Let me tell you a story. There was a night, many, many years ago, when everything ended. Bugs aren’t that great at writing things down, so nobody really thought to record the particulars of the event, but the effects were lasting; no more pesticides, no more deforestation, no more fish hooks or bait boxes or flypaper. Pets ran free from newly-quiet houses, and roach motels showed nothing but vacancies. The biggest change that most bugs noticed that night was that it suddenly got a lot quieter, especially near those black stone ribbons they’d learned not to cross, and the immense above-ground warrens full of beeping machines and smells so succulent they were almost impossible to resist. So bugs, on the whole, flourished. And the world opened up to them in return.
Welcome to Pico, a game of tiny bugs in a big world. The Mysteriocalypse has been termed, by some bugly historians, as the 'end of an age of order', and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than within the transparent confines of the Skyglass Dome. There are echoes of a less chaotic time - workbenches stacked with rusting tools, sacks of sand that would have dwarfed even a picotitan before they split and spilled, the remnants of a fine iron cage standing stark against the outer sky. But that old world is... Well, not gone, not entirely, but certainly thoroughly reclaimed.
The Skyglass Dome now stands as an ecological triumph, a contradiction, and a living chaos. Desert dunes stretch between lush, fertile flowerbeds,and cacti grow in the shade of fruiting vines. The glass panelling that once kept the outside world at bay is bloomcovered, stem-choked, and in some places missing entirely. Some denizens, the spiky sorts, revel in the spilled sands and the heat of a glass-focused sun and wish to keep things as they are. Others want to speed the spread of vegetative chaos, hatching elaborate schemes to break panes and twist metal, and sowing ever more seeds wherever they'll take. The Skyglass Dome is glorious, rowdy, tropical, colorful and above all, ready for you to come visit and explore. Pico is the newest release by Felix Isaacs, based off the same engine as his award-winning game The Wildsea, with a few little bugly twists thrown in to keep things fresh! It is a fiction-first system about playing as tiny bugs in a huge world where humans have disappeared entirely. The game's themes are Cute, Weird, Community, Creativity and Adventure. It is a game about solving tiny problems, most often in creative ways and often without violence.
This game will be great if you like exploration, creative problem solving, playing small creatures in a big world, The Wildsea, Mausritter, Redwall, The Rescuers, The Hobbit, Over The Hedge, Discworld, Hollow Knight, or Thumbelina.
New players are welcome.
The GM is also new to this system.
Pregenerated characters are provided to pick from.
Tone: Silly⚪⚪⚪⚬⚬ Serious
Combat: ⚪⚪⚬⚬⚬
Role Play: ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚬
Exploration: ⚪⚪⚪⚪⚬
Tags: exploration, animals.
Content warnings: lots of different bugs