Dim All the Lights Heading to Layout, So Here's Some Previews

So over the course of July, I’ve gotten material from me (yay!), Noora Rose, and Bendi Barrett, and forwarded all of that over to Jared Sinclair, the official editor of Roseville Beach (and really, all of Rose Island). I don’t brag much about my own skills, but I get to work with some of the most thoughtful and skilled people in tabletop RPGs. Jared wrapped up his developmental comments on this first round of documents late last week, so we’re ready to start making some previews.

Dim All the Lights (Announcement List | Kickstarter Pre-launch) is coming together, and to celebrate, we’re making some early-release zines!

Dim All the Lights 1: New Characters on Roseville Beach

While I call Dim All the Lights a “Mystery Book,” it includes new tools and toys for players as well as GMs. The first of these is a set of origin stories:

• The Veteran has spent most of their adult life hunting monsters and studying the occult in the employ of the wealthy and powerful. Now you’ve come here to Roseville Beach to use your skills to keep a community safe. You’ve forgotten more than most people will ever know. Each session, you choose a background and during the session pick three skills you want to use as you need them. You also have a Go Bag from which you can make your own new Supply Checks for equipment others wouldn’t thave access to.
• The Changeling was once a normal kid in the terrestrial world but were taken away to another. You’ve since grown up and returned, only to discover someone else has been living your life. Your time among non-humans has give you a deep understanding of what others are thinking and taught you a few supernatural tricks (that are more routine but easier than working magic with sorcery and words of power).
• The Rose Island Regular has a job like everyone else, but they’ve had more Rose Island jobs than almost anyone else. Instead of a separate set of skills and backgrounds, the Regular takes a current job and two former jobs. They’ve also got a reputation around town, and know a lot of Roseville Beach gossip.
• The Mainland Renegade came out to Roseville Beach for a short getaway. It was supposed to be a few days. And then you stayed. The Renegade is a slightly more mature version of The Fresh Face from the core book, and was inspired by Mary Ann Singleton from Maupin’s Tales of the City.

The book also includes a few more jobs around Roseville Beach (like fire fighter, drag king/queen, and bookstore clerk) and Rose Island (like an admin for the park department), and the option of being self-employed as a band member, writer, swim coach, or repairperson.

Dim All the Lights 2: Entities of Roseville Beach

Inspired by The X Files, SCP, and The Magus Archives, Noora Rose wrote five new “Entities of Roseville Beach.” Moonlight on Roseville Beach doesn’t have opponent, antagonist, creature, NPC, or monster stats: If you can figure out how to hurt something, it has up to 3 hit points. Instead, Noora took things in a new direction and focused instead on the entity’s victims and the evidence they leave behind.

Noora, who wrote the strange events generator of Moonlight on Roseville Beach, where ever die roll is a small, eerie fragment of a horrifying story, tackled this section, and I spoke after reading an early draft of her work back in June, but now Noora’s expanded the section, adding more detail and some GM notes.

Instead of focusing on the entities, Noora focuses on their victims, looking at what witnesses saw and what the victims recorded in their own journals and logs. Her work not only introduces the entities but creates clues and player handouts. I’ve mocked up a couple of layouts here.

Here, Dr. Jo Norris is logging her observations on a mysterious sea slug that she’ll soon learn can take the form of anything it’s near.

Here, we take a look at the diary of Nicole Wolf, a young woman who went missing after starting to date a singer named whose waterlogged diary was found at the beach.

Noora also added a bunch of GM notes on using the entities, and I've created a short mystery generator using the entities in Roseville Beach.