🇫🇷 (Rôlistes français·e·s, pour voir une version française de cette page, c'est par ici !)
THE RED LION HOTEL is a diceless narrative game in which players collectively embody a grand hotel, describing its many places and the people in them (staff members or clients). It is composed of cards, each featuring a different narrative challenge to describe a place or person in the grand hotel. It requires 2 to 6 players or more and is designed for sessions of 60 minutes or more, with no preparation. You'll like this game if you enjoy experimental, improvised narration, 1920s aestheticism and the wonders of (almost) mundane stories!
The game features 128 tarot-sized cards which include:
Simple rules you can start to use as you read them collectively
6 "Theme" cards, to give your stories different narrative orientations
70 "Places" cards divided in four categories, ranging from the mundane to the odd, both in terms of their type and their rules of description
25 "Characters" cards, to help you imagine quirky clients and inventive staff members
The base rules of THE RED LION HOTELare easy to learn and simple to use. They can be summed up by the four actions a player can do during their turn:
Play a new place card: the player puts a card face up on the play area, reads its rules (see an example below) and follow its instructions.
Revisit an already played place: the player describes a particular event that happens in a previously described place, in freeform narration.
Play a new character card: the player decides in which place the character is located, puts a card face up on the play area, reads its rules (see an example above) and follow its instructions.
Revisit an already played character: the player brings up a previously described character and explains what they are doing in the last described place.
Apart from these actions, most of the game's delight is discovering the rules featured on every card, using a pictogram system to make them easily understandable.
If you want to see how all of this translates into play, you can download a free demo version that includes the full rules of the game and half of its content cards; it is playable using a regular deck of cards.
I'm offering only two different pledge levels for this campaign:
For 22 € (+ shipping fees), you'll receive the printed version of the game: 108 tarot-sized cards in a rigid cardboard box, shipped anywhere in the world.
For 80 € (+ shipping fees), you'll receive the printed version of the game and an exclusive card which I will work with you to imagine and design. This card will be added to all copies of the game, and you'll be credited as its co-creator! This level is limited to 20 copies.
I'm not offering a digital version of the game as a pledge level since I aim to release it for free, sometime in 2025, as a virtual tabletop (details pending).
As this game is part of BackerKit's Pocketopia 2025, you'll also get an exclusive reward if you back both this project and Tanya Floaker's Edinburgh Indie Gamers #3: 2 printed postcards, one featuring The Red Lion Hotel, the other featuring a game from Tanya's zine!
Finally, you'll also be able to purchase a print version of any of my previous full games—Green Dawn Mall, Two Summers and its supplement Other Summers, Meanwhile, in the Subway, Broken Cities, Feathered Adventures. I'll also be offering 3 of my smaller games: HERE & NOW, The 7th Rainbow and She Traveled / She Stayed. Note that some of these games are only available for backers living in North America!
Green Dawn Mall—teenagers searching for their lost friend in a weird endless mall (NORTH AMERICA ONLY)
Two Summers—wonderful adventures 30 years apart
Other Summers—alternative settings and rules for Two Summers
Meanwhile, in the Subway—surrealist adventures in the form of a map
Broken Cities—urban exploration of a quixotic city (NORTH AMERICA ONLY)
Feathered Adventures—light pulp stories in the style of children's comics (NORTH AMERICA ONLY)
HERE & NOW—experimental exploration of the whole of time and space
The 7th Rainbow—a whole life told in seven scenes
She Traveled / She Stayed—two urban witches, 30 years after their last adventure
Note that shipping fees will be collected after the campaign. If you live in North America, fees should be somewhere between $11 and 15 for untracked parcels and for a single printed copy; I'll be working with IPR as a fulfillment partner and we'll try to keep prices as low as possible. If you live anywhere else in the worlds, fees should be somewhere between 15 and 30 € for tracked parcels and for a single copy; unfortunately, the French postal service does not offer me the option of sending you untracked parcels, which would cost significantly less.
Note that, given he state of things, these indication are subject to change and I can't guarantee the fees indicated here. Additionally, there will most probably be customs dues to pay for your copy, depending on where you live.
I want to keep this campaign simple, which is why the initial goal was of 4500€, which covers the cost for the game's illustrations, layout and print run, both for the playing cards and the postcards.
We added one stretch goal after this initial goal has been reached: because we reached 5500€, 20 extra cards will be added to all copies of the game!
Nicolas Folliot likes to enhance other people's games by all means at his disposal: by dressing them up graphically, by laying them out, by proofreading them, sometimes even by editing them, but also by spreading the word on Mastodon. He's responsible for all the visual things of the game!
This is far from my first rodeo: this is my 7th crowdfunding campaign and the previous 6 have all been successful, hitting no particular obstacle, so I'm confident this one will be similar. The game's text is already entirely written and its rules have been playtested dozens of times throughout the years; however, its visual design is still in progress. We're aiming at a summer release and will do everything we can to finish polishing the game in the next months. It will be printed in Poland by Parioprint; the printed postcards will be printed in France by Imprimerie à Réaction. I've worked with both partners before and don't expect any hurdles there. Let's make this game a reality!
