Launching 'London Calling'

London Calling began as a love letter to the British television of the 1970s, from the gritty dramas to the bleakly humorous sitcoms. I've always been fascinated by the nostalgia these shows evoke, their episodes endlessly looping on UK reruns—a curious period forever caught in stasis. Liminal Horror felt like the perfect system to explore a London caught between decades, a wasteland between what it had been and the modern city it would become.

The game centres on characters whose lives are bleak and routine-driven, without much hope for change. This reflects the 70s TV dramas, which often carry a melancholic edge. For example, the titular character in Budgie is an ex-con always trying to get ahead but forever losing; the bombastic opening theme of The Sweeney theme becomes achingly sad over the end credits, as even when justice is done there is a human cost. Even the sitcom Steptoe and Son presents a never-ending struggle between father and son, never able to escape each other or their circumstances. In London Calling, London itself is out of time, and entropy is eating away at the city and its people.

London Calling was written as a setting that could support countless adventures, though it also has a definite plot arc that can unfold at the facilitator's pace. This progression is often tied to fallout—the more player characters suffer the more they are changed, drawing them deeper into the city's struggle and the more influence they gain over its fate.

A key inspiration for this plot structure was the film Hidden City. Although set in the late 80s, the film follows the unravelling of a long-buried secret concealed within archival footage, depicting a woman being abducted, with the truth not wilfully hidden but lost by mindless bureaucracy. The film's strange turns and dream-like atmosphere inspired London Calling's own central secret.

The London presented in the book is not a London that does or has ever existed. It is deliberately an echo of what we might imagine a London of the 70s might be, but one that is rapidly fading away. It is less a studious recreation, and more of a playground for the factions to fight over and for nightmares to fester. I didn't want the facilitator to worry about being accurate in the geography of the city, or knowing the history and name of each district, so there are reasons why the London depicted in this book is very much its own place.

 I hope that people will be able to use London Calling to create gripping stories with conclusions they find equally satisfying and horrifying.