Blue Calculus

This is a quick starter. Pledges are open for 15 days and then it's over. You'll get your PDF shortly after that. If you want a book, that's your call.

Blue Calculus is a tabletop roleplaying game about the cost of knowing too much, and of people who see things they shouldn’t. It’s about unraveling conspiracies no one believes, confronting phenomena no one understands, and risking everything to glimpse a truth that can never be fully known. Blue Calculus focuses on modern-day fringe researchers, theorists, ruined skeptics, cult defectors, failed prophets, broken scholars, and survivors trying to answer questions no one else is asking.

It is grounded in late 80s and early 90s fringecraft obsessions. Players take on the role of characters obsessed with government coverups, electronic signals, chemtrails, aliens, and so on. But it is NOT gonzo nonsense. It is a game with uncomfortable answers.

If there are answers.

The game is completed. Unless I have to make extra content because of stretch goals, it is written and finished.

The goal with this project as a kickstarter is to make enough money to pay for better illustrations and add more textures to all of the pages.

Blue Calculus is a game of Epistemological Horror. Based on Protocol: Eons and Protocol Squared: Eons, this game involves a game master and any number of player (even one) meandering through a world they don't really fit in. Blue Calculus is inspired by Black Mirror, Fear Itself, True Detective (Season 1), The X-Files, William S. Burroughs, Thomas Ligotti, conspiracy forums before they turned toxic Dark City, The Mothman Prophecies, The Serpent and the Rainbowa, and games like Kult.

The book is filled with advice, tone, and a creepy first adventure designed to vex players. The adventure kind of wrote itself, so I'm especially excited for that part of the game. There are also charts at the end to help inspire the gamemaster.

Weird talents and character abilities round out the awkward, uneven nature of the game.

The game rules are so razor-thin simple as to be almost nonexistent. The true test of the game's mettle is the Static charts in the gamemaster section.

What are Static charts you ask? You sound like one of them. I'm not sure it's safe to tell you. Mr. FBI-Man.

Fine.

Static is feedback that happens when you fail too much. Happy?

Can you tell us more?

You don't need to worry about it. That's for the gamemaster to know.

But I am the gamemaster!

Are you really?

$1000. We made it. I pay for the six images I already ordered from Nagy Norbert and Steve Bellshaw.

$2500. I order more art and make more textures so the pages all look special. Or as special as I can

$5000. I order a few more pieces of art and everyone gets free EONS PDFs from the other games. Some of you may already have these, so I'll throw in a new Protocol horror game. I'll make something up.

$7500. Rob Manning writes some new/extra abilities for characters. He says he has ideas. Why won't you believe him?

$10,000. Are we really going to get this high? I'm open to suggestions.

I am already working on a sister game to this one. It's about transcendental horror. I might show pieces of that game if you're well behaved.

But something tells me you're not.