November is here and that means the release of Hard City: Noir Roleplaying is only three weeks away! Over the rest of the month we'll have even more behind-the-scenes content to show you, but let's kick off with a welcome to the Hard City itself from none other than the game's author Nathan Russell...
Thick mist rolls between the darkened waterfront warehouses as a figure steps from the inky shadows, the steel glint of a pistol in their hand…
A sequined seductress finishes her song on the stage at The Tropicana and descends the stairs towards her mark…
A tired cop, still hungover, pulls out his crumpled notebook and scratches details about the gory scene he’s been called to investigate…
These are just some of the stories unfolding on the dark streets of the hard city…
Hard City is my roleplaying game of investigation and intrigue set in the shadow-filled world depicted in noir films and hardboiled detective novels. It is a game of tough guys and two-bit crooks, where the distinction between hero and villain is never black and white. In a dark city of smoky jazz bars and fog-shrouded docks, two-fisted private eyes and dangerous dames always seem to get into more trouble than they bargained for.
While most film noir share a distinct visual style, there is no definitive plot or setting – there’s quite a difference between Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, for example, even though both are iconic film noir. I wrote Hard City as a toolbox that provides the details you need to tell your own stories, inspired by whatever movies or hardboiled detective fiction you love to watch or read. The rules and character generation systems are very flexible and whether you want to play a group of private eyes, members of a special police division, or just a collection of people thrust together by circumstance and bad luck, you can do it. This flexibility also makes Hard City just as good for a “one-shot” mystery as it is for an on-going campaign in the vein of television shows like Peter Gunn or Dragnet.
Hard City is set in a nameless metropolis drawn in broad brushstrokes that could just as easily be New York, London, or Los Angeles, depending on how you colour your descriptions and what characters you throw into the mix. It is presented as a sandbox, with key districts and important people described in just enough detail to spark your imagination and get the story rolling. Where you go from there is anyone’s guess, but rest assured that crime and corruption lurk around every corner and there are endless opportunities for your characters to get into trouble.
Speaking of characters, you can create for yourself any kind of dime novel detective story character that you can imagine. Do you want to play a soldier turned private eye with a knack for driving, an intrepid reporter, or store clerk turned dangerous femme fatale? What about a charming lawyer who likes to fight dirty, a disgraced cop, or a former heavyweight champion who has fallen on hard times and now works as an enforcer for the Mob? All of these, and more, are easy to create with a few simple choices during character generation. One of the things that fascinates me about noir protagonists is that they are complex, flawed people, often acting against their own best interests. They have drinking problems or anger issues, gambling debts or bad reputations – any one of which can make their life and their job far more difficult. In Hard City this is conveyed through a character’s flaws – personality traits, bad habits, or background details that complicate their life and often get in the way of wrapping up their case. Players are incentivised to draw a character’s flaws into the story as doing so refreshes their moxie – a resource used to change dice results and do other cool stuff. Flaws really help to bring characters to life and add interesting twists to the stories you are telling.
Characters will get involved in cases, frequently the investigation of a crime, with the players working their way through a tangled web of clues to find the culprits or save some innocent (or not-so-innocent) victim. The book provides plenty of advice for game masters on how to plan and run a mystery, lay out clues, and tailor cases to the skills of the characters. There are also guidelines on carrying out heists and other schemes in the form of capers, such as stealing a priceless artwork to pay off a family debt or escorting a prisoner across the country while pursued by their criminal accomplices. Cases can be stand-alone stories, like an episodic television show, but there are also plenty of opportunities for them to tie together into an ongoing campaign where a deeper mystery is slowly revealed.
There’s a lot more to Hard City, too. I haven’t touched upon the way the dice pool system works, or how the combat rules make talking just as important as fighting, or even how characters, their abilities, and their injuries are entirely described with words. I’ll save that for next time.
Hear more from Nathan Russell here on our blog a week today, Tuesday November 8th.
Hard City is out November 24th and available for pre-order today.
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