Back in February of this year (2025), I mentioned here, in “Fey and Fedoras, Nixies and Noir,” that my old college buddy Tim Ryan and I were using the Fairyland Confidential solo mystery game by Teapot Dome as a GM-less framework for play-testing the d4ce rpg.
Before I go any further, let me repeat that the biggest crime here is that Fairyland Confidential has gotten so little love on DriveThruRPG. I’m asking you to go fix that right now. It’s PWYW (pay what you want), so please, go now to get a copy, play it, and give it 5-stars. If you can’t yet play it, trust me and give it 5 stars anyway. (drivethrurpg.com/en/product/286295/fairyland-confidential)
Though I bought the game, I’m prevented from rating and reviewing other publishers’ products on that site, so I’m relying on you. (And maybe message Teapot Dome Games that I recommended their product.)
Over the course of the past six months of Mondays, Tim and I had worked through a half-dozen permutations of Fairyland Confidential’s fantasy/noir crossover mysteries, and were preparing to return to our old Bookmark Cyberpunk campaign. But the urge to continue role-playing with Tim’s Frankie Blair (bar owner) and my Pudge Mallone (bouncer) was too strong. So we decided to continue their adventures, replacing Fairyland Confidential with the GM-less oracle Cut Up Solo: Carnacki the Ghost-Finder (a randomizer of text snippets from the public domain Carnacki tales.)
With both of those frameworks, the GameMaster’s Apprentice core deck has been handy for added details such as character motivations, etc.
An aside: Though the oracle products tend to use the terms “Game Master” and “GM,” I prefer the gender-neutral term “game host” as a better descriptor of the job.
Our first CUS Carnacki adventure in the Fairyland Confidential setting begins with this three-snippet prompt:
disagreeable sort of slithering sound
I slammed the door
run in the complete darkness
We’re starting at Frankie’s bar. Is the joint open? CUS has a Yes/No dice roll option, and my roll says Yes, but I rolled boxcars, suggesting more than a simple affirmative. We decided it meant still open but Last Call. So while Frankie is putting away bottles, Pudge is telling patrons at the tables to drink up and go home.
Who are those patrons? I roll a couple of dice for how many. It says “5.” Tim’s GMA draws give a few details, and we decide there’s:
- Millie, a former mine manager whom we cleared of murdering her boss, in an earlier adventure, now drunk as usual;
- three nameless gangsters; and
- a fairy named Snare, who’s taking payment for a delivery of Oberian Brandy from Minnie Hargrave (a smuggler we helped out in another previous adventure).
Pudge sends one of the gangsters to the bar to settle up their tab.
Tim’s imagination turns that CUS prompt into … A woman comes slithering out of the bathroom on her belly like a snake, leading a wave of darkness.
Pudge rushes to slam the door before the darkness floods the room. (Which action nicely fits line 2 of the prompt, right?) Typically I’d call for an Athletics skill roll, but Pudge is an ex-boxer, and Tim agrees that Martial Arts qualifies here. We decide the difficulty is Formidable (d8s). Success!
Did that contain the darkness? Yes/No dice say No. Tim decides this means inky blackness begins erupting out of the snake lady herself, and we’re all in the dark.
Time to flee the bar with some Difficult (d4s) Perception skill rolls (in d4ce, the smaller the die, the better):
- It seems Millie is too drunk to even notice what’s happening;
- The gangsters stumble around but can’t find the door, so they pull knives (only a fool uses a pistol in the dark);
- Snare, despite whatever magical attunement, also fails;
- Pudge fails to find his way back to protect Frankie;
- Frankie also fails, but with a 1—d4ce treats that as an experience point—so we figure Frankie at least realizes where everybody else is, especially the snake lady.
We figure it’s time for a new CUS prompt:
The great tread came
about seven feet high and
a half passed, quietly
O-o-ka-a-y then. That sounds ominous.
Let’s have some Perception rolls, d4s again, to track that huge thing treading quietly through the darkness.
- Millie fails, but a roll of 1 suggests that she now knows something—so we hear her scream;
- The gangster at the bar knows its location, by sound;
- The other gangsters are clueless;
- Snare has the same results as Millie, and cries out;
- Pudge still can’t even find the bar where Frankie stands;
- Frankie rolls several successes, and knows exactly where the seven (“and a half”) feet tall thing is.
