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Sick, Sad World
TRIGGER WARNING: What follows is not safe for Life, let alone Work.
Don’t Rest Your Head was an innovative, little, narrative-focussed TTRPG.
Combined with the Don’t Lose Your Mind supplement, what you had was the fast-moving, rules-light, bastard offspring of The Phantom Tollbooth and the Zamonia books, if it had been conceived in London above ² (i.e. Roofworld)
… on bad acid.
Inevitably, therefore, as I remarked here, about a few others …
… it was going to appeal to me — combined with other elements, it could be used to tell some truly twisted tales.
The recent release of Glitch has given me some ideas too … ones that would, I think, deliver to fans of gaming the kind of punch in the gut that killed Houdini — I’ll give you dark fantasy alright (you’ll be traumatised for Life! ³)
However … whilst some might consider me ‘a very troubled, young man’, there are those in this world who are more profoundly disturbed than I will ever be (and, no, for once, I’m not talking about Stephen or John 😉).
I, for instance, would never conceive of anything like the below …. which is the most disturbing idea I have ever encountered (and I’ve seen some sh*t in my time, let me tell you!)
It’s up there with Happy! in the What-the-F*CK!?-ery stakes
And the NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo…-ery stakes,
It’s the baddest and wrongest idea ever … the stuff of Humanity’s foulest nightmares …. and there is no amount of mindbleach that will wash the stain from my psyche — It’s like Tim Burton and David Cronenberg cloned David Lynch from a dead flake of foreskin with a Herpes sore on it and the clone made paedosnuff bestiality porn.
No, I won’t be incorporating it into anything — even I have to draw a line somewhere.
Aura, on the other hand …
Expect to read a story by her based on the idea in the not too distant future
(like Erik, she’s Dutch … and there’s no way to say “that’s going too far” in Dutch),
—
¹ It’s sick and twisted and furry.
² Cf. Neverwhere.
³ See if you can guess which elements of the following I might mash together after bingeing on Barker/Gaiman/Preacher/Sin City and Carnival/Fringe/Twin Peaks/X Files/Dark City/The Adjustment Bureau/Misfits/Orphan Black/Happy!/The League of Gentlemen and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil
[ Oscar, take note 😉 ]
Don’t Rest Your Head/Don’t Lose Your Mind, Nobilis, Glitch, Little Fears, City of Mist, Clockwork Domain, Crimes Against Men and Gods, Crossroads Carnival, Domains, Dreaming Cities, Dresden Files, Into The Odd / Electric Bastionland, Enter The Forest/Enter The Palace, Extracausal, Fairy Meat, Folkloric, Grimm, GURPS Steampunk/Screampunk/Time Travel/Warehouse 23/Faerie/Metro of Madness, Headspace, In Dark Alleys, In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, Katabasis, Kidworld, KULT, La Compagnie des Glaces, Monsters and Other Childish Things, Nephilim, Over The Edge, Part-Time Gods, Puppetland, Reaching In The Dark, Relics, Savage Worlds Codex Infernus/Contagion/Crystal Heart/Enascentia/Fae Nightmares/Imago Mortis/Mutant Chronicles/Savage Tales of Horror/Streets of Bedlam, Schauermaerchen, Shattered Dreams, Shelter, SLURPS, Solipsist, Summerland, Terribly Beautiful, The Echoes of Heaven, The Nightmares Underneath, The Strange, The Swing (except Time is a stretched out Slinky instead), The Thing That Lives In Your House (Knows All of Your Secrets), The Zantabulous Zorcerer of Zo, Threadbare, Through The Breach/Meat Market, Troika!, Twisted Rails, We Are Champion and World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness Orpheus/Umbra/Wraith/Geist/Fae/Gypsies/Midnight Circus/Possessed/Time of Judgement/Changeling/Deamon/Deviant/Promethean/Hunter/Dark Eras/Hurt Locker/Asylum/Immortals/Inferno/Innocents/Midnight Roads/Mysterious Places/Proverbial Monsters/Second Sight/Skinchangers/The Godmachine Chronicles (NO f*cking elves/dwarfs/hobbits/orcs/dragons/werewolves/vampires/any of that sh*t though!), Broken Rooms, Born From Hate and … if I can wrap my head around it (and it doesn’t turn out to be a joke) … possibly … Jenna Moran’s game WTF
… how
… and why I might give the experience the title of: No Happy Endings 😉
