New urban unease apartments thread!

I know it was established in the first thread that there are washers and dryers to do your laundry in the labrynthine, ever-changing basement. That alone would make laundry day a funny and appropriate place to start a campaign.

Personally think that there should be some areas that have a hard, consistent dimension, say the first few floors, but the rest of the building can be truly random and entirely up to the GM.

Maybe the entire block is "weird space" and the apartment is just where most of it is concentrated? I could easily see a grocery store on the corner for example to make even getting food a weird experience for players. I know that the immediate outside of the apartment complex is "weird space" since most people that mentioned that area also included weird shit.

If you get cable from a local provider you can get a special discount, but half the channels are in a foreign language similar to Russian yet unidentifiable. They play everything from local news to places you've never heard of before, to strange talk and gameshows, to occasional blurry, surreal porn.

You've seen hybrids of rats and cockroaches. Sometimes they stop and gesture at one another, organizing into work groups.

The indoor patio is open to the sky, despite being right under your apartment and with a clear view, none of the taller buildings nearby anywhere in sight. At night, the few trees seem to stretch out into a dark forest where something large stalks on all fours.

The kitchen microwave works perfectly. No need to set timers or power, just hit start and it can heat things perfectly with no spatter and always less than a minute. It grills steaks, bakes cakes and other things you would need a stove or oven to do too.

Starting it empty results in a parchment paper bag of 'pop-roaches'.

Metal items cooked in it melt into human figures that scream and beg you to stop before boiling away to nothing. The dead girl warns you to never, ever stop if that happens.

This fucking dystopian building horrify me.
>google source
>Johannesburg's Ponte City: 'the tallest and grandest urban slum in the world'
We really are living the cyberpunk now.

Well, in the anime Dennou Coil, traveling in certain patterns allowed access to certain areas, if I remember correctly, so...

If you take the main stairs from the fourth floor to the third, walk down the hallway to the rear stairs, then climb up to the non-existant 8th floor, you'll find a door that consistently leads to the portion of the basement that has the laundry room.

In order to consistently find your apartment, you have to take the main stairs from the entrance, climb 3 floors, descend 2, the climb up to your actual floor.

There is a hidden staircase that is available between 3am and 5am on the 5th floor that will exit into the grocery store across the street if you exit the stairs on the second floor.

Some tenants know the way these patterns work but won't tell you unless you give them something they want. They won't know all of them but they know a few that are useful to their lives. Others will tell you to use just use the elevator.

>rules
>setting
Nah, that's no fun, just let people post as freeform ideas come to them. Who cares if something's a bit contradictory? GMs fishing for ideas can pick and choose as they wish, those of us just reading for fun get a wider range of stories.

>The grocery store occasionally gets shipments of goods and items unheard of in our world. They just put them in the "Stranger Things" aisle.
>The local library is pretty normal, but the librarians there warn people to never grab the beckoning hands that reach out from between books when walking through the fiction section. The last person who didn't heed this advice was Norman, who is now the main character of the book "Situation Norman".
>The laundromat has a pile of found socks, none of them in pairs.
>The sporting goods store sells vampire hunting kits, exorcism manuals, silver bullets, holy water, and Ultra Bounce basketballs. They aren't ultra bouncy.

>the local emergency room offers its users alternative ways to pay
>no money, no problem! you don't need more than one kidney and half of your liver anyway
>if you're squeamish about losing one or more of your organs then maybe you'll be willing to volunteer for our alternative treatment programd
>while effective and friendly you still can't avoid having the feeling that surgically reconfiguring the human body in various experimental ways isn't part of the normal er services, but given that cops don't bother them such things are presumably legal

Your neighbors all claim the Building is in a different place. Several think the address is in a different state, others say you're in various countries around the world. Some claim you are speaking the appropriate language for those places too, and you have several mailmen a day, all delivering to the same address in wildly different places.

