Neverwhere3.pdf

Neverwhere

A Co-Operative Story Game 3rd Edition

Credits

System & Rules © Postmortem Studios (James Desborough) 2009

Neverwhere setting, Derivative Works & Television Series © Neil Gaiman & Crucial Films 1996

Neverwhere Comics/Graphic Novel © Neil Gaiman & DC/Vertigo 2005-2006

Neverwhere Third Edition:

Written By: James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Artwork By: Raven Morrison and James ‘Grim’ Desborough. Some additional art taken from the public graﬁtti

works of ‘Banksy’.

Layout/Design By: James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Designer’s Note:

There are some conﬂicts between the TV series, graphic novel and book. Having access to all of them we have

chosen what we believe to be the better option for the overall story in each case. Additionally a great deal has been

speculated upon from as little as two word mentions in the book and a lot more made from whole cloth or by look-

ing up street names in the A-Z. Your vision of London Below may be quite different to ours, so feel free to change

anything you want.

Permission:

Permission for home printing is granted but under the terms of the agreement on ﬁle, proﬁt cannot be made from this

game so it is not for sale. Nor should the game be printed at a professional printing service or via a Print on Demand

service. Home printing only – or you could play it from your laptop.

Disclaimer:

Permission was gotten from Crucial Films for the development of this game as a non-proﬁt enterprise way back in

1997 or so. The letter is on-ﬁle at Postmortem Studios or can be seen in the Second Edition of the game. It has been

omitted in this version of the game as unnecessary and not in keeping with the overall design.

This game is not for proﬁt, if you have been charged for it in any way then you’ve been ripped off and should seek

restitution. Full permission is granted for anyone to freely distribute this game as they see ﬁt, in any form so long as

nobody proﬁts from it.

Dedication:

To Neil Gaiman, his fans and to those who cared enough about this game to help it return again, harnessing the kind

of social-media effort and internet power that we could barely have dreamed of back in 1996 or even in 2002 when

the Second Edition was produced. Let’s all give ourselves a pat on the back, we all rock.

Page 1

Falling Through the Cracks

Not so long ago everything was normal. I drove my cab

around, picked people up, dropped them off, took their

money and that was it. Alright, so occasionally I’d mis-

use ‘The Knowledge’ to take scenic detours so the meter

would rack up a bit but who doesn’t take advantage of

tourists now and again eh?

My feet slam on the brakes and I let out a heartfelt;

“Shit.”

I look and at ﬁrst I think he’s given me chocolate money

like the kids get for Christmas. I’m out of the cab like a

shot in hot pursuit, then I hear claws on asphalt behind

me. More dogs, chasing him, chasing me. The alley

turns dark and misty. The streetlights are gone save for

a couple of old Victorian gas lamps. The fare vanishes

into the mist on the bridge and I shout after him:

The fare isn’t impressed with my stopping, his pack-

age has tumbled onto the ﬂoor and I hear squeaking

and scrabbling. Looking over the back to reason with

him I see what he’s dropped. An enormous, great, big,

fucking rat. Not one of your loveable domesticated rats

either, this is a big, dirty, brown bastard that stinks of

the sewer and looks like it could take on a terrier single-

handed. Not at the moment though, right now it looks

like its already been in the wars, a great big series of

nasty teeth marks running down its side and blood get-

ting on my leatherette.

“Oi! You owe me fare!”

So, anyway, I get a pickup at The Isle Of Dogs and I

make my way there, ﬁnally pulling up at the address to

ﬁnd the geezer waiting for me by a phone box. He opens

the door and hops in pretty quick, like.

I don’t like the sound of the dogs so I follow him onto

the bridge. The dogs have more intelligence, stopping

at the end of it and whining, refusing to chase any

more. There is a moment of… Nothing. I feel horror and

loneliness, I feel suspended in the dark for the longest

moment until my foot hits the boards again and I come

off the other end of the bridge. The fare is there, wait-

ing for me it seems. He grins, showing me the rotting

stumps of his teeth.

