Indie TTRPG of the Week

Locus

Locus

its the scariest time of year when ghouls and goblins come out from the dark and everyone is frightened

Genre: Horror

Touchstones: Psychological horror films, like Citadel and Shutter Island

What is this game?: Locus is a ttrpg of psychological horror with weak, guilty characters

How's the gameplay?: Locus works by rolling 3d6 and checking against a character's stat, the result depends on the difficulty of the check, Easy checks use the Highest roll, Medium use the Middle, and Hard checks use the lowest roll. In addition, players have a hand of cards, these represent how your character's vices begin to burden them, they have a suit representing a Virtue and a suit representing a Vice, when you draw a virtue card its not added to your hand, but any other card is still added, what do cards do? Well, I can't say! Locus uses a lot of mechanics deliberately kept secret to the players, and what cards actually DO is a secret!

What's the setting (If any) like?: Not really applicable, the setting is whatever you need it to be, but if you need some inspiration go play the first 4 silent hills + Downpour and Shattered Memories, right now, go do it!

What's the tone?: Locus is about horrible people being placed in horrible situations, it is a dire game through and through

Session length: Locus lends itself to shorter, 1-3 hour sessions

Number of Players: 3-5 players

Malleability: No setting, it can be used for most Psychological Horror games you wanna run

Resources: the character sheet is so stupidly small you don't really need THAT much to run this game, just something to keep track of cards in hand

Locus is a solid psychological horror RPG, it has some very inventive mechanics and some very tried and true mechanics, which are all used to build tension in the narrative and take control away from the players