Cartel: A Mexican Narcofiction Tabletop Roleplaying Game
Created by Mark Diaz Truman
Cartel is a tabletop RPG in which players portray bold narcos, naive spouses, and dirty cops caught up in Mexico's eternal drug war.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
La Mariachi!
over 3 years ago
– Sat, Sep 03, 2022 at 12:54:30 PM
Hola, cabrones!
Another mes, another update for Cartel! While we’re still working on finalizing the materials for Berlin ’87, we have finished our final playbook: La Mariachi!
New Playbook: La Mariachi
The final Cartel expansion playbook, La Mariachi, is both a love letter to the Robert Rodriguez’s Mexico trilogy and a chance to introduce the perspectives of the true victims of the drug war—the ordinary Mexicans caught in the wake of US drug policy and cartel profits:
Innocent, passionate, doomed. La Mariachi is a local musician who suddenly finds herself in grave danger, caught up in the chaos and violence of the drug war in Durango.
But unlike El Tahur or La Abogánsta, La Mariachi is not dragged into the drug war by greed or profits; instead she seeks revenge against someone—probably a narco—who murdered one of her loved ones, a quest for vengeance that can only end in tragedy. But she is not alone! La Mariachi is accompanied on this journey into darkness by members of her banda, the mariachi band she plays with that often performs for los narcos.
Thanks again to my co-designer, Claudia Sánchez (CyMorgan), for helping me bring La Mariachi to the game. She brought some incredible ideas to the playbook that make La Mariachi a lot of fun to play while still retaining the innocence and rage inherent to her story. I’m extremely excited about this playbook; I can’t wait for you all to try on the boots of a mariachi seeking revenge!
Reminder: you’ll only have access to this playset if you’re getting the stretch goal materials.
If you have any feedback, especially playtest feedback, please drop us a line at [email protected]. We can’t wait to hear what you think of La Mariachi!
Production Update: August 2022
The completion of La Mariachi means we’re done with the expansion playbooks for Sin Fronteras! We’ll continue to make changes and edits, but these playbooks are in good shape and ready to move into writing/layout in full. We’re also close to done on the Berlin ’87 full materials; those should be ready as soon as Miguel has time to update the layout for the new setting.
Next up is fully transitioning over to work on the completed text for the NPCs featured in Amigos y Enemigos. The initial drafts of those characters have all been submitted, so we should see a good number of them ready for you all to preview in the next month or two! Stay tuned this fall for more Cartel, and we’ll have an update on the final print schedule as soon as these major portions are complete.
Berlin Revisions, El Tahúr, El Abogansta
over 3 years ago
– Mon, Aug 01, 2022 at 01:04:56 AM
Hola, amigos!
The progress for Cartel keeps coming: this month we’ve got an updated set of materials for Berlin ’87 and two new playbooks: El Tahúr and El Abogánsta! ¡Vamanos, cabrones!
New Playbook: El Tahúr
First up, we’ve got one of two new supplemental playbooks: El Tahúr!
Charming, reckless, drowning. El Tahur is a gambler who has gotten himself mixed up with los narcos in the worst way: he owes them money. Lots of money. What will it take to free himself from their clutches?
El Tahúr is unique among the playbooks we’ve released so far: he’s probably the closest thing to innocent in la guerra antidrogas! That said, he’s still in way over his head and he swims in the same circles as the narcos who hold his debts. He’s inspired by characters like Howie from Uncut Gems and Axel Freed from The Gambler, but he’s also a nod to the original Westerns set in Mexico and the Southwestern US.
Huge thanks to my long time collaborator Brendan Conway for his help on this playbook. We’re both excited to see what you all think of the way El Tahúr plays with the lifestyle mechanic!
New Playbook: El Abogánsta
But that’s not all! We’ve also got a second new playbook: El Abogánsta!
Astute, connected, flexible. El Abogángsta is the corrupt lawyer, the legal agent for the cartel that keeps the money flowing and los federales away from everyone important.
Based in part on characters like Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul and Dave Kleinfeld from Carlito’s Way, El Abogánsta draws more heavily from the realities of the Mexican drug trade than many other playbooks. Dirty lawyers, working to cover up los narcos dealings while making them politically palatable, are a common ally to los carteles. After all, sometimes you need a truly criminal lawyer!
