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The Laundry Role-Playing Game
The Laundry
CAPITAL LAUNDRY SERVICES - WHAT NEEDS TO BE CLEANED UP? There are things out there, in the weirder reaches of space-time where reality is an optional extra. Horrible things, usually with tentacles. Al-Hazred glimpsed them, John Dee summoned them, HP Lovecraft wrote about them, and Alan Turing mapped the paths from our universe to theirs. The right calculation can call up entities from other, older universes, or invoke their powers. Invisibility? Easy! Animating the dead? Trivial! Binding lesser demons to your will? Easily doable! Opening up the way for the Great Old Ones to come through and eat our brains? Unfortunately, much too easy. That's where the Laundry comes in - it's a branch of the British secret service, tasked to prevent hideous alien gods from wiping out all life on Earth (and more particularly, the UK). You work for the Laundry. The hours are long, the pay is sub-par, the co-workers are... interesting (in the Chinese curse sense of the word), and the bureaucracy is stifling - but you do get to wave basilisk guns and bullet wards around, and to go on challenging and exciting missions to exotic locations like quaint, legend-haunted Wigan, cursed Slough and Wolverhampton where the walls are thin. You may even get to save the world. Just make sure you get a receipt.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 8, 2011
The RPG I am currently running with my group, in which the players take the parts of British civil servants working for a secret department of the Security Services which is tasked with protecting Her Britannic Majesties Domains and Protectorates - and, incidentally the world - from all manner of unspeakable, tentacled monstrosities from beyond space and time. HP Lovecraft called them The Old Gods, others have called them the Many-Angled Ones, but they are multitudinous and ever hungry for human souls (or quantum thought patterns, as modern terminology has it), and almost always possessed of some deranged cult that feels summoning them to our world is a good idea. Add to this the aspects of the espionage genre that Charles Stross has woven into the novels on which the game is based and the authors make full use of here, and you have a fun game that can be played as any mix of Lovecraft and le Carre that you wish.
The characters are not superheroes, or even necessarily heroes, just ordinary people who have been inducted (often forcefully after being involved in an Incident) into the dark secrets that hide behind our modern, wipe-clean world. Magic has always existed, of course, but the utterance of complex grammatical and mathematical summoning structures (or spells and incantations, if you prefer) was always hit and miss until Alan Turing developed both the computer and the algorithms that made the process a little safer. Hence there is a substantial emphasis on IT and CD (Information Technology and Computational Demonology), with gadgets like the specially adapted Apple product (nicknamed the NecronomiPhone) being a must have for any smart Laundry operative.
The system used is the classic BRPS (Basic Role-Playing System, usually pronounced 'burps'), a nice simple metric that leaves most of the emphasis on role playing rather than dice but offers a good solid backbone for the mechanical aspects of the game. It is also a natural fit for this setting; having been developed from the original Call of Cthulhu RPG system the players should feel right at home as their characters' sanity begins to ebb away when they encounter all manner of squamous, cyclopean terrors.
The characters are not superheroes, or even necessarily heroes, just ordinary people who have been inducted (often forcefully after being involved in an Incident) into the dark secrets that hide behind our modern, wipe-clean world. Magic has always existed, of course, but the utterance of complex grammatical and mathematical summoning structures (or spells and incantations, if you prefer) was always hit and miss until Alan Turing developed both the computer and the algorithms that made the process a little safer. Hence there is a substantial emphasis on IT and CD (Information Technology and Computational Demonology), with gadgets like the specially adapted Apple product (nicknamed the NecronomiPhone) being a must have for any smart Laundry operative.
The system used is the classic BRPS (Basic Role-Playing System, usually pronounced 'burps'), a nice simple metric that leaves most of the emphasis on role playing rather than dice but offers a good solid backbone for the mechanical aspects of the game. It is also a natural fit for this setting; having been developed from the original Call of Cthulhu RPG system the players should feel right at home as their characters' sanity begins to ebb away when they encounter all manner of squamous, cyclopean terrors.
June 18, 2011
I read RPG books for all the fun background. However with this background, it pretty much just revolves around and repeats a few jokes over and over. The Office vs Cthulhu. Zombies are euphemistically called Residual Human Resources. Sorcery is high-level math.... we GOT IT ALREADY!
