T E E T H

NIGHT OF THE
H O G M E N
 An Overview Of
The Evening’s Hogtainment
Night of the Hogmen is a grotesque, single-session
table-top roleplaying game for 3-5 people. It requires one
game master (GM) to run the game, and the remaining
players to portray hapless travellers, forced to flee from
a ravening horde of hogmen during one grim and grisly
night in a cursed corner of 18th-century England.

The game uses a simplified version of the Forged In

The Dark rules to tell this troubling story of peril and
unpleasantness, and, as a single-session game, is designed
to be experienced in a more linear fashion than larger
roleplaying settings. It should take between two and four
hours to play, during which time the travellers will make
horrifying decisions and gather allies and items that might
save them at the story’s climax.

This document is divided into two sections. The first is

for the GM’s eyes only, and will guide them through the
unfolding adventure. The second contains information
for all players, including the rules of play. This second
section is also provided as a standalone PDF, so it’s easier
to distribute.

More of Teeth, our full-game setting, will be revealed

later in 2021.

We hope you enjoy yourselves.

- Jim & Marsh

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PART I: FOR THE GM

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The Set-Up & The Scenario
When everyone is settled, the GM should read this to the players:

You have caught the last mail coach out of Carlisle. The horses
seem nervous. You and your fellow passengers are destined
for Gatlock, a remote town under mysterious quarantine in
the very North of England.

The night seems to arrive too early, and it is terrible:

ferocious, driving sleet lashes your carriage for most of the
journey, and the bedraggled coachmen have had to work
their animals to the limits of endurance.

You feel lucky to be inside the carriage compartment, though

it is cramped and the jolting, lurching cabin has made sleep
impossible.

You pass some of the time by introducing yourselves.

Who Are The Passengers?

At this point players should choose one of the possible passengers
aboard the carriage. These are listed on page 16 of this document and
provided in greater detail in the playbooks.

The players should then ask each other questions, and the GM can help
with prompts:

Why are you travelling to Gatlock?

They say these moors are plagued by ghosts! Do you believe in ghosts?
Do you mind if I smoke?
Do you like horses?
What do you do for a living, exactly?
Have you ever been to India?
Have you ever been to Moreton-on-the-wold?

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Calamity Strikes
Suddenly, an almighty crack convulses the wooden frame
of the carriage and the entire compartment spins an abrupt
ninety degrees, unfixed objects pirouetting around you.
As the impact arrives, wooden shutters splinter inwards,
followed by a violent spray of mud and stones as the carriage
gouges along the wet road.

The coach scrapes to a halt on stone. A bridge!

Inside the cabin there is a stillness for a few moments—

though the icy rain hammers on, and one of the horses picks
up a horrid, panicked braying.

But there is another noise. A sort of shrieking, squealing

sound, echoing through the storm. And it is getting louder.

One by one, you climb out of the wreck. The carriage has
crashed across a bridge, partially blocking it. Only a single
coachman remains standing, the other has been flung from
the vehicle and lays stricken among the hooves of the horses.
The standing man is pointing into the dark behind the coach,
rigid with fear.

“Hogmen!” screams the coachman, fumbling to load a

flintlock pistol. “The Hogmen are abroad!”

He stares with wild eyes into the black. “Arm yourselves!”

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What Do They Take?
The characters grab desperately at their luggage. They take three items
each. Players do not need to choose or declare these items now, and
should only do so when it is narratively useful for that object to come
into play.

Players will find a list of the things that were in their luggage on their
playbook. Once described, the item should be ticked off, and may be
used when appropriate thereafter.

One of the coach’s oil lanterns remains unbroken—who takes that?

The True Peril Is Revealed

The sky is split by a streak of lightning.

Three things happen near-simultaneously. The first is that

the surviving horse thrashes to its feet, and in its struggle
to free itself from the shattered harness, plants a shoe in the
spine of the fallen coachman, with grisly consequence. Yet
he moans: he still lives! The horse charges off into the night.

The second is that the hills beyond are briefly illuminated,

revealing them to be alive with pigs and hunched bipedal
creatures. Creatures that are coming your way, with haste.

