Under the Autumn Strangely

Here and there, gone in the hazy echoes of antiquity, sits a land scarcely glimpsed—an uncanny hinterland named the Never Was, in which unremembered whispers are shown to passengers lost through the wilds beyond…

“Under the Autumn Strangely” is a Shared-GM Storytelling Game of Pastoral Horror from a lost age that Never Was.

The experience focuses on mood and tone, drawing on the melancholy of rustic farmland and the romantic oddness of a dusty road through a dark wood, wound in a blanket of anachronistic old Americana.

This is a vibes-forward kind of game. A storytelling game. A spooky, magical, unsettling game about exploration in a land called the Never Was. Inspired by Over the Garden Wall, an animated series about brothers lost in an ominous, often supernatural, autumnal alternate-past, players choose to join one of three narrative ‘teams.’ Balancing one another, these roles weave the tale. The Traveler describes the characters, their curiosity as well as their fear, and the discoveries they make as they attempt to get home. The Arcadian controls the land and the denizens of the Never Was, setting the mood with cursed innkeepers, sentient cornfields, talking animals, and forest spirits. The Terror, then, is the Evil that stalks, grows, and poisons all it touches, turning the whimsically strange dark and dangerous.

Game includes core rules and a safety guide as well as a variety of tools to set the tone – plot hooks, game element generators, world prompts, keywords, story shaping suggestions, and play examples.