Postcards From Avalidad

Postcards from Avalidad
by Miguel Ribeiro
Postmortem Studios, 2021

Available in pdf from Drivethruprg:   https://www.drivethrurpg.com/

Available in print from Lulu:  Postcards from Avalidad (lulu.com) 

 

 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Postcards from Avalidad is a 200 page handbook for playing a retro-future noir campaign with demons and a small amount of cyberpunk and a lot of biotech.  It is based on the works of William Burroughs (whom I've not read), mixed with William Gibson's books (which I have read) and the films of Davin Cronenberg (I might have seen one or two).

If you have played Dark Conspiracy from the 1990s, and liked it, then you will like Postcards, as the two are very, very similar.

Avalidad is a city in Morocco, founded in the 1960s.  Formerly, Avalidad was the Tangiers International Zone.  It is a corporate city, owned primarily by Takeda Technologies, though there are other companies as well, many of whom are just fronts for a larger corporation.  

The setting expects that the characters will all work as troubleshooters for what passes as law in the city, called ZoneSec - not exactly cops, not exactly corporate peons, not exactly criminals themselves, but some mix of the three.  Provided the profits of the companies don't take a hit, the characters have free reign but they are expected to follow the orders of their superiors.

The first 10 or so pages of the book describe the author's inspirations, plus a very broad overview of the setting.  The book then has a few pages describing the technology of the setting, again just an overview.  In these sections you start realizing that the author is giving you a fun, pop culture wink, what with Rollerball (the 70s movie) and Leary Pharma (man oh man, have I gotten old), which continues through the book.

Following, you are treated to 75 pages of NPCs, statted for Actual Fucking Monsters (AFM) and *Punk.  I pretty much ignored the stats since I am not familiar with either game.  I did look through them and had a laugh or two at some of the skills on some of the characters, who knew that "fellatio" could have a die rating?!   Two of my peeves with the book show up in the section, however.  First, on at least two occasions, the picture of the NPC doesn't match the description (and I'm 99% sure that one of the pictures is from a British dude on YouTube who does "top 10" list and "did you know" type videos).  Secondly, the page numbers start creeping down the bottom margin until they are unreadable about halfway through the book.  I will blame this on the POD though.

Every NPC has a description, a background, and an adventure hook, which I find very useful.

The next 40 pages are people (more of them), places, and things in Avalidad.  You learn about political and social groups, as well as criminal organizations.  My third gripe happens in this section - the headings are a rust red on army green background, which is very difficult to read, but not as difficult as...

The next 20 pages are about society as a whole in the city, including psionics, mutants, and drugs.  The headings here are army green on rust red and I cannot read a single one.

Both of these sections also include an adventure hook for every entry, which again is an awesome thing to do.

Section 6 is for media and entertainment, which includes pop stars, musical genres (no heavy metal?!  What a ripoff!), virtual entertainment (I think the fleshy game controllers are based on a movie but I can't remember it's name), and Rollerball (err, I mean Rollerclash).  By this part of the book, the page numbers are now visible again.

The remainder of the book is dedicated to technology and drugs, both of which have been discussed throughout, and includes stats for a lot of the neuroware, cyberware, and drugs.  Again, I sort of breezed through the game stats - I would run the game with Savage Worlds or my own Tyndale Game System v.3.

My thoughts?  I love it!  I am a huge fan of Dark Conspiracy and this is a slimmed down version of that game.  The POD quality control on my copy is obviously missing, but this is no fault of the author.  The color scheme, except for title headings is great - the title headings, as I said in some sections, are not readable to me.  I enjoy the marbled border around the pages, which give the book a fun profile when looked at from an angle.  

What could have been better?  I wish the author included a short scenario, maybe 5 to 10 pages, to get the characters started and to include a NPC or two and some corporate intrigue.  

⇒Grit:  ★★★★☆  The setting accomplishes what it sets out to do, though it is marred in some places.  It is organized well, though some entries seem to be randomly placed, i.e. you might find technology spread throughout the book rather than in just one section.  The book has an index, so it gets a solid 4 stars.

⇒Vigor:  ★★★★★ The setting appears that it can be used for extended campaigns without any issues.  Having a plot hook with every entry goes a long way towards this.  I can see a year or two of regular games with just the Postcards book.

 
⇒Grace:  ★★★☆☆ The book is very attractive but the font colors on the headings leave quite a bit to be desired.  The page numbers wandering around like Bedouin nomads doesn't help, but I do believe this is a POD issue.  Still, I'm grading on the book I have in my hands.

I hope y'all enjoyed my very first review!

- Michael