SHIVER RPG Core Rulebook

Product Information

There’s no setting in Shiver. That’s entirely up to you. The game suits sci-fi as well as urban horror or even alternative history. Shiver Gothic comes to unlife as two books; Secrets of Spireholm and Disciples of Dregstone. They add new Archetypes, adventures and monsters. The question, “Should I risk that?” is a pretty significant one in Shiver. This is not an RPG in which fortune favours the bold. Secrets of Spireholm is a huge Gothic campaign that can be played over a large number of sessions taking characters right from their early levels as nighttime novices all the way to hardened veterans of horror. Inside you’ll find everything you need to play the story including monster profiles, items, NPCs, and plot galore.

The level indicates the progression of the character and how many Ability Points she can spend in the Ability Tree of her Archetype. Each character therefore progresses in a unique way, allowing for an almost infinite variety of builds to play. SHIVER is inspired by many great bits of pop culture which the makers really wanted to play on the table including: Stranger Things, Dracula, Jurassic Park, Aliens, Evil Dead, Friday 13th, Hellboy, League of Extrordinary Gentlemen, Gothic stories, Hellraiser, Indiana Jones, IT, Stephen King and his works, Fallout, HP Lovecraft, The Thing, and many more… As we have already seen in this review, Shiver offers the opportunity to play in any setting or historical period, without limitations of any kind. With this nearly limitless number of possible game worlds, the Director has an unlimited arsenal of possible equipment to assign to characters. This fun social deduction mini game will pit players against tavern patrons and each other to discover who has been replaced by a adventurer eating mimic.We created the gigantic gothic city of Spireholm for players to explore along with a huge interweaving narrative and mystery to be uncovered within it. Giant spire covered cathedrals, moonlit cobbled streets, and the monsters of classic novels and movies populate the city along with many other gothic inspired terrors. Gothic horror was also the top of our list for horror sub genres to explore as it is the one that most people associate first with the genre. There aren’t many people who when asked to name a famous horror novel that don’t name Dracula, Frankenstein, or another novel of the gothic persuasion.” Players take on the roles of archetypal characters found in stories across time and attempt to survive whatever strange and horrific things they may encounter.” Menzies explains. “Want to play your favourite horror movie and try to make better decisions than those on the screen? SHIVER lets you do that and then some, with space to make your own sequels and explore your favourite spooky and strange franchises.” The city of Spireholm is different of late. Strange folk are abroad, disappearances go unexplained, and a sombre mood descends upon the populous. A high profile murder brings an unlikely group of individuals together to investigate. What they uncover, will change them all forever. To pass a test in Shiver, you need to roll as many successes as the challenge rating for a scene. You get success for each Skill Dice you roll with a matching symbol for the test. So, if you roll three skill dice, and two are Wit symbols, and it’s a Wit test, then you’ve two successes.

Immortal words that point the finger at the next victim for any good horror-based or spooky film plot, we’re pointing the finger at Barney Menzies from Parable Games, for details on the new expansion to their horror based roleplaying game, SHIVER. SHIVER is setting neutral allowing you to play any story, anytime, and as anyone. Want to play a game of teens in survival mode against a zombie horde? Kids on Bikes who dread exploring a haunted house on Halloween night? Or perhaps a medieval monster hunter looking for a werewolf, vampire or mage? SHIVER can deliver stories and characters for anything from cult pulp classic toCthulhu fuelled eldritch mystery. John Carpenter is one of the big influences on Charlie’s writing, you can definitely see this in The Lost Ship, a snowy arctic tale which pays homage to a certain famous one of his films.” Menzies does clarify though. “Our influences don’t just stem from film however, as you can likely tell from SHIVER’s artwork we’re also big comic fans. The works of creators like Mike Mignola and Alan Moore have also inspired us. We have hidden so many little references to things we love across the books and hope players have fun hunting for them.” Of course, half the fun of such adventures is making almost exactly the same decisions as those on screen –yes, I will go alone, no, there’s plenty of battery left in my torch, that noise absolutely was nothing – a good chunk of giddy excitement comes from knowingly making horror film decisions, as opposed to a viewer hidden behind the sofa. Now, when push comes to shove, and I’m attempting to do it in this review, I don’t think I can do it any better.Shiver proves to be an interesting and extremely versatile game. The atmosphere is undoubtedly one of the main elements in this type of game and the core book itself provides a number of tools to help the Director. Each archetype, with the exception of the Survivor, has a preponderant linked Skill where you can assign the highest value, which is 5.

The Spooky Supporter Tier brings a story of extra terrestrial terror in troubled Redwood Rise. Disappearances in the town are making everyone suspicious and choosing who to trust may be the difference between life and death. I had conspired with the Director of the game to have my character killed in the opening scene for dramatic effect. I then spent the rest of the playing as my deceased character's dog, barking at other players to try and give them clues like a very morbid Lassie. This also spawned some of the pet mechanics we later added to the game.”. Woof woof. I’ve died quite a lot on Discord during the pandemic. Some deaths felt cheap and pointless, mainly in overly hard online convention games. But not in Shiver. Each messy character end in this RPG was appropriately dramatic, and I’ve always had fun.This tier will also give you access to the Cursed Archive, the repository of Patreon content where you can get the previous 3 months releases and any bonus permanent content that fills its shelves. We will update this every month, so as soon as something leaves the archive, a new spooky piece of content will take its place. Although the themes proposed by the game are evident from the title, Shiver could have had a paragraph dedicated to explaining how to manage it at the game table. In my opinion, this is an important detail, especially for less experienced masters and it is a real pity that there is not even a reference in this regard. You can get The Hunted from itch.io. A trailer for The Hunted roleplaying game. 8. World of Darkness: Slasher SHIVER is a tabletop roleplaying game that you bring your favourite scary movies, spooky tv shows, and horror stories to life. Ever wanted to play through the plot of your favourite film on the tabletop? Or wanted to make sequels, prequels and original stories in the worlds of pop culture you love? SHIVER lets you play that! One thing that I learnt through this project is that the definition of Horror is extremely broad. Jaws, Jurassic Park, Scooby Doo, all these titles fit within the Horror genre just not in the gorey axe wielding murderer way that maybe you see picturing a ‘traditional’ horror film or tv show in your head.