Take your'a friendly neighborhood drug dealer advice - NEVER EVER take a psychedelics drugs while in the Building. Trust me, you don't wanna see a real Condo's face and really are Man in the Fanct Suit.

> The Building is not the same while on drugs.
> LITERALLY not the same.

The owners of the bodega on the ground floor insist that the grocery store doesn't exist, and vice versa.

There is fierce, but albeit friendly rivalry between Chinese takeout and a Japanese noodle shop located somewhere in the Building. All their customers are expected get into heated arguments about which one is better or they will get neither.

While I hate to be the cunt who kills a comfy thread this is where I have to intervene and tell you that this apartment is located in south Africa, and is known for having the most rancid stench.

The centre ground is literally cluttered with feces, garbage thrown, spit and piss. Lots of film makers want to go there to shoot a film and most promptly leave after realizing how absolutely disgusting the set is. It might work in Austria or a Soviet bloc but not in Africa

See
And yes, there is one tenant who swears this is South Africa and that the place is horrible, but as long as you're not using the entrance from his neigborhoid it seems a bit worn but still pretty livable.

You're certain that the angles of the door to the roof all, somehow, add up to more than 360 degrees...

>While I hate to be the cunt who shows his lack of reading comprehension
Too late

One abandoned looking apartment is actually home to Mrs. Sphinx, and she does ever so appreciate your help dearie. The joints get stiff after being mummified by old age don't you know? Oh of course you're here for advice, but before that, are you seeing anyone? Her great-great-great....

..great-great grandchild is about your age and seems like you'd get along. She does worry about them being single forever you know. And of course they're not a cat, the curse won't pass until she stops being stubborn long enough to die properly.

The building is consistent, except for those things that consistently change. There is a corner taken out of the Chinese restaurant where the bodega should be, and a corner taken out of the bodega where the restaurant should be. The inner layouts are consistent, and the doors never move around, but the spaces they should be occupying overlap, as if they both were larger on the inside.

Each floor has a consistent layout with itself, but this layout does not match the outer dimensions of the building nor should it still be standing from an architectural standpoint if you match it with the other floors. This makes the building easy to navigate, but a nightmare to understand. This taken with the concept at the end of the last thread where there are two second floors, a missing fifth floor (that you can somehow access anyways when you need to), a reference to the tenth floor with no way to get to it, and an elevator with all its floors out of order, means that your players will have a ton of screwy to get through once they actually bother trying to map the place out. If the whole place keeps changing, they'll give up on the whole thing.

That's just old man Kowallski, got messed up back in The War. Fortunately, his granddaughter Erika recently completed her nursing degree and moved into the building too so she can keep an eye on him when she's home.

Several of the older tenants talk about their time in "the War". If asked which war, they just say "the only one that matters". One day, you see the twelve year old Vernice chatting with these "veterans" about HER time in the War since her daddy died.

No matter what time of day or night, at least one member of the community council is sitting in the lobby.

One time, you had a crap day at work (boss dicked you over, and ended up withholding an entire paycheck, on top of making you clean up... nevermind). The two council members seemed to take notice. The next day, your boss was deathly pale and very apologetic, even offering you a double paycheck.

Once, you and your girl got in a fight and she stormed out. The next day, she was back, and ever so happy about all the wonderful things you had been saying about her to the other tenants in your building. It showed how much you loved her.

You don't ever remember talking to them about her, but they always look so happy that you're happy.

One time, a councilwoman asks you for a favor so sweetly. It was your pleasure to pay her back.

woah is that dog okay

Bongo? Don't worry about it. He's only dead on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

After living here for a few months, asking the girl next door out doesn't seem like too bad an idea.

But, she's dead. She's even told you she's dead. Where do you go on a date with a dead girl? The cemetery?

Anywhere that's open at night?

Last thread mentioned a HIM in connection to playing games with standard playing cards. This refers to the Man in the Fancy Suit. He will appear to play cards with you. The stakes? He wins, you take him up on his offer. You win? He never asks you again.

