DescriptionCity of Lights. City of Hope. City of Arts and Culture. The names the travel brochures use to describe Gotham are almost endless. They make it seem like a great place to live and a wonderful destination for tourists. If you ask anyone who actually lives in the city, or has even been there, to describe it, however, it is more likely to be called the City of Darkness, the City of Despair, the City of Crime and Danger. Those who call it home dream of leaving. Those who visit look forward anxiously to going home. Yet for all its forbidding nature, life goes on in Gotham. Businesses thrive or fail according to the skills of those that run them. Newspapers are published. Products are manufactured and sold. Police cars cruise their beats. Customs inspectors keep an eye on the shipping containers in the docks . . . ***************** 17th Precinct GCPD Dispatch Facility, Gotham Island, Old Gotham 2007-01-13-0217 "Sergeant, I've got a Major Daniels from the Port of Gotham Homeland Security Force on the inter-task-force hotline asking for a half dozen black and whites, a homicide team and the coroner's wagon down at Traskers Yard. He's telling me that the night shift just dropped one of the shipping containers, and it's full of dead bodies." The dispatcher listened for a few more seconds on her headset before toggling back into the desk sergeant's circuit. "Sounds like he's calling in the Feds as well, sir." She listened again to the panicky voice from the young military officer at the scene. Her capable fingers flew across the touch screen, tracing the call, querying its routings. "Dipshit!" she muttered. "He's sending this out in clear. Every nut-job on the Islands with a police band scanner will know what's going on down there." ******************* Traskers Shipping Yard Port of Gotham, Old Gotham 2007-01-13-0239 Large cities never sleep. Even in the small hours of the morning work continues. Power plants roar, hospitals moan, and the tides wait for no man. The job of loading and unloading the many ships that ferry goods to and from the great city goes on at all hours of the day and night. Traskers is a small yard servicing the much diminished port facilities on the Islands. In the 19th century these dock yards were the center of Gotham's seafaring commerce. In today's world of container vessels and railhead shipping yards the majority of the business has moved across the Narrows to the mainland. Nevertheless a steady trickle of lesser ships still calls in at the old docks and unloads their cargo at the more central location. Many of the old warehouses and sail-making facilities that clustered around the old docks have been gentrified, converted to artist's lofts and trendy condominiums. Amid the new population of stockbrokers and software moguls there is a constant grumble about the working of the few actual shipping facilities that survive. The lights and the noise late at night keep the pencil pushers awake, and they don't like it. Indeed, tonight is going to be complained about mightily at the monthly condo meetings and in the snippy letters to the editor of the Daily Bugle. In addition to the clanking of the chains and the whine of the hydraulics from the cranes, there is growing cacophony of sirens and bullhorns. Police cars have set up a cordon of bright yellow tape around a five block area, not letting anyone in or out unless they can verify their reason for coming or going. A coroner's wagon has pulled in to the front entrance of Trasker's yard and a slew of other vehicles, official and private, but each topped with its own flashing light in various hues of white, blue, red, and yellow have parked at odd angles on the streets alongside it. A TV news van has made its way into the center of the activity by creeping through back alleys and the camera crew is busily seeking any footage they can find.
******************* WELCOME TO PESTLENTIA I hope that the scenes above have given you an interest in playing in my new game. It is set in Gotham City, but it is not a superheroes game. The Batman is out there, somewhere, in the night, but he's not going to show up to save anyone in my game. There will be characters from the DC universe at the periphery of the action - Commissioner Gordon, for instance - but that's just for flavor. They set the game in a world that is not our own, but feels like it in most ways. In this game the Player Characters will be those who are most likely to be first on the scene at the incident described above. They could be:
- GCPD Homicide Detectives - GC Coroners - Homeland Security Officers (Customs, Coast Guard, other military, etc.) - FBI Agents - News Reporters - Special Interests (Dockland Mob, Banker's PI's, etc.) This is a horror game. Above and beyond the plain nastiness of the various crimes that will be uncovered by the investigation, the clues will lead the PC's into areas that the rest of the world considers supernatural. I will be using a simple version of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu rules to govern character abilities and successes. I am not a rules lawyer. I want the game to be driven by plot rather than dice, but I will not allow over-the-top actions to take place unchallenged. If you would like to play, please submit a character description to me. Tell me who you want to play, and why they would be at Taskers Yard at 2:30 am on a bitter cold January morning. I'm looking forward to gaming with you.
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Greg Lindahl