A Town Called Malice
A GM-less Nordic horror story game about an isolated town, a discovered body, tangled relationships, and a darkness threatening the community's last chance to survive.
Nordic-noir horror - GM-less Story Pillar System - 3-6 players - One-shot or short-arc play - Best for relationship-driven mystery, isolation, and community collapse
A Town Called Malice is best for groups that want horror to come from a town under pressure: a body in the snow, a community event that cannot fail, old relationships curdling, and a darkness that makes every secret feel like a threat. It is a strong choice when the table wants Nordic-noir mood and shared narrative authority rather than a GM-led monster hunt.
It is a weaker fit if your group wants tactical survival horror, a single prepared mystery solution, or a GM who privately owns the setting truth. Malice works because everyone helps build the town, the relationships, and the fallout. If players do not want to invent complications, expose ugly ties, or let the community itself become part of the danger, the game loses much of its force.
What the game is
A Town Called Malice is a standalone story game by David Kizzia, published by Monkeyfun Studios. The official page describes it as Nordic Noir crossed with isolated small-town horror, drawing comparison points such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Thirty Days of Night, The Thing, and Salem's Lot. The premise is deliberately compact: Malice is isolated, a major event is coming, a body is discovered, and something dark is moving behind the town's fragile hope.
The game is powered by the Story Pillar System, originally from Jason Olsan's Home by Dark. Monkeyfun explicitly frames the system as using story-game elements popularized by Fiasco, especially shared narrative development and complex character relationships. The result is not a police-procedural simulation; it is a table-built pressure cooker about whether a damaged community can hold together long enough to face what is coming.
Publication history and current edition
The public development trail runs through a 2019 crowdfunding campaign and the current DriveThruRPG listing. Tabletop Analytics records the Kickstarter campaign as running from April 22 to May 24, 2019, raising $16,949 from 673 backers against a $6,000 goal. Monkeyfun's own blog later noted that the team got Kickstarter backer and preorder fulfillment out by the end of 2019.
The current practical product listing is A Town Called Malice on DriveThruRPG. DriveThruRPG lists a 132-page core book by David Kizzia, with Novo Malgapo credited as artist, and shows watermarked PDF plus softcover and hardcover print options. The listing says the title entered the catalog on October 14, 2019, with a file update on December 30, 2020.
Product line and what you need to play
Start with the core book. DriveThruRPG currently presents A Town Called Malice as a paid product with PDF, softcover, hardcover, PDF plus softcover, and PDF plus hardcover purchase options. That makes it easy to treat as a finished standalone game rather than a quickstart or supplement.
The core book's value is its contained premise. You need players willing to build a town, define relationships, and push toward a bleak community crisis. You do not need a long product line, a campaign setting shelf, or a tactical map package to understand what the game is asking the table to do.
Supplements and playsets
A Town Called Malice supports play through playsets and genre variants rather than through character-option expansion. Contemporary and later reader commentary points to playsets in the main book, and the 2025 Gordsellar reading notes describe Acts of Malice, Volume 1 as a stretch-goal supplement that applies the rules to other isolated-pressure situations, including a science-fiction mining-station scenario.
That support pattern is useful, but not required for a first table. New groups should run the default Nordic-horror premise first, because the title's strongest identity is the collision between murder, weather, town survival, and relationships that already hurt before the supernatural pressure arrives.
Core rules and play structure
The key structure is the Story Pillar System. Rather than asking one GM to prepare every location, clue, and truth, the table uses guided story elements to define the community, central relationships, and rising pressure. The official page emphasizes players developing the narrative together as they try to keep the town together while facing an unspeakable darkness.
The practical loop is closer to collaborative television drama than tactical adventure. The group establishes Malice, its crucial event, the discovered body, the people who matter, and the dark force underneath. Scenes then pressure relationships and force characters to choose between self-protection, community survival, and the awful truth behind what has happened.
That makes investigation matter, but not in the same way as a clue-chain mystery. The point is not only to solve a prepared case. The point is to expose what the town is, what its people did to survive, and what the darkness can use against them before the event fails or the community breaks.
Characters, roles, and advancement
A Town Called Malice is GM-less. Characters are important because of who they are to each other and to the town, not because they carry long mechanical builds. The game is strongest when every character has a reason to care about the public crisis and a private reason to make the solution harder.
There is no visible public evidence that the game is built for deep advancement or long character optimization. Treat it as a one-shot or short-arc ensemble game first. The satisfaction comes from relationship escalation, revelation, and a final account of what happens to Malice, not from watching a build improve over twenty sessions.