I think the question we have to ask here is, what form of dead is she? Ghost? Intelligent zombie? Schrodinger's Cat? Overlap of different timelines resulting in a dead person that is alive?

Aside from her agreeing the best thing to do is keep her locked up. There's a reason all the locks are on the Outside of her door, but if you want to do something nice she could always use another. Something nice and sturdy, for your and the other residents safety.

You can set a chair outside of her room and listen to the radio together. Neither of you are really going to understand the static ridden gibberish but it'll fill the quiet moments.

Well, as long as you aren't white, there's a lovely diner that caters to both the living and the dead in Cold War Era Imperial Japan. Just take the stairs up from the 4th floor to the 6th, the elevator down to the 7th (The buttons will have it below the ground floor if you get on it after that jaunt through the stairs), then go up the stairs to the basement and exit through the storm doors out into the alley. The restaraunt will be two blocks east from there. Just remember, they are in the middle of the Cold War against the Third Reich so they do not like white people.

Also, make sure to follow those directions in reverse to come back. I still haven't been able to find Josh since he decided to just take the stairs from the basement.

But which suit is the Fancy Suit? Diamonds for riches? Hearts for souls? Clubs for scepters? Spades for swords?
Perhaps he's only in the face cards, and you need to beat him with other combinations. But lose, and you'll be in his house forever.

There's a pigeon coop on the roof.

It's cared for by Mr. Stiles. He has a small tent on the roof and some assorted appliances, and will always happily lend an ear when you need someone to talk to. He used to go on for hours about how Beatrice was taking more than her share of feed, or how Ted would try to woo the occasional crow that stopped by on the roof. Sometimes he would say the pigeons want him to fly away with them and truly see the world, but he wasn't ready to go just yet.

These days there's nothing in the coop save for a lone black crow; large amounts of feed are still bought and eaten, and there's always a few white and gray feathers scattered around when you go up to visit. Sometimes when you go up to visit, you can even hear a soft rustling as if thousands of wings are taking flight. Mr. Stiles won't say what happened to the pigeons, or where the crow came from, or even what he does with all the feed he buys; but he does say that they'll always live on in his heart.

This I find rather sweet. I could totally see this as a scene in a TV show. You bring a picnic basket, slip her some food through the mail slot, and double check her locks whenever she asks. You listen to the detective noir radio show (which is about the detective and his love interest having been captured by a villain, and are talking from their cells), and chat about everything.

If you ever arrive home early, you will find all the lights in your apartment already switched on. No matter how hard you look, you can find no intruder. This never happens if you arrive home at the correct time. After you get into bed you hear the front door being gently shut.

>you've been invited to the 2nd floor's mr. redgrave's burial
>the sermon goes perfectly fine without any disturbance or out of ordinary happening, creepiest thing out whole event was seeing mr. redgrave's corpse in the open casket
>on your way back home you finally realize what has been bothering you since you got the invitation; mrs. redgrave has been a widow for over a decade

This thread has some nice Voynich Hotel vibe

This thread has some spooky ass vibe!

The Spanish-American war, or "war of independence from Spain for Cuba" was 118 years ago and could fit the bill. Let's say she was 5 and visiting family when se got caught on it all or something.

Extraordinary, record breaking too, but dangerously close to the realm of the possible

What happens if your parents come to visit?

On the 4th floor, just a few steps on the right, on top of the stairs below there's a nice old couple.
Ol'man Emil is the man, you usually see him roaming around the 4th and 5th floor.
Whenever you met him he had a different hat, hell, he somehow changes the hat he is wearing every time you look away from him, even for a second!
He may sometimes mention that it may or may not have been his fault that half of the 5th floor is constantly on fire and full of kebabs.
One time you could swear you saw him arguing with the landlord while they were whacking each other with a kebab.
He mentions very frequently about his 'beloved', but you actually have never seen her, heard, yes, as sometimes while passing in front of ol'Emil's apartment you could hear a female voice singing old Disney songs.

The kebab from the 5th floor are actually delicious
The pig breeder from the 34th floor swears that there is some asshat stealing some of his pigs every day, and every time he swears he hadn't even one left.
You would't swear, but you think you saw once that ol'man Emil was wearing your aunt Cassie as a hat
Aunt Cassie died when you where 4, and THAT was a loooong time ago

They tried talking to the landlady on your behalf to move you into a different, less spooky, apartment. Now your parents have an apartment of their own; it's four floors below yours, and they put it up on AirBnB.

And stare awkwardly, together, at Al as he walks across the landing for the 6th time.

>Kicked out of old apartment complex
>found a new place with great rent and amenities
>the add was posted up on some random vending machine on the backstreet to your part time job
>kinda trashy looking on the outside
>super sketchy Chinese place
>finally get your stuff moved over and put away
>get home from work
>everything in the fridge and cabinets has been arranged by color and size
>all your clothes have their colors inverted for some reason
>The dresser, television, and bookshelf are now facing the wall instead of out
>there's a nice, perfectly warm TV dinner waiting for you on the kitchen table with a smiley face sticky note next to it

Pretty neat place, time to leave

What kind of TV dinner? If it was the one with meatloaf I would have stayed.

The chicken one's pretty good too, the one with the mashed potatoes? Fucking delicious.

It's just a shy benign poltergeist

Honestly, you could have ended up with a heck of a lot worse, and leaving now is just gonna upset the thing and make the next tenant's life a lot more complicated. Decent thing to do would be to just live with it.

>can't leave yet, months rent just went in
>Jesus holy Christ protect me from my spooky apartment
>hesitantly eat the TV dinner
>the meatloaf was delicious
>can't let them know that, feign disgust
>turn around the tv
>another smiley face
>On all levels except physical I am fucked
>decide to sleep and get it over with
>middle of the night I'm roasting under the covers
>can't get up though
>probably something waiting in the dark to suck my eyeballs out
>ceiling fan clicks and begins to spin
>oh my god I am going to die in this place
>bolt to the door and jump outside
>sleep in the hall, shitty nightmares
>go back in the apartment in the morning
>there's an omelette with a sad ketchup frowns face
>mfw

>Ketchup on omelette
Burn the place down

That really is a sweet idea, and I too can picture it very clearly:

>Wishing each other a good day when leaving for work each morning.

>Sharing friendly chit-chat when returning from work each evening.

>Hauling a chair and stereo out into the hall to listen to the local radio station.

>Bringing home Chinese takeout and cheap beers to have "together."

>Signing cards and chipping in birthday money for the both of you.

>Buying and taking care of a few potted plants to brighten up her doorway.

For newcomers to the thread, the previous one can be found here on Sup/tg/:

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=Your Apartment Building...

You got face-omelette?

Son of a bitch. All I got was a panful of burnt flour.

>every time you exit, close the door to, and re-enter a room all of the furniture shifts slightly
>every time you pass through a doorway in your room you hear a mysterious click
>whenever you come home, all the doors in your room are open at 45 degree angles

>a neighbor family often invites you to share dinner with them
>the food isn't bad, but you've never been able to figure out what it is
>when you ask them, the replies are all in a foreign language
>at best, you've worked out what is meat or vegetable, not that anything on the plate seems to be either

>correlation is obvious in my head
>I'm freaking out, it probably sees that
>cut the omelette in half and poke holes here and there
>no razor blades, that's good
>take a bite
>whoever is fucking with me knows how to cook
>inwardly decide to put up with freaky shit for good food
>part of me says I'll end up in 17 pieces scattered throughout the city dumpsters
>my wallet says enjoy the free food
>this is a horrible idea
>before leaving I say thank you out loud and leave a thank you note on the table
>I'll probably come back to a sacrificed animal
>I think the walk from my third floor apartment down the stairs took longer than it did yesterday

There are gargoyles on the roof. They're from an old church, and they're very big. If you look from outside, you can't see any gargoyles. All of them are facing in, all of them look like owners of the businesses on the ground floor, all of them look like they're locked in combat with something. Except one. One has a blank, smooth face and is reaching out pleadingly. You feel drawn to it whenever you are on the roof.

