Rough Justice: '84

About

Rough Justice '84 casts you as Jim Baylor, a disgraced detective turned private eye running a security agency in a corrupt 1984 port city. Manage staff, deploy surveillance, and strategize investigations using a mix of dice rolls and card-based choices to expose criminals and rebuild your reputation. Each decision shapes your network of contacts while balancing resource management and riskier gambles. The game stands out for its tight blend of board game mechanics with narrative-driven strategy. Players navigate moral gray areas and procedural challenges, with outcomes influenced by both planning and luck. Released in 2023, it runs on most consoles and PC, offering a retro aesthetic paired with systems that emphasize player agency. Community feedback highlights its creative use of dice and cards to drive storytelling, though some note the learning curve for its layered mechanics.

Storyline

It's 1984, everyone's favorite year, and the port city of Seneca is experiencing a boom. But upstanding citizens aren’t the only Senecans benefiting from the city's spoils. In its underbelly, Seneca's criminals, and worse, are finding homes and lairs in all sectors of society. You are Jim Baylor; Seneca's former top detective and law enforcement officer fallen from grace. A man falsely accused of crimes he never committed, stripped of rank, title and honor, and incarcerated with the very people he put away. But you don't stay locked up for long. You're released from jail under questionable circumstances. You seek to clear your name, get the dirt on the people responsible for your demise and discover the greater machinations at play. To that aim, and with the help of friends and former colleagues, you open and run a private security agency that hires, manages, trains and deploys agents all across Seneca. To root out the cancer gnawing the city you'll have to use all the power and resources available to you from agents, modern surveillance technology, friends in high places, and trust built through your ever-growing network of sources. What better way to righteously clear your name, than by gathering Seneca's best and brightest.