Category:Brindlewood Bay

Brindlewood Bay is a tabletop roleplaying game that combines Murder, She Wrote with H.P. Lovecraft. In it, you play a group of elderly women, members of the local Murder Mavens Mystery Book Club, who help the authorities solve murder cases in a picturesque New England Town. Over the course of their investigations, they become aware of a dark occult conspiracy that connects the cases, and will eventually have to face that conspiracy in order to save their community. The game is low-prep and easy to play no matter your experience with tabletop roleplaying games.

• Handouts (PDF)
• List of recurring NPCs (not including suspects)
• List of sessions

• In the summer of 1877, the crew of the whaler Deep Reaver set out from Brindlewood Bay. They returned with the strangest whale anyone had ever seen. It had tentacle-like legs and rows of oily, black eyes. They sold its parts all over the world, and the proceeds were used to turn Brindlewood Bay into what it is today.
• In the spring of 1942, wreckage from a Nazi U-boat washed ashore at Brindlewood Bay. The U-boat appeared to have been torn to pieces—literally ripped apart—and some of the interior bulkheads had strange, occult symbols scrawled all over them. No bodies ever turned up, but there was one reported survivor: a Nazi submariner whose mind was shattered and who committed suicide by repeatedly slamming his head into a wall shortly after being detained. The U.S. government gathered the pieces of the wreckage before it could become a major story in the papers.
• In 1967, during the Summer of Love, a hippie commune sprung up just outside Brindlewood Bay. The members of the commune largely kept to themselves, only occasionally coming into town for supplies. The people of Brindlewood Bay began to hear rumors that the commune was engaging in Satanic rituals and other dark, orgiastic magic. When a young boy, George Maplethorpe, went missing, the commune was blamed. A young Wyman Dalrymple, future sheriff of Brindlewood County, lead a citizens’ march to the commune in response. Once there, violence broke out. No one can say for certain what happened to the hippies, but none have been heard from since, and their facilities were burned to the ground. Little George Maplethorpe was never found.
• In the fall of 1992, a group of anti-government separatists called the Sons of Freedom had a standoff against federal agents at the Sons’ compound deep in the woods outside Brindlewood Bay. The standoff lasted for six days, during which time federal agents claimed to witness all manner of strange things coming from the compound: bizarre lights, chanting, barnyard animal noises, and more.
• New Year’s Eve, 2011: Brindlewood Bay was the convergence point for numerous doomsday prophets who believed the world would end in 2012. A massive “End of All Things” party was held in and around town, and the next day, most of the revelers went back to wherever they came from. A few, however, remained…

All Hallow's Scream

A tree oozing blood-red sap

The electricity goes out, causing the music to come to a groaning stop. You can hear feverish sounds in the darkness: lovemaking, death throes, barnyard animal noises. When the lights come on again, everything is normal.

Dad Overboard

A fish, dying, strange purple ooze seeping from its beady, black eyes.

Jingle Bell Shock

A nativity scene features a Baby Jesus that suddenly bleats like a goat.

The Great Brindlewood Bay Bake Off

For a moment, an oven seems impossibly vast and dark on the inside.

A Night at the Whaling Museum

A black scrimshawed bone, every square inch covered in winding, unfamiliar script.

The Midwives of the Fragrant Void’s very first ritual robes and batons, mislabeled and crumpled in a corrugated box

A manifest bound in cracked red leather. It details a seemingly ancient obelisk pulled from the bed of the bay, and where it was taken.

Deadly Silent Auction

An auction item—an 1800s meat grinder—the Mavens bid on shows a dark childhood memory when touched. Have the player describe the memory if their Maven touches it.

The drinks smell and taste of fish, though no one else seems to notice.

A Throng of Vice and Liars

A copy of A Crash of Crowns begins whispering about torture and human sacrifice.

Fudge, Jury, and Executioner

A piece of fudge is riddled with maggots, which spilled out when it is bitten into

A fishmonger is seemed to hardly tuck a waving tentacle back into his coat as he packs up his stall

A tentacle tattoo

Control, Alt, Deceased

An array of monitors blinks to life, each displaying a single word and blocky, oversized letter letters together the words create the sentence rejoice for a child will be born onto us

At first the grinding bleeping sound of a dial modem, but upon further inspection that the chanting of ritual words

Carnival Carnage

A clown mask that contorts from a broad smile to a twisted grin

Shadows shaped like tentacle beasts creeping between the carnival tents

A child dressed in all black, who gestures to you to follow, then disappears before your eyes