A cask of lantern oil is leaking across the bridge, spreading

like a black rainbow. The standing coachman fires his
flintlock into it, setting it ablaze and creating a temporary
barrier between you and the horde. A barrier that he is on
the wrong side of.

“Save yourselves!” he screams.

The players must flee.

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It’s important to make clear what’s happened here: there are two
coachmen. One coachman sacrifices himself to the horde: describing
his grisly demise will make clear what is at stake here.

But there is also the stricken coachman. What the players decide to do
about him, for he will surely die without assistance, could define how
their adventure unfolds. Will they attempt to render aid or, perhaps,
merely steal his pistol? This is a clear decision.

This is also a good opportunity to make clear that the players are
not mighty adventurers and underscore the level of danger they are
immediately in. Dragging the coachman to safety will be very hard
indeed, and the tide of demonic pig people will imminently cascade
across the river, tearing apart anyone who remains in a squealing frenzy
of trotter and tusk.

A Distant Hope Is Spied

No sooner are you off the bridge than you realise that the
road itself descends into the shallow gorge cut by the river,
leaving no alternate path but the one before you. However,
a church steeple glints in the moonlight, much further down
the valley. Perhaps you can reach it, barricade it, and ring
the bell to summon help before the horde is upon you?

Perhaps!

It is some distance.

A ragged and complicated countryside lies in the way.

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Tracking Progress & Peril
At this point the GM must draw two clocks:

The Hogstorm Proximity Clock

This eight-segment clock (which you can refer to as the Porximity
Clock if you truly must), represents how close the main body of the
hog-horde is to players.

For every major diversion or dalliance, add a section to the clock.

If the coachman was brought along, for example, he must be helped,

and cannot walk unaided. Fill in one segment of the clock.

If things go badly wrong in their flight from the hogs, multiple sections
may be filled in. If the clock is entirely filled before reaching The Lone
Church, the players are beset by the hogmen in the open and likely
torn to shreds. However, if they reach the church and ring its bell, they
may yet survive.

The Hogsiege Preparedness Clock

This six-segment clock underscores the importance of collecting
resources on the way to The Lone Church.

The GM must make it clear that the players will not survive the
encounter at the church if they do not make preparations and gather
allies and resources along the way.

How the final encounter goes will hinge entirely on how full this clock
finally is. Take care to note which resources are collected so that you
can describe how they are useful in the final siege.

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9
 An Important Note
Remember to panickedly shout “The
Hogmen are coming!” at points in the
game, so that people remember the pressure
their characters are under.

If the Hogstorm Proximity Clock

gets very full, charging pigs and marauding
hogmen may become immediate problems.

Journey To The Lone Church

On the way to the sanctuary, players will encounter a number of
challenging sitations. Some hazards may threaten to delay the party,
filling the Hogstorm Proximity Clock, or imperil them more
directly, via horrible injury. Others will offer potential advantages for the
inevitable siege that you can track on the Hogsiege Preparedness
Clock. Be careful to make a note of the specific resources and allies
the players obtain, too, so they can feature meaningfully in the finale.

Sketched below are some potential encounters that the players may face.
The GM should feel free to improvise or expand upon these scenarios
as time allows.

The Old Mill

The first location they retreat to is a derelict, ivy-choked mill. A yellow
X has been painted on the door, which is not exactly an encouraging
sign, but something sharp, shiny, and metallic catches the moonlight
through a window of the upper floor.

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Do they climb up several floors to investigate?

Lurking within the mill is a lone hogman, dragging around the body of
the dead marksman, mauled beyond all recognition. It will attack the
players if disturbed.

The glinting object on the upper floor reveals itself to be an ancient,

runed arquebus, set up as if for sniping. (Looking through the scope
will reveal the pursuing horde of hogs.) There are other useful items
here, too: gunpowder and distilled alcohol, if the players search for it.

The Choke Point

A landslide has created a natural choke point. Two weary and bedraggled
soldiers occupy a barricade here, and have been told not to let any
civilians past. Their orders are very clear.

Can they be persuaded to step aside?

The Traveller In A Tree

Further down the valley a traveller (another soldier? A Bible salesman?
A lost aristocrat?) has been trapped by a gang of raging, hairy pigs,
which circle frantically around the base of the tree. He calls for help.