What you notice ﬁrst is the smell. I’ve been around the

city for the longest time. I’ve smelt it all, boozy students

and their girlfriends, reeking of cider, businessmen

stinking of guilt, hotel sex and cheap cologne, kids’

nappies, blood, you name it its happened in the back of

my bloody cab. This guy smelt of the street. Stale sweat

and socks worn all month long, dirty teeth and lingering

bad breath. I adjusted the mirror and started rolling, the

meter starting to tick over.

“Look mate.” I start, “I’ve hit something and I need to

go take a look-see to check whether its alive or not, you

understand right?”

“No!” He says. “We have to get out of here! His Lord-

ship is wounded and the dogs pursue us, we have to get

away before he gets us!”

“They won’t follow here, animals have more sense,” he

says, which ﬁlls me with a great feeling of security, I

can tell you.

“Where to, guv?” I ask. The usual taxi banter puts most

of the punters at ease. Not this bloke, he’s as nervous as

a monkey in a lion cage, looking out the back window

and peering into this little covered box he’s got with

him.

Now, I’m used to dealing with loonies, I get all sorts

in the cab after the clubs close, so I smile sweetly like

I always do and get out of the cab anyway to check the

dog. It’s nowhere to be seen. The big bloke with the two

Rottweilers though, he’s close. Close enough I see his

yellow eyes and teeth and the teeth on his dogs. Close

enough that I jump back into the cab and start off right

away, foot to the ﬂoor. My fare cheers me on as we

speed away but I start to see dogs at every trafﬁc light

and crossroads. No collar, no lead, just big nasty look-

ing mongrels all over the place.

I look at the coins again. Now, I’m no history expert but

I know gold when I see it and I can take a guess about

big-nosed Romans. I smile to him and back away, taking

the long way around back to my cab.

“Night’s Bridge,” he says. Just like that, two words

only.

So, things are back to normal now then, sort of. I

kept one of the coins as a keepsake and I keep get-

ting strange fares that want to barter. I’m getting less

ﬂag-downs so that suits me, the barter’s almost always

worth more in any case. So yeah, if you’re after a lift

anywhere, just ask or give me a call.

Foreign I ﬁgure, Albanian maybe, so I don’t argue I just

drive on autopilot. ‘The Knowledge’ takes me where

I need to go and no roundabout routes this time. This

bloke won’t have any money to speak of and I want him

off the upholstery as soon as possible. Looking in the

rear-view mirror I see someone jogging along the pave-

ment after the car as I turn the corner. Great big brute

of a bloke dressed in rags and tatters, another homeless

I reckoned, his two pikey dogs trotting along beside him,

great big Rottweilers, all teeth and attitude. I’m so busy

keeping an eye on him I don’t see another dog run under

the wheels.

In the back the fare is cooing over his rat, squeaking

and wiggling his nose like he can talk to the damn thing.

Takes all sorts to make a world I suppose. I pull up

and stop the meter, reading off the price without even

looking at it, before I realise I’m nowhere near Knights-

bridge. Not that the fare seems to care, he hops out and

drops some money in my palm before he legs it down an

alleyway.

No dogs though eh? Hair gets all over the seats.

Page 2

Introduction

This is the third edition of the Neverwhere Role-Play-

ing Game that I’ve written. The ﬁrst existed only as a

bare-bones HTML webpage with a scant system and

a smattering of ideas. The second edition was an early

PDF effort and – while ragged and not very well done

– had its charms. It massively expanded and ﬁlled

out the world of London Below with the ideas of the

authors and several other gamers and made for a much

more complete and playable game.

and quantiﬁed, for those who wanted a slightly more

robust system in order to play. There will also be an

alternative system that can be used – potentially – for

Live Action, salon-style play.

The Marquis de Carabas, for example, stems from cer-

tain adaptations of Puss in Boots where the Marquis de

Carabas is the cat’s – supposedly ﬁctional – master.

I hope you enjoy this new – and most likely ﬁnal – edi-

tion of the Neverwhere RPG and never grow tired of

playing it or exploring the whimsical – and dark – take

it has on the cities we all know and love.

