The Grim Gazette - A Collection Of Victorian Horror TTRPGs

The Grim Gazette 💀

Play the life of a Victorian adventurer from cradle to grave in this haunting 5-part story. Set in a Gothic Victorian world where danger lurks in the shadows, and the sins of your past are never far behind you, The Grim Gazette thrusts gothic malice and horror onto your tabletop. But remember, in The Grim Gazette, even in death there is no rest.

The Grim Gazette is a series of 5 Victorian horror TTRPGs, each one contained within a high-quality A5 hardback book with 48+ pages of rules, stories and monsters, ready to be unleashed on your creepy game nights. 

Play solo or multiplayer, as a linked campaign or as standalone one-shots - The Grim Gazette brings a haunting experience to your game nights, however you want to play!

The Grim Gazette lets you play through a haunting campaign where you’ll explore the life story of a Victorian adventurer from cradle to grave. Take your traumas and sins with you on your journeys as you explore this dark, fateful world.

Start your journey as a pauper, paying off your debts in the abhorrent Nightwatch - facing off against the horrors of the night in the big smoke. Travel throughout the land on vehicles of wonder, encountering foul mythos in All Aboard. Explore the fey world and rescue a taken loved one in Stolen Child. Have your sins return to challenge you in The Haunted Manor. And, finally, return from the dead to seek revenge on those who wronged you in Monkey’s Paw.

The Grim Gazette can be played as a linked solo campaign or a multiplayer experience. Every game has been designed to be a complete solo experience, letting you explore this gothic world alone…if you are brave enough!

Playing as a group sees players developing their own backstory in Nightwatch, before travelling together through All Aboard, Stolen Child, and The Haunted Manor.  Finally, players can write their own epilogue in Monkey’s Paw, making sure they go down in legend as they see fit.

Every game in The Grim Gazette is designed to be learned and get you playing in 10 minutes. With rules-light, easy to play systems, you will not have pages and pages to scour, focusing on what is important - the players and the story.

Whether playing as a campaign or as a refresher from your normal games night, The Grim Gazette gets you right into the thick of the action without the hassle.

You can play each Grim Gazette game and a standalone one-shot as well as a linked campaign. Playable in a single session or over a few shorter sessions, these games offer an atmospheric delve into a dark paranormal world.

The simple rulesets mean these can easily be integrated into your other gaming systems, bringing the characters and stories from your roleplaying games to encounter brand new challenges.

Try it now!

One Epic Campaign! 🗺️

The Grim Gazette campaign is linked using the Campaign Guide, a special issue ofthe Grim Gazette filled with instructions on how to link your experiences together and play out the adventurous life of your Victorian character. 

Each game focuses on a different point in your character’s life, playing them in order allows you to step into a character's shoes, starting in their early life, winding all the way to their death, and beyond:

When you complete each game (well, if you survive) you will take your experiences with you on your character's life journey. You may earn powerful rewards and bonuses if your characters achieve greatness in a previous game. Or more likely, you will suffer the dire consequences of their past actions as their regrets continue to haunt them. 

The Campaign Guide provides a unique way to track your progress, keep a record of your triumphs and blunders, and the effects they will have on your games moving forward. 

The collection can be played in a multitude of ways, either as a fully solo campaign, a multiplayer campaign with a solo prologue and epilogue, or as standalone experiences. Play the games your way to craft the life of your Victorian Adventurer, origin, adventures, death and all.

The special edition Grim Gazette Campaign Guide is filled with instructions on how to link the games together and play out the complex and adventurous lives of your characters.

Are you brave enough to face the horrors inside The Grim Gazette?

5 Games, One Epic Story

Five thrilling tales of chilling adventure await! Each game explores a different aspect of Victorian Gothic horror, using its unique mechanics to emulate the vast cast of characters you’ll find in this grim and grisly world. Which one will be your favourite? 

👁️ Nightwatch 👁️

Nightwatch is an investigative Solo Roleplaying Game where, as a newly reluctant member of the watch, you patrol areas of the sprawling city, the Old Smoke. Your objective is  to gather keep the peace, gather evidence and try to stop the supernatural criminals and villains that are plaguing them. Make enough money to clear your debts and retire, or go mad and perish in the pursuit of justice. 

HOW DOES IT PLAY?

In Nightwatch, each night you will go on patrol in your Beat, an area of the Old Smoke you have been tasked with keeping in check. You will go through 6 Encounters each night, randomly determined to see what you come across as you keep the peace.  

