Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Little Town Part Four

Little Town
Designed & Written by Gustavo Coelho

You can purchase this game here.

Last year, I came across this solo tabletop rpg inspired by the creator’s love of Twin Peaks. As someone who also thinks Twin Peaks is one of the best pieces of American media ever made, I had to buy and play it. It was a lot of fun, structured with a time mechanic & scenes, pulling bits & pieces from other games Gustavo Coelho liked. He recently contacted me with a revised edition of Little Town set to come out later this month with some revisions. One of those additions was a town backstory oracle, so I rolled on that and got: “The Town’s settlement traces back to dubious land deals,” a new detail I will incorporate as the story progresses.

I jumped back in with the story I had started last year, which you can read here, and probably should before you continue with this. 

Scene 1 – Time Limit 9
Location: Bright Hills PD, Morning

April 18

Richard Robertson entered the Bright Hills Police Department around 9am to find Deputy Brooks arguing with her cousin & the town’s jack-of-all-trades handyman, Red. Diane recently brought two of her meemaw’s famous Key Lime Pies with Strawberry Whipped Cream to a church potluck. It’s the same congregation Red attends, and he is not pleased. As he explains to Richard, who does not express interest in the argument, his cousin obviously used artificial key lime flavoring, not authentic key limes like their grandmother always did. Diane says she used real key limes but added some artificial flavoring to “enhance” the taste.

They ask Richard for his opinion, and the psychiatrist replies, “To tell the truth, I’ve never had a slice of key lime pie in my life.”

This spills into a new conversation, and Richard excuses himself while arguing in the lobby continues. He enters Sheriff Moore’s office, who had called him early this morning. Moore sits at his desk, engaging his favorite pastime of braiding rope into intricate knots. Moore was in the Navy as a young man and developed a penchant for it. It’s common for his beautifully constructed knot sculptures to be displayed at the annual county fair. His current project is one of his more simple ones, a Practical Paracord Survival Bracelet for his niece in the Scouts.

Moore gestures and says, “Take a seat, Rich.” The psychiatrist does, and Moore continues, he assumes Richard has heard about John Taylor Williams’ escape from the Moccasin Creek Mental Institution for the Criminally Insane. “I want to station Deputy Brooks outside your house for the next few days in case John Taylor comes a-callin’,” he explains. “I know how things ended after the murders and his conviction. Hell, we all saw the footage of him being dragged out of the courtroom screaming about all the people he was going to get his revenge on.”

Richard says he saw the story of the escape on the news last night. Richard desperately doesn’t want a cop outside his house all day when he considers the messiness of his affair with Lucy. Then Lily’s bizarre behavior has him even more unnerved. 

(Sweet Talk – Result: Weak hit – Richard gets what he wants, Instability increases by 1, putting it at 2 total.)

It hurts Richard to lie to someone he considers a longtime friend, but he can project a level of confidence about the situation. He points out the still unexplained fire at the hospital and his daughter’s condition. Doesn’t Bright Hills PD have more significant problems to focus on than Richard? He’s an adult; he can handle himself and will call the police when anything seems off. The sheriff mulls it over, taking a long sip of his black-as-night coffee. He nods; but you make sure to call if a single thing seems off, he tells Richard. Richard lies; he will.

---

Scene 2 – Time Limit 9
Location: Bright Hills town square, preparations for springtime Magnolia Marketplace, morning

Richard makes a stop by the town square. He knows Lucy will be there setting up her booth for the Magnolia Marketplace. It’s an arts & crafts fair held for one weekend every April in Bright Falls. Lucy is selling the clay bowls and pots she makes in her spare time, a hobby she picked up during a very influential trip to Taos, New Mexico, during her post-graduate years. When she sees Richard approaching, she rolls her eyes, sighing in annoyance that she has to deal with this mess.

He quickly explains the situation with John Taylor Williams. She vaguely remembers hearing about the murder trial. Richard describes a little more. Williams began to believe he was transforming into something supernatural in nature. Eventually, he had a complete psychotic breakdown and broke into an elderly couple’s home, killing them, claiming they were not what they appeared to be. That was four years ago, and he’d been institutionalized until last night. Richard says he doesn’t want her coming around for a while because he wouldn’t know what to do if Williams discovered their connection and went after her. 

(I realized Richard isn’t trying to Sweet Talk, a manipulation, but is being direct & honest. That meant I went with a Yes/No Oracle roll. “Will Lucy accept this?” – Result: Yes.)

Lucy looks at Richard. She says that she will stay away. In fact, she thinks this might be how their relationship goes forward, with Lucy keeping her distance from Richard. He silently nods, realizing internally how badly he fucked up her life, how he’s continuing to fuck up his wife’s, his daughter’s, his own. He leaves Lucy to get back to her stall for the festival.

