Apartment Below

“The Frompt Side”

Trigger warning: Suicide, death, gore

Art by Paul Walker

This is not a review of Apartment Below, a new one page TTRPG from Paul Walker. Nor is it instruction on how to play. You can see that over on Paul’s Substack.

Note to Paul: There is a typo in the file structure, that labels the first page as “Frompt Side”. It is harmless, but gave me a chuckle.

Character Creation is simple, since you don’t really know much about yourself. You get two of your 5 skills boosted at the start. You don’t know your name, goals, motivations, nothing.

It was not specified if I was supposed to choose which two skills to raise during the start, so I just rolled 1d5 twice and got:

3 Cracked Mirror. Vigilance 60
2 Heavy Wool Coat. Stealth 50

Floor 3 Apartment

D10 Search your apartment: 2 High-powered torch (Vigilance +5) This puts my Vigilance at 65.

D10 Room Appearance:7 Many clocks all stopped at the same time
d10 Room Features: 5 The Room smells very strongly of something familiar from your past

I’m awake. Who am I? Where am I? I push myself up from the dirty carpet and look around. The room was curiously filled with clocks, but they were all stopped at the same time, 4:46. AM or PM, I cannot say, all the clocks are analog.

The room smells of freshly brewed coffee, but of the liquid gold, there is no sign. I’m wearing a heavy wool coat, of which I’m thankful, there is a dreadful chill in the air. Something heavy tugs at one of my pockets, and I pull out a small, but powerful flashlight. I click it on and off experimentally.

D100 Vigilance, is it dark? 50 vs 65 Yes.

When I shined the high-powered beam around the room, the light reflected from a compact mirror sitting on a kitchen counter. It was cracked, but threw by reflection back at me, the crack giving the illusion of two persons standing side by side. Was that truly me? I was gaunt, with dark circles under my eyes. My stomach rumbled, it was the only thing that remembered, and it was not happy with the memory of no food.

Action + Theme: Transform Identity

I touched my face tentatively, and the memory of me shaving my full beard hit home. The why was lost, but at least it was something. I rubbed my hand over my now stubbled face. It must have been some time ago. The wool coat I was wearing was very familiar, reminiscent of walking along a dock. Perhaps I worked there?

I continued looking for clues as to my identity, but the apartment was mostly barren and filthy. I walked toward the front door, and a dirty sheet of paper with a coffee stain rested where someone had pushed it under the portal.

Scrawled hastily in pencil were the words, “DO NOT LET IT REACH THE ROOF!” Impossibly, I recognized it as my own handwriting. A loud boom resonated somewhere below me. I wondered anxiously if it was the “IT” I warned myself about.

I turned off the flashlight and opened the front door a crack. The hallway was empty except for another apartment door across from me, another down the hall to my left. Opposite that was a sign for a stairwell. Hesitantly, I crept across the hallway and tried the doorknob.

D6 Room occupant: 1 No one here
Room appearance: 9 Has been used as a ritual. +1 First Aid Kit
Room features: 3 The room feels abandoned for decades with debris and junk everywhere
Loot: 7 Hip Flask of whiskey

I didn’t immediately see anyone, so I ducked inside, and quietly closed the door behind me. I instantly regretted it. Detritus and filth from countless squatters filled the room. Buckets of human waste lined the walls, and upon the far back wall, a pentagram drawn in shit was smeared onto the wall. Within the sections of the star, strange symbols were drawn in something dark. Perhaps blood? I did not get close enough to find out. I hastily searched through the piles of garbage and found a flask of what smelled like cheap whiskey, and perhaps more importantly, the remnants of a first aid kit. I placed them both in my copious coat pockets and left the room with haste.

I walked to the last apartment on the floor, desperate to discover what was going on. I tentatively knocked on the door, not wanting to disturb any shit rituals like in the past room.

D6 Room occupant: 2 No one here
Room appearance: 7 Many clocks, all stopped at same time
Room features: 5 Room smells familiar like something from my past
Loot: 5 Two First Aid Kits

Action + Theme: Conceal Violence

There was no answer to my hesitant knock, and the doorknob turned freely. As the door swung open, my nose was assailed with the scent of death. Its sickly-sweet stench wafted into the hallway. I held my arm over my nose as I peered into the room. There in the living area lay a corpse. I could not tell if it had been a man or a woman, it was covered with a knit blanket. Beside it stood two open first aid kits, and I decided to brave the smell to scoop up the valuable items. Despite my rush, I noted many clocks on the walls stopped at 4:46, just like in the original apartment. I closed the door behind me and consolidated the contents of the kits into one container, to decrease the bulk I would need to carry.

