Liminal Horror: La Santa Muerte, a toolkit instead of a ready-made adventure

I came across a review of La Santa Muerte in Poltergeist, a standalone supplement for the Liminal Horror roleplaying game. The reviewer points out that although most official adventures for the system take place in the USA, they can easily be set in almost any real-world location: a Polish housing estate, the Paris catacombs, a Korean nightclub, or a remote Welsh moor. The light mechanics and sketched-out setting make it easy to build the adventures, called Mysteries in liminal terminology.

The printed La Santa Muerte is a small booklet of sixteen pages, and once you subtract the cover, the full-page illustrations and the blank sheets, there are really eleven. It deals with the cult of Santa Muerte, the Holy Death, one of the most striking current motifs in Mexican culture. It is usually associated with gangs, but it is also present among the working class and the Mexican diaspora.

The reviewer praises the artwork, the many illustrations, and the photos of women made up as the Lady of Death. The downside is white text on a red background, which makes it hard to read and to print in its electronic version.

The most important thing is that this is not an adventure with a plot, but a set of elements for building your own scenarios: a description of the Night Market, where the strangest goods can be bought, its regulars, other independent non-player characters, random tables of unsettling motifs and events, a police report as a help for the players, and a table of Aftermath effects. Turning this into a session will take the game master a lot of work, but the elements can also be woven into other Mysteries, for example as rumours in the NPCs' conversations.

The author did not get what he expected but was pleasantly surprised, and advises buyers to know the nature of the product beforehand. I personally like this kind of toolkit, because it leaves room for your own story.

Source: Poltergeist