Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives is a supplemental gamebook for the popular magic academy horror roleplaying game. Use tarot cards to discover what new terrors haunt your mage as they try to best their rival.
On the eve of your final exam at Brackroot Academy, what mysteries, secrets, dread, and drama will you recall from your last four years of schooling?
Tangled Blessings is a solo journaling or two-player RPG inspired by dark academia media, ghost stories, and graduate school. Featuring a wizarding college, wandering specters, assigned houses, curses, devils’ bargains and more supernatural flavor, Tangled Blessings blends horror and the fantastical to help players craft a story that spans their time at the academy — culminating in one final showdown against their rival.
In this series, Tangled Blessings is the core book.
First published last summer, Tangled Blessings came to be through a crowdfunding campaign that raised $11,000+ during February 2023.Tangled Blessings is required to enjoy Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives. You can grab both the core book and Echoes of Lost Electives within this campaign.
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Tangled Blessings core book in a snapshot
Estimated to offer a 2-4 hour experience.
Playable in one or multiple sessions with natural breaks.
Supports solo play or two players without the need for a game master.
Doesn’t require a character sheet because there are no skills to track.
Diceless; only tarot cards are required to play.
Inspired by dark academia, ghost stories, and graduate school.
Over 60 unique and thematic prompts.
22 unique and robust rival descriptions,
Includes several pieces of original art, NPC ideas, and more to inspire playthroughs.
You can cut out 78 pieces of paper or use 78 index cards and write the name of each card on them, looking up interpretations on the internet as you play. You can find a complete list of tarot cards here.
You can also use this major arcana picker, a couple dice, and a standard deck of cards in place of the minor arcana (you'll be one card short a suit, but the game is still very playable).
What is Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives?
Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives is a new supplemental gamebook that expands the base Tangled Blessings game. This supplemental gamebook layers in new lore, experiences, horrors, and art to inspire your playthroughs. The core book is required to enjoy this expansion.
In brief, Echoes contains:
22 winter-themed prompts that involve your Rival.
16 additional atmospheric and vivid endings.
70 new prompts inspired by each of the existing houses.
2 new houses of dark origins and 28 total prompts to go with them.
Alternate end-year events.
A selection of cults to join or flee from.
Prompt tables by Kat 'The Lore Mistress.'
And more!
This campaign will see these expansions with new and flavorful layout and in print for the first time ever.
Included in Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives
Winter Break
Explore the campus of Brackroot Academy when it's covered in fresh snow. This expansion forces you and Rival to work closer than ever to overcome the strange hauntings that only appear during the longest nights of the year. There are also optional rules for applying yourself during the break by studying one-on-one with your favorite professor.
Twisted Endings
To end Tangled Blessings, you and your Rival face off in a final exam. The exam has 16 possible outcomes that until now would lead to only 3 possible endings. Twisted Endings adds 16 dark and delicious outcomes that lean heavily into the magic and horror of the academy, featuring robust and potentially deadly scenarios for your mages to weather. All of the new endings support both solo and two-player Tangled Blessings games.
Expanded Houses
In the core book, your mage character is sorted into one of 5 houses. This doesn't add much mechanically or content wise, but the houses do add atmosphere and a roleplay element. Expanded Houses adds 14 prompts to each house, delivering a total of 70 new prompts to vary gameplay. Each set of prompts is split in two. One set is for your character's early years at Brackroot Academy, and the second set is for your character's later years, when things always seem to get worse. Scroll down to the team section to see the list of fantastic writers that contributed to this section!
The Lost Houses
Formerly banned from campus, House of None and House of Divines are being reinstated. They'll bring an additional 28 prompts themed in their images.
House of None is an alchemy and science-based house banned from campus for breaking the space-time continuum and corrupting the timeline. Only students who live there know how to find it.Â
House of Divines, a demonic and vampiric house, is under the campus cemetery and chapel. They've been known to perform blood magic and if rumors are to be believed, even worse acts on campus. None of the faculty understand how the house was reinstated.
Cunning Cults
There are many sects gunning for power on campus. Those who hold the knowledge, shape the future. This small expansion includes 5 extremist groups your character may be asked or forced to join.
