Blackstone: A Mistcrawling Game
You’ve found me at a very liminal point in my life.
Sidetracked and jamming away, a new project has emerged from the fog: a hack of Liminal Horror.
The premise is as follows:
Chicago.
45 years later, the Haymarket Affair gets its sequel. Amidst the revelry of the A Century of Progress International Exposition a bomb rips through the city. The subsequent devastation dwarfs the Great Fire of 1871.
The hack takes place twelve years after the event. The burnt area never heals. The Blackstone is a resonant region. The charred buildings secrete an unreliable fog, shifting travelers to and fro in the area. Artifacts torched by the fire, emerge resonant from the zone. Unique items manifesting unknown abilities with limitless possibilities.
The Blackstone takes more than it gives. As one spends more time in the region, it begins to take affect one’s life outside the region.
Horrors skitter about the scorched streets and The Blackstone wants you to join their ranks. The charred remains of Chicago can provide life’s answer or leave you dead in a ditch engulfed in invisible flame.
Mistcrawl
Reliably unreliable exploration.
It’s been twelve years since The Blackstone gouged Chicago. They have been mapping it. Monthly flights. On ground surveys. Real data. The Blackstone shifts. Locations move about the area.
Maps that show where Known Locations have appeared in grids. Players can buy bundles of maps and compare them to what is in front of them. Matching grid to grid.
Let’s pretend northern region of The Blackstone is a 10x10 octagonal grid with 40 Known Locations and 60 “empty” grids for potential encounters.
One day the Carbide and Carbon building is in grid (4,2) right off the Chicago River and the next it’s moved to (5,5) in the middle of the Loop.
Diamond sections are Shortcuts.
Risky plays are either a quick way through… or a dead end.
Each day the GM picks a 10x10 map for the region. Known Locations move. Shortcuts become dead ends. Horrors change behaviors.
Keepsakes
As part of this hack, Investigators have Keepsakes. Planting one at a location tethers them to it, locking the location into that grid (x,y).
Experiments have shown that an item becomes a Keepsake if it stays on their person for 48 hours. If the item has preexisting significance, it is also viable as a Keepsake (GM’s discretion). Investigators are limited to 3 Keepsakes.
Planting one incurs 1 stress. Investigators must retrieve it to plant it again. Choosing to leave it incurs 1d4 stress.
The Blackstone uses Keepsakes to latch onto the Investigators. Attacking what means the most to them outside the burnt streets.
Libraries
A supernatural fire consuming half of Chicago vs some books? Atomic bomb vs coughing baby. Well maybe some survived. I am planning on using the many Libraries in Chicago as informational hubs.
A place where a group of Investigators can try and delve to secure the architectural layout of a Known Location. Maybe they need to retrieve film negatives from the second floor of a broadcasting studio.
…or maybe it’s simple as liberating a bank’s contents:
I think getting the “dungeon map” ahead of time is fun. Especially when it doesn't say what room the Michigan Dogman is nesting in.
Why do it this way?
Surely I could just tell the GM to roll dice for each day, making locations to bounce around via dice rolls. That is lame.
Liminal Horror puts the Investigators behind the eight ball. Being ridiculously well informed makes the blows feel fair.
With this format, the GM can internalize and maintained. As they shift, the GM can make assumptions about what could occur, how they would interact, etc.
To me, this is as close to random locations (for the players) without it being a headache for the GM.
I really want to focus on in-world capabilities with this one. A well prepared Investigator should be able to navigate better.
Closing
This insanity is being constructed for the Noir-Vember Jam. We’ll see if I can reasonably finish by the end of the month.
Noir-ification
This hack is getting a coat of black paint. One such thing is a shift away from ItO/Cairn’s 3 abilities.
Str, Dex, Ctrl are expanding to:
CRU (CRUELTY): Suffering, endangerment, and distress
EROC (EROTICISM): Readiness, desire, and sensuality
STRG (STRANGE): Uncanny, weird, and unknown
AMBV (AMBIVALENT): Hesitation and contradiction
ONC (ONEIRIC): Dreamlike and surreal
This is also an attempt to give the Investigators some more time to survive The Blackstone.
Additional Thoughts/Comments/Questions
- Different Resonant Artifacts attract more encounters/Horrors?
- Thinking of a decaying of keepsakes as they stay in locations.
- What if an area shifted less or more than once a day?
- Are there any scenarios that something similar?
- This was my obligatory “explain it in a blogpost before writing it down”. Very helpful and fun!