Web Video / Rotgrind A World In Decay

The world of Tyne has wasted away...

A Tabletop Role-Playing Game livestreamed campaign, Rotgrind: A World In Decay, is a Dark Souls-inspired show by Narrative Declaration and is hosted on the Twitch channel of ZoranTheBear, running on alternating saturdays.

300 years ago, the world of Tyne began to waste away. No single war, plague, or other cataclysm started this decay; the world itself seems to have simply stagnated and withered as its once great nations have fallen into indolence, hubris, and decadence. Those few who even acknowledge the state that the world has fallen into call it The Rot or The Demise, which are terms used interchangeably to describe both the general malaise that is gripping the world as well as the metaphysical sickness that grips those who succumb to this mindset. The gods have abandoned this world to its fate, leaving the salvation or damnation of Tyne to the few would-be heroes or villains who can sum up the will and courage to press on in spite of the omnipresent oppression and death as the world slowly grinds to its inevitable doom.

Our party comes together deep within the worst prison of the oldest city in the world; the prison of Pawn's Pilaster, with only one choice given to them: Stay and rot in jail, against a system that will not be for them...or fight their way out.

The current campaign of Rotgrind: A World In Decay uses the Pathfinder Second Edition ruleset and follows five up and coming adventurers in the city of Outset, all of whom have faced tragedy and hardship in this world and are trying to make something of thesmelves in spite of the oppression they exist in.

A co-campaign running primarily in the same setting called Rotgoons is run on alternating Saturdays, where four unsual residents of Pawn's Pilaster try to survive a seemingly simple task.

The Players of Rotgrind

• ZoranTheBear as Oran, the Strix Druid
• OdoroshiRider as Vaali/Vina, the Sylph Swashbuckler
• Earndil as Baldric, the Human Alchemist
• HulkyKrow as Rehua, the Conrasu Cleric
• SpeakerD as Tannhauser, the Android Magus
• Thurston Hillman as the Game Master

The Players of Rotgoons

• SaltyJub as Heart, the Human(?) Monk
• FroggyLoch as Beetlezebub^* aka Beetle, aka Beet, aka Bee, aka B, aka Buh!, the Kobold Investigator
• Minerva, aka PartyDemoness as Gray Crokus, the Gnoll Ranger
• Kabhaal as Tellem Shaburra, the Ghost Magus
• Zoran The Bear as the Game Master

Narrative Declaration provides examples of the following

Rotgrind

• Affably Evil:
  • Tannhauser has all the mannerisms and appearance of a villain, but is neutral by his player's admission and, barring getting on his bad side, is quite cordial to near everyone he meets.
  • Hummal, the half-orc prison guard from episode one, is either this or a Punch-Clock Villain; yes, he's a cog in the oppressive, fascist regime that is the Tyrant's Guild, but he holds no particular ill-will towards the party and even has something resembling a repartee with Baldric due to the sheer amount of times he's been in and out of prison.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • One of the big mechanics in the game is that players can use a Hero Point to make a narrative declaration, effectively willing something into being that wasn't there before. One of the players decides to do this to make it so there's such a thing as a "chainsaw car" as a gag. But then the GM actually statted one up and turned it into a combat encounter...
  • Happens again hard in Act 2: The party picks up a helpful but extremely obnoxious halfling bard named Picktern Squelchfoot, who bores most of the party to tears with his long-winded stories and overly loud bagpipes; to the point that Earndil's characters actively wish pain and death on him most of the time, and each party member seems more than a little flippant on whether or not they want him to survive. The finally get a chance to fight him towards the end of the act, but only after realizing he has a Rotten condition worse than Vaali's, and plunges them into a boss fight; having become too far gone from the party's abuse.
• Combat Parkour: Vaali uses them as part of her panache features...though it's also parodied as she tends to do backflips just to keep up the bonuses during inopportune moments.
• The Corruption: The Rot is a particularly virulent and wide-spread version, with the entire world of Tyne being affected by it in some way, shape, or form. The Rot is both a physical malady that causes the slow wasting of the body of any who are infected and a spiritual plague that results in selfishness, ennui, and malaise before eventually completely eroding the victim's sense of self and turning them into a listless and mindlessly violent husk of the being they once were. Every nation and community in the setting has been touched by the Rot since it first appeared several centuries ago and many conflicts are the result of trying to eradicate it when it manifests or finding a cure for it. What's worse, if a permanent solution is not found to rid Tyne of the Rot it will eventually cause The End of the World as We Know It when everyone succumbs to it.
• Death Is Not Permanent: After being killed by their encounter with the chainsaw car, Vaali and Oran wake up in the same pool of water they woke up in after falling off a collapsing building.
• Disney Death: The first episode ends with the entire party falling off of collapsing building into the depths of Outset. The next episode opens with them having survived by hitting a pool of remarkably pure and soft water. Or rather, having died and been resurrected in said pool.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • Bremblo, a minor NPC who is noted for three things; his Plinkett-esque speech, his deep and abiding desire for avacados, and the fact that he is a flesh puppet piloted by a massive flying centipede-like creature that cannot die and speaks of the unending madness of the cosmos whenever he appears.
  • Once the crew begins meeting some of the more heinous examples of what the Rot can do...they become disturbingly common.
• Find the Cure!: Season 2 of Rotgrind sees the party leave Outset for the Solitude Swamps to track down a group of Twangfolk who live out there and supposedly have a treatment for the Rot, as both Vaali and Oran had contracted it during the excursions in the City. A servant of the Old Powers, Ribbius, whom the Twangfolk serve did indeed have a cure, but it came at the cost of the party's ally Pikturn Squelchfoot, who had become far more Rotten than either Vaali and Oran during their travels. The party was forced to put him down when the Rot finally subsumed him as a manifestation of the Rot within Ribbius in order to awaken the Frog God fully so he could cure them.
• Plant Person: Rehua, as a Conrasu, is made of an amalgam of wood, vines, and metal.
• Lady Drunk: Vaali affects this type of personality, trying to keep very posh in her mannerisms while simultaneously being off-her-ass drunk.
• Large Ham: Tannhauser and subtlety do not mix. Virtually every line he speaks tends to be over the top, whether he's giving speeches, pushing for the "revolution," or being terrifyingly sinister.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Baldric has gone to prison and knows the routine so well he's practically a regular. Further, they only take visible weapons from their prisoners and keep them readily available...because they're probably gonna need them.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Tugbert, a platypus with a beanie cap, shows up occasionally purely because it's cute, existing as a mascot on the overlay for a couple of episodes.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: As an android, Tannhauser is in fact so humanoid that he is racially classified as one instead of a construct, and even has a soul.
• Sadistic Choice: The prison system either runs on waiting years for one's case to be heard, or fighting aspirants of the police force. Many overwhelming choose the latter, even if it might get them killed.
• Scam Religion: The crawfish deity Crawdadimus is in fact a scam made up by locals in the Solitude to dupe outsiders out of offerings made to it for supposed safe passage through the swamps. Vaali manages to Nat 1 her check to see through the lie and becomes a fervent follower of Crawdadimus. Later comes back up when Pikturn succumbs to the Rot, as the Rot within him takes the form of a hideous Rotten avatar of Crawdadimus, proving that there might be some truth to this phony god.
• The Scapegoat: Unlike the rest of the party, it's implied that Baldric's crimes are largely trumped up charges done to satisfy the local government. In reality, he is effectively a bomb-making terrorist, just one who hasn't been able to blow up the right targets... yet.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Rehua gets forced into helping an old lady run her restaurant after she (somehow) mistakes him for her grandson.
• Surfer Dude: Oran affects this to the point that at least two other characters ask if he's been taking narcotics.

