A game of urban fantasy, set in the 70's, when the world could end and the RPG panic was real. Can you keep a secret?
You will need playbooks, and a deck of cards for every three players (not counting the GM). Four players means two decks. Seven players means three. Player and GM create some planar entintites, and disucss the city thier character's know. More on both later. Players choose playbooks and assemble their characters.
The GM shuffles cards together, and deals all players 13 cards to start their deck. Players may not pickup, lookup or alter the order of their stack. The boardgaming terminology is a 'deck-builder'. The stack represents the deep magical energies they have built up or accumulated. Remaining cards go in the center of the table in a neat pile, face down.
Players can draw the top four cards of their deck into their hand. These represent magical energies you have some control over. Bigger numbers mean more powerful spells.
When something is uncertain and important, you do it in the fiction first and describe what you are doing in the fiction that triggers the move. Sometimes a GM may call for a move based on what is happening in the fiction. (INSERT EXAMPLE) After the move triggers, the player turns over the top card from their stack and then chooses to turn over a second card, OR play a card from their hand. Certain resources and abilities will allow the player to place more cards.
Like the card game 21, the results are added up, picture cards count as 10, aces count as 1. As a general rule for moves: Lower then 17 it doesn't work and the GM takes the story forward. Beat 17 to succeed with a 'but' Hit 21 exactly to succeed with an 'and' Go over 21 to succeed but trigger a hard GM move too. (example. Lighting a campfire becomes a wild fire. A teleportation spell opens a portal to a new plane)
A move made with mostly black cards is a constructive spell A move made with mostly reds is a destructive spell A move made with a mixture is a transformation spell
(so a two black card spell could create a statue out of thin air. A two red card spell could destroy a door. A mixture would be needed to turn someone into a frog) Player ambition and cunning is valued here. You can justify using a Red card spell to destroy parts of a stone block to leave a statue behind. You could justify using a Black card spell to create a fireball that happens to burn the door or making the wood in the door frame come back to life and grow, crushing the door open. You could transform something into a bomb or an acorn)
Spent cards go in the discard pile. When the stack runs out, shuffle the discard pile and turn it back over to make a new stack. You can draw the top card off the stack and add it to your hand by spendign time in the fiction meditatiing, chanelling, or conducting some ritual suitable to your charactr. Normally you cannot hold more than four cards in your hand at a time.
When you invest time and story in developing your character a certain way, this is reflected in gaining certain resources. These go on the table in front of you and if it suits the fiction, can be used in a spell instead of drawing from your hand. They don't get discarded. They also trigger extra things as described below.
Familiar - use more actions Demense - Draw more cards Implement - Use more cards Speciality - More effects Mundane - Draw discards
An old one but a good one. You've entered into contract with an entity. Reasonably loyal as long as you keep them fed. Has the definite advatnage for the player that you can be literally in two places at once.
A territory, staked out and
Sometimes it all goes wrong. This isn't the kind of game where you calcualte the damage done by a two handed falchion against two types of armour worn on different limbs to take away a number from a fixed stat and you die when you hit zero. It's the kind of gam where the torrents of unearthly magical energy curdle your brain a little and something in your reflection cracks.
Synasthasia Hallucinations Coherent hallucinations Amusica Colour blind Alinguistica Body language blind Face blind Life blind Aliterate Innumerate Short term memory loss Long term memory loss Friend/foe blind
Fight/Flight/Freeze primed Shape dysmorphia Gender dysmorphia Obessiion itdeation Addiction
Each player gets to add a type of planar entity to the setting, and the GM gets to add two. Others might appear in game. These are the things in the shadows, that lurk under the bed or ring the doorbell wearing suits. Plane entities are obsessed with a specific human emotion and are created with a descriptive tag and a tactic tag. Mutliple types of entity can come from the same plane. EG Goblins - Emotion: Disgust - Desciption: mucus covered small humanoids - Preffered Tactics: ambush and traps
Anticipation/Vigilance Optimisim/Zeal Joy/Ectasy love/Devotion Trust/Admiration Submission/Subservience Fear/Terror Awe/Petrification Surprise/Amazement Disapproval/Horror Sadness/Grief Remorse/Shame Disgust/Loathing Contempt/Hatred Anger/Rage Aggression/Domination
Possession, infection, haunting, hunter, cat's paws, traps, territory, trade, spawn, passer, recruiter, crafting
Anctinet Jackdaw Coven Debter Possessed Hacker Knight Queen Arcanist
Why Urban fantasy? Why the city?
Cities are close to us, they wrap around us, they feel familiar. In a horror game, familiar is the first step down into uncanny valley. You can talk of a city's loa, of it's spirit and people will understand the idea. They anthropomorphise the metro system, the highways, that weird building on the corner, that entire neighborhood of snooty new money. The idea of a city having a spirit, a gestalt, of all these fragements is intutive.
Cities are also complex. There's a lot of systems interacting. If a bridge breaks in tolkienesque fantasy, it is time to quest to the lumberjack camp, but a major bridge coming down in a city... well, there's ripples. Riots are an urban thing, chaos held at bay by three meals and 24 hours. Chase that thread of an idea, and you are half way to a zombie story. Rampant inequality and competition and consumption is the other thread in that plait. If you need to feed, masses of people is a resource. Bureacracy and rules frame the game.
Pace of change is much higher in cities. New replaces old. New buildings. New tech. New tenants. Change can be on hourly basis. Consider the night time economy vs the early morning one. By same token, people wear different masks and layers for surroundings and times. The person fighting and spewing outside the club at 2am is the hollow eyed commuter at 8am is the blank professional by 3pm. This is why vampies and werewolves and the other descendents of gothic are such staples of urban fantasy. As ideas, they feed on places where there are hidden parts to the personality.
Cities are where opportunities are. They are where the sink estates are. They are where immigrants flock for a chance and where stability, safety craving suburbanites escape from. The pace of change is a promise and a threat. Scale and variety and interlinking is and opportunity and a threat too. Your buisness coud be wildly succesfull. A single burst pipe could fill six hundred homes with sewage. Cities have energy. They shine. And that is why magic users need to be there.