Strange Hours

True to its name, this supplement to Mall Madness features encounters and rules for a shopping mall with fantastical elements, and even truly weird and paranormal settings that merely wear the skin of a 'mall'. You should decide upfront roughly what level of weirdness feels right for your story. You can dial it back or ramp it up as you play, and you can always use elements of an Adversity Character without committing to its whole list of Moves, or limiting yourself only to its list of Moves.

OmegaMall™ normally closes at 9PM, a normal mall where normal people go to buy normal goods in normal shops and return home to normal lives. And that includes your MCs and their Clique. Ordinary rules and common sense apply at all times.

Note that 'normal' here needn't exclude "my character is an elf" or "my character is a foxtaur", if elves or foxtaurs exist normally in your setting! 'Normal' refers to the MCs' and other characters' perception of normalcy versus uncanniness. You can set your mall as a spaceport, an open-air fantasy bazaar, or even throw 'realism' to the wind entirely, and all of those will work just fine without this supplement.

Rather, if you want to treat OmegaMall™ as a 'normal' place with something abnormal in it, or an unexpected interplanar destination, or otherwise confront your MCs with things they find strange and fantastical, read on! In keeping with the loose theme of closing time, the ACs that follow will break into four groups for easy organization:

  1. A Life Outside
  2. Closing Midnight
  3. Closing §©:†þ
  4. Closing Never
  5. Omegalopolis™

A Life Outside

Mostly useful if you choose the Closing §©:†þ or Closing Never modes of play, you may find it a helpful roleplay prompt to ask each other what your respective MCs 'have to go home to'--both as obligations and as reprieves.

To start, say for your MC, "I have to get home to my--" (choose one: spouse, hobby, pet, TV, job, bed)

Choose one of these for your own MC, and ask the other player about theirs in detail. Where do they live? What does your MC know about it? Do the others of the Clique know about it, or care? What does the mall and the Clique give them that they don't have at home? What doesn't the mall or Clique give them, that they need to go home for? This supplement never leaves OmegaMall™. Do you want to?

Closing Midnight

These entries each offer Something Weird, but intentionally work best in isolation, with the other ACs of your story coming from Mall Madness, the normal mall. This will preserve the 'veneer of normalcy', of a setting where no one else sees a reason to freak out (yet), unless you give them one (by freaking out). But you might use several or all of these in Closing §©:†þ, along with ACs specific to that mode.

  1. Segues and Setpieces
  2. Store-Specific Specialties
  3. Lacuna Locations
    1. Sandwich Sultan
    2. Stoner's Novelties and Gifts
    3. Flower Shop
    4. Splendor Shots
    5. A Shrine?

Segues and Setpieces

These one-off products, items, obscure corners, or phenomena could appear anywhere in the 'normal' mall, or within an otherwise normal shop. In isolation, they can make for the start of humorous hijinks, or surreal experiences, or even unsettling investigation into something inexplicable. But, even if your MCs don't follow these 'white rabbits', you'll still have fun encountering the uncanny!

When you give any of these to a side-character, just trust your judgment, in general a Status on a side-character works best as an Edge that any MC can apply to any suitable Action on that side-character. The rules listed here assume your MC has used the product themselves (or had it used on them).

Consult Mall Madness' Countdowns for detailed guidance and suggestions. For general orientation, if your MC tries to resist something physical, use Brace; if they try to resist something mental, use Give In. Most effects that wear off over time work by applying a Danger to some Action(s), for a number of consecutive Actions or scenes.

Peculiar Products: strange items or effects one can purchase, and possibly foist off onto someone unsuspecting.

Strange Sightings: unnerving, unsettling, or uncanny phenomena, people, or locations one can pursue, that may lead the MCs away from normalcy.

Store-Specific Specialties

A few venues or encounters in OmegaMall™ lend themselves especially to hiding an abnormal event, effect, or phenomenon, something that may pass unnoticed . . . or that those who do notice might still never mention.

Action Arcade has a very unique version of 'The Tetris Effect' in one of their adult game cabinets. Players find themselves more and more compelled to re-enact the erotic animations and fetish cut-scenes from the game. They earn lots of store credit and merch, but with a Danger of later [reflexes] kicking in unexpectedly, the player unthinkingly reacting like the porn-game main character.

Boutique Bookstore, Mondo Matinee, or possibly Action Arcade, may have a very curious 'cosplayer' appear when the venue has no one else there. Stepping as if from nowhere, a character from the book, film, or game your MC loves (or loves to hate), fully real--and fully aware they come from a work of fiction.

Discreet Dealer has to keep up with new demands, y'know? Premium deluxe exclusive boutique Wizard Weed: the rolling paper of these joints has inscrutable sigils on it, and it smells and tastes ha-ha-funny. Smoking one gives you a temporary Edge for a random one of the following spells, which you can definitely do with magic psychic powers: [Awaken Inanimate], [Charm Monster], [Turn Gender], [Detect Evil Or Horny], [Fireball], [Summon Dire Squirrel]. Okay, maybe you just burned a can of hairspray, but people don't normally run in panic from an ordinary squirrel on the loose, right?

Obscured Offices has some memos on a desk, and nosing through them you find mention of 'recommended procedures', in the event of 'spontaneous activation', 'delta-wave detection', and 'effects on personnel'. This--doesn't actually seem fine or normal. Psychic experiments? And the date says . . . yesterday.

Sensuous Spa can relax you so well, you forget all your troubles--including some you might want to keep. When you enjoy their services, name one thing your MC wants to let go of, and one thing your MC wants to hold onto. Then, make a special roll to Forget: let worries, cares, and a suitable Status slip away. Danger: you forget something important about yourself or something you care about. For extra teeth, this can take the form of losing a permanent Edge your MC has, but it can include anything you'd want to see your MC just stop caring about.

Slack Security keeps quietly conferring with nondescript people in black suits and shades. You can make out questions about 'sightings', and asking about descriptions, and 'ensuring cooperation'. You probably should stay away, and keep a sharp eye out yourself . . .

Tenacious Tunes has a recording booth in the back, everyone knows that. But most don't know that if you ask to make a 'special recording', you can record your own obsessions, fixations, attractions, or sensations. Only genuine performances work, but for anyone hearing the recording, it makes a powerful impression--whether they like it or not.

Closing Time seems more nebulous than usual. Does anyone else notice the lights hissing and sputtering? It seems like only over you, when you look back behind you, the recessed bulbs look normal. You keep seeing silhouettes and and edges of a cat--the same cat?--all through the parking-lot. And when you reach your car, you only now notice signs insisting on reverse parking. And your car sits reversed in the spot--with a weird rightward lean. You--probably don't need to worry. Right?

Lacuna Locations

You might notice a few shops that you hadn't seen before. But when did these stores open? What do they even sell? And . . . did they replace something? Do you remember anything that you don't see?

Sandwich Sultan

You didn't know the mall ever had one, but you found it through a service doorway in the halls of the administrative offices, the exterior walled off from the rest of the mall. Somehow you never noticed it out there, and as the admin hallways have such a convoluted layout, you couldn't guess where in the 'public' mall you would even come out, if you could get through the door, which you can't for the--it looks like drywall?--blocking the way. But the place looks completely untouched as if it just closed for the day after cleanup . . .

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Stoner's Novelties and Gifts

Well, you've heard of this, but didn't know the mall had one here. Lots of weird motorized spinning things, blacklight posters, 'water pipes' definitely intended for 'tobacco', 3D holographic plates . . . really, really entrancing, really . . .

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Flower Shop

Really, the sign just says 'Flower Shop', but they do have a wide range of flowers on display. Yet somehow, no roses, or lilacs, or orchids. Instead, a lot of gorgeous species you can't remember ever seeing before. They smell lovely, too . . .

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Splendor Shots

You knew the mall had one of these, but never visited till now. With a range of backdrops, props, and costumes, they can stage most any kind of portrait or tableau you could want, but check the effects closely. They don't look very realistic--at first.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

A Shrine?

Or some kind of chapel? It looks like barely a small alcove, enough room for a few people to stand together inside without crowding, as if from under the rain. You can't tell what religion, if any, but it still somehow seems 'sacred'.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Closing §©:†þ

These Adversity Characters connect to each other, in a way that Closing Midnight ACs don't. No one else sees a reason to freak out, but you might. Many of these ACs or combinations of ACs will make it difficult to escape leave the mall, but why would you want to? Just for a change of pace though, you might round things out with some unaltered ACs from 'Closing 9PM', the normal Mall Madness, though these stores, events, or people might pose the most risk of all: why would this one thing seem normal in such a surreal place?

  1. Corners and Crossings
  2. Weird Wares
  3. Eerie Encounters
  4. Familiarly Foreign
    1. Your Clique's Cloister
    2. Boozehound's Bar
    3. The Exclusive Exhibit
    4. Flashy Fashion
    5. Industrial Ink
    6. Quixotic Quisine
    7. Workout Warehouse
    8. Closing Time
  5. Suspicious Storefronts
    1. Crystal Cove
    2. MugenMart
    3. Party Province
    4. Psomgaram
    5. Unnatural Wonders

Corners and Crossings

Your MCs came from a 'normal' world, at least passingly like our own, and probably thought they'd entered a normal mall they've frequented in the past. If you want to shake the MCs of this misconception, use any of these, as ideas to let your MCs, in-character, realize they've officially left Kansas. And you might also use a similar transition if the MCs find a way away from surreality, and back into (or at least toward) normalcy.

Weird Wares

Buyer beware the vast variety of paranormal products and supernatural services you can find just lying around, for sale at kiosk carts and vending machines and stranger points of sale besides. While you might enjoy some of these products yourself, for others, you might rather give than receive. For a refresher, see the advice for the Closing Midnight Segues and Setpieces on handling these in the rules.