On his way out, Richard bumps into Mikey Fletcher, a local crackpot whose brain is saturated in conspiracy theories. Mikey was one year behind Richard in school. He’s garnered a reputation for being a dishonest person. Richard clearly sees the man as having a delusional personality, which has made it hard for him to hold down a job, so he resorts to stealing or promising to do odd jobs only to flake on them. 

At the moment, Mikey is looking over a stall devoted to coffee bean carvings, the artist using miniature tools to make famous faces on the small beans. Mikey notices Richard and rushes over, yammering his ear off about interdimensional squirrels. Mikey is convinced that the squirrels are the true puppet masters over the strange goings-on in Bright Falls. In passing, he mentions he followed a squirrel into Twin Rivers State Park one night, and the thing just vanished into thin air; what do you think about that, Richie? The psychiatrist tries to be kind to Mikey, nodding and saying that sounds like an incredible thing to witness, saying out loud how he needs to get back to his office and if Mikey was looking for work, he needs someone to mow the lawn and trim the hedges out front if Mikey is interested.

---

Scene 3 – Time Limit 9
Location: Frost Memorial Hospital, afternoon
Scene Event: Someone threatens you

Richard makes a stop by the hospital to check on Liza, his teenage daughter, still in a coma after the strange events a week ago that sent her running out of the Twin Rivers State Park in the middle of the night, only to be struck by a car passing through. He’s stunned when he enters the room and finds Liza’s best friend, Lily Davis, sitting at her bedside, thumbing through one of the old magazines left there for visitors. The steady beat of the heart monitor is the only sound as Richard and Lily regard each other.

She places the magazine back on the side table. “Afternoon, Richard,” Lily smiles as she says these words. He’s so used to hearing her say, “Mr. Robertson.” He asks what she’s doing here. Without missing a beat, she responds. “Just visiting with my dear friend. How about you?” Richard is annoyed. “She’s my daughter.” Lily touches her pointer finger to her chin, performing a mock version of thinking. “But then why haven’t you visited every day, and when you spend more than an hour, if you love her so much?”

Everything about this girl tells him it is not Lily; this is not his daughter’s friend. Richard doesn’t like the idea of being in the same room as Lily and asks if he could be alone with Liza. Of course, she says, getting up and grabbing her jacket off the back of the chair. Before leaving, the teenager smirked and said, “You should probably expect a visit or two tonight. Seems like it’s in the air.”

---

Scene 4 – Time Limit 9
Location: Richard’s Home Office, Night
Scene Event: You find your office broken into and ransacked

Richard finally makes it home in the early evening. Teresa is home. The car in the driveway and the lights on in the house tell him that. Yet, he doesn’t go inside. Instead, Richard goes around the back of the house, up the stairs to his home office. He stops suddenly when the busted-in door catches his eye. Carefully pushing the door open and standing back, Richard waits to see if Williams jumps out at him. Nothing.

Venturing further inside, he discovers papers, his files, strewn across every surface. Richard quickly rushes over to his filing cabinets. The locks were busted off, and a quick survey shows his files on Williams are missing. So are a dozen others…including Lucy’s. Richard searches around the office for anything that will provide concrete proof of who did this.

(Investigate – Result: Strong hit. Markings (e.g., symbols or sigils etched on walls))

There’s something behind the filing cabinet, markings. It doesn’t make sense because it’s heavy and hasn’t been moved in years, even during the break-in. Richard starts wiggling the cabinet back and forth, pulling it towards him across the carpet. It’s hard work, but he finally removes the structure from the wall to see what is behind it.

A basic crescent moon symbol, but inverted and accompanied by irregular lines that give it an unsettling, distorted appearance. A line resembling lightning comes out of the moon, pointing downward.

---

Scene 5 – Time Limit 9
Location: Observatory (random card pull)

Dr. Jasmine Brown, 36, is an astronomer at Vanderbilt University, currently using their observatory facilities at Radnor Lake State Park. While gathering papers from her desk to put in a binder, Brown accidentally knocks over a mug of coffee. “Shit.” She dabs at the small river of coffee paper towels grabbed from a countertop. Once the mess is cleaned, she makes her way to the telescope. No one else is here tonight, and she can finally do some critical research, following up on an anomaly she encountered last week.

Dr. Brown inputs a series of coordinates into the computer, which she double-checks on her papers. She sits back, waiting for the image to process on the monitor. We don’t see what she does at first. What we do see is her shocked look. Brown returns to her papers, triple-checking some numbers and what she inputs into the computer. Then, she quickly pages through her binder and finds regional maps. Grabbing a red pen, she circles a spot multiple times before returning to the monitor. The camera pushes in on the map. She’s circled Bright Hills, Tennessee.

The camera moves around to show what Dr. Brown sees. It’s a crescent moon, somehow reversed from how it should be. An optical illusion (?) makes it appear that an arc of light is pointing downwards.

To be continued…