Introduction

Welcome to The Centre Cannot Hold, the new role-playing PBM from Undying King Games. This way madness lies...

The Centre Cannot Hold is an open-ended, freeform RPG. That means that there is no particular aim which characters must follow, and no way of winning the game. You set goals for yourself (or not, if you prefer not), and define success or failure in your own terms. You may conceive vast ambitions and strive to realize them, or you may just happily potter about in the lower reaches of the story. There are no deadlines, and you can send in turns as often or as rarely as you wish: and you can choose the extent to which you want to interact with other player characters.

Compared with our other games, The Centre Cannot Hold is most like Ixion's Wheel in its open structure, so it might be worth looking at the example turns for that game if you want to get an idea of the sort of things characters get up to.

One important way in which the two games are unlike, though, is that The Centre Cannot Hold is rooted in our own historical world. The game starts in London, in 1860, and the setting is as authentic as we can make it – there are no significant differences from our own history. This is an important difference between this game and Inferno. Any reading you want to do about the period will be time well spent: when people talk about Victorian England, they usually mean the 1890s, but we've gone for a slightly earlier period, where some of your 'Victorian' assumptions may be inaccurate.

This book

... is not meant to be definitive, all-embracing or even 'finished'. It contains all you need to know to initially create your character, but as you play in the game your understanding of its world will grow, and we'll send you more detail and background on the areas in which you're interested in. So think of this as an organic document which will grow with your character, and not as a complete state-of-the-world.

Contents:

• Introduction
• Creating a Character
• Character Development
• Overview of Victorian London
• Prominent Persons of the Age
• Technology and Transport
• The Culture of the Age
• Treatment and Care of the Insane
• Practicalities of Playing the Game
• Acknowledgements and Bibliography

To play in The Centre Cannot Hold, just send GBP 15.00 to cover your setup and first two turns.
Further turns are GBP 6.00 each. Please make cheques payable to Undying King Games,
or you can pay by credit card using our secure transactions page.
You will receive a copy of the rules, map, and start form.

Like all our games, The Centre Cannot Hold can be played by post or by email, as you find convenient.