Merryshire Detective Club

Merryshire Detective Club, a cosy fantasy mystery RPG from Pelgrane, Backerkitting now.

You play amateur detectives in a cosy-fantasy setting. Your band of plucky investigators solves mysteries (quite often, murder mysteries) that crop up with remarkable regularity in the lovely little halfling village you design together.

One of the General abilities is called Risky Nonsense.

Ballad Hunters

Ballad Hunters, a GUMSHOE game of haunted folk songs and breaking the curse through ballad magic in 1813, Kickstarting now.

Pelgrane AMA with Cat Tobin

Pitching , publishing and playing

Operation: CRIMSON GIFT

A bundle of Night’s Black Agents and Dracula Dossier PDFs declassified by Pelgrane for eyes only.

RPGaDAY 2025 14 - Mystery

#RPGaDAY2025

14 - Mystery

How to host a mystery?

Which is a less deadly spinoff from How To Host A Murder which didn’t catch on as much because the original title is so much more morbidly fun.

And that’s an example that interactive mystery stories are popular beyond genre gaming circles.

Murder mystery parties can and do become LARPs if the guests start playing characters instead of just investigating as themselves.

Call Of Cthulhu, one of the big RPGs for forty years now, is built around solving mysteries. (And then wishing you hadn’t.) So it’s a baked-in playstyle going back decades, earlier than that as some D&D modules tried it early on.

The GUMSHOE system is dedicated to making sure the PCs got all the core clues and then deciding what else to select.

I will tend to start a game with a mystery to solve if I don’t have a reason to do something else. The kind of mystery can help set the tone - murder establishes stakes.

And there are other ways to run mysteries, closed or open. This goes for secrets between players and the like as well.

There are even mystery genre games with no actual answer so you propose a solution and roll to see how right you are.

How complicated do you get, and how much do you nudge, remind, throw in surprise reveals and the like? My high school group got stuck in Power Behind The Throne for Warhammer and I couldn’t figure out where to redirect them.

Having at least some of a solution in mind generally helps with making the clues make sense even when improvising, otherwise you have a mystery box, not a mystery.

Red herrings are tricky because the GM is the narrator of the world as well as making up what the possibly lying suspects say, and players have to know what to trust in and out of character.

And there are only so many games where you can solve the mystery like I often do with crime shows by identifying the most familiar actor with too few scenes early on.

14a - 2, 10, 4

What, Excited, Rule

The PCs get roped into a murder mystery party or play. And it doesn’t end up featuring a real murder!

Runeslinger

Boundary of the Darkness playtest

Pelgrane calling for playtesters for Boundary of the Darkness, the Trail of Cthulhu sourcebook of dread investigation during the Age of Enlightenment.

Fear Itself - Shattered Veil Edition

Fear Itself - Shattered Veil Edition - a new expanded full-colour hardback version of Fear Itself, with the addition of a expansion, The Ocean Game, also available separately as part of the campaign.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 23a: Quieter Weirdness

Character Creation Challenge 2025

23a: Quieter Weirdness

For a more Twin Peaks setting that’s slightly odd on the surface with just one or two bizarre dark secrets, maybe something like Chronicles Of Darkness or Fear Itself, with advice and possibly characters from Station Duty in The Esoterrorists second edition.

Julee Cruise at the Roadhouse

The house band in a town saloon, or students at a music conservatory. Drama, mysteries, and room for something like a singer who sometimes channels voices from beyond.

Wild At Heart

“Yet something is different

Are we falling in love?”

Concept

They’ll be heading to college or other futures come the fall, but tonight they’re playing, making the kinds of mistake kids their age should be making... maybe finding someone made a worse one.

Trail Of Cthulhu 2nd edition

Trail Of Cthulhu 2nd edition, now live on Backerkit.

#RPGaDay2024 11 - RPG with well supported one-shots

#RPGaDay2024

11 - RPG with well supported one-shots

Dread. Which is ironic because a horror game using Jenga as the core mechanic is all about not being well supported.

Horror games are naturally one-shot-heavy, with games like Dead Of Night and Quietus which aim for finality as well as options like the Cinematic version of ALIEN and the one-shot, miniseries and campaign rules for Fear Itself.

Dread in particular has the character questionnaire setups with lots of leading questions to feed into the scenario.

All. Fall. Down.

