As promised, for those of you who can’t join us at JiffyCon, here’s your free copy of Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit.

As I’m writing this, I’m still suffering a bit from yesterday’s all night rush to the presses. It’s actually two something in the morning the Friday after, but if all goes well this post won’t show up until the very brink of Free RPG Day. So please forgive me if I seem a bit scatterbrained.

Just over a week ago, this game was not much more than a tentative title on a piece of scrap paper with 9 other game ideas vying for our attention. We winnowed out the candidates we thought we could actually finish in a week and then fate in the form of a d4 pointed its gnarled claw at Trial & Terror: SVU (whose original title escapes me at the moment).

The week has been tremendous fun for me. Exhausting, but a hell of a lot of fun. And I’m sure Jason and Jim had similar experiences. Right now, I’m just kind of dazed that it’s all over. Well, probably not exactly over. I think this one’s got legs and I’m very interested in seeing where this game takes us next. But for now, the experiment is a success and we couldn’t be prouder of our little Game in a Jiffy–rough spots and all.

We hope you enjoy it as well. If you have any questions about how to play, or any
tales of how it worked for you and your friends, we’d love to hear about it.

And a huge thank you to all our artists who exceeded expectations with an entirely unreasonable deadline. Thank you John Carimando, Scott LeMien, and Andrew DeFelice! You made us look far more professional than we are.

illustration by Scott LeMien

As you know if you read our previous post, last week we had the crazy idea to create a game in a jiffy for Jiffycon. So crazy it just might work!!

So we got together last Thursday, picked a premise and started playstorming. Then we got together again yesterday to test out what we had so far and playstorm some new ideas. Tonight was our third game, more of a playtest than a playstorm. Before us lies the task of writing up the rules and printing them before we head up to Massachusetts on Friday.

We’re having a blast! We love the mechanics we’ve come up with, but we also love the premise, conceived by our own Jason “herzwesten” Keeley. In a world where monsters and humans live side by side, you need special laws to keep the peace, and you need special detectives and lawyers to enforce those laws. You will play those detectives and lawyers in Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit! Perhaps a Vampire has been feeding on humans without a license. Perhaps a werewolf was a victim of a hate crime. Perhaps a ghost has taken the law into his own hands in the case of his own murder. You will have to investigate the crime, find the suspect, make the arrest, and convict them in a court of law.

Here are some highlights from tonight’s game:

• The detectives met with a mummy real estate tycoon whose son had just been murdered
• The detectives took a trip to Little Transylvania (a neighborhood of Manhattan) to meet a vampire contact
• The prosecutors introduced the recent telephone records of an ancient undead monster as evidence
• Though the prosecutors failed to get the conviction for the charge of “unlawful summoning and binding”, the suspect received the maximum penalty for first degree murder!

Time to air out the ol’ sweatshop as it’s pretty stuffy in here. We kind of lost the keys to the front door while we were on our jetsetting vacation to Europe with smart and ultrarich supermodels. But now we’re back and…uh, we might need to get some new employees…

But first, the news! Next week is the inestimable Jiffycon and the ISS is making a grand appearance! Jim had the brilliant and crazy idea to whip a game for the con “in a jiffy” that we could hand out. You know, as proof of this whole playstorming thing.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to do! Last night, we playstormed a brand-new game. By next week we should have a the rules in physical paper form to give away at the con. Of course, if you can’t make it to the con, we’ll be posting the rules here on this site the week after.

Finally, here’s a little taste of what’s to come:

Within the organizations of criminal justice, all people, be they living or undead, are represented by two separate yet equally vital groups: the detectives who investigate supernatural offenses, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.