For each encounter you will make narrative decisions and roll dice to determine the resolution and then record this in your journal, describing what happened and how you overcame the challenges. 

As you patrol your beat, you’ll also be gathering evidence of heinous crimes. When you have found enough evidence you will track down the most dangerous villains that prowl the filthy city, the Rogues, and set up a hellish showdown. 

Survive blood-soaked streets, defeat the rogues gallery of a decaying city, and gather enough shillings and you might even be able to retire in peace - lest death or madness claim you first. 

Key Mechanics: Solo Play, Dice Rolling, Random Tables, Journaling

🚂 All Aboard! 🚂

All Aboard is a multiplayer roleplaying game where you take on the role of daring, Victorian adventurers who are exploring the strange and dangerous corners of the world that have yet to be discovered. Fight dinosaurs in the centre of the Earth, sail high and far in the Cloudsea, and travel to adventure aboard your own custom, steampunk vessel. 

HOW DOES IT PLAY?

The game is helmed by one player who takes on the role of Engine, the driving force behind the narrative. They lay out the story and the challenges for the players, who set out to explore the world and overcome obstacles. Players create not only their characters, but also their prodigious contraptions that they plan to travel in on their dangerous expeditions.

Characters and vehicles have skills that are represented by dice, assigned during their creation. These range from the humble d6 to a powerful d12. When the Engine tells the crew of players 'The pathway ahead is blocked by a horde of molemen,' the players would discuss how they would approach the challenge, and the Engine would ask for a roll based on the appropriate stat to carry out their 

For example, distracting the molemen with a controlled explosion' might take an Intellect check for the players, whilst barraging straight through might require a Fortitude check for the vehicle.

For each challenge, players roll against the Engine based on the difficulty assigned. Success or failure always comes with interesting consequences, as adventure is the name of the game!

Whether you're roleplaying crew combat, or your vessel as it speeds onwards into the unknown, All Aboard! has a simple system that gives you fast, punchy gameplay.

Key Mechanics: Solo and Multiplayer, Opposed Dice Rolls, Vehicle Creation, Vehicle Combat

🧚 Stolen Child 🧚

Stolen Child is a multiplayer and solo roleplaying game, where players take on the role of parents whose children have been stolen by faeries. These aren't the twee Tinkerbelle fairies you see in kids books, they are old, cruel and cold-hearted, their intentions as ugly as their appearance. Band together and hunt them down in time to retrieve your stolen children. Will you be able to save your family?  

HOW DOES IT PLAY?

Working together, to save your stolen loved one, the Stolen Child has players work together in a tactical game using a pack of regular playing cards to overcome obstacles and enemies. Players will bluff, gamble, play card hands, and use special abilities in their challenges - set facedown by the Courtmaster. 

You will progress through the material world and into the fae realm playing through scenes in your story. In each scene, characters face a set of challenges that they must overcome to discover clues and information to let them carry on in their quest.

Be careful not to overplay your hand, lose all of your cards, and you will perish, your child lost to the Faerie Realm forever. And remember, faeries are not afraid to play dirty…

Key Mechanics: Solo and Multiplayer, Tactical Card-Based System

👻The Haunted Manor👻

The Haunted Manor is a Multiplayer RPG that sees players take on the role of ordinary Victorians, trapped inside a sprawling manor haunted by deadly ghosts. Work together to survive the sins of the past, solve the manor's mysteries, and make it out with your lives intact. 

HOW DOES IT PLAY?

The Haunted Manor has you exploring supernatural threats in a ghastly location, all controlled by the Architect. The game starts with the party creating the Haunted Manor together, adding rooms, dark omens, and haunted inhabitants. The Architect can draw on the characters past sins to add a slice of personal horror throughout the spectral halls.

When exploring the Manor the players make skill checks rolling 2d6 and aiming for a 7+ on their final results, so everyone knows just exactly what the score is. The Architect may impose bonuses or penalties to these rolls if the threats are deemed trivial, challenging, or supernaturally cursed. Failing the roll however means bad things are going to happen. Bad, creepy, ghostly things...

Key Mechanics: solo and Multiplayer, Dice Rolling, Card-Based Haunted House Creation, Random Tables.

🙉 Monkey's Paw 🙊

Monkey's Paw is a Solo RPG where you have been murdered by a group of 5 fiendish individuals. Resurrected through occult practices, you are now plotting your revenge against them, using the powerful dark relic – the Monkey's Paw. Wish upon each of its wizened fingers to help your vengeance come true, the cost? Your body will begin to decay once more, and eventually return you to the grave. 

