Osprey Games

A roleplaying game of mystery and hardboiled action in a city that never sleeps.

I woke with a start, my mouth tasting like an old glove and my head pounding from the events of the previous evening, though I wasn’t sure if it was the beating from Benny’s boys or the half bottle of drugstore whiskey that had done the most damage. I lifted my eyelids like stubborn blinds to find my gaze fall on a dame with a hundred-dollar purse in one hand and a cheap bean-shooter in the other. I groaned and cursed myself for ever getting involved in this mess…

In Hard City, character creation is swift and simple, generating competent yet flawed individuals and focusing on what sets them apart as they walk the fine line between right and wrong. Fast action resolution places the emphasis on the momentum of the plot, while the sandbox setting provides evocative hooks for adventures – fight crooks, rescue the innocent, thwart blackmail plots (or start them!), or uncover corruption in the Mayor’s office.

Stalk the mean streets of a world filled with two-bit thugs, hard-nosed gumshoes, intrepid reporters, gangsters, and femme fatales, all doing what they must to survive in the concrete jungle. With trouble around every corner, a secret on every lip, and a gun in every pocket, danger is never far away in the hard city.

Highlights

• Inspired by the novels of such authors as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane, and by both classic Film Noir (such as The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon) and more modern hardboiled crime movies (such as Chinatown, The Getaway, L.A. Confidential, and Sin City), Hard City taps into an enduring genre.
• A ‘pure’ hardboiled Noir roleplaying game – no horror, no weird science, no superheroes – just ordinary people doing the best they can in a world of crime and corruption.
• The sandbox setting provides evocative hooks that allow players to build the city they want – whether it's prewar Berlin, postwar Los Angeles, Caponeera Chicago, or anywhere else – and to tell the kinds of stories that appeal to them the most.

Author Biography

Nathan Russell is a teacher, writer, father, and man of imaginary action. He has fought vampires, flown spaceships, plundered dungeons, and rescued Viking princesses. That is what he loves about tabletop adventuring – you can go anywhere and be anything. He has been playing, tweaking, and writing roleplaying games for 30 years and, in 2005, began publishing games for others to enjoy, including the popular Freeform Universal and Neon City Overdrive. Nathan lives in Australia with his far-tooindulgent wife, children, and pugs.

Luis F. Sanz was born in Villafranca del Bierzo, Spain, and earned a five-year degree in Fine Arts in Salamanca. He has since worked for more than 20 years as an illustrator and designer for numerous publishers, magazines, newspapers, companies, and institutions. More recently, he has also been making award-winning comics.