# The Between tags: #game/rpg/the-between ![[The Between (cover).jpg|600]] **The Between** is a gothic horror mystery game about a clique of Victorian monster hunters rattling around a grand house on Belgrave Square, quietly catching the things Scotland Yard won't admit exist while a criminal mastermind dismantles the British Empire a little more every night. It's *Penny Dreadful* by way of the murder-mystery table, with a generous helping of Conan Doyle and pulp-era gothic. And it's one of the rare games where the rules **legally forbid you from telling anyone your character's backstory** — which is either a bold design choice or the perfect way to drive your table up the wall, depending on who you ask. It is, mechanically, a sibling of **Brindlewood Bay**: one more game **Carved from Brindlewood**, where even the Keeper doesn't know the answer to the mystery. ## Setting The player characters are the residents of Hargrave House, a strange shared home and workspace on Belgrave Square whose true patron and owner is never revealed. They are each "hunters" of the monstrous — people with genuinely dark, occult-tinged pasts who now hunt the supernatural threats that stalk Victorian London. The game is called *The Between* because the hunters are caught perpetually between a very dark past and an equally dark, possibly tragic future; exploring that past is a **load-bearing** mechanic, handled with strict dramatic timing rather than exposition. London itself is a deliberately fantastic, cinematic version of the Victorian era — drenched in gothic darkness, but explicitly not shackled to historical accuracy, and not a place where you're supposed to be a jerk about race, gender, or identity just because the 1890s would have been. The other great mover of the campaign is the **Mastermind**: a Moriarty-style criminal genius who wants to topple the Crown. The default Mastermind is Theodora Brathwaite, a ruthlessly wealthy former pirate queen — and tellingly, the Mastermind has *no* supernatural powers at all. They're a threat because of intellect and money, which is somehow scarier than the monsters. ## Mechanics The Between runs on the house **Carved from Brindlewood** engine, which in turn descends from **[[Powered by the Apocalypse]]**. The core roll is 2d6 plus an ability modifier, across five abilities: **Vitality, Composure, Reason, Presence, and Sensitivity** (each ranging −3 to +3). A result of 7+ is a hit, 6− is a miss, with success tiers at 7–9, 10–11, and 12+. Advantage and disadvantage roll three dice and keep the two highest or lowest respectively, and they cancel rather than stack. ### The Day/Night Cycle The Between's signature structural trick is its day–night phase cycle, and its two most-used basic moves split along it. **The Day Move** triggers on risky daytime actions or scary daytime encounters; roll and on a hit you do what you intended or hold steady, with a 7–9 leaving the Keeper telling you how your action would leave you vulnerable (you can back down or go through with it). **The Night Move** is the same idea but written to be more perilous — nighttime is simply more dangerous in this game, and the Keeper tells you how the situation is *worse* than you feared before you commit. ### The Information Move & Answering a Question Hunters gather **Clues** with **The Information Move** (roll to search, research, or investigate; a 12+ also turns up a Mastermind Clue). Each monstrous Threat and case is framed around a **Question** with a **Complexity** score. Once the hunters have gathered Clues equal to at least half the Question's Complexity and reach a consensus on their theory, they trigger **Answer a Question** — rolling *plus* the number of Clues incorporated, *minus* the Complexity. On a 10+, the answer is correct and an **Opportunity** becomes pursuable; on a 7–9 it's correct but with an unwelcome complication; on a 6− the answer is simply wrong and the Keeper reacts. There is no canonical answer to any Question — the Keeper discovers the truth when the players roll for it. ### The Vulnerable Move, the Janus Mask, and the Mask of the Past The other defining machinery is about secrets and survival. **The Vulnerable Move** triggers on intimate moments between hunters while one is engaged in a vice — it clears a Condition, can surface a Clue, and is one of the two sanctioned ways to pry into a hunter's occluded past. **The Janus Mask** is The Between's resistance mechanic: after a bad roll has been narrated, a player can invoke it to bump their result up one success tier, and we collectively experience — then discard — the worse timeline that didn't happen. And **The Mask of the Past**, tied to each playbook, is the other doorway into character history. All of this dovetails with **Conditions**, the hunters' **Personal Quarters** (unmarked items grant advantage), and the fully **playbook-based** character sheets — a deliberate step up in mechanical weight from Brindlewood Bay's single shared Maven sheet. ## Editions - **2021** — digital release (as *The Between: Preview Edition*), originally a strictly digital product. *In the library (core 129-page PDF).* - **2023–2025** — a Kickstarter/BackerKit-funded **hardcover** edition with expanded and revised rules, roughly double the art, and full color; expanded digital release and physical book followed in 2025. - **Supplements** — *The Between: Playbooks*, *Threats*, *Reference Sheet*, *The Mastermind*, the *The Orphan* case, and *London at Night: The Unscene*. *All in the library.* ## References - [The Between — The Gauntlet](https://www.gauntlet-rpg.com/the-between.html) - [The Between: Preview Edition — DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/360858/the-between-preview-edition) - [The Between — BackerKit crowdfunding](https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/the-gauntlet/the-between)