The Curse of the Yellow Sign

The Curse of the Yellow Sign is a triptych of scenarios around the theme of Carcosa and Hastur written by John Wick and funded via Kickstarter.

The first scenario is somewhat ho-hum, Nazis in the Congo discovering a door during an archaeological dig. There's nothing particularly interesting around the set up and while the characters are strong they are also caricatures that don't really make a lot of sense. They are pulp characters rather than people.

The second scenario is a bit of classic for the King in Yellow, a group gets together to rehearse the play; but the play comes to life! The basic outline of which reminded me a lot of Tatterdemalion from Fatal Experiments.

There are a few interesting touches such as using a Shining-esque derelict hotel as a rehearsal space and having some of the actors expecting a simulated serial killing to occur during the rehearsal to lull suspicions.

The biggest problem with these scenarios though is the motivations for performing the play and how the performers come by or create a script and neither question is answered in a satisfying or inspiring way for me here.

It is the third scenario, Archimedes 7, that blows my mind. Set far in the future with a cryogenic-frozen crew being revived by a ship's computer that needs them to overcome the sabotage and madness that has overcome the flight crew. The setup is fascinating but again we've been here more than once. What is amazing is that everything about the initial situation is turned upside down over the course of the scenario. It is hard to talk about how expectations are subverted but every cliché is overthrown into darkness and the characters rediscover themselves.

The book also packages up a nice rules-light system called Unspeakable which is heavier than Cthulhu Dark and relies on a GM to adjudicate skill challenges but other than that looks like a neat way of handling the "investigator" archetype.

"Madness" is melodramatic and Lovecraftian and not really a model of mental illness, if that is one of your push button issues.

If you've never read a King in Yellow scenario then this collection is a great exposition of the tropes and themes. All of it is competently executed but really Archimedes 7 is the really outstanding piece of work that makes we want play immediately.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Troika!

Most OSR community is based around Dungeons and Dragons, however like a lot of Europeans my first encounter with roleplaying or fantasy gaming was not through D&D itself by through reflections of those who had read a copy or heard of the idea and created their own. Like a lot of early British roleplayers my nostalgia is really for Fighting Fantasy, a formative experience that was notable different in tone from American fantasy while being composed of much the same tropes. Troika! is an attempt to create a retro-clone that brings together Warhammer and Fighting Fantasy into a simple rules system that bakes weird fantasy into core of character creation in the same way that the Ratcatcher career did in the 1980s. The basic mechanics are pretty simple. Mainly 2d6 are used and the basic characteristics are Skill , Stamina and Luck . If you are attempting something against the environment you try to roll under your Skill on two dice, if contested you roll and add, aiming for t...
Read more

Ruma: Dawn of Empire

Ruma is a Powered by the Apocalypse game about a Roman Empire that is facing off against supernatural threats summoned by it barbarian neighbours. Players take the role of characters who are confronting those threats. The rules introduce Latin-flavoured playbooks that reflect various roles in historical Roman society and within the Legions. Irritatingly Ruma introduces some alternative names and spellings for the various countries and peoples of its world. It tries to put some fictional distance from history but not in a way that adds to the historical roots. While flawed as a narrative campaign Hunters of Alexandria did a better job of blending the historic and supernatural fantasy of its world. Apocalypse World, as a ruleset, seems appropriate to the environment, the Empire is powerful but besieged by threats that seek to overthrow it. Characters will win big eventually but the costs will be high. Ruma's fundamental problem for me is that I'm not sure why this isn...
Read more

Cabal

Cabal is a game about sinister conspiracies trying to seize power through a corporation or organisation. Mechanically it feels weirdly like a game where a group of players share a single Runequest character and try and make them a Rune Lord. The company has various attributes that are rated on 0 to 100 scale with points being spent at generation time and then the players going on missions to try and raise the value of the attributes by between 1 and 5. The target value is also used to set the difficulty and provide the mechanisms of opposition. The game uses a GM to manage the opposition and provide the colour to the missions. Something that feels like a design cop-out. The game does make some interesting use of the fact that the players take on the role of individuals in the company and therefore you get to play very different characters and the risk of them dying is lessened by the meta-reward to the organisation. However it also has an experience mechanism that makes chara...
Read more