Stefano Buonocore
Today we want to thank The Lost Bay Studio for sending us a preview copy of the quickstart of The Lost Bay. It’s about a suburban gothic horror RPG. A broad definition, because the stories that The Lost Bay (located in an unspecified coastal suburb of the 90s) can range from a melancholic magical realism to a slasher-style dungeon crawling. With everything in between.
The quickstart is available at Itch.io, including a trial adventure. 40 extremely practical pages to consult both digitally and in paper, with a selection of rather disturbing black and white illustrations by Evangeline Gallagher. And therefore perfectly in tune with the volume.
It is also possible to pre-order the full game in hardcover for $51.95, plus a series of bundles with adventures and ancillary products.
You can follow The Lost Bay Studio’s projects on their official site.
Preview of The Lost Bay: the Game
As anticipated, The Lost Bay it’s a horror game that dictates the themes, but allows you to vary a lot in tone. In general it is based on an extremely intuitive and simple system, both in the creation of characters and in the mechanics. Putting together a plot is also relatively simple: the setting is based mainly on atmosphere, leaving a lot of freedom to the narrator.
The protagonist characters of the stories are ESPers. Young people who have recently passed adolescence, between adolescence and adulthood. Caged in a foggy and frustrating province. A province populated by living saints, cultists, dark entities that have granted them extraordinary and terrible powers. To face even more extraordinary and terrible threats.
Vibes
The quickstart of The Lost Bay it has enough rules to try the game independently. Character creation is very simple: it all starts from choice of Vibe (vibration, to be understood in the emotional meaning of the term), comparable to the character’s class. Or, in other words, the type of ability he manifests. The complete game system will feature ten, the quickstart anticipates three. Firestarter (incendiary), Seer (seer) e Splinter (splinter).
The first two are self-explanatory, the last insists on the concept of a loose cannon, a character who has been broken and in some way has risen again, restless. Each Vibe has a passive ability, plus two active abilities that are drawn from a table. It also presents a list of possible equipment and some information on the entity that gave the character the powers, with related cults, sacred places and omens. Another table also allows you to determine how, from background, the PC acquired these skills.
The Lost Bay: Mechanics Preview
Once the Vibe has been chosen, the points are distributed among the attributes. Force (for anything requiring brutal impact, physical or emotional), Flow (speed of thought and action) e Focus (for actions that require concentration and patience). The game includes shots only for significant actions, which are resolved by rolling a six-sided die for each point in the attribute chosen as it is narratively best suited to the character’s intent. You must roll a 5 for a complication success, and a 6 for a full success. It must be said that the declared inspirations are LUMEN by Spencer Campbell and Cairn the Yochai Gal.
The quickstart already suggests a set of complications broken down for the three attributes, but you can create your own. There are some additional mechanics, such as help and critical results, which are now standard in all more narrative games. Furthermore the two resources Heart and Weird are fundamental. The first indicates the psychophysical health of the character and erodes by suffering damage and trauma. Weird instead fuels the characters’ abilities. It is important to note that these always succeed: a Weird check must be made only to see if the character is required to cost.
A very interesting aspect that is already present and that the quickstart illustrates particularly well is the way in which the characters evolve. This can only happen marking a Scar, or the result of a power that had side effects. Sometimes the Scars can evolve a power, sometimes grant a new one. Sometimes it’s already a big deal if the character avoids worse trouble.
The Hollow Hitchhicker
The lost bay that gives the game its title, is a deliberately smoky setting. And not only because of how it is presented: every location is immersed in fog, and getting away from it is an impossible task. Everything is decadent, wrong somehow. And it fits into this context The Hollow Hitchhicker, the introductory adventure presented in the quickstart. It’s difficult to give a taste of it without giving away spoilers, but not because there is a plot to reveal.
The brilliance is just how a sort of closed map has been enriched with a myriad of mini events and secondary characters. By keeping track of the passage of time and the movements of the PCs on an extremely simple to follow pattern, the GM goes on to mark a series of events that increasingly lead to the grotesque. The crescendo of anxiety and horror is incredibly effective, becoming disturbing until a risky epilogue.
Conclusions of the Preview of The Lost Bay
“Disturbing” is indeed an important feature of this quickstart. It characterizes the themes, the artistic style, the proposed adventure. However, this is not a defect, but the desired gaming experience. A grotesque experience that The Lost Bay seems to achieve very effectively. Precisely for this reason, since the introduction we have found a whole series of security tools to better manage the gaming table and any problems it may have.
This quickstart of The Lost Bay gives us the preview of an extremely intriguing game, with the ability to base everything on atmospheres and moods with a few but extremely significant brushstrokes. A game we eagerly await the full version of, to see how far the game themes can be expanded.