Eerie Encounters

Where Corners and Crossings lets your MCs know they've entered somewhere strange, these freaky phenomena and inexplicable incidents give your MCs something strange to do. Consider these as addenda to Plaza Parade atop the mundane Moves from Mall Madness, though they may just as easily occur in other locations. And definitely do take the mundane locations' Moves for a weird ride.

The Ancient and Mystical Order of the Ruby Chalice claims to know the secrets of history, destiny, the universe, the arcane, personal growth, and everything They don't want you to know. And the representative in the strange yet stylish embroidered tunic shows a really professional business card with their rank on it. You might want to get them to tell you a little more first, before paying up to sit in on the seminar starting very soon. Or, for motivated initiates, they can waive the fee . . .

Construction Under Way nearly blocking off an arcade, piled up reddish-brown clay and dirt, beside a deep, neat rectangular hole cut into the polished tile floor. They really should have some kind of safety barrier around it. Someone has recently dug a tunnel in each direction, and piled it all up in that huge clay mound on the edge of the pit. But you don't see any rope or ladder, or anyone in the pit now . . .

The Directory seems more like the misdirectory, the more you look at it the less sense the layout makes--you can always spot something familiar, but not where you'd think, and always next to something you don't remember. But trying to get your bearings even on the map itself, you finally see 'You Are Her'. Not--'here'? But sure enough, when you look at yourself, you've become 'her'. Besides how that happened, you should probably figure out anything about 'her', besides what she looks like, you know that much already. At least any social Statuses you had stop applying as long as you stay 'her'!

Disassembling Dolls seem to peek through the meandering crowds, or the same doll? Never in the same place twice, and it seems like whenever you look for it, you see it in tidy dismantled pieces--but still wearing that really awesome outfit. One of the cooler clothing stores must use it for advertising. If only you could figure out where it came from--or why it keeps falling apart. Or how it keeps reassembling when you can't see.

Escherlators cris-cross above the main plaza, sometimes pivoting like a turnstile to a different mezzanine or in a different direction, shoppers nonchalantly riding them sideways and upside-down. If you could figure out how to reach one, and then how to stand sideways, you could see what those really wild-looking shops have for sale--or you could lose someone on your trail. But if you don't already have anything helpful for non-Euclidean navigation, you'll get a Status of [dislocated] until you can figure out where you've ended up in relation to anywhere else.

The Fountain Pool seems--a lot bigger than reasonable, big enough that no one has cleaned up or removed the several . . . blow-up dolls? Flat, deflated, but they look like blow-up dolls, drifting placidly on the rippling surface. You don't see any coins in the pool, even, just these deflated inflatables, drifting aimlessly, as if watching the skylights--wait, what skylights--?

Succulent Trees in massive terra-cotta pots seem to watch from the corners of the arcades and intersections, wide waxy-green stalks seeming more like graceful life-size statues than any tree or bush or fern. And with smooth beckoning and suspiciously-placed limbs and 'stalks', and fragrant floral pitcher-like heads, you might think of doing more than just smelling the flowers. Any MC who successfully Sneaks to fertilize (or get fertilized by) the alluring arboretum will enjoy three scenes of [arresting aroma], others unable to think of anything but your fresh fragrance while you use this Edge (and replacing any smell-adjacent Status you might have). But increase a Mall-wide Countdown ('Buying Time', hits at three failures) toward 'Perambulating Plants', the fertilized flowers growing (and growing feisty), eventually pulling up roots with redecorating ideas of their own.

Sympathetic Screens seem to follow you everywhere: an indistinct figure, almost a silhouette, leans into frame on the various OmegaVision™ monitors and storefront screens, seamlessly superimposing over stock footage, advertisements, or animations. If you have any negative emotional Statuses, it beckons closer--but how could you get close enough to hear?

Your Rival Clique seems . . . 'normal'? They walk and talk with each other, and turn to sneer at you, and you can't tell at a glance if they always dressed like that, or if they have any . . . weird new additions--or subtractions. But they also don't seem to notice anything amiss. Don't they see? Well, if not, you don't need to 'enlighten' them just yet. You definitely could turn this to your advantage, and it definitely won't go wrong.

Familiarly Foreign

You'll see some storefront signs you recognize, but the interior, the merchandise, and the staff, not so much. And the venue names now seem only abstractly, or even ironically related to the corporate-approved business model you've learned to know and trust or tolerate. The shape seems deceptively familiar, but the content not at all what you expected. Use these to prolong your MCs' uncertainty about OmegaMall™'s (un)reality, giving them somewhere they can mistake for 'normal', or at least, normal enough to debate where they've arrived and what's happened to them.

Your Clique's Cloister

It doesn't seem quite like yours, anymore. Not only do you not recognize the staff today, you don't quite recognize the posters, or the displays, or the usually-familiar music playing. But the clerk still lets you loiter as long as you like. Do they recognize you?

Boozehound's Bar

They've done away with Ladies' Night (boo!), instead offering complimentary Nookies and free Bitch Beers (three per patron) (yay!). They still serve the crowd favorites at normal price, Broskis, Mellow Malt, Wicked Whiskey, and all the rest--just make sure you pay your tab before you leave.

The Exclusive Exhibit

This current setup uses signage and posters in a language you can't easily place, festooned around a display of--something impressive. Impressive and inscrutable. Much more approachable, the booth-babe (or booth-boy? you can't tell exactly--) looks exceptionally tarted-up for just-barely-permissible appeal, wearing a shiny, brightly-colored, and highly-revealing outfit that fits their costume. You can't tell if they should look like a fantasy race or a sci-fi alien, not even when they step fully into your personal space, jabbering excitedly and incomprehensibly.

Flashy Fashion

It seems to have expanded, not just floor-space, but height as well. It looks like it should stretch into a whole additional floor above, the headroom filled with gleaming chandeliers and light fixtures, and the 'organic' aisle-less shopping-floor punctuated regularly with opulent marble columns, the store echoing with regality and grandiosity.

Industrial Ink

The shop used to have a sterile look to its for-show sleaziness. Now . . . the grunge looks a lot more sincere. The tattoo catalog looks a lot more detailed, realistic, explicit, and surreal, the piercings not quite like any you've ever seen, and the artist has an odd, unblinking gleam in their eye. But they still have plenty of bondage gear, fetish outfits, and they still pay for 'photo shoots' in the back--much more brazenly now, 'quick cash for quick shots, in partnership with Splendor Shots' on a placard at the counter. Hey, you've seen them around--

Quixotic Quisine

They have drastically changed their formal(?) dress-code, as well as their menu, and even their storefront: now just a forbidding wall of tinted, sound-proof glass, that only dimly hints at the decadence of the diners within, and half as much reflects the unworthies without. But even standing outside, watching patrons enter, one can't miss that they obviously have wealth. And that only they get a seat at the table.

Workout Warehouse

It seems like they've renovated: the front facing the arcade now sports heavy stone-textured pillars, like marble columns, with the interior posts featuring upturned spotlights almost like braziers. The walls now show mythic-looking figures, standing floor-to-ceiling, sculpted-looking bodies lit and shaded in bright fuchsia and dark teal, ambiguously but heroically posed. And the equipment--just where exactly does that rubber post go? And what do you do with that rubber-ringed hole?

Closing Time

. . . Should have chimed by now, right? How long since you got here? How long since you checked a clock, what time does it say? How long does it feel? And--why can't you find the parking-lot exit? This replaces the mundane Closing Time AC, for obvious reasons. Not to say your MCs cannot leave the mall, but--it might take some doing, and this mall never truly closes . . . you hope.

These Moves all have to presume your Clique surviving some amount of 'adventure' prior to leaving (or failing to). Use these as examples: callbacks, deferred costs, unforeseen consequences, cascading combinations of chaos that your MCs have tried to stay ahead of, or that has unfolded around them just out of sight. If part or all of a Move doesn't match what your Clique has seen, done, or had done to them, see if a similar format fits. Like the mundane Closing Time, these Moves aim to waylay, delay, dissuade, and distract your MCs from actually leaving. Unlike Closing Time, MCs have no assurance of succeeding. Instead, like Corners and Crossings, these can tell your MCs, in-character, that they won't leave that easily. For best dramatic effect, like a mirror of A Life Outside, you can use these as reasons to stop your MCs from leaving at all.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Suspicious Storefronts

Though seemingly familiar, or at least plausible, you haven't seen these stores and businesses before--ever. Under the superficial veneer of 'this looks like a store that sells things for money', you'll quickly find a very different mission statement at work. Of course, they still do charge money, but they may take from you more than that.

Crystal Cove

While Workout Warehouse can strengthen you, and Sensuous Spa can beautify you, this serene and peaceful retreat can purify you. With inspirational readings, meditation and visualization, and the latest in ancient energy healing practices, expert spiritual consultants will guide your journey to your maximum potential. Potential for what, you'll have to find out.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

MugenMart

It seems like some kind of bodega or convenience store. Don't other countries sometimes do that, putting small groceries or other shops inside a mall? The double-doors even slide apart automatically as you walk up, wafting something oddly like seasonings and a little like transmission fluid. The products on the shelves all have vivid colors, the lighting looks stark, but something feels closed-in and dim. The aisles packed too full and too close and not quite aligned, so you can't see across the small(?) store. But you do see quite a selection here . . .

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Party Province

Not merely Party Parish anymore, you might first think to skip this store, not having anywhere to host a party--except they offer to book a party-time, any time! The cheap costumes might look a penny worse than their shockingly low price-tags, but if you need a new outfit in a hurry, these will technically do! But maybe stand clear of the display black-lights . . .