Thank you also to Claudia Sánchez (CyMorgan) for the work she has done to help bring El Abogansta to life! It’s been a pleasure to work with her, and I’m excited to showcase both her design work here and some of her fiction work later this year in Amigos y Enemigos!
Claudia Sánchez, co-designer of El Abogansta
From a young age, Claudia has been interested in literature and creative writing; she graduated in 2013 with a BA in Literature and Spanish. In 2017, she played TTRPGs for the first time and started writing for TTRPGs just a few years later. Claudia has been doing the rounds on the US convention circuit—often participating as a panelist for topics on accessibility and representation—and opening a space for the neurodivergent and the Spanish speaking members of the community through D&D in Spanish.
Berlin ’87 Revision
The full text of Berlin ’87 is still in editing and layout, but we have collected all the feedback we received from playtesting and revised the original Berlin ’87 play materials. The changes are many, but the main areas include:
revising the Cover moves to better reflect the setting
completely rewriting The Chief playbook
adding features and choices to The Spycatcher and The Mole
revising moves and options throughout
We’ve still got a bit of time before the editing on Berlin ’87 is complete, so please let me know if you have any feedback on the new materials!
Downloading Materials
You can get all of these new materials via Backerkit ahora mismo:
Reminder: you’ll only have access to these materials if you’re getting the stretch goal materials.
If you have any feedback, especially playtest feedback, please drop us a line at [email protected]. We can’t wait to hear what you think of everything!
La Esperanzada y Berlin ‘87 Update
almost 4 years ago
– Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 06:12:27 AM
Hola, amigos!
We’ve got grandes noticias for this month! Let’s jump in and see the latest progress for Cartel!
New Playbook: La Esperanzada
After a long wait, we’re finally ready to release the first supplement playbook: La Esperanzada!
Dogged, oblivious, brave. La Esperanzada is a flicker of hope in the darkness, a cop who hopes to bring the villains of the drug war to justice. A would-be savior, in a war that turns heroes into martyrs.
La Esperanzada is a DEA agent who has dedicated herself to bringing el narco to justice, even if it means breaking all the rules to do what’s right. She’s a cop on the edge, inspired by characters like Special Agent Jorge Ramirez from Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Kate Macer from Sicario. In many ways, La Esperanzada is one of the darkest playbooks in Cartel; there’s nothing quite as tragic as watching the only light in the darkness start to flicker.
Reminder: you’ll only have access to this playset if you’re getting the stretch goal materials.
If you have any feedback, especially playtest feedback, please drop us a line at [email protected]. We can’t wait to hear what you think of this new playbook!
Berlin ‘87 Update
Thanks to the amazing work of Lari Assmuth, the main text of the Berlin playset is complete and ready for dev/copy editing. He’s put together an amazing guide to the Cold War and 1980s Germany, and I can’t wait to share it with you soon. I’m really excited!
One quick note: we’ve decided to move the timeline up on the playset from 1981 to 1987, mostly to capture the chaotic energy of the end of the Cold War. For example, the Chernobyl disaster occurred in late 1986, an event that shapes the fiction in the Berlin playset away from a conflict between two stable world powers into an asymmetric engagement between a nearly triumphant United States and a failing USSR.
Look for a full look at the Berlin materials in our update el próximo mes!
Production Update: June 2022
As we noted in our April update, we’ve been working on finalizing the materials for both supplements. Progress is solid, and we expect to share a lot of finished material in July and August, starting with the remaining stretch goal playbooks, the full Berlin ‘87 text, and the first batch of finished NPCs from Amigos y Enemigos.
Thanks again for your patience! We’re excited to wrap up Cartelpronto!
Berlin 1981 Play Materials!
almost 4 years ago
– Thu, Apr 14, 2022 at 09:19:41 AM
Hola, amigos!
We’ve gotten back into the swing of things at Magpie Games HQ, and I’m proud to say that we’ve finished the core materials for our first Cartel expansion playset—Berlin 1981. Read on for more about this new way to play Cartel!
Berlin 1981 Playset
When I first created Cartel, I thought that much of the Mexican narcofiction experience would be built into the core moves, similar to Sagas of the Icelanders. But as I worked on the game, I realized that the core moves of narcofiction actually had a lot in common with stuff like spy fiction; the playbooks were the primary place that brought the Mexican elements into play.
