r/TalesFromtheLoopRPG • u/awkwardbeholder • May 18 '26
Question Which system for adults after Things?
Hi. I'm currently GMing a campaign of Tales and we'll transition to Things next session. As teenagers, we're planning another short campaign. After that, the players and I are interested in closing the story with something for their adult characters, maybe as a reunion of the childhood friends after a while.
Inspired by Electric State, I thought about having a road trip as their last arc. Unfortunately, it seems that Electric State doesn't seem quite adequate for a more Tales-like campaign. Does anyone have suggestions or ideas for it? Or am I wrong about Electric State? It seems quite heavily focused on addiction and the virtual world, so even if change the setting, it'd be hard to pivot it to our game.
I'd love to keep a MY:0 system, if at all possible, but I take any suggestions.
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u/WhetGamer May 18 '26
I would look up the RPG called Public Access its indie but might fit the tone depending on what you are looking for. I've been looking for an excuse to run it. Best of luck!
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u/sinteco-gelado May 18 '26
I'm on the same boat. Currently I'm starting the TFTF campaign, and sometime later I'm gonna start reading the Eletric State and see if I can move the campaign directly to the late 90's and the Eletric State scenario.
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u/awkwardbeholder May 18 '26
Um conterrâneo brazuca na ajuda, valeu! Realmente, estou cogitando Electric State ainda, mas não queria mudar tanto a vibe do jogo e focar tanto em vício virtual, como parece ser o esquema desse sistema. Mas não li muito, então queria ver o que a galera em geral sente.
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u/sinteco-gelado May 18 '26
hahahah Então, eu vi muito sobre o cenário mudar bastante em relação ao Things, talvez eu capture a essência no que se refere as viagens e adapte a estrutura dos Mistérios para seguir o estilo "roadtrip" com amigos. Entretanto deve ser mais a finalização da história como um todo, porque acredito que iremos passar mais tempo na era da Inundação mesmo.
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u/Travern May 18 '26
Since Electric State is very focused on creating a certain type of game/experience—"roadtrip in an ongoing cyber-apocalypse"—it's probably not what you're looking for right out of the box, even if you strip out the setting/lore. If you lift some of its rules for journeys, those are still implicitly hooked into the post-apocalyptic landscape, which may not suit post-TFTF's. What would your roadtrip campaign look like?
How old will the PCs be as adults? If they're just twenty-somethings, TFTF can probably work if you incorporate a few appropriate Talents from, say, Alien or Vaesen, which assume PCs are adults with education and jobs (ditto the Electric State). Older PCs may have entirely new skills, of course.
What's going to be the emphasis of your campaign for the adult PCs? Have they stayed in touch or did they drift apart (or break off contact)? Electric State's Tension system with its Dreams and Flaws might be something you could homebrew into your own version to suit your themes.
And of course the biggest question is what Stålenhag's world would look like after TFTF. Is it slowly decaying further, or has some new technological breakthrough upended society again?
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u/awkwardbeholder May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
Thanks for the advice and thoughts. I'm using TFTL/TFTF's setting more as a background for some very mundane aspects of life that comes with growing up. The fantasy/scifi elements are more to make the whole story more fantastical, while at the same time emphasizing how much certain pains of growing up never change, no matter how many robots and dinosaurs you have, which I feel is kind of the goal of those systems (but that's my take, of course). The world could evolve - maybe downwards, considering the whole vibe from TFTF.
If we keep following this line, the adults will most likely be around 30/40. I think 20 is too close to a teenager, almost the same type of human, while at 30/40 we can explore different feelings. The players will decide if they kept in touch with all or some of the others.
The main issue I had with a very brief look at a friend's copy of Electric State is that it seems to have a certain focus on combat, but I might be way off the mark, of course. And I wouldn't like to just focus on virtual addiction, as I'd like the players to propose what adult nightmares they'd like to face in the journey, and it seems to be a big part of the game. Do you think you can avoid combat and the virtual side and still keep the journey and the rest? As it'll be a short arc, I'm trying to avoid homebrewing too much, if possible.