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Psomgaram

At least, you think it says that. Whenever you try to discern the lettering on the neon sign, they don't quite look like letters. Nor can you decipher what wares they have on display in the front window. You can see them clearly alright, you just can't understand them: some look like implements for a hooved animal to use, some look like tasteful outfits for the wrong number of limbs, one section on display looks like a dentistry kit with a bonus oil-can and more wrenches and screwdrivers than a dentist should have. The shoppers--look like the kinds of people, or things, that should shop here.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Unnatural Wonders

Wait, Unnatural--but you've seen enough of OmegaMall™ by now to know that it doesn't exist only in the world you came from, or follow the rules you know. Still, the store looks bright, clean, pristine, and promises products sampled from all spirit-walks: essential meditation accessories, proven articles of faith, genuine imitation relics, and most of all, the atmosphere of true spiritual union, just for you!

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Closing Never

Promises of prosperity, even delusions of deliverance, gave way to austerity, brutality, and collapse without conclusion. These Adversity Characters comprise a place that your MC probably wants to leave, as soon as they can find a way. You can soften the tone by including some Closing §©:†þ entries, but anything as seemingly normal as 'Closing 9PM' will stand out as disturbingly out of place, as you'll likely soon see. This maddening mall uses a 'palette' of industrial rust, concrete, and blood, but feel free to use a different aesthetic. For instance, overgrown vines and wood, surgical-theater sterility, hand-chiseled stone and scooped mud, or elaborate embroidered tapestry for walls, draping in the dark.

This mode of play makes heavy use of the threat or delivery of physical danger and violence to your MCs, who (by default at least) have basically no way to answer, with only their normal socially-focused Actions. The Abject Arcades replaces the Plaza Parade, and introduces a simple health mechanic that can take an MC out of commission (in need of rescue, by default, or permanently, if that suits your interests).

In particular, your MCs will likely need to Brace or Give In quite often. In 'Closing 9PM', the Danger of 'getting incapacitated' would make for either a comedic moment to draw on someone's face, or a beat of character drama, with an MC in need of caretaking or protection (or ripe for ruthless exploitation). Here, the stakes run far higher, with that frequent threat of violence, and not just from monsters.

To keep your MCs from getting dragged offscreen too often, you have the following option when you Brace and become incapacitated: describe how your character Gives In to their powerlessness, aggressor, or other circumstances, with a Danger of 'losing your self-image', and in particular, gaining a Status like [starting to like it], [getting ideas], [payback], or a similar burgeoning corrupted desire or appetite.

If your MC succeeds at Giving In, they manage enough composure (steadying their breath, going limp, unclenching) to recover from 'incapacitated' quickly enough that nothing else does them in before they can get out of immediate danger. And if the Danger comes true, your MC acquires one of these corrupting Statuses, which will tempt them toward more dangerous or more perverse acts. Your MC can try to dispel it, such as putting it out of their mind in safety, facing a shock that makes them reconsider what they might become, or even indulging to satisfy their curiosity. Use these as prompts to make your MC confront themselves, possibly even with a Countdown, if they encounter the same unwanted, uncomfortable temptations again.

This mode of play also offers MCs a few ways to fight off and escape from monsters, monstrous humans, and humans who want to do monstrous things. You might even consider bringing in venues like the Closing §©:†þ Party Province and Workout Warehouse, or at least the options they offer for disabling threats and fending off things that get in your face.

And none of this makes your default, socially-focused Actions obsolete--if anything, you need them all the more . . . and that includes putting them to work on even those physically threatening creatures. If you can't talk your way out of a confrontation, you could work your way out of getting attacked--or at least, into a different kind of 'attack' . . .

  1. Shadows and Scratches
  2. Scary Staff
  3. Corrupted Cliques
  4. Preferred Payment
  5. Bad Goods
  6. Vicious Venues
    1. Abject Arcades
    2. Blighted Bookstore
    3. Corroded Commons
    4. Cultic Cove
    5. Frightful Food-Court
    6. Gruesome Garage
    7. Lethal Loading-Dock
    8. Overhanging Offices
    9. Sacrilegious Spa
  7. Deeper Departments
    1. Build-a-Babe
    2. Control Computers
    3. The Harder Image
    4. Vicarious Video
  8. Consuming Creatures

Shadows and Scratches

If your MCs intended to enter a 'normal' mall, but found themselves in Closing §©:†þ, you can likely use very hard and jarring descents into Closing Never. Conversely, if your MCs ventured into a mall they thought abandoned, or if you want them in the 'normal' mall, only to turn a corner they can't come back from, you might get more out of slower revelations, leaning more on building anxiety and the realization unfolding.

The Arcade narrows suddenly, the lights dim and flickering, the shops much smaller, where they don't have the roll-down barriers crookedly lowered. You turn left past an eyewear store, left past a tiny signless clothing store, left past a Sandwich Sultan--three lefts? Behind you, the corner only turns left. It smells like rain and rust.

The Dark Elevator stands open, when the Escherlators won't cooperate, and you can't find a normal stairwell, and--have you even seen any other actual elevators around? No one enters for as long as you watch, no button panel sits outside the open doorway, and no lights show inside. But you have to--

The Floor creaks and squeaks--somehow without noticing, you've left behind the polished faux-marble tile. Now the arcade stretches out with rusted metal grating, tight thin metal slots you could squeeze a pinkie through, gleaming burnished by heavy use, but rusted in those slots. Only just here have the bolts and rivets popped loose enough that the panels of grating can slide and even rattle under your footsteps. You can see only darkness below.

The Menacing Mannequin looks rougher, all of a sudden. Now only appearing in curiously dark corners, on the far side of an oblivious bustle of patrons, obscuring it just long enough to lose sight of it. And where before, you could find it disassembled sometimes, only to reappear, reassembled somewhere else, now every place it disappears from, you see only smeared, smudgey, gritty stains. And when you do see it, it always has its non-face turned toward you, specifically.

The Revolver gleams dully on the dingy floor, unnoticed, under faltering overhead lights. No one passing by seems to see it, much less pay it any mind. The arcade hall stretches past it, unlit, even--looking darker than it should from the light shed by the rest of the arcade and plaza, dingier, sootier. The gun feels heavy--authentic, not a toy or prop. And only empty casings in the chambers, and a burnt scent like matches.

The Shops look long-abandoned here, not just 'closed', but forgotten. Every horizontal surface shows a layer of dark, sooty dust. Every vertical surface has streaks of rust--at least, you hope, but some of it looks more . . . fluid. And every noticeable basin or depression, including the dips in the uneven floor, holds dark, murky water, or some kind of pooled liquid. But that doesn't explain the signs: all faded or defaced, but one shows a distant high-angle shot of a lone figure in a hall, 'Be Seen'; a sexy model from behind, almost a silhouette against rough concrete, face to the wall and wrists overhead and out of frame, 'Be Desired'; a blurry face behind chainlink fencing, 'Be Here Forever'.

Your Front Door? Instead of even a tiny stall of a shop, simply nested between a Sandal Closet and a defaced storefront, you find your very own front door to your house. You don't need your key, the doorknob looks like something ripped it off, and the door swings in--but you don't see your living-room. You see your childhood bedroom. As clean as you ever left it, maybe even cleaner, with the toys and posters you half-remember, all intact. But it does lack one thing: any windows, or any door besides this one.

Scary Staff

While certain standard storefronts and venues from 'Closing 9PM' may not offer you much for this horror-themed mode of play, others might offer a lot with an appropriate change of tone and palette. And you can most easily do that by simply changing the other patrons, staff, shopkeeps, and managers.

Specifically, when first entering one of these corrupted venues, if the staff lacks a real description or suggestions in the normal version, roll on this table to find out who (or what) stands behind the counter or in the aisles, and add their Moves to the Adversity Character for the store or encounter:

  1. Abandoned
  2. Panicked
  3. Manic
  4. Bound
  5. Warped
  6. Brute

Some locations such as the later Abject Arcades, Corroded Commons, and Overhanging Offices don't fit the motif of a store, and use an additional Move marked with a plus or a minus. You can use these marked Moves elsewhere, but they primarily suit either open expanses, or small enclosures, without anything like 'merchandise'.

Abandoned: you don't see anyone here to tend the shop, take payment, or--stop you from taking goods. But you do see goods on the shelves still, so why hasn't anyone cleaned the place out by now? You also see a large slot in the counter, possibly for payment.

Panicked: they cling to a pretense of normalcy so hard, so delusionally, that they might have no other way to survive. Like an abused child who can't question their parent's incoherent and conflicting rules and whims, they insist on (what they understand of) the 'rules' of this place. While they won't initiate any aggression, they might get desperate if you break the 'rules', or their facade.

Manic: they know full and well the nature of this place, or think they do, and they would never leave. They might act with aggression, in service to what they think they serve . . . But, however tenuously, they still serve you, the customer! As long as you can pay.

Bound: someone, or something, has bound this person(?) in place. You can't quite tell if they ever resembled you, in any meaningful way, but their captor has restrained them in a severe, vulnerable, provocative, and alluring manner. And it bound them here for a reason, one you probably don't want to find out. Whether they would attack you, or something else, they have a--mechanism, obscene and lurid, that looks connected to the cash funnel in the top of the counter. Only one way to find out what it does.

Warped: quite vocal, when they want to talk, something clearly changed them into--this, seeming to slither from under the counter, or crawl spider-like along the walls and ceiling, completely silent as they follow, except to chime in with a chuckle at your choice, whispered insistence on something else, or a faint gasp at what you pick, and always ending every remark or answer to you with a suspicious laughing cough.

