Public Access, Sessions 1 and 2 · Game Master's Laboratory

Public Access, Sessions 1 and 2

The last two weeks, I’ve been trying out a new game called Public Access—it’s an ongoing game, but I expect it to only run 10–12 sessions. I tried it out after watching this truly excellent review from Quinn’s Quest (who, if you haven’t watched, makes what I think is pretty much the best reviews of TTRPGs on the internet) https://youtu.be/DI8fUgSdgZg?si=ieolVb190wGzz_ag

The game is an absolute blast. "No on remembers this children's show you watched growing up, except all of you. Something was...not quite right with it...what happened to it?" The explicit goal of every character is to find out what happened to this unsettling children's program that no one seems to remember called TV Odyssey. It’s inspired by analog horror and creepypastas, using the Brindlewood Bay system to facilitate a very cool storytelling system (rather than a puzzle heavy system like some mystery games). Brindlewood Bay and its offspring have a clue system where there’s no set answer to a mystery—instead, players collect clues, then make a role to create their own answer to the question with as many clues as possible. If their roll is a success, their answer is right. This concept bothered me a lot at first, but when it works, it works GREAT. It’s really nice for a game like this where the story, tone, atmosphere, and characters is the focus, and not actually the main mystery like in a Sherlock Holmes game or something like that. The mysteries build tension but never slow down the game from theorizing, which is nice. Other interesting mechanics include Keys, these boxes you can check to improve a roll. They effectively make characters unkillable, which is important for encouraging them to split up and get into danger. They're also all connected to either narrating a flashback to childhood, or mechanically entwining yourself deeper with the forces of horror, which is cool.

All of this to set up the games I’ve run! We’ve had two virtual sessions, and I’m running with three players (friends from high school!). In the first session, we spent about an hour making characters, and two hours on our first mystery, the House on Escondido Street. The campaign has a cool narrative structure I won't spoil in case someone plays it, but it comes with a bunch of premade mysteries that are really well laid out. The group spent the day digging around the house, butting heads with the HOA, and otherwise engaging in investigative antics. They spent the night (which is its own phase where all rolls are more dangerous) watching a tape of the mysterious kids show that they found. Very good time.

Session 2 was also a blast! We introduced a second mystery---you keep adding them each session until there's three at once, and whenever you drop below three, you add another---and the gang split up. Investigation by day, by night we finally got to some real horror with some bloodthirsty otherwordly forces, sinister emails, and an arcade game built from the wood of an 18th century whaling vessel. Great stuff. I'm trying to be pretty vague because if even one person tries this game out, I'll be pretty happy haha, it's one of the most original things I've run in a long time.

Something I really love about it, and a common topic on the lab, is the adventure design. The mysteries don't need to take up lots of space making careful answers of everything, since the players are the ones who create answers to the mysteries. This leaves lots of space for useful tidbits to run the game, letting every mystery fit on two or three pages total. It's pretty great! Each one has an intro to read, a main question to pursue and a follow opportunity, then some cool moments to drop in, dangers, locations, NPCs, rewards, and clues, in that order, plus some space to keep notes to boot. It's a shocking amount of stuff in a little space, but it's the least amount of prep I've ever done to run a fun and exciting game. I can't hype this game up enough, it's really, really cool. I'd suggest checking out that linked video above, to see if it might be your thing---it's been a pretty reenergizing thing to run, as I've been feeling a little burned out.

Proactivity wise, it's simultaneously very constrained and ridiculously open. The players HAVE to pursue the TV Odyssey Mystery, and they have to pursue the other smaller mysteries you put in front of them. GMs have premade mysteries (you could make your own, but why, they're so good!) that they lay out in front of the group. But these constraints just set a lot of momentum and energy for the game. With no specified mystery answers beforehand, players get to decide the direction the mysteries will go by creating the canonical answers via their conspiracy board madness, which all culminates in the final TV Odyssey Mystery, so in a roundabout way, they have a lot more control over the direction of the campaign than your average player. Plus, if they're ever about to die or don't like their die result, they can turn a key and alter the course of the story. The mechanics share a lot storytelling power between players and GMs in a pretty elegant way that maintains a narrative arc, which is pretty neat.

Criticism wise, I honestly don't have a ton. The game has a little less guidance than I'd like for the end of the campaign, but I haven't actually run that yet so I could be wrong. I've also had some trouble with the Conditions, which are the main way you inflict harm or stress onto the characters, since I'm meant to remember them and impose disadvantage on a roll for them, but since they're listed on the other PCs sheets, I forget them haha. I'll probably keep a list for myself next session and see how that goes. Excited to see how the game unfolds!

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