Gangs of Titan City is agrimdark future roleplaying game that thrusts its characters into a nightmare supercity that wants them dead. You play as desperate gutterscum who will soon dominate the underworld as crimelords or end up riddled with bullets. The game helps you create stories in the vein of Peaky Blinders, Scarface or Blades in the Dark, but cast into a brutal and uncompromising urban future.
What is Gangs of Titan City?
Gangs of Titan City is a tabletop roleplaying game that puts you in control of a gang of desperate outcasts fighting for survival. You’ll start out as a small fish in a very big and murky pond and steadily wrestle control of more of the city away from not only your gangland rivals, but also the institutions that want to crush you.
Make big plays and seize what you want, then deal with the fallout of your actions. You’ll find yourself pressed in on all sides whether it’s other gangs, corrupt authorities or deadly mutants. How will you handle the pressure? What price will you pay, what sacrifices will you make to stay ahead?
Gangs of Titan City uses simple and flexible 2d6 design to be intuitive and fast moving. The dice provide tools to players and The Narrator to craft compelling stories about gangs who claw their way to towering heights and sometimes fall to terrifying depths. The game comes with a toolbox of gang archetypes, gang member playbooks, rules for arcane and unknowable tech, sector hexmap generation tools and a rogue’s gallery to cautiously deal and ferociously battle with.
Drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources, Gangs of Titan City is a game for anyone who loves grimdark cyberpunk, dystopian futures, or criminal stories of rise andfall. If you’re a fan of Necromunda, Fallout, Judge Dredd & 2000AD, Borderlands, Altered Carbon, Blade Runner, Mad Max or Mos Eisley stories, then this is a game for you.
The Gang Archetypes
The core of every game of Titan City is the Gang. The first thing you do during play is choose a Gang Archetype, which decides their starter abilities and the path of their entire campaign:
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Consortium: Hawkers and fabricators. They’ll make and sell anything to prove that money really is power.
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Cult: The few righteous ones, or the harbingers of doom. Servants of the strange, the great, the terrible.
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Enclave: The dispossessed and the outcasts. The city turned its back on them, and they’ll give as they were given.
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Mercenaries: Wardogs and guns for hire. No deed is too bloody, no target too secure, no invoice too large.
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Operatives: Saboteurs and infiltrators. A secret that no one knows is a secret that isn’t making anyone rich yet.
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Overlords: Tyrants and conquerors. You'll rule and dominate the city streets.
Every gang comes with a selection of names and aesthetics, along with unique XP prompts, Gear, Contacts/Rivals and Abilities, allowing you to quickly create a custom and flavourful starting point for your campaign.
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Broker: A deal-maker and hand-shaker. A warm smile and just the right words will get you far in Titan City.
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Bruiser: A deadly close-quarters combatant. Try not to be on the receiving end of their bark or their bite.
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Marksman: A skilled shooter and guerilla warrior. Relentless and resourceful in equal measure.
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Mastermind: A devious thinker and master of lies. The gift of intelligence is one you bear with grace and poise.
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Psionicist: The awakened, wielder of the mind’s might. Their gift marks them, and there are many paying attention.
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Spectre: The unseen hand and the knife in the dark. How do you fight an enemy you can’t even see?
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Technomancer: A technological expert, more machine now than man. The secrets of lost science are yours to command.
Each Gutter comes with their own XP prompts, Gear, Contacts/Rivals and Advancements, along with a couple of tables to create a unique style and personality at breakneck speed. You’ll be blasting at the Enforcers and claiming whole hab-blocks as turf before you know it.
The World of Titan City
The posh nobs and the educated know the city by its technically correct name: Plutogia. Those in the Guts, however, call it by its real name: Titan City.
This city sits under the rule of the Empyreals, who look down from the Spires high above the city, and exert their dominion through the brutal Enforcers, the enigmatic Psi-Squad and the bizarre data-brain technologies of the Technocults.
The Game
The core, smoke-belching engine of Gangs of Titan relies on a simple 2d6 roll for quick and easy resolution, whether for in the heat of battle or tense stealth. With a simple resolution mechanic reminiscent of Powered By The Apocalypse games, players roll 2d6, adding a modifier from their Approach, with a result of a 7-9 providing a partial success and 10+ providing a full success.
The reins are in the players’ hands; push your Gutter to breaking point or rely on specialist knowledge to push the odds into your favour, or use their powerful Advancements to take more direct control.
On a wider level the game will see your Gang navigate the physical and political landscape of Titan City, clawing at every opportunity. This is represented in the three main sections of play:
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The Escalation Phase: the calm before the storm, where the Gang plan their next move.
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The Operation Phase: the action, where the Gutters make their play whether with words, weapons or their wits.
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The Fallout Phase: picking up the pieces, where the Gang take stock of their new situation.
If all goes well, you’ll have grabbed a Claim, a shiny new addition to your burgeoning domain. Succeed or fail you’ll have made waves with the other Factions around; who knew trying to take people’s things would annoy them? Dangers, enemies, and consequences will pile up over time, and sometimes you will need to consider if the benefits of dealing with them are worth the costs.
In addition to the rules, the book contains a veritable trove of additional tools and procedures, such as:
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Rules and guidance on creating the arcane and unfathomable technology of Titan City, in all the many wondrous (and often terrifying) forms it takes.
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An intuitive procedure for generating the sector hex-map of your very own corner of Titan City with depth and juicy morsels of land for the Gutters to gobble up into their petty empire.
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A rogue’s gallery of 36 unique and characterful factions to populate your campaign with, and guidance on how they fight and bicker amongst themselves.
Great pains have been taken to ensure that these rules, rather than a burden, are accessible and useful to Narrators and Players alike, both through their writing and Dai Shugars’ stellar layout. Helpful examples and sidebars help keep things nice and clear, and where possible rules are kept on facing pages to reduce page-flipping.