As a child of the 80s, I stayed up late to watch a lot of television. It was a different time on the screen back then. Forgotten movies, strange reruns and the oddest of local programming mixed together in a foggy haze where it was sometimes hard to draw a line between what was really on TV what might have been a dream influenced by desperate programming. The latest game from Jason Cordova, Public Access, uses the last days of the battle between UHF stations and VHS tapes as a garden for a game of surreal conspiracy horror. Cordova sent a review copy of the game which includes a handful of episodes from writers Megan Caldwell, Jack Hargreaves, Ben Mansky, Mike Martens, Gabriel Robinson, Alexander Rybitski and Michael Van Vleet. Did the game haunt my static filled dreams? Let’s play to find out.
Public Access sets up a premise as something of a flashback within a flashback. The characters call themselves the Latchkeys, kids that grew up in the town of Deep Lake, New Mexico during the 1980s and early 90s. They’ve come together in the 2000s because of a shared obsession. They want to know whatever happened to TV Odyssey, a strange low powered TV station that existed during their time as kids. While the station is no longer on the air, there are videotapes of the programming that occasionally float around town, usually connected to strange goings on in Deep Lake. This sets up the game play loop for the game: investigate weird mysteries, acquire weirder videotapes that might have the power to warp reality. Repeat as necessary until the big mystery is discovered or the show gets canceled halfway through its first season and is hailed as a cult classic for years to come.
This loop should sound familiar to fans of Brindlewood Bay. A lot of the same elements are at play here, such as player driven solutions to mysteries and a light Powered by the Apocalypse framework. But there are big changes to genre focus and tone. Brindlewood Bay tells stories of cozy mysteries of Murder She Wrote with the darkness of the Cthulhu Mythos as a campaign frame. Public Access is a darker game that mixes things like Videodrome, IT, Twin Peaks, The Ring and Welcome To Night Vale. The artwork really sells the theme being full of glitched photos and screen grabs. The included mysteries touch on some modern horror tropes ranging from isolated summer camps with a slashing killer to role-playing games that teach players the Real Magic. The truth behind these mysteries is found out in play based on the clues the GM gives out and how the Latchkeys weave them together.
But there are some variations on the theme here too. Instead of one big mystery, the stories are composed of smaller mysteries that must be completed in stages to resolve the main story. In they mystery involving the unmarked arcade game cabinet, for example, the players have to figure out how the clues unlock the secret levels before they move onto the next step. There’s also more of a back and forth in the overall mystery of TV Odyssey. When the players watch one of the fateful tapes, the GM describes some of the elements of the weird images but also asks questions of the players on what happens or how their characters interpret things. The GM has a worksheet that lets them note how things go and how to shape the arc of discovery. What I found particularly interesting was how the worksheet encourages the GM to not get locked into one explanation for the source of the weirdness. After certain turning points in the story they are asked to evaluate the narrative based on everyone’s choices. Have the players been pulling the story towards aliens? How do you reconcile it with your idea about angels and demons?
Public Access is an excellent game for players to create weird stories together with their GMs. For tables tired of horror connected to worlds of darkness or cosmic indifference it's a great way to tell spooky stories with like minded friends.
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