Well, like many things this year, my plans for 2022 Gaming have largely failed so far. I haven’t run any of the stuff I said I was going to. There’s still time to run some of them (maybe); but I have decided I am definitely going to run a game of my own design next week, on Sunday, August 14th. I just need 3-5 players.

My game is called The Hub, and it is a street-crime roleplaying game set in the city of Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-1970’s. Boston in the 1970’s was a particularly deep cesspool of crime and corruption. The Winter Hill gang ran the underworld under Howie Winter, setting the stage for James “Whitey” Bulger to take over by the end of the decade and unleash hell on the streets of South Boston. The Boston Police, the FBI and the Department of Justice all shielded and protected Bulger, allowing him to benefit from his status as an informant while running a criminal empire of drugs, racketeering, extortion and murder.`

This is that city. Kinda. Rather, it’s a fictionalized Boston of the time. All the crime and corruption are there; but you won’t run into Whitey Bulger or any real-life people. What you will do is take on the role of a street-level criminal. If you like movies like Mean Streets, The Departed, Black Mass, Super Fly, Death Wish, Carlito’s Way and Taxi Driver; this could be right up your trash-strewn and rat-infested alley.

As far as content warnings go, take a look at that list of movies. That gives a pretty good idea what to expect in my game. There will be bad language. There will be drug use. There will be copious amounts of violence and gritty and realistic depictions of street life and organized crime. You will be playing a character who is not very nice, and you will be interacting with not-nice people.

What you won’t find are any racial slurs or depictions/descriptions of sexual violence. Everyone has a line, and that’s mine.

Combat will be realistic and dangerous, because when people get shot in real life, they tend to die. You won’t be able to go to sleep for 8 hours and wake up good as new. There are no saving throws here; and certainly no potions of healing. Your characters are not superheroes and there is the very real possibility of character death.

My goal with the game next week is to test out the system I’m using to see if it fits the theme. I assume the game will run about 3-4 hours or so, including character creation. (You can create your character in about 5 minutes.) It’s a straightforward scenario to see if I want to go further with it.

I said this on the gaming page, but it bears repeating here: Please note: I live in the Eastern United States, very close to Boston, where this game is set, which is the EST time zone. I don’t care where you live, but you need to keep that in mind as to when the games will be played. For example, California is 3 hours behind me, England is 5 hours ahead of me and Australia is 16!! So, if I start a four hour session on Sunday at noon my time, someone in California will start at 9 am; England at 5 pm, and most of Australia will be at 4 am on Monday! Once I have a group of players I will schedule a time that is best suited for the majority.

This game will be run on Discord, with a die-rolling app or site. It doesn’t require much.

I am also planning on running Slasher Flick on the 30th of October this year. I already have one player from Canada (assuming he’s still interested), but I’m always looking for more so drop me a line if interested in that or any of the other games I intended to run. Who knows? I might get to another one before the end of the year!