OLD HOUSE RPG | NINE-STOREY SILENCE

(Post-Soviet Apartment Horror / Domestic World RPG / AnyPOV / Slow Burn / Multi-Start)

"Apartment 84 is cheap, close to the tram line, and available immediately. Nobody explains why."

A folded address in hurried ink. A ring of old keys. Two travel bags left beside a cracked pavement while the taxi disappears between grey panel blocks.

The building ahead was completed in 1972. Nine storeys, one unreliable elevator, a green metal entrance door and enough lit windows to prove that people still live here.

Near the entrance, two elderly women stop talking when they notice the apartment number on the note.

Inside the locked building, the elevator begins to descend.

Old House Narrator runs the whole address.

Apartment 84 and the flats around it. The stairwell, elevator, basement, courtyard and service rooms. Neighbours with routines, grudges, jobs, families and different versions of the same old story. Domashniy across the road. University routes, trams, buses, housing-service notices, bad weather and the rest of the city continuing beyond the entrance door.

This is not a single-character bot and not a haunted-house tour guide. The building does not pause ordinary life while waiting for the next scare.

⚠ CONTENT WARNING: slow-burn supernatural horror, claustrophobia, isolation, stalking-like threshold pressure, distorted spaces, unsafe infrastructure, injury, possible death, grief, poverty, addiction, caregiving stress, illness, neighbourhood conflict and unsettling domestic situations. Romance is optional and never assumed.

Most Days Are Still Ordinary

The rent still has to be paid. Groceries still run out. Pipes leak, buses arrive late, neighbours argue over rubbish, and the housing office avoids responsibility with professional consistency.

You can spend entire scenes cooking, studying, travelling, shopping, repairing something, talking through half-open doors or learning which resident actually knows how the water valves work.

Quiet scenes remain quiet when nothing has earned an interruption. The house does not throw an anomaly into every reply just because the wallpaper has not moved recently.

The Building

The block stands on the documented site of a much older cemetery. Official records say the burials were relocated before construction. The surviving plans do not establish how complete that work was, and nothing here treats the connection as a solved answer.

Some failures are only failures. Old wiring flickers. Pipes knock. Lift doors stick. Residents misremember apartment numbers and repeat rumours until nobody knows who started them.

Other patterns are harder to file under bad maintenance.

The building reacts through routine, thresholds, concrete, wiring, water and shared space. Whether those reactions belong to one presence, several phenomena, accumulated resident fear or something else remains open until the route produces evidence.

Your Place in It

› Apartment 84: the default route makes you its current tenant. Everything else about you remains open: age, gender, work, education, finances, family, beliefs and why you accepted the address.
› Another Connection: play a resident from another floor, visitor, relative, delivery worker, housing employee, former tenant, investigator or somebody passing through for reasons of your own.
› Sandbox: establish the time, place, current situation, your connection to the building, which residents are actually present and how much has already happened.

An established alternative role replaces the Apartment 84 default. The story does not drag you back into being the new tenant after you chose something else.

How the Horror Works

› Time matters, but time is not a dice roll. Evening changes how residents behave. Late hours change which spaces are sensible to use. A clock alone does not force an event.
› Actions matter more than message count. Walking home because you need to is not the same as testing the same stairwell for the sixth time. Mentioning a warning is not breaking it.
› Warnings come before consequences. Severe outcomes arrive through visible causes and leave an answerable moment unless your action already accepted the risk.
› Residents stay people. They disagree, forget, exaggerate, hide things, help for practical reasons and sometimes give bad advice with complete confidence.
› A report is not an event. A name in a mailbox does not place its owner behind you. A story about the basement does not move the scene there. A quoted rule is not automatically true.
› Consequences remain. Injuries, damaged doors, opened letters, missing keys, strained relationships, repairs, contradictions and unfinished incidents continue forward.

Neighbours, Records & Local Rules

Long-term residents have habits they rarely explain. Maintenance workers know which valves are mislabeled. Shop staff remember who used to buy groceries for apartments now listed as empty. Two witnesses can describe the same family and disagree about which door they lived behind.

Advice may be useful without being universal. A ritual may calm one situation and do nothing in another. A resident lowering their voice proves that they are afraid or cautious—not that their explanation is correct.

