The Coffin Club Presents

It’s not all about the home run.

It’s not all about the crack of the bat, the impact of the ball in the glove. The way the shoe leather squeaks, the spit drying in the sand, the sweat on the brow.

It’s all about the waiting. The uncertainty. Someone’s going to win here. Someone’s going to lose.

It’s about the terrible weight of anticipation within an inescapable binary. This is why baseball is a game about cheating, fudging the numbers, arguing the rules: anything to give yourself an advantage. Anything to pretend physics is fair, that praying to your God actually will give you the win and your enemy the loss.

Baseball is a ritual of fate and fortune. Baseball is a litany. Baseball is a punishment that befalls some for the amusement of more.

Let’s play some fucking baseball.

“The Coffin Club Presents: Deadball” is an ongoing campaign using Deadball 2e by W.M. Akers.

Eight baseball teams have won out in their local leagues in the mid-Southern United States (Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri) to make it to the Regional Showdown Tournament. 36 games, each team squaring off against another, to rank wins and losses. Those results will be used for a double-elimination tournament to see who wins the whole season.

Four of these teams are played by cast members. The others are played by Jess. Welcome to the PVP season.

Every episode will focus on a match involving at least one cast member. NPC vs. NPC games will happen off-screen.

Anyone can win. Anyone can lose. The odds are against each and every one of them.

That’s why we love to watch along.

TEAMS

Lavender as “The Eddingston Bootleggers” and their manager Don Moretti.

The Bootleggers started off as mobsters-and-molls cosplayers and actors who had a fateful enough pickup game to form a baseball team. It’s their hope to dance their way to national fame and pop bottles over the tournament trophy.

Grint as “The Big Valley Snake Oilers” and their manager Professor Lionel Elbert Sr.

The good professor is a pioneer in the field of pseudo-scientific pharmacology and the team swears by the efficacy of his elixirs. Hopefully that’s enough to make a quick buck and net them the grand prize.

Sophie as “The Barretville Sharons” and their manager Sharon “Tex” Growler.

Every member of the Sharons has the name Sharon in some form, a badge of honor, a tie that binds. The question remains: will they all be Sharon the same victory, or the same defeat?

Bastion as “The Faraway Wardens” and their manager M.T. Mann.

The Wardens hail from Parts Unknown, all people of the same esoteric faith and interests. To them, baseball is an aspect of their worship and greater interconnected plans and forces. Maybe the stars are right for their success this year.

Jess as The Opposing Teams:

Four player teams. Four non-player teams. A coin-flip for if the house will win or not. Meet your enemies. Maybe you can overcome them. What’s a tournament without an emergent narrative?

The Long River Bodyguards: folk in slick suits, leaving behind checkered pasts and murky choices in pursuit of redemption through winning the tournament. But it’s never really over, is it? Not after all the things you’ve done…

The West Cider Housekeepers: Maids, butlers, cleaning staff, serving up pitches in dashing skirts and aprons, cleaning the plate after every stolen base. Success is a good goal to strive for; they’re here to prove that they can certainly have fun.

The Red Hills MILFs: time to let the hair down and show the kids how it’s done. Every player on the MILFs has raised a kid and identifies as a mother, simple as. As for the rest of the acronym…time will tell if they’re on top this season or not.

The Marshboro Monsters: novelty masks and themed jerseys, here to put on a show and raise some hell. The Monsters fancy themselves the outlaws of the tournament, the heels. Go ahead, show them who’s boss. Or are you too scared to make them lose?

MATCHES

Warmup Scrimmage

Sharons vs. Wardens

Snake Oilers vs. Bootleggers

There are no specific content warnings for this campaign, but we would like to recognize that the uncertainty of sports and probability can be stressful for the players, especially with the structure of baseball. The stress may bleed through in places, and that’s preferable to keeping it all locked in and tamped down.

Rest assured, we’re practicing care and support between each other at the table. Every game is far from set in stone.

We’re also going to say some nonsense and crack some jokes, but real baseball announcers have said far worse than anything we’re going to say on a recording of pretend games.

Deadball 2e was inspired by:

  • look it’s fun to play sports with friends, okay? This is a nontraditional TTRPG campaign. It’s a fun, big swing (heh). It’s not all Themes and Influences. That said:
  • The Monsters are influenced by The Monsters in Wasteland 3 and Universal Monsters.
  • The Housekeepers are influenced by maidposting and personal interests in traditional maid uniforms.
  • The Bodyguards are all references to dramatic irony, revenge narratives and ambiguous identity/culpability.
  • the classic radio tradition of hearing a fucking baseball game and living vicariously through the announcers’ delivery, the power of imagination.

The biggest influence is the fact that a game like Deadball 2e exists. That this hobby is so big and weird enough to let it have its niche, be picked up and be played. That we, as people making a show, can play any game we want, without having to play the same game twice, without having to play the biggest name hits to follow in the footsteps of other shows.

The fact that we have an audience that supports us doing all of this and is willing to give us a shot. Or, doesn’t, and isn’t! We’re still doing it for us at the end of the day!

We only hope you’re having fun too.

“Baseball is a Spite emotion.” -Jessica Valentine, 2026