Play the Integration Era: Two Free Tabletop Modules
Two standalone one-shots, two very different nights at the table. Both free when you join.
For a while now, the Integration Era has been something you read. Starting today it's also something you can run.
Two tabletop modules are ready. Both are free, both play in a single evening with friends and a handful of six-sided dice, and both teach you everything at the table as you go. You don't need to have read a word of the fiction. You don't need to know LitRPG, or the setting, or how any of it works. Sit down, hand out the characters, and play.
They're called Signal Break and Hard Lock. They share a world and they feel nothing alike on the night, which is exactly why there are two. One is a slow, creeping investigation. The other is a fight you might not all walk out of. Pick the one that suits your table, or run both and watch the same world show two completely different faces.
What you're getting
Each module is a complete one-shot. Self-contained, no prep beyond a read-through, designed for 3 to 5 players and one person running it, in a 3 to 4 hour session. Recommended for ages 16 and up.
The rules are light. You roll six-sided dice, count the ones that land, and get on with the story. Five ready-to-play characters come with each module, so nobody has to build anything. The setting primer takes five minutes. Everything a first-time GM needs is in the document, including a cheat sheet for the table.
If you've run any tabletop game before, you can run these tonight. If you've never run one, these were written with you in mind.
Signal Break: the one where nothing attacks you
The survey team's last transmission lasted four seconds. Static. Then nothing. Someone has to go in. The system says you're qualified. The system has been wrong before.
A corporate survey crew went quiet on a Fringe world, and the party gets hired to find out why. What they walk into is an Architect ruin that has been asleep for longer than anyone can date, and has recently started running diagnostics on everything that steps inside. Including them.
There are no monsters here. The dread comes from somewhere quieter: a structure that scans you and won't say why, two missing people somewhere deeper in, a company man on the team whose helpfulness is two degrees off from honest, and a transport captain who gave you 48 hours and meant it. The characters start as strangers with their own reasons for coming. By the end they're a crew, or they're in trouble.
This is the on-ramp for a table that likes mystery, atmosphere, and figuring out what's really going on. It also quietly teaches the core rules, so it makes a clean first session for a group new to the dice or to the world.
Hard Lock: the one where everything does
The bore went too deep. Something under the rock woke up, and the system started counting. Ninety minutes to containment. The only Designated personnel on the deck are you, and you got your designations last month. The machines coming up the shaft do not care that you're new.
A deep mining bore on a Fringe ore outpost cracks open something the Architects left buried, and tears a small wound in reality. Old machinery starts coming up the shaft, treating everyone it finds as a problem to correct. The station's system triggers a 90-minute containment lockdown, and the five newest workers on the deck are the only ones it counts as qualified to hold the line until it finishes.
This one is a fight, in four escalating waves, on a clock that gets worse as it runs. The hook is what happens to your characters while they hold. You start the night barely able to swing, and every wave you survive, the system invests in you: a stat raise, a new skill rank, and at the finale a hard-won rank and a one-shot burst of power. By the last wave you feel dangerous. That climb, fast and visible and earned under fire, is the whole experience.
This is the on-ramp for a table that wants tactics, pressure, and the specific satisfaction of watching their characters get stronger in a single sitting.
Why two, and how to choose
The split is deliberate. Signal Break is the quiet half of the Integration Era: a system that watches and judges and never explains itself. Hard Lock is the loud half: a system that hands you power as fast as you can earn it, while something old tries to take your head off. Together they show both halves of how this world actually works.
If your table leans toward investigation and roleplay, start with Signal Break. If they want a brawl with real stakes and a progression rush, start with Hard Lock. Run one this month and the other next, and your players will have seen the full range of the game in two evenings.
How to get them
Both modules are free. Join integrationera.com, also free, and they land in your inbox, ready to print and run. A membership also grants access to every new story, post, and module the day it goes public.
Grab the dice. Round up some friends. The system is waiting to see what you do.
The Integration Era is a science fiction series about a world remade by an alien system nobody asked for.
Run the Integration Era. Two free modules.
Two standalone one-shots for 3 to 5 players and a handful of six-sided dice. One is a creeping investigation, one is an escalating fight, and both teach themselves at the table. Subscribe to the free dispatch and they land in your inbox, ready to print and run. No account, no cost, no designation required.
We'll email it to you. Unsubscribe any time.