Add to that, it also spoiled The Fuller Memorandum completely!
The upside? I just learned that my browser has spell check for Cthulhu!
Add to that, it also spoiled The Fuller Memorandum completely!
The upside? I just learned that my browser has spell check for Cthulhu!
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May 3, 2011I am biased, but it's totally awesome.
June 18, 2025
I bought this book a lifetime ago, and paused reading it because I hadn't finished the first book and didn't want to spoil myself. Now that I'm about seven books in, I figured I'd give it a try. It's an interesting book. BRP remains my least favourite old-school system, but this version feels satisfactory.
Based on the Laundry Files horror-espionage-bureaucracy-thrillers, this book adapts them into a tabletop RPG. It's interesting to see how the books have evolved into more straightforward stories (The last couple books I've read have had "superheroes" in them). The books really veered away from tales of bureaucracy, which is a fairly strong part of this version of the game.
I'm not sure if you can build Bob & Mo in this book or not. I see the Zann violin is in there, but nothing about how to become an Eater of Souls.
I am interested enough to give generating a PC a try, and might want to run the introductory module, although I might convert it to GumShoe.
Based on the Laundry Files horror-espionage-bureaucracy-thrillers, this book adapts them into a tabletop RPG. It's interesting to see how the books have evolved into more straightforward stories (The last couple books I've read have had "superheroes" in them). The books really veered away from tales of bureaucracy, which is a fairly strong part of this version of the game.
I'm not sure if you can build Bob & Mo in this book or not. I see the Zann violin is in there, but nothing about how to become an Eater of Souls.
I am interested enough to give generating a PC a try, and might want to run the introductory module, although I might convert it to GumShoe.
November 13, 2014
Some of you might be surprised at my sudden move from 5 stars to 3 stars, over an RPG set in a setting that I LOVE.
Here's the thing, while I don't like CoC as a system, just reading it, I could overlook the main issues. Hell, even after the first try in a convention, I could trick myself into thinking -- this is awesome.
But the moment I sat down and played a campaign was the moment I realized it just didn't work.
Yes, The Laundry Files is awesome.
Yes, I understand why they tried to tap the CoC-fanbase to sell more of their books.
But the moment I begin realizing that the system had to break itself to live up to the NPCs, and that NPCs had to have their own special rules, was the moment I realized that this game could have used its own system, instead of borrowing from CoC. Then, when I was faced with an official scenario where the final scene became ridiculous because, due to the players being smart, the final boss had no weapon, and sucked at hand-to-hand (as the PCs did). So, 30 minutes (I counted) of "Roll, I hit, Damage, ugh, I have penalties, I deal 0 damage" or "Roll, I missed" from both PCs and Boss, I realized that this was it. This was the Achilles Heel of what could be one of my favourite games.
Also, Mona is a damn mary-sue (she's as intelligent as Brain? Really?! REALLY?), which her being stated in this game only turned up to eleven but not really the game's (entire) fault.
Here's the thing, while I don't like CoC as a system, just reading it, I could overlook the main issues. Hell, even after the first try in a convention, I could trick myself into thinking -- this is awesome.
But the moment I sat down and played a campaign was the moment I realized it just didn't work.
Yes, The Laundry Files is awesome.
Yes, I understand why they tried to tap the CoC-fanbase to sell more of their books.
But the moment I begin realizing that the system had to break itself to live up to the NPCs, and that NPCs had to have their own special rules, was the moment I realized that this game could have used its own system, instead of borrowing from CoC. Then, when I was faced with an official scenario where the final scene became ridiculous because, due to the players being smart, the final boss had no weapon, and sucked at hand-to-hand (as the PCs did). So, 30 minutes (I counted) of "Roll, I hit, Damage, ugh, I have penalties, I deal 0 damage" or "Roll, I missed" from both PCs and Boss, I realized that this was it. This was the Achilles Heel of what could be one of my favourite games.
Also, Mona is a damn mary-sue (she's as intelligent as Brain? Really?! REALLY?), which her being stated in this game only turned up to eleven but not really the game's (entire) fault.
September 16, 2020
It's a flavor heavy mechanics light rpg
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews