A downloadable game

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Welcome to Gravemire, a horror TTRPG by Sylvan Lawrence, published by Clawhammer Games. Set in an uncanny, creature-infested version of 1890s Louisiana, Gravemire uses an original D12-based system of mechanics and a deliberate focus on character relationships to help players tell meaningful stories of fallible people coping with unfathomable odds.

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The Game

Gravemire is a tabletop roleplaying game about death, growth, horror, and survival, based in an original mechanical framework and set in the churning waters of the Louisiana bayou circa 1894. Players slip into the roles of outsiders arriving in the town of Scarstone, a rural outpost that has been warped by a terrible transformation known as the Convulsion. Once, Scarstone was surrounded by similar towns. The Bayou once had an end. Now, unknowable numbers of horrors seep through the uncharted backwaters, strange magic contorts reality to its whims, and the settlements that called Scarstone their neighbor jut half-ruined from the mire like bones from a wound. Times have changed.

Folk like you drift into Scarstone in a steady trickle. Maybe you’re a researcher, or a monster hunter. Maybe you’re just on the run. Whoever you are, the good people of Scarstone will not open their hearts to you easily; they’ve grown used to the stream of hopefuls, all trying to make their mark on the shifting swamp. One day soon, they expect you will find your place there, buried under that mud that sucks at your shoes even now, and they’ll never see you again.

They’re right, too.

You see, Gravemire is a game about surviving the Bayou, but it’s also a game about not surviving the Bayou. Every time you push your way through the Border, you gamble with the life of the character you play. It is a gamble that you are likely to lose sooner or later. When you do, the waters will be waiting to claim you, and the boatman on the other side will be waiting to help you pick up the pieces, escort a new soul into the light of the boarding house, and try again. This, then, is the driving crux of Gravemire: how do you try again? How do you commit to a character you expect to lose? We leave it up to you to decide; all we can provide you is the tools to make your journey. Welcome, friend. Here... we saved a ticket just for you.


The Book

Gravemire is a 130 page tabletop roleplaying game, and has everything you need to play through your own stories in and around Scarstone. It features gorgeous full-color, black-and-white, and sepia artwork, brought to you by Clawhammer's incredible art team, directed by Sara Belote.

The book has eight chapters, including advice about getting started and session 0, rules for play both beyond the Border and within Scarstone itself, a full chapter just for the Dealer, and a chapter on Gravemire's unique magic system.


What folks are saying 'bout Gravemire

Gravemire's been well received around the internet. Check out what people have said about us online here, and scroll down for quotes and feedback we've received from friends, playtesters, and the tabletop community.

From the web:

Jeff Stormer played Gravemire with Sylvan on the Party of One podcast 

Sylvan & Gravemire were featured on the Draw Your Dice podcast

Dicebreaker wrote an article introducing Gravemire

From the community:

Gravemire is a brutal action-horror game that dares to stare into the pit of death and beg for more. Its rules are systematic without being smothering, and the whole game balances on that perfect precarity between an uncaring society and the nightmares of the deep.

 — Jay Dragon, Possum Creek Games 

Gravemire is a tight game of confronting otherworldly horrors with a lot of player-to-player safety and control built in - all nicely wrapped within a rarely seen 2d12 system!

 Viditiya Voleti, creator of SWORD&BEARER and Basic TCG 

Gravemire is a game that explores tropes and genres that can feel overlooked or left behind in our American history. If you are familiar with works like Will Jobst’s Black Mass or the tales from the audio drama Old Gods of Appalachia, pull up to the campfire and tell a spooky tale or two with your bravest friends.

— Jeremy Gage, Draw Your Dice Podcast

 This is a game that takes care to take care of its players and I dig that. The mechanics are simple and designed in a way that they all interact with each other to limit cognitive load so you can focus on the story and the creep factor...I recommend this game to anyone that wants a easy to pick up horror game with simple, but evocative gameplay.

— Nick Butler, creator of Tide Breaker RPG

The bayou in Gravemire is a dark and twisted place, make no mistake. It can legitimately be the stuff of nightmares. But what sets the game apart is the way it leads its players to make bold choices. What will you do with your character when you know their life is fleeting? How will you connect with other players through a world where the characters can be so ephemeral? The game inspires us to conjure a tremendous amount of heart, which gives it real weight and power, and makes me a better player for every RPG I'm part of.

 90south, playtester


Gravemire was written by Sylvan Lawrence, which is the pen name of David Gales.

Purchase

Buy Now$15.50 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15.50 USD. You will get access to the following files:

Gravemire Pages v1.6.pdf 80 MB
Gravemire Spreads v1.6.pdf 81 MB

Community Copy

Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.

