Pyramid Review
Don't Walk in Winter Woods: A Game of Folkloric Fear
Published by Xolis.net
Written by Clint Krause
17-Page PDF Document; $5.00
Don't Walk in Winter Woods: A Game of Folkloric Fear is a storytelling game that encourages the telling of tales around a campfire on a cold winter's night. As the title suggests these tales should be about our fear of the unknown the lies inside the eerie gloom of the woods that stand forebodingly on the very edge of the village. The game falls into the genre of the dark whimsy, that of the American Gothic, best typified by Half Meme Press' My life With Master, Atlas Games' Gloom -- The Game of Inauspicious Incidents & Grave Consequences, and Ronin Arts' Vs. Monsters. Its inspirations are given in movie terms as The Blair Witch Project and Brotherhood of the Wolf, but more obviously are Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, particularly the latter. This shows in the setting of the game, an unnamed and isolated settlement in late 18th century post-revolution America, on the edge of a forest with a forbidding presence and an ominous reputation.
Designed for three to four players, plus the Watcher (or GM), the intention of the designer of Don't Walk in Winter Woods is that it be played somewhere cold and dark. So if not out in the woods or around a campfire, it is probably best to turn down the light and leave the windows open. The game's mechanics require no more than a single six-sided die along with six beads per . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: May 6, 2005
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