Barney Menzies of Parable Games reached to me at the Tessera Guild about their Kickstarter for SHIVER: “A Tabletop RPG bringing your favourite Scary Movies, Pulp TV Shows & Stories to life.” The concept, the dice, and the Halloween push intrigued me enough to ask him some questions about the project.
EGG EMBRY (EGG): What is your RPG, SHIVER, about?
BARNEY MENZIES (BARNEY): SHIVER is a rules light, fast paced RPG that lets players bring their favourite scary movies to life on the tabletop. It’s a great starting point for players who want to give tabletop role-playing games a try for the first time but also having the depth of character creation and system to give experienced players something to sink their teeth into.
EGG: What can you share about the setting? What era does it take place in?
BARNEY: We wanted to provide a real sandbox for players to bring their favourite bits of pop culture to the tabletop. Horror is such a broad genre that encompasses everything from high tech sci-fi stories to low tech medieval monster hunters. You can play any time, setting and character. The one thing that all the stories SHIVER tells have in coming is that something strange is going on.
EGG: This RPG was inspired by horror films and cult classics. Which ones specifically? Why were they ideal to build a game around?
BARNEY: To name just a few films that are personal favourites of my brother and I that acted as inspiration for SHIVER: Halloween, Jurassic Park, The Thing, Scream, and Cabin in the Woods. Horror has such a broad scope in intensity and themes that it is pervasive in so much fiction, we felt it had a wealth of opportunities to explore in terms of characters, monsters and stories.
Growing up, we consumed so many movies that we loved but there were a few that really stand out when it comes to influences on SHIVER’s design. Alien and Aliens had a massive impact when it came to thinking about how games, and by extension their stories, develop and have their characters grow. The transformation Ripley goes through across the two films as well as the genre shift from tense space slasher to bombastic action all whilst maintaining the horror at its core, was a great starting point when thinking about how characters and stories can change and grow.
EGG: What system does SHIVER use?
BARNEY: The system for SHIVER was born from me and my brother wanting to be able to play out all our favourite scary movie plots, terrible B movies, and even our own homebrew film scripts. We found that other systems we’re great for telling stories in very specific settings, or were great at being general but did so at the cost of endless complexity. So, we designed SHIVER to take the best of both, the simplicity and clean mechanics of setting specific systems and the broad brush strokes of character creation and world building from wider systems.
We designed SHIVER to be a game system that would allow us to tell any story we wanted regardless of setting. We started by identifying the thing that unifies all stories, their characters. SHIVER uses these archetypal characters that exist in all stories across time as the focal point around which the system is designed. By focusing on how the characters and stories interact we found a lot of the additional technical mechanics could be stripped back or removed completely.
SHIVER is the first game to use the Archetype Dice system. This is a dice system that uses purely symbolic dice for checks that not only offer a way to see if players succeed or fail in certain actions but also add a role playing aid for both players and Directors (game masters).
We designed the system specifically for SHIVER and applied a lot of custom functions for horror stories but we plan to evolve the system and add specialism for other specific settings.
EGG: Why symbol dice? What is the upside of using symbols over numbers?
BARNEY: When we set out to design SHIVER we wanted to remove the barriers to the immersive story experience. By removing numbers from the dice and replacing them with symbols we removed a lot of the mental arithmetic and calculations that can bring players out of the moment. This was a design ethos we took across the entire system, removing excess complexity wherever possible to keep players in the moment.
The other benefit of symbolic dice in the Archetype system is that they act as a role playing aid. Each of the symbols on the dice correspond to a core skill in the game. This allows players to roll play out failed rolls or even turn failed rolls into successes. Take a Grit check (physical prowess) and roll lots of Smarts symbols (intelligence/deductive powers), perhaps your character thinks their way through the situation rather than punching.
EGG: If you don’t have access to those dice, what’s the best fallback?
BARNEY: We wanted to make sure that players didn’t have to buy custom dice if they didn’t want to. We developed a dice roller app which also functions as a mini character sheet which can be found on our website here. The SHIVER Core book also contains a conversion table for players to use regular roleplaying dice into dice for the Archetype system.
EGG: Who is working on this? How many pages will the book be?
BARNEY: SHIVER is a tight knit team, the concept, rules set and all the written work has been created by me and my brother Charlie. Charlie has spent his adult years (and most of his teen years) working in film and television and has brought his script writing knowhow and technical knowledge to the project. A lot of the stories and campaigns you will find in our books are from his imagination.
I’ve been working in the games industry for the last decade in a variety of capacities. Currently I run a local game store in the UK as well as a web store. I’ve also spent a lot of time traveling around playing in events for various systems and immersing myself in tabletop game culture. Much of the technical rules writing has been my domain as well as organising the testing element to really put SHIVER through its paces.
The stunning art for the book has been created by our wonderful artist Ben. He joined the project after he joined the team as a playtester in the early stages of development. He was doodling away while the game was going on, we saw what he’d drawn and we asked him to join!
We also have a small army of playtesters who have been putting the system through its paces and being some of the first to play our stories and fight our villains.
EGG: Will this Kickstarter just fund more than the book?
BARNEY: Yes it will. In our Kickstarter we will have the SHIVER Core book which contains the base rules for the game. Alongside the Core book we have The Cursed Library, this is an expansion book containing stories and specific settings. This expansion will also house stretch goals and any bonus content unlocked during the Kickstarter. Finally, on the book front we will also be releasing an art book which details the process behind creating SHIVER’s art style, including loads of behind the scenes sketches and art not featured in the other books.
The Kickstarter will also have a number of accessories available including a dice pack containing SHIVER’s symbolic dice. We will also be releasing a Director’s screen for the game to be run behind, this will have quick references for making SHIVER to help manage games with ease.
EGG: What projects are you working on beyond SHIVER?
BARNEY: We have plans for future expansions after SHIVER has launched, we have specific genres and settings that we would love to write for.
We’re also looking at how we can bring SHIVER to local environments such as game stores although this project is currently delayed somewhat by COVID.
EGG: Thanks for discussing your project. Where can fans learn more about it?
BARNEY: SHIVER goes live on Kickstarter on October 27th here. Fans can also find out more about the project on our website, on Facebook, or on Twitter @GamesParable.
SHIVER: Horror Roleplaying in the Strange & Unknown from Parable Games
“A Tabletop RPG bringing your favourite Scary Movies, Pulp TV Shows & Stories to life.”
TRY BEFORE YOU BUY: SHIVER Quickstart Guide
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG and Amazon.
Latest posts by Egg Embry (see all)
- New Gamemaster Month 2023 - January 20, 2023
