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The YELLOW KING RPG: Paris – Shattered Realities, Exploded Selves

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The YELLOW KING RPG: Paris – Shattered Realities, Exploded Selves PARIS Robin D. Laws BOOK ONE PARIS Publishers: Simon Rogers and Cathriona Tobin Designed, Written, and Produced by: Robin D. Laws Cover Art: Shel Kahn Interior Illustrations: Shel Kahn Collages: Dean Engelhardt Graphic Design: Christian Knutsson Copyediting: Colleen Riley, Cathriona Tobin Eagle-eyes: S. Ben Melhuish Indexing: Cathriona Tobin Special Thanks: Kevin Kenan, Côme Martin, Erik Otterberg, Galen Pejeau Playtesters: Ralf Achenbach, Jack Anderson, Bradley Barger, Jeff Bernstein, Julien Berton, Alizée Bleue, Yosefka Bill, Jeff Borders, Mark W. Bruce, Shaun Burton, Kelli Butler, Brian Carter, Brendan Clougherty, Chris Cooke, Lizzy Cooke, Maudie Pepper Croal, Ashley Cyr, Jarrod Davila, Susan Davis, Mike de Jong, Dimes, Toorte Dot, Axel Eble, Jonathan Elcock, Davina Ellis, Anne Freitas, Jeromy French, Meg Gallagher, Nicole Gardella, Davy Gerard, Lloyd Graney, Jacob Haley, Justin Haley, Morgan Hua, Chris Huth, Bert Isla, Susan Isla, Paul Jackson, Bertram Jänsch, Sydney Jones, Zachary Joyner, Shel Kahn, David Kennedy, Joe Kimbrough, Zack Kline, James Kohl, Julaïe Koï, Rainer Koreasalo, Chris Lambertus, Nicole Long, Nyssa Mackinnon, Mark Manlapas, Côme Martin, John W.S. Martin, Damon Matthews, Dan McSorley, Dustyn Mincey, Chandreyee Mitra, Justin Mohareb, Arka Neirda, Thomas Nowell, Janne Nuutinen, Travis Offenberger, Tyler Omichinski, Erik Otterberg, Cameron Parkinson, Andrew Pfeiffer, Michael Pfeiffer, Florian Poisignon, Luke Powell, Jack Reidy, Tim Reiter, Christian "CJ" Jensen Romer, Aubrey Rush, Nat Sanderson, Tomi Sarkkinen, Liam Scanlon, Martin Schramm, Steve Seminerio, Eric L.M. Shuman, Scott Slonaker, Jebadiah Smalls, Becky Smith, Robert J. Smith, Simon Strietholm, Aser Tolentino, Megan Tolentino, Ben Wachtell, Scott Wachter, Brett Wagner, Markus Wagner, Paul Ward, Michael Warnick, Brian Watson, Mike Weber, Cory Welch, Calliope Westbrook, Dan Wiley, Joseph Williams, Charles Wright, Kim Wright. Copyright © 2019 Pelgrane Press Ltd. The ellowY King RPG and GUMSHOE Quickshock are trademarks of Pelgrane Press Ltd. Pelgrane Press is co-owned by Simon Rogers and Cathriona Tobin. TABLE OF CONTENTS SHATTERED REALITIES, Combat Special Cases, EXPLODED SELVES 6 Exceptions, and Explanations 59 Roleplaying Basics 6 Hazards 63 Mysteries of Paris 7 Regaining Pushes and Pool Points 69 This Game 8 Improving Abilities 69 Modes 11 Character Replacement 70 Characters 11 RUNNING THE GAME 71 A HOWLING To Arc or Not to Arc? 71 FROM CARCOSA 11 Scenarios 73 Kits 12 Self-Motivated or On Call? 73 Gender and Background 16 First Episode 74 Name 17 Taking the Premise as Read 77 Drive 17 Further Mysteries 77 That Deuced Peculiar Business 18 Antagonist Reactions 82 Subplots and Side Notes 83 DESCRIPTIONS 18 Maintaining Genre 83 Relationships 20 Tone 84 Investigative Abilities 21 Investigative Ability Descriptions 22 BELLE ÉPOQUE PARIS 86 General Abilities 28 City of Lights 86 General Ability Descriptions 29 Americans in Paris 87 How You Act is Who You Are 88 GAME RULES 33 The Century So Far 89 Getting Clues 33 Politics 92 Tests 38 The Press 96 Time Increments 43 Evocative Details 97 Refreshing Points and Pushes 44 Locations 98 Fighting 45 Haunted Paris 111 Shocks and Injuries 55 Horror in the Countryside 112 Shadows of Brittany 112 Artists and Bohemians 115 3 PEOPLE 115 CARDS 188 Artists and Bohemians 115 Injury Cards 188 Scientists and Inventors 125 Shock Cards 209 Occultists 126 Police and Thieves 133 APPENDICES 227 Upper-Crust American Names 229 THE KING, HIS PLAN, French Names 230 AND HIS MINIONS 138 The Unreliable Narrations TABLES AND REFERENCES 232 of Robert Chambers 138 Relative Challenge Table 232 Your Unreliable Universe 142 Physical Hazard Table 234 Mental Hazard Table 235 FOES 146 Investigative Ability Worksheet 238 Foe Format 146 Spotlight Tracker Table 239 Foe Master Table 147 Relationship Table 240 Group Matrix 240 GHOST OF Fight Trackers 241 THE GARNIER 168 The Alien Truth 168 INDEX 242 Inspiration 169 Scenes 170 Antagonist Reactions 186 The YELLOW KING RPG: Paris – Shattered Realities, Exploded Selves SHATTERED REALITIES, EXPLODED SELVES In The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, interwoven structure, or in a simpler, players take on the roles of young artists episodic mode featuring shorter studying abroad in Paris in 1895. When incidents of subjective reality horror in the publication of a play called The King any one of its four settings. in Yellow begins to overwrite the city To play the game, you need this book, with the supernatural reality of an alien which includes both the rules and the world called Carcosa, they plunge into central Belle Époque Paris setting. weird mystery. Each of the other settings appears in And they play European soldiers its own volume: The Wars, featuring fighting in the murky Continental War Europe’s 1947 War of Reclamation; of 1947. They come to realize that their