To celebrate the reveal of the Carved from Brindlewood Creator's Kit achievement, we're holding a writing contest! The Gauntlet is famous for how we get the community involved in the creative process for our games, and we want to invite you to join in the fun! Our writing contests are a fantastic way to do some low-stakes game writing, and you don't have to have any experience to give it a shot! 

We'll talk about the contest more at the end of this update, but first...

As always, we want to invite you to join our server. Even if you aren't participating in the contest, The Between is a game with lots of unique and unusual mechanics, and the folks in our server are happy to discuss them with you, or just generally share what they love about these games. You can find our server here.

One of the things that makes The Between innovative (and beloved) is how it invites players to get involved in the process of world-building. In The Between, it's not just the Keeper's job to describe the world; at key moments in gameplay, the Keeper invites the players to fill in details of The Between's London. There are two main ways this is done: Locations and The Unscene.

Each Location a hunter visits has a short description and what's called a "Paint the Scene" question. A Paint the Scene question is a question posed to the players that, when they answer it, they not only tell us what a Location looks, sounds, and smells like, but also help explore an idea associated with that Location. Put another way, it's thematic set dressing, and it's quite engaging and fun. Here are some examples:

Savile Row
Vibrant, bustling storefronts. Tailors laboring by lamplight. Relentless displays of
luxury and excess.
Paint the Scene: They say a perfect fit makes you feel like a new person. How do the
wares on display tempt you to reinvent yourself, even assume a new identity?

Whitechapel tenement house

Three stories. Beggars and other street people all over. Poorly lit.
Paint the Scene: This building was originally a charity project, now abandoned, for some wealthy do-gooder. What faded remnants of their largesse do you see around you?

The Limehouse School (workhouse)

Filthy children all over the place. A frustrated mistress storming away from a group of girls (not) learning to sew. The smell of unwashed bodies.

Paint the Scene: Workhouses like this are where poor children are sent to be managed until they’re old enough to be turned out. What signs of deprivation do you see?

The Unscene is something truly unique—there's nothing like it in any other TTRPG. In The Between, London is just as much a character in the story as the hunters in Hargrave House. One of the ways we explore that idea is through the Unscene. The Unscene is a scene taking place somewhere in the city on the same night as when the hunters are engaged with their monstrous quarry. You cut back and forth narrating between the Unscene and the hunter scene, and while the two have no direct connection to each other, players are invited to make thematic or sensory connections between them, which we call Echoes in the Night. The effect is a style of play that is highly cinematic, dramatic, and thematic. We think you'll love it. An example:

The writing contest invites you to create your own Locations and Unscenes! There are some small cash prizes (and winners will be made a publication offer), but it's mostly an excuse to learn more about the game, engage with other writers in our Discord, and have fun. You can learn more about the contest here.

We want to thank you for all your support during this campaign. We'll leave you now with artwork for the achievement we're currently trying to unlock, The Monochromatic Men of Three Mills Island!

-The Between team