Announcing The Lost Bay RPG, a dark fantasy game set in the 199X
And community news
Hey folks, happy new year! I wish you a 2024 filled with lots of gaming and happy moments.
My 2024 will be pretty much focused on bringing to print several projects and mostly The Lost Bay RPG. What about you? What are you working on? What RPG project makes your heart beat? Let me know in the comments.
In this newsletter:
The Lost Bay RPG pre-launch announcement
Community news
The Lost Bay RPG
You and your gang are young and wild: you’ve been touched by the Weird. It’s in your blood, and grants you extraordinary Powers. You crawl the Lost Bay, hang out with immortals, collect Relics, and fight the ancient horrors that have awakened.
The Lost Bay is a dark fantasy RPG set in the 199X. The pre-launch page is live on Kickstarter, be sure to follow to be notified on launch: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thelostbay/the-lost-bay-suburban-dark-fantasy-rpg
What is The Lost Bay?
The Lost Bay is a dark fantasy tabletop RPG. It’s set in alternate 199Xs. The Lost Bay is also the name of the game setting, a small coastal suburb, both familiar and uncanny, where the mundane and the magical mix inextricably. Living Saints, rituals, blood curses are part of the characters’ daily life alongside console games, VHS tapes, and phone booths.
The Lost Bay is a set of three booklets. It contains everything you need to play: character creation, core rules, advanced tips and toolkits, detailed setting and bestiary.
The Lost Bay is my passion project, I’ve been working on it for years. Now, thanks to the loving support of play testers and early enthusiasts, the game is ready to go to print! I am overexcited, and I can’t wait to share it with you.
Who is the game for?
OSR, NSR enthusiasts will enjoy the lightweight and hackable rules, as well as the semi-tactical approach to powers and to combat.
Fans of Dark Fantasy will feel at home playing powerful and weird characters.
People who want to feel the 199Xs magic will love references to film and subcultures spread throughout the books.
Key Features of the game
Strong Vibes. Playable character classes are called Vibes, and are inspired by 90s urban and horror archetypes. There’s ten of them to choose from, like Splinter, Firestarter, Scanner, Screamer. Vibes are granted specific powers and gear.
Lore light and flavor heavy. The lore of The Lost Bay is spread throughout the ruleset, tables, and game procedures. You’ll discover it as you create your character and play. You can customize the setting or dive head first into the pre-existing world.
Open and play. The core ruleset is spread over four pages and built around a unique mechanic. Whether you’re a veteran or novice you’ll need fifteen minutes to familiarize yourself with it.
Weird is cool. The Lost Bay is story driven and focused on exploration and character growth in an urban fantasy world.
Deadly combat. Combats are fast and epic, particularly if you use one of your powers.
Community fueled. The game engine is robust, and has been extensively playtested and fine tuned, thanks to the feedback of a community of early enthusiasts.
Solo compatible. The ruleset, setting and procedures, have been designed to facilitate and support solo play.
The system in a nutshell
Three attributes, and a d6 dice pool for all your Action Rolls or Saves.
One resource to fuel your Powers.
Powers always succeed but can get you a Scar.
Scars can hurt you, make you more powerful, or change you. They are specific to each Vibe.
If you get all the Scars and you manage to survive them, you become a Living Saint, an immortal roaming the Bay. YOU become the Lore of the Bay.
What’s in the books?
User Guide: character creation and core rules, ten playable classes, three post-death special classes, custom character growth, Scar tables.
GM Guide: tips and toolkits, advanced rules, adventure building frameworks, examples and designer commentary.
Travel guide: extensive ready to use setting, exploration procedures, pre-gen point-crawls, six full-fledged districts featuring: locations, NPCs, Bosses, complications, rumors, treasures, adventure seeds.
