Wraithound is a tabletop role-playing game designed for 1-3 players, where you embody a unique ghost hunter endowed with supernatural abilities as part of an ancient order. Your adventures take you through haunted properties like ancient manors, desolate castles, and abandoned mansions, each steeped in mystery and spectral phenomena.

As you step into these eerie settings, you must investigate the underlying causes of the supernatural occurrences that plague these locales. Through careful exploration, you gather clues and insights into the hauntings, confronting any horrors or threats such as ghostly apparitions, monstrosities and other unsettling entities.

The heart of your task is to resolve these disturbances, struggling to banish, capture, or eliminate the spectral presence. After each haunting is put to rest, your journey leads you to the next troubled site, continuing your life’s dedication as a Wraithound to shielding the living from the echoes of the spectral world.

Highlights

• Solo or coop: play it solo or with up to three players. You don't need a game master; the procedures will guide your gameplay smoothly.
  
  
• Zero-prep, rules-light: grab 2d6, a deck of cards, and you are all set. You learn the rules in five minutes and set out to your ghost-hunting mission.
  
  
• Multiple variations: a full set of tables for locations, rooms, secret rooms, curiosities, threats, horrors, and boss monsters, together with a myriad of character options, ensuring that you'll always have a unique session every time you play.
  
  
• A peculiar oracle:  ask the oracle to create prophecy/riddle-like sentences full of mystery that you can use to come up with your conjectures about the ongoing investigation.

 

All you need to play Wraithound is two six-sided dice of different colors, a standard deck of cards (jokers included), up to 2 friends (optional) and about 2 hours for a full mission. 

Here's an overview on how to play:

• Create your character by rolling or picking on 5 d66 tables for a name, a drive, a talent, a style, and a trinket.
  
  
• Create your mission by rolling on 2 d66 tables to get a location and the nature of the haunting.
  
  
• Set up your play space by distributing a few cards on a 3x3 grid, representing each room of the manor you'll investigate.
  
  
• Reveal the first cards to learn about the room you just entered, a curiosity you may investigate, and a threat or horror you must face.
  
  
• Ask the Oracle if you want help envisioning the scene or coming up with your theories about the haunting.
  
  
• Get into action to overcome the challenge in front of you. Time to roll some dice!
  
  
• Evaluate your performance, update your notes, and you may even find a secret room!
  
  
• Move on until you find and face the final boss!

It is a deceptively simple framework, but you'll be surprised how well it fosters emergent stories of supernatural investigation through the interplay of evocative prompts, oracle rolls, your character details, and your personal interpretation.  

You can play with physical cards and dice, or online with a dedicated VTT

 
Your purchase includes:

For the $12.90 package

• 104-page, full-color, totally hyperlinked and bookmarked PDF
• Printer-friendly version of all the tables in a dedicated document
• At-cost print-on-demand coupon for the 6 x 9 in (US Trade) book, perfect bound, full-color interior (estimated price between $9 to $12 + shipping, via Lulu)
• At-cost print-on-demand coupon for the custom deck of cards
• At-cost print-on-demand coupon for the custom pair of dice
  
• Custom deck of cards as individual images

For the $14.90 package

• Everything above, plus:
• Access to a dedicated VTT using the playingcards.io platform, with fully automated actions for a seamless online experience, even when playing with a group, including a custom dice roller, custom deck of cards, and a single-click prophecy/riddle oracle

How to use the VTT:

1. Download the file named wraithound.pcio 
2. Navigate to https://playingcards.io/import in your web browser. 
3. Drag and drop the downloaded file into the designated box. 
4. Once the file is imported, the room is opened automatically, and you can click to enter. You also have the option to share the unique URL with friends (this is a good time to copy the code and save it somewhere, so you can return later to a game in progress). 

Here's an example actual play, showcasing the rules and the use of the virtual tabletop:

Credits 

► This game was made possible by the support of my amazing patrons. Join today and get all my future games for free!

All art by Kim Holm.