Community Copies

If you are a member of a marginalized community or otherwise cannot afford to purchase this game, please help yourself to a community copy, no questions asked, no fees charged. The starting pool of community copies was generously provided by Kickstarter backers, and each purchase of Gravemire above the asking price adds another copy to the pool.

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

This is not only a great setting, but a really well designed system, wow! There's an ingrained gameplay loop of leaving and returning to town, and the horror and magic are implemented so smoothly into the mechanics and feel of the game!

(+1)

Gravemire is a liminal southern gothic horror TTRPG.

Think of it like Hunt: Showdown but tabletop.

The PDF is 130 pages, and there's a physical book available as well. Both have clean, easy to read layouts that prioritize negative space, short written sections, and big illustrations. There's art throughout the book, in a mix of color and black and white, and while the color pieces are evocative, the black and white spots are really striking. Some have an almost Edward Gorey vibe that does a great job of communicating the precise feeling of the setting.

Lore-wise, Gravemire takes place in the late 1800s town of Scarstone Louisiana, whose swamp has recently become infinite. People with nowhere else to go arrive in Scarstone by riverboat and take jobs looking for treasure in the swamp. The swamp, meanwhile, kills them.

The swamp operates on an eerie internal logic that isn't really comprehensible to people. Sometimes it spawns monsters. Sometimes those monsters are willing to bargain with treasure-hunting intruders, but it isn't ever particularly safe.

Gameplay alternates between phases of exploring the swamp and recovering in town, with intermittent character death expected. The book even includes a small ritual to honor dead characters, which is a nice touch, and contrasts with the "walp, time to reroll" tone that other popular systems sometimes take.

The core mechanics of Gravemire are 2d12 + Skill vs target number, with Skills being sorted into tiers. Broad Skills like, say, Survival are tier 3 and very expensive to raise. Very specific Skills like Survival In Swamps On A Tuesday are much cheaper. And you can apply all relevant Skills to a roll, with ones that are only sorta related providing a reduced bonus.

Gravemire has a Willpower system that feels similar to stuff like Call Of Cthulhu's sanity system. The design intent seems to be to not make it about mental health, and the text is very clear about this, but functionally you roll against your Willpower or lose Willpower whenever you get badly scared. Dropping too low in Willpower can cause fearful events to damage your health instead, and they can also give you Aversions, which are specific triggers that cause you to automatically lose Willpower. Willpower recovery is difficult, but you recover a bit in town and characters can also roll Skills to restore it for each other once per scene.

Characters in Gravemire can use magic, but it is strictly succeed-at-a-cost. Using magic (mostly) automatically succeeds, and can produce a variety of spectacular effects, but always reduces your max health or Willpower. You can easily cast yourself into the grave, or into a state where you are unlikely to survive your next expedition into the swamp, and the only way to offset the penalties of using magic is by spending your permanent progression points to patch your health and Willpower back up, so there's little encouragement to use it for anything short of an emergency.

Combat in Gravemire is simple but fluid, with players picking from a list of actions, some of which cause their turn to end and some of which let them keep acting. Taking certain actions can cause enemies to act, as can rolling poorly on attacks or other combat maneuvers. Actual attacks ask you to split your Skill bonuses between damage and accuracy, and deal 1 damage plus whatever damage bonus you assigned, so it's possible combat might sometimes collapse into the players poking at a foe from behind the safety of their accuracy bonuses, but overall this is the smoothest PbtA style combat I've ever seen, and I especially recommend game designers check this part of the system out.

Gravemire's rules for character progression are their own detailed minigame, with characters returning to Scarstone and spending a set number of actions recovering health and Willpower, gaining new Skills, improving their stats, and learning more about the town. There are roleplaying hooks and questions built into this process, and the whole thing feels immersive in a way that levelling up usually doesn't.

For GMs and players, a lot of resources are included. There's guidance throughout, but there's also a full GMing chapter with a bestiary, GMing philosophy, rules for creating monsters, and everything else necessary to run the game short of a sample scenario. It's all clearly explained and the tone of the game is easy to lean into.

Overall, I think Gravemire is a great fit for oneshots and short campaigns for a group that likes atmosphere, character development, historical roleplaying, and only a little bit of rules crunch. It's low to zero prep and very easy to GM, and the setting is deeply flavorful. Definitely give it a chance if you're looking for something murky and eerie.


Minor Issues:

-Sift Through Scarstone and Get Something You Need both seem to provide no concrete benefit to players. I couldn't find anywhere in the book that assigned bonuses for having items, and Skills seem broadly to assume that characters have the necessary gear to use them always at hand. In a game that's play-to-lose, taking a roleplaying option at the cost of more health or Skills would make sense---you're trying to kill your character. But Gravemire's tone doesn't feel entirely play-to-lose, so it felt odd that the GM wasn't instructed to make sure something good comes of spending Letups on these.

(+1)

Much love for this amazing game, very excited about hopping into my first session soon :)