Beneath Hallowed Halls
A downloadable game
“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.” - Donna Tartt, The Secret History
You are a tight knit group of students at an elite university where you spend most of your time drinking, sharing secrets, and rambling about your obscure intellectual passions. Also, one of you committed a murder. You must make it to the end of the semester without arousing too much suspicion, or you could be the one to go down for it.
Beneath Hallowed Halls is a social deception game of friendships that run deep and bodies that are buried even deeper. It has been designed with Vincent and Meguey Baker's Powered by the Apocalypse system and includes several new mechanics, such as Loyalty and Suspicion trackers. It features elements of both cooperative and player vs player gameplay, and can be run with three to six players and one game master.
You do not have to be familiar with Dark Academia to play this game! Beneath Hallowed Halls incorporates themes and aesthetics common to the genre, such as cult-like friendships, intellectual elitism, and gray morality, but requires no specific knowledge.
About the Downloads
- Beneath Hallowed Halls: 42 pages, bookmarked
- Beneath Hallowed Halls Quickstarts: 30 pages, contains 3-player, 5-player, and 6-player options
- Basic Moves, Playbooks & GM Tracking Sheet (free download): Play material including Basic Moves reference sheet, 6 playbooks (form fillable), and GM notes sheet
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $10 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
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Community Copies
We started with a limited pool of community copies, but thanks to several generous Kickstarter backers, we were able to add more!
Download demo
Comments
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So, we had two different runs of the game last week and I really enjoyed both of them.
Unfortunately, they were both one-shots, so I hadn't the occasion to play a full-length game, but here is my feedback.
First things first: I loved every single bit of the theme, the playbooks, the setup questions and everything connected with the colour. Being a huge fan of The Secret History, I had very high expectations and was nonetheless completely satisfied by how the game brought up the typical themes of this kind of fiction.
Another aspect that I very much enjoyed was the huge impact of secret information in the game. Having players pass notes and ask secret questions during the game was super fun and helped to raise the tension at the table: I loved it!
Concerning how to manage characters' secrets and how to run the game being the MC though, some issues emerged and I'd like to ask you for some clarification. First, I was never sure if it was a good idea to hint at characters' secrets to keep things moving or If a was supposed to raise the temperature differently. During our first game, I put stressors not directly connected to characters' secrets in, but I noticed that they preferred to play in a very conservative way, sharing also small secrets and turning out to be a very close-knit group with a lot of unshared secrets. This was also enforced by the fact that I was not sure if the "two can keep a secret" move required to share one of the starting secrets or if it can be triggered also by sharing secrets obtained with moves or questions.
When I played it again (second game) I was a little bit more strict in allowing sharing only big secrets (starting secrets or victim-related secrets) to trigger that move and it turned out way more tense. For our second game, I also tried to hint at secrets a bit and incorporate them in stressors, without completely revealing them but not letting the characters get away with their secrets without even discussing them at all. I think it helped the pace of the game a lot, and I was wondering if you think the same.
For our second game, I created my own scenario- heavily inspired by The Secret History and English Poetry, would you like me to share it? :)
Thank you for this amazing game, I'm planning for a whole full-length game this summer. I'll keep you updated!
Thanks so much for reaching out! We are so glad that you enjoyed the game, and hope your longer session goes well! For secrets, both methods work though, like you, we have found that hinting at secrets through stressors does help to raise the tension and leads to bigger moves. And for Two Can Keep a Secret, a player can share any of their secrets, not just the one created from the question on their character sheet.
We would love to see the setting you created! :D
I received the pdf copy a few days ago and I'm going to run a session tonight. I'm super excited!
We hope you have a blast! Let us know how it goes :)