Do you dare assist? The branch bows under his weight, creaking.

The Imperiled Wagon

A covered wagon belonging to a young married couple has ridden one
wheel over a cliff-edge. The ox that pulls the wagon idly chews upon a
tussock of grass as they wait for aid, but the animal could be spooked
by thunder at any moment.

The couple must be persuaded to leave, lest they be devoured, but they
are frightened, and might even be wary of speaking with the players
at all. They claim not to believe in hogmen, and will not be persuaded

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otherwise without a strong argument. They are equally adamant that
they cannot abandon either ox or wagon.

At some point during this discussion, a strange whimpering and

scuffling is heard emanating from beneath the wagon’s covering. The
couple insist there was no such sound, but if the players insist upon
looking, they pull back the tarpaulin to reveal a caged and ragged man
of advanced years.

While the couple deny all knowledge of this benighted soul—“Well, I’ll
be! How did he get in there?”—the prisoner begs pitifully to be released.

Of course, if released, he immediately tries to bite the nearest person.

Once the players have negotiated all of this, the ox proves as obstinate
as its owners, and slow even when finally coaxed into motion.

The Farmhouse
A lantern glows in the window. Someone is home!

Unfortunately, that someone is the farmer, and he is deranged. He won’t

contemplate leaving. “The Master” has plans for him here, he says. Plans
which may involve the players, too, if they’re not careful: the old coot
tries to lead people down into the cellar and trap them there. “For secret
reasons!” he explains, irritably.

This is a shame, because, though insane, the farmer could be extremely

handy in battening up the church.

His wife is a good deal friendlier and pays no heed to the raving of her
husband, who she says she hasn’t spoken to for ten years. She instead
bustles about the kitchen, whipping up a bounty to feed the players.
Sadly, some of the food they eat is cursed.

“That was the pie I baked to keep away the witches!” she says, exasperated
at their lack of common sense. Players have to use Guts (literally) to
resist the consequences of eating the pie.

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If the farmer or wife go with the players, there are many things they
could take to defend the church, and a donkey to carry them upon.

There is a fork in the road now: one way sinking into a

dark bog, the other winding circuitously toward a thicket of
tangled vegetation.

The Bog
Oh no—the bog!

The black water means to drag under anyone who passes. If the farmer
is with them, he will say it is the only way to reach the church in time,
though it fills him with dread. The farmer’s credibility may be at a low
ebb at this point, but he is right to be anxious: a giant worm lives in the
bog and will try to snatch the donkey, or a player.

The worm is open to reason, however, and will take an alternative form
of food if offered.

The Tangled Copse

The road winds back, down and around, rising in a long steep curve
towards the church, passing as it does through a briar and bramble-
thickened stretch of woodland.

As the players move towards the trees they see the glinting of pig-eyes
in the murk, and then - surely not! Can it be? Are those pigs gnawing
at the base of a tree—like beavers? They mean to bring it down across
the path!

If their dastardly plan is achieved, further progress with the carts will
be impossible, and everyone will be forced from the road and into a
thick tangle of roots and branches. In the dark and confusion, the pigs
will snap at and gore ankles, dragging people to the ground—who then
must be rescued and brought to their feet.

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 Brace For The Hogstorm!
The players flee the last stretch, hogmen all around them now, into the
safety of The Lone Church. Barricade the doors! Bar the windows!

How successfully the players have filled the Hogsiege Preparedness

Clock should be reflected in the opening circumstances of the siege
and the desperateness of their position:

1-2 segments: pigs and hogmen immediately pour through doors and
windows, forcing those they don’t kill to retreat into the spire.
3-4 segments: the players put up a good fight before being pushed back.
5-6 segments: the players’ efforts keep the horde at bay—until the
simple mass of pork upon the walls causes some to collapse. Retreat!

It is important that the players’ resources should feel specific and

meaningful, and that any accompanying characters—such as the farmer,
the person in the tree, or the soldiers from the chokepoint—have a
poignant death defending the church from waves of piggish terror.

The players have another problem to deal with, too: the rope has been
cut from the bell! Someone must climb up the spire to ring it. This
should all escalate horribly, forcing the players to retreat up the spire of
the church, pursued relentlessly by screaming, squealing hoggery.

