#horror rpg tabletop

[legionofmyth]

[Hour 3 of 3] James "Grim" Desborough | Wightchester: Prison City of Ye Damned | Horror Genre

Wightchester: Prison City of Ye Damned [PDF]Wightchester: Support Material [PDF][Part 3 of 3] – James “Grim” Desborough joins 🐲 RPG Die Gest 🐉 to talk about his 500 page campaign sourcebook, Wightchester: Prison City of the Damned, a historically inspired zombie / undead survival setting for your Dungeons & Dragons 5E, Old School Renaissance, and Mork Borg tabletop role-playing games. After this…

[prokopetz]

Today's aesthetic: cosmic horror tabletop RPGs from the 1980s whose creators wrote the "madness rules" by simply plagiarising a list of disorders and their descriptions from the DSM-II and turning it into a d100 lookup table, except the DSM-II still listed "homosexuality" as a mental disorder (it wasn't removed until the DSM-III), with the result that there are several published tabletop RPGs where there's a small but non-zero chance that seeing Cthulhu will make you gay.

[anim-ttrpgs]

(Exerpt from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.)

[cassimothwin]

Which house will be you be assigned at Brackroot Academy??? Pause or Screenshot the gif at the top to learn your destiny!

Then "Keep reading" to learn more about your house!

Brackroot Academy is part of Tangled Blessings, a magical school horror roleplaying game that uses tarot cards to uncover your fate as a student.

If you like this fun exercise, learn more about the crowdfunding campaign happening now!

Learn more about your house further below! Does it suit you?

House of Celestials 

The skies borrow from the elements to paint a backdrop for life. Featuring iconography of the sun, moon, and constellations, celestials are known for their inner glow. Still, they do not shy away from the dark surrounding them, understanding that all things require balance. Students in this house often carry at least one or more of these marks: discipline, passion, or indifference. This dorm overlooks the lake. 

House of Dahlias 

Dahlias rely on the energy of celestial bodies for growth and endurance. As a vibrant flower, dahlias are a symbol of elegance and devotion. The plant may seem abundant, but it requires careful nurturing in the wet and cold climate of Brackroot. Students in this house often carry at least one or more of these marks: creativity, perfectionism, or obsessiveness. This dorm is connected to the greenhouse. 

House of Panthers 

The panther needs a garden to rest from its daily stroll, and the dahlias always supply. The panther is a symbol of grace, athletics, and agility but still elusive and rare — a fierce creature of the shadows. Students in this house often carry at least one or more of these marks: observation, punctuality, or ruthlessness. This dorm is at the edge of the forest. 

House of Spires 

The spires are only safe in their tower because of the panthers who keep guard. The House of Spires represents the connection blades, pens, and spirituality share. While members of this house may only show interest or aptitude in one of the represented icons, they are a full member of the spire. Students in this house often carry at least one or more of these marks: empathy, isolation, or judgment. This dorm is in the high tower. 

House of Elements  

Elements are the wildest of the quintet, but they maintain control with help from the spires. The elements symbolize excess and power, but together, they represent the strength of unity. Students in this house often carry at least one or more of these marks: cleverness, hunger, or negligence. This dorm is under the school, but furnished with enchanted windows that overlook the neighboring mountains.  

House of None

Accessible by only walking along the edge of a bridge in the right invisible spot, students in the House of None often think of themselves as beyond reality. These thoughts only worsen the more they understand magic on cosmic and atomic scales. Students in this house are often detached, cold, and fiercely intelligent Symbols commonly associated with this house include the number zero, a black hole, a vortex, lanterns, and knots. 

House of Divines

Hidden beneath the campus Chapel and graveyard, this house was annexed centuries ago for blatant misuse of dark magic. Some stories claim this house serves as the birthplace for demons and vampires. Whatever the reason for the House's former eradication, blood stains remain in the foundation. Students in this house are often vengeful, patient, and not above harming others to get what they want. Symbols commonly associated with this house include blood, fruit, teeth, bones, claws, horns.

