Codex Spotlight – Café Luz Estelar
One of the great things about working on Codex is getting to see all the content just that little bit earlier, and Tom McGrenery’s Café Luz Estelar was one of the loveliest pieces to lay out.
It first appeared in Codex Starlight, and it was immediately intriguing as it was the first step Codex had taken out of the more usual RPG genres of fantasy, SF and horror, being a starter for Tom’s own Malandros RPG, a game of social struggles in the dying days of the Empire of Brazil.
It’s a time and a subject I know very little about, but Tom’s romantic and evocative prose takes you instantly there, with prompts including “Bohemian socialites, slumming it, top hats and velvet jackets and studied nonchalance” and “In the main saloon, mingled scents of tobacco, cachaça, rum, sweat and perfume.”
It’s illustrated by Sean Poppe, whose lively, sketchy accompanying pictures (like the one below) perfectly reflect elegiac nature of the writing.
Christian Hundahl It’s definitely its own game, but the book (and Cafe Luz Estelar, discussed above) would be a very rich resource if you wanted to run that setting in some other system.
Christian Hundahl It’s definitely its own game, but the book (and Cafe Luz Estelar, discussed above) would be a very rich resource if you wanted to run that setting in some other system.
Oli Jeffery This is still among my favorite Codex articles, and easily the most beautiful. It’s just so damn evocative.
Oli Jeffery This is still among my favorite Codex articles, and easily the most beautiful. It’s just so damn evocative.