Peculiar Ground

Peculiar Ground is a musical 'Belonging Outside Belonging' narrative roleplaying game, in which players sing shape note songs together as they narrate a Southern Gothic story set in an isolated town.

3-6 players play the parts of inhabitants of a small community in the American south. Whatever year the game is set, you are surrounded by perilous wilderness and a society riven by civil violence. Every heart contains its secret vice. Supernatural horrors await to lure the unwary.

If you seek any sort of salvation here, your community will have to come together. This is represented in the game by singing traditional folk hymns in harmony with each other. The game uses the No Dice, No Masters engine with this additional musical element. Each playbook has a theme tune taken from the Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, an American hymnbook published in 1854 and a forerunner of the Sacred Harp and Christian Harmony tunebooks that are still very much in use today across the world.

You can listen to recordings of the songs in this game at: https://soundcloud.com/francis-gaskin/sets/peculiar-ground

This is a complete, playable beta version.