Department of Peculiarities

Summary

The Department of Peculiarities is a top-secret government body located under an unloved toyshop in Marylebone, London. It’s the late 19th Century and most devices from watches to automobiles are experimentally harnessing steam technology., However, this department has its own niche. It caters to the weird, the curious and the downright horrific. If something does not make sense and is too worrisome for normal minds to comprehend, it’ll go to the department. Most of the people who work here are given the title of “Researcher” – that is on the paperwork at least. They are people who explore the vaults, libraries and temporal anomalies in the department trying to understand them and in some cases, neutralise them. Occasionally, that which does not turn the researchers crazy will contribute significantly to popular science.

Underneath the toy shop, the inner workings of the department are vast. From large comfortable reading rooms to the Libraries of banned books to the vaults where the most dangerous creatures are kept, most things can be found if you dare to climb one of the confounding staircases. You will find weirdness and horrors here but you will also find strange things you thought only existed in fairy tales – goblins, mythical creatures and mutants. During the evenings,  employees meet in the Departmental Smoking Room where they can enjoy a drink and discuss their research. While they’re there, however, they are still on duty and will be expected to deal with problems that arise.

The Department of Peculiarities will be a game of mysteries and problem-solving, a game where you can create your plot based on your specific research interests and constantly create the world around you. Do you want to bravely defeat the Kraken who’s been locked in one of the vaults underneath the Great Library? Would you like to solve the minor time anomalies in Room 10Alpha? Would you like to solve the mystery of the lost children in the portal? The choice is yours. The game takes elements from steampunk, lovecraft and other mythology. The magic is generally that which emnates from artefacts and creatures but weirdness is everywhere.

Rules

Red Armbands

In DoP, players vary between normal-looking human beings and strange abominations. To signify this, those characters that look peculiar/not like a standard human will wear a red armband. If you see a character with a red armband on, this may prompt you to ask “NARRATE What do I see?” to figure out their state of appearance.

White Armbands

In DoP, refs will wear white headbands to indicate their refdom and that they are not present in character. You may also see a ref wearing a white armband. This indicates that they are there in-character but may be approached for OC reasons

Research Pad

Each character will be given a small notebook that contains their character sheet as well as any pertinent information the refs need to inform them of. This is an out of character item and cannot be taken away from you. However, if you need to consult your character sheet you may instead inform people you are “just writing some notes”.

Metaphysical Damage

In this game, damage can either be tangible (such as being hit with a chair/being shot with a bullet) or it can be metaphysical (damage on a supernatural level that true humans are not vulnerable to).

In certain situations calls may be prefixed with META, indicating that the effect is purely metaphysical. If you have no specific instructions on your character sheet for how to respond to META calls, respond with ‘FAILED: Human’ when they are made on you.

Barring exceptional circumstances, all player characters can be affected by non-META calls.

Sanity

[REDACTED]

If a ref calls SANITY LOSS on you, take note and inform the ref team by email after the session, along with your other downtime. (This is to prevent OC sanity loss on the ref team.) The call SANITY LOSS will usually be accompanied by a mind-altering or otherwise deeply alarming event, so roleplay accordingly.

Google Drive

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B4cdbmMEAa-ffkZjSExJWkFVX0dvVlYzOEdiOWFZSWZKeDM2NFdSMDZjamYzdkw4SmFnYmc – the game’s public documents