I smell a plot hook

>spend close to three years (months?) in apartment
>finally acclimate to the environment and become friends with neighbors, even pick a couple of "quirks" yourself
>suburban normie mom and dad call, they want to visit and see how you've settled in to the new place
>they're Dursley levels of "hates the abnormal"

Are you a bad enough dude to survive their visit without freaking them out or getting disowned?

Plots discovered thus far:
Visit from your Dursley Parents.
Exploring the basements.
Romance with Dead Girl
"Holders"-like mini-quests available from Chinese restaurant.
The Man in the Fancy Suit.
"The Only War that Matters"

This here is a campaign, brothers.

They would never disown you user. You're their perfectly normal, sweet little boy.
No, they would blame the Building. That place is evil and wrong and they need to get you out.
The whole thing must come down!
And isn't it their good fortune that they just happened to meet a nice man with just that in mind on the first day of their trip?
A nice, perfectly normal, and so fancily dressed man?

A bit of research informs you that the gargoyles were broken up and mortared together with other materials in a faux stone wall along the front of the building. How they're whole on the roof, and left no holes in the wall, is a mystery.

The Man in the Fancy Suit hates them and refuses to even go up to the roof.

If you think that's spooky, you'd hate the enormous windowless nuke-proof tower AT&T built in New York.

I urge anyone who is into spooky homely atmospheres to read the voynich hotel manga.

It hits the spot between unsettling and funny with a touch of SoL.

Like Russian Bratva mice would ever let Capitalist Suit Man on roof. Is sacred place, fit only for mice and tenants. They are okay with the crow, but only because he knows how to pay dues to Bratva mice.

I feel sick just looking at that thing

He has a plan. He's going to build a beautiful, soaring condominium that will increase property values and pull the neighborhood out of the gutter.

It will have a Starbucks on the ground floor.

Don't you want a Starbucks?

Of course you want a Starbucks.

The last big stumbling block, the very last thing preventing is this beautiful, soaring condominium from being built, is this one ugly, dilapidated old apartment...

Don't forget the various NPC's with fluffy side-quests that don't advance the plot much and serve as fun little digressions.

I might try to build a campaign around this whole setting in the future. The main problem is finding the right system to play it in though. But that's neither here nor there; I just want to immerse myself in this spooky (urbanpunk? fantastical realism with a horror bent?) world as much as I can.

I think that would work better as an epilogue, a few years after the campaign that would take place when the party moves into The Building.

His parents arrive. Their son takes them into the living room and offers them a seat. There is a squelching sound as they take their places on the (disturbingly comfortable) sofa. There is a hellish scream as a bat made of flames flies through the room, and their son nonchalantly picks up an asbestos mitt from the coffee table, catches it, and hurls it into the fireplace before picking right back up where he left the conversation off. He goes to fetch some tea, but when he opens the cupboard, his parents catch a glimpse of a swirling void within, sparkling with the light of dying suns. His eyebrows raise slightly, and he closes the cupboard. He turns to his parents and shrugs in a 'Can't be helped' sort of way, then opens it again and retrieves a pot for the tea. He isn't otherwise acting strange, but his total lack of reaction to these bizarre, twilight zone-esque events is disconcerting, a little frightening. But... He seems to have it under control. Maybe they'll just grin and bear it, and try to invite him over to their house instead, next time.

While he brews the tea, he ponders his guests.They seem uncomfortable, but he can't quite seem to work out why. He vaguely recalls that he was pretty terrified of this place when he first moved in, but having dealt with it for a while now, it doesn't seem so bad. In fact, the quirks make it seem homey. Is that weird? Maybe it's a bit weird. Still, they're his parents. Maybe he should try to dial down the crazy a little, just for them?

