The Cacogenic Vats is a role playing game supplement written and published by Operant Game Lab for use with OSR games. The supplement is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a 12 page Pay What You Want PDF. One page is the front cover and one the Credits. A separate png file has a copy of the map.
The Cacogenic Vats starts with Adventure Pitch explains that near a village is a shrine that’s been surrounded by corpses and wrapped in a black fog and had a reputation for being the source of disease. This fog has now gone and there are rumours of treasure within the shrine. GM’s Summary explains that the shrine is home to a wizard and the shrine and corpse pile were created by him to keep locals away. Recently, he was struck down by a rival and is now waiting for his clone body to mature. During this time, his powers are diminished and the illusions around the shrine have gone. Some kidnappers have also moved in. Hooks has hooks to get the characters involved.
Encounters and NPCs has random encounters within the dungeon and stats for NPCs.
The Dungeon covers the location itself. There are some details on the legend, the above ground shrine and the dungeon below.
The final page of content has maps of the above ground and underground areas.
The Cacogenic Vats in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and has enough sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of comparatively crude custom illustrations. Presentation is okay.
The characters will need to explore the dungeon that’s full of cloning vats, the clones all having different capabilities and some might be made loyal to the characters but one will definitely try to kill them. As time passes, this clone will get out of the vat it’s in and begin hunting. There are also the kidnappers to deal with. Though this is a small adventure, it won’t be easy to drop into every setting; the overall tone is more gonzo and some settings won’t work so well with that. Though specific system is targeted at, other than OSR in general, it might work better converted to Troika! The Cacogenic Vats can be found by clicking here.
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