In November 2021 we presented the Liminal Bundle, featuring Liminal, the modern fantasy RPG set in the United Kingdom on the borders between the everyday and magical worlds. Designed by Paul Mitchener (Age of Arthur, Hunters of Alexandria, Mythic Babylon) and distributed by Modiphius Entertainment, Liminal uncovers secret societies of magicians, a police division investigating Fortean crimes, fae courts, werewolf gangs, and haunted places where the walls between worlds are thin.
“The Liminal world almost writes itself for me,” Paul Mitchener wrote in a 2019 Modiphius blog post. In Britain, he says, “Almost every village has a known history, going back centuries, of triumphs and tragedies — churches and ruined abbeys and castles. Liminal is my view of the imaginative landscape of Britain, urban and rural and incredibly diverse. Britain is shaped by more that one culture, and that’s a part of Liminal too. It’s my vision of the country in the form of a fantasy.”
Inspired by the fantasy fiction of Ben Aaranovitch, Jim Butcher, Emma Bull, Susanna Clarke, Harry Connolly, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, and others, and funded in a successful February 2018 Kickstarter campaign, Liminal casts the player characters as wardens protecting mortals from supernatural menaces; burglars stealing supernatural relics; werewolf gangs; dhampirs, striving to do good despite their vampiric infections; and mortals who know some of the real strangeness out there. Aided or opposed by powerful factions like the Council of Merlin, the Court of the Queen of Hyde Park, P Division, the Sodality of the Crown, and the Order of St. Bede, the PCs take on cases dealing with the affairs of the Hidden World that affect the ordinary world. These cases further both the goals of the crew and the drives of individual members.
Liminal uses an original skill-based 2d6 system that defines characters by their drives, their traits, and their “crew,” the group of PCs. Magic uses many subtle styles, including geomancy, divination, and wards. A skilled magician knows several styles, whereas a dabbler might know one. Supernatural creatures such as the Fae have their own magic. Characters can spend Will to succeed in tasks that would otherwise fail, but Will is a finite resource, lost in social conflicts and spent in casting magic. You replenish Will by following your drive. Characters advance by learning more about the Hidden World, solving cases, and achieving the crew’s goals.
You’ll face danger, play supernatural politics, solve mysteries, and try to minimize the harm the Hidden World does to mortals, once you cross the boundary into Liminal. There were nine titles in our Complete Collection (retail value $38) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the beautiful full-color 286-page Liminal core rulebook, the Pax Londinium sourcebook, and seven Case Notes (scenarios): Beneath the Stones, Ghosts of Glencoe, Prodigal Son, The Haunting House, The Repairer of Reputations, Shadow to the Light, and the new Case Note The Oak and the Amulet, which debuted in this offer.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this offer’s pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