Signature mechanics
- Story Pillar System: the structure gives the table enough prompts and constraints to build a coherent horror drama without a traditional GM.
- Town pressure: the isolated community and its major event make the setting a shared problem, not just a backdrop.
- Relationship web: the game borrows from Fiasco-like story-game instincts, putting messy character ties near the center of play.
- Body and darkness: the discovered body gives the table a mystery hook, while the lurking darkness pushes the story beyond ordinary local crime.
- Playsets: the core book and related material can frame different versions of the same pressure-cooker structure.
What play feels like
A good session feels cold, exposed, and socially claustrophobic. Characters are not wandering into an anonymous haunted location. They are stuck in a place with people who know them, need them, resent them, or remember what they did. The horror works best when every external problem also threatens a relationship or a public obligation.
Compared with Fiasco, A Town Called Malice is darker, more community-centered, and more explicitly horror-shaped. Compared with Public Access, it is less about recurring clues in an uncanny media landscape and more about an immediate town crisis. Compared with Vaesen, it trades GM-led folkloric casework for shared authorship and Nordic-noir social pressure.
Running the game
Because it is GM-less, running A Town Called Malice is really about facilitation discipline. Someone should still keep the group moving through setup, tone alignment, scene framing, and the final pressure of the event, but that role does not own the truth in the way a traditional horror GM might.
The main facilitation challenge is focus. The premise gives the table a body, a town, an event, and a darkness; players still need to keep scenes pointed at those pressures instead of drifting into loose atmosphere. The game is likely easier for groups that already enjoy story games, relationship maps, and player-authored twists than for groups whose only TTRPG reference point is GM-led adventure play.
Campaign fit
A Town Called Malice reads as a one-shot or short-arc specialist. The official and store descriptions emphasize a sharply framed crisis rather than an open-ended campaign chassis, and reader commentary points to playsets as the way to get replay value. That makes it useful for a focused horror night, convention slot, seasonal special, or short mini-series.
Longer play is possible only if the group treats Malice as an anthology engine or uses additional playsets to create new crises. It is not the best pick for a years-long horror campaign with recurring tactical procedures, slow character advancement, or a large setting atlas.
Reception and awards
DriveThruRPG currently shows seven ratings and no long public review thread on the product page, so the review base is small. Still, the available signals are positive. The DriveThruRPG listing cites a 2019 Best RPG nomination from Meeple Mountain and a Top 10 RPGs of 2019 mention from Victory Condition Gaming, while Geek Native's crowdfunding coverage highlighted the premise, drama, and Story Pillar System hook during the campaign.
Later reader commentary from Gordsellar describes the game as an interesting fusion of Story Pillar structure and Fiasco-recognizable elements, especially for people who like Fiasco but want a little more structure to keep play on track. That is probably the fairest reception summary: Malice is a niche game, but its niche is legible and distinct.
Where it is strongest
- Groups that want Nordic-noir horror built around an isolated town, a public event, and a discovered body.
- Players who like Fiasco-style relationship drama but want a more focused horror frame.
- Tables comfortable sharing narrative authority without a traditional GM.
- One-shot or short-arc play where the community's fate matters as much as individual survival.
Where it can frustrate groups
- It is a poor fit for tactical combat, equipment play, or survival-horror resource accounting.
- Groups that want one hidden canonical mystery answer may find the shared-story approach too loose.
- Players who dislike inventing town details, secrets, and complications may feel exposed.
- The public review footprint is modest, so new tables may need to trust the premise more than broad community consensus.
Content and safety notes
Expect murder, isolation, small-town cruelty, social collapse, secrecy, grief, fear for a vulnerable community, and supernatural or ambiguous darkness pressing on ordinary life. The tone can also invite material around family damage, addiction, prejudice, intimate betrayal, and people protecting a town by doing terrible things.
Use a clear tone-and-boundaries conversation before play. Because the game asks players to create community secrets together, the table should decide how bleak the story can become and which forms of interpersonal harm should stay offscreen or out of bounds.
Best starting path
Start with the official Monkeyfun product page to confirm the premise, then buy the current core book through DriveThruRPG if the table wants PDF or print. For a first session, use the default Nordic-horror frame rather than jumping straight into variant playsets, and spend setup time making sure every character has a personal tie to the town's event and to at least one other character's problem.
Research notes
Last checked: August 5, 2026.