But then, The Building might take offence to that. No, they'll just have to bear with it, for now.

On floor 6 is an actual, living demon. Red skin, horns, hooves, the whole nine yards.

His name's Falfarafax and he's a pretty chill dude. Just don't accept any offers he proposes.

The Man in the Fancy Suit is a player in "The Only War that Matters". He is not on the side of the enemy, but he is not on the side of the tenants, either. He's on his own side. The profitable side. The side that will take advantage of the War and everything related. He has a birthmark on his neck that looks curiously like the damask pattern on the lobby wallpaper.

Oh, I haven't forgotten, I just pulled the major, plot-advancing stories.

Just make a list of valuable skills and professions. Players choose a profession, which grants them a set of skills and some extra skill points to spend. Completing story and personal objectives grants you strange, mystical coins you can use to barter with other tenants or increase your skills and abilities.

Falfarax seems to fear the Man in the Fancy Suit, and advises you to do the same.

The Man appears both in the current events, and in the tales remembered by the veterans. In fact, he is one of the few consistencies of such stories.

And for the system idea, perhaps choose some creepy/occult CYOAs and allow players to pick from those?

You could also do a thing where getting the other tenants things they like or want give certain bonuses the players aren't aware of.

Tipped the Chinese restaurant well the last time you ate there? Get a slight bonus to a roll at a critical moment.
Remember to get your neighbor's favorite kind of chocolate bar? She tells you what combination of stairs to take that get you to the eight floor every time.

For a more grim ending/spookier game, I'd use Dread

>the weirdness of the apartment complex is starting to spread to the entire block
>Might get the attention of paranormal investigations, which is more trouble than it's worth for everyone living there
>go down into its heart (possibly literal) to figure out the cause
It doesn't mean any harm, it's just...
All the other building are so empty, there's no heart to them. How are they going to take care of their tenants?

I was thinking similar. Build a CYOA which allows you to choose a profession, a day job (not necessarily your profession), and a background. These each grant you bonuses to certain skills. From there, you can random-roll a relic in your possession, as well as a number of quirks about your apartment specifically. You can spend any Eldritch Coins in your possession to up skills, swap/gain relics, or tweak/gain quirks.
Charms, blessings, and clues are a given here. You're part of a community, and the community rewards looking after the community.

This is easily tied into "The Only War that Matters". Maybe as a lead in or epilogue. It's where the campaign is getting at the core of the weirdness, and offering the players the chance to become a part of the family, so to say.

the Jaffa Factory?

All except for the development down the road of course. Those aren't just empty, they... your Building doesn't understand, but they make their tenants empty instead. Bright and shiny, popular and rich, all empty with fake smiles and heartless laughter. The Building needs to get stronger, to beat it somehow...

I want to call it the dystopian tower.

Let's just call it "His Office."

dystopia is a pretty specific word, I feel like it needs a more brutal fun-crushing name.

"Progress Place"

Or at least one of them. Every resident claims that He comes from a different high-rise, depending on where that tenant believes the Building to be located.

...

I understand that reference

There's a man in one of the courtyards who plays chess by himself during the day. The pieces are never in the spot whenever you look at the board. If you sit opposite him he will smile and the board will be reset when you look down again. Play the game have fun wake up on the roof. Normal stuff.

The roof has a giant metal spike stuck in it. The residents say it's a lightning rod and change the subject when asked. It isn't grounded.

These games sometimes feature pieces that you've never seen, and have new movement rules. Your performance in the games unlocks new pieces and further boons from the Chessmaster.

Oh, yeah. That's the tail from that one plane that went down. So why is it covered in runes, sanskrit, and demotic writing?

I assume it's a compromise to allow for some more interior spaces, without compromising the number of windows

"Those are Lichtenberg figures. That is what a Lichtenberg figure looks like. Stop being silly."

"Lichtenberg Figures that forms perfect futhark runes? That strip right there reads 'HE COMES'. Who's being silly?"