I'm familiar with the rules from Brindlewood Bay and Public Access. On the surface this is "what if Penny Dreadful?" but there's plenty more going on. While the playbooks may be familiar, the mysteries aren't. It adds up to a fine narrative game with plenty of collaborative world building that uses the fun "piece the clues together to find an answer" play-to-find-out mechanic I very much enjoyed in BB and PA. Also has some excellent guiadance on making your own threats. Will be picking up some of the supplements later this evening I think.

Intriguing. Cuts the mechanics right back, focuses on the roleplaying and the cool while still having the theme of dreadful people looking for treasure in the worst places possible. Can't wait to run it for my group.

Hearts of Wulin is a great PBTA game for a genre that does not get much attention in the west. Wuxia dramas are something I have recently started watching, and for playing something like Handsome Siblings TV series or Juedai Shuangjiao the novel, this game gives the player and the GM all the tools to run the adventures of Xiaoyuer and The Ten Great Villains of the jianghu. Great game, I highly recommend.

I ran a one shot of "dad overboard" for Brindleewood Bay, and it went absolutely swimmingly! The game mechanics were clear and easy to articulate, and the general premise was so easy for my players to latch onto that they had a blast roleplaying!

My favorite mystery game! Brindlewood Bay is an incredibly elegant system and a great introduction to Jason Cordova's emergent mystery mechanism. As a Keeper, I love how little prep is required and how the worldbuilding is collaborative. During a campaign, the mavens go through amazing character arcs that feel 100% natural. The mysteries are all full of rich details and witty cultural references. And the Dark Conspiracy simmering in the background adds just the right amount of creepy.

Brindlewood Bay

Brindlewood Bay is the name of a picturesque coastal town in Massachusetts that began as a whaling port and has evolved into a cozy town for tourists. Brindlewood Bay residents include a mystery book club of older ladies, the Murder Mavens. They are fans of the Gold Crown Mysteries series featuring super sleuth Amanda Delacourt. But the Mavens are not just passionate mystery fans who appreciate a good book; they also emulate their great role model and investigate as amateur detectives – with real success and to the chagrin of the local police force. And their cases are not just petty crimes, but mostly murder cases the Murder Mavens run into. And for a seemingly innocuous small town, Brindlewood Bay has a terrifying murder record – almost as if sinister forces are at play...

Brindlewood Bay is an unusual detective role-playing game that uses the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) rules concepts. All characters are older, single ladies with a murderous hobby. The characters are defined by five traits, which are used in moves typical of PbtA. As an additional mechanism, rolls can be made easier or harder by rolling three dice instead of the usual two and using the two best or worst results. The moves are boiled down to the essentials: There is one move each for risky situations by day and by night, an investigation move, and the Cozy Move. The interesting concept is that hazards at night carry greater risks, while one standard move (fittingly called the Meddling Move) represents all types of investigative work. The Cozy Move is used to eliminate negative effects, conditions, in a cozy scene. Therefore, each character is also defined by her favored cozy activity. Furthermore, there are two special moves: the Gold Crown Mysteries Move generates a perfect success once per story by inventing a reference to one of Amanda Delacourt's adventures. And through the Occult Move, new supernatural moves can be developed.

In addition, each Maven is not only described by her background but chooses a unique Maven Move based on allusions to movie characters of the 80s/90s or well-known fictional detective characters. Eventually, the group has to select one of the two sets, but has a wide range of choices in both. For example, the Angus MacGyver move allows improvising something helpful with just three random items. In contrast, the Jane Marple move allows entering anywhere during the day and moving (and snooping) around undisturbed.

However, the most fascinating feature of Brindlewood Bay is the approach to the criminal cases: Each case provides a starting situation, clues and hints, and suspects – but no predetermined solution. Instead, the players must develop a solution with their evidence at the end of the case. Then a single move decides whether their solution is correct. The more evidence is collected and incorporated into the theory, the easier the move is. This approach allows the game master to improvise with the given information during the game. The reason for this mechanism is simple: this way, players can never get completely stuck because they fail to find a crucial clue or make some other mistake. And the solution to the case – whether correct or not – is the players' creative solution, which will probably often surprise the game master as well. With this approach, a case can be presented in 5-6 pages and played without much preparation.

But Brindlewood Bay has an additional twist: The fact that murder abounds in the small town is due to the activities of a cult, which the Mavens must unmask in the end. And even though its background refers to Greek mythology, there is a hint of Cthulhu drifting through Brindlewood Bay. In addition to concrete suggestions, the game master gets various ideas to shape this cult – and again, he should not prepare everything in advance but develop this central threat based on the player's interactions during the game. A mixture of Murder, She wrote and Call of Cthulhu as a role-playing game would already be an unusual idea. However, combined with the mechanism that the cases are not predefined and spiced up with many intriguing approaches that capture the genre and the flair of TV series, Brindlewood Bay is not only a surprising but, above all, extremely fascinating game. Even though the layout and illustrations are relatively simple, the role-playing game is designed with great attention to detail. The book guides the game master perfectly through rules and setting – up to a complete case series ready to start the game immediately. If the cozy-crime/cosmic-horror crossover appeals to you, Brindlewood Bay can be highly recommended as an original highlight regarding both setting and rules.