HOW DOES IT PLAY?

Monkey’s Paw is a blend of solo roleplaying, journaling, and dice rolling, all coming together so you can plot your vengeance for the five fiends responsible for your death. Start the game by creating the devious villains from your characters past, build up their dark deeds, and then plan their downfall. 

Armed only with your cunning, occult knowledge, and (most importantly) a fistful of wishes from the cursed Monkey’s Paw. With each wish upon the paw that you make, your mind and body will decay further, as you descend upon the damned road of vengeance. 

When all five fingers are curled up into the monkey's palm, there will be no more wishes. The afterlife awaits you, as you fade away and return one final time to the land of the dead. 

Key Mechanics: Solo Play, Dice Rolling, Random Tables, Journaling

Deluxe Upgrade Pack 🎲

Keep a record of the horrors you have faced with the Deluxe Writing Pack, including a luxury journal for gameplay notes, sketching monsters, and keeping a memento of your adventures. Note all this down a custom Grim Gazette pen, used by the paper's intrepid reporters!

Want to upgrade your gameplay? Get a set of deluxe dice to match the blood-spattered streets you explore, alongside a deck of cards in our Deluxe Gameplay Pack, ripe for playing games with the crew of your airship, or gambling against a faerie queen for the return of your long-lost child. 

All of these items are included on the Grim Gazette Deluxe Edition Pledge Level, and the gameplay and writing packs are available as separate addons as well!

Pledge Levels

We are committed to bringing you the best product possible from the outset, with five amazing games as an interconnected collection, designed to be part of this premium set of roleplaying games. 

The compact and easy to learn nature of these games means we want to avoid the games expanding beyond their original intent and purpose, hence why we have decided to not have stretch goals on this campaign. 

Add Ons

For the Grim Gazette crowdfunding campaign, alongside a whole host of Victorian horrors, we've made a selection of games from the Parable Games range available during the active campaign. Visit the add-ons page to view the other great games available, including SHIVER, Ion Heart, Don't Play this Game and Sisterhood!

These can be added to your order and will be shipped together. Digital files will be released as they are available to get you playing your games as quickly as possible!

If you aren't quite ready to add more to your pledge now, we will open the Pledge Manager after the campaign, allowing you to add additional items to your pledge at a later date.

The Team

Started by two brothers Barney and Charlie Menzies, Parable Games is a TTRPG company based in the UK. We teamed up with some like-minded friends along the way - Adam, Ben, and Matt all joined to form a group of RPG super-geeks. At Parable Games we have one aim: to make amazing, unique games that are made to be played.  

With a focus on ensuring Accessibility, Approachability, and Affordability - alongside exciting gameplay and amazing artwork. We want our games to be open to everyone, join our Discord to chat with us and learn more about our games!

We are a group of passionate creatives who are very proud of the things we make, and the effort and skill we put into everything we do. This project, like all of our projects, is human-made, and does not use any AI in any way. 

This work was made by humans. No AI or Machine Generated works are included in this project. Supporting this project means you are supporting real human beings who have dreams, passions, & bills. Thank You. 

Accolades

See the map above for our current estimated shipping prices to all regions for Internship pledges. Larger pledges may have increased pricing depending on weight and location. Please be aware that these prices are subject to change as international shipping conditions shift. Shipping and any applicable taxes will be charged during the pledge manager after the campaign ends.

We're teaming up with a number of global fulfilment centres to get the best possible prices for worldwide shipping. Depending upon where your rewards are being shipped, you may be liable to pay customs charges on your package. However, we’ve currently secured customs-friendly shipping for the US, CA, EU, AU and UK.

As we're sure you all know, global shipping and manufacturing chains have become slightly more unpredictable since COVID-19 (although it has gotten a lot better) and more recently, Tariffs have had a large impact on the industry as a whole. As a result, we have been conservative with our estimation for shipping times of Physical Rewards. We hope to get them out a little faster, but the world is a tumultuous place. To guarantee as accurate prices at the time of fulfilment, we will be working with Backerkit to collect all shipping fees and taxes after the campaign through their pledge manager.

All products are shown and charged in GBP. Any prices shown in USD are approximate and representative only, and subject to exchange price fluctuations.

Disclaimer: Please note that this is not a pre-order, and the final product might vary in the process or become delayed. All images and contents are subject to change. By pledging to this campaign you acknowledge that the final look and feel may differ from what is presented.