TEETH: A Roleplaying Game

TEETH: A Roleplaying Game is a strong pick when your group wants Forged in the Dark pressure aimed at occult crime, monster-hunting, and grotesque historical horror instead of another crew of urban thieves. It is best for tables that want missions, wilderness hardship, faction obligations, and black comedy in the same campaign.

Do not choose TEETH only because the title sounds like a light horror one-shot. The official page presents it as a 320-page paid game for 3-6 people, with a full campaign setting, maps, playbooks, and supporting material. It can move fast at the table, but it asks the GM and players to buy into a very specific comic-horror version of 1780 northern England.

What the game is

TEETH: A Roleplaying Game is a comic-horror tabletop roleplaying game by Jim Rossignol and Marsh Davies, published through Big Robot Ltd and the official TEETH itch.io storefront. The premise is occult criminality and monster-hunting in a cursed corner of 18th-century England, where an alchemical catastrophe has damaged reality and made the moors, bogs, local politics, and Crown interests dangerous in several directions at once.

Player characters are Hunters: trained killers, trackers, and academicians whose public job is to push back monsters while keeping occult artefact trade profitable for the English Crown. The official pitch also makes that assignment a cover for a secret task that could affect England or the wider world before winter turns to spring.

Publication history and current edition

The current public product is the full TEETH core game on itch.io, listed as released and sold as a paid download. Its Kickstarter campaign established the larger book-and-zine line, while the current itch page is the most practical source for what buyers can get now: PDF formats, maps, playbooks, and optional module material.

The same line continues beyond the core rulebook. The 2025 ENNIE nominees page lists TEETH: False Kingdom by Big Robot Ltd under Best Setting, which is useful evidence that the setting has enough follow-up life to support more than a novelty premise.

Product line and what you need to play

The core purchase on itch.io includes the TEETH PDF in pages and spreads, plus downloadable playbooks and map files. The official page also points to three modules in the same setting with cut-down rules: Night of the Hogmen, Blood Cotillion, and Stranger & Stranger. That gives a group a sensible path from sampling the tone to committing to the full campaign frame.

The game is also listed on DriveThruRPG, which makes it easier for groups that prefer a conventional TTRPG storefront. Physical availability should be described carefully: the official itch page advertises a physical version while stocks