Alas Vegas

3/5 ( ratings)

Bad bets, bad debts and bad deaths.

You wake in a shallow grave in the desert. It's night. You have no memory of how you got here, or who you are, or the location of your clothes. A scar of neon in the shape of a city squats on the horizon. There are answers there. And trouble.

ALAS VEGAS is a dark journey through a bizarre and terrifying casino city where everything has a cost. Caught in a war between the Rat Packers who run the place, the players must find allies, the truth, and a way to escape. Memories are recovered, secrets are revealed, old debts are settled, and nothing is what it seems.

Your character sheet starts as blank as your memories, but your character gains skills by having flashbacks to their previous life, so as the game progesses their backstory does too - and intertwines with other characters', and with events that happen in the game, creating a complex and twisted story.

The mechanics are based on the casino game Blackjack played with Tarot cards, creating high-tension showdowns, and spinning the game's narrative from the cards that come up in play.

'Alas Vegas' itself lasts four sessions, structured like a high-budget HBO miniseries, leading to a revelatory final showdown. It’s Franz Kafka’s Fear and Loathing. It’s The Hangover meets The Prisoner. It’s Ocean’s Eleven directed by David Lynch. It’s like nothing you’ve played before.

PLUS THREE MORE CAMPAIGNS

ALAS VEGAS runs on the Fugue game system, built to tell stories of characters with amnesia. It uses Tarot cards and rotating GMs to create unique, high-tension adventures, heavy on character and narrative. The book contains ideas, background, and game-running advice by some of the finest RPG designers alive, and three extra Fugue campaigns:

YET ALREADY, frantic time-travel to save a chaotic, collapsing universe, written by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan;
WARLOCK KINGS, paladins returned to life as generals of a dark army, by Allen Varney and Johnstone Metzger;
REMEMBERING COSMIC MAN, in which you play two characters: one of a gang of superheroes whose leader has just been found dead, and one of the police investigating the crime, by Laurent Devernay and Jerome Larre.
All the Fugue mechanics are included, of course.

PLUS A HOST OF STARS

ALAS VEGAS also contains articles by some of the finest games writers of the last two decades:

Kenneth Hite contributes a complete stand-alone story-game set in the blood-red heart of classic Vegas, 'Killing Bugsy Siegel';
Robin D. Laws tells you how to use tarot cards to create game narratives on the fly in 'Tarot-Jumping Other Games';
Mike Selinker adds a bizarre casino in which your characters can place bets on their own chances of success in the adventure;
Matt Forbeck details the ins and outs of running gambling games in RPGs ;
Richard Dansky expands the Alas Vegas setting in 'Grifts, Scams and Making it';
John Scott Tynes serves up cocktails in 'The Guide To Drinking Heavily In Vegas';
Eye-popping interior art by World Fantasy Award-winner John Coulthart and Dennis Detwiller;
John Kovalic contributes an exclusive in-game comic strip!
And Sean Smith describes how to... but you have to let us keep a few secrets.

Language: English

Pages: 324

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Magnum Opus Press

Release: December 01, 2017

ISBN: 1906402175

ISBN 13: 9781906402174

Alas Vegas

James Wallis

3/5 ( ratings)

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Language: English

Pages: 324

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Magnum Opus Press

Release: December 01, 2017

ISBN: 1906402175

ISBN 13: 9781906402174

4/5 ( ratings)

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Reader Reviews

pookie

(4/5)

0

Feb 24, 2025

Alas Vegas, Alas… A review of Alas Vegas: Flashbacks, Blackjack and Payback, the storytelling roleplaying game in four Acts designed by +James Wallis Wallis and published by Magnum Opus Press/Spaaace.http://rlyehreviews.blogspot.co.uk/20...
Benjamin

(4/5)

0

Feb 24, 2025

Bundle of Holding Indie Cornucopia #7Logline: Characters wake up in a desert outside Vegas with no memories, and the system focuses a lot on flashbacks that both fill in their stories (and relationships) and also fills out their character sheets.Oh, so this is a comedy like The Hangover? No, it's more a comedy like Mulholland Drive: things are weird in this Vegas and very particularly so. Rather than an open-world sandbox or even a collaborative narrative game (where everyone plays a part in fle...
Jose Manuel Real

(2/5)

0

Feb 24, 2025

Esto como juego de rol no tengo cojones a explicarlo. Como obra me parece la hostia.
Adam Windsor

(2/5)

0

Feb 24, 2025

Notoriously late in release after its 2013 kickstarter, this game was always going to have to excel if it wanted to impress.Alas (Vegas), it does not. The truth the players are set to explore is really not all that interesting at the end of the day, and the adventure reads a lot like some of the worst 90s adventures: overly impressed with the coolness of the writer's setting and NPCs, and not willing to give the actual players any real agency or ability to disrupt things. In fact, the text is fr...
Mike

(2/5)

0

Feb 24, 2025

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Jeff

(2/5)

0

Feb 24, 2025

I am drawn to disasters and curiosities. So when I heard that Alas Vegas, the game I ONLY knew as a disaster Kickstarter that no one thought would ever come out, had been released, I had to pick it up. Well, I wasn’t there for the Kickstarter campaign, but I feel confident saying that the final product is the true disaster. This is one of the worst RPG products produced by someone who should have known better.To be clear, I am referring specifically to the titular scenario. The content produced

pookie

(4/5)

Feb 24, 2025

Alas Vegas, Alas… A review of Alas Vegas: Flashbacks, Blackjack and Payback, the storytelling roleplaying game in four Acts designed by +James Wallis Wallis and published by Magnum Opus Press/Spaaace.http://rlyehreviews.blogspot.co.uk/20...

Benjamin

Bundle of Holding Indie Cornucopia #7Logline: Characters wake up in a desert outside Vegas with no memories, and the system focuses a lot on flashbacks that both fill in their stories (and relationships) and also fills out their character sheets.Oh, so this is a comedy like The Hangover? No, it's more a comedy like Mulholland Drive: things are weird in this Vegas and very particularly so. Rather than an open-world sandbox or even a collaborative narrative game (where everyone plays a part in fle...

Jose Manuel Real

(2/5)

Esto como juego de rol no tengo cojones a explicarlo. Como obra me parece la hostia.

Adam Windsor

Notoriously late in release after its 2013 kickstarter, this game was always going to have to excel if it wanted to impress.Alas (Vegas), it does not. The truth the players are set to explore is really not all that interesting at the end of the day, and the adventure reads a lot like some of the worst 90s adventures: overly impressed with the coolness of the writer's setting and NPCs, and not willing to give the actual players any real agency or ability to disrupt things. In fact, the text is fr...

Mike

Jeff

I am drawn to disasters and curiosities. So when I heard that Alas Vegas, the game I ONLY knew as a disaster Kickstarter that no one thought would ever come out, had been released, I had to pick it up. Well, I wasn’t there for the Kickstarter campaign, but I feel confident saying that the final product is the true disaster. This is one of the worst RPG products produced by someone who should have known better.To be clear, I am referring specifically to the titular scenario. The content produced

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