Párvulos Review – Coming of Age Horror Fantasy

One thing I enjoy about the modern indie tabletop RPG space is that when a game comes around with a great foundation, it often gets a ton of support in the form of new adventures from both the original creators and fans alike. Mork Bork, Mothership, and Trophy blew up in popularity largely because of this, giving GMs a simple set of rules paired with a wide range of premade scenarios that are easy to get to the table. One game that’s been quietly building a collection of zine-sized adventures is Liminal Horror, a rules-lite narrative-first TTRPG from Goblin Archives. This year, their new module The Bloom was nominated for an Ennie, an annual award that celebrates roleplaying games. After flipping through the 45 page module, it’s easy to see why this was one of the standouts in this category.

Before diving into The Bloom, let me give you a little primer for the Liminal Horror system as a whole. It’s a flexible system that’s derived from another game called Cairn, modifying it to tell stories of modern day investigators confronting horrors of all different kinds. Players only have three base stats to roll, strength, dexterity, and control, which can be reduced after a character’s initial hit protection (HP) is reduced to zero.

When they reduce one of their stats, they need to make a saving throw based on the damage type to see if that damage leads to a more permanent consequence. If the characters take damage, physical attacks that reduce their strength, they roll on a wound table that will give them a hindrance to their character’s body. When they take stress, something that reduces their control stat, they will instead roll on a fallout table that will have stranger effects on the player. Fallout occasionally gives you a benefit as your body and mind twist in weird ways, allowing you to grow your character even in failure.

There aren’t traditional classes in the game that give you special abilities, but you do begin with an archetype that gives you starting items that help focus your fictional position on what you are capable of. Eventually, players can find resonant artifacts that give them access to unique abilities, some of which have dire costs.

The other big hook of the game is its structure, which is centered on what they call the Voidcrawl Procedure. The GM will keep track of the time as players do things and will roll on a couple random tables when players perform significant actions that move the day forward. The results of the table can be events like NPC encounters, omens, or finding clues, which are also rolled on a table. This means that even if you’re running a set adventure like The Bloom, the way clues show up for players can be radically different, allowing each group to have their own unique version of the adventure.

Now that you’ve got a little background on the system, what is The Bloom? The quick pitch that Goblin Archives gives is “What if Twin Peaks had a The Last of Us season” and that sums it up pretty well. Set in the idyllic Pacific Northwest town of Coldwater, your group of investigators is attempting to figure out the mystery behind the disappearance of a group of campers. While investigating, you’ll meet the tight-knit community that’s preparing for their annual blueberry festival and discover the creeping menace that plagues the town. Alan Wake, Stranger Things, and even Dying Light are all listed as inspirations for this adventure, and it’s easy to see how that all comes together into a unique little setting.

In order to help players create characters that feel right for this adventure, The Bloom includes a set of twenty new archetypes for the game. This feels like a smart way to use the character creation mechanics to set tone for the players, putting them in the correct mindset for the adventure they’re embarking on. There’s also hooks for how to start the adventure, whether you’re playing it as a one-off module or integrating it into a larger campaign. Are you coming to Coldwater specifically to investigate with an already established team, or are you all just lost in the forest together after a party as weird things start happening around you? Figuring out an entry point to a sandbox-style adventure like this can often be challenging for both the players and the GM, so I’m glad to see some suggestions listed within.

The book is laid out nicely, frontloading the unique rules of the module and the overall story details before moving into a breakdown of the town, location by location. It’s these location entries that have most of the details about the ins and outs of the story, allowing you to slowly get a full picture of what’s going on in Coldwater. Many of the locations have specific characters that they introduce that are integral to the overall plot, grounding the events in interpersonal drama between townspeople. There’s also appendices that give you new tables to roll on, allowing you to quickly find rumors or NPCs to put in front of your players, and a few custom fallouts that are tied to this setting.

There’s not a ton of art within, but the art that’s there is crisp, mimicking the looks of government documents, “Visit Coldwater” postcards, and other in-world paraphernalia. It’s a fun way to present information without losing clarity, adding a lot of character to the book. Whether it’s a hand-drawn map of a cave or an advertisement for the local campgrounds, The Bloom’s use of art is effective at setting a mood.

Location entries are broken down into different sections, each with their own unique locations that paint a full picture of the Pacific Northwest town. Coldwater and the surrounding area has all the standard small town trappings: a 1950s style diner, campgrounds, and a surrounding forest, just to name a few. Each location has a brief description, sometimes including possible key plot events that occur when you stumble across them. Players are encouraged to investigate this area in whatever order they see fit, and each entry gives you just enough to be able to frame a scene for the investigators based on the results of your Voidcrawl roll. Some locations are meant for big, specific sequences, and those are always well-written and creepy, making for great set pieces to mix in with the more low key investigation moments.

NPC entries are scattered among the locations, and these do a great job of not only creating fun characters for players to run into, but help illuminate the larger picture of the sinister forces lurking in the town. They each have a basic description, desires, secrets, and social connections, giving the GM good material to work with to make them feel fully rounded while still providing space to add your own touches to their depiction. There are a couple different factions hidden within Coldwater, making character interactions important to being able to figure out the total picture of the mystery. I do think it could use a one-page chart of all the connections between major NPCs in order to make everything clear at a glance, but as written there’s a lot of meat to the relationships set up here.

The Bloom also provides a lot of guidance for you to ratchet up the tension for the players. The new fallouts included in the book do a great job of reflecting the themes of the adventure, taking the existing mechanics and making it work even more for the module. There’s a few monsters in the book that are horrific as they are deadly, each with their own stats and attacks. My favorite element is the Doom Clock, something included in all Liminal Horror modules, which is a series of escalating events that take place each day throughout the investigation. Characters go missing, monsters attack, and locations fall to corrupting forces. It’s a great way to keep the plot driving forward while still giving players the narrative freedom to investigate the area in whatever order they want.

Maybe you’re really interested in this module, but your group is already invested in a campaign of a different game. Goblin Archives made a great decision here to give you advice on how to convert this adventure to work in a couple different systems. The systems listed are Agents of the O.D.D., Cairn, Monster of the Week, Cthulhu Dark, and the recently released Triangle Agency, so if you’re in the middle of any of those games, it’s pretty easy to make the Bloom work for your campaign.

Conversely, if you’re using this to introduce your group to Liminal Horror, and it catches on, Goblin Archives has a few other zine-sized modules available for you to check out. The Mall drops you into a 1990s mall and sets you up against a Thing-like shapeshifting horror. The Bureau presents the labyrinthine headquarters of a Control-like government agency that’s being corrupted. They also recently ran a crowdfunding campaign for the Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow, which should be coming out later this year. After the high bar they set with the Bloom, I’m excited to start flipping through their other modules.

Liminal Horror as a system is a great combination of old-school dungeon crawling mechanics with modern story-focused sensibilities, and the Bloom shows off its strengths well. The sandbox nature of it gives the players a ton of agency while discovering the intriguing mysteries of Coldwater. In the influential tabletop RPG Dungeon World, the first principle for setting up a good game is to “draw maps but leave blank spaces,” and The Bloom follows that principle perfectly. I’m very glad a small game like this got recognition from the Ennies this year, and I’m excited to see what the Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow looks like when it’s released.

The Bloom is now available via itch.io. A physical version is also available.