Hey folks!
In this post, we will highlight games for the upcoming week which have open seats and therefore the opportunity to add some more gaming fun to your week.
InSpectres: Still in Hollywood
Wednesday, May 15, 2019 12:00 AM → Wednesday, May 15, 2019 3:00 AM
You have the Cecil Hotel in Skid Row, “The Mansion” in Laurel Canyon (Houdini didn’t actually live there, but Errol Flynn did), the Pico House on Main, and of course there’s the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. But those are the glam jobs. Someone has to get those gremlins infesting the International Terminal at LAX. Someone has to boot the troglodytes in the Third Street Tunnel from under Bunker Hill. And then there’s Reseda. Seriously. Reseda. You won’t get famous on those jobs, but you do enough of them and that’s what will keep the lights on in the City of Angels.
Into The Odd: Electric Bastionland - Tomb of the Serpent Kings
Tuesday, May 14, 2019 11:00 PM → Wednesday, May 15, 2019 2:00 AM
Have you heard about this whole OSR thing and you’re itching to try it out? Come along and play a bunch of indebted treasure hunters far from their home in the great city of Bastion… They’ve heard rumors of great wealth in a locked away in a desert tomb…
Tomb of the Serpent Kings is an intentionally designed “learning” module. It has been designed to help acclimate new players to the play style of OSR gaming. (I’d recommend taking a look at https://lithyscaphe.blogspot.com/p/principia-apocrypha.html - especially the last section for players - to get a good feel for what to expect.)
We’ll be using the Into The Odd: Electric Bastionland ruleset - a very lightweight set of rules that are simple to learn. Character creation is quick and easy. (Which is good, since in all likelihood you’re gonna lose one or two on the way.)
Dark Streets & Darker Secrets: Beneath the Canals
Wednesday, May 15, 2019 12:00 AM → Wednesday, May 15, 2019 3:00 AM
Everyone knows Pentola, with its catacombs and canals, is built on top of something even older. But few have gone as deeply into the worlds of “Those Who Came Before” as you will be: The Suzerain of Zehir is a mystic, spiritual advisor, and wealthy patron, but also famously vindictive and impatient. For the money they have put on the table, you can get yourself out of your debts if you can find what they and their cult want. This will be a “fantasy du siecle” take on Zine Quest setting of Pentola detailed in “Beath the Canals,” but with aesthetics and technologies reminiscent of our world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We’ll be using Diogo Nogueira’s recently Kickstarted game of occult mysteries and monsters: “Dark Streets & Darker Secrets.”
Block by Block: Homicide Squad
Thursday, May 16, 2019 1:00 PM → Thursday, May 16, 2019 3:30 PM
It’s not about trails of clues, little grey cells, suspects in drawing rooms. It’s about doing the work. Piece by piece, street by street, block by block. That’s how you build a case.
We’re playing a police procedural about a LAPD homicide detectives, some time in the 1970s.
The aim of the game is to investigate crimes, close cases, and not get fired. Each detective on the squad has a personal caseload for which they are ultimately responsible. But the overall performance of the squad reflects on all its members, so you’ll need to help each other out.
It’s not a game about interpreting clues and solving puzzles. That will happen some of the time, but the goal you always have is to investigate cases hoping to get a ‘break’ – a significant piece of information.
When you’re ready, you take your case to the DA – having more than the minimum number of breaks makes it more likely that the DA will accept and thereby let you close the case.
CONTENT
The genre is a largely realistic mid to late-20th century police procedural. Crime stats used are drawn from LAPD records of the 1970s. However, the victim profiles are deliberately not realistic: these are based instead on the types of case you would see in a prime-time TV detective show.
The game is about investigating murders: as such, violence and the outcomes of violence will be depicted. However, it does not feature gore or horror.
[GERMAN] World of Aventurien - Schatten XII
Thursday, May 16, 2019 5:00 PM → Thursday, May 16, 2019 8:00 PM
I’m running two German language sessions of a Dark Eye 1E adaptation of World of Dungeons by John Harper
This is part of a series of playing Indie / story games in the world of the Dark Eye, the most popular German fantasy RPG.
Gone
Thursday, May 16, 2019 6:00 PM → Thursday, May 16, 2019 10:00 PM
Lise suffers from dementia and is slowly disappearing from the world, while her family watches. Unable to do anything. Soon she will be gone. The scenario follows her husband and three adult children the last year before she is admitted to a nursing home.
Up until now the family has managed to push old conflicts aside and pull together in taking the best possible care of Lise. But the disease is wearing on them and everybody is nearing their breaking point.
Gone is about being a relative to a person suffering from dementia. Not about having dementia yourself. Therefore, Lise is never directly featured in the scenario, but the characters’ relationship with her is played out through their interaction with each other.