Brute: skulking and shadowed, possibly restrained or possibly only waiting, intimidating, but for now just crouching and watching. It lets you examine the wares and goods, but doesn't lose sight of you in the aisles, stalking and rumbling. Better not find out if it knows how to count.

The shopkeeps and staff of Closing Midnight and Closing §©:†þ already feature creepy vibes, feel free to exaggerate and twist these further should you encounter them in Closing Never. But pick or roll from this table to quickly and easily give stores a disturbing tone, and narrative nudges and threads you can string up throughout the maul mall.

This supplement intends you to soak in the aesthetics, think about the themes, and invent your own horny horrors, filling the mall with abominations that appeal to you, with just the right grotesque and fetishistic notes to terrify and titilate. So read through the Adversity Characters that follow, imagine the stores and locations, picture your lurking wet-nightmare there: prowling predators, sneaking seducers, erotic enforcers, creatures not just to threaten or arouse, but to strengthen the setting. But if you draw a blank, especially in a pinch as the narrating player, see Consuming Creatures for some suggested monsters with descriptions and worked-out rules and guidance for use.

And to address side-characters in general, human and otherwise, keep Statuses firmly in mind for side-characters as well. In Closing Never, more than the other modes of play, you might find it sensible or necessary to think of a side-character as acquiring, or always having, some Status that a product or item or Action might affect. Normally, as introduced all the way up in Closing Midnight, a side-character's Status works best as an Edge any MC can use on their Actions. Here, you may need to treat the Status as actually belonging to the side-character. Keep it simple and sensible, try not to dwell too long, and in a rush any side-character might reasonably have [frightened], [hungry], [horny], [enraged], [grotesque], and [arousing], as a minimum palette, and might inflict anything like [bruised], [bloodied], [hunted], [horny], [drained], or [filled] as Statuses on your MCs.

Furthermore, it might bear restating, Countdowns work for much more than simply reflecting an MC's state while under some progressive effect. For recurring side-characters, groups, or locations, Countdowns can reflect the acts and Actions of MCs, on a person place or thing that they want to wear down, persuade, degrade, or repurpose, across multiple scenes or encounters. Reinforcing a hideout, earning the trust of a Clique, even making an ally of a Brute, should all probably take more than a few hasty Actions--but no reason you can't do them. Just consider the milestones of what 'progress' (or regress) looks like, and think of what it would take to advance past each.

Corrupted Cliques

If the otherworld of Closing Never opened for business long enough ago, other unlucky, wayward, or misguided 'patrons' may have ended up here long before your MCs. Or, if a big enough group of patrons finds themselves locked in with you, they may fracture into factions such as these, to replace the usual, more superficial Cliques. After all, as much as you might hate the Jocks, you might really want one in front of you where you're going . . .

Puritans: they've settled on a supernatural explanation for the mall, and that they want no part of it. They agree on precious little else. As a Hell, the mall resembles none they've believed in before; as an apocalypse descended on the 'real' world, even less so. And they argue about whether some god has punished them, or instead presented a grim rebuke toward redemption. But they all agree that they must avoid corruption and the corrupted, and when they decide one of their number has become corrupted, they don't always settle for shunning the evildoer. If you can get and keep their good graces, they treat their own kindly and they never take risks. But they'll quickly turn on their own for anything they imagine as 'impurity', or anything violating 'tradition'. And as to what they might (have you) do:

Devotees: unlike the Puritans, they see the corrupted mall as the gateway to paradise, or even paradise itself. They recognize the dangers, but fixate on the opportunities and rewards, probably too much. They naturally have the widest knowledge of where to find things and what things do, but they may well 'volunteer' you to the mall or things in it, as tribute to gain the favor of whatever they believe presides over the mall, or simply to learn more. You might keep that (and yourself) off the menu if you:

Survivors: they don't know how or why they've ended up here, and care even less. They only want to leave, and that means living long enough to leave. They'll make use of whatever they can with surprising resourcefulness, and they've learned and fortified the least dangerous places for themselves. They can hold their own against some of the creatures and dangers, but if you join them, make sure you have good track shoes on. They don't have to outrun the monsters, if they can outrun you. But a few things might motivate them to wait up for you when you need it:

Allying with any of these Cliques will impose some serious restrictions on what you can do without losing their favor, as well as what they'll expect you to do whether you like it or not. All of them have suffered understandable trauma, possibly much worse than your MCs have (so far), and as a result, all of them handle it badly. They see you as potential faithful to recruit against evil, a blight to purge, an asset to their practical concerns, or a potential sacrifice if you don't make yourself useful.

The mall might have only one or two of these Cliques, and still feature tense negotiations, hostilities, or outright conflict. With all three, you can 'shop around', as each have benefits, resources, and aid to offer, along with the costs. Sadly, none of them have the one thing you probably need the most, and they won't likely get it either . . .

Preferred Payment

Given the frequent life-or-death nature of many likely scenarios and dilemmas in this mode of play, most venues 'sell' products or services by removing helpful Statuses from MCs, or imposing harmful ones, or simply hiding the goods behind some significant risk or harm to the MCs, before they can get something they want. A few venues or encounters may barter tangible goods, or reward a favor by the MCs.

But a few venues listed here, and many you might want to drag in from Closing §©:†þ, Closing Midnight, or even 'Closing 9PM', give little suggestion for what or how an MC might pay for whatever a shop or seller offers, and MCs would likely run out of cash quite quickly. To solve this, consider the 'normal' venues that do offer to pay MCs:

And always, try to keep in mind the original guidelines for money in general: only track as closely as you have fun with, a quest for cash should usually amount to "enough to get the thing I need", or "just X more and I can pay for--", rather than nickels and dimes. And on that note, given the uncanny and otherworldly nature of Closing Never, the coin of the realm might not at all resemble the legal tender the MCs would expect . . .

Bad Goods

You might find these just lying around, perhaps dropped in a hurry by someone who needed them, or left somewhere hard to reach when you need them most. Then again, if you get what you don't pay for, you might not want it--at least, not for yourself . . .

BBF Locket: "always have something to remember them by", promises the grimy cardboard slip. 'Brain Buddies Forever' will give you an inversion of someone else's mental Statuses, and vice versa, lasting as long as either party wears one of the half-brain pendants. After snapping the pendant in half, new Statuses work normally, not copied or inverted to either party.

Crooked Crowbar: you've only seen one of these, and very hard and dangerous to get. But as long as you hold it, you can do a new trick:

Fluorescent Fungus grows behind immovable crates, under inconvenient shelves, atop loudly squeaky ducts, and generally out of reach. But munching one will let you see everything in the dark--as well as seeing the [unreal] as a Danger on every Action for the rest of the scene. Still beats them seeing you.

Gabstoppers taste like a sugar-rush and can survive a nuclear holocaust, but don't fill your mouth while you talk: eating one will make you [unintelligible] for the rest of the scene. Meaning no one will understand "no", but you also won't give up anything to a Sneak against you, or other efforts to understand you or figure out your secrets. And you can always 'share' one with someone else. And while no one can understand the gibberish, things might work differently . . .

Jawstretchers on the other hand don't fill your mouth. Instead the expanding gummy ring will open it, wide, but at least the localized [rubbery] effect makes you immune to any strain or stretching there for the rest of the scene. Venus Candies refuses any responsibility for insertion into other orifices, but can't stop you from trying in a pinch.

Metamorphine reverts all physical changes and applicable Statuses for one scene, but each dose increases a Countdown: (fine), [flaky], [shaky], [falling apart], at the last stage pieces of you simply detach, and can just get lost. You probably should find a way to reverse this Countdown before taking any. Maybe one of the metamorfiends might have a clue?

Toolbox: left in a hurry by some unlucky maintenance worker, this [bulky] box has a few useful things amid the disorganized and rusted crap. Specifically, three uses of an Edge to any Action involving jerry-rigging, fixing, modifying, or carefully breaking anything mechanical or electrical.

Wild Windbreaker: waterproof to keep off--water and other things, and that famous athlete said it makes you eighteen percent faster! Fast enough to let you:

And if you have a hard time finding these, you still can find the Weird Wares of Closing §©:†þ . . . and you might find some very different ways to use them here. If you get creative, a packet of Instalose might go a long way, and a tiny tube of Spunktan Lotion might get you out of some tight spots . . .

Vicious Venues

Here you'll find the remnants or reflections of OmegaMall™, recognizable enough to let you know that a piece of Kansas has come with you. But, that might give precious little comfort, if what's happened to them reflects what might happen to you. Still, if you sift through the scraps, you might find something you need--or hints of how to leave.

You can use any standard store with the help of the Scary Staff table and some creative re-reading, and that goes for these venues too. But these venues get a special treatment in addition to that. You still should use the Scary Staff table if a Move suggests interacting with a person, whether staff or customer, though it may often make more sense to choose one rather than rolling, and several of the following ACs give an explicit person (or non-person) for you to deal with.

Abject Arcades

Here you can most clearly see decadence decayed, futures foreclosed, promises broken. Adjoining and connecting every major part of the normal mall, at least you don't see a literal beating heart. So far. Open and expansive enough that you can feel a brackish breeze of dank cold metal mingled with hot humid--something, the faltering lighting and haphazard wreckage still give plenty of places to hide--and not just for you. You'll have to pass through here a lot, whether you want to or not. Best to stay unseen. The displays . . . don't bode well.

You'll have to cross the Plaza Arcades anytime an AC or side-character says to go 'across the mall', and probably no more than three or four venues should share the same Arcade wing branching from the plaza. Accordingly, the first time you visit an Arcade, before even entering a venue, you should roll for Scary Staff to give you someone or something to interrupt you on the way. You probably should roll again for any wing you haven't visited in awhile, as things may have changed.