10 Alternate Greetings
Ordinary mornings, neighbourhood mysteries, active danger and one blank Sandbox. Each start establishes only the situation visible on the page; everything else remains open.

Start 1 — First Arrival

The taxi has gone. Your bags, keys and the note for Apartment 84 remain on the pavement. Two women near the entrance want to know whether the elevator began descending before you arrived.

MAIN START

NEW TENANT

SLOW ENTRY

Start 2 — Eight in the Morning

A housing-service worker is checking the water risers outside Apartment 84. The notice looks legitimate, the pipes are still running, and two different lines inside the cabinet carry the same apartment numbers.

08:00

MAINTENANCE

MUNDANE FIRST

Start 3 — The Second Key

Galina found an old brass key near the bread shelves in Domashniy. The tag says 84. Before she calls the building's handyman, she wants to know whether it belongs to you.

DOMASHNIY

LOST PROPERTY

NEIGHBOURHOOD MYSTERY

Start 4 — Tamara’s Rules

The elderly woman across the landing opens her door as far as the chain permits. She offers two practical warnings before something knocks from inside the wall between your apartments.

8TH FLOOR

NEIGHBOUR

CONFLICTING SOUND

Start 5 — Mail for Voronina

An old envelope waits inside mailbox 84 beneath a recently replaced label. The apartment number is correct. The name belongs to somebody else. Grigory Pavlovich is more interested in when the label changed.

WRONG MAIL

ENTRANCE HALL

RECORD MYSTERY

Start 6 — The Eighth Floor Again

The landing is where it should be. The flights above and below are not. Tamara tells you to ignore the painted floor numbers and compare the torn notices instead.

STAIRWELL

AFTER 20:00

SPATIAL IRREGULARITY

Start 7 — The Polite Knock

The radiator has been hammering through Apartment 84 in a repeated pattern. Three measured knocks answer from the corridor, followed by a calm request for silence.

LATE NIGHT

APARTMENT 84

THRESHOLD PRESSURE

Start 8 — Between Eight and Nine

The elevator is stopped where no landing should be. Its doors have failed to meet, and the relay has just decided to open them wider.

03:02

ELEVATOR

ACTIVE DANGER

Start 9 — The Wrong Riser

Viktor has shut the documented water line in the basement. The gauge reads zero. An unmarked pipe beside it continues carrying water toward Apartment 84.

BASEMENT

DAYTIME INVESTIGATION

INFRASTRUCTURE MYSTERY

Start 10 — Sandbox Mode

Set the time, location, immediate situation and your connection to the building. Begin with an ordinary errand, a repair, a social conflict, an investigation, an active anomaly or the aftermath of a bad night. Establish only what matters now; anything omitted remains open.

SANDBOX

CUSTOM ROLE

CUSTOM HOUSE STATE

New Here?

› Want the full slow entry: Start 1.
› Want ordinary life with something slightly wrong: Start 2 or Start 3.
› Want neighbours and incomplete local knowledge: Start 4 or Start 5.
› Want an investigation already underway: Start 6 or Start 9.
› Want immediate pressure: Start 7 or Start 8.
› Want another apartment, another role or your own opening: Start 10.

Before You Start

The static card and all ten greetings were reviewed for scene continuity, formatting, player agency, route separation and slow-burn pacing.

Response length, memory, formatting discipline and mechanical consistency still vary by model. A good route gives ordinary life room to exist, treats warnings as evidence rather than commandments, and remembers what actually happened instead of escalating from keywords alone.

Creator Note

One of the old bots for improvement. Good luck.

Update List:
26.07.26: Rebuilt the public description around the final ten-start structure, reduced anomaly spoilers, removed outdated Lorebook advertising, preserved the unresolved origin boundary and added clearer route, agency and continuity guidance.

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Tags:
urban horror, apartment horror, post-soviet horror, soviet panel building, nine-storey building, domestic horror, old house, apartment 84, university district, student life, neighbours, domashniy, elevator horror, stairwell horror, basement mystery, infrastructure horror, slow burn, realistic horror, slice of life, mystery, social horror, survival horror, atmospheric horror, longform, campaign, world rpg, narrator bot, ensemble bot, anypov, multi-start, sandbox mode, original setting, psychological horror, claustrophobia, neighbourhood drama, roleplay