One-On-One Play: The game is designed for use by one narrator and one player, allowing for the tales to be far more personal and involved experiences. There are optional rules for multiple players for those nights in which you have several gamers wanting to participate.

Dominoes: Macabre Tales foregoes traditional dice in favor of two sets of double-six dominoes. The player maintains a hand of three dominoes at all times and must play one of them when his character attempts a task that could result in failure. In effect, the character's fate is in the player's hands. Does he want to spend that 6/6 domino now and risk needing it for something even more dire later on? Or does he spend it now and hope that he won't need it later? This creates suspense and forces the player to make very real choices.

Tension Scenes: As Lovecraft's tales didn't feature RPG-style combat, Macabre Tales defies the standard practices by featuring no true combat system. Does that mean that the cyclopean horrors lurking in the darkest recesses of the world can't kill the character?  Of course not. Tension scenes, a stylized game mechanic that maintains suspense when things become intense, cover these situations easily, without the need for a separate system for dealing with combat.

Sanity Checks: When the character faces the unfathomable horrors of the cosmos, he will be forced to make a sanity check, the result of which will determine if his mind can handle what he has seen... or if it's enough to plunge him into madness. 

Genre Points: In Macabre Tales, the character is rewarded for delving further into the unknown (and for other genre-appropriate actions). They say that curiosity killed the cat... but what they don't tell you is that curiosity also earned the cat genre points. These points can be spent to aid the character in numerous ways, from adding to check result totals to allowing the player to alter the scene ("What? I didn't bring an electric lantern? Can I spend a genre point to find one in the drawer?").   

Lovecraft Only: We have stripped out the influence of other authors who have "contributed" to Lovecraft's pseudo-mythology over the years, leaving only the aspects created by Lovecraft himself.   

Everything You Need To Play: Aside from two sets of dominoes, the rulebook has everything you'll need to play or run Macabre Tales. In addition to all the rules, the book contains loads of advice for both the player and narrator alike. We've even included a 13-page introductory adventure (or "tale" as we call it).