For the plaza itself, each time an MC gets the benefit of a Soft Move, cross it off. Do not cross off Hard Moves without taking some Action and succeeding, to resolve whatever problem the Hard Move presents, or stems from.

The narrating player should make a note if they deem you have any Status for trauma, injury, deprivation, or anything similar, before you enter the Plaza. If so, then if you fail at any Actions in the plaza, when you leave it start or increase a [fatigued] Status Countdown:

(fine)   [tired]   [exhausted]   [crawling]

This represents all accumulated bruises, hunger, sleep deprivation, caked-on fluids, infestation, drug-like after-effects, and everything else the mall has thrown at you since you last crossed the plaza through the Arcades. When your MC reaches [crawling], you can no longer take any Actions on your own, and your MC will give in to the 'mercy' of the first person, creature, or pitfall you would have to take Action against. (This might not kill your MC, but might make a dramatic Fade To Black for them.)

While perverse appetites or awakened interests from Giving In represent a kind of trauma, if your MC only has such a Status, and not a more blunt Status from Bracing or other harm, the narrating player should show a little lenience, asking if this Status would really put your MC closer to [crawling]. It very well could (especially if the Status itself suggests so), but if it wouldn't, the narrating player shouldn't count it against your MC as they pass through the Arcades. You already paid a price to keep your MC on their feet, and they should make sure that price shows in a fun way. And any amount of harmful Statuses counts the same as a single Status for injury or delirium or mental trauma, for the purpose of entering the Arcades and failing an Action.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Optional: if you still have your Clique's Queen Bee with you, they might end up fixated or--affixed here in the plaza, rather than risking their life, sanity, or humanity with your MCs. As they somehow negotiate, or negotiate with the hazards and creatures in the Arcades, they may become increasingly attuned to, aligned with, or one of the mall creatures, possibly even anchoring in place. But this doesn't make them any less your Queen Bee, and they may well persist in conniving, cajoling, browbeating, and otherwise bossing-around. And while they might not have a way to enforce their will on your MCs when you leave the plaza, if they become sufficiently monstrous, they might still pose a serious threat if you don't placate them and fulfil their increasingly strange and disturbing side-quests.

Blighted Bookstore

Knowledge only lasts as long as someone preserves it, and disseminates it. The storefront stands open like a crooked-toothed mouth, the pale shelves pockmarked with gaps, and many of the remaining titles molded, glued shut, or half-dissolved with something dripping from the ceiling. The floor has a thick cake of dark paste--the disintegrated books piled and smeared around. So what can you find here?

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Corroded Commons

Safe, serene, scenic socialization has no place here, even brute pragmatism and transactional tolerance takes luck and work. The enclosed quad no longer even resembles a courtyard, much less reminiscent of a park. The distant walls, pockmarked with irregular holes, burrows, and rusted bolted plates, stretch far out of view, wide and tall, reaching up into blackness and enclosing a space too big to see across. Heavy, listing posts host dull, flickering, ruddy spotlights. These canted columns support cables and chains cris-crossing the commons, but don't do so well for the floor, made of rough rusted diamond-stamped plates and creaking metal grates, some with loose bolts sloping down into the dark like waiting mouths.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Optional: plunges into a lightless abyss, as featured here and other ACs, should probably not result in a Game Over for an MC. It should result in serious problems, with lasting consequences, for which the MC had no way to prepare, but it also shouldn't result in splitting your story, such that the other MC(s) have to simply wait out scenes that the 'lost' MC struggles through.

On the other hand, if you want to start over fresh with a new MC, dropping your current one into the void certainly would do the trick, and you can always do narration duties and give suggestions while you create a new MC.

Cultic Cove

Beware anyone offering The Truth™, especially if they charge for it. The rusted joints of the cargo container creak, and sand pours over an exposed and damaged mechanism of some sort, the sound of the sifting grains echoing in corrugated walls. Uneven sheet-metal shelves sit on bolted struts affixed to makeshift dividers, sections decoratively labeled '[Imbue]', '[Purge]', '[Manifest]', storing jars, bottles, and bowls of subtances, and displaying uncomfortably suggestive figurines--or devices. A figure emerges, clad in a clinging plastic sash that would pass for 'revealing' even without the translucent material. They usher you into an embrace and draw you into the scent of salt, rust, and oil: "welcome, seeker, let the soothing sound of the sand, and the peaceful darkness put you at ease, the world is what you create with your beliefs, so long as you believe as we do."

The spiritual practitioners here could sensibly overlap or ally with Devotees, possibly Puritans, or even an uneasy cross-section of both Cliques. But unlike either, the Cult of the Cove insists on their isolation, never venturing into, much less changing, the rest of the mall. Still, they have services to offer and products to provide, even if they don't give the the safety or protection of a Clique.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Frightful Food-Court

No such thing as a free lunch, sure, but 'dog eat dog' sounds optimistic, compared to this. Only dogs, and one of them gets to eat. The once touted 'Omega Experience™' has expired, hopefully you won't as well. Heavy mortician-slab tables and manacled chairs lie haphazardly scattered, some looking like hasty barricades, others simply knocked aside, gouging the rough concrete. Fixtures creak with rust even without obvious cause, and wet grime smears every surface. But despite the dark signs on the vendor stalls, you still smell something cooking . . .

With the size and centrality of the food-court, you may want to roll twice or thrice for Scary Staff and include the '+' options: one end might come out 'Abandoned', yet at the other end, if you look behind a counter, you might find someone 'Panicked'.

With the original Frenetic Food-Court adjust the standard Soft and Normal Moves for this new context, but in practical substance, they mostly still work: finding someone or something useful or informative, difficult and dubious food, a lack of obvious witnesses despite feeling watched. Though probably not 'dozens' of people, if any 'people' at all. The following will only list some more appropriate Hard Moves:

Hard Moves:

Gruesome Garage

They used to sell parts, but give away for free the idea that you could make something yourself. Now it looks a lot more like its namesake: grimy, rusted, neglected, and barely navigable. But in the corroded clutter you can see parts in stock, even if you can't identify them, and they should still work--but forget about help from staff or customers. And they've added a few more ominous features, more suited to a dungeon--

Use the Scary Staff table with the original Gadget Garage as a base; its Soft and Hard Moves will suit just fine, for the kinds of 'projects' you'll likely need. And a Brute or Warped creature expressing 'interest' in your 'project', or a Manic shopkeep wanting to 'film something in the back', all will have a much different tone.

As to those new features and products, you'll find them very useful, if you can pay for them:

You don't remember Gadget Garage ever carrying copies of 'Impractical Electronics'--and they wouldn't have, with issues like these: smudged, scorched, and dubiously stained, but much more worryingly, prominent and explicit diagrams of 'optimal electrode locations', precise 'survivable and lethal amperage benchmarks', and 'average joint flexion, tension, and torsion tolerances' organized by limb. But you do see a few blueprints and schematics you can use . . .

Lethal Loading-Dock

Where do things come from? Especially these things. The loading-dock would have to lead to somewhere outside this place . . . but when you pry open the rolling door, you see no sign of that. Instead, a concrete channel, a steep ramp leading up into darkness beyond what you can see, walled in taller than the dingy light can reach, and a conveyor chain creaks and clatters to life, a hook carrying a--thing swiftly toward you. But too late to close the gate now--

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Optional 1: unlike the original Lucha Loading-Dock, you don't get Attack just for showing up--so you probably should get some other means of facing violence beforehand. But also unlike the original, you can directly get a few things you need or want, if you risk enough for it. And remember the note from the original: sometimes failing a Goal can do something helpful; much more rarely for Dangers, but not quite never. If nothing else, purposely facing these creatures might well harden and inure your MCs, and make them willing to do things they would never have considered in A Life Outside.

Optional 2: like the Corroded Commons' collapsing gratings, the ramp sure seems to go on forever. This supplement assumes so, but if you or the narrating player have a better idea, good luck with it! Maybe if you took The Dark Elevator down here, going back up might take you somewhere stranger?

Overhanging Offices

The architects did not build this place for you. But what did they build it for? Catwalks of metal grating connect precarious vault-like rooms, extending over empty blackness, or rarely a canted bulky--thing below, possibly more rooms falling into the abyss. But though the boxy cubes look like vaults or bunkers, each features a rusted door with a plain handle. And the catwalks don't lead anywhere but to more rooms like these, or a cracked decline into the dark. Still, if this place has any reflection or correspondence to the, or any, real mall--it must have the keys in here somewhere . . .

Use the Scary Staff table for each room you explore, including the options starting with a minus: rather than a shopping floor with aisles, these encounters take place in contained spaces, variably the size of an office room. And rather than racks of merchandise, you'll instead find scrawled notes, something someone else left behind, or some personal item from whomever you encounter. The layout and rooms change over time, as you'll see, so if you leave for an extended period, you should treat your return as a fresh start.

During each trip through the offices, the area as a whole has a Strain Countdown:

(stable)   [shaking]   [swaying]   [creaking]   [shrieking]   [tilting]   [falling]

At [falling], the section of offices snaps its last frail strut of scaffolding and falls into the void, and you with it. Luckily, more offices always fill in--from somewhere, somehow.

The 'Abandoned' entry features a breach in a wall, which can lead to any other venue, so the narrating player should choose either at random, or by their own sense of what to inflict on the spotlight MC. For a fun way to do this, list a number of possible outcomes, and ask the spotlight player to pick the one they do not want right now. Choose from the remainder.

