Penny Dreadfuls of Victorian London (2023)

Overview

Penny Dreadfuls were short illustrated periodicals, very popular in the United Kingdom in the second half of the nineteenth century. They were very cheap booklets, costing just one copper penny and offering short stories with vivid and popular themes narrated with an emphatic and sensationalist style. Despite the low cultural value, Penny Dreadfuls gave birth to a genre that has constantly evolved to this day.

In Penny Dreadfuls of Victorian London: Sensational Tales of Terror, 1 to 5 players will share bizarre and frightening tales masterfully narrated by our authors, set in gloomy Victorian London in the late 19th century, infamous for the mysterious serial murders in the neighborhoods of Whitechapel and Whitehall.

In each Sensational Tale, specific Characters living in an ordinary Victorian world are suddenly embroiled in shocking events that catapult them out of reality and natural conventions. By joining them, players face a bizarre scenario, investigating, making deductions and choices, facing trials leading to unpleasant consequences or handsome rewards.

Each game has a variable number of turns with different possible outcomes, ranging from miserable failure to utter and satisfying success, all depending on how the players interpret the story, sharing the fate of their Stars.

—description from the publisher