Berlin 1981 is our first opportunity to bring some new experiences to those core moves. The playbooks have been completely rewritten by myself and Lari Assmuth (more on him below) to reflect a different place and time—you might still need to justify your behavior, but the stakes have changed!
The Prize, one of six new playbooks for Berlin 1981
In Berlin 1981, you play scheming station chiefs, desperate defectors, and cunning double agents caught between two superpowers at the end of the Cold War. As the USSR begins to crumble from the inside, Berlin is a city cut in half by a wall that divides West from East…a front in a silent war that rages everywhere around you. As the fate of the world hangs in the balance, can you separate friend from foe?
Here’s what changes from the core Cartel experience in Berlin 1981:
The basic moves largely remain unchanged, but the stress moves replace losing yourself in a substance with losing yourself in a vice—the list of vices includes drugs, but also covers paranoia and casual sex. Confessing your sins is also replaced with lowering your guard, a move with similar themes but a different narrative role.
Heat is completely replaced with Cover, a stat that reflects your forged/legitimate paperwork and institutional access. If you’re showing your papers, doing shady shit, or running from the authorities, you’re rolling Cover! (It’s also worth noting that Cover is a positive stat, so a hit is good and a miss is bad.)
The playbooks (listed below) are all totally new, but they contain many core Cartel elements: stats, stress, gear, keys, relationships, moves, and extras. For the most part, if you’re familiar with Cartel playbooks, none of the Berlin 1981 playbooks will seem too strange. That said, they all have new extras and moves to make them fit the totally new setting!
The new playbooks are as follows:
The Chief: Beleaguered, responsible, and ambitious. The Chief is in charge of the CIA Berlin Station, the architect of Langley’s plans for Berlin.
The Case Officer: Tenacious, integrated, and resourceful. The Case Officer runs agents and informants for the CIA on both sides of the wall.
The Mole: Two-faced, corrupt, and compromised. The Mole is a West German officer who has betrayed the CIA in the hopes of furthering Moscow’s cause.
The Operator: Deadly, veteran, and resilient. The Operator is a master of direct action, the agent sent to do the dirty work of protecting America’s interests in Berlin.
The Prize: Vulnerable, secretive, and clever. The Prize is a KGB agent seeking to defect to the West before the imminent collapse of the USSR drags them down as well.
The Spycatcher: Curious, jaded, and frightening. The Spycatcher is the spy who specializes in exposing spies, an internal inquisition devoted to rooting out betrayal.
I’m so, so excited for you all to get a chance to try this playset out. You can download the full set of play materials, including all the moves and playbooks ahora mismo:
Reminder: you’ll only have access to this playset if you’re getting the stretch goal materials.
If you have any feedback, especially playtest feedback, please drop us a line at [email protected]. The full version of Berlin 1981 will contain more information on Berlin, new layout and art for the playbooks, advice for running the playset, and MC tools, but you have everything you need to play now!
Finally, I want to give a huge thanks to my fellow designer on this project, Lari Assmuth. He’s done some incredible work bringing the flavor and history of Berlin to this playset, and I’m so excited to have him on board.
Lari Assmuth, co-designer of Berlin 1981
Lari Assmuth lives in Helsinki, Finland and was born during the last hard freeze of the Cold War, in 1981. When he is not consuming spy stories in various forms or working at his day job in educational publishing, he enjoys thinking about game design and typography.
Production Update: April 2022
While I’ve been focused on getting Berlin 1981 out to you all, we’ve gotten everything moving again on the NPCs for Amigos y Enemigos and the remaining stretch goal playbooks. We’ve made some progress on the love letters for Sin Fronteras, but we’ve realized that the stretch goal playbooks need to be finished before the love letters can be completely resolved; look for those new playbooks (and my Aztlan playset) in our next update later this year!
As for the overall schedule, we’re currently estimating a steady stream of material throughout the summer, culminating in full PDFs when everything is completed. I’ll keep you posted as we make progress!
Start of 2022 Update
about 4 years ago
– Sat, Jan 15, 2022 at 07:16:49 PM
Hola, amigos!
