This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

The Lost Bay is a 90’s throwback, suburban horror game by Iko, with art by Evangeline Gallagher and maps by Strega Wolf van den Berg. The Appendix N for this is wild; it covers Lord of the Flies, Ring, Nightmare on Elm Street, and even Hotline Miami. I’m not entirely sure what to expect, here, in terms of vibes, but that cover is striking! I was offered a pre-release version for Critique Navidad, so this is the first review I’ve ever done still in google doc but it’s available for preorder now.

Ok, I’m going to blitz through the basic rules. In this version, there are 6 classes (there will apparently be 10 in total), each of which has a unique passive power and two random active powers, what appears to be some kind of god or patron which is not explained but is definitely creepy (future me thinks these might be Living Saints, perhaps, as they get mention further into the book?), and a randomly generated way you got the weird. I like these classes (called “vibes”), because, growing up in the 90s, they’re 100% specific archetypes of kids in High School in my experience, made weird and supernaturally amplified. The character creation section ends with the fact that there’s a decent chance you won’t die, depending on how weird you are when you die (there’s a score, basically HP for magic). Instead, you arise as a ghost, or half-death, or as an evil twin, which are their own unique classes. The Lost Bay uses a dice pool of d6s, with results being a meaner version of the pool in Blades in the Dark. It doesn’t say anywhere that this is a Forged in the Dark game, but it uses the terms Action roll and Attribute, so it feels like it pulls some inspiration from there. I like the addition of spending an attribute point to force a success. We also have Saves in the Lost Bay, which are no different from an Action Role that I can see, except that the referee chooses when you roll. I’m not entirely sure that I see the need for Saves, given that mechanically they’re identical, and use the same Attributes as Action Rolls. There are some unique saves, though – Horror, Weird, and Heart – which work against those stats, which is an interesting twist, that I like, I could just do without the initial three, you know? Combat is quite concrete, with rounds, actions and moves, and causing Harm. The NPCs get a lot of kick here, both acting on their turns and being able to act on a PC’s rolling a complication. I’m a little surprised by the concreteness of the combat rules, which use range bands and have explosives rules. Given we’re talking young adults in 90’s suburbia, I never anticipated needing grenade rules? Now that I’m here, I’m wondering how much this was also inspired by, perhaps, that season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the secret government agency and the Frankenstein monster? After this we hit classification and difficulty, ways to customise your gaming sessions. You can choose Slasher, Gross-out, Chiller, or Eerie, and a range of difficulty from “I’m too young to die” where PCs don’t sustain critical damage and have extra hearts, to “Nightmare” where you start much weaker in terms of powers. We also explicitly use point-crawling (called “wandering”) as our method of movement around the Lost Bay.

I think the classification and difficulty levels are a neat idea to throw in as optional rules, but when I read that it clicked into place why I wasn’t vibing the rules up until that point: There’s no strong aesthetic or drive behind the rules, and they feel shoehorned in, especially after opening with a set of 9 really strong classes with some stellar horror vibes. But there’s a huge contrast between those classes and the rules that follow. Those rules feel like they’re a mix between modern D&D-like rule sets and Blades in the Dark, which is entirely a different kind of setting and system than what I’m anticipating this being. I’ll keep digging in, but for me at the moment, while these are perfectly serviceable rules, I’m surprised that they’re not more bespoke for the subject matter.

