Starless Skies & Buddhist Monks

There are no stars in Porte Noire's sky. No sun shines, and no moon tells secrets. The only light comes from the lamps, and the city, and the electrics of the city.

You cannot see that everyone around you is dead. You cannot see that you are dead. You cannot find what you want. You cannot find the reason that you shouldn't find it.

A black man in a black suit playing the flute on the side of the street watches as you kill an armored knight in a back ally with a pick axe and garrote wire. The Hoodoo Man selling you gris-gris in Coven Lane asks you to do him a favor, listens to your answer, watches how you use the gris-gris and what you use it for.

Underneath a sky as black as obsidian, where the River Styx, or the Gihon, or the Hubur, or the God River (all the same River that flows through a different world) runs free, the souls of the desperate dead are brought to Porte Noire. You cannot sail back. You can go further, into an afterlife beyond Porte Noire, but fragments of it are already there.

Monks robed in white meditate in gardens where black flowers blossom 'round black shrines, where black tori gates stand over black cobblestone streets. They meditate on why they are here. They meditate on where they are going next, so that they may never return.

Porte Noire is where your dreams await you, and where you will learn that your dreams need not be achieved if one wants peace for the soul. And it means something else, too.

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A Party of Gamblers

Parties of characters in the Noir Gambit system are linked by their desperation. They all have the same drive for something unattainable yet needed; their thirst is both the fuel and flame that drives them. In the setting of Porte Noire, the characters know they are dead (or are dying). They know that somewhere in this forever-night city they can find a miracle: their dying wish that they could never find in life. When the players find each other, they know they are all looking for the same thing. Not in specific detail, but in overall detail. They align themselves selfishly and gamble with their souls, memories, sin, and virtues. Over the course of a campaign the players will lose a lot of who they are in order to find something they may not even truly want. And this has to be made mechanical. The Noir Gambit system will use Gambler's Playbooks instead of classes. This isn't quite like *World games (like Apocalypse World or Dungeon World) because your playbook isn...

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Poker Decks are Holy Relics

Hold it in your hands. Fan a few tricks. Shuffle them real smooth. Smell that new card aroma and that old card scent and tell me that poker decks aren't holy. In Porte Noire, nothing is more important to a dead or dying soul then their cards. Everyone carries them. Those that don't are given them when they get off the boat, and can buy new ones virtually anywhere in the city. See, to the dead, currency ain't worth much. You can buy things, but often you just end up trading favors, secrets, and promises, given everyone's after their own personal legend. If you can't compromise, pull the cards out. Play a game of blackjack or spades. Up the ante. Keep searching. Duels happen, but settling your problems over the poker table is better. The dead and dying are always betting more of themselves, more of their purgatory lives, all in desperate attempts to draw closer to that miracle they so crave. Then, when they've bet too much, they find themselves trapped by...

Porte Noire, A City for the Dying

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