Content warnings: Divorce, manipulative romantic or friendly relationships, being involved in a crime, paranormal horror, alcohol and drug use, crab mentality, professional jealousy, lateral violence, gore, self mutilation, body horror, sex (bondage related, demon-fucking), obsessive thoughts towards your character and other forms of parasocial relationships.
It’s 2023 in New York City. You graduated from art school with dead prospects and too much talent. Nobody wants to hire a painter who doesn’t have extraordinarily rich parents. The art gallery scene in New York City only takes the wealthiest, most well-connected people.
Unfortunately, you’re a nobody. Sure, you aced all your classes and you have a great eye. But it’s hard to make it into Art Forum magazine. Instead, you’ve found contract work in replicating famous paintings and selling them online, which is actually legal as long as you specify it’s a reproduction. The pay hasn’t been great…until you receive your latest commission.
Forgery is a story of a down-on-her-luck art forger named Tempest, who receives a new commission to recreate a painting that they discover is cursed over time. It is a solo tabletop roleplaying game where the player (you) will be coloring in a paint-by-numbers image. The colors that you choose determine the outcome to the story.
The game comes in a 144 page book that has 26 chapters that you will go through in a choose-your-own-path style of play. As you choose from the options provided, you will fill in noted parts of the picture with colors of your choice.
If you feel conflicted over some of the options provided, you may roll 1D6 to determine which option you go with.
For example:
Take the image that you are coloring. As you paint, what are you reminded of?
- On a 1-2: Blistering your egg yolk during brunch, reminding you of an episode of Dr. Pimple Popper.
Color in the spaces labeled 1 with warm colors (red, orange, yellow) - On a 3-4: The texture of the toast you grated between your teeth at brunch. It was burnt and overpriced.
Color in the spaces labeled 1 with cool colors (blue, purple, green) - On a 5-6: Your sister lecturing you about getting a "real job" again. At least she paid for brunch.
Color in the spaces labeled 1 with neutral colors (black, white, gray, brown, beige)
At the end, you'll have an artifact from the game that you had a hand in creating.