How this ends is really up to the players and the GM, but we suggest
a final cinematic shot of the characters clinging to the outside of the
church spire in the dawn light, the bell ringing madly, an endless horde
of hogmen stretching as far as the eye can see.

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PART II: FOR ALL PLAYERS

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 The Characters
These are the possible passengers aboard the carriage. You should
choose which one you want to inhabit, or devise your own—with the
permission of the GM.

More details about these characters can be found in the Playbooks,

such as the weighting of their various attributes, and what kind of
items they might have in their possession. Once you’ve selected your
character, you must also choose their Special Abilities.

Lady Catherina de Grope

Haughty dowager
A physically and socially powerful woman, de Grope travels to Gatlock
to secure her late-husband’s business interests, which her useless family
are unable to do. Did she kill her husband? (He certainly deserved it.)

Sir Shartle Pudget

Gouty industrialist
Pudget hungers for many things. In fact, his appetites are the reason he
is travelling to Gatlock in the first place. He has heard rumours about
what can be procured there. When did Pudget last feel satisfied?

Dr Nabeel Uddin
Academic and memoirist
The well-travelled Dr Uddin is fascinated by many subjects, but few
more keenly than the country which now voraciously feeds upon his
own. He’s here to see it for himself. Will it impress? (Unlikely.)

Mr Trode Wickle
Royal Disease Collector
The outbreak of the purple sickness in Gatlock has attracted a number
of academics, but Wickle is the first to be charged by the king to extract
hard evidence. Has he contracted some exotic ailment?

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Madam Blanche Wosenbury
Idealistic governess
Wosenbury left the Carribean to start a new life in the employ of a
noble family in Gatlock. What an adventure! Will she inspire all she
meets with the radical notions of an enlightened age?

Mr Theodore Orlingstet
Anxious tax collector
“Just because the region is cordoned off by King George’s men does not
mean the people within can’t pay tax.” How far will he take his belief in
revenue collection?

Ms Dandridge Sloopville-Jones
Disinherited daughter
Gatlock sounds like a place to start again: a place beyond the suffocating
rules and etiquette of the rest of England. Is that a small animal living
in her waistcoat?

Reverend Matthew Eel

Unctuous parson
“You are all such wonderful and interesting people! Perhaps you would
be interested in my limited edition gospel of St Lorkus? Yes, of course
Lorkus is a real saint.” (But is he, though?)

Mr Laconicus Strong
Muscular poet on his own path
A poet who has (probably) been to Tibet and Egypt, and whose muscles
ripple beneath a loose linen shirt. Will he ever be published?

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 Rules For Play
Attributes And Their Actions

Attributes define the sort of approach you are going to take in any given
action. Only roll if the action merits a challenge.

BRAWN (Fighting, Forcing, Heaving)

WIT (Perceiving, Comprehending, Deducting)
SLEIGHT (Sneaking, Tricking, Manipulating)
WILL (Commanding, Persuading, Enduring)

When you perform an action, decide which of your attributes is being

applied and roll an applicable number of dice. If you have no dice in
that attribute roll two and take the lowest number.

Roll the dice pool and take the result:

Multiple 6: You are successful and achieve some other advantage.

6: Full success. You achieve what you wanted to do.
4-5: You do it, but there’s a consequence, like injury or a worse situation.
1-3: You fail and there are bad consequences. Sorry.

For example: Peter wishes to climb a tree to escape being gored by feral
hogs. He uses his Brawn to heave himself into the tree. He has two points
in Brawn. He rolls a 3 and a 5. This means he makes it up the tree,
but there are consequences: he kicks away a rotten branch so that his
companion, Emily, cannot climb the tree! Emily’s Position is worsened.

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For any given dice roll the GM must set Position and Effect.

Position

Your Position describes the pressure or difficulty of your situation.

A Controlled situation means you are not under

pressure or in great peril. You will not take harm if this
action fails.

A Risky situation is the default, and means if you fail the

consequence could include minor harm.

A Desperate situation means if you fail there will be

major harm and further situational disadvantage to boot.

