Depersonalization Roll dice, mend broken timelines

You are the Star Key, the will of Yog-Sothoth made form, and your job is to cross the Gate into worlds whose timelines have shattered. Home base is a timeless library, a quiet hub between adventures where your investigators rest, heal, and grow stronger between modules. Each story stands on its own: an anthology of Lovecraft-inspired cases in different genres and settings, from short strange tales to the long, sprawling Cursenday's Black Carnival. What carries over is your people. Investigators and companions keep the experiences of past runs, so every new world is a fresh story with veterans who have seen things no one should see.

Each module casts you as an investigator in a tabletop-style RPG. You search scenes for clues, roll dice for skill checks, and trigger events that pull you closer to the truth, or shove you away from it. The rules are simplified from full tabletop systems, which makes this a gentle first step if you have never played a pen-and-paper session: you learn the rhythm of checks, rolls and randomness without anyone explaining it over a table. Combat is tactical and genuinely tense, because your investigator is as fragile as the things hunting you. And when dice betray you, the story rarely dead-ends; it simply turns somewhere else.

Why fight when you can talk? To uncover what really happened, you can bribe, steal, trade or appease the people in a story, and each choice bends the plot in a new direction. Win a fight through stealth and a single fatal strike, or through intimidation that sends your target running. Learn forbidden knowledge and magic becomes a weapon, though the side effects are real, so cast carefully. Different approaches lead to different endings, and roleplaying your investigator in character is half the fun. The same module can be a bloodbath, a heist or a negotiation depending on who you decide to be.

The mystery is the spine of every module. Clues are scattered through each story, and the game trusts you to gather them, weigh them, and decide what they mean before you act. Interrogate a suspect, check their story against the evidence, then choose whether to press, deceive or walk away. The dice decide whether a check succeeds, but what you do with the answer is yours. Endings branch on these decisions, and the anthology format means a fresh case is always waiting: a new scene to read, a new lie to catch, a new truth that is stranger and worse than you expected.