#tales from the loop ttrpg

[gr3y-heron-art]

Finished a project I've been working on for many months!

I played a really fun campaign of the Tales from the Loop ttrpg last year, and made an animatic trailer for it!

[vintagerpg]

Oh man, Out of Time (2019) is so good. I like the smaller mysteries and short arcs, but by the time this came out I was really hankering to see what an extended play Tales from the Loop mystery looks like and holy wow this delivers. It’s full to the top with the sort of stuff that is gonna have your players knocking over chairs and howling.

Before I get to the meat of it, though, let me talk about the general material in the back of the book. First is a collection of locations for a Mystery Landscape, TftL’s free-form, hub-based sandbox play, which basically provides places for players to explore and organically tease out mysteries. There are also more formal scenario seeds, mostly feeling keyed to the teenager version of the game, Things from the Flood (there is one about symbiotic sex aliens and another in which the Loop’s gravitron gain sentience. Finally, there is the mystery machine, a nicely designed set of tables for generating new mysteries. These three things alone could have been a really hand book!

The campaign is spread across three chapters that likely will not feel interconnected, at first. As the title of the book implies, the story involves time travel. I don’t love time travel as a general rule but the way this is structured around a central mystery and, later, a very high stakes endgame, makes it work. Oh, and it features a villain who is also a key ally, and I won’t tell you in which order. The way they constantly appear and reappear with different agendas and forms is just, absolutely delightful. Plus, we finally get to go into the Loop facility. PLUS, plus, the second scenario takes place at summer camp. In the ’60s. ARGH, so good.

Again, the game is butting right up against territory that I feel like is firmly under control of Delta Green, but never feels like a horror game. It’s a mystery and it is an adventure in the truest sense and the ways in which the game sticks to that is really fascinating to see.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played TALES FROM THE LOOP ?

By Free League Publishing

In 1954, the Swedish government ordered the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator. The facility was complete in 1969, located deep below the pastoral countryside of Mälaröarna. The local population called this marvel of technology The Loop.

In this roleplaying game, you play teenagers in the late 1980s, solving Mysteries connected to the Loop. Choose between character Types such as the Bookworm, the Troublemaker, the Popular Kid and the Weirdo. Everyday Life is full of nagging parents, never-ending homework and classmates bullying and being bullied. Explore the secrets of the Loop in two main game settings – one based on the Swedish Mälaren Islands, the other on Boulder City, Nevada.

The Mysteries let the characters encounter the strange machines and weird creatures that have come to haunt the countryside after the Loop was built. The kids get to escape their everyday problems and be part of something meaningful and magical – but also dangerous.

[meziniart]

You can hold my hand if no one's home

[hikariwolf]

Tales from the Loop is back!! And my baby boy Aki has joined the team!!

The updated gang!! From left to right we have: Aki (that's me), Mika (@meziniart), Virginia (@moist-car) and Priscila (@yumimirart)

[prettymediocrewizard]

I was sketching a quick character for a one-shot this weekend and then got distracted because I forgot about this guy that I designed for a one-shot in April that fell through so he now sits in my archives....

Maybe one day you will be used Gabriel, so for now I'll post his concept sketches I had hidden away for months

[aki7art]

finally, after about 4-5 years, i drew my first ttrpg character i ever played as! her name is Dana Nelson, and she's a 13 yo girl who plays guitar and her biggest dream is being a rockstar!

[goldyke]

if you have the time, what are your favorite ttrpgs? I'm interested in getting into the genre but dnd is kind of hard to break into. Again, you don't have to answer if this would take too much time to explain. Thank you!

So I’ve played about 35 different games, mostly one shots. I’ve had the benefit of playing with people I trust which can greatly influence game play. Below I’m going to include the full list of games with brief descriptions, but favorites first.

I definitely prefer non-traditional, narrative, and gmless games, so that will be a running theme.

Tales From the Loop has to go first because it’s the game that made me fall in love with ttrpgs. This game has Stranger Things vibes. You play a preteen in the 80s in a town where weird shit is constantly happening. This game is more on the traditional side. There’s a GM running the story, you roll for skill checks, there’s probably a specific story playing out that your gm will try to hook you on to. This game uses only 6 sided dice. There is a sequel listed below for teens in the 90s.

Fall of Magic is a narrative rpg with at most 3 dice rolls in the entire game. FoM is played on a beautiful, handmade map. Your characters progress through the cities on the map as you collaboratively tell the story of your journey to the birthplace of magic. Every city on the map has locations in it with a narrative prompt. Each player decides what location to visit and acts a scene at the location answering the prompt. Anything you say becomes true. There are no rolls. Nothing makes me want to write an epic fantasy more than a good game of Fall of Magic

Pasión De Las Pasiones is a PBTA game, which is one of my favorite systems. In it you play a character from a long-running telenovela. I suggest only playing with a gm familiar with the genre who can do justice to the setting. There’s lots of scandal and intrigue. In fact one of the possible characters to play is the secret evil twin of any of your fellow players. PBTA gamesone are closer to traditional with dice rolls and a gm, but emphasizes the narrative more. Rolls are based on you committing to certain tropes and are boosted by narratives rather than any sort of character skills. (I also suggest checking out other PBTA games.)