Any direct attack on a creature should be Desperate by default, unless

orchestrated with deliberation.

Effect

Effect determines how well you perform an action.

The range is: Poor—Limited—Reasonable—Superb. In a combat

situation this could do one, two, three, or four segments of damage on a
Clock (see page 22). We suggest a four segment clock for one hogman.

If you use an item to perform an action then the GM must decide how
that boosts that action. A knife might increase the effect of an attack
(+1E), for example.

Players can bargain with the GM to enhance Position at the expense

of Effect, or vice versa. For example: a player who wants to deliver
more damage to a foe might suggest to the GM that they will make
a wild swing—making it a Desperate action, but one which will be
more deadly if it lands.

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Guts

Guts are the narrative currency of the game. It takes Guts to:

• Push yourself to enhance your actions

• activate your Special Ability (unless otherwise specified)
• Resist the consequences of bad dice rolls

To Resist injurious consequences: roll against an applicable attribute

(e.g. Brawn to resist physical harm) and then subtract the highest result
from 6. The result is your Guts cost: fill in the appropriate number of
segments in the Guts section of your playbook.

For example: Emily has attacked a ravening Hogman with

a pickaxe. She rolls a 4, and so while her blow connects, she
suffers a complication: her swinging arm scrapes against the
Hogman’s tusk. Emily doesn’t want to take an injury and
rolls Brawn to resist. She rolls a 3 on a single dice, and so
spends 3 Guts on resisting the consequences. This means
she does not have to move up the injury track.

To Push yourself: spend 2 Guts to give yourself either an extra dice

(+1D) for that dice pool or increase the Effect (+1E) of the result.

If you run out of Guts then you descend into Hysteria.

Team Actions
• You can be a hero and choose to take someone else’s
consequences for them (if it makes sense to the narrative).
• You can lead a group action, where everyone rolls for the
same action. As long as one of your succeeds, the group
succeeds, but the leader of the action takes the cost,
spending 1 Guts for each failed roll.
• You can also spend 1 Guts to assist another player, giving
them increased effect (+1E).

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Injury
Consequences of a failed roll might include physical injury. Fill these
in, going up a tier if both boxes for a tier of injury are already filled.

Level one: Minor injury, e.g. bloodied and bruised. (-1E)

Level two: Major injury, e.g. a bleeding gash or fracture,

leaving the player limping. (-1D)

Level three: Ugh! Mortal injury, e.g. impaled. Cannot

act without spending Guts or being assisted by another.

Death: Play out a melodramatic death scene.

If you are dead, your ghost may (and should) still whisper to the other
characters, urgently warning of the horrors of being dead.

Hysteria

If you have used up all your Guts, then you fall to hysteria (choose
one). This is an ongoing condition which changes behaviour, and it
might be manic laughter, wild panic, awful savagery, absurd
recklessness, or abject terror.

The condition lasts until the end of the adventure, and the player it
afflicts must act accordingly. You can still use Guts after this point,
but for every subsequent expenditure, you will gain an additional
Hysteria. If, somehow, you survive to gain all the above conditions,
then you can no longer use Guts to resist or push yourself.

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Clocks

Simply draw a circle and divide it into four, six or eight segments.
This is a Clock! These ingenious devices can be used to track overall
tension and progress, but also to describe individual challenges, such as
defeating a tough enemy.

The greater the challenge, the more segments. Add more clocks for peril
or complexity. If the clock represents something the players are trying
to achieve, fill more or fewer segments depending on the Effect of the
players’ actions. Or, if the clock is a bad thing—e.g. alerting a slumbering
monster as you try to sneak into its lair—fill it based on the severity of
failure as determined by the players’ Position.

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 Farewell
And Godspeed To You!
Thanks for playing—or at least reading!

This work is based on Blades in the Dark—found at

https://BladesInTheDark.com
—product of One Seven Design, developed and authored
by John Harper, and licensed for our use under the Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

It’s also a cut-down scenario based on our full-sized game

setting, Teeth—forthcoming 2021, probably. If you’d like
to keep track of its development, or find other games by
us, head here:

TeethRPG.com
You can also find us on Twitter:

Jim Rossignol Marsh Davies

@jimrossignol @marshdavies

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