Hinterlight

What is Hinterlight?

A tome of gothic roleplay with 120+ full-color, art-heavy pages. Within, you will find…

A COLLABORATIVE WORLDBUILDING RITUAL.  A deck of cards, four(ish) willing compatriots and the gentle guidance of our play-tools are all you need to mold a fae dreamscape stranger than any solitary mind could conceive. Assemble a band of ludicrously gloomy ne’er-do-wells. Recall and map the haunted forest that claimed your miserable lives. Bind yourselves to the noble faerie who preside over the grim ritual of your resurrection. It's a wicked fever-dream of manufactured memories, tragic tales and enticing possibilities that come together to create a world rich in fae melodrama & ready for deep exploration. 

PROCEDURES FOR RESONANT ROLEPLAY. After the ritual is complete, use our simple card-based system for play not only aesthetically but thematically gothic. Fetch A Candle is a Together We Go game less concerned with the risks of failure than with what success will cost you. Wherever you may go, you carry your choices with you. When they grow too heavy, you must choose: Surrender or Persevere?

Whether you elect a GM to guide you in your further adventures or choose to share that burden in perpetuity, Hinterlight has a robust toolkit for quick and easy campaign prep.

Savor a morsel of the ritual's power for yourself:

Quickstart Available Now!

The Ritual

The Hymn of the Hollow Flame is a spell to help the dead remember how to live again. Entertain the noble fae with the details of your recent tragedy, and they shall unwind the gruesome demise that’s waiting at the end of it. 

Draw cards to rekindle lost memories. Consult the hymn to interpret these visions. As they leak back in through the cracks in your skulls, you will learn not only of your own sad fates but also of this strange world you’ve come to be lost in…

Wherein we draw cards to learn WHO YOU WERE. Reassemble the meager pile of tragedies you were made of. Recount every thoughtless act that drove you into the faeries' arms. 

The suits of your cards reveal what the fae wish to know about you. Answer their inquiries, no matter how personal. Set down your portrait for posterity by marking your effigy. Account for what few talents and personal effects you can yet lay claim to.

Wherein we build cards into a pattern to help recall THE DWELL, mother of all forests. Turn your mind back to that time spent wandering amidst her shadows and the grisly end you found out there. Behold again her mighty boughs and twisting roots. 

Physically assemble a patchwork map of your tragic journey through the empire of the noble fae. Once, it shone brighter than any built by mankind. Now all is gone to rot. What dregs are left strewn about the Dwell have since been claimed by the wretched, the untamed and the damned. Surely, you met their ilk along the road to your death? Tell all. We must know how bad things have gotten if we are to reclaim them.

Wherein we come home to RHYME, the ancient seat of faerie power. It, too, sags under the weight of neglect and decay. Some few noble fae yet linger. It is to them you must swear your second lives. Build Rhyme's pattern to seal your fate and make your vows.

Learn first and foremost the manner of creature you have bound yourself to. Use your deck to reveal their habits, dreams and secrets. Spy out the corners they claim for their own and mark them on Rhyme's legend. Once they’ve set your hearts back to beating, you'll call the banners, fill the halls and set sure again each crumbling brick. 

It is what you were reborn to do. 

Wherein we feel the presence of THE ABSENT CROWN, the lost ruler whose influence still stains every corner of the Dwell and keeps this land bound to its rotten past. What gift shall they impart as they render their unseen blessing to this unholy resurrection? 

As the Hymn comes to a close, crystalize your new selves into something of practical use to your new masters. Then draw a single card, that reshapes everything and sets the stage for further play!

The Hymn is no-prep, GM-less, and radically collaborative. Everyone comes to the text together and shares the responsibilities of curating your group’s experience. Continuing play with Fetch A Candle provides a veritable feast of tools at your disposal to make the preparatory work a breeze, with or without a GM. Including:

• Tables to quickly generate Noble Fae, their private chambers, their strange servants, their uncanny pets, the many rites and feasts that they observe, the daily tragedies that befall them, and More™. 
• Simple GM rituals to expand collaborative locations into one of Hinterlight’s unique adventure types: Haunts, Delves, & Knots.
• Procedures for courtly intrigue, hypnagogic travel, and quiet moments of growth.
• A Mystery Map to track the web of intrigue weighing Rhyme down and to set the hidden history of Rhyme’s long decline in stone as your players reveal it bit by bit.
• Hundreds of combinatory relics, rites, creatures, moments and threats.
• Intuitive phases of play to help you balance time spent amidst the intrigues of the faeries’ court and the perils of their ruined empire. 
• Pre-gen adventures to showcase the types of play that make Hinterlight shine bright!

