Liminal Roleplaying Game

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But you know. You're at the edge of the Hidden World. Maybe you've seen it and can't ignore it. Maybe you're from the Hidden World, but with ties to humanity. There are people in the major British Churches and in the police force who are aware of the Hidden World and work to defeat its more murderous inhabitants. Equally, the limitations section (traits as well, to a lesser extent) help define the world. Typical traits include things like Oathbound – where characters find it hard to lie or Obliged – where characters are in debt to a supernatural power – and come together to create a layered world where negotiation and intelligence are as important as punching power.

House Annyn: Descendants of ancient Welsh Druids. They wield old magic and hoard the legendary magical treasures of Britain. Second, the rules and the flow they impose on a session. Just compare what they are trying to achieve with other systems relating to the supernatural. Players are meaningfully involved in the creation of the group and the campaign from the very beginning. To say that the game is story-driven is quite an understatement. Literally, one gains experience through achieving narrative goals and using the system in a way that promotes interaction within the scenes, even when that means abject failure. The system gets the job done without you needing to climb mountains of crunch. Rolls matter only to a certain extent seeing how Will can alter them, while combat is deadly enough for you to think twice. The Forest of Dean contains the Puzzlewood—a place where no one can inflict harm on another person, and all sorts of chaos can be caused and ultimately resolved. Nearby, is the Fae Inn called, The Lost Angel. The Skill list is fairly standard. There are twenty-one Skills, divided neatly between Physical, Mental and Social. These include Art, Lore, Melee, Stealth, Streetwise, Taunt and Vehicles. Each Skill gets a paragraph of description and some sample Specialities e.g., Knives for Melee, Flattery for Charm, or History for Education. These all made sense to me, though I have seen a lot of skill lists in my time.It’s not my preferred approach, but it’s a valid one. Liminal assumes you will build your own unique NPCs using the Traits provided. And it’s very easy to do that with this system, particularly if you use the templates in this chapter as a jumping off point. And even without modifications, this section certainly gives you all you need to tangle with every major faction and supernatural type for at least a couple of cases each. Some werewolves are well meaning, others indulge in their monstrous nature. All must decide whether to resist the ambitious Jaeger family or join the growing ranks of their werewolf faction. The Jaegers are self-styled werewolf nobility, trying to impose their will upon and exact tribute from the other gangs. Sort of a cross between Sons of Anarchy and The Howling. Conclusion: Liminal might be a niche of an RPG, yet it easily achieves what it strives for. It won me with its embrace of story over rules, its simplicity, and its diversity. Fish, chips, and gravy on top.

Characters have a set of skills (training and natural abilities), traits (advantages) and limitations (disadvantages). Some supernatural characters strongly suggest certain traits and limitations, but nothing is mandatory. Initiative also uses the Skill system. It does favour the NPCs slightly, but it’s easy to understand and follows the core mechanic. Academic Wizard. Universities in the UK are recruiting grounds for wizards as it turns out. Makes sense to me! Want to bring in Felix Castor or Alex Verus? No problem, even if you can’t build them with the existing Traits and magical styles, you can throw your own together very easily.Baird, Josephine. 2021. “The Mislead of The Missing: A Queer Videogame Narrative through Misdirection of Gameplay, Player Presumption and Storytelling.” Paper presented at International Conference on Games and Narrative, University of Waterloo, U.K., June 11 - 16, 2021. The magical world has a basis in British and Irish folklore and legends, along with ghost stories and modern day popular takes on the supernatural in fiction.' Rusch, Doris C., and Andy Phelps. 2021. "Games of the Soul." In A Ludic Society, edited by Denk, et al., 102–126. Donau-Universität Krems, Universitätsbibliothek.

Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2022. “Death and Dying in Games: Exploring Age Old Questions of Mortality through Role-playing Games.” Paper presented at Popular Culture Association, April 13. Video linked here Gremlins get a mention, (and a cool picture). Vampire fledglings, though relatively weak by supernatural standards, are violent and bloodthirsty, with very poor impulse control. Older vampires are more calculating, but ultimately more dangerous to society at large. I am having some trouble getting my head around vampires in this setting. I know this is a very open setting and I love that don't get me wrong however I can't get a whole on what vampires are in this setting. Rusch, Doris C. 2021. “Of Magic, Witches and Neuroscience – Designing Games for Integrity and Personal Power.” Keynote presented at ICDIS, Talinn, Dec. 2021. Video linked hereThere are driving rules, for example, in which your vehicle has Body Points as an abstraction of their current wellbeing. All vehicles from a state board to tank start off at 100 BP unless noted. Then there are considerations for Bumping as opposed to Ramming. Lite, yes, but also not too light. Liminal is a new tabletop roleplaying game about those on the boundary between the modern day United Kingdom and the Hidden World- the world of secret societies of magicians, a police division investigating Fortean crimes, fae courts, werewolf gangs, and haunted places where the walls between worlds are thin. Personally, I much prefer settings which explore true afterlives and follow the souls that pass into them. But then, there’s nothing in Liminal’s lore which outright says souls don’t exist or there isn’t somewhere they end up, it just isn’t the Ghost Realms. Readers can draw their own conclusions or add their own cosmologies as they wish. (And the thought of wandering through pre-Blitz London or Viking York, without actually having to deal with time travel, is definitely appealing.)