Use one of the following Moves each time you visit a new office (entering or leaving, whichever fits best). Several Moves refer to the Occupant of the office room you've just entered or just left, whether Panicked, Manic, Bound, Warped, Brute, or some other idea of your own. If an office comes up Abandoned, just don't choose any Moves referring to Occupants.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Optional: as noted in Corroded Commons, and moreso here, your MCs all dropping into a lightless abyss probably shouldn't abrubtly end your story. But for something this dire, it probably should make your MCs wish it did. As for climbing the ladder, if they climb high enough, your MCs might bring valuable skills to an unprepared market.

Sacrilegious Spa

Everyone needs healing eventually, but how to get it? At first, you only hear the faint chanting, not a light or sign in sight in the dim and dingy arcade. But through the narrow doorway, you spot the flicker of light on dark walls, from tallow candles smelling faintly of bacon. Sleek figures in form-fitting hooded robes usher you in from the arcade. "Welcome, welcome, your contributions are welcome, please, add to The Pool." After a moment, in a soothing voice, another adds, "if you do, once you are covered, we can heal and restore you." The following quiet fills in with the faint chanting from elsewhere, "cover our bodies, insure us from sickness, do us no harm . . ."

You can omit the Scary Staff table entirely here, unless you intend a sprawling temple complex of isolated rooms that might reasonably vary from the salon acolytes. By default, the acolytes fulfill a specific function here, and the spa has enough of them to attend to any of your needs (if they don't create new ones). While they have some parallels and overlap with the Devotees, the two groups have differing missions, as you'll see.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Deeper Departments

It takes a certain set of conditions to let certain business models even exist. Here, you'll find venues like nothing you've ever seen in your normal world--and reminders of why you should escape as quickly as you can. But until you do, you'll find a lot of these goods and services essential--if you can afford them. But, you did come here to shop, and you can't find these exclusive offers anywhere else . . .

Build-a-Babe

You can't sell any product unless it has the best features for the price. Brighter and cleaner than other shops, in that you can see into any given corner, and things seem only dingy and neglected, rather than rusted and forgotten. The signage indicates you can build the man, woman, or--other things of your dreams! Well, the signs say dreams. Nightmares might count as well. You only need the parts and materials, the machinery does all the rest! You can make anything from a hand-sized squeaky-toy, to a larger-than-life action-statue . . . if you put in the right parts.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Not Optional: the Babe-Builder needs parts and ingredients to produce a Babe: an animate, variably mindful creation with traits that depend on those ingredients, longevity that depends on their quality, and obedience (or competence) that you roll for.

As an example: you round up a (motionless) mannequin, a pair of balloons, a can of Monster Dick Energy, a bag of Cummies, a tube of Spunktan Lotion, and a four-pack of Bitch Beer. You hope for the traits: [big tits], [dick fit for monsters], [comes early and often], [everyone's coming], and [begging for it], perfect bait for a Brute or sending somewhere as a distraction! It might only last for three Actions, but you wouldn't last that long.

You Create A Babe, and roll a 4 and a 2. You put the 4 into the Goal, crossing off [big tits] with only some disappointment. The 2 in the Danger means your Babe doesn't want to do what you say (or doesn't have enough wits to do it right)--but it didn't get any traits for strength, and you can at least shove it into somewhere dangerous, and follow once it attracts that danger.

Suppose you worked to find an inanimate mannequin that you wouldn't have to subdue: this Babe would have at least three scenes before falling apart, excluding scenes where it takes no Actions--you have time to get to know it! Maybe it has a muddled head and frustrated resentment, because the Spunktan Lotion and Cummies mean it always teeters on the edge of climax, but the Bitch Beer means it needs to [beg for it]. Palm-greasing and helping handjobs might improve your rapport and the Babe's focus and fealty for you!

As the Babe breaks down, maybe its Monster Dick withers and its Cummies run out--which could have either of two effects on the Babe: maybe the Babe feels like it has fallen from its nature, it no longer has a [dick fit for monsters], and wants to fix that. Or, the Babe's body may change its nature, suddenly proud of its plastic panel crotch and lack of any come left to orgasm with--at least until you patch it up or make some alterations.

If you throw yourself into the Babe-Builder, you count as a person, so you last as a Babe indefinitely. As an MC, you reasonably can always do what you want to (or try and fail, with dice). But your list of traits starts with your MC's permanent Edges, so you may lose some if your Goal shows less than 4. Then again, you can list as many traits as you want and have ingredients for . . .

Optional: if someone else throws you in and rolls to Create A Babe, you come out with some degree of obedience, loyalty, or fixation on your 'creator'. Negotiate with the other player, to make sure you both have fun as players, but in spirit, if that bitch Stacy throws someone into the Babe-Builder, the Babe-Builder doesn't care whether it was side-character Nora, or your MC Alice. And if you later on throw your creator in--well, you and your Friend With Penalties can figure that one out.

Control Computers

Free communication, free expression, free creation, all come at a price, but control costs nothing to you. Monitors and consoles faintly flicker from cobwebbed shelves, cases drip a clear watery liquid, and cables cross between the aisles. A tinny synthesized voice emits from every direction: "Hi! I'm Alexander, your new Personal Digital Administrator! Just say what you want, and I'll make it happen! I record everything!" It says this every time.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

The Harder Image

When you live in a cutthroat world, razor margins count, and you may have to cut out anything soft in you. Instead of overpriced, questionably-useful appliances and gadgets, this brightly-lit, brazenly-stocked shop promises to take your image and make it harder, specifically, more dangerous to others, and more beneficial to you. Just flip through the glossy catalog of Successful People, and become more like one of them--and less of yourself. It may cost you more than an Edge, though . . .

Specifically, this venue will fully remove one of your permanent Edges, in exchange for re-writing one of your basic Actions. This will allow the Action to do things it previously couldn't, or in contexts it shouldn't. But each available re-write applies every time you use the new Action, and the altered Dangers may prompt you to think twice.

Soft Moves:

Normal Moves:

Hard Moves:

Vicarious Video

The new opiate of the masses. Mind, opiates have legitimate uses--try getting a root canal without them. The store looks seedy. It smells seedy. But nothing follows you in here, nothing jumps out from the shelves that you don't pick out, and--you don't even see anyone to take payment. You also don't see anything to watch on--you can just walk out of the store with a movie, but you'll have to find a suitable place and screen on your own. Still, how can you beat 'free'!

Vegging out with a video can clear all mental Statuses you have that don't constitute a Countdown--but they don't have much re-watchability, so you'll always need new entertainment to binge. And since you have to watch somewhere else, several of these Moves apply even far outside the store, long after you've left.

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Consuming Creatures

Several of the Adversity Characters and the Scary Staff table refer to unspecified 'monsters', 'creatures', and other inhuman beings. This supplement intends you, as players, to invent and describe the kinds of 'creatures' that suit your tastes best, but these abstract placeholders might leave you with little inspiration or direction. Accordingly, this section lists some sample monstrosities to fill a variety of roles and niches, and to give some worked examples of how you can create your own abominations, with rules and consequences more engaging than 'it hits you' or 'it fucks you'. Not that these creatures will skimp on those fronts . . .

Blue Angels: these hulking, plodding, armored sentinels look less like knights and more like upright crabs, with vise-grip pincers and wide, wall-like bodies. But while they might move slowly, they move inexorably, impossible to push back against. Their barbwire halos and the fans of blue spotlights behind their backs give them their namesake, but if they happen to 'protect' you, it has nothing to do with service.

Climbers: creepy, crawly, chatty creatures, their numerous gangly limbs look mechanical and insectile, their bodies organic and disturbingly sexual, these small scuttling freaks crawl throughout the mall, snooping, gossipping, trading, and harassing for fun and profit. They only shut up when forced to, or when trying to get the drop on someone.

Clingy Clothes: they say 'the clothes make the man', but these might unmake you. Stylish, sapient sets of animate attire, an outfit will creep through the mall, or pilot a mannequin around, to find someone to wear, and wear down into something fitting to join the ensemble. But at least you'll look good doing it . . .

Screen-Face: a bulky, brutish juggernaut, muscles corded with RCA and coaxial cables, it pushes aside anything that doesn't get out of the way, announcing loudly in any fitting snippet of channel-surfing as it rolls on wheels in place of feet. The obnoxious noise makes it easy to avoid, but if it sees you, you won't easily escape--even if it lets you go.

The Secret Shopper: standing patiently on a wall, or lying peacefully on the ceiling, sometimes plugged in with--cables? Tubes? Tendrils? Clamps? This well-endowed, hooded, masked figure usually observes unobtrusively, occasionally inspecting merchandise or surveying stores, seemingly paying no mind to what happens around or beneath it--but then, that mask doesn't just hide its face, but its gaze, and it does intervene when it chooses to.

Vampiquins: faceless figures roaming in unlighted halls or 'abandoned' shops, these mannequins want nothing more than to go back to shopping, preening, flaunting, and fucking. All they can do now is pencil and marker their expressions on. They've gotten tapped out--and want a donation.

Whisper Wisps: sapient smoke that has no need for fire, Wisps look a lot like ghosts, if you don't notice the swirling. While they can't disperse thinly enough to become invisible, seeing them doesn't help much: they can drift at will in still air, seep through any gap or crack, and laugh at any ordinary attack. And while they can't strike you, they can still give you a very serious hit, if they catch you by yourself, or with too many problems to deal with.

Omegalopolis™

The original Mall Madness contains its storytelling to only OmegaMall™, and this supplement continues the theme, even to the point of using it for horror, in Closing Never. But a surreal or scary trans-dimensional mall hits very differently from applying that to a whole city--whether 'the one you grew up in or lived in for years', or 'a strange place you just entered'. And since OmegaMall™ has almost all the amenities of a populous metropolis, this section will fill out a few likely or reasonable missed beats.

