The premise of the system itself is interesting and encourages curious play. The execution...not so much. A group of friends and I gathered for a 4-session game of this, as the book recommends. We chose to have one DM (myself) rather than rotate as the book recommends. I doubt rotating DM's would have saved it from its faults.

The positives first. The Fugue system created for this adventure is very interesting. My group was most intrigued at the possibility of creating characters from complete scratch (due to amnesia) and having a lot of sway over how their stories intertwined and came together. The tarot element was also fun, although I made the mistake of not using a standard Ryder-Waite deck. Mine was stylized and much more difficult to utilize for flavor on the draws. My mistake. I do wish there was a printable PDF for the cards in the book - they are on-theme and look great.

As for the negatives, the cracks became apparent as I read through the book. I'm not overly familiar with TTRPG writing, having most experience with several PbtA systems and D&D5e. However, the style this book was written it was at best self-indulgent and at worst absolutely horrendous. The author goes on long asides about his process of writing, how he thinks things should turn out, even admits at several points that sections of the game are likely to be boring (see: coyote quest early on). It is also aggressively unkind to its players. I've not come across a book so disdainful towards its players, and so dedicated to "no, but"ing them. It encourages refusing to give characters (or players) ANY information unless absolutely necessary, I assume in an effort to build tension. All it did at my table was cause frustration.

Also, there's this line at the beginning: "That doesn’t give you a licence to make shit up. This isn’t one of those indie games. Improvise by all means, but this is guided storytelling not a freeform bullshit session". As much as it tries to convince you that you're the DM, you're in charge, you can be flexible with the story beats...this is the most on-rails experience I've ever had. I know that many folks like this style of game. My group and I very decidedly don't.

I have plenty of other complaints that would take me hours to put to paper, so I'll just say this: Alas Vegas should have been a novel. It is practically written like one in many instances, which isn't conducive to storytelling gameplay. It's a game that doesn't care about its characters (necessarily, as they can permanently die with just a few unlucky draws in combat), and altogether FAR too much about its story. All in all, a memorable experience if only for how frustrated it left all of us at the end. Would not recommend unless you are VERY into 1960s Vegas aesthetics and don't mind a railroad game.

I just finished running this for a group of four players. Having read the whole thing beforehand (I got to the bit where it suggests having a rotating GM and thought "pull the other one, mate"), there were already a few problem areas jumping out. Actually running through the thing shone an unflattering light on what I consider Alas Vegas' biggest flaws, but also highlighted some surprising strengths. My overall thoughts are that it's kind of a railroady mess, but brings some interesting ideas to the table. If you've got a GM who's willing to jury-rig its components into an actual campaign, and a player group willing to buy into the premise, then it might be worth a look.

Unfortunately, as an actual adventure Alas Vegas is pretty weak, and after some reflection I think most of its problems stem from its insistence on having a rotating GM. It's a fun gimmick, and if you've got a group of friends who'd be game for it I think it's something that could work with a different system. I don't think Alas Vegas is that system. With everything it tries to do, the things required to make it work, and the way it drip-feeds information, I think it'd take a really talented group of GMs to actually make something enjoyable out of the rotation. So, I guess if you're a skilled GM who's friends with three Matt Mercers, give it a shot? I ran this as the only GM.

This adherance to being able to be run by a rotating GM has pretty dire consequences for the adventure. Each session has one or two key beats, a smattering of exposition, and then a lot of scenes that are generally a) boring and b) have predetermined outcomes the players have no control over. Several times the GM is given no instructions on how to run a particular conflict, instead being told "here's the Deus Ex Machina to pull out when you think it's time for the next thing to happen". And that really is the core of Vegas. Go here. Talk to this person. Now it's time for the next thing to happen. Very little the players can do actually affects the outcome of anything - short of refusing a fetch quest or not playing nice with the NPCs, players have very little agency (and the book repeatedly insults players who do try and break out of the railroad). For any other adventure, this would be a glaring flaw. But for Vegas, with its rotating GMs, it becomes a necessity. Nothing the players do matters, because it can't matter if the session needs to end at a predictable place for the next GM to pick up. It's a linear, railroady mess, but it has to be for the rotating-GM gimmick to have any hope of working.