11a - One-shots

I was introduced to the idea of specifically playing one-shots early, with TOON having several in the rulebook and only really getting to a more “campaign” structure in a later sourcebook. Filling a single session with incident is easy enough but there’s an art to introducing and actually finishing a story of some sort.

11b - Invasion

A suitably dramatic invasion can be the frame of a series by itself or shake up an existing setting. Or in a suitably big setting aliens invading could be a reasonably busy day for the PCs.

David Chapman

Runeslinger

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who celebrate. Ideas by Gar for Pelgrane games from 2020.

Trail Of Cthulhu second edition

Trail of Cthulhu second edition is on its way, via Kickstarter aiming for November.

Huntober 2022 14: Descent Into The Darkness

Huntober 2022 14: Descent Into The Darkness

Carry the light with you.

(Inspired by The Esoterrorists.)

RPG soundtracks

io9 checks out official and unofficial soundtracks for tabletop RPGs, including D&D, Vampire: The Masquerade and Trail Of Cthulhu, as well as some games where the soundtrack is part of play.

Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff 500

Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff for the 500th time.

Dracula Day 125

Dracula looms large over vampire stories, the big brand that they have to contend with. The Xerox of vampires. If Dracula is missing in an Earth-based setting with vampires you’re in an alternate world beyond having vampires around and have to figure out how much else to take out.

See my having massively overthought Dracula in Vampire settings where the book and the character both exist, and vampire fiction in general.

See also Dracula-specific gaming things like The Dracula Dossier, Dracula’s America and Fury Of Dracula.

And some I don’t have copies of for some reason.

He’s also the only vampire I ever battled in ice lolly form.

St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day if applicable!

From 2020, plot hooks from Gar Hanrahan at Pelgrane Press.

I’ve never used Ireland as a setting, having never been there myself (though an Irish con is on my wishlist) and having had a number of local players so it seems a bit presumptuous. Of course I can point to fiction from Irish creators, with Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Carmilla for starters.

Character Creation Challenge 2022 21d: Fear Itself

Character Creation Challenge 2022

21d: Fear Itself second edition

(website)

17d: Jodie Wells, Final Girl...?

18d: Ashley Shelton, Supportive Friend...?

19d: Officer Derick Forrest, To Serve And Protect...?

20d: Ted Randall, Film Geek...?

And finally for Shiver...

Other options I considered include Perfect Boyfriend, Rival Filmmaker, and Suspicious Professor Played By A Well-Known Horror Character Actor.

Tilly Hayes

Crusading Reporter...?

Character Concept

A Journalism student writing for the school paper, she knows Ted and Officer Derick, and knows Jodie and Ashley by reputation (she’d love to get an interview) and tried to get into the crime scene. (Professional bond.)

Sources of Stability

The story matters!

Paper staff

Kiersey Clemons

Have you ever been into the old shuttered Delta Kappa house?

“I was... investigating a sound inside.”

Character Creation Challenge 2022 20d: Fear Itself

Character Creation Challenge 2022

20d: Fear Itself second edition

(website)

17d: Jodie Wells, Final Girl...?

18d: Ashley Shelton, Supportive Friend...?

19d: Officer Derick Forrest, To Serve And Protect...?

Ted Randall

Film Geek...?

Character Concept

Friend and film student, with a raft of horror and other trivia.

The Spiral is meant for a new branch after four PCs, but with five I’m going for two equal branches, so back to Jodie and Ashley. (Personal bond)

Sources of Stability

“This is like that scene...”

Gallows humour

Add one location - a store, a landmark, somewhere on campus you hang out, anything - to the map of town. Name someone associated with that place.

“The Lake Theater, has the best late night movies in town. Riley, the manager, really knows his stuff. Not sure why he didn’t finish his film course.”

Jordan Elsass

Character Creation Challenge 2022 19d: Fear Itself

Character Creation Challenge 2022

19d: Fear Itself second edition

(website)

17d: Jodie Wells, Final Girl...?

18d: Ashley Shelton, Supportive Friend...?

Officer Derick Forrest

To Serve And Protect...?

Character Concept

Campus police. Pretty new to the job, after a city posting. Knows Jodie due to alerts about possible security, and Ashley through occasional troublemaking, and they know to call on him if there’s a problem. (Professional bond.)

Sources of Stability

Duty as an officer

Department backing

Lamorne Morris

Who do you know on campus that you wouldn’t be at all surprised if they ended up dead or turned out to be the killer?

“There’s this BMOC type, rich family, basketball captain. And he’s dating Jodie Wells’s roommate...”