Gats & Grimoires

GATS & GRIMOIRES

Magic never disappeared. It bought a motorcar, joined a Family, and learned to carry a gun.

Gats & Grimoires is a Jazz-Age fantasy crime tabletop roleplaying game about mobsters, magic, gunfights, heists, criminal Families, monsters, crooked deals, and the poor decisions that happen when all of those things meet in the same alley.

The old fantasy world never went away.

It industrialized.

Wizard towers gave way to skyscrapers. Horses share the streets with motorcars. Enchanted relics get fenced through backroom auctions. Goblins build guns. Elves rob museums. Vampires operate blood banks. Devil-Kin sell fire insurance. And somewhere beneath the electric lights, jazz clubs, factories, and speakeasies, the things from the old stories are still waiting.

Around here, adventurers aren't clearing dungeons for kings.

They're Goons working for the Family.

PLAY IT BEFORE YOU BACK IT

Don't take our word for it, pal.

The Gats & Grimoires — Introductory Playtest Rulebook is available FREE on DriveThruRPG.

Download it, get a Crew together, pull a Job, shoot somebody you probably shouldn't have, and decide for yourself whether you want in on the Family business. Click the banner below to download.

YOUR FIRST JOB: BACK ALLEY CHALKLINE

So, you got the rulebook. Now what? Gonna sit around reading it, or are you gonna earn your keep?

Welcome to Back Alley Chalkline, an introductory one-shot playtest for Gats & Grimoires, where a quiet night at the Crew's hideout turns into a murder investigation nobody particularly wanted.

There's blood in the alley, a chalk outline on the pavement, street constables asking questions, and enough suspicious characters wandering around to make everybody look guilty.

The rain's washing away the evidence, the locals ain't talking, and somebody knows more than they're letting on.

Sounds like a job for your Crew.

Back Alley Chalkline gives you an opportunity to put the Gats & Grimoires rules to the test. Gather your friends, grab some dice, and see how your Goons handle an investigation where trouble could be waiting around every corner.

This is your chance to experience the world before deciding whether to back the full game.

PLAY BACK ALLEY CHALKLINE

PDF: https://jester-knight-games.itch.io/back-alley-chalkline

VTT: https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/gameaddon/45602/back-alley-chalkline

Grab the free Introductory Playtest Rulebook too, if you haven't already.

SO WHAT THE HELL IS GATS & GRIMOIRES?

One person at the table takes the role of the Don, running the city, its criminals, monsters, cops, victims, witnesses, rivals, and everybody else unfortunate enough to cross the Crew.

Everybody else creates a Goon.

When something uncertain happens, you roll a d20, add the appropriate Modifier, and try to meet or beat the Difficulty Challenge. Advantage, Disadvantage, Critical Successes, Critical Failures, Opposed Checks, Success at a Cost, and other tools keep the rules moving while letting the consequences of your decisions drive the story.

The goal isn't to spend all night arguing over whether you can kick down a door.

The goal is to find out what happens after you kick it down.

BUILD YOUR GOON

This ain't a game where your fantasy people stayed politely separated into forests, mountains, castles, and caves.

Everybody came to the city.

Play a Devil-Kin, Dwarf, Elf, Goblin, Human, Jester, or Salamander, each with its own abilities, resources, Heritage Traits, strengths, and ways of making the Don regret allowing character creation.

Then customize your Goon with Traits, Flaws, Talents, Stats, equipment, relationships, history, and enough personal problems to make sure the easy Job stops being easy somewhere around the second gunshot.

There are no rigid fantasy classes telling you what your Goon is allowed to become.

Want a goblin back-alley surgeon?

Do it.

An elf with a shotgun?

Sure.

A dwarf con artist?

Why not?

A human who learned just enough forbidden magic to become everybody else's problem?

Now you're getting it.

PICK YOUR FAMILY

Being dangerous is useful.

Knowing dangerous people is better.

Seven major criminal Families operate throughout the world of Gats & Grimoires, each with its own rackets, connections, equipment, specialties, and particular interpretation of legitimate business.

The Black Carnival moves contraband beneath striped canvas and traveling midway lights.

The Cinder Company deals in furnaces, fire, protection, and insurance nobody wants to decline.

The Gilt Lantern Society steals art, relics, jewels, history, and occasionally the paperwork proving you ever owned them.

Hex & Hammer deals in wards, curses, contracts, magical construction, and protection rackets where the building itself knows whether you paid.

The Numbers Choir runs gambling, coded broadcasts, information, pirate radio, rumors, and secrets that travel faster than bullets.

The Rivet Brotherhood builds machines, runs factories, moves guns, and believes any engineering problem can be solved by adding another barrel.

And the Velvet Veins operate clinics, blood rackets, necromantic services, and the sort of hospitals where nobody asks why you got shot.

Your Family gives you connections.

It also gives you enemies.

Usually more enemies.

GUNS MEET GRIMOIRES

Magic survived modernization.

So did violence.

Gats & Grimoires puts firearms and spellcraft in the same toolbox.