Thank you all for your patience this past year. In Spring of 2021, it appeared as if we were nearly done with COVID…but the reality of 2021 was far messier. Our return to the office in May gave way to staff quarantines and outbreaks—even today we have two employees isolaing and one recovering from COVID.
One of the main casualties of all of this chaos was progress on Cartel stretch goals. I’ve spent a huge amount of time as Magpie Games’ CEO dealing with these issues of safety at our office, trying to figure out how to have people working together safely in a time of great uncertainty and covering for folks who aren’t able to work. We’ve gotten better at managing all this uncertainty, but it’s been a steep learning curve; I’m sorry our learning curve came at the cost of delays and periods of little communication.
That said, we have made progress on nearly all the parts of Cartel that remain—writing is done on the NPCs, the new playsets, and the love letters! But we haven’t gotten nearly as much done—or been as communicative—as I would have liked. I’m so sorry! I can tell you we’re taking steps to make this next year different, including handing over management of comments/updates to our community manager, but we all know the world remains chaotic.
(This year is off to a rough start—I’m having some minor surgery this week for some chronic pain that will likely put me out for the rest of January. I’m glad to finally address the issue, but the pinche chaos continues...)
When I return to work in February, I’m planning on doing my best to finish up all of Cartel in the first half of the year. We’ve made good progress, and I’m committed to making sure we update you all more often on our work. COVID is a reminder that nothing is certain, but I think we can make 2022 a much more productive year for this project.
In the meantime, we have finished two stretch goals: the corridos and Roll20! Read on for more about both!
Corridos de Durango
Unfortunately, our original artist for the corridos was not able to get the narcocorridos sound the way we wanted. He’s a great songwriter, but it looks like the corridos were a bit too far outside his comfort zone. We spent a few months working with him on lyrics and music, but none of us were happy with the results.
Luckily, Los Buitres del Desierto came to the rescue, a Mexican troupe of songwriters that took the ideas that Miguel and I had for the songs and ran with them, producing some really exciting new corridos to finish the entire album of six original songs. Here’s a bit about them:
Los Buitres del Desierto
Ulises Martínez is the bass player and songwriter for the mexican metal band FreakGod. He grew up in southern Mexico but his passion for music made him travel around the country ending up in Guadalajara, the capital of Mariachi and Tequila. Beer, music and roleplaying games are his passions. Ulises is the host and Dungeon Master of 'Tirando Rol' an Original Content Actual play podcast
Antonio "Fharina" is a singer, songwriter and producer from Guadalajara México who has been in the music industry for almost 10 years. He's currently working on his 6th studio album and developing his social media presence.
Paulo Martínez is a musician and composer born in Nuevo León, state of the carne asada, he currently earns his living from his voice and his favorite instrument, the classical guitar. Paulo is part of the Tirando Rol podcast and the vocalist for metal band FreakGod. He loves burgers and beers.
Mike Balles was born and raised in Baja California, Mexico. He is a content creator and collaborator in the ttrpg community advocating for hispanic content, representation & the telling of our stories. He is currently found in both 'Sendas en los Reinos' as well as the Ixalba based 'Trece Albas' spanish language actual play streams. You can find him at twitter at @Themikeballes
If you backed at a level that included the corridos, we’ve uploaded both the mp3s and the lyrics for this album to your Backerkit! Grab ‘em here, cabrones:
We’ll be putting together the liner notes and images into a booklet to accompany the CD. We expect it to ship alongside Amigos y Enemigos later this year!
Cartel on Roll20
In addition to completing the corridos, we’ve also finished creating the Roll20 implementation for the Cartel core book. If you’re playing Cartel on Roll20, you can select Cartel as a base character sheet, and you’ll have everything you need to play the game:
Jason Slanga, the creator of our Bluebeard’s Bride sheet, is doing some really interesting stuff on Roll20 to help players make better use of their user interface. I’m excited for you all to give this a try, and let me know how it works for you! We’ll update it with additional playbooks as they are released this year.
Next Steps: More Cartel in 2022
While I’ll need a few weeks to recover from my surgery, we are planning to wrap up a good portion of both Amigos y Enemigos and Sin Fronteras in the next few months; we’ll release previews of that material as it’s finished.
Thank you again for your support and patience. Cartel is quite literally the most personal, most meaningful Kickstarter project I have ever worked on, and I want very much to finish it out strong this year!
