In The Mansion, we use a 14-card deck to stretch dread across a session. No timers. No checks. No illusions.

Just a slow build.

And something that shouldn’t be here is now in the room.

open.substack.com/pub/saffronq...

I'm writing a series of design notes about my PbtA teenage horror. saffronquill.substack.com

#rpgdesign #rpg #ttrpg

Ekhem, care to visit the Mansion? I'm sharing my process and thoughts in a series of design notes

saffronquill.substack.com

Now, back to Remain Someone Still 👇

I like fantasy cities that aren’t clean.

Give me moss on the stones. Weird street food stalls. Chalk sigils on brick walls that no one will talk about.

Give me the kind of place where the rain whispers the memories of the city.

“Fear is a compass here. It only points toward what’s about to find you.”

New design blog is up: how The Mansion builds horror through feelings, not numbers.

#ttrpg #gamedesign #pbta #ttrpgdesign

Important thing I've learned #ttrpg

If you don’t name a tavern right away, your players will.
And I promise they will call it “The Moist Beaver” or something equally cursed.

Just name it. Save yourself.

This is my editor, Ari. Her notes mostly consist of “sit on that a bit longer” and “needs more birds.” On the next round, "forget it".
She’s never been wrong.

There’s a house at the edge of everything you fear. It’s quiet there. The kind of quiet that gets louder the longer you sit in it.

You’ve been there before. Not this house exactly, but one like it. A hallway that stretched too far. A door that didn’t belong. A flicker in the corner of your eye. /1

I used to have 5 indoor cats living with us in an apartment. It was glorious. Moving to another country forced me to leave 3 of them at my mother-in-law.

🐈 Now I live and design games surrounded by two cats, a daughter, and one looming existential crisis.