Diary of a Chaos Engineer
An Experiment in Coherent, Mechanical, and Emergent Resistance
📍 Myomar, Sector M-7. Deep within the shadows of a decaying Empire, I’m designing not just a game… but a coherent insurgent system — tactically plausible and narratively immersive.
This isn’t just an RPG. It’s an emergent design experiment, where the world reacts — and characters must survive, think, and improvise.
🧩 The Current Challenge
🛠️ I’m structuring NPC encounters that behave like real insurgent cells or counterintelligence units (COMPNOR).
No arbitrary rolls.
No purposeless random events.
No narrative shielding: “My NPC must survive.”
To achieve that, I’ve been investing hours into:
📍 Terrain abstractions to track movement and disguise patterns in the COMPNOR vs. Nellis Var conflict.
📋 Variable surveillance routines: patrol shifts, listening posts, access sectors, tactical route rotations.
🎯 Dynamic agendas for Var, with mechanical consequences, where each choice shifts the balance between concealment and execution.
🧠 NPC situational awareness, and their actual capacity to interfere with — or adapt — their own agenda.
All of this is to ensure strategic plausibility, consistent mechanics, and full thematic immersion.
🗃️ Tools in Development
🔧 Operational Profiles (NPCs)
Tactical classification of every possible action:
🟥 Survival 🟦 Calculation 🟩 Expressive
🟨 Manipulative 🟧 Logistical 🟫 Aggressive
🧪 In Testing: Infiltration Skills
📘 I’m retranslating and adapting abilities from the Cyphers and Masks (Age of Rebellion) supplement to develop:
A list of 16+ Insurgent Abilities, tested in the field and validated by internal coherence.
Psychological and operational profiles for insurgents, linking preferred traits to preferred covert actions.
Mechanics for realistic tactical opposition tests, enabling Resistance vs. COMPNOR clashes to be resolved through structured data — not improvisation.
🧪 In Testing: 🧩 Narrative Deck
Each card delivers a narrative trigger, categorized and color-coded:
🧩Situation: Environmental event that demands immediate reaction.
🔑Opportunity:Tactical opening or infiltration window. Allows rebel initiative rolls.
🚫Obstacle: Complication trigger — demands tests, disrupts the operation.
🔁Reaction: Enemy/environmental response to Var’s presence or moves.
🔍Revelation: Hidden information emerges: surveillance, betrayal, covert connections.
🧠 Conclusion: A Designer in Tactical Crisis
The hardest part?
Creating opposition tests that are narratively credible and mechanically consistent — where tactics, bluff, routine, and misdirection intersect under real tension.
This project is my lab.
I’m juggling too many variables.
But with every mechanism that clicks into place, I feel the insurgency in Myomar come to life.
If you’ve read this far — congratulations.
You’re already inside the bunker.