- This game is under the Supernatural, Historical & Drama genres.
- This game contains adult content.
- The GM has marked this game as containing personal and intellectual property.
If the GM leaves or deletes the game nobody else will be able to continue the game.
The Flicker Effect
"What is it?" Polhaus asked.
"The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of," Sam replied.
~The Maltese Falcon Written by Dashiell Hammett, Adapted for the screen and directed by John Huston.
Los Angeles, October 29th, 1949. As the sun set, the ground shook, the sky flashed and the world changed.
The effects were instantaneous, as far north as the San Fernando Valley, as far east as Banning Pass, and as far south as San Clemente, people changed. Not everyone. Like the endless stream of starry-eyed waifs stepping off the buses from the mid-west, only one in a million Flickered. OK, technically it was more like one in a ten or twenty thousand, but still, you get the point.
Some were obvious, transformed into something that could have just stepped off the silver screen, werewolves and bloodsuckers, invisible men (and women), human flies, and fish people. Others were more subtle, a sudden and inexplicable talent for magical invocation, a head full of insane scientific ideas or plans for the perfect crime (or the answer to an as-of-yet unsolved one).
People also simply arrived, like kids on buses from the midwest seeking fame, only they had no memory or life before the event, at least no memory other than what had been written for them in a script. Some of the newcomers slipped into the shadows, with no identification, no family, and nothing but their wits to make a place for themselves in what had once been called the City of Angels. Others found help, a benefactor here, a charity there, or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has a department that deals with the newcomers.
The first aftershock occurred on New Year's Day, 1950. For an instant, the world turned black and white, like a paparazzi's flashbulb burst. Everyone braced for another outbreak of transformations and they weren't disappointed. While nothing on the scale of the Big Flash of '49, the New Year's Day Flash unleashed another dozen Flickers (a term which sometimes gets confusing to use since it can refer to the transformed, the transformation, the triggering event(s), the city, etc.). Not thousands, but a dozen. Still, it was clear, the Flicker Effect wasn't done and now, it's as likely that kid stepping off the bus from Kansas is hoping to become a Flicker, as much as become a movie star. The odds were about the same.
Now, Los Angeles has come to accept its place as the Flicker capital of the world. In the months that followed they began to recognize Blinks, tiny moments of disruption, and the smallest bit of change, all while waiting for the next Flash or the next Big One. That next Big One was today.
The Flicker Effect is a free-form urban fantasy game set in a fictionalized world of 1950s Hollywood glamour. Players take on the role of a someone transformed by the Flicker Effect, a Fiction (someone stepping off the silver screen), or a Mundy (someone unchanged), all just trying to make it in Los Angeles, the Celluloid City, the City of Stars, Flicker City or whatever else you want to call it.
The game is based on Nitrate City, a Fate Worlds of Adventure supplement, but we won't be using those rules or much beyond the basic setup for the idea. Other influences are movies like LA Confidential, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Cast a Deadly Spell, a game run here on RPOL a while back about weird science and the supernatural in 1930s, and whatever else catches our fancy. Knowledge of the above isn't at all necessary, but credit to all is deserved.
The game begins in the Spring of 1952. It's been just over two years since the Big Flicker, almost a month since a flash on Valentine's Day and a few hours after the latest, one that occurred in the early hours of the morning, just before dawn..
Many of the original Flickers have settled into the fabric of the city, most around 'Vineland', a Flicker District catering to their needs (and tourists, fetishists, and curiosity seekers drawn to them). Others have tried to maintain some semblance of their original life though most face a variety of challenges, from fear and fascination, or simply the challenge of grappling with their new self. For instance, Flickers are nearly impossible to film. They usually come out blurry in photographs and flicker on film. This has ruined more than a few promising careers, though Los Angeles was always a city of dreams, so who knows what the future holds.
For more information about the setting and game, click here. To join, click here.