''Apocalypse Keys'' is a mystery

tabletop role-playing game A tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG or TRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a kind of role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech and sometimes movements. Participants d ...

about monsters who decide to save the world, designed by Rae Nedjadi and published by

Evil Hat Productions Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. They are best known for the free indie RPG system ''Fate'', '' Blades in the Dark'', and '' Thirsty Sword Lesbians'', all of which have won multiple awa ...

. It uses the

Powered by the Apocalypse Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) is a tabletop role-playing game design framework developed by Meguey Baker, Meguey and Vincent Baker for the 2010 game ''Apocalypse World'' and later adapted for hundreds of other Indie role-playing game, indie ro ...

game engine by

Meguey Baker Meguey Baker () is a tabletop role-playing game designer, independent publisher and quilt historian. She and her husband Vincent Baker designed Apocalypse World, the first game in the Powered by the Apocalypse system. Career Game design Bake ...

and Vincent Baker. The game is inspired by

Hellboy Hellboy is a superhero created by Mike Mignola and appearing in comic books published by Dark Horse Comics. The character first appeared in ''San Diego Comic-Con Comics'' #2 (August 1993), and has since appeared in various miniseries, one-shots ...

'',''

Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (the B.P.R.D. or BPRD) is a fictional organization in the comic book work of Mike Mignola. The B.P.R.D. originally appeared in the ''Hellboy'' comics and has since become a major part of its Hellbo ...

Men in Black In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are government agents dressed in dark suits, who question, interrogate, harass, and threaten unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesses to keep them silent about what they have ...

Penny Dreadful Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular Serial (literature), serial literature produced during the 19th century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typical ...

, and Doom Patrol.

Gameplay

Players create monster characters based on emotional wounds instead of typical archetypes, and their world-saving organization operates like a

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...

chosen family. Nedjadi designed the game with emotional safety in mind, driven by the questions, “''How do I build in a sense of narrative power that's not just in the GM’s hands? How do I build in this ability to communicate and collaborate?”'' The game is for three to six players and plays like a detective game.

Reception

Chase Carter for

Polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure made up of line segments connected to form a closed polygonal chain. The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called its '' edges'' or ''sides''. The points where two edges meet are the polygon ...

named it one of seven most anticipated new tabletop games of 2023.

Publication History

Nedjadi originally self-published Apocalypse Keys in pdf form on

Itch.io Itch.io (stylized in all lowercase) is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games, indie role-playing games, game assets, comics, zines and music. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 1,000,000 ...

in August 2020.

acquired publishing rights in March 2021 and ran a

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

campaign for Apocalypse Keys in October 2023, raising $165,883 from 3,226 backers.

Roll20 Roll20 is a website consisting of a set of tools for playing tabletop role-playing games, also referred to as a virtual tabletop, which can be used as an aid to playing in-person or remotely online. The site was launched in 2012 after a success ...

soon released a fully online version of the game. Evil Hat released the pdf version on Itch.io on April 19, 2023.

References

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