Following on from the success of The Almanac of Sanguine Paths – which was funded in just six minutes, Rori Montford of Montford Tales has launched a crowdfunding campaign for Asher’s Ridge, with late pledges opening up after the campaign’s conclusion. Montford handled the design, art, writing, and layout while Penny Blake (Two Gay Dragons, Field of Sunflowers) worked as editor. Stretch goals for the campaign unlocked an AP series from Storyweave as well as a full soundtrack from J. Strutman, Chris Bissette, and BE/HOLD.
Asher’s Ridge is a tabletop roleplaying game for one to four players, taking around two to four hours per session and requires no preparation or game master to play. The game draws heavily on classic paranormal drama series such as Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Stranger Things.
Each session is about creating and acting out your very own versions of a Twin Peaks or X-Files episode: crafting the basic story beats, before playing out the scenes yourself. Set in the sleepy town of Asher’s Ridge, your TV series could see any number of strange and disturbing scenarios occur:
- Maybe hikers are going missing in a sudden flash of bright lights
- Perhaps a horrifying experiment has escaped a secret military lab
- Is it possible residents are being hunted by an occult serial killer
Every episode or session of Asher’s Ridge begins by deciding on a logline – or the central mystery or mysteries driving the story. You then decide how each scene is going to begin by creating story threads and choosing a location, before playing out those scenes.
Rather than ordinary dice rolling, Asher’s Ridge uses an innovative system of letter tiles (such as the ones you’d find in a Scrabble set) and playing cards. When creating the story threads for the next scene, you draw a random collection of letter tiles and must make a word with them. This word can be integrated into any existing story threads to further develop them, or sit apart as an entirely separate storyline. These threads can form either central themes for the episode’s scenes – such as fear or family – or can act as keywords and clues, like gun or footprints.
Locations for scenes are represented by specific playing cards, with certain cards indicating different places throughout Asher’s Ridge – like Brightwater Lake or Ultimate Trails Campsite. For every episode, you draft a certain number of cards from the deck which form the pool of locations you can use, thereby keeping things fresh every time you play.
Rather than skills and stats, characters have key attributes to make them interesting personalities – such as their occupation, relationships and clothing. One attribute is Attitude, which determines how characters approach different scenarios. Whenever a character is either acting with Attitude or just doing something dumb they’re ‘inviting risk’, which means the player draws a random card from the Risk Deck to determine their fate.
Perhaps Ellie’s skeptical Attitude means she doesn’t heed the warnings about the nearby lake monster? Maybe Jack’s anxiety has led him to panic and reveal his whereabouts to some cult members? Asher’s Ridge is all about embracing dramatic situations surrounding weird and unexplainable, but most certainly dangerous, stuff. Eventually, the episode reaches its dramatic climax, with the characters confronting whatever strange phenomenon has been threatening their town and, hopefully, surviving to face yet another paranormal incident in Asher’s Ridge.
As a fan of this exact genre of TV show (and a real big map enjoyer), I wanted to dig a little deeper into how Montford approached this new game and what it represents for her as a designer.
Why form the conceit of the show around a tv show? What’s the line between a “normal” paranormal TTRPG and a more metafictional story like this?
Rori Montford: There are three parts to this: one from how the game came to be, one from making it a GMless game, and another from the stories I wanted to tell with it.
I started the design process that led to Asher’s Ridge around April last year, and through a confluence of different ideas, it evolved from what you call a “normal” paranormal TTRPG into what it is now. Framing the game as a TV show crystallised my thoughts on the experience I was trying to create; it was an ‘ah-ha’ moment where a lot of conflicted ideas about what I was making came into alignment.
The second reason I stuck with the “TV format” comes from the nature of a GMless game. I’m passionate about making games that don’t hang the narrative burden entirely on one player, the GM. I want this style of game to be approachable for folks, whether or not they’ve previous experience with GMless games. The conceit that you’re playing a TV show explicitly invites everyone to step beyond their character and share the descriptive burden a GM would normally take on.
Thirdly, I made this game for me to play solo (and with friends, when schedules permit) and after designing two games that focus very intensely on 1-2 characters, I wanted to tell the story of an ensemble of people. Playing a solo game by script-writing makes that a much easier task than switching point of views in a chapter-book sense.
As for the line between a “normal” paranormal TTRPG and what I’ve strived for with Asher’s Ridge: This comes back to the invitation to think outside your character, and take risks for the sake of the show. It’s easier to put a character in a dangerous situation when you can take that step back and remember all the times you’ve shouted at a character on TV, “don’t go in there!” and seen the drama that unfolded as they went in anyway.
How do you tell a collaborative story that also sticks to traditional story structure?
RM: In my opinion, it’s easier to tell a collaborative story with a traditional story structure. Everyone shares an expectation of where the story can go over a set number of story beats. It stops it meandering. Asher’s Ridge uses a traditional ’three act’ structure with a set number of scenes per act and a defined end point. Everyone knows they’re building up to a cliffhanger from the start of the game, and scene-by-scene they see the time to it ticking down.
Why letter tiles? How did you use them to stretch your design abilities? What makes them fit this game better than something like tarot that you’ve used in the past?
RM: The idea that started this particular design journey saw you making up words from tetris-shapes over a grid of letters. It was far too complicated an idea for this particular game and I eventually realised I’d achieve the exact same outcome by pulling letter tiles from a bag.
For a while I used tarot cards instead of playing cards in the design, and over time realised that what I love most about tarot-driven games was actually getting in the way of the stories I wanted this game to tell. Tarot cards have specific feelings and meanings attached to them, which is very useful in a game like Dead Letter Society as it provides an additional layer of context to draw on. However, overlaying those meanings onto a series of scenes of escalating tension felt mismatched. The letter tiles work because the meaning assigned to them is dependent on the players and any tiles drawn and used before. They build up their own history and context.
Your previous titles worked a lot with journaling and letter writing, which are slightly more personal “mediums” than paranormal TV. What made you want to try this new format out?
RM: It’s as simple as wanting to tell a different type of story. I wanted to play and find out what happens to a group of everyday people in extraordinary circumstances. While I could have framed it as a journaling or epistolary game, the TV format gives the immediacy I wanted to experience.
What’s your approach to maintaining fear and tension on the tabletop?
RM: Personally, for me, it hinges on not knowing what happens next. I try to preserve that feeling when playing, as when something is overly fleshed out or described, I find it too easy to fall into an analytical point of view, which is much less terrifying.
The book for Asher’s Ridge features an introduction to its world, rules for play, pre-made scenarios, locations and characters, as well as additional resources like a town map and a glossary. Backers can get a physical copy of the game book for £30 ($40.50), or a digital version for £12 ($16.20), with the current plan of getting products sent out by March 2026.
Images via Montford Tales
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