I am very excited to tell you about a new crowdfunding project on Backerkit: Shadow City Mysteries is a new 5e setting and rule set for clockwork noir that blurs the lines between reality and the supernatural. I’m a writer and editor on this incredible project, and I hope you’ll read on and find out more!
The City
The sprawling metropolis the locals call Shadow City is far from the front lines of the war but at the heart of the nation’s politics. The fabulously wealthy play games of influence while those on the street organize into ever-bigger syndicates of crime. The union of steelworkers building the city’s clockwork tech and the nation’s war machines vies for status with the consortium of entertainers and other trades whose impossibly intricate prostheses give them manual dexterity beyond the unaugmented. All the while, the mystical Church wields its divine mandate and heavenly gifts for both temporal control and to try to root out the shadowy cults that forever find purchase among the disenfranchised.
As a player, you stand between and among all these factions, and will unravel intricate mysteries, expose deep conspiracies, and confront the supernatural forces hidden beneath the mundane surfaces of the Shadow City. Your choice of factions and backgrounds shapes the unfolding narrative. You may be a detective solving a crime of passion, a fixer navigating a web of deceit, or a warrior battling eldritch horrors. In Shadow City, each night is a new and unforgettable adventure where nothing is as it seems.
The System
Shadow City Mysteries uses the SRD of the world’s most popular roleplaying game as its engine, and brings new classes—the Heavy, the Infiltrator, the Maker, the Savant, the Mystic, and the Face—as well as new subclasses and feats. Our playtesters have loved our mechanics that offer more ways for characters to support each other. There are also subsystems for influence projects, crafting, and stronghold-building. There are rules for clockwork prosthetics, vehicles, and other strange technologies.
The game supports three modes of play: gritty and low-magic Mystery, city-wide investigation in Conspiracy, and higher-powered Supernatural investigation, peeling back the shroud of lies that cloak the world.
It’s not easy to run a deep, involved investigative adventure, and Shadow City Mysteries is here to help your adventures resemble the twists and turns of noir and hard-boiled detective fiction. Relationship mapping within the City and procedures for building mysteries and conspiracies make all of this manageable—and make the book a great asset even for games outside the Shadow City.
What’s That, You Want More?
Oh yeah, there’s more, baby. There’s a free Quickstart adventure that you can download right now, complete with six pregenerated PCs at level 5!
There’s a tarot deck, with meanings written by Rabbit Stoddard. If you’ve seen any of her previous tarot deck guides, you know that this is not to be missed.
There’s a GM screen. There’s an incredibly gorgeous dice set. Go check out the Backerkit page!
Read more at this site