Your Crew might carry revolvers, pocket pistols, shotguns, rifles, submachine guns, knives, brass knuckles, dynamite, occult ammunition, lockpicks, enchanted equipment, and magical relics somebody really should've left buried.

Meanwhile, spell-slingers can study Pyromancy, Cryomancy, Beat Magic, Illusion, Electromancy, Conjuration, Nature, Divination, Necromancy, and Demonology.

You can throw lightning down an alley.

You can summon something unpleasant.

You can rewrite what somebody thinks they're looking at.

Or you can pull out a shotgun.

Sometimes progress is beautiful.

PULL A JOB

A Gats & Grimoires game can be a bank robbery, smuggling run, assassination, protection racket, investigation, monster hunt, museum theft, gang war, occult mystery, getaway chase, or whatever other perfectly respectable business your Crew manages to involve itself in.

Jobs don't have to go according to plan.

Actually, we'd be a little disappointed if they did.

The Don has tools for running NPCs, encounters, complications, factions, criminal operations, downtime, and the inevitable consequences of a Crew deciding that explosives are technically a form of lockpick. The current rulebook is organized around character creation, magic, equipment, combat, advancement, the criminal world, crafting and upgrades, advanced magic, Don tools, tables, NPCs, and reference material.

WELCOME TO THE BLOOD PUDDLE KILLER SERIES

Gats & Grimoires isn't just a toolbox.

We've also been building adventures designed to show exactly what happens when the Crew gets turned loose in this world.

The Blood Puddle Killer Series is a connected line of crime-mystery one-shots involving assassins, mob captains, rival Families, investigations, supernatural murders, recurring NPCs, escalating conspiracies, and a killer whose victims have an unfortunate habit of becoming exactly what the name suggests.

The series currently includes the storylines surrounding Rooftop Reaper and 5 Elemental Captains, with The Bloody Exorcist established as the last chapter.

Different Kickstarter tiers provide access to the series in PDF, Roll20, or both, depending on your pledge.

No spoilers here.

You'll make enough mistakes on your own.

WHY KICKSTARTER?

Gats & Grimoires already exists as a playable game.

The introductory playtest is available now so players can see the world, learn the rules, run games, and tell us what works before the finished edition lands on the table.

This Kickstarter is about taking that foundation and turning it into the finished Gats & Grimoires experience.

The campaign helps support the final production work needed to bring the game together: continued development, editing, proofreading, presentation, artwork, digital support, adventures, and the other pieces needed to turn a working playtest into a game we're proud to put the Jester Knight Games name on.

We're not asking you to fund an idea scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin.

We're asking you to help us finish the Job.

CHOOSE YOUR PLACE IN THE FAMILY

Every operation's got a hierarchy.

Ours does too.

From the $1 Associate who gets their name recorded in the book, through Made Man, Capo, Consigliere, Underboss, and finally The Don, each step up the Family brings more of Gats & Grimoires and its adventures into your collection.

OTHER WORLDS ARE WAITING

Gats & Grimoires may be the big Job on the table, but it isn't the only game coming out of Jester Knight Games.

Projects like Maddening Red Wastes, Evil Beyond the Hill, and Jester's Gambit represent other worlds and games we're building alongside the Family's criminal playground.

TRY IT. THEN DECIDE.

We could tell you Gats & Grimoires has mobsters.

We could tell you it has magic.

We could tell you about shotgun-wielding Salamanders, goblin mechanics, criminal elves, haunted typewriters, necromantic clinics, enchanted ammunition, magical radio stations, cursed architecture, and all the other perfectly sensible things we've put into this game.

But there's an easier way.

Play it.

https://jester-knight-games.itch.io/gats-grimoires-introductory-playtest-rulebook

If you like what happens at your table, come back and join the Family.

THE FAMILY'S ALWAYS LOOKIN' FOR NEW FACES!

Hey, you! Yeah, you! Don't go wanderin' off just yet.

The Gats & Grimoires Kickstarter might be our biggest Job yet, but the boys over at Jester Knight Games have plenty more trouble cookin' behind closed doors.

Wanna keep your ear to the street?

Join the Jester Knight Games Facebook page to stay up to date on our tabletop games, upcoming adventures, playtest opportunities, development news, and everything else we're working on.

Whether you're a seasoned Don, a fresh-faced Goon, or just somebody who enjoys a good story with a few bullets flying, there's always room for another mug in the Family.

And don't forget, we've got more worlds waiting for you, including The Maddening Red Wastes, Evil Beyond the Hill, and Jester's Gambit.

JOIN JESTER KNIGHT GAMES ON FACEBOOK

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556125886711

Come on in, pal. Pull up a chair. The Family's got stories to tell.

WELCOME TO THE FAMILY

We want Gats & Grimoires to give groups a world where the fantasy didn't end when somebody invented electricity.

It changed.

Magic got commercialized. Monsters got jobs. Criminals got organized. Guns got cheaper. The city got bigger.

And somewhere out there is a Crew looking at what should have been a simple Job and saying the six words every Don eventually learns to fear:

“Alright, I got a better idea.”

Welcome to Gats & Grimoires.

Now get to work.