Pyramid Review
Dead of Night: The Little Book of Horrors
Published by Steampower Publishing
Written by Merwin Shanmugasundaram & Andrew Kenrick
Cover by Eric Lofgren
Illustrated by Eric Lofgren & Michael Cunliffe
224-page 4¼"×5½" b&w softcover; $19.95
The first thing that you notice about Dead of Night: The Little Book of Horrors is that "littleness." This is a pocket RPG, but still big enough to tackle the horror genre, and more specifically, the horror of the campfire tales, the B-movie, and the urban myth. Being pocket friendly, Dead of Night is designed to be played anywhere, and to that end is mechanically simple, and can be played with or without dice. Although it employs two 10-sided dice, the authors tell you how other dice can be used, and when no dice are available, both players and GM can stab a finger at the table of random numbers on the last page. Admittedly, I would have preferred to have a random number on each page so that the dice rolls would be generated by flipping pages, but Dead of Night also counters its portability by players still requiring characters sheets. That said, since one of the game's character sheets is the size of a Post-It note, this is less of a problem.
The table of random numbers is one several factors that make Dead of Night easy to pick up and play. The most obvious being the clearly marked "Quickboxes" that neatly summarize the rules, the creation and handling of both characters and monsters, the ready-to-play monsters . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: December 1, 2006
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