We let Frankie make a roll for his Fairyland Lore to identify it. (There’s no Fairyland Lore skill in the d4ce core rules, but we’ve been to the fairy world on cases more than once over the past six months, so he invented the skill for his character awhile back. I call Pudge’s version “Streetwisery, Fae,” for similar knowledge, but with a twist.)
Frankie’s success means he dimly perceives the figure of Apep, shedding the skin of the snake lady like an ecdysis in rags and earrings. He’s holding Snare by the neck in his right hand and Minnie by the arm in his left. Apep’s focus is on Snare.
An aside: How did we decide on Apep, I hear you wondering. Well, given (a.) Tim’s snake lady idea; (b.) the darkness; and then (c.) the “great tread, quietly” of something seven (and a half) feet tall, to my mind an avatar of that Egyptian god seemed to suit.
Having heard Minnie’s scream, Pudge heads toward it, blindly through the darkness. He’s stepping in a boxer’s pose, left fist up for contact, right drawn back for a haymaker. Pudge bumps into Apep and swings (Herculean, d10s) and fails, swiping through empty air.
Frankie is desperately wracking his brain for what to do. Tim asks me, “Remember that case we solved a couple of months ago about the evil Faerie Queen Abraxis, where someone anonymously left her crown here for safekeeping? Did we ever give that back?” I didn’t think so, but we let the dice decide. Sure enough, it’s still here!
Seems like a good time for another oracle prompt:
he would gladly have
forward I flashed the light
(natural enough in his
Frankie opens the safe under the bar by touch (a roll of d6s), pulls out the crown, stands up, and puts it on his head. The room lights up, and Apep immediately focuses on Frankie (though he’s still holding Snare and Millie). Tim says, “Shit!”
An Aside: Over the course of our years of GM-less play, we’ve developed a style in which, when one of our two heroes is in the limelight, the other steps into the role of whatever other characters they’re facing. So that was my decision for Apep.
A light like the sun (because Ra, Apep’s enemy, right?) flashes from the crown, and Frankie focuses it on Apep. Pudge takes a mere mortal’s swing at this avatar of a god (we decide on Legendary difficulty, d12s) and connects! Apep disappears.
Pudge grabs Snare and Millie as they fall. He turns to Snare, the elf’s shirtfront in his fist, and snarls, “You brought that thing in here! It came for you!”
Tim says Millie cries out, “Pudge, you’re hurting me!” because I forgot to have Pudge let go. Also, I suspect, because Tim figured it was a dramatically appropriate detail, taking Pudge’s tension down a notch. (As I said, we sort of take turns with these sorts of game host decisions.) Pudge lets go, sheepishly apologizing, though he retains his grip on Snare.
Snare turns to glance at the crown but Pudge jerks him back, waving at Frankie to put the thing away. Then he drags Snare over to the bar and plunks him down on a barstool.
Frankie says “Fess up or we take you to Minnie to sort it out.” Given that this is the first time Snare has appeared in one of our adventures, and that we’ve developed a close relationship with the smuggler Minnie Hargrave, he’s clearly newly in her employ.
Time for another oracle. This time we took a whole five-line set, instead of just the three most suggestive ones:
torn from my grasp with
lanterns; also some whisky
grapple. The wire was
his big chair—began
we had not heard those
Tim and I decide, after some discussion, that what best makes sense from Apep’s appearance and now “lanterns; also some whisky” is that Snare was in on some tomb robbing (lanterns to light the way, “whisky” to bribe the guards). At Minnie’s direction, no doubt, because it’s just the sort of job she’d take on for some rich gangster wanting a roomful of trophies. “His big chair” suggests an actual throne.
Tim’s GMA deck says that Snare’s vice is “Dissembling,” so there ends up being some role-play and dice rolling for Pudge to shake the truth out of him. But it also says that the elf’s virtue is “Loyal,” so once we convince him that Apep is probably on his way to Minnie’s joint now, while she’s asleep, he says, “What are we waiting for? She’s in danger! Let’s go!”
We leave the fright-sobered Millie to keep an eye on things while we head out.
And thus endeth the session. More to come.