If your gaming group has been looking for an excuse to dust off Vaesen, Free League has handed you a corker. City of My Nightmares dropped on 7 April 2026, a full-length, four-part campaign that drags investigators into the gas-lit streets of 19th century Stockholm to chase a string of grisly murders. What starts as a body hunt becomes a much darker conspiracy, one that reaches back into the very origins of the Society, the secretive group that protects humans from supernatural creatures known as vaesen.
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Find events near youVaesen is Free League's gothic horror RPG, released in 2020 and built on the haunting art of Johan Egerkrans's folklore book of the same name. It scooped three Gold ENnies in 2021 (Best Art Cover, Best Art Interior, Best Monster) and a Gold ENnie for Best Setting in 2023 for the Mythic Britain & Ireland expansion, so the bar for this Stockholm campaign was high. Tomas and Kiku Pukk Härenstam handle the writing here, with illustrations from Egerkrans and Anton Vitus, and the book ships with a separate large map of Stockholm and an oversized in-world newspaper handout. Those physical bits do a lot of heavy lifting on the table.
The campaign is built for Stockholm but Free League notes you can lift it wholesale into London, Prague or any gothic capital of the era. That makes it tempting for UK groups who fancy running a Sherlock-meets-spooks campaign closer to home, swapping the cobbles of Gamla Stan for Spitalfields.
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Set up your group for freeHorror RPGs are a great hook for new players because the table mood does half the work for you. If you've been meaning to bring a one-shot to your local board game cafe or community group, a Vaesen mystery night is an easy pitch. List your session free on Backseat Gamer and see who turns up.
The book is available now from Free League's webshop, hobby retailers and DriveThruRPG.
Sources: Free League | TTRPG Fans | Celenic Earth Publications
