The City Might Be Dying

I always have this sort of nonsense happen. Words trapped inside my head, spinning around like leaves caught in the wind.

The City Might Be Dying.

I think it’s a game of survival, where the remnants of a great city serve as the basis for a society. But this isn’t society under threat from zombies or war. Perhaps it’s an environmental thing, a world released from a deep freeze. Or perhaps that isn’t important; perhaps working out what happened is part of the game, like survivors emerging from a silo after generations.

It feels like a tabletop RPG lingering on the brink of becoming a resource management board game but without the need to be quite that specific. It feels like the threats might be driven as much by wisdom and logic as by physical acts. Adventures that focus on discovery, finding plans, divining improvements, and salvaging resources.

I think it might be coming out of my train of thought at the moment, around tabletop games that have mechanics but don’t utilise them for combat. Or, at least, where the focus lies heavily on matters resolving away from warfare.

I have read some games recently that should be about a lot of things with fighting in the background or just another part of the mix. Yet, these games will then present non-combat elements of the game without complexity or mechanical heft, like one moment you’re granular and visceral, the next it’s all hand waving and chat.

Or maybe it’s just a name. The City Might Be Dying.