Through Monday, February 9 we present the all-new Sleepy Hollow Bundle featuring Sleepy Hollow, the FRPG of early 19th-Century folk horror from Kids in the Attic Games based on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and other works by Washington Irving and other early American writers. (Note: This Sleepy Hollow RPG is unconnected to the 1999 Tim Burton film or the Fox TV drama.)
In 1810 America, the small, isolated New England village of Sleepy Hollow is steeped in rituals, customs, and tales of spectral riders, witches, and dark pacts. Twenty years have passed since the fateful night Ichabod Crane vanished, leaving only whispers of the Headless Horseman. But the darkness never truly left Sleepy Hollow, and every shadow hides a secret. As a Wandering Minstrel, Hunter, Barber-Surgeon, a Schoolteacher like Crane, or even a Retired Hessian, you’ll explore shrouded woods, find cursed artifacts and restless spirits, and protect Sleepy Hollow’s residents from ever-encroaching darkness – and possibly from themselves, for their hidden past may yet return to haunt the living. Still, the people stand united against the unknown, clinging to sanity and drawing strength from community.
Using the Year Zero Engine (Vaesen, Forbidden Lands, Tales From the Loop), the Sleepy Hollow RPG adapts the Stress mechanics seen in the Alien RPG to create a charged supernatural mood. In Year Zero, Stress can help you a lot, right up to the point where it stops helping at all. If you fail a roll, or if you want additional successes, you can push the roll, re-rolling failed dice. But pushing increases your Stress Level and adds Stress Dice to the pushed roll. Stress Dice can increase your success chance, but if a Stress Die rolls a 1, you roll on the Panic Table to see whether you keep it together, tremble uncontrollably, drop something, freeze, scream, flee, or go berserk.
But this is no routine monster-of-the-week playground: Sleepy Hollow‘s loving descriptions of authentic locations evoke a focused sense of place – a place with a troubled past. The settled landscape makes its unsettling histories convincing. When every villager (including you!) has secrets and regrets, every monster hunt becomes a darkly personal story.
In August 2024 James M. Spahn of Barrel Rider Games previewed the Sleepy Hollow manuscript: “This is a wonderfully evocative game that is easily approachable for new gamers, doesn’t fall back on cookie-cutter design tropes, and remains loyal to both the fiction and the genre it helped create. The choice to focus tightly on a single location and a very specific style of play creates a focused game experience. […] It’s a game about slow burns, gut-wrenching reveals, unexpected discoveries, and what it means to face something truly horrific.”
This all-new Sleepy Hollow Bundle gives you everything you need for tense encounters with the hidden past and unknowable shadow. Pay just US$7.95 to get all four titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $32) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete 180-page Sleepy Hollow core rulebook and its Player’s Journal, Faithful Companion: A Session 0 Supplement, and a set of Year Zero solitaire rules, The Devil’s Nine Questions.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $17.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get our entire Bonus Collection with five more supplements and scenarios worth an additional $50, including Ichabod Crane’s Field Guide to Uncanny Creatures, Folk Magic: Spells & Charms of the Hollow, The Parish Ledger book of nonplayer characters, and the adventures Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground and A Little Darkness.
The Headless Horseman returns to chase away this Sleepy Hollow offer Monday, February 9.
