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We've got guns and hover hotrods, cantinas and drug dens, racetracks and brothels. At the heart of the desert lies Sugar Skull City, where you arrive at Calavera Station as an exile—referred to as a Consideration. With no hope of escape from this open-air industrial prison complex, most people go to work in a factory until they die. But it’s not forced labor… not exactly.
You see, Death Mesa exists in a state of anarchy—the corporate entities offer work, an apartment, food, other allowances, and protection from gangs, con artists, and cutthroats. All you have to give up is your agency and dignity. What a bargain!
Your character won’t fit well into a life of servitude, and there are options. Will you become a villain, a hero, something in between… or reject this fate entirely? Will you choose to escape—or change Death Mesa itself?
If you want a Quick Start pick one of the
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This TTRPG is based on my Open Development 3d6 Gaming System, the Death Mesa Core Rules document is where you can find the answers to all of the questions about the game mechanics. If you need to know about dice rolls, skills, effort, conditions, etc. you should check the Death Mesa Core Rules. You can also find development and author’s notes there.
New players should concern themselves with the following chapters:
Skill Groups & Skills Abilities & Effort
Those are the chapters needed for Character Creation (In-Work). You start as aConsideration so you’ll have no gear or money.
Everything else has potential SPOILERS FOR THE DEATH MESA SETTING.
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Sugar Skull City is an entity. Built at the center of a vast desert landscape surrounded by impassable mountain ranges, it’s a dumping ground of people too useful to kill and to problematic to keep around: a melting pot where generations born in exile share a space with corporate interests aligned against them, the alien overlords in control, and the thousands of Considerations sentenced to a life of servitude or desperate survival.
Massive energy banks, neon-lit back alleys, and graffiti-covered train platforms crowd the skyline. Industries churn day and night: auto plants assemble mining equipment and Ix-powered hover cars, textile mills crank out Ix-sealing dyes for fabrics, and chemical labs distill everything from medicinal miracles to designer intoxicants. Military component foundries hum quietly at the edges, ever ready to supply the next conflict.
Sugar Skull City is an open-air prison where you arrive on a train with some clothing and your skills. To outsiders, it’s a ruin. To locals, it’s freedom. The city doesn’t care where you came from or what you did, only that you work or survive by your wits.
There is none.
Sugar Skull Station is occupied and operated by Xborgnio and his Outworld Expats. The Eldar Districts are kept clean and relatively safe through the threat of violence from Elan IeSia and Elven Gunslingers. True-Grit goblins do not allow anyone into their residential areas, and finally, the corporate interests have automated security keeping their employees safe and secure in the Station Plaza, Factories, or designated travel and shopping zones. The employees of most companies are recognizable by their collars, bracelets, armbands, or other identification and tracking markers. Too much harassment of productive corporate employees will have Xborgnio’s Regulators after you. They are a cruel and messy crew of Outworld Expats, contract fixers with a passion for violence.
The rest of the city and most of the desert are in a state of anarchy. The customs and courtesies expected change from one neighborhood to the next, and the act of crossing a street might take you from complete safety to mortal danger. But don’t fret, with all this violence and uncertainty looming, opportunity can’t be far off. RIGHT?!
That means you and your crew are welcome to try anything they think they can get away with. There are plenty of weak crews out there waiting to get their gear jacked or become fodder for a scheme. A group of certified bad-asses such as yourselves shouldn’t have no trouble scrounging in the desert for car parts, avoiding con-artists and cut-throats, being guardians to the downtrodden, or becoming the aggressors who take what they want, when they want it…
Because they feel like they can.
Remember that actions have consequences, and someone or ones may come looking for a personal brand of justice. There are plenty of benevolent neighborhood watch groups, guardian angel crews, independent arbitrators, and non-exploitative business opportunities in Death Mesa, so don’t feel that the only option for adventure is the path of the murder hobo. Although that path might be fun in the beginning, you’ll find there are lots of good people and wild characters for your crew to get to know in this city—they might not be as easy to take out as you think.
New players are encouraged to make their first character a Consideration from Inworld Maht. You don’t have a enough experience to make an established character or Natural Born Mesan, and anything else would be playing on hard mode.