Rotgoons

• Beware the Nice Ones: Heart is generally a pretty swell guy and easy going to all who know him, but if you give him a reason to believe that you are endangering his friends and loved ones he will personally invert your skull with his fists.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: For as much of a manic nutball as he is, Beetle is frighteningly competent at his chosen profession of Forensic Medicine; he is quite good at healing the party, can analyze a crime scene and dead bodies for clues like no other, and can weaponize his Sherlock Scan to devastating effect.
• Character Death
  • Tellem died before the start of the campaign, having been shot in the back during a bandit raid in Quanshir, and only his love of money and business keeps his spirit tied to the world of the living.
  • During the party's first foray into the Sinkhole Tellem is killed again by a mass of crystalline zombies that dogpile him, and his soul gets trapped in an Amari crystal. He is later revived by Lorn Barnes.
  • Beetle is killed during the assault on Krohk's Den to save the giant blacksmith, getting shot point-blank by Krohk's blunderbuss.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Everyone in the party gets in on this a bit due to the Denser and Wackier nature of this campaign, but Beetle easily stands heads and shoulders above the rest of the party in this regard. He's a manic Kobold with a mangled snout who has No Indoor Voice, uses a gun longer than he is tall, and generally offers up the most violent options for conflict resolution out of the party.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: A non-villainous version that is Invoked and Played for Laughs; at the parade the Goons find that one of the food carts set up along the parade path is only selling potatoes that are magically conjured by a so-called "potatomancer" named Greg, who is rather depressed about the fact that his sole magical ability is so pointlessly mundane compared to his dreams of becoming a fancy wizard. As Beetle and Tellem are swift to point out, Greg's conjured potatoes avert the common rules for conjured items by being real manifested potatoes that can be used like ones naturally grown from the dirt, meaning that not only could he potentially feed the world, but he will have a nigh-constant source of free income because he can sell off these potatoes literally as fast as he can make them^note and Tellem specifically notes that this trick is basically a cantrip to Greg, meaning that he could potentially make potatoes every second of his waking life if he so chose. Tellem immediately brings Greg under his wing and plans to get stupidly wealthy and become the "Potato King of Outset."
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the Rotgrind campaign, Rotgoons has much lower stakes and much higher potential for comedic shenaniganery since the adventure is mostly kept to the City of Adventure that is Outset and gives ample opportunities for the party to interact with the wacky locals.
• Massively Numbered Siblings: Beetle has a number of sisters that is somewhere in the double digits, and there are so many of them that even Beetle has trouble remembering how many there are.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Gray found out the hard way from one of her daughters working in Krohk's Den that many of her children who moved away from home died out in the wilderness, and Gray's daughter blamed her for not being there to protect them.

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