[tabletopresources]

Darren Tan

Check out Tabletop Gaming Resources for more art, tips, and tools for your game!

[chrisairgames]

When in Rome

Right, so I write for Mothership RPG, yeah?

It was basically a professional obligation for me to go see Alien: Romulus on its opening weekend.

Short review: Cool. Though I wish directors would make a new alien horror movie instead of new Alien movies.

Lemme tell ya, I might have designer brain disease, but this movie really is a series of problems for a sci-fi adventure, haha. My favorite thing about this movie was the smart, player-skill level problem solving the characters came up with. I was actually impressed. The film made me want to put my friends through the same ringer, and write up a similar scenario.

So I did.

When in Rome is a 20pg Mothership RPG adventure module with two player handouts, obviously heavily inspired by Alien: Romulus. I started last weekend, and released it yesterday. (What’s wrong with me, right?). That is: writing, playtesting, Mothership 3pp approval, peer review (thanks Josh Domanski, Christian Sorrell, Iko and Allen Hall!), hiring Brandon Yu “Chaoclypse” for the sick art, revising and putting into layout.

So yeah, this module is basically an adaptation of the film, but it does have some very notable (read: legally distinct) differences.

It's free for the next five hours, and I would love to hear what you think, and how your PCs fare on Caesar/Augustus.

Click here to download the module on itch.io. Note that I’m still working on the plaintext file and VTT asset updates. I would love to hear what you think, and how your players’ crews fare on Caesar/Augustus.

Good luck.

[zhjake]

Magnagothica: Maleghast necromancer house 3/6: ABHORRERS

[cat-cosplay]

To illuminate the truth, you have to bring your own light.

[bleakbarrows]

Beasts of the Putrid Hills, II

[dinoberrypress]

GET READY TO HAVE A TERRIBLE TIME IN SPACE

You’re In Space And Everything’s Fucked, our sci-fi horror TTRPG, is available digitally now!

Head to bytes.rip/spacefucked and get ready to die!

[sprintingowl]

LIFELINE

I release a tabletop rpg every week.

This week's is based on those survival horror games where you play as someone doing tech support for the real protagonist.

You work in a call center, taking calls from final girls and inadvertent cosmic horror protagonists, and attempt to coach these callers through their situations.

The callers instinctively trust you, but you're limited by their capabilities. You don't roll your stats. You give them advice, and they roll theirs. They also can't stray too far from the phone.

You do have a resource called Battery that you can spend to bend the odds in your favor, and every supernatural threat can be countered in some way, but your caller isn't exactly built to brawl it out with the boogeyman, so you may need to walk them through building traps, blocking doors, or simply running.

LIFELINE is inspired by games like Killer Frequency, Operator's Side, Home Safety Hotline, and also older stuff like Critical Path.

[legionofmyth]

[Hour 1 of 3] James "Grim" Desborough | Wightchester: Prison City of Ye Damned | Horror Genre

[Part 1 of 3] - James “Grim” Desborough (@Grimasaur) joins to talk a/b Wightchester: Prison City of the Damned. After this we take a broader look at the #horror genre in tabletop role-playing games. #Wightchester #ttrpg #osr #DnD5E #DnD #MorkBorg

Wightchester: Prison City of Ye Damned [PDF]Wightchester: Support Material [PDF][Part 1 of 3] – James “Grim” Desborough joins 🐲 RPG Die Gest 🐉 to talk about his 500 page campaign sourcebook, Wightchester: Prison City of the Damned, a historically inspired zombie / undead survival setting for your Dungeons & Dragons 5E, Old School Renaissance, and Mork Borg tabletop role-playing games. After this…

[prokopetz]

Okay, so we all know the real reason for the vampires-versus-werewolves thing in popular culture is because back in the 1930s, the same studio owned the movie rights to Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman, and they decided to moosh them all together into what is arguably the first Big Stupid Cinematic Universe, but what's slightly less well known is that H G Wells' The Invisible Man was also part of that package. I want to see what the goofy we-swear-it's-personal-horror tabletop RPG based on that facet of the mythos looks like, weirdly artificial taxonomies of playable splats and all – everybody's invisible, but there are like five completely different possible reasons for that, plus a sixth, evil reason for being invisible which you're not allowed to play as because they secretly rule the world.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by A.N.I.M.