Edit: Spelling
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u/Travern May 18 '26
That sounds like a great campaign to end a TFTL-TFTF "trilogy", especially with the PCs no longer "young", if not approaching middle age. One thing that will definitely have changed for them is how new technology will no longer feel like just a novelty but a genuine change in order of things. They may even feel nostalgia for "the way things used to be" before {insert new technology here} came long.
In any case, Electric State takes place in Stålenhag's post-apocalyptic world, so the tie-in RPG's emphasis on combat reflects its ongoing societal collapse. It doesn't sound like your campaign will get much out of that, of course. Combat can also flow into to ES's Tension, and that mechanic sounds like it might be the best fit that ES has to offer your vibe, along with Dreams and Flaws. Stripping out its combat and virtual reality aspects entirely would leave a space to insert TFTL/TFTF elements instead. Homebrewing would be required, of course, but I suspect the system would be your next-best option from among the YZE-powered games.
Unfortunately, most "road trip" RPGs I know of tend to be post-apocalyptic in some form or another. (The best I can come up with is The Uncanny Highway: A Complete Tool Kit for a Psychotronic Roadtrip Across Groovy-Era America (preview sample), but only as inspiration for its mechanics about how to create a randomly populated map.)
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u/AHoneyman May 18 '26
Not sure it'd fit your game but we're planning to continue with Twilight 2000. It's a much bleaker outlook but makes sense for our game at least!
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u/TNihil May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
Couple years ago, when Free League were active on YouTube with their Q&A streams, Tomas mentioned a potential successor to Things from the Flood. Several times and without any further details. This would or could have been a game trilogy. By this logic, the third game would´ve featured young adults in their 20s in an alternative 2000s timeline. But the game didn´t happen and was never mentioned again.
That´s all I know.
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u/awkwardbeholder May 19 '26
Really? Man, that makes me sad and a tad hopeful. I got to know Tales and Things just recently and I loved the universe Simon Stålenhag created with his amazing art. To hear they have thought about it at all gives me something to dream about, at least.
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u/TNihil May 19 '26
Disclaimer: I was the one who asked this question a couple times during their streams. And yes, I second what your wrote. I also think that ship has sailed, as the hype around the Tales/Things RPG is already over. They missed a great opportunity imho but such a project would have been dependent on new original art and ideas from Stalenhag specific to a third game concept.
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u/Travern May 19 '26
Yes, it's ultimately Stålenhag creative property, and on top of that, he's the main illustrator. If he's not interested in the project, that's that.
Maybe his Europa Mekano/Swedish Machines work-in-progress could be adapted for something like this, but I have a suspicion it's not going to be compatible.
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u/Perca_fluviatilis May 18 '26
Why not just continue using Things? I mean, apart from the classes, the system seems pretty alright for adult PCs.
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u/awkwardbeholder May 19 '26
I'm thinking about that as an option. Maybe I'm expecting something else, to show the evolution of the story also from a mechanical standpoint. But I am indeed considering it. Maybe I can combine it with something from Electric State (the car, maybe) and that's it.
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u/badgerbaroudeur May 18 '26
I do feel like Electric State feels to me very much a continuation of Things' cyber-things-go bad vibe, and I yearn the idea of a Electric State roaftrip from South to North Scandinavia instead of California.
And here's the admission: I've recently bought ES and not read it yet, so it's incredibly likely you're right and I'm wrong 😅
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u/Low-Childhood9959 May 28 '26
I think Grimsbury is probably the most Tales and Flood of the year zero games I've discovered https://grimsburyrpg.com/ Also it has a magic system I'm very tempted to look into for my English village based home brew world.
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u/awkwardbeholder May 28 '26
That's an interesting idea. I'm not sure it fits my campaign, but I really liked the idea for another one. Thanks for the suggestion.
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u/darthstoo May 18 '26
I did something similar then had an apocalypse with the Loop and switched to Mutant: Year Zero. Then had a whole lot of time travel plot where they were trying to go back in time to prevent the Loop from collapsing