Get more
A set of adventure modules complete the core books. They’re designed by a roster of international designers, and offer a variety of gameplay options:
ParaByte: cursed tamagotchi module, by Samantha Leigh
Decay Daughters: nuclear hexcrawl, by Alfred Valley
The Swine: slasher survival escape, by Iko and Chris Airiau
Corpse Snatchers XMAS: solo-first mall-crawl, by Iko and Dave Kenny
Heterogony of ends: body horror mutation, by watt
UNIT DH-17: horror suburban min-dungeon, by Iko
And by the way, all the amazing art in the game is by Evangeline Gallagher.
If you want to get more info about The Lost Bay, its content, design choices and sources of inspiration, subscribe to The Dispatch or come and try it on The Lost Bay Studio server where we hold regular sessions.
Be sure to follow the project on Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thelostbay/the-lost-bay-suburban-dark-fantasy-rpg
Jennell Jaquays Memorial Game Jam
A game jam in memory of Jennell Jaquays who has sadly left us recently has been organized. Jennell’s work inspired countless game and dungeon designers, and remains highly influential to this day. I know it has shaped profoundly the way I think of writing, running, and probably even playing dungeons, whatever fits in the world “dungeon”: old monastery, drifting spaceship, or ruined suburban house.
The game jam seeks entries to build a megadungeon à la Caverns of Thracia, adventure with a mythological Greek theme first published in 1979. The entries will be collected in a book, Return to Perinthos, which will be crowdfunded to go to print. Profits from the crowdfunding campaign will be donated to Jennell Jaquays's family to help with medical and funeral expenses and to Trans Lifeline.
More information here https://itch.io/jam/jennell-jaquays-memorial-game-jam
A dedicated channel has been created in The Lost Bay Studio server. Feel free to come and meet other members of the community to share with them this moment in memory of a great game designer and Queer activist.
The jam is being organized by
, owner of RV Games, with permission from Jennell Jaquays’s family. And special thanks to David Wilkie and Sean McCoy.If you want to know more about how Jennell Jaquays’ work influenced dungeon design, check out the cool video by Map Crow
Free spaceships
I’ve been keeping my eyes for a while on the work of Carly A-F, a designer with a unique talent, and a taste for eerie, dreamy images. The good news for us all is that Carly has recently released a Sci-Fi asset pack. The art is phenomenal with a retro-futuristic touch and adds-up to the list of free or affordable resources available for your TTRPG projects. Folks, no need to use AI generated content for your games. There are incredible beings out there, made of flesh and love, who create killer RPG art. Support them if you can: you’ll help the community grow, and you’ll support your hobby. With Spaceships VOL. 1 you get 40 files for only $5. Go get it!
Get Spaceships VOL. 1 here https://carlydraws.itch.io/spaceships-vol-1
Production update
I wasn’t super happy with the print quality of the CY_BER Bundle and the Fallen Bundle maps. The ink kind of peeled off the creases, which was pretty bad. Gladly, the printer admitted the issue, and offered to reprint them all. I guess this is one of the positive aspects of printing locally, on top of labor and environmental considerations. I can talk to real humans, as opposed to web interfaces. In my experience this makes communication much easier and that’s better for the project. I got those new prints on Thursday and they look fantastic. Next week will be dedicated to completing the bundles assembly.
Above is one of the said maps, the dungeon/adventure Fishy Business by Victor Merino, included in the CY_BER Bundle. You can grab the CY_BER Bundle here https://outer-rim-uprising.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/583381
Where I dwell
In addition to The Dispatch newsletter and TLB Studio discord server you can find me in several social networks
TikTok where I’ve been experimenting with short review and behind the scenes videos
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X https://twitter.com/thelostbay
Bsky https://bsky.app/profile/thelostbaystudio.com
Insta https://www.instagram.com/thelostbaystudio/
Have a great Sunday! Today I’m facing a gigantic conundrum: it’s below zero Celsius, but I need to go outside to get to the old café on the other side of the park to snag one of their fabulous apple cakes. Will I dare? I have no clue.
Last minute addition
Jean Verne, a designer and layout designer, has been putting out regularly what he calls the Alphabet Superset, a series of layout experiments, one for each letter of the (Latin?) alphabet, and for each letter a weapon, or item related to the art of war.
Follow Jean on X and here
Thanks for the shout-out Iko!