Aftermath, the contemporary post- endless, inexplicable struggle occurs at Castaigne world; and This Is Normal the behest of Carcosa’s Yellow King, Now, our world with supernatural and plunge into weird mystery. corruption seeping in from the corners. And they play former resistance fighters in the present day, after the overthrow of the tyrannical Castaigne Roleplaying Basics regime, which has held America in its This is a tabletop roleplaying game, icy grip since the 1920s. They want to or RPG. rebuild their nation, but that requires— When playing an RPG, a group of you’re seeing a pattern now—a plunge participants gather to talk their way into weird mystery. through a story they spontaneously And finally they also play create together, adjudicated by a set of contemporary people in the world as game rules. we mostly know it—but what is that Unlike other types of games with strange masked creature lurking behind multiple participants, you don’t win or that dumpster over there? Could it be a lose a roleplaying game. Often you play harbinger of… weird mystery? many times, building a story featuring Something links these characters the same characters and situations. across time and alternate realities—a You come to follow them as you would grim destiny that may enable them to the episodes of your favorite serialized unravel the king’s ultimate scheme. television adventure show. The Yellow King Roleplaying Game (or All but one of the participants takes YKRPG when only an acronym will do) on the role of a particular fictional can be played using this overarching, character. These participants are called 6 ROBIN D. LAWS the players. The haractersc are player mysterious to you, check out an characters, or PCs for short. Your rules example game and you’ll soon see how set may give you other synonyms for the it all comes together. PCs, for example, investigators, heroes, conspirators, or the team. As a player, you prepare for the first Mysteries of Paris session of play by inventing details about Mysteries the group investigates go your character, following a character something like this: creation process laid out by the rules set. • Grit and rock dust found in the Typically one participant serves as the strange wounds of victims murdered Game Moderator—GM for short. near the morgue suggest that the The GM guides you through the gargoyles of the nearby Notre events of the game: Dame Cathedral have come to life. • populating an imagined • Addled by reading The King in world with compelling places, Yellow, a beloved art instructor people, and things for the main changes by night into a murderous characters to interact with brute—and the trail of victims • portraying those secondary grows ever closer to the heroes. figures, called GMCs (Game • The delightful but overbearing Moderator Characters) mother of an investigator arrives • describing the setting’s in town to visit—and then seems places and things when your to have shed thirty years. She’s characters encounter them determined to spread the miracle • deciding how the rules apply, cure to aging to America, but when should confusion about them arise the group goes to find the man • refocusing your attention when the who treated her, they find only a group gets distracted or bored murder scene—and clues pointing to The ctiona in a roleplaying session a conspiracy of Rosicrucian occultists happens in each participant’s about to transform themselves into imagination. Just as your experience Nietzschean übermenschen. reading a compelling book doesn’t • Once word gets out that the group provide an observer with rich visual knows its way around the occult, cues, playing a roleplaying game a foreign agent tries to use them remains a low-key affair. to contact the King in Yellow, to It used to be hard for absolute enlist his aid in a colonial war. newcomers to initially figure out what • A mysterious but munificent the heck goes on in a roleplaying client pays the group’s portrait game. These days, lots of folks point specialist to create a weird, full-body video cameras at their tables, playing painting depicting him suffering online in real time for others to watch. from all manner of wounds, from Roleplaying streamers, as they are stab to gunshot. The client then called, then archive the results on goes on a murder spree, proving sites like YouTube. If RPGs still seem immune to all of the harms shown 7 The YELLOW KING RPG: Paris – Shattered Realities, Exploded Selves in the painting. To stop him, the this case, the subjective reality horror group must locate and destroy the of Robert W. Chambers’ King in painting, which by the addition Yellow mythos. of the Yellow Sign has become a protective charm of unholy power. Rules Basics • In a sequel to Chambers’ story “The When characters seek information Mask,” residents and household staff where it might be available, they in the wealthy Faubourg Saint- always gain it, provided they have Germain district are found in fancy an Investigative ability that fits the homes, transformed into marble situation.
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