Tales From the Loop RPG

Are you nostalgic for the good old days, or have you just watched Stranger Things and now feel that the 80s were the coolest era ever? Now you have the chance to live out a genuine 80s childhood with Tales from the Loop. Inspired by sci-fi artist Simon Stålenhag, who has created a series of beautiful paintings of a Swedish suburb in an alternative version of the 1980s. Here, robots are part of the landscape and mysterious constructions fill the horizon. This has been transformed into an exciting role-playing game by the game developer Free League, where solving mysteries and nostalgia unite.

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In Tales from the Loop, players take on the roles of a group of children exploring their local environment and solving mysteries centered around the "Loops" large particle generators, which cause all sorts of events. The game is primarily centered around two different Loops: one in Nevada, USA, and one in the Malar islands in Sweden, but there is also ample opportunity to create your own town if desired. The game mixes 1980s pop culture with futuristic sci-fi elements such as robots and anti-gravity airships.

As a player, you step into the running shoes of a child aged 10-15 and can model your character after 8 archetypes. These archetypes will be easily recognizable if you have seen classic films like The Breakfast Club or Goonies. These archetypes include things like the bookworm, the troublemaker, and the popular one. An important part of the game is also the character's age. The younger you are, the luckier you are. But with age comes experience and thus more points you can put into your skills when creating your character.

If you are a regular player in Tales of the Loop, you only control a single character. If you are the Game Master, it is your job to control the rest of the world the players explore. This includes all people, as well as robots (and monsters?) the players may encounter. The game itself takes place as a kind of verbally improvised play, where the players and the Game Master together create a story with the players' characters as the protagonists. Since the game focuses on not too serious, but exciting mystery solving and with a group of children as the focal point, Free League has chosen to include a rule that the characters CANNOT die in the game. The game is more E.T. than it is Stranger Things, although there is still plenty of potential to also create nerve-wracking situations.

Tales from the Flood

If you are not into 80s nostalgia, but rather have a greater fondness for the 90s, you can instead play Tales from the Flood. This is a continuation of Tales from the Loop and takes place in the same world, just in the next decade. Here, an accident at the Loops has caused major flooding, which has had far-reaching consequences. Earth's magnetic fields have been reversed, making many forms of technology completely useless, and the robots and other technology that still work have been infected with a disease that makes them directly hostile.

In Tales from the Flood, you are no longer just a child, but a teenager between 14-19 years old. This makes it possible to play the same character across the two systems. The underlying game system is the same, but with new additions. For example, new archetypes (such as hacker and party animal) have been added to choose from, and to better portray that the characters are no longer children, it is now also possible to die in the game. Mystery solving is still the focus in Tales from the Flood, now just mixed with all the complications that come with the teenage years.

Free League

Free League, or Fria Ligan, is a Swedish board game producer. They have produced a number of well-known role-playing games, several of which have won prestigious awards. They focus on science fiction and fantasy themes, often taking place in an alternative version of our world. They are behind titles such as: ALIEN The Roleplaying Game, The One Ring, Mörk Borg, Vaesen Nordic Horror, and Forbidden Lands.