The Red Room

 

Postcards from Avalidad

Postcards from Avalidad is a darkly surreal campaign setting for both *Punk and Actual Fucking Monsters that takes place in an undetermined time, in the near future. It is influenced by William S. Burroughs’ works such as Naked Lunch, the Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket that Exploded), William Gibson’s Sprawl and Bridge trilogies, David Cronenberg’s films, and Clive Barker’s Hellbound Heart and The Scarlet Gospels.
Avalidad, previously known as Interzone or just Zone, was initially a large district in Tangiers, Morocco. In this alternate reality, instead of integrating the International Zone territory – formerly administered by France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States – back into Tangier, the Moroccan state made a deal with an international conglomerate of several corporations, led by Japanese Kobayashi corp, who were interested in investing in northern Africa. The futuristic metropolis was built in the early 1960s, and accordingly divided into subzones, managed by different companies. In current time, Avalidad is a Burroughsian nightmare world of decadence, drugs, Libertarianism, violence, glamour and oppression. In this unique game setting, characters will delve into the strange lives of Avalidad’s celebrities, fiscal royalty and seedy underbelly.

As Above, So Below

“Quite free-form in its methodology, you can run it several times and no single playthrough will proceed the same way. After the scenario is over, you will have a mini campaign setting in the shape of Agartha.”

Abraham Zetina, Talking About Games

As Above, so Below is the first scenario for Postcards from Avalidad. In this module a valuable technological artefact smuggled into the City by Machinatores – a race of alien creatures that defy the laws of space and time – ends up in the hands of a young Moroccan rent boy, who is pursued by Yakuza enforcers, and seeks refuge in Agartha, a subterranean shantytown which is a darker and seedier reflection of Avalidad, the “sinful” city above it. Player characters can choose from several factions – mostly criminals, also some shady law-enforcers – who later storm Agartha looking for the item. The scenario plays like a tech-noir version of a Guy Ritchie movie mixed with Luc Besson’s Subway (1995), with some elements from Emir Kusturica’s Underground (1995) thrown in for extra weirdness.

All Bets are Off

All Bets are Off is a mini-setting for Postcards from Avalidad. It adds the city of Lisbon, Portugal’s capital, to the Avalidad game world. Lisbon of the near-future is a new entry in the infamous list of gambling and vice cities of the world, such as Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Macao, Monaco and Singapore. There are several tie-ins to the original storyline through factions in the core book and plot hooks which demand the characters to travel to the Iberian city. There’s also enough information to make Lisbon an alternative location for an Avalidad on-going plot.