A Quiet Year is a map drawing game. All you need to play are a deck of cards, a printout of what the cards mean, and drawing materials. You tell the story of a community rebuilding after a harsh winter, answering prompts from the cards for each week of the year. As you build the village and create the story, you draw a map to show all you have done. No artistic skill is necessary. You do not play a character in this game. There is no gm. There are no dice rolls. This is the map from my last game. (I prefer to use wrapping paper for more space)

Dialect is a language building game in which you collaboratively make up new words that become completely normal to you through play. You play as members of an isolated community of any sort (lost mars colonies, online message boards, a thieves guild) which breaks down over the course of the game. You play out the evolution and eventual dissolution of your joint language. Each turn comes with a prompt for which you create a word and then play a scene. This is great as a stand-alone but I love the idea of using it as worldbuilding for a larger campaign.

I will hopefully do another post talking more about someone games tomorrow

(Warning for q slur used once below cut)

This is a list of all the games I’ve played with a short description for each. I do not recommend all of these, but feel free to ask more about any of them. I’ll talk more about some of these in future posts.

Masks (teenage super heroes. PBTA)

Paranoia (dystopian bureaucratic comedy horror)

Weave (app based multi genre. Left very little impression for me)

Tales from the loop (80s teenage horror mystery. D6 based game)

Things from the flood (90s teenage horror mystery. Sequel to above)

Descent into Midnight (map drawing game. psychic underwater entities in a community fighting an influence. PBTA.)

Dream askew (queer enclave as society falls PBTA. Book also contains a jewish companion game set in a shtetl, Dream Apart)

Rippers (dark Victorian. supernatural hunters)

Pasion de las Pasiones (telenovela the rpg. NDNM)

Fall of magic (map based, gmless, story telling game. High fantasy. I own but have not yet played their second scroll game City of Winter)

-

Fiasco (multi genre heist-gone-wrong game. Gmless. D6 based)

Inspecteres (ghostbusters-esque, bureaucratic comedy. Some mockumentary elements.)

Dnd (we all know this one)

Quiet year (map drawing, gmless game on the growth of community)

Dialect (linguistics based game telling the story of a collapse of community)

Microscope (world-building game played over the course of an era. Great for works building for a larger campaign)

Lady blackbird (single scenario game- helping a noble escape arranged marriage. Steampunk)

Lasers and feelings (Star Trek, basically. One pager. Great for new players and gms. Good system to build a home brew based on)

Castle falkenstein (steampunk+fantasy adventure)

Headspace (cyberpunk, anticorp. Emotionally intense/triggering)

-

Mouse guard (mouse fantasy adventures)

Numenara (science fantasy adventure game. Earth based, 1000 years off)

Manifest (sci-fi western)

Damn the man save the music (employees try to save their dying indie record store and achieve their personal goals. 90s)

Ryutaama (npcs travel and experience the joy of existence)

Dead Halt (a hotels AI has gone rogue. You work there. Try to survive. Horror-ish but in a campy way)

Knave (a very simplified fantasy adventure game)

Thirteenth Age (similar to dnd with a few unique interesting features. Made by creators of dnd 3&4)

Anomaly (tarot based gmless game about a sinister organization investigating supernatural anomalies)

Visigoths vs. Mall goths (conflicts and romance between the warriors who sacked Ancient Rome and 20th century spooky teens. Takes place in a mall in 1996)

-

Arcana Academy (magic school game. Don’t play with strangers because they will fall into HP tropes)

Alice is Missing (silent game played over discord or similar. A mystery is solved through texts and group chats

Worlds Without Numbers (large world fantasy adventure game. OSR. Similar in concept to dnd but with plenty of differences. More human centric)

Nahual (Mestizo shapeshifting angel hunting underdogs)

Sign (sign language building game. Deaf children develop their language collaboratively in a new school setting. Played silently.)

[mermarve]

A tiny scene from an old Tales from the Loop campaign - this was the first time our DM really shocked us. RIP Wilhelm. That last panel is probably the most quintessentially these kids image I’ve ever drawn - I miss playing this campaign!

[shyestbarbarian]

#13 Evocative Environments

I feel like Tales from the Loop fits this prompt pretty well. Set in an alternate 1980's, it features giant robots, flying transports, and strange experiments!