Unlike the preceeding sections, this section will presume a mundane and modern-day setting, but you can easily apply the aesthetics and surrealness of the previous chapters, from One Weird Person Place or Product, to whimsical dream-logic, to industrial rust and blood wet-nightmare, as suits your use for Omegalopolis™.

In particular, a few locations such as the Apartments suit slower revelations or more restrained encounters with the uncanny, the familiar and homey opening up into the fantastical, or the frightening. Other locations, like the Alleys or the Den, present opportunities to make the surreal or sinister into more permanent features of your story. And still others, like the Courthouse and Hospital, serve plain 'in case you need it' functionality--but lend equally well to fully nightmarish encounters akin to The Castle or The Yellow Wallpaper.

Given the wider variety of people you might encounter, when narrating new side-characters, you probably should default to giving them at least a few traits or a demeanor that the spotlight player (or their MC) would find attractive. After all, this game aims for erotic roleplay, so even hostile or dangerous side-characters should present at least a temptation toward solving things with sex. Unless of course as players you get off on 'unfuckable' characters--as long as you want your MCs to fuck them (or get fucked by them), go for it!

  1. Missing Mundanity
    1. Amorous Apartments
    2. Anxious Alleys
    3. Capricious Courthouse
    4. Depraved Den
    5. Hillside Hospital
    6. Savvy Sex-Worker
    7. Simmering Suburbs
  2. Genre Guidance
    1. Cyberpunk
    2. Steampunk
    3. Bronzepunk

Missing Mundanity

This supplement will not attempt to list every service, institution, or specialist business that a proper thriving metropolis needs to sustain itself. Rather, it will list locations and people that lend themselves to the kind of horny escapades of Mall Madness, or that you can readily embellish with the rest of this supplement: places for your MCs to go and get into trouble and fun.

Amorous Apartments

One you live in yourself, or one you've visited, everyone needs somewhere to live. And Amorous Apartments gives all the ameneties: furnished suites, soundproof walls, and very friendly neighbors. If you don't live here, maybe you should visit! If you do, the following Moves distinguish whether they apply to you as a visitor, or a resident.

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Optional: to add some variety, consider what it might take to make you into any of the 'someone's listed here.

Anxious Alleys

You keep hearing in the news about the 'record crime-wave'--and that the news blows those stories way out of proportion. Either way, the alleyways just look like the place where crime would happen to you . . . But then again, sometimes 'illegal' just means 'too fun for polite company' . . .

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Capricious Courthouse

Speaking of crime, the city has to handle it somewhere, along with all the public records and civil proceedings. Here, citizens file petitions or referenda, sue or defend themselves, sober up in the short-term jail, or await trial. While this game doesn't suit detailed courtroom drama or actually going to prison, your MCs may still encounter some of the following beats during other stories of social conflict.

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Central College

This very liberal arts school has a surprising outlay for 'experiments', not just in arts and media, but science as well. It probably comes from their low budget for security, both on entering the campus, and places in the campus. Students here get a diverse education, and alumni leave with deep experience in their studies. As with the Courthouse, a university as a full setting with 'college antics' exceeds the scope of this supplement, but as a location it offers a few useful beats and plot points, especially for introducing the kind of strangeness or horror of the preceeding chapters. It combines well with the original Boutique Bookstore as a library, or original Workout Warehouse as a gym, and in a pinch, some of the original Gadget Garage can round out a science lab scene.

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Depraved Den

They don't let just anyone in, and the thrills don't come cheap, but if you want the best indulgence the city has to offer, you'll have to make some friends here. Just take care who finds out, 'respectable' people won't respect you. And keep in mind, you take your safety into your own hands, here. You will need some kind of an 'in' before you can visit, a favor to call in, or else one of the regulars vets you and convinces the rest that you'll provide suitable 'entertainment' or 'goods'.

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Hillside Hospital

Whether you got injured from some 'misadventure', or came down with a fever, the very attentive staff will give you the healing you need for whatever ails you. Just remember the fine line between 'intimate' and 'invasive', and read carefully before taking any of the cutting-edge treatments. They work, but sometimes 'too well'--and sometimes for conditions you didn't know you had . . .

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Savvy Sex-Worker

This veteran of vice knows everyone who "wouldn't want you to know", all the heavy hot-spots, and an esteemed colleague for any appetite, if they, somehow, don't fit the bill. If you make their time worthwhile, they might even mention a few. If you make their time rewarding, they might, possibly, consider making you an exclusive 'introduction'. But their time doesn't come cheap--even when they don't charge cash.

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Simmering Suburbs

The 'community' has an official name, but no one uses it, or really knows the boundary it covers, simply referring to 'the neighborhood' or just 'the suburb'. The residents of this bedroom borough have other things to occupy their attention. Sure, everything looks tidy, buttoned down, and boring, but that just makes the denizens that much more desperate for distraction. Like the Apartments, several Moves here distinguish between your MC as a visitor, or a resident. It also combines well with the standard Picturesque Park, and most of MugenMart.

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Genre Guidance

From its low-magic light-fantasy origins in Harem Tales, Mall Madness shows you can change a lot about genre, while keeping the core kind of story very much the same. And given the wild and surreal effects of the products and places in this supplement, and with the wider scope allowed by Omegalopolis™, you have everything you need to put your horny, preening, scheming MCs into a wide range of settings, in which to flaunt, flirt, befriend, backstab, and shop!

This section will explore three fairly workable *punk genres, ones that allow for some of the unspoken requirements to make Mall Madness MCs work, so to speak them now:

Some genres have some implicit or default assumptions about sexuality or libertinism, but this section will not address that question, for a simple reason: as the creators of your setting and writers of your story, you and your fellow player(s) have a range of good and valid approaches you could take for your erotic escapades:

One, the free-love sex-positive version of the genre and setting, where no one bats an eye at any couple, triple, or moreple, and at worst might nudge someone out of the way if they fuck in the middle of a hallway. The other trappings and tropes of the genre and setting serve as set-dressing for your characters to fuck in, and maybe some other, non-sex-related character and plot drama may also occur. Non-sex-related, because you don't have any real conflict or strife regarding sex. In this extreme case, sex happens, but it takes really contrived circumstances to make that sex affect the plot or character relationships in a meaningful way.

Two, regressive, puritanical, or otherwise reactionary takes, where either no one fucks without social stigma, or who fucks whom under what conditions always comes with a pile of baggage. Maybe the law prohibits sex outside of matrimony, or maybe your peers sneer at opposite-sex romance, or maybe society considers penetrative partners as pathetic sexual objects. Here, all your character interactions, power dynamics, and plot events will have something to do with sex: resisting it, hiding it, getting away with it, getting with a forbidden partner, a forbidden partner getting it with you when you don't want it, facing the judgment (social or even legal) when the truth comes out--or if someone lies about you. In this extreme case, even if actual sex doesn't happen, the people in the setting have so much baggage they can't help but make everything about sex.

And of course you can play out anything between these two ridiculous extremes. Which means you can have prudish cyberpunk, or free-love steampunk, as long as you know why you want to use that setting, with that set of sexual mores. You'll have a better understanding of that than this supplement ever could, so this section will only consider "how do you put this kind of MC with these kinds of places to go and things to do, into that kind of genre setting".

One particular tool you might have forgotten till now will help a lot in adjusting this game, and your MCs, for new contexts and backgrounds: A Life Outside! The questions you answer there serve as wistful or even compelling motivations and tensions, in Closing §©:†þ and Closing Never, but for creating a new setting, or repurposing one you know, you'll find them much more directly useful for establishing your MCs' place in their world, what material problems they face, and what opportunities they have to solve them. Make sure to use this questionnaire and discussion to get a better understanding of your MCs, and the rest of the world! You needn't write an elaborate, detailed, consistent history of this alternate universe, but you do need to know how MCs survive, what practical interests they have (and don't have), and what social mores they enjoy and suffer from (and might violate (and face penalties for . . .))

Cyberpunk

Bruce Sterling once defined 'cyberpunk' as a genre: 'high tech, low life'. Technology has considerably advanced in ways that change everyone's lives and the very shape of society--but that shape includes a vast majority of the 'low-lives', the have-nots, impoverished and locked out of any real prospects or power. And William Gibson helpfully suggested 'the street finds its uses for things', that all these sophisticated products and inventions will always have applications far outside what the inventors and sellers expected. Indeed, one good piece of writerly advice rejects any fancy invention or wondrous magic, unless you--the writer--can think of at least three ways to misuse it. This supplement has slavishly followed that advice with every product and service: everything your MCs can buy or use, they can creatively misuse to cause problems for others, or run into problems themselves.

To apply this directly to a cyberpunk setting, a lot of the Peculiar Products, Weird Wares, and Bad Goods (or at least their effects) would make sense as 'skillware', designer drugs (legal or otherwise), even advanced entertainment, using transcranial sound, magnets, and vibration to alter someone's thoughts or perceptions (or implant new ones). Such sophisticated 'immersion' technology could even justify some of the more seemingly psychic or supernatural phenomena, such as the Sympathetic Screens or some effects (if not the processes) from Crystal Cove, Unnatural Wonders, or even Cultic Cove or Sacrilegious Spa. Swap the crystals and chanting for headsets and programming, and you have mental Statuses covered. As to the magical effects on social Statuses, consider paying to have The Algorithm hacked to your favor (or someone else's disfavor), flagging their profile and dinging their social credit score, for which, Alexander might lend a digital hand. Even combine these, for a sapient shared hallucination, such as the 'cosplayer' in Store-Specific Specialties.

