The Shivering Circle captures one of the more understated and ultimately grim horror subgenres, folk horror. It promises a world where the mundane and the horrific freely intermingle, and delivers it in a setting of hunt enthusiasts that'll hunt people when foxes are scarce and a junk shop whose proprietors own a tormented soul. The default setting of a strange circle of standing stones and the community around it is full of different options to threaten the bodies and souls of PCs, along with a few allies to give just that glimmer of hope.
It is ultimately the way that the setting and system capture the glimmer of hope that makes it work in the reading. The setting offers plenty of trouble and the system backs it up—failure doesn't just bend the story against you character, but it diminishes their attributes and brings them closer to their doom. While success replenishes attributes, it also increases the difficulty going forward for that PC, balancing out the mechanical davantage of having an attribute increase. In addition, you can move your character closer to their final doom to replenish stats, or if you've been on a roll reduce your stats to push back that doom, but it costs more to buy more time than to barter long term survability for in the moment increase to attributes.
The relentless pull of the system captures the sense of inevitable, building dread key to folk horror. It does not attempt, nor need to attempt, to do anything more than that. It is neutral on whether or not a task succeeds, but instead concerned with what the attempt and result does to the PC. Uncanny powers in the hands of the PCs are tools to achieve whatotherwise couldn't, but hastens their doom when used.
Finally, the core system itself is licensed so that others can create settings around it. Wherever the edges of regular life blur into the uncanny and history looks unkindly at the present, the Shivering Circle system can drag protagonists through on the thinnest of hopes.
|