Montford Tales' Asher’s Ridge is the dream RPG for lovers of Twin Peaks, X-Files and Stranger Things

The crowdfunding campaign for Montford Tales' latest game, Asher’s Ridge, has launched on Kickstarter!

Following on from the success of The Almanac of Sanguine Paths – which was funded in just six minutes! – the crowdfunding campaign for Asher’s Ridge is now live, with backers able to pledge until September 16th for a copy!

Asher’s Ridge is a tabletop roleplaying game for one to four players, taking around two to four hours per session and requires absolutely no preparation or game master to play. Our latest tabletop RPG is the ideal vehicle for fans of classic paranormal drama series such as Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Stranger Things. 

Each session is about creating and acting out your very own versions of a Twin Peaks or X-Files episode: crafting the basic story beats, before playing out the scenes yourself. Set in the sleepy town of Asher’s Ridge, your TV series could see any number of strange and disturbing scenarios occur: 

• Maybe hikers are going missing in a sudden flash of bright lights 
• Perhaps a horrifying experiment has escaped a secret military lab 
• Is it possible residents are being hunted by an occult serial killer 

Every episode or session of Asher’s Ridge begins by deciding on a logline - or the central mystery or mysteries driving the story. You then decide how each scene is going to begin by creating story threads and choosing a location, before playing out those scenes.

Rather than ordinary dice rolling, Asher’s Ridge uses an innovative system of letter tiles (such as the ones you’d find in a Scrabble set) and playing cards. When creating the story threads for the next scene, you draw a random collection of letter tiles and must make a word with them. This word can be integrated into any existing story threads to further develop them, or sit apart as an entirely separate storyline. These threads can form either central themes for the episode’s scenes - such as fear or family - or can act as keywords and clues, like gun or footprints.

Locations for scenes are represented by specific playing cards, with certain cards indicating different places throughout Asher’s Ridge - like Brightwater Lake or Ultimate Trails Campsite. For every episode, you draft a certain number of cards from the deck which form the pool of locations you can use, thereby keeping things fresh every time you play.

Rather than skills and stats, characters have key attributes to make them interesting personalities - such as their occupation, relationships and clothing. One attribute is Attitude, which determines how characters approach different scenarios. Whenever a character is either acting with Attitude or just doing something dumb they’re ‘inviting risk’, which means the player draws a random card from the Risk Deck to determine their fate. 

Perhaps Ellie’s sceptical Attitude means she doesn’t heed the warnings about the nearby lake monster? Maybe Jack’s anxiety has led him to panic and reveal his whereabouts to some cult members? Asher’s Ridge is all about embracing dramatic situations surrounding weird and unexplainable, but most certainly dangerous, stuff. 

Eventually, the episode reaches its dramatic climax, with the characters confronting whatever strange phenomenon has been threatening their town and, hopefully, surviving to face yet another paranormal incident in Asher’s Ridge.

The book for Asher’s Ridge features an introduction to its world, rules for play, pre-made scenarios, locations and characters, as well as additional resources like a town map and a glossary. Backers can get a physical copy of the game book for £30 ($40.50), or a digital version for £12 ($16.20). An ashcan version of Asher's Ridge is available on Itch.io, if you'd like to try the preview first.