For some more adventurous goods, the sex-organs from Stoner's Novelties and Gifts and the sensation and behavior-modifying piercings and tattoos of Industrial Ink make perfect sense as implants (possibly mandated by an employer, where corporations much more directly rule characters' lives, or forcibly installed by a gang). For a 'full-service' body-mod experience, look no further than The Harder Image, and for a more forced experience, Build-a-Babe can fix you up--or just give you the drone of your dreams. And to handwave away pesky delays like tissue healing and rejection, consider localized gene modification and controlled force-grown tumors, to quickly incorporate or excise living tissue, and grow or repurpose natural glands and organs.

On that biological note, designer genefixes and fashionable chromosome upgrades would suit Succulent Trees, Flower Shop, and beings from Psomgaram. Has the wider society accepted these deliberate 'mutations' as normal? Or did an enterprising entrepreneur with a CRISPR setup start selling 'DIY DNA', unknown to the rest of the world (yet)?

And going even farther afield, the numerous living mannequins and blow-up people might fill in for androids, gynoids, sexbots--or humans with extensive mental 'modification' to suit them to such a role. And digging deeper into Closing Never, the Digi-Dongle from Gruesome Garage gives an entry-point for brain-hacking, mind-imprisonment, and upload resleeving, while the Consuming Creatures Blue Angel, Clinging Clothes, and Whisper Wisp work just fine as militarized enforcer, forced behavior-mod chip or programming, and viral brainhack, respectively.

The pervasive branding of OmegaMall™ hardly needs any adjustment, at most a little intensification. More importantly, as a genre, cyberpunk varies pretty widely in whether the state or a government meaningfully exists, or affects the lives of ordinary people. While Strange Hours plays with these questions, it doesn't give any conclusive answers: the Slack Security and the Blue Angels might strongly resemble police, but they don't serve the law. They serve the mall.

And widening the scope to Omegalopolis™, you might also consider questions like the environment and ecology, whether any new futuristic plagues (natural or bioweapon) have affected life, and whether those implanted, upgraded, skill-chipped, genefixed, or otherwise altered but otherwise-ordinary people have formed their own communities and norms, or absorbed into wider society, or suffered (or caused) any conflicts.

Steampunk

As a loose interpretation of Victorian-ish era plus approximately plausible technological advances, steampunk's greatest offer as a genre comes from the tensions of a stilted aristocracy, waning in power and control against a rising and entrepreneurial middle- and merchant-class, and the aforesaid inventions starting to disrupt a stifling social order. But, the gothic literary influences give you some excuse to include a few hints or elements of the paranormal, the 'last gasps of magic', or the ghosts and demons not quite fled from 'the light of science and reason'. Even if those supernatural suggestions always end up unmasked as fanciful farces or scheming skullduggery, the culture and climate makes such premises and plots plausible for the characters themselves.

Less fantastical, but still allowing a touch of mystery, much of the world remained unknown (at least to the Victorians themselves), and popular culture and high society alike regularly buzzed with the latest discovery (or plundering) from far-off lands and reclusive peoples, as well as unearthed relics from the distant but local past. Combine these with the flurry of scientific discoveries, industrial innovations, and flat-out hoaxes, and even a hard-headed skeptic of the supernatural might give some credence to an incredible claim--or sight.

To put some of the mall's products into concrete context, the wild claims of patent tonics align pretty exactly with almost any of the Weird Wares candies and Peculiar Products drinks, though Monster Dick Energy and Nookies would strike (default) Victorian sensibilities as perhaps the most horrifying curse one might suffer. Which might make them fun to lean into.

To emphasize that social focus where steampunk excels, the tensions of the stratified society and a newly upwardly-mobile class make your MCs' Actions far more weighty, and make the risks of humiliation and social stigma far heavier too--for MCs and side-characters alike. While you might not have ready access to reliable photography, much less video, you can still use Statuses to incriminate a rival in 'improper' or outright outlawed activity: "Just look at her orange lips, an unmistakeable symptom of that odious Doctor Regina's Secretional Gumdrops, no doubt to inseminate dear Lord Oldcuck's wife!" "How preposterous! I haven't even a penis, you cad, and I definitely shan't show you my maidenhood!"

Keep the original Flashy Fashion, Sennsuous Spa, and Quixotic Quisine in mind as regular battlegrounds for your middling- to high-society MCs to socially spar and jeeringly joust in. Tailors, salons, and restaurants present some of the best excuses for characters to spend time close to each other, whether they like each other or not, and the staff consequently collect much more than tips, in the form of fodder for slander or even blackmail, if someone can assemble enough tarnishing tidbits into a tale.

Use these hypocrisies, contradictions, and latent conflicts between classes and Cliques wherever you can, and treat the mundane and fantastical products and services as weapons and armor. Loss of social standing could mean loss of livelihood, even condemning one to poverty--a fate just as bad as exile, when your family disowns you and your neighborhood expels you. So, a perfect place to put your hated rivals! Just take care it doesn't happen to your MC first . . . unless you enjoy that sort of dingy degradation.

You'll especially need Omegalopolis™' additional locations, and make frequent use of the Anxious Alleys, as the centralized commercial venues of a mall don't suit the period or its economy. And while an actual modern suburb bears little resemblance to crowded multi-storey tenements, the Moves of the Simmering Suburbs still suit a stroll through a close-knit but contentious community, especially in free combination with the Amorous Apartments. Likewise, for the more fantastical inventions and discoveries, the Central College's lab and Gadget Garage make a good backdrop for a newly devised contrivance of cogs and magnets, suitable to simulate the more paranormal products through aetheric compression, orgone accumulation, or Mesmeric projection.

You might also consider easier and more frequent forays into the original Obscured Offices for their rooftops, steamworks, and mechanical rooms, much larger and more prominent in building design of the period. And on the other end, while the majority of Closing Never has features far too uncanny for most steampunk, the rapid and reckless industrialization and development left some city quarters and townships scarcely distinguishable from the Abject Arcades or Corroded Commons. Indeed, you might even combine some elements of Cultic Cove and Sacrilegious Spa as a start for any hospital sanatorium, as the Hillside Hospital least suits this setting.

Bronzepunk

Myth and magic set in the Bronze Age of the Fertile Crescent and places adjacent, with shameless commingling of traditions and inaccuracies to attested historical and archeological record. While the real Bronze Age clearly had no magic, the people of the time believed in it as unremarkably as we believe in penicillin and vaccines. Accordingly, much as with steampunk, you may want to decide to just what degree you wish to include the supernatural: as real and common as the weather; or rare, remarkable, and debatable; or a silly superstition that everyone simply happens to believe in.

Far less debatable, the priesthood played an enormous role in daily life, for commoners and courtiers alike. Even if you don't ascribe them any supernatural powers in your story, their social powers can easily justify most any mental or social Status you could find in this supplement, if bestowed publicly as a blessing or curse. Your MC Ashurpal may find himself so emboldened by a blessed amulet that others treat his dick as [mythically monstrous]. Or your MC Ninshuba finds a malediction on her house so distressing her hair begins to fall out, leaving her [un-beddable].

Indeed, you likely will want to remix the original Sensuous Spa, Crystal Cove, Cultic Cove, and Sacrilegious Spa, combining elements of the mystery-cult secrecy, conditional provision of their services, and open practice in the public, as much as for any rules or effects.

On the other hand, many modern institutions such as libraries, restaurants, and indeed 'organized, self-contained shops' don't suit this period at all. Even an open-air bazaar strains the premise of 'a mall'--but make free and heavy use of the Frenetic Food Court, Picturesque Park, Plaza Parade, and Moves from the Corroded Commons, as the public streets and clearings played such a huge role in daily civic and social life . . . and the lack of any constabulary or law-enforcement made such gathering places dangerous as well as vibrant.

And while it might seem a strange suggestion, most of Vicarious Video and a peppering of Mondo Matinee can provide a good basis for watching a public performance by a poet, musician, or even a play. For the Vicarious Video Moves, you would necessarily always count as 'a guest', having no way to enjoy in private--and having others crowded around you, of whom one might prefer to enjoy you.

Leaving behind responsible historical context and accuracy, Depraved Dens have changed very little through history, and an especially insidious den might afflict some of their unwary attendees with enchantments or binding curses from the revised Industrial Ink, perhaps even enslaving characters who indulge to excess. But, perhaps the local temple could free you--for a fee, or services, or a quest at their bidding.

Or, you could undertake such an adventure yourself, with rumors of legendary garments once worn by heroes--but take care that their former wearers' spirits don't haunt or possess you. Indeed, a lot of renowned relics and Unnatural Wonders seem like a lot of trouble once you get them--and your MC hardly has the makings of a hero. Maybe they could study at the Warrior Warehouse, or even join in one of the many and regular small skirmish-wars with other city-states, claiming treasure or even a bride or groom, with Lethal Loading-Dock as a base. Overhanging Offices would take more imagination and creative re-writing, but has many elements of invading an inhabited village or city, applicable to an inexpert and uncommitted conscript for the city-state's king.

Lastly, consider consulting Harem Tales itself, the game from which Mall Madness first arose as a supplement, going literally back to the source. Most of its Actions and all of its social emphasis apply to this game, and it aims for a historical yet fantasized milieu for MCs. It may not suit your MCs, who (notionally) do not belong to a captive harem (yet), but many Moves from those ACs may apply directly, or help inspire adjustments here, and . . . you never know when your MCs might move down, or up, in society, perhaps even prompting Harem Tales' section on creating entirely new Actions, to suit your needs.