The central premise of Gone is the question of how people react to slowly losing someone they love. Within this premise is two
themes of how we are affected by grief and what it really means to be a Family.
This scenario won the prize for best scenario and the audience award for best game at Fastaval in 2018.
Monsterhearts 2: Forbearance
Friday, May 17, 2019 2:00 AM → Friday, May 17, 2019 5:00 AM
Forbearance, New Mexico, 1997, a dot-com boomtown haunted by digital monsters.
In the new economy, locals rely on freelancing and service jobs. A kid with a bike can get a courier gig. A smart and savvy enough kid could swing a QA job at one of the startups.
And that’s to say nothing of the demons. Daemons? It’s unclear whether they were born on the Net or whether they’re infernal opportunists, but Dark Powers haunt the modem lines, offering wealth and power to those who can do their bidding. What do they want? Maybe just chaos.
Mutants in the Night: Unity
Saturday, May 18, 2019 12:00 PM → Saturday, May 18, 2019 3:00 PM
Unity Heights was a high tech, sleek neighborhood for the many “young professionals” working for the new headquarters of the shipping megacorp in the city. It was much celebrated, a seed of hope and renewal for the city.
That was 24 years ago. The seed? Corrupted.
Today, Unity Mutant Safe Zone are where the unwanted, the exploited, the acceptable target. The world is dying, the megacorp has changed headquarters again but still profits from exploitation of the inhabitants of Unity - perhaps even more as they are not even recognized as humans. The world crumbles away as capitalism keeps chugging along. You are mutants, the scapegoats for a crumbling system, blamed for everything; but you also have the tools to fix your communities and save your loved ones. As they fear you, they admit to the power for change your can wield.
The soil is ready and toiled; make Unity a true seed. Bloom.
Ascendancy Playtest
Saturday, May 18, 2019 5:00 PM → Saturday, May 18, 2019 9:00 PM
"No matter how many times you see Mooncore from up high, you always feel something stir inside of you.
From up here, it all seems so distant - everything you’ve fought for, everything that was lost. The banners of revolution are meaningless - simply specks of color, if they’re visible at all. The people who live their lives in fear are just colors as they turn on their lights in their homes, and the ever-present purring of your mechanical arm is quieted against the wind’s noise.
You wait, knowing that it’s only a matter of time before you see the city’s true colors."
We will be playing 3 sessions of Ascendancy, an in-development Sparked by Resistance RPG about bio-engineered mutant soldiers called Ascended trying to define themselves and survive in a post-revolutionary city that does not trust them. It is a game about identity, rebellion against power structures, and our relationships to others.
The author includes the following content warning: “Themes of abuse, body horror involving technological augmentation, identity, trauma, political upheaval, and imperialism are all either explicitly intended or heavily implied through the text and the mechanics. The core conceit of Ascendancy is exploring how expectations of those around you can shape you into a different person, and how identity is changed and shaped by others, but the explicit attention to the abusive and manipulative nature of the Ascended’s relationship to the Uplift, as well as the Ascended’s relationship to their own powers may be difficult and traumatic to some.”
Dungeon World: Cold Ruins of Lastlife
Sunday, May 19, 2019 12:00 PM → Sunday, May 19, 2019 3:00 PM
Imagine grand cathedrals. Spires scraping the heavens. Statues of alabaster and silver. A song echoing through stone corridors. The light of hope ensconced in a thousand torches, keeping the darkest nights at bay. Then imagine it all fell. Grand cathedrals, silent and empty. Spires, crumbling and broken. Statues dirty and tarnished. Song, forgotten and lost. A thousand torches, cold and dark. That is the world of Lastlife.
Macchiato Monsters: Operation Unfathomable
Sunday, May 19, 2019 3:30 PM → Sunday, May 19, 2019 6:30 PM
BEHOLD!!!
…the Underworld in all its bewildering majesty as titanic Chaos godlings and their unsavory cults make genocidal war upon one another!
EXPLOIT!!!
…a trail of dead horrors supplied by the recent, doomed expedition of powerful heroes!
SEIZE!!!
…eldritch artifacts and treasures far above your lowly station!
PONDER!!!
…the mind-bending riddles and inscrutable anomalies of reality itself in an overwhelming cascade of cosmic secrets!
THRILL!!!
…as you throw the gauntlet of your life into the smug face of the unknowable and embark upon this…
OPERATION UNFATHOMABLE!!!
We will be playing three sessions of Operation Unfathomable by The Hydra Cooperative, using Macchiato Monsters. Due to high lethality, we will be creating two PCs in the first session.
The tone of the module is a gonzo pulp comedy mashup of science fantasy and high fantasy. All subject matter is treated ironically and unseriously.