Fighting the forces of supernatural evil is tough work. It’s long hours, the pay isn’t great and there’s the pressure of failing and accidentally ending the world. On top of that, things get even worse for monster hunters who don’t fill out their paperwork right even when they do close the interdimensional portal before it engulfts everyone they love.
Such are the challenges faced in The Laundry RPG currently on Kickstarter from Cubicle 7. This is the second edition of the game which first came out in 2010. This new edition features a newer system as well as more recent material for the setting.
The game is based on The Laundry Files. This series of novels by Hugo Award winning science fiction author Charles Stross mixes occult conspiracy like The X-Files, the strange alien threats of Men In Black and the workplace comedy of The Office. The agents have been tapped by a super secret division of the British government that’s oversupervised, underfunded and expects results no matter what.
There are things in space-time where reality is an optional extra. Al-Hazred glimpsed them, John Dee summoned them, HP Lovecraft wrote about them, and Alan Turing mapped the paths from our universe to theirs. It turns out that mathematics really is magic, or at least that aspects of it describe, enable and power magic, with omputing power supercharging these spells.
The right calculation can call up entities from other, older universes, or invoke their powers. Plenty of people now have access to petty powers like invisibility or summoning demons to strike deals. It’s the ones who want to bring forth the Great Old Ones that has the Laundry converned.
The Laundry is a branch of the British secret service tasked with preventing alien gods from wiping out all life on Earth with a policy focus on the United Kingdom. Most agents don’t have a choice in whether or not they join the agency. They stumbled onto the truth or survived an encounter with the unknown and just can;t go back to a world of endless zoom calls andworrying about a mortgage.
In this world, agents access to all sorts of strange technology. Instead of laser watches or cars with rocket boosters they can use iPhones that talk to the dead. Of course, they still need to bring the gadgets back in one piece or the cost comes out of their paycheck.
There are countless departments filled with hundreds of overworked and underpaid employees within the Laundry. An agent might be an accountant, IT support, a driver, or something weirder, like a counterpossession exorcist, a computational demonologist, or one of the really odd people who dedicate their life to research and development. But still, that’s a mere day job.
The RPG focuses on special missions that need the agent’s expertise. They could be sent to the heart of London, Wolverhampton, or Milton Keynes or even be sent overseas, but they have to be careful not to upset the rival agencies also tasked with saving the world. They handle things very differently and some refuse to believe that the Cold War is over.
The Kickstarter for the second edition ends on Wednesday, May 1st 2024. Digital rewards are due in August of 2024. Physical rewards are currently slated for February of 2025.