Extras
During every third year of a Tangled Blessings game, there is an Alumni ball where something happens. Echoes of Lost Electives will include new horrifying events that interrupt the event. Echoes will also include several new prompt tables by Kat 'The Lore Mistress' that are guaranteed to add flavor and jolt your thoughts while playing!
Even if you’ve never played a journaling game before, Tangled Blessings makes it easy to dive in, walking you through the simple character creation process step by step. As you play, you’ll draw cards from your tarot deck and respond to prompts that guide you through 4 years at the academy. You can record your responses in whichever way pleases you most.
Two-Player
When you play with another person, you’ll take turns exploring what the Academy holds for you, adding to each other’s memories as you go. Just like in solo play, you’ll use a single tarot deck to uncover events where your characters cross paths.
Rivalry (for solo and two-player versions)
A highlight of many academic-centered tales is the Rival. In Tangled Blessings, your rival can be your best friend, a family member, a stranger, an enemy, a romantic interest or a combination of relations. Your Rival is present in most of your memories at the academy. How your relationship evolves with them is up to you, but at the end of four years, you’ll still stand against each other in one final test of academic and magical mastery.Â
To keep the project simple and fulfilled quickly, I'm not announcing any stretch goals at this time. This may change, depending on how the campaign does, but they'll be upgrades to the material of the book and not any content upgrades.Â
Most of the text for Echoes of Lost Electives is complete. Most of the art is complete too. During the campaign, in addition to working my full-time role and getting the word out about this campaign, I'm finishing up the writing and working on layout. While the writing in layout draft form goes to editing, I'll finish up artwork. Ideally, we'll move into proofing pretty rapidly right after editing.
Realistically, we're looking at January 2025 for delivery. This allows for holiday breaks and the occasional illness that always seems to hit in this timeframe.
Delivery Estimates
Digital editions: December 2024 Physical editions: January-February 2025 (depending on far you are from the middle of the U.S.)
We'll be fulfilling pledges in waves in our tiny apartment as quickly as possible using Pirate Ship. Shipping and handling costs will be collected later through Backerkit.
United States will ship via media mail. Costs are estimated to be $6.50.
Canada will ship using Pirate Ship's simple export rate. Costs are estimated to be $11.00 USD.
Rest of the World will ship using Pirate Ship's simple export rate. Costs are estimated to be $13.50 USD.
Due to holiday season price increases, these may fluctuate a dollar or two.
The digital edition of Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives will be claimable either through DriveThruRPG or Itch.io, depending on your preference!
Risks and Challenges
This is my third crowdfunding campaign, and I've fully delivered on the other two prior to launching this one. With 75% of the project completed, I'm confident your gamebooks will be shipped with a low chance of delay. Should this campaign exceed our expectations, I have several partners in the distribution industry that can help us scale as required.Â
A slew of amazing creators have put together new add-ons for Tangled Blessings. These can be mixed and matched with the base game and the official expansions. Explore community content here.
Create your own!Â
I have a simple third-party license here! If you feel inspired and want to make unofficial expansions for Tangled Blessings, do let me know and I'll add it to the existing collection!Â
All art and text in this project is made without the assistance of generative AI models. Each piece of art, each word, each photo, each page is carefully curated and considered. Humans collaborated, laughed, celebrated, cried, and cheered for Tangled Blessings. Real humans were paid for their contributions.
One of the reasons I first created Tangled Blessings is that I wanted to read more stories set at universities where magic mingled with close-proximity drama. There simply aren't enough. I'm so thrilled with how many playthroughs I've had the opportunity to enjoy since the initial release. Much of the prompts in the core book are inspired by my time in graduate school, pulled and stretched until they're the strange and fantastical experiences that made it to the text. I do not regret school, and I don't think I would be where I am without my time shivering on the fourth floor of a later condemned building, wishing I could be anywhere but there. The truth is, there were moments that were horrible.
However, as part of my effort to keep the game approachable, I was careful with how much horror I infused within the core book. The expansions allow me and my contributors to push the envelope a little further and invite more terror into the school than officially allowed before now. I hope you enjoy. I hope you shiver.