If you cannot commit to further explorations at the ritual’s close, use these tools to populate Rhyme & the Dwell with an absurd knot of interconnected faeries, tug at the strings of their fascinations, secrets and affiliations, then watch the madcap (and often lethal) fallout of your ill-advised meddling.

The Book

We're printing Hinterlight as a 7x10 softcover. Deluxe tier backers will also receive maps, gatefold character sheets, custom-backed playing cards, an altar cloth, and a few other physical goodies that other folks can buy as add-ons for a few extra bucks.

Testimonials & Media

"A storytelling seance that makes a first impression out of your character's last words. After just two minutes of play, we had already created a creature fascinating enough to build a setting around. After five minutes, we had crafted a wonderfully cinematic final moment for our doomed adventurers (RIP to the Harvesters of the Pyrite Scale)!" – Sean Ireland, Co-Creator of Triangle Agency

"Gorgeous art with evocative world-building tools?  Sign me up!  But to be honest, they had me at 'collage'!"  - Kyle Latino, aka Map Crow

"Immaculate, numinous darkness."  
- Will Jobst, Good Luck Press 

"Hinterlight will inspire you to draw out a weird and tragic macabre tale you did not know you had. If you like the fae, poetry, or some good Type Two Fun, gather your bravest friends to play Hinterlight." - Superdillin

"I love that the tone of Hinterlight is so tightly woven into the gameplay itself."
- Will Chesney, Writer and Designer

"Hinterlight is a ghastly, gothic delight. Each step of your journey will be fraught with collaborative decision-making, reverberating consequences, and an inevitable ending for each of you. One from which neither characters nor players will emerge entirely the same..." - Ed Spence, Warcradle Studios

Hinterlight on the One Shot Podcast!

Listen to Episode 2!
Listen to Episode 3!

Behind the scenes: Art of Hinterlight

Fetch A Candle

Once the Hymn has gone silent, your song must find a new home. Fetch A Candle is a Together We Go game that explores the soft tragedies and difficult choices you will face in your deathless service to the noble fae. Its card-&-pattern mechanics are dead simple and foster a ceremonial grandeur in play, even after you've left the ritual behind.

 Feel the unbearable weight of the past. Every corner of The Dwell reflects and manifests your own tortured past, as well as the terrible history of those you’ve sworn to serve. Phase play allows for quiet moments to confront these terrible burdens. What you find there may give you what you need to dispel this land's terrible curse.

When death is off the table, what is left to despair?  As your characters gain strength, they also risk losing themselves. With every false death, a bit more of your soul lost to the spell. With every return, a bit more of the fae sinks in to fill the gap. 

Hold yourself to nobler standards. The noble fae do not measure their servants by brawn, reflex or sacrosanctity. Your new shape will be carved from subtler things: authority, memory, patience, grace. Things that will be of some use to you in places where the knife fails. Fetch A Candle's four Humours force you to consider every action and moment of growth in the light of fae standards. Make yourselves in their image, or pay the cost of insolence.

Many of TWG's base procedures have been tweaked to resonate with Hinterlight's gothic sensibilities. Ill-gotten gains, foolish mistakes and horrid secrets all weigh equally on sojourners of the Dwell and each fetch their own lurid price back in the safety of the court. Those skills and tools that resonate with you become enshrined in the sanctum of your self. Those that fail you fade and are fed to the flames of your growing strength. 

When the spell of your resurrection falters, you must surrender to the Hymn and return, for a while, to incorporeality. There, you will see things that only lost lights can see. Hear things no ear of flesh could prick itself to. Commune with things too old to recognize life as a form of thinking.

Fetch A Candle is in alpha-test as of this Kickstarter, but we'll share a sneak peek soon!

Meet the Team

Tyler Lamb Lead Writer & Designer

Robbi Burns Artist/Co-Designer

Kelsey Jirikils Co-Designer/Administrative Lead

Richard Ruane Editor

Charlie Ferguson-Avery Trailer/Additional Art & Design

Tony V, Plus One EXP Publishing and Fulfillment

Shipping Estimates

US Shipping will be $8-20
International will be $18-40