The Between enters its final week of crowdfunding

On September 24th, game designer Jason Cordova and the rest of The Gauntlet team launched a BackerKit campaign to crowdfund three hardcover books for their game: The Between.

The Between is a tabletop roleplaying game about a group of mysterious monster hunters in Victorian-era London. The hunters are residents of a place called Hargrave House, and their job is to investigate and neutralize monstrous threats terrorizing the city—threats that Scotland Yard won’t or can’t handle themselves. As the story progresses, they become aware of the plans of a Moriarty-style criminal mastermind they will eventually have to confront in order to save Queen and country.

...It can also be a game about ghost hunters in the Old West of El Paso, passengers aboard a supernatural ocean liner at the turn of the century, or the informal security team of King Louis XIV at a werewolf-stalked Versailles.

And it was funded in 10 minutes.

The Between & Shadow Society

When the campaign launched, it promised an updated and expanded version of the game's core rules: 7 character playbooks, 11 monstrous Threats, and 1 Mastermind.

The second book, Shadow Society, serves as an expansion that includes 2 additional playbooks, 10 monstrous Threats, as well as new guidelines and rules for exploring the mysteries of Hargrave House itself.

Various unlocked stretch goals have continuously added more and more content. For the London setting alone, the physical edition will now feature: 13 Playbooks, 4 Masterminds, and 30 Threats.

Suns of Another World

The third book, Suns of Another World, offers three entirely new settings for the game, each with their own playbooks, Threats, and Masterminds: Ghosts of El Paso, Unsinkable, and Court of Wolves. Each of these campaigns lasts for, approximately, 15 3-hour sessions of play.

That means, across these spin-offs and the base game, there will be 40 playbooks, 60 Threats, and 9 Masterminds.

None of this is essential to the experience. Over the last three years, quite literally thousands of sessions have been run with half this much content. One user in The Gauntlet's community Discord said:

"With all of the Masterminds and additional campaign settings, I run the 'risk' of always having a game of The Between going for the rest of my days."

Remaining Achievements

Earlier this week, the team revealed the campaign's final stretch goals:

• $215k: The Informals, a troupe-style playbook that puts players in the shoes of multiple characters at once.
• $230k: The Underground & The Queen of Hearts, a playbook and Mastermind combo that brings the fairy tale dimension of Reverie to London.
• $240k: The Wellington-Hughes Family, a Mastermind family of rival monster hunters.
• $250k: The Volatile, a chemist playbook inspired by The Invisible Man and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.
• $260k: Shrouded London, general-use locations to drop into any session of play.
• $275k: 24 new Unscenes, bringing the total number for the London setting to 50.
• $300k: Blood & Coal, a whole new campaign setting for Suns of Another World, inspired by the audio drama series Old Gods of Appalachia.

In response to what all this extra content means, Jason writes:

"I would like to think we're making [The Between] as fun as we possibly can. If we unlock nothing else from this point on, you're getting FOUR WHOLE GAMES."

Raising an additional $100k in less than a week may be a close shave, but the team isn't ready to throw in the towel yet.

"We absolutely can unlock them."

Call to Action

And so, in these final days, The Gauntlet is asking people to help push The Between even further past the finish line. This involves:

• Adding to your pledge, if you can afford to do so.
• Grabbing one of the deluxe pledge tiers, if you can afford to do so.
• Spreading the word anywhere you can talk about The Between.
• Joining the Discord, where Jason and the team regularly interact with the community and encourage people to play games.