Our lead game designer Alen Kapidžić walks you through the how-to-play basics. You will learn about Characters and Creatures, encounters and combat rules, various surprising equipment pieces, and much more. If you’re still baffled as to what Luckies and Unluckies are, and why they’re such a unique and funny bit of playing mechanism, take a look at this 16 minutes video.
Arcadia Tenebra is a heavily story-driven Role Play Game (RPG) where you play as one of the Playable Characters (PCs).
Your goal is to find who the mysterious murderer is and stop him or her before the Blood Moon rises.
On your way of stopping the serial killer, you will embark on a typical RPG adventure: you will explore, fight, intimidate, charm, steal, bribe, outsmart, team up with other players or play against them by actively disrupting their investigation. It’s up to you.
You can team up with other players at any time during the game except in the Combat phase. You may play a full co-op from a start, or everyone can play for themselves. You may play Arcadia Tenebra even solo.
Arcadia Tenebra gives you the option to play the way you want it. You may attack other players, and steal their things. You may charm or outsmart them and make them do your dirty jobs. The choice is yours. Will that bring you closer to stopping the killer? Maybe. Maybe you even don’t want to stop the murderer? Maybe you secretly admire him or her? Who knows what are you up to?
At the start, your mission will be to gather three Clues and bring them back to the Chief of Police. You will do that by picking locks and stealing clues, or by doing favors to Non-playable characters (NPCs), or by intimidating, charming, or outsmarting them. You may even steal Clues from your fellow players.
On your way to NPCs, you’ll fight various Creatures. Some of them belong to our everyday world that is ruled by the rationalistic worldview. Later on, you will encounter Creatures from the mythical world. You will develop your character by equipping him/her with various weapons, garment, and trinkets which you’ll seize from the dead bodies of your enemies or by trading. You will use your special abilities when an opportunity arises and carve your path through Arcadia Tenebra, as your investigation takes you beyond the borders of our rational world into the mythical land of magic, mystery, and horror murders.
The whole mechanics is very simple and is based on rolling d20 and passing various checks that define whether to hit in Combat or to charm somebody.
If you’re out of luck, you will be able to neutralize the luck effect by roleplaying: any skill check in Arcadia Tenebra may be roleplayed, and (if you’re convincible enough ) you will get up to +5 to roll check. Of course, your roleplay is judged by other players. Maybe the ones who you just robbed of their Clues? Well…
As we said before: It’s up to you how you’re going to play Arcadia Tenebra.