When Nightmares Come

Brutal murders at the waterfront; missing students at University Square; antiquities stolen from the city museum; mutilated pets in a suburban community; strange creatures sighted in the state forest… sound familiar?

Always eager to bump their ratings, news feeds will dangle click-bait captions: Bizarre! Disturbing! Mysterious! After all, anything scandalous or sordid will hook an audience. The same goes for the eerie and the deviant.

But what if there was more to these headlines than hype? More to these crimes than the time-worn tragedy of human folly or greed? What if something unnatural really was going on? After all, ghost stories, fables, legends about vampires, beasts, and monsters are surprisingly tenacious – even after so many centuries.

Of course, modern society dismisses all that as superstition. Or, even better, makes good coin off our nagging fears by revising them into summer blockbusters.

But what if there was a kernel of truth under all that? A sharp sliver of fact buried in all that fiction? What if there really were sinister things hiding in the dark corners of the world? After all, just because we only know the distorted and diluted myths that clung so stubbornly to reach our age, it doesn’t mean that those creatures didn’t exist, or that they were somehow banished by science and progress. Not at all

Perhaps they just got better at hiding.

Nightmares is a solo/cooperative tabletop adventure wargame that uses miniature figures. Up to five players will form a team of paranormal vigilantes; self-taught occult specialists and monster hunters who call themselves the Nightwatch.

These self-appointed ‘watchmen’ have banded together to investigate mysterious disappearances, thefts, and murders, or any crime they suspect to have been committed by supernatural forces. Despite the obvious danger, not to mention the utter disbelief shown by the rest of society, these brave souls have vowed to exterminate the terrors that lurk in the shadows.

Nightmares is an open-world, open-miniature wargame. Even though it is modern and horror-themed, most of the mundane and occult terminology is intentionally generic. Neutral categories and classifications keep the focus on in-game effects and leave players free to adjust wording to their specific narrative setting.