It probably sounds like I'm being a little harsh on Alas Vegas. To its credit, I did enjoy running it a lot! The way Flashbacks work is a fun piece of collaborative storytelling with your players, and it's woven into the game and the story both in a way that's very satisfying (what people who like long words would call ludonarrative assonance, I suppose). Vegas' setting is very fun, and while its twists and reveals aren't that surprising they also aren't strung out for too long. Four sessions feels like exactly the right amount of time for Vegas; my group ended up stretching it out to five, because it took two sessions to get through one act before I realised I needed to start cutting a lot of stuff out to get through the sessions in the 3-4hr time span we had each week. (Luckily, as described above, there's a lot of useless bloat that you can throw out of any given session to streamline it. Unfortunately, if you're doing the rotating-GM thing you can't skip stuff as easily because you don't have the foresight to know what scenes will actually turn out to be important and which are just dead ends.) Four sessions is enough that the final scene (which is extremely good, easily the highlight of the campaign) has satisfying buildup, and also mercifully terminates the campaign before the mystery starts to become too drawn-out and the lightweight system starts running too thin.

If you want to play Vegas exactly as it's laid out in the book, I can't really recommend that. The adventure as written is kind of broken, and rotating GMs is a gimmick that seems fun on paper but, I would imagine, is a chaotic disaster in practice. However, if you're willing to slice the adventure open, pore through its innards, and reconstitute the best bits into something new, there's definitely some moments of brilliance in among the slurry of poor adventure design. I've seen it described as "like playing through an HBO miniseries", and honestly, that (and everything it implies) kind of sums it up. If you want to read more about the setting/content, there's a great write-up archived here; it's got spoilers, but is also the thing that sold me on picking up and running the adventure. Overall, if it's the kind of thing you think you might be interested in, I'd probably recommend picking it up; even if as-is it's a little wonky, there's bound to be something in there you'll get use out of. If you're looking for a more traditional adventure... probably give this one a miss.

Another KS backer who had a long wait, but yes, it was worh it.

An inovative system with a good set of extras.

Don't read the designer's notes if you don't want to see a huge spoiler, mind.

I backed this as a Kickstarter, and it took forever to release--but seriously, it was worth every minute of that wait. The mechanics for character development during play are clever and intrinscally thematic while the story is both compelling and mysterious. Honestly, even if you don't intend to play it, the book is worth it as a read.

I was a kickstarter backer on AV, and though it was a long ride to get here it's absolutely been worth wait, even just to see the process of building it. I'm not hugely creatie myself, and seeing the joys and frustrations of it first hand is always intriguing.

The game... well, it's as unusual as you might expect from the brain behind Baron Munchausen. The idea of a tightly scripted RPG like a DVD box set - an RPG with spoilers! - was what first intrigued me, but we've ended up with a ton of fresh new ideas rolled into this: a cycling GM, a unique resolution mechanic, even a chapter written by a bloody magician. A MAGICIAN. What more could you want?

I'm having to dance around a lot here, mind, as the less you know about this game going in the better. Just... trust that if you can get a handful friends together for a handful of sessions, the kind of friends who would be tickled by having you read the blurb to them, you're not going to regret picking this up.

Non-spoiler review: I was a kickstarter backer and rode the long wait for this game to see the light of day, and it was absolutely worth it. This is one of the best story-driven RPGs I've ever ran. The book recommends swapping GMs for the 4 parts, but I ended up running the whole thing for my group based on how we play (long 10-hour sessions once every three months), and it worked out really well - we're a seasoned group of CoC players and had a blast with this game.

The less the players know about this game going in, the better. There's a big reveal at the end of Act 2 that's best not spoiled, so if you plan on playing in this game, I recommend you don't read the entire book (or any spoilery reviews).

The story / narrative is the game's strongest point. It works perfectly with the fugue system, where you build your characters by having "flashbacks" to remember them doing things - for example, someone might approach you with a knife, and you have a flashback to being a knife fighter - so now "knife fighting" is a skill you have. The flashbacks also serve to help build your character's backstory, and eventually the backstory of the entire group, for a fresh take on the whole idea of bonds and connections.

The conflict resolution system is a modified version of blackjack played with a tarot deck. It works pretty well, especially once you're used to it - the game recommends using the imagery on the cards to help narrate what you're doing, but we ended up just kind of making our own stuff up as we went, and it worked out just fine. The first combat is designed to get everyone up to speed on how it works, but I highly recommend the GM run some mock combats before the first session to famliarize themselves with how it works.

All in all, Alas Vegas is a stunning self-contained game with a heck of a narrative punch. My group ran it in two 10-hour sessions. I highly recommend this game for a unique, one-or-two-or-four-off game that will leave your group talking about it for weeks afterward.

This was a wait, boy was it a wait... BUT SOOO WORTH IT! :D

Beautiful artwork, a fantastic premise and the gameplay seems good (even if I am stuck out in the sticks & have not been able to give it a good run).

Thank you so much for a great addition to my games collection.