Trick or Bleat

The annual Harvest Festival has begun in the cozy town of Brindlewood Bay! For our players, the sweet treats, booths, and games of the event will have to wait- this year's guest of honor, Dimples the Wonder Goat, has gone missing. Can our ladies of the Murder Mavens Book Club find him in time for the award ceremony at the end of the night? And what dark forces might be conspiring for one goat?

Brindlewood Bay

Brindlewood Bay is an emergent mystery TTRPG written by Jason Cordova. In it, you play as retired older women in the titular town of Brindlewood Bay, Massachusetts. You and your fellow Murder Mavens (named for your murder mystery loving book-club) periodically solve real murders and strange happenings in your sleepy bayside community. Behind the scenes, a vile conspiracy lies in wait which may swallow the whole town and more unless the Mavens stop it.

A game played in silence via text - you WILL need a device with a texting app on it, Whatsapp is best but we can run it on Discord if people prepare.

*Please ensure your phone or device is charged, or bring a charger to use in the room*

Alice is Missing is a game about a group of teens trying to find their missing friend, Alice. None of the PCs are the culprit but must work together to unearth clues about locations, possible culprits and motives. Set in a small US town in winter, each character has secrets and motives, but none are as mysterious as Alice herself. This game can get very intense emotionally.

The game itself runs for 90 minutes but there's a fair bit of set up, rules clarification and so on so it usually takes the full 3 hours including debrief.

This game will incorporate the Silent Falls expansion

Brindlewood Bay is a tabletop roleplaying game that combines Murder, She Wrote with H.P. Lovecraft. In it, you play a group of elderly women, members of the local Murder Mavens Mystery Book Club, who help the authorities solve murder cases in a picturesque New England Town. Over the course of their investigations, they become aware of a dark occult conspiracy that connects the cases, and will eventually have to face that conspiracy in order to save their community. The game is low-prep and easy to play no matter your experience with tabletop roleplaying games. The game requires 3 d6 dice (spare dice will be available) and will be especially approachable for anyone familiar with Powered by the Apocalypse games.

Strange Squad is a New Zealand made game about weird, powerful individuals known as 'Agents' investigating and solving issues involving 'Aberrants': Paranormal creatures, beings, and phenomena that defy logical explanation. Agent's seek to uphold The Veil, a layer of secrecy that keeps the public from learning about these fragments of unreality, for their sake and ours.

Set in Ohura, New Zealand, Ella Marie has gone missing. Normally the agency wouldn't worry about such mundane matters but the pedict-o-monitor spiked to 3000 just before the call, and the Agency doesn't want another Ester Kampf situation (2016) especially as the runes of banishment are in Waimate stopping (another) demonic excursion. Plus the Guru of the Kings Country is down there and there hasn't been an IN-3-B5 (risk assessment - possession (accidental) and disclosure (Veil)) completed on her yet. So definitely do that whilst you're down there, those forms were rolled out in 2021 and she'd be one of the stragglers the Agency needs to complete it for.

Content Warning : Horror, kidnapping, cults, views about Ohura, rape/sexual violation (offscreen- think law&order SVU )

At university you were a tight-knit group, sharing a house and getting involved in some legendary hi-jinks, united by your love for the cheap packets of mustard found at your local takeaway joints.
But that was a long time ago, and despite promising to keep in touch, life has moved on, and so have you. Then one day you get the message, using the agreed code to indicate one of the group is in trouble and needs your help: We're out of mustard.

The birthplace of Silicate Intelligence is in chaos. On the eve of their announcement to run for mayor, Karel Stork, a champion of both human and digital-sapience rights, has gone missing. As the grim search for Stork begins, the city erupts into riots.

Noirlandia is a character-driven system about uncovering a mystery, and the sacrifices you are willing to make to uncover the truth.

Something stirs deep in Aro Valley, down one of those streets you walked past a hundred times.
People have started going missing and it is up to you to find out what is happening.

You always thought that guy at the video place looked a little too pale, that old lady with too many dogs, the guy who owns a fancy car but lives in that dilapidated house on the corner or was it the guys at the brewery looking for a special ingredient.

This is a Monster Hunting game set just a stone's throw away and right around now.

Are you brave enough to see what lurks in the shadows of the darkest parts of the valley

Your group of fortune-hunters and militant entrepreneurs known as the Handiwork Heroes all hail from a similar region of the Oathsworn League, in the world of Valn. Specifically, a number of the company have their roots in the settlement of Talden, a mixed community of halflings and humans nestled at the base of the mighty Cloudcaught Range, in the district of Oakfields in a country called Rutlandshire.
It is here that, after half a dozen years of adventuring together, vanquishing evil and aiding the helpless, your leader Captain Elminai “the Warbird” Bronaion has decided to return to for the occasion of Heartwinter’s Night.
You arrived in Talden three days before Year’s End of 140 Oathsworn Calendar, and spent the next three weeks either catching up with family members, helping out in the community, and/or being treated to rounds at the Frosted Flagon as the returning heroes you are while telling tall tales of your journeys. But rumours start to catch your ears something is amiss in your quaint little township...

Everybody comes to Rick’s, they say. But the nobodies, they go to the Blue Parrot Cafe. When Captain Renault gives the order to ‘round up the usual suspects’ he’s probably referring to you. Of course, the ultimate goal of every foreigner in Casablanca is to get passage out, to Lisbon and on, America if you’re lucky. Unfortunately, passage costs money, which you haven’t got.
But now you’ve stumbled on a big score, a huge haul of gold, said to be from the fabled fortune of Mansa Musa himself, the richest man who ever lived.
And it’s out there in the desert, just waiting for you to come and get it.

In the coastal port town of Balance, Ballentia horror lurks nearby in the creeping fog. Ships go to sea never to return and creatures slither silently by in the ocean.

The Wistal Whistles have been called in by Benedict Orez, young mayor of the town. He was recently appointed by his Grandfather and former Mayor Sirap Orez. He is determined to solve the mystery surrounding the fishing boats of Balance that don't always come back home as the town is now in big trouble.

Will the Wistal Whistles, an extraordinary mystery solving team, be able to figure out what's going on and put the town back to the bustling port town it always used to be?

A tale of curses, lost love and high seas treachery. Come aboard, me hearties as we take to the sea! Yo ho, yo ho, a pirates life .... and death ....

'Adrift on Ruined Seas' is a homebrewed one shot pirate mystery horror adventure based in The World of Isen created by Brad Zimmerman. The one shot is played over 3 to 4 hours with pre-generated level 7 characters featuring characters previously seen in another horror home brew one shot set in Isen, "The Hallowed Festival of Frights" with some new friends also in tow.

Warnings: This session is fairly fun and super welcoming of all ages, abilities and who folx are or want to be, there are one or two moments of scary. Just the usual mystery solving with monsters stuff but I like to be upfront and keep my players safety in mind at all times. Any questions regarding this, please ask. Also this session, being with level 7 characters is a bit more advanced so some basic prior knowledge is advised.

'Adrift on Ruined Seas' is set in the homebrewed World of Isen, created by Brad Zimmerman. Session DM’d by Julz Burgisser who plays Marley Kraff in the D&D 5e actual play podcast ‘Fate of Isen’ available for download on iTunes, Spotify and all good podcasting apps. See www.fateofisen.com for more details on Isen.