[gordonhasthoughts]

Like the other two loops, the Roslyn Loop (RosLoop) was built during the scientific boom of the 1970s. It brought a huge influx of workers to the previous mining town to build, then staff the particle collider for specific research. Roslyn was chosen for a few reasons. Washington was no stranger to cutting edge nuclear research, and many of the scientists that had been working at the Hanford Site moved to this installation as a career opportunity. 

Furthermore, the already hollow ground of the Coal mines provided an easy opportunity for a number of booster rings to be constructed for the high energy research needed. 

The influx of the scientists brought a want to make families. Some families had already lived in Roslyn before the loop, now they are about equal in number. 

Roslyn is also interesting given its distance from both a major Magnetrine Highway, as well as the cascade mountains and greater forest area. 

The city is just over a mile in diameter, with the loop sitting just northwest of the town’s edge, making it great to access many of the amenities by bike, or even by foot. 

The summers are warm, but not hot, and many Kids on break will bike to the local town of Cle Elum, just a 15 minute ride down the coal mine trail, right on the yakima river to swim and play on the rocky shores. 

Adults will most likely be found at 'The Brick' or 'Mako’s Place' for drinks on off hours, or bumming around the Northwest Improvement Co. general goods store.

Also in town is a newly opened video and home computing equipment retailer named CompuTech in response to the growing demand from the tech-savvy scientists. This also was coupled with the opening of Silver Rocket Electronics consignment for various second hand oscilloscopes and other test equipment, but sometimes through the rubble extraordinary things could be found. Also downtown is Basecamp Books, a bookstore. There is a small medical clinic downtown, but more serious injuries may need to be treated at the Cle Elum Hospital 20 minutes bike, 5 mins car ride away.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mystery ideas:

A kid wakes up, he was in a coma for 8 years but hasnt aged a day

Rogue robot is destroying crops between cle elum and roslyn 

In the back of the Silver Rocket, you find

A watch that counts backwards

2. A strange blinking device that freezes time while you are touching it 

3. A tv screen that displays impossible footage from the past 

For some reason, all the fridges in town stop working 

You find a rock on the beach. When you take it home, the radio, microwave, and tv all start malfunctioning. Your parents blame you for it.

[gr3y-heron-art]

I've gotten about halfway through my tales from the loop ttrpg animatic project, here are some of my favourite frames so far.

[vintagerpg]

Our Friends the Machines (2017) seems like a pretty key companion to the Tales from the Loop rules. There are scenarios, of course (more on them in a moment), but it’s the final, relatively brief chapter that I see as the crucial one: it provides rules for sticking a Loop under your hometown. That’s, I think, the ideal mode of play for Tales from the Loop. I love Stalenhag’s art and how it fuels the feel of the game, but at the end of the day, the winter twilight of his paintings represents his nostalgia trip. With a little work, guided by this chapter, you can make Tales from the Loop so much more personal. I’ve done it both ways and the North Jersey Loop looms larger in my mind than the Swedish one.

Anywho, in addition to the hack chapter, we have three scenarios, a mixtape of scenario seeds and four closer looks at some of the machinery that shows up frequently in Stalenhag’s paintings. The first scenario involves a rogue a.i. infiltrating a toy factory and, through manipulation of chipped human workers, distributing itself into a new line of action figures. I like this one a lot, and appreciate how it gets close to the horror line, but never crosses it. Same with the very similar second scenario, in which a PTA president under the influence of some malicious software, brainwashes a town with subliminal messages. The only cure? Horror movies and heavy metal music, which the adults in town are confiscating. I love this one. The third one gets into the idea of the Loop as a conduit for interdimensional entities. This is highly implied in the source material and the rulebook and I am into it, again, because it never quite becomes a horror show like Stranger Things. It’s more like…hm. My Science Project, maybe? But it is held back by the fact that I can’t really picture the entities and the book is dependent on recycling Stalenhag’s art so…no illustration. Booo.

I do have to note that while most if not all this art appears in Stalenhag’s two narrative art books, I don’t mind it being recycled here. Deploying it in the layout here changes it somehow. It doesn’t feel fresh, exactly, but it also doesn’t feel stale.

[msvblight]

Finally getting around to reading my rulebook for "tales from the loop" and oh man this is a cool setting

Brimming with ideas already, but I need to read more on the tone and function of the game

[meziniart]

Forgot to post this one here when I sketched it, but here's our kids from our Tales From The Loop campaign 💕

In order: Aki (@hikariwolf), Priscila (@yumimirart), Mika (me) and Virginia (@moist-car)

[hikariwolf]

I'm DMing a Tales from the loop campaing for my friends and just finished drawing their characters! we have @annemationbr as Ana, @meziniart as Mika, @yumimirart as Priscila, and @moist-car as Virginia!