(Björn Lippold)

A rules light, RPG system that embraces story game mechanics. This game is not designed with a simulationist bent, but instead allows the players as well as the game master to direct the fiction in new and interesting ways. On youtube you can watch many play throughs with the system if you have questions about the mechanics. i especially enjoy the random character creation system. every time i have used it the end result was a unique character with intersting combinarionsof skills and magical rituals. overall its fun, easy and has some great support, and is a great deal!

I love this game! I found out about it too late to support the KickStarter, but I grabbed the PDF because i clukdnt wait. Just got done running my first campaign last night and we had a blast! It can be played as a one shot but i think it lends itself to at least sloghtly longer campaigns best because in a one shot you dont get to use moves like the Cozy Move. But I will absolutely be buying the physical copies once I can, and this is a game I will keep in rotation for a long time!

This is easily one of my favourite games of the last few years, and every time I've played it has been an absolute blast. It does such a good job with both the action/combat and romantic/dramatic sides of play, separately and together - I can't think of another game I've played where every fight felt so personal, as well as dangerous and thrilling. Although I haven't run it (yet), I have enthusiastically stolen its ideas for other games, including the brilliant collection of scenario starters and specific mechanics, like Entanglements - a way to set up difficult romantic and other relationships at the start of play, one of the best approaches to setting up those connections that I've come across. I'm not very familiar with the genre and would not have guessed I'd enjoy a wuxia game this much, so I really recommend this to everyone - it's that good.

All great additions to the Between. We just wrapped up David Morrison's the St. Petersburg Mirror. The relic mirror is now in the hands of our Mother character and Madam Sorokin is now an allied side character of immense psychic power. Theodora better watch out!

The Between is easily my favorite game of the last year. It’s laser-focused. It’s a game that knows intimately what it is, and delivers on its every promise: satisfying investigative play, and dark, dramatic stories about morally complex characters in Victorian London. Between the playbooks and the unscene, there is theme and atmosphere here in spades.

The Between’s emergent mystery resolution system–shared by the equally fantastic Brindlewood Bay–allows for almost endless replayability. I’ve run and played the recommended campaign starter threat, The St. James Street Ghost, a handful of times now, with radically different investigations and solutions each time. I’d gladly run and play it many times more (although with the breadth of new official content coming out for this game, alongside the thriving player-driven content community around it, I won’t have to).

The way threats are presented packs a real punch: each threat sheet provides a solid base for improvisational, collaborative play, with everything you need to adapt to whichever direction the players decide to take the investigation. The GM tools codified throughout the game’s design will actively make you a better GM. I can’t recommend it enough.

In addition to the previous The Between content, The Between: Season 2 offers a new hunter and new threats, and even a new mastermind (I didn't even finish with Theodora Brathwaite yet, but nvm ^^). What more could you wish and ask for. It adds new content as well as new layers to the whole stories you can tell with The Between.

I had the opportunity to get the holiday version, and I immediately bought the classic version. It's simple clear and concise and only 40 pages. The game has completely convinced me and I can't wait to test it, it will probably be my first game played in 2022. Merci beaucoup :)

Brindlewood Bay is very smart and very enjoyable game. It is the first of The Gauntlet's games to present their Mystery Mechanic; a geniune innovation in the way that roleplaying mystery games can work.

Rather than there being an predetermined solution to mysteries, the GM only holds the responsibility for creating the clues. The players take the responsibility for using those clues to construct a narrative that forms the solution to the mystery. This relieves the GM of many of the traditional burdens of running a mystery game.

It also makes picking up and running a scenario very quick. A quick read of the clues and you are more or less ready to go. (This gets even easier in The Between where "moments" and scenes are also sketched for you.)

Using a very small set of PbtA style moves, Brindlewood is easy to learn. It is a ton of fun to play and run.The mystery mechanic is something you'll be wanting to homebew into other games once you've seen how it works.

...And, hey, who doesn't want to be a meddlesome old lady who solves murders?

I have just read Brindlewood bay and it is excellent, I can't wait to play it I feel like it will be my first game of 2022.

There are a lot of ideas that I really like and I think I will work on a hack to run my Call of Cthulhu games with a Brindlewood Bay variant and share it, if mods are allowed of course.

Anyway, I'm impressed that in 40 pages it's so clear, concise and understandable. Really great ideas and a great job, congratulations again!