D6 What does the Hollow do nearby? 4 You hear your voice from below

I walked over to the stairwell, and there was a sign indicating the roof was accessible on the floor above me. Not wanting to possibly meet this creature, whatever it was, I decided to descend. As I walked downwards, a voice called up faintly from below. It sounded eerily familiar…like perhaps it was my own voice. I vocalized silently a few words in defiance, not wanting to accept I was hearing my voice from below. But it was the same. I shook my head and hurried to the next apartment door.

D6 Room occupant: 2 No one here
Room appearance: 10 Combine two.
2 Part of the ceiling or floor has collapsed +1 Scrap.
8 An icy chill pervades the room
Room features: 6 You sense there is a secret and you feel compelled to investigate
Loot: 9 Flash Bomb

Action Theme: Damage Guilt

Like the last rooms I searched, there was no one here, thankfully. Part of the wall around the window had been ripped away, and the icy air from outside gusted within. I looked around in the cold and dark, and discovered someone had set off an explosive near the window, causing the damage from within. Across the room, an unexploded flash bomb nestled among a pet bed. I scooped it up and placed it into my pocket.

On the kitchen table, various bits of springs, wires, and other mechanical bits I didn’t recognize were all scattered into piles. Probably the owner had been assembling something. Perhaps more bombs? I had no idea, but I crammed as much of the material into my pockets and first aid kit as I could.

D6 Room occupant: 6 Infestation of insects or vermin. Pass Stealth check or drop 1 Physical State
Room appearance: 10 Roll twice.
6 Distinct signs of recent occupation.
2 Part of the ceiling or floor has collapsed +1 Scrap.
Room features: 2 Every object in the room is in exact symmetry.
Loot: 7 Hip flask of whiskey

Action Theme: Alter Loss

I entered the next apartment with the same trepidation as the last few. Why was I poking around in other people’s homes? I couldn’t answer that, but I knew that something was normal about it. This was what people did. We scrounged. A mutated version of our hunter/gatherer ancestry. The room before me was strange. The living area had two couches, facing one another, perfectly in symmetry. Identical end tables, with identical lamps stood at the ends. Two men lay on the couches, they looked alike. Probably brothers.

“Hello?” I croaked, my voice unused to being flexed. There was no response from either. I cautiously approached, there was not the expected smell of death surrounding them. But when I touched one of their hands, it was cold. Likely recently dead then. Up close, I could see now that they weren’t just brothers, but twins. A bottle of pills in the floor between them was the only thing out of symmetry. So, they had taken their own lives then, rather than live in whatever hellscape we found ourselves in. The thought had not occurred to me, but now I longed for another large dose of those same pills. I was alone. Alone in a way most people can never be. I did not even have myself. My own thoughts and memories had betrayed me and left. I was truly and utterly alone.

I slumped into the floor between the two dead men and sobbed quietly for some time. Finally, with what little mental vigor I had left, I gathered myself and finished searching the small apartment. There was a hip flask of whiskey on the table, likely they had mixed it with the pills for ultimate effectiveness. One of the bedroom doors was locked, but with a simple piece of wire from my pocket, I easily turned the simple knob lock that is common on bedroom doors. They are for privacy, not security.

The door swung open, and a pungent smell of filth rushed from the room. Along with a swarm of rats!

Stealth check d100=14 vs 50 Pass!

I quietly stepped up on a nearby shoe shelf, luckily it was sturdy enough to hold my emaciated weight. The rats swarmed past me, chittering among themselves, happy to be free from their confines. I peered around the corner into the room, and part of the floor had collapsed into a small closet area below. I easily climbed down the fallen support timbers into the room to check it out. There was a variety of foodstuffs in there, but they were all compromised by the vermin. I did find a few bits of twine, scissors, and other small items I might be able to use. It all went into my bulging pockets, and I scrambled back up the clumsy ladder of floor joists into the room above.

The rats had settled on the men, and I gagged as I snuck past their macabre feast. I stood with heaving stomach in the hallway. Once it finally stopped its tumbling, I braved the last doorway on this floor.

D6 Room occupant: 4 Hostile NPC
Room appearance: 4 Set up like a prepper’s bunker +2 Scrap
Room features: 1 Something Important displayed in center of room
Loot: 5 Two First Aid kits

Action Theme: Break Guilt

D6 Hostile NPC action: 1 Attacks Immediately Threat 3
d6 nonbinary/man/woman: 6 woman

A combination of nausea and overconfidence at finding no living soul so far led me to opening the door with a lack of caution. There was a woman with long, matted hair and ragged clothes kneeling in the middle of the room before a wooden shelf. Stacked on the entertainment center converted into something akin to an altar were various bits from first aid kits.

