If you have ever finished a weird-town mystery series and wished you could keep going, Asher's Ridge hands you the writers' room. Rori Montford's new game-master-less tabletop RPG, out in digital form today (29 May 2026), casts 1 to 4 players as the makers of their own paranormal drama, something in the mould of Twin Peaks, The X-Files or Stranger Things. No game master, no prep.
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Set up your group for freeEach session plays like building and filming one episode. You set a central mystery, spin up story threads, then play the scenes out to a dramatic climax. The clever bit is how it generates ideas. Instead of rolling dice, you draw a handful of letter tiles, the sort you would find in a Scrabble box, and make a word from them. That word becomes the spine of the next scene, perhaps a theme to dig into, perhaps a concrete clue to chase, which you weave into the story. Locations come from a deck of cards (Brightwater Lake, the Ultimate Trails campsite and the like), drafted into a fresh pool every time so no two episodes feel the same. Act recklessly, or lean too hard on your character's Attitude (one of their core traits), and you draw from the Risk Deck to see what it costs you.
Montford Tales is a one-person operation run by illustrator and designer Rori Montford, who is keen to point out the game is entirely human-made with no AI involved. It is the same studio behind the journaling games Dead Letter Society and The Almanac of Sanguine Paths, so the storytelling focus is no accident.
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See how it worksThe digital edition is out now on itch.io and DriveThruRPG for £12. UK readers get the physical book first, on 30 June, before a worldwide print release in mid-July, and it costs £30. If you are at UK Games Expo this weekend, the studio is on stand 3A-412. It is a tidy pick for a small group, so round up a couple of friends and direct your own season.
Sources: Rascal | Montford Tales | Geek Native
