Sigil & Shadow: A Roleplaying Game of Urban Fantasy and Occult Horror

A dark world lingers beyond our own, sometime slipping through the cracks. Vampires, zombies and all the cryptids that exist and evolved to live in the modern digital age. Shadowy boardrooms where dark pacts are sealed between eldritch demons and corporate elite, chatrooms where horrors ensnare innocent visitors, and viruses that infect the very soul of those who the reach. Sigil & Shadow is a modern horror themed role-playing game that is aimed at bringing classic horror tropes into the modern age. Published by Osprey games and written by R.E. Davis the game gives you the tools to create characters, enemies and run games with a large scope of modern scenarios.

Character Creation

Characters are picked from either an illuminated or a Shadowed background. Illuminated generally being average everyday people who have stumbled onto the supernatural elements hiding in the real world and possibly possessing divine powers and the Shadowed being created from those supernatural elements such as vampires, warlocks and cursed individuals.

There are four classes available to each option and these can be used creatively to cover pretty much any character with a bit of imagination. They also have some mechanical differences such as how they gain ‘bones’ (the flavored equivalent of inspiration/advantages) and their starting perks. For instance, a Shadowed ravenous could represent anything with a hunger that must be sated e.g. a zombie, vampire, demon etc and this is where some creativity helps when designing your character as it is mechanically driven but flavourfully broad enough that you can really have some fun with it.

You can also take various traits/powers such as magical abilities, diving gifts and cursed abilities. These cover things such as paranormal familiars, clairvoyance and bestial horns that negatively impact your social standing. There are also a robust set of rules for defining you background and social class which impacts your wealth and potential to use social standing.

Gameplay

The game is played using a D00 (not D100) system. Two D10’s rolled with one being double digits and the other single. The difference between D00 and D100 being that a double roll of 00’s resulting in 0 rather than 100 and giving a range of 0-99.

Character/skill checks are measured against your character stats attempting to come in under your characters skill so a higher skill is preferable. This forms the crux of the mechanical gameplay with the addition of the bone pile which is similar to inspiration or advantages from other game systems and expending bones from the bone pile allows the players more agency over the story as long as they are willing to use the limited resources they have available.

In practice this puts the story direction in a balance between players and dm and avoids dm railroading to an extent as well as encourages role-play as performing actions in character (as dictated by your chosen class) may reward you with additional bones. This works well in practice and helped encourage some newer players by giving them a tangible incentive to play in character but it should be taken care that people do not try to abuse the meta of harvesting/hoarding bones and they are best used sparingly as rewards to players.

Thematic

The theme is strong and the ruleset fully supports the style of atmosphere and narrative that it is aimed for. Players familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade or Monster of the Week will immediately be at home here and it would be entirely possible to run those style of games within the ruleset given but it is best used when leaning into the digital/modern aspect of the theme and involving modern elements such as technology based magic and enemies.

For example, the campaign we played through made used of an eldritch horror jumping through smartphones and causing insanity through a social media-based panic that was hiding eldritch text in various images.

There are a lot of examples given within the Sigil & Shadow book to base campaigns and one-shots off of and a decent sized repertoire of enemies that you can pit against your players beyond the generic horror types such as the Tower Sentinel and the Influencer. Using these examples, you can also create your own themed villains and it is ruleset that supports creativity in the vein of ‘Black Mirror’ and other modern horror shows.

The Presentation

The book of Sigil & Shadow is well formatted and clearly presents the rules. There are a few grammatical errors but nothing egregious or obscuring to the actual rules and the book is well suited thematically to the content it is presenting. The greyscale theme is prevalent throughout and the artwork is of a high quality but sometimes borders on uncanny valley. It is also reminiscent of the old Vampire masquerade books so it may be an intentional nod towards that. It all combines to present the rules efficiently and clearly while maintaining the gritty supernatural horror theme.

Downsides

The main downside to this ruleset beyond the potential to abuse the bone mechanic is that it is not particularly beginner friendly. There is a maths requirement and although it is easy enough to equate to percentages there are some nitty gritty parts where you will need to roll then apply various bonuses in increments that take a minute to figure out if you have passed the role or not. It is also just different enough from the classic D20 system that you have to unlearn and relearn certain parts. For instance, preferring a low roll to a high one is counter-logical to players who are used to a natural 20 being the best possible result.

However, this is not so much a fault of the system but to the prevalence of the D20 system being used as the standard for RPG games and it may be a system shock to someone who has only played those before.

Conclusion

Sigil & Shadow is a fine RPG that caters well to the horror demographic. It is steeped in modern horror and suits several settings very well. It also separates itself from the existing titles (e.g. Call of Cthulu) by offering a modern spin on the classics and the system is best used by fully leaning into it yet care should be taken to keep the horror grounded lest it becomes gimmicky which I can see as a potential issue when using modern elements in a horror setting. The rules are clear and solid and there are enough tools given to spark the creativity needed to launch into a campaign or a one-shot.