Embedded Files
2001: Reason to Believe. The original game, long-past, used the Adventure! system from White Wolf games. It is now owned by Onyx Path and recently dropped a new edition on Kickstarter. It was a "Year One" game in which vigilante PC heroes arose alongside the villains and heroes of Gotham City.
My thoughts on the drive towards and limitations of Year One games for established properties in roleplaying campaigns.
2017: The Devil's Toys. The story of the Riley crime family, the rise of one of its lieutenants to become the boss, the discovery of an evil artifact which could be their ticket to the big time, and their rejection of that unholy power, and the fall of the family. Used the Savage Worlds system, much aided by Jason Blair's Streets of Bedlam supplement. (Savage Worlds also now has a new edition.)
This was what I called a "Year Two" game - although it had no relation to the DC series of the same name, I defined it as "Gotham City with all the origin stories done". This worked well both for non-comics fans and comics fans, so I stuck with it for future games. Here's why I think it worked.
2017-2019: Happy New Year - The first set of "short" games, all set on the same New Year's Eve, when the Calendar Man holds the city hostage. Includes:
A team of thieves pulling off the ultimate heist, impoverishing the reigning Cassamento mob family. Used the Leverage RPG, no longer available due to licensing issues, but you can get the latest version of the underlying system at CortexRPG.com.
A pair of ninja escaping from the League of Assassins with a magical item desired by its insane leader, Ra's al-Ghul with the help of "local talent". Used the Feng Shui 2ed. system.
A rowdy gang with nothing to lose tears their way across the snowy night, demanding they not be overlooked.... Used the Operators system.
A team of first responders delve into the tunnels beneath Gotham City in order to repair the electrical system and suppress a fire caused by the Calendar Man's attack.... Used the Cypher System's First Responders supplement.
Perhaps more to come..... learn more about the New Year's Games here...
2020 - All The Lies You Can Invent. A game about four Gotham City PD officers who are sent, undercover, into the most corrupt precinct in the City. Used the Cartel system from Magpie Games.
This was the game where I started to realize the traits of the anthology game that I was after were incompatible with true collaboration with a group of players, even consistent or overlapping sets of players. I explain more in The Birth, Death and Afterlife of the Riley Crime Family.
In this game, the group originated the Baroque Hill neighborhood, which came to have such a significance given real world events that the neighborhood was the setting for the first set of duets.
2020-2021 - Summer on Baroque Hill. This was the first set of games in the new format - one GM and one to two players. It tells the story of a queer enclave in the summer the dirty cops go down, a community under siege from the ghosts of its past and a new, horrendous threat in the form of a Nazi street gang. For this game, I settled on Fate Accelerated (SRD, PDF) with the White Picket Witches add-on by Filamena Young (available in the Worlds on Fire supplement.) I think the Approaches and use of supernatural abilities in that one is ideal for a soap opera/comic book world.
Cassilda - A witch with a taxi medallion faces the curse of Tricorner Island that brings and binds ghosts there...
Noreen - A guerilla filmmaker with ambitions tries to shoot her experimental B-movie, but is targeted by a sinister criminal...
Others are coming soon....a young firebrand politician seeking their first office, a hard-fighting rockabilly street punk...and more...
Some thoughts as a straight cis guy portraying a fictionalized, comic-book-ized queer enclave, how it came about, challenges and ideas for the future: Building Baroque Hill
2021-2023 - Autumn in Old Gotham I turned to the autumn and the mysterious, dark streets of a tangled, car-less neighborhood buried along the slow-rolling Gotham River.
At Massah, the story of two brothers, Daniel and Alex, their occultist foster mother, the synagogue they were raised in, and a horrible crime releasing a deeper evil...
Others are coming soon....
And more games to come....
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