Postcards From Avalidad - As Above So Below
by Miguel Ribeiro
Postmortem Studios, 2021
Available in pdf from Drivethrurpg: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/
Available in print from Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
As Above So Below is a supplement/adventure to Postcards From Avalidad (hence, PFA), the cyber-horror-punk-noir-ish game I reviewed previously, on May 23, 2022.
The book is 96 pages long, including table of contents, OGL, and map.
Whereas PFA details the Moroccan city above-ground, As Above So Below details the city below the streets. The city below can be reached from a handful of points from Avalidad, proper. Avalidad, below, is called Agartha. As with PFA, this supplement includes stats for both Actual Fucking Monsters (AFM) and *Punk. As I mentioned on my review of PFA, I know very little about either game system. From the character's stat blocks, I suspect I would prefer AFM.
Starting with the table of Contents, the reader will realize that this is a beautiful book. I really like the cover as well, though I wish the picture on it was a bit less busy. This is a really gorgeous book and it shows that with some extra loving, and a person who can do layout and graphics and all that jazz (I cannot), a relatively cheap print-on-demand book can be made to look fabulous.
The book has a quick introduction (evil monsters living below ground) and then jumps right into the game system chapter. In this chapter, the author gives some quick notes on the two game systems for which it was written, and has a very handy several pages on loss of sanity, for those who want to rock the supplement in a Call of Cthulhu style. There is a list of 14 different mental illnesses which a Referee might inflict on a character. Interestingly, the book also says that the player can choose the illness himself. I think this can make for a really interesting game. I can see a couple of my players really having fun with it.
The Sanity stat in the game is for *Punk but it could easily be worked into any game I feel, and the same goes for the supplement's fear rolls. I would definitely work both of these mechanics into a game system I was using for the supplement, if the game did not already have the mechanic.
There is a list of "Appendix N" movies to watch for inspiration (I have seen 8 of them I think, and Dark City is the best of the ones which I have seen).
After this, we get into the meat of the matter.
Chapter 2 explains how the "adventure" starts. I use quotes since this is not a traditional adventure. Those familiar with the author's Giallo "adventures" will feel right at home here. The adventure has an overarching plot which can be summed up as, "A Portuguese sailor whacks off for some creepy alien entity, scores the gizmo as payment, some other stuff happens, and then the gizmo disappears into Agartha. The gizmo is worth some serious ducats. What do you do?" There is more to it than that, of course, but this is the gist of it.
Like Miguel's Giallo adventures, you get a very simple plot and then a slew of NPCs and locations. Many of the characters are repeats from the main rulebook, but have abilities altered slightly to bring them all to a similar power level, specifically so they can be used as player characters. The author does note that some of them might actually have been killed previously since there were not designed originally as PCs. There is a mix of ZoneSec (remember, this is what passes for cops in this setting), Yakuza, hitmen, hackers, mercenaries, and the typical ne'er do well types that players enjoy playing. Side note, the character on page 35 looks like a model from the magazine Gothic Beauty that I might have, err, uhhh, noticed from part of my misspent early 20s. On page 52 there is a picture of a gill woman, which is nice since the gillmen live down below, in Agartha. This brings us to the end of chapter 3.
Chapter 4 is all about Agartha. This chapter goes over some NPCs, including Pigface the Mayor. There is a random encounter chart in this chapter and a few of the adventure locations also have random tables with treasure. The list of locations is pretty fun and characters can perhaps find a copy of the Necromicon, some sexy underwear, a mutant mating ritual, and for those curious, there is a 33% chance that if you shoot someone in the head who is taking matters into her mouth of painfully and permanently "freeing willy", if you know that I mean.
The book ends with a not-very-helpful map of Agartha. I think that with the detail spent on layout in this book, a two-page spread with a more detailed map would have been lovely.
So, what does your not-quite-humble reviewer think? I like it. I don't like it as much as the setting book for which this is a supplement but I do like it. It is a very pretty book, it has useful information, and works well as a supplement to Postcards from Avalidad.
⇒ GRIT: ★★★★☆ As a supplement, this book does what I believe it has set out to do. I hesitate to use the term adventure for it, since, to me, an adventure is Keep or the Borderlands or Masks of Nyarlathotep. The book is an adventure location for under the streets of Avalidad, and it is good for what it is.
⇒ VIGOR: ★★★☆☆ There just aren't enough adventure locations for me. I think that if the author cut out all of the possible player characters which were duplicated from the core setting, and replaced those pages with more locations, this book would be better. I also would have loved to see a few pages with notes on other reasons why characters would adventure to and from Agartha. The adventure won't take very long without a lot of stuff added by the Referee
⇒ GRACE: ★★★★★ This book is freaking lovely! The only two complaints I have are that the page numbers on what I assume to be an Islamic pattern are not readable (there are not that many pages like this) and the map at the end. I'm not going to ding a star for these issues. This book, to me, is a benchmark on what a home-based, indie rpg publisher can do.
