Tabletop RPGs have tons of, as the kids say, “aura.” Settings such as World of Darkness arguably rose to prominence on the strength of their first impressions. Urban fantasy is especially striking, a mirror to our reality with a dash of the fantastic. It’s easier to tag something as cool when we see folks in a familiar setting do the hypest stuff.
Especially when they do it in the most stylish anime fashion possible.
City of Espers by Three Sails Studios is an urban fantasy action TTRPG set within an urban jungle of psychic chaos. Zener City is a seeming paradise for espers, a place to let their powers run wild without fear of rejection. At least, in theory. In reality, Zener City is a city divided by petty differences, the psychic gifts granting powers akin to DnD classes used for faction warfare. With your found family of espers, you make your mark on this blooming metropolis.
The tone and aesthetic of City of Espers is the biggest draw for me personally. Story-wise, I adore the focus on found family and urban living. The card-based narrative mechanics serve to make the world easy and fun to discover. Massive cities with thriving subcultures, each charmingly filled with quirks and flaws. What unites them all isn’t just a dedication to diversity, but by the sheer amount of drip they wear.
My personal favorite are the Noir Drag-tectives, a faction of cross-dressing investigators who combine noir with queer fashion. Something about the assimilation of a genre so tied to hardboiled machismo into drag culture just tickles me, and the fact it’s narratively thematic for Zener City is a bonus.
The rest of the Esper Houses are as colorful as the Warhammer 40k factions, each tied together by ideology and culture. Whether you want to save the streets in spandex with the House of Tokusatsu or sing your way up the charts with the House of Starfall, City of Espers is teeming with passion, and I can’t wait to pick it up.
You can support City of Espers on Kickstarter here.
What Zener City is to psychics is what we hope the Wargamer Discord becomes for tabletop players, so come on in!
