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In Development · A Nightjar Game

Real Tales
of the Wyrd

You had a normal life. Then you saw something you weren't supposed to see, and you can't unsee it. Nobody can.

A folk-horror tabletop RPG. Ordinary people, 1999, poking at the boundary between what's real and what's underneath it.

Maggie: a red-haired woman in a leather coat, mid-stride, eyes catching an unnatural light
// What Is This Game

You play ordinary people. Not heroes, not chosen ones.

A paramedic. A graduate student. A bartender who closes every Tuesday because nobody else will. Then you touched something you shouldn't have, walked through a door that wasn't there yesterday, watched the wallpaper breathe. Whatever happened, it happened. And now you know.

The Above

The world everyone agrees on. Concrete and traffic and mortgages. A routine you could sleepwalk through.

The Below

This world with the consensus peeled back. The light bends differently. Sounds echo too long. The deeper you go, the more it starts to feel like home. That's the danger. Not dying. Belonging.

// Three Pillars

A Character, Built on Three Things

Tags
What you're good at

Thirty mundane skills. You're a [Medic], or [Well-Read], or [Athletic]. Tags are free. They never cost a thing. The +1 or +2 that turns a 7 into a 9 lives here.

Myths
Who you are to the Wyrd

When the Wyrd noticed you, it saw a shape. A protector. Someone who breaks things until they stop being a problem. Thirteen Myths, nine abilities each. They cost Stress.

Vestiges & Whispers
The deals you make

A Vestige is a Wyrd entity that never had a name. A Whisper is the power it gives you. Carry more, and you get stronger. Also less human. Both are true at once.

// What's Down There

The things in the Below aren't monsters.

Not in the traditional sense. They're emotional residue given form, or fragments of the Wyrd that found a shape they liked. Some of them used to be people. The scariest moment isn't the chase. It's the quiet one, when you realize you understand the creature. When you realize you've become something closer to it than to the person you used to be.

"It doesn't care about you, but it notices you. And once it notices you, it doesn't stop."
The Rider: a long-coated figure on a skeletal, blue-flame horse
// The question at the heart of every session

How far are you
willing to go?

Real Tales of the Wyrd is in development at Nightjar. Pull up a seat by the fire and we'll send word as it comes together.