Pigtown RPG Devlog #3: Adventures in Pigtown

Sorry I missed one of these last week without notice, approximately three piles of shit have collided with four fans, and I'm just getting some of it all mopped back up into a semblance of order. In any case, this week's topic is turning from the basics of character, and instead discussing some of the mechanics of the Pigtown setting itself.

Longtime readers will know that I draw a pretty stark line between what I would call setting, and what I would call worldbuilding. Pigtown, I have always maintained, is a setting--it isn't a place that exists with consistent rules and guidelines that have to be true--it is a flexible place that adapts to what the story you're telling needs it to be. This is true for the RPG as well. So, what I want to describe here isn't a history of the bar, a tale of houses, or an explanation of districts, but rather a more general outline of the principles that dictate how the game usually flows. Most of these can be bent, if not entirely broken as well, once you know what you're doing. However, I also want to use this opportunity to make a couple of things clear as well, regarding who this game is intended for.

#1: Pigtown exists as a space for homosexual men

But let's be clear, this is for all men--including men who might not even realize their men yet. I'm a cis gay man, and I've written Pigtown from that general perspective, but I want to be absolutely clear here that when I say "men", I consider that to be a loose collection of related genders, of which cis male is one. Some guys have vaginas, and those guys are just as welcome in Pigtown as all the rest. Some guys in Pigtown might even want to have a vagina, and trade in a dick for one--that's fine too. TERFs get out, basically.

#2: There will be rape, and violence

Pigtown is, first and foremost, a horror setting, and because it is rooted firmly in horror, there will be things that happen to characters that occur without that character's in game consent. This is, as you can imagine, a difficult subject, but as with any game that centers sexual content and mind control, it's one that needs to be addressed openly and transparently with all of the players and the GM at any given time. Furthermore, because this is an RPG engine built on a rather combat and action focused engine, there will be combat involved, and so sexual violence is pretty much baked into the game. Players should be able to place limits on what happens to their character, both inflicted by other players, and by the GM, but the game is designed with a rather loose moral framework. Pigtown is not a moral place. It's hedonistic, and immediate, and more than a little bit cruel. Sexual violence is just one more type of violence, along with swords, guns, brawling, that are omnipresent in today's culture. I'm not apologizing for it; I'm encouraging you all to approach it openly, and honestly, and remember that this is a game, and a power fantasy. 

Now, onto some more light hearted topics:

#1: Inside and Outside

Put simply, Pigtown is an anomaly. A space with rules that don't operate the way things do in the normal world. The boundary can be as vague or as strict as you'd like it to be, but most characters usually come from outside, somewhere, and become stuck inside, as someone else.

As a bit of a corollary to this Pigtown is always looking to grow, and that means, it is trying to turn more of what is outside of itself, into whatever might be inside of itself. If you're looking for stories to tell, this is a good place to look, from a rural Pigtown trying to absorb another small town into its collection, to a more urban Pigtown trying to take down a few government officials looking to try and attack it.

#2: Day and Night

Pigtown comes alive at night. This serves as a helpful way to break up adventures into smaller chunks. Players should be able to come out during a particular night with a discrete goal, something they can accomplish with a "yes" or a "no", and then try and do so. It might be as simple as finding and corrupting a few new members of Pigtown, or as difficult as diving as deep into the bar as they can, trying to find and control the source of the magic inside of it. One thing is for certain--no player lasts to the dawn. They all fall at some point, and wake up back in their own beds, without any knowledge of how they got there, with the shadows of their successes and failures to haunt them. And next night, they can try again. 

This constant cycle of death should feel a bit like a rogue-like. No matter what a character does, at the end of a night, they always end up right back where they started--perhaps stronger, perhaps cursed, but always ready for another round of play. Ideally, I would expect a night, or perhaps two, to make up a single session of play, and I'll be trying to balance it with that sort of length in mind.

#3: Corruption

The more players and characters in general interact with Pigtown, the more they are changed by it. Rather than simply growing stronger, players should feel like they are becoming a part of Pigtown itself, something that prowls the depths of it. It should feel, in a grand arc, that you get to grow and change from prey, at the lowest levels, to a predator at the end game. 

Beyond these three aspects, pretty much anything is up for grabs. You can set your Pigtown in the middle of a large urban center, or you can set it up in the middle of a network of small towns. You can put it on a space station, if zero gravity sex is something you feel like role playing. The physical location is merely the set piece, so long as these three principles are mostly intact, because these are the three driving forces of the setting that I'll be relying on, as I design the game.