Allow us to introduce ourselves, we are The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery, or “A.N.I.M.”, a very small TTRPG studio based out of the southern U.S. but ultimately made up of people from many different walks of life.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is a neo-noir investigation-focused RPG with (as you can probably guess from the title) a supernatural twist, that is currently in production after an extremely successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.

How far would you go to learn the truth?

Play amateur detectives caught up in things they barely understand, and explore how the lives of your characters unravel as they push themselves to dig deeper into the unknown!

Eureka innovates on and revolutionizes investigative gameplay, TTRPG combat, and what it means to play as a monster as a character in a TTRPG, filling several voids we have noticed in the TTRPG space. Eureka supports investigation to a degree never before seen, ensuring that searching for clues is a granular and player-driven process, but also ensuring that the whole story doesn’t grind to a halt after one single failed investigation check.

Character-driven gameplay!

Stats and abilities are based on who your character is as a person. Freeform character creation allows you to build a totally unique little guy, and have a totally unique gameplay experience with him! This is supported by the backbone of the Composure mechanic. Stress, fear, fatigue, and hunger will wear your investigators down as they trudge deeper into the unknown. Food, sleep, and connections with their fellow investigators are the only way to keep them going!

Secrets inside and out! 

Any investigator could be a monster, helping their friends while trying not to reveal their true natures. The party will learn to trust and rely on each other, or explode into a tangled net of drama!

Though most PCs will be mundane humans—or perhaps because most PCs will be mundane humans—Eureka also supports playing monstrous PCs, such as a vampire, in a way never seen before. This isn’t just a watered-down stat bonus, it’s like playing an almost entirely different game, with all the monster’s strengths and weaknesses to account for while solving the mystery, plus the added incentive to keep it a secret from the other PCs as well as their players.

(You can also play as something like The Thing from John Carpenter's The Thing!)

If you like or are interested in Call of Cthulhu, Monster of the Week, Dresden Files, X-Files, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Apocalypse Keys, World of Darkness, or Gumshoe, you’ll probably find something in Eureka to really enjoy.

Intense, tactical combat! 

Hits are devastating, and misses are unpredictable–firing a gun will always change the situation somehow, for better or for worse!

Now in Technicolor!

Evocative artwork from talented femme-fatales @chaospyromancy and @qsycomplainsalot and the mysterious @theblackwarden paint a gorgeously-realized portrait of a world with shadows lurking in every corner.

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but you can still check out the public beta on itch.io to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, etc.!

You can also follow updates on our Kickstarter page where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more, you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy earlier, plus extra content such as adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[cassimothwin]

Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives launches tomorrow, September 3, on BackerKit!

>>> Click here to follow the project <<<

Tangled Blessings is my dark academia magic academy roleplaying game that features assigned houses, magic, and terrifying forces that don't want to see you graduate.

Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives adds even more content. I invited 11 contributors including the 10 pictured below to add even more to the cursed school.

The base game only requires tarot cards -- no weird dice. Plus, you can play by yourself or with a friend who will take on the role of your academic rival. You don't even need a game master!

We've all worked really hard on the project, and I hope you consider checking it out! :)

[commander-ben]

Some rapscallions from my ttrpg Black Powder and Brimstone. A rules light, art heavy grim-dark game based on the Mörk Borg system.

Dark and thrilling adventures await in a world blighted by war and demons.

This illustration shows a mercenary deserter, a ruthless adventurer, and a lapsed practitioner. Only three of over twenty character archetypes you can shoes from, or just make up your own!

You can pre sign up for the campaign here!