# Public Access tags: #game/rpg/public-access ![[Public Access (cover).jpg|600]] **Public Access** is Jason Cordova's analog-horror mystery game — a **Carved from Brindlewood** sibling of **Brindlewood Bay** and **[[The Between]]** about a group of twenty-somethings in 2004 who rent a house in a dead-end New Mexico town for the summer to unravel what happened to a public-access TV station that simply *vanished* in 1992. It's nostalgia soaked in cosmic horror: VHS static, purple tape clamshells, internet-forum friendships, and the creeping sense that the town would rather forget the whole thing ever existed. Don't confuse it with **[[Weird Heroes of Public Access]]** — that's a completely different, d6-pool game by Joey Royale about a Fairhaven TV crew. This one is the mystery-answer engine, not the dice-pool comedy. ## Setting In 2004, the **Deep Lake Latchkeys** — a group of people who met on an internet forum, bonded over a shared latchkey-kid childhood in 1980s Deep Lake, and a shared obsession with the vanished station — gather in person for the first time. They've rented a house on Rodenbecker Street for the summer in Deep Lake, Degoya County, New Mexico, a remote town of under 5,000 (a number that swells with vacationers in summer). Their goal: find out the true story of **TV Odyssey**. TV Odyssey was a public-access studio broadcasting on cable channel 94 across Degoya County. Anyone could reserve studio time, and the station aired a parade of strange low-budget amateur programming — *Happy Jack the Lumberjack & Friends*, *Voyages to the Astral with Lunaria Gomez*, *Poetry SLAM*, *Gastronomica*, *Daily Affirmations with David Tilbert* — until the building itself disappeared one day in 1992. The official story was a fire; there was no evidence. Nobody in town will talk about it, and even the people who made the shows deny knowing anything. All that remains are the **Odyssey Tapes**: VHS recordings in distinctive purple clamshells, hugely valuable to collectors, showing programming that never quite makes sense. Beneath the sunny nostalgic surface, the game turns very dark — cosmic horror, graphic violence, ritual sacrifice, and the shared childhood trauma each Latchkey carries. The friends don't just investigate the disappearances; they're quietly exploring the terrible things that happened to each of them as kids. ## Mechanics Public Access runs on the same **Carved from Brindlewood / Powered by the Apocalypse** base as The Between — 2d6 plus one of five abilities (**Vitality, Composure, Reason, Presence, Sensitivity**, −3 to +3), with hits at 7+, misses at 6−, success tiers at 7–9 / 10–11 / 12+, and advantage/disadvantage that cancel rather than stack. Its five basic moves are **The Day Move, The Night Move, The Meddling Move, The Nostalgic Move, and Answer a Question**, and its resistance mechanic is **Turning a Key** (bump a just-narrated bad result up a success tier by experiencing and discarding an alternate timeline). ### Mysteries & Answering a Question As in all CfB games, there's no canonical answer to any mystery. Latchkeys gather **Clues** (the Information-style move even surfaces an **Odyssey Tape** on a 12+), and once they have Clues equal to at least half a **Question**'s **Complexity** and reach a consensus, they trigger **Answer a Question** to see if their synthesized theory holds — a success unlocking the **Opportunity** to actually resolve the mystery. The inherent danger of pursuing an Opportunity is inversely proportional to its Question's Complexity: an easy-to-answer Question hides a much more dangerous payoff, and vice versa. Mysteries are loosely connected to a larger story, the **TV Odyssey** campaign spine. ### Watching the Odyssey Tapes Public Access's signature set piece is **watching an Odyssey Tape**. Each tape holds roughly four narrative prompts describing a "lost episode" of the vanished station's programming; every player is assigned a piece of one prompt, and together they collaboratively tell a little story about what plays on the screen — an "around the digital campfire" ritual that sits at the heart of the game. ## Editions - **2014** — the original 7-page game, quite different from what came later: a small game about a group of people simply watching a tape, designed for 3–5 players. Included as a lark in the supplement below. - **2023** — the full *Public Access* PDF (97 pages), added to DriveThruRPG in early 2023, with the rulebook, character/latchkey/reference sheets, the TV Odyssey campaign sheet, Odyssey tapes, and 8 mysteries. *In the library (Singles + Spreads, plus a large run of mystery packs and aids).* - **2024** — *Public Access: Skinny Jeans & Summer Screams* (32 pp): new mysteries and Odyssey Tapes plus the "**Skinny Jeans**" ruleset, a tightened, harsher version that centralizes the TV Odyssey mystery and refocuses the campaign into something more terrifying. - **2026** — a new edition crowdfunded by The Gauntlet, refocusing the game with TV Odyssey front and center, plus a companion book, *Signals from the Other Side*. ## References - [Public Access — The Gauntlet](https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/public-access.html) - [Public Access — DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/429340/public-access) - [Public Access: Skinny Jeans & Summer Screams — DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/486806/public-access-skinny-jeans-summer-screams)