A3. Alphaville

Last one for now:

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where no one suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program.”

Jack Green drives home from work in a perfect tailfinned 50s car to a perfect three-bedroom bungalow in a perfect Pleasantville suburb. He waves to Joe Green, a perfect neighborly neighbor, and walks in the door for a perfectly chaste kiss from Jane Green, a perfect June Cleaver sitcom wife. Jack doesn’t listen to the bushwa Joe’s peddling about a family of Yellows moving in down the street. Jack’s a team player, a straight shooter, a perfect company man. Old Mr. Indigo says Jack’s doing a bang up job at Alpha Corp, building honest-to-gosh computers to stop the Commies. So Jack keeps his eyes on the prize. He’s not troubled by questions; he’s even learned to tune out Jane’s sobbing. But every night he needs to up his dose of Blue Pills so as not to wake up to the Truth…

A2. Alpha | State

OK, how about this? Two words, so obvious I’ve got to assume there are umpteen GeoCities pages on this topic from 1997: Steampunk PARANOIA. Still, as any IntSec termination squad will tell you, it’s all in the execution.

The sun never sets on the Alphan Empire. Never sets, never rises, and never moves, actually: it’s a coal-fired blast furnace fixed with iron girders in the smog-shrouded sky. One hundred years after Babbage, one hundred years after Lord Byron’s coup, the Alphan Empire is a steam-driven superpower stretching from Barbados to Bangalore. At its heart squats perfidious Alpha, the not so Green and Pleasant Isle, and at Alpha’s heart sprawls the Empress, the city-sized analytical engine that rules and mothers the Empire.

A1. Slave Complex of the Under There

Beyond the Borderlands and beneath the Misty Mountains lie the caves and caverns of the Under There. The Under There is an archetypal megadungeon, a subterranean labyrinth of evil humanoids, accursed undead, and eight flavors of sentient ooze. There are dark passages, cramped lairs, and secret doors, all constructed on a weirdly regular 10’ by 10’ grid. But the PCs are not adventuring heroes, they are monsters, the put-upon inhabitants of this deadly and dysfunctional underworld.

Yes, yes, you’ve had this idea before.