Description

Somewhere in Belgium the truth machine seems to be rusting away. Where science forgets who it was and logic calculates that it cannot do everything. You don’t know who trust, but cooperation is going to be essential in order to tie the events down and crystallize a coherence for this spreading caos. And of course you are the only person who knows the truth behind the "SCP - db", the Standbeelden.

The SCP Foundation is a fictional international organization that contains and classificates anomalities outside bounds of natural law to prevent mass panic. But, what happens before these events are classified and somehow enprisoned? What if those were free?

This is a game based on the contemporary era and involves suburb investigation on paranormal events along a fractional surrealism. The players get bits and pieces of what’s going on and tie them together, giving different endings to it depending on the interpretations of their character's point of view. The objective is to propose the most coherent scenario in a convincing storyline.

The game starts by dealing Character and Object cards that remain hidden. Then a keyframe card is revealed, this one contains a mysterious image and narrative fragment. All the players pose their questions around it and then take turns to answer them with a small story in order do build coherence. A vote round will determine which storyline wins, staying as the real version of the occurred events. The corresponding player's character then becomes the protagonist who will then explain what the "SCP - db (Standbeelden)" turns out to be. The losers will give an outcome to their character taking into account what the protagonist, the antagonist, the narration, the secondary characters and the items are.

It is better consider this game not as a zero sum game but as a narrative game-tool. An open ended game in which players can also write their own keyframes and subsequently play as many keyframes as they want. Any doubt about the game is to be determined by the people involved.

This game's setting underlines the human ability to cooperate and piece together non-linear narratives in search of further, more rhythmic patterns. Through overinterpretation, eldritchness and speculation. It puts into consideration the next questions: “What is that which we do not acknowledge as a whole?” And “Why does it necessarily and so often have to do with streams of massive delusion?”

—description from the designer