She snarled at my intrusion. “Get out of my temple, heretic!”

Roll vigilance for initiative: 34 vs 60 Pass.
Flee roll physicality: 77 Fail. +1 Trauma.
Woman attacks, roll Resilience: 66 vs 40 Fail. Physical state now at 4

Now, here is where I have a bit of confusion with the rules. We start with a physical state of 5, but the rules state when we “Reach” level 5, we get Dazed. So do we start at Physical state of 6 (not marked on the sheet), or do we start Dazed and our first damage reduces us to 4? I’m not sure, but that’s what I’m going to do.

Physical state 4=Injured. -10 Melee; -10 Stealth

I scrambled at the now closed door behind me, it had swung shut after I entered. The knob was slick with something I did not want to think about, and I could not effectively turn it. A sharp pain entered by shoulder, and I turned in horror to see the woman had stabbed me with a small pair of medical snips. I screamed and shoved her away from me.

Melee against woman 29 vs 30. Success. Threat reduced to 2.
Woman attacks, roll Resilience: 36 vs 40. Success.

The woman stumbled backward, then snarled and rushed toward me, yelling wordlessly. She lashed out with the scissors again, but I was able to keep her at arm’s length with simple shoves.

Melee against woman 74 vs 30. Fail
Resilience against attack: 08 vs 40. Success.

We danced around each other, her probing with strikes with the short shears, me attempting to keep her away from me. With the slippery door handle, I would not be able to escape, but I decided to make a run for one of the bedrooms further into the apartment. Perhaps I could calm her down by talking. I knocked over the altar in my flight, attempting to slow her pursuit.

Flee Physicality 63 Fail. +1 Trauma, now at 2.
Resilience 37 Success.

The woman wailed in horror at seeing her shrine knocked asunder and she began throwing random items at me as I fled further into the apartment. I slammed one of the bedroom doors, but it did not even have a simple lock on it. She knocked it open and I backed into the corner next to a disheveled bed.

Melee 63 Fail.
Resilience 10 Success.

In an almost comic display, if it had not been so desperate of times, I jumped onto the bed and she snarled as she followed me, bouncing, across the mattress. There was a small glass of water on the bedside table, and I tossed it at my attacker.

Melee 54 Fail.
Resilience 67 Fail. -1 Physical state. 3 Battered. Cannot Flee

The glass bounced from her chest and shattered when it hit the bedside table beside her. She snarled again and picked up a shard of the glass. A trickle of blood leaked from her palm where the glass sliced her hand, and I stood stupidly gawking long enough for her to slash at me with the improvised weapon. I raised a leg to block the blow and a bloody gash blossomed on my thigh.

“Dammit, stop, I’m trying to leave!” I yelled.

“You have blasphemed, and the punishment is death!” she wailed in a mad, shrill voice.

Melee 86 Fail
Resilience 17 Success.

I brushed past her as she spoke, and ran from the room once again. She tried to get me again with the glass, but was unable to connect.

Ok, this is dragged out a bit here, so I’m going to do a sequence of rolls to see if I can bring it to a conclusion.

Melee 89 Fail
Resilience 45 Success

Melee 97 Fail
Resilience 80 Fail. 2 Crippled. Cannot use Momentum. I forgot about Momentum! LOL

Melee 77 Fail.
Resilience 64 Fail. 1 Dying. -10 to all Skill rolls

Melee 90 Fail
Resilience 26 vs 50 Success

Melee 57 Fail
Resilience 59 Fail. 0 Expire. D10 for death check: 3 Permanent Death.

I tried several times to open the door to the hallway, as the mad woman chased me around the apartment. The more I exerted myself, the more blood started to flow down my injured leg. I was beginning to tire, and my feeble attempts at striking her ended with more cuts to my hands and arms. During one of the many circuits around the apartment I made while trying to distance myself, I stumbled from blood loss. I had just enough time to roll onto my back to see the mad little woman pounce across my prone form, the shard of glass held like a ritual dagger. I saw more than felt the reddened glass plunge over and over into my chest, her blood mingling with mine. Her eyes were glazed with fury and she continued to stab frantically.

I gratefully faded into darkness as her makeshift blade continued to wreck my body.

Finally, I no longer felt alone.

Well that was fun! I definitely was playing on “Hard” mode since I forgot all about the Momentum mechanic. Apartment Below is currently available on itch.io as Pay What You Want. I encourage you to check it out, and throw Paul a couple bucks if you can afford it.