Monte Cook Games' Darkest House Is Designed For Online Play

Monte Cook Games' newest Kickstarter has just launched. It's a plug-in horror location/interlude designed to work with any game system, and built for online play.

The house itself can fit in any game by simply placing a door -- they give examples of the apartment at the end of the hall or a strange unit in the station quarters sector. In that sense, the house exists in all worlds.

As a digital product, everything is shareable and formatted for the screen, with plenty of handouts, images. It has been deigned with VTTs in mind, as well as Zoom or Discord.

The house itself has several dozen rooms. You get two an app, and two PDFs -- the GM's Secrets of the House, and a Player's Guide. The GM downloads The Darkest House (mac or windows ZIP files) -- you can actually download a little demo, which is the intro page.

It's $45, or $85 with exclusive additional content.

The Darkest House

A descent into horror for 5e or any RPG that will make your campaign and characters better—optimized for an awesome online experience.

www.kickstarter.com

 

[Mistwell]

This is a fun and interesting one-shot that I can see a GM playing over and over with different groups.

But I'd only invest that money if I thought I would be playing it over and over with different groups, like a party game.

 

[Zaukrie]

I am playing online and am likely to continue doing so, at least some of the time, when the pandemic ends (I've got players in four countries, sooo ...). That said, MCG's Ptolus campaign was run horribly, from the "guess what's in my pocket" stretch goal system to the "please put all of your comments in the Comment section, so we can ignore all of them in one place" form of non-communication.

I think this will likely be good -- as a two-time Ptolus backer, I am a big believer in their ability to organize a product in such a way that it makes it easier to use than anything the competition can do on their best day -- but yeah, pricy pricy.

For people who want an alternative, there's this on DriveThruRPG. (I don't own it, but it's been on my wishlist forever, waiting for the right time to scare the crap out of my players with a good haunted house adventure. I winged one years ago, and it worked amazingly well, and I'm looking forward to turning some hair white with a product like this or the Darkest House.)

I share your frustration with their "communication"....

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is a fun and interesting one-shot that I can see a GM playing over and over with different groups.

But I'd only invest that money if I thought I would be playing it over and over with different groups, like a party game.

That's actually what's making me lean toward getting it. I have about five groups I play with regularly and am already planning on remixing them based on time zones to do Tomb of Horrors runs with premades on D&D Beyond.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I share your frustration with their "communication"....

It's weird, because their team isn't likely to be smaller than Kobold Press' or Goodman Games', both of whom communicate throughout their campaigns just fine.

 

[Dire Bare]

Another MCG Kickstarter that I will pass on.

Okay.

 

[Mistwell]

That's actually what's making me lean toward getting it. I have about five groups I play with regularly and am already planning on remixing them based on time zones to do Tomb of Horrors runs with premades on D&D Beyond.

I think this would be killer for that kind of situation.

That, and I suspect it would be really fun around Halloween.

 

[Aldarc]

Okay.

Yep.

 

[Wrathamon]

i didnt realize there was no physical book. this is pricey

 

[Mistwell]

i didnt realize there was no physical book. this is pricey

It's a heavily electronic product. It's much more than a PDF. It's an entire downloadable executable game product, which has all sorts of abilities built-in to copy out pictures, text, and other elements. It's built from the ground up for online play.

 

[Morrus]

i didnt realize there was no physical book. this is pricey

Yeah, that's the whole concept. It's designed for online play. If online play isn't your bag, this one isn't for you.