D13 RPG

by Lester Smith, Winifred Lewis (Editor)

“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.”
—Arthur Conan Doyle

Horror maims and kills.

That makes the genre a tough beast to tame for any role-playing game. And once tamed, it isn’t horror any longer.

Other genres—fantasy, sci-fi, westerns, modern combat, and such—are about characters who go seeking adventure. It’s only natural that their lives are a string of such escapades.

But horror stories involve innocents caught up in peril they never sought out. Even if they survive, they’ll be scarred physically or psychologically.

This game of “grim horror across time and space" depicts just that, in an episodic fashion like an anthology or TV series. With it you can play any horror plot you have ever read, seen on film, or yourself imagined.

Within the pages you’ll find a “One Roll to Rule Them All” system, using a unique “dl3” mechanic for actions, and tarot cards to represent the dangerous, unwieldy nature of paranormal abilities.

Horror maims and kills. Are you ready to face it?

The D13 RPG is designed by Origins Award winning game designer Lester Smith, author of the Dark Conspiracy RPG, Dragon Dice, the D6xD6 RPG, and many others.

118 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Elissa Malcohn has been published in Amazing Stories, Asimov's, Hugo Award winner Electric Velocipede, Hugo nominee Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, IPPY Silver Medalist Riffing on Strings, Tales of the Unanticipated, Bram Stoker Award winner Unspeakable Horror, and elsewhere. Her story "Hermit Crabs" (Electric Velocipede #14) appears in the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition.

She was a John W. Campbell Award finalist in 1985 for best new science fiction writer of the year, reached preliminary ballot for a Nebula Award in 1989, and is a four-time Rhysling Award nominee for best speculative poetry of the year.

Covenant, the first volume of her Deviations series, was released by Aisling Press in 2007. See this blog entry for publication changes.

Covenant is now available as a free download (ISBN 978-0-9819764-0-2), in formats compatible with Kindle and other e-book readers, Palm and other PDAs, HTML for reading on a browser, and PDF (Acrobat Reader) reflowed to fit different-sized screens. In May 2009 Elissa released Volume 2, Appetite (ISBN 978-0-9819764-1-9).

Downloads are available at The Deviations Series website, Smashwords, and in even more formats at Manybooks.net.

Thanks to Rachel Baker for this review of both volumes at the Old Musty Books website, and to hosts Mark Eller (Chronicles)and Cyrus A. Webb (Conversations LIVE!) for having me on their shows. You can listen to the Chronicles interview here (click here for a transcript with accompanying photos and links) and to the Conversations LIVE! interview here (links-inclusive transcript here).

Elissa's novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work" appear in the Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's. Work is forthcoming in the Dybbuk Press anthology She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (expected 2010), and elsewhere. Publication details here.

Elissa is also a participant in Operation E-Book Drop and keeps a Facebook fan page here."