RPG: Bluebeard’s Bride now Available for Pre-Order
A game of investigatory horror and psychodrama from Magpie Games is now available for pre-order…check it out!
Bluebeard’s Bride is a fascinating concept. I’ve talked about it before, as it’s one of the games I’m really looking forward to this year. But the basic gist of it is that you and your friends all take on the role of different aspects of the titular Bride of Bluebeard, and you play your way through a horror-tinged reinterpretation of the Bluebeard myth. Which, if you don’t know goes: man marries woman, tells her never to go in part of the house, she does, but instead of finding paintings of him from when he was a boring human instead of an awesome, Michael Dorn-voiced creature, she instead discovers an abattoir littered with the corpses of previous brides and gets murdered–and that’s before adding in elements of horror gameplay…
In the game players take on the role of one of the aspects of the Bride’s psyche, so you’re all playing archetypal characters, like the Fatale, or the Mother–each of whom have their own special functions within the realm of the game. Drawing heavily on works like Crimson Peak or American Horror Story, Bluebeard’s bride sends you into a dark and vaguely twisted world that unravels as you explore it.
via Magpie Games
Bluebeard’s Bride is an investigatory horror tabletop roleplaying game, written and designed by Whitney “Strix” Beltrán, Marissa Kelly, and Sarah Richardson, and based on the Bluebeard fairy tale.
In this game you and your friends explore Bluebeard’s home as the Bride, creating your own beautifully tragic version of the dark fairy tale. Investigate rooms, discover the truth of what happened, experience the nightmarish phantasmagoria of this broken place, and decide whether or not you are a faithful or disloyal bride.
AdvertisementBluebeard’s Bride is based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system used in Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Monsterhearts, Masks, and more. It’s a simple system; when your character takes an action that fits a move, the move tells you what happens, or you roll two six-sided dice to find out. Since this is a horror game, we have modified it so that the majority of moves use no dice; this harkens back to telling ghost stories around the fire.
Bluebeard’s Bride produces adult feminine horror fiction like Crimson Peak, American Horror Story, or The Company of Wolves, making it fun for horror fans and dark fairy tale fans alike. And the Powered by the Apocalypse system gives Bluebeard’s Bride the strong, yet flexible system necessary to tell your own flavor of horror.
Bluebeard’s Bride is designed as a one shot game where you play out your fairy tale version of Bluebeard in 3-4 hours. Each game is its own story, its own investigation, its own beautiful, macabre dance. The Bride from your game may even leave behind a legacy of her own, inspiring her very own room to be explored by future brides of Bluebeard. Replayability is high as you investigate other rooms, interact with new Sisters, and even explore the horrors of new Groundskeepers and their own dark twists on rooms you may have already been to. Even the final room is shaped by the players and their decisions.
Pre-Order Bluebeard’s Bride
Happy…adventuring? Hmm, maybe not this time…
