Description
A good scare makes for a great game.
It’s the abandoned corridor, the flickering light never quite reaching the deeper shadows. It’s that cry in the distance—a child’s wail, or some weird animal bleating? It’s the gentle breath on the neck, or that slithering motion just past the edge of the light. It’s horror, and whether it’s a terrifying one-shot adventure, an entire campaign fighting against the darkness, or an edge of tension added to a more conventional adventure, it makes for great roleplaying experiences.
Build an entire campaign battling Lovecraftian cults or surviving the zombie apocalypse. Run one-shots that pit the players against masked slashers, crawling xenomorphs, or sinister spirits. Or just get the most fun out of your lich queen and her minions at the lowest depths of your dungeon. No matter how you use horror at your table, this book gives you all the tools you need to create hair-raising game sessions and nail-biting campaigns.
Stay Alive! includes:
- A thorough exploration of the many subgenres of horror, from slasher films to classic vampires, psychological thrillers to monster invasions, zombie apocalypses to demons—and more!
- Great advice on building your own horror campaign and setting, whether wholly original or kit-bashed from shows or fiction you love.
- An encyclopedia of Cypher System horror mechanics, including rules for last survivors, ghostly help from dead PCs, hallucination and dream resets, possession, secret twists, and backup characters for genres with high body counts.
- Dozens of creatures, artifacts, and cyphers.
- A complete horror setting: Masters of the Night. There are creatures in our world that should frighten any rational human. But there are other things in the shadows that frighten even you.
- Three full-length adventures that explore different horror genres, plus several Cypher Shorts.
Stay Alive! is a setting and supplement for the Cypher System. It requires the Cypher System Rulebook for play.
But first, discover why humanity has always feared the wilderness…
Here, the woods sing. The sunlit leaves sigh, stroked by gentle breezes, their verdant shades accepting the first touch of autumn’s brighter crown.
But go no further, friend.
Do not mistake the forest’s bounty for kindness. Do not think its shadowed depths are simply denser versions of these pleasant shallows. For to venture deeper is to become lost within the ancient chambers of the forest’s dark heart, where twisted and sinister things make their homes and even light struggles to find its way.
Can your characters escape the Darkest Woods before they are consumed by them? To do so, they’ll need to discover and master ancient, primal secrets and perhaps even fundamental truths… about themselves.
