Shiver RPG Review – The 2021 Horror Sandbox Game

A Gateway to Your Favorite Horror Movies Awaits You in this Shiver RPG Review

Horror as a genre in the tabletop role-playing community has always been very decisive. To some groups, it is like candy, and they just can’t get enough of it. For others, it is anathema to them, and the notion of horror RPGs fills them with dread. I myself see horror RPGs as a big bar of chocolate; they certainly are delicious and pleasing to the eye. But if you eat too much, they are quick to leave a poor taste in your mouth and leave you feeling horrible.

This brings us to the 2021 horror sandbox RPG Shiver, by Parable Games. The game sets itself the ambitious target of allowing players to recreate their favorite horror movie tropes, all in one convenient book. This Shiver RPG review will let you know whether it is the scary Halloween game for you.

Shiver RPG Review

Straight out of the gate I want to be honest about my feelings towards Shiver. I do not like this game; from the moment I started reading the book, I knew it wasn’t for me. That said, I do recommend this game, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, but hear me out, please.

While most horror RPG games, supplements, and expansions tend to focus on one specific niche, Shiver is far more ambitious than that and provides genre-breaking resources for both players and game masters (called directors in this game) to create any kind of horror movie experience they would like. Want to recreate your favorite 80s slasher flick? Or a Lovecraft mythos investigation?

If you can dream up the trope, chances are the rule book has the assets and rules for you to make it. A large portion of the rule book is instructions for the director as well. It contains helpful advice on how to create a horror story, managing the sensitive nature of horror, and some general sound game master advice.

All the content comes in a well-designed and very stylized 224-page rule book. While reading the Shiver RPG, I decided I want to give a special shoutout to the illustrator, Ben Alexander. The style of art in this book has done something quite incredible; somehow it manages to work in whatever horror setting the art is trying to convey. One page may feature a futuristic sci-fi scene, and then the very next page may have a creepy body horror segment. While the artwork itself will never win awards, it does a fantastic job of representing the scope of opportunities this game offers to players.

Shiver RPG Rules Overview

My biggest pet peeve in modern role-playing games, you ask? Two words: custom dice. The Shiver RPG uses custom d6s and d8s for dice rolls; while there is a conversion chart in the book and an online dice roller, I will die on my hill that custom dice are nothing but a pain and a barrier to entry for any RPG. I don’t want players sitting and fiddling with their phones to load a die roller mid-game either.

With that gripe out of the way, the gameplay rules for Shiver are concise. The rules themselves span about 25 pages and teach you everything you need to know. The game has six core stats, each represented by a face on the custom dice. There is grit, wit, smarts, heart, luck, and strange.  The more points you have in a certain skill, the more dice you get to roll when testing that skill, and of course, rolling the stat skill picture on the dice counts as a success.

Fans of other dice pool systems like Forged in the Dark or Cortex will feel right at home here. If you plan to be a player in Shiver, I have just taught you everything you need to know to start playing. Sit with your director and follow the create a character section, and you’re good to go. If you are a director, you have a lot more work to do friend. I won’t get into too much detail on particular rules, but know that all your usual RPG goodies are here: advantage, turn-based combat, level-up systems, feats, and much more.

Why I Won’t and Why You Should Play Shiver

What most stood out to me as I was researching for this Shiver RPG review is that it feels like the game wants you to recreate your favorite movies with this game. As someone who doesn’t enjoy the horror movie scene, I am not the target audience for this product, and that’s okay; there are loads of other games out there for me. If you love the horror genre, I recommend you and your group check out Shiver. I know I have been to my horror-loving friends, because what we have here is a well-crafted toolbox that allows people to add their own personal twist to a subject they already love.

Apart from the theme of the game not being for me, there is one other thing that you should consider if you plan to run this game. Shiver is a lot of work for the director. Designing and running a session is a painstaking task that an inexperienced or unmotivated GM will struggle with. You have to know all the rules, find specific gear, find the right monsters, and also try to make the game scary.

This is tough due to the confrontation-focused rules in the game. I find confrontation distracts from the horror; compare the first two Alien films if you don’t believe me. How difficult the game is to run feels so weird because learning the game as a player is the exact opposite of that. If you are a horror junkie who loves RPGs, I can’t recommend this game enough. If you prefer more focused, mysterious, and tighter rules, I think you should try out 10 Candles instead. You can buy the Shiver RPG on the Parable website here.