From here we veer into world-building and setting material, which I’m interested in because The Lost Bay is named for a specific place. A Faceless God rules in the Lost Bay, and its’ church is spreading, while Living Saints roam offering their wisdom and weirdness, although they are often indistinguishable from mortals. This is such a compelling, weird concept for a setting. I want to know what makes the Lost Bay (the place) so special, I want to interact with these saints, I want to fight the Faceless God. It’s bringing strong Call of Cthulhu vibes, but also with a dash of Control or SCP Foundation aesthetics. I love the weird suburban ur-Catholicism that is this interpretation of suburban Gothic, I love that there are explicitly no cops or firemen here, no one to turn to. It’s just you. This setting is just so good for me, and Iko really nails the pitch in just a few paragraphs. This is just a detour, though, and we’re straight back into rules, but let’s focus on setting for now: The back half of the book is almost entirely description of the Lost Bay, which is honestly all bangers, although it’s still under construction. Now, while I say it’s all bangers, what I mean is that what we have here is all weird districts, filled with clear iconography, factions and NPCs, both detailed and more general locations that are easily improvised (the Water Reservoir, vs. a Gas Station for example), random events, and encounters with varying options for modification. It’s really good stuff, and when it’s completed it’ll be a hell of a resource. And, if I look across to the Quickstart, a different, shorter version of the manuscript, there’s a map of the Lost Bay, which is exactly what I want from this.

The manuscript finishes with an “expanded” Urban Legend, which is the Lost Bay name for an adventure. This thing is pretty cool, actually. In the Hollow Hitchhiker, a man is killed in a car accident and comes back with a bottomless hunger for death each year. Only you can placate his pain and guilt and end the destruction! In this, you explore the point crawl map for Omens, and eventually your investigation leads to the Hollow Hitchhiker. Omens work a bit like the Doom Clock in Liminal Horror — they mean that the game progresses even when the players choose to be passive, it just won’t go well for them. The PCs quickly become the victims in a slasher horror scenario, while trying to figure out what’s wrong. NPCs have moves, pulling terminology from Apocalypse World which works well here. Character descriptions are evocative and really useful for roleplay. There is good refereeing advice, as well, which I always appreciate. Oh, and there are horror flamingoes, which you’ve just got to love. There are even a few optional NPCs to introduce if you need one. All in all, if this is the model that the modules for the Lost Bay will follow (and allegedly there will be a book released filled with Urban Legends, as well as a Lost Bay Jam for further Urban Legends), it’s a pretty high bar.

While I can see the logic in the organisation, in the format I’m reading it it doesn’t work for me. We dip in and out of rules and setting material, where I think a lot of this would be better off side by side on the same page — and the name-dropping of the Explorer’s Template early on suggests that the final version may look like that. Overall, I hesitate to judge the Lost Bay, because I’m reading it in a pre-release, pre-layout version, and layout and information design goes a long way towards making sense of a rule set. I can make judgements, though, based on the Quickstart, which is laid out, and while the Quickstart layout is very flashy and looks good, I’m not sure that if the final product follows the same conventions, it’ll be a compelling longer-form read or run. But the art in the Quickstart by Evangeline Gallagher, is absolutely fantastic. I can’t praise it enough for bringing the aethetics. More of that art, especially the way it creatively uses the pages, is very exciting.

One thing is certain: There are areas in the Lost Bay which sing, namely the classes, the setting information, and the expanded Urban Legend at the end. These make me want to run it. But in this pre-release version, the rules feel patchy and ill-suited to the story being told. It’s notable, I think, that the Quickstart doesn’t contain the combat rules: It means that probably a bunch of the people who’ve played this didn’t play the combat by the book, and that’s a major part of what I bounced off in the rules. I can see a little more sense in the high-end explosives in the context of the invisible undead hitchhiker in the module, and the deadliness of the combat also makes sense in that context, but I’m not convinced that I would enjoy being that fragile in play.

I’ll withhold judgement for the Lost Bay, because what’s good here is very, very good. I want to run a campaign in the Lost Bay. I love the underlying story behind it all. But, while admittedly the manuscript I’m reading is incomplete, I want this to be His Majesty the Worm but for urban horror, potentially my forever game, and I want more information on what’s going on and what this Faceless God is doing. That’s not what the manuscript I’m reading is going for, sadly. But, given the strength of the module included, I could definitely see that this book, in combination with the Urban Legends book and the jam, would result in a lot of very fun play, for most any table, especially when considering the included tools for refining your experience. If you’re interested in this kind of setting, or those kind of adventure, The Lost Bay is definitely worth a look-in, particularly given the strength of what’s here.

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