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About Texarkana

Texarkana is a card-based, cinematic, character-driven RPG; set against a backdrop which is one part revisionist acid western, one part cosmic and psychological horror, and one part purgatorial dreamscape.

Players will venture into the Frontier as characters who are looking to begin a new life (or more correctly escape their old one), typically in the aftermath of some great calamity, misdeed, or source of shame. It is said that the Frontier is the place where you can start afresh, where your past won’t haunt you, and where your guilt and wrongdoings are extinguished.

The characters will find themselves in a place which superficially resembles Eighteenth-Century colonial ‘frontiers’, such as those in what are now parts of the USA, Mexico, Canada or Australia. This place is unusual and uncanny, however, and some unearthly, malignant force will lie at the heart of each campaign. Confronting this force will require the characters to face their wrongdoings and flaws, and prove that they have in fact overcome their pasts. The influence of this force is often nightmarish in the truest sense: horrifying, inescapable, absurd, and deeply personal.

As Texarkana is a horror story, sessions will all include some number of tense, high-stakes scenes, in which characters are at genuine risk. The Frontier is a place to find and absolve yourself, but always at a cost - and some prices are high indeed. As such the game lends itself to short, self-contained campaigns of between one and six sessions, which should culminate in a climactic and cathartic conclusion.

All aspects of the game involving conflict, danger, risk, skill or luck are resolved using a deck of cards, similar to a poker deck. Each player is dealt a hand of cards which can be used to influence certain situations depending on that card’s suit. A player’s hand  represents their character’s willpower and resolve, and as cards start to dwindle characters become increasingly hopeless and desperate. This deck is also used during character creation, to determine each character’s skills and experience, resources, personality traits, and personal flaws.

Key inspirations for the setting include:

• Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995)
• John Hillcoat’s The Proposition (2005)
• Ted Kotcheffs Wake in Fright (1971)
• Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo (1970)
• Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter (1973)
• Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
• Keiichiro Toyama’s Silent Hill (1999)
• Daniel Knauf’s Carnivàle (2003-2005) 
• Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Giraud’s Blueberry (1963–2007)
• Earth’s The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (2008)
• Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading (1934)
• Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890)

Any card-based or western-themed RPG stands on the shoulders of giants, particularly those of Pinnacle’s Deadlands and TSR’s SAGA systems. 

Notes on this site

This rules summary is intended as a first-run ‘minimum viable product’, to distribute prototype cards and documents, and allow playtesters to run the game and understand the rules. It is written with an intended audience of players who are generally familiar with tabletop RPGs, and standard terminology in the genre ( PC, NPC, etc). For stylistic reasons, the PCs in Texarkana are collectively referred to as the 'Posse' and the GM is referred to as the 'Dealer'. All other game-specific terms will be defined and described in the rules text.

This site does not include any flavour text, setting details, fiction, or sample adventures, and as such the game may come across as bland and flavourless. Similarly there is no guidance for the Dealer on how to structure and run a campaign or generate NPCs, how to maintain tension in a horror game, or how to sensitively run a campaign set against a backdrop of colonial frontier violence. 

My intention is that these elements can be added to the rules as a next iteration, along with the first sample adventure, The Incident at Sorry Gulch.

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