All these elements combine with the leftover dregs from

the world ‘above’. The homeless, the lost, the rejected,

the mad, the unconventional and those dragged in by

events within the world below, torn away from their

own world and rendered all but ‘invisible’ to the real

world, given no choice but to try and adapt to life on the

‘underside’.

World of Neverwhere

The world of Neverwhere is that of a kind of whimsical

urban fantasy, combined with some rather pressing real

world issues, a metaphor for the life of the homeless

in today’s cities and the issues, in particularly, of the

mentally unwell who are all too often found wandering

the streets.

It’s now been more than ten years since Neverwhere

ﬁrst came out as the BBC TV series and the book, plen-

ty of time to reﬂect upon it and its inﬂuence, particularly

on the newer wave of Urban Fantasy books and upon

certain lines of games, as Gaiman’s books have often

been. Time, again, for a new edition.

Every city – and a few other places besides – have their

‘underside’ version and these are referred to as ‘be-

low’. For London there’s London Above and London

Below. London Above is the vibrant, cosmopolitan city

we all know, all West End theatres, street markets and

shopping centres while London Below is the rubbish,

the history, the idle dreams and the transient areas, the

secret city within, beneath and scattered throughout the

‘real’ one.

The permission letter I have for the Neverwhere RPG

doesn’t permit it to be done for proﬁt, only for personal

pleasure and enjoyment and it’s on that basis that I am

proceeding. That does also mean that there can never

be a hardcopy of this game since any print-on-demand

service would take a proﬁt cut – something that can’t

be done – so this book is formatted for PDF and to be

viewed on screens or printed out at home.

In Neverwhere urban legends come to life and place

names take on a much more real existence. The world

is made up of dreams, imaginings, nightmares and the

detritus that ‘fall through the cracks’ into the world ‘be-

low’, be it people, items or treasures. Past and present

meld into one, history comes alive in the form of

remnants from that time and fairytales and imaginings

are made real – often in forms one might not expect and

knitted together in ways that defy reason. It’s a darker,

seedier, lost and forgotten version of Alice in Wonder-

land or The Wizard of Oz.

London Below

London Below is the counterpart to the ‘real’ city of

London. Where London is dirty, London Below is ﬁlthy,

where London is mad, London Below is Insane, where

London is exciting, interesting and wonderful, London

Below is magical.

This edition takes into account the other material around

Neverwhere that has been thrown up and revealed by a

newer edition of the book, the author’s commentary on

the DVD (and close examination thereof), the exami-

nation of the comic book version and listening to the

audiobook version of Neverwhere. A lot of new material

has been added, but you can – of course – ignore this at

your discretion. Additionally where ideas are skimmed

over in the book or only appear brieﬂy in the back-

ground, they’ve been ﬂeshed out.

London is rich with history, stories and folk tales and so

London Below, like London Above, is a very, very im-

portant city worldwide in the culture of the Underside.

The Beast of London is the greatest beast of any city.

The sprawling expanse of London plays host to an army

of Underdwellers and all that really brings it low and

keeps it as being less than it could be are its divisions.

Place names, in particular, become something else in the

other world. Whether it be Hammersmith – an area in

Fulham, London, becoming a literal blacksmith in Lon-

don Below or whether it be Knightsbridge, a rather posh

and upscale area of the same city becoming a terrible

and fearsome place, Night’s Bridge, literally a bridge

that belongs to the night and the things that lurk in it.

London Below is divided into many competing baronies

and ﬁefdoms, as well as individual tribes and powerful

entities whose allegiance is negotiable or who try to stay

apart from the machinations of the various courts and

houses.

The big difference for this edition will be a revised and

more concrete system, though still one based on de-

scriptive paragraphs and adjectives, allowing for a much

more free-ﬂowing and negotiated type of play.

In this edition this system will be a little more tied down

Other parts of ‘The Underside’ might come from ﬁction

or history, or from things that never really happened at

all but which people think or believe might have.

Page 3

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