I don’t know who has the Brindlewood Bay book (or the Nephews in Danger! sequel). Let me know if you need to borrow it.
As a rule (ha!) the main BB book is mostly usable by players, and any of the GM/Keeper stuff in it has enough options and variability that there’s probably no real danger in reading stuff one oughtn’t. I’d prefer, though, you avoid reading the mysteries in the two books – not so much because of spoilers to the mysteries as spoilers to characters and reveals.
That said, you can also play without having read anything. One of the keen things about the game is a key GM rule: Play to find out what happens. The story, and to an even greater extent, the mysteries, are driven and solved by the players, not the Keeper.
The quoted text below is from the book …
Introduction
BRINDLEWOOD BAY is a roleplaying game about a group of elderly women – members of the local Murder Mavens mystery book club—who find themselves solving actual murder mysteries in their quaint New England town. They become aware of a dark occult conspiracy connecting the murders, and will eventually have to defeat that dark conspiracy to save their community.
The game is directly inspired by the television show Murder, She Wrote, but also takes inspiration from the cosmic horror genre, “cozy” crime dramas, and American TV shows from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s.
The Setting
Brindlewood Bay is a small coastal community in Massachusetts. A whaling town in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is now largely a tourist spot. Many locals have turned their homes into bed & breakfasts, and the town has antique shops, comfy dining spots, and artists and artisans of all kinds. Guided fishing trips are common.
Brindlewood Bay likes to market itself as “quaint,” but it’s actually a highly successful example of a particularly New England phenomenon: a once-thriving center for a now-defunct industry (in this case, whaling) that has by necessity, investment, and force of will reimagined (and rebranded) itself as a historical tourist destination, bedroom community (in this case, for Boston), and unobtrusively queer-friendly summer home market.
The Murder Mavens
The Murder Mavens is a mystery book club that has been meeting on the top floor of The Candlelight Booksellers every Saturday for the last ten years. The Murder Mavens are particularly fond of The Gold Crown Mysteries series by Robin Masterson, featuring the globe-trotting super-sleuth, Amanda Delacourt.
The Mavens themselves are all elderly women whose partners have passed away and whose children have long flown the nest. Now, they’re enjoying their golden years in the picturesque town of Brindlewood Bay, keeping their homes the way they like, pursuing their hobbies, and finding comfort and companionship in each other.
The Mavens are also amateur detectives, and by the time the game starts, they have helped local police solve several high profile crimes. Sometimes people approach them to get their help on a case, but usually the Mavens just stumble onto it—much to the chagrin of the authorities, who almost always resent their meddling.
BB is a loose PBTA-based ruleset – the same kind of 1-6/7-9/10+ die roll spans, moves that get applied to actions that are being role-played, etc. The idea of a playbook isn’t really there – there are specialized Maven Moves that provide some specialization, but generally the Mavens have similar mechanisms for character progression and advancement. The major differences between the Mavens come out of RP, not a proscribed list of options and abilities.
The overall goal, unlike in most PBTA games, is not to retire your character (though that can happen, either as a player wants, or if they become too corrupted by the Void, or if they actually get killed) but to:
- in the short term solve the mysteries you are run into.
- in the mid-term advance your character.
- in the long-term resolve the “dark conspiracy” of the long-term occult conspiracy lurking behind the scenes of this pleasant little town.
There is an expectation of some lean into the cozy mystery genre; there is nothing mechanically stopping a Maven in the rules from pulling out an Uzi and gunning down the murder suspect, but that’s probably not the direction we’re going for if this is the game we are playing.
The game actually recommends, if you are unfamiliar with the genre, a “crash course” of four Murder She Wrote episodes from the first season (available on Prime or Peacock):
- 1x0 (Pilot) “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes”
- 1x3 “Deadly Lady” (shows as 1x1 on IMBb)
- 1x18 “Murder Takes the Bus”
(Margie and I watched all three, and had fun.)
The Midwives of the Fragrant Void
Brindlewood Bay is geographically and historically significant to a dark cult called the Midwives of the Fragrant Void. At the start of the game, the Mavens don’t know anything about the Midwives, but as players we know they are a Hellenic death cult of men and women dedicated to bringing forth the “children” of Persephone — chthonic monstrosities that will usher in the End of All Things.
As the game progresses, the Mavens will become ever-more-aware of the supernatural connections between the murders they are investigating, and will eventually come to understand the role of the Midwives of the Fragrant Void. They may begin to dabble in the occult in order to combat the dark forces arrayed against them, come face-to-face with a child of Persephone, or even be tempted to join the Midwives themselves.
Content Warning
On the surface, this game is about little old ladies solving murder mysteries—and it is definitely that! But it is also more than that: the game (and this text) becomes very dark as you progress through it. Cosmic horror, graphic violence, ritual sacrifice, and other unsavory things can potentially come up. Additionally, this book occasionally touches on sensitive subject matter, such as sexism, sexual desire, the violence of America’s gun culture and consumer culture, and other topics. You may decide that this is not for you, and that’s ok! There are other excellent mystery-horror games out there for you to read and play, including Cthulhu Dark, Lovecraftesque, and The Society of Dreamers.
The game comes with a complete complement of Safety Tools to deal with potentially disturbing content. I’m not the type to lean into ick factor stuff in games I run or play, but I do want to be sensitive to what does not work for the players, and I don’t want to presume that what I’m cool with is the same for anyone else. We’ll use two of the tools:
In-game, please feel free to say “Pause a Minute” at any time (sort of a verbal X-card) over anything that happens during the game – with a suggestion to fast forward, rewind, or even just to take a breather… I think we’ve gamed enough that we don’t need to make that more formal.
Proactively, there is a Safety Tools handout in the Roll20 game which includes a Lines & Veils table. The handout is open to edit by all players; please anonymously fill it in as you wish before the game (I’ll mention it during Session 1 and folk can also do it then, but the editing in Roll20 is single-threaded so I want to avoid conflicting edits). I will use the table to know what I should steer clear from in story and narration.
- Lines are things we will not have in the game at all, even by reference.
- Veils are things that can be referenced in the game, but will not be role-played or shown “on-screen.”
- “Ask First” means just that, when the subject might come out, I’ll ask about it at the time, and folk can veto or provide other guidance at the time, depending on how they are feeling.
I’ve combined a few lists to make the one there, and there are some “other” spaces at the bottom in case I’ve left something out. I’ve also seeded some of my own preferences
(Note: this is (a) a murder mystery game, with (b) occult conspiracies going on. So some things might be hard to avoid. If you feel we should draw a Line on “murder,” we might want to reconsider the game we are playing.)
Tools
The BB folk have not yet released their Roll20 stretch goal adaptation, so I’ve had to improvise a bit. Or a lot.
We will be running in Roll20 (link sent). I’ve got the main screen set up for tracking clues, pulling out information and pictures, cluster tokens together as the action splits up, die rolling, etc. Once we see how things actually work, I can further refine it for functionality. Most goings-on will be “Theater of the Mind.”
I’ve also, um, spent a bit of time, just maybe, pulling out material from the books for common NPCs about town and the places they hang out and putting it all into perhaps overly cross-linked Roll20 Handouts, not to mention rules stuff. Just as Jessica Fletcher knew everyone in Cabot Cove, to some degree or another, so your Mavens have presumably been here for a while, and know where the bank is, the movie theater, the fried beach food shop by shore, etc., and the characters you might find there.
(The nature of the mysteries varies – some are of the “You are all at the DeLany mansion for a holiday party, and now you’re trapped there” variety, others of the “You are running all over town pursuing clues” type of thing. As well, the town can often serve as a backdrop for a variety of activities beyond the mystery itself.)
I have also found a Roll20 BB character sheet out there, and tweaked it so that it is actually readable and a bit more usable (tip of the hat to Bill for his tech support).
The Ask before the Game
Think of a later-aged woman, your character, who’s a big fan of reading murder mysteries and, as a projection of same, enjoys going out with her friends and solving real-life murder mysteries using her own intelligence, connections, curiosity, and gumption.
(Yes, woman; that’s the design intent. The creator of the game talks about it on p. 165 of the BB book. If you want to discuss it with me, please feel free.)
Think about her history. Who she’s loved and lost. What was her career, if any? Who’s her family still?
Think about how she presents.
Think about what she’s really good at.
Think about who she is, what she looks like, where she lives, what her relationship to the town is, what her hobbies are.
You really don’t need to do anything more. We’ll walk through the formal character creation in Session 1, which has enough interactive aspects that I’d prefer you not do any of the character sheet filling-out in advance.
(That said, once you are registered in the game, I will open your stub character sheet to you. If you have picture and/or token you want to use, you can add it to your character sheet beforehand; if you want to provide it to me to add in, I am happy to do that, too.)
And/or mention important things in the Discord.