Black Iron Engine

        Everything happens because a vast machine hidden in higher-dimensional space makes it happen. Mechanical rings raise the sun in the morning, ventilation ducts create the weather, and reinforced concrete holds up the earth. The demiurgic Engine makes one plus one equal two and water flow downhill.

            Yet, if you've ever seen a cryptid, heard an inexplicable hum, or remembered a fact that no longer seemed to be true, then on some level you realize that reality is falling apart. The gears are scraping, the wires are fraying, and something is seeping through the cracks in the walls. The world is glitching and ready to crash.

            They contacted you after the incident: men in black suits with dark sunglasses, claiming to represent an organization they simply called the “Civil Service”. Their engineers keep the pistons oiled, the breaker fuses replaced, and the code up to date. They offered you a chance to join them and put your skills to use maintaining the universe. Someone has to keep the lights on.

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            BLACK IRON ENGINE is a tabletop roleplaying game suited for the standard 3-6 players plus GM campaign format. Take on the role of a memetic engineer, a dimensional architect, a cyborg electrician, or a psychonaut chemist. Play a talking gun wielded by another player character. Design your own equipment using nested modular components. Explore a city locked into an eternal 1989.

          The game is powered by a unique diceless action resolution system designed to emphasize clever plans over random gambling:  solve problems, bend situations to your favor, and accept sacrifices to get the job done. A flexible project system lets you set goals to fundamentally alter both the Engine and yourself through a series of narrative steps: uncover secrets, fall in love, and change the world.

           It's Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine by way of Philip K. Dick. It's movies like The Matrix and The Truman Show, games like Portal and Control, books like Blame! and House of Leaves, and shows like Severance and Serial Experiments Lain. It's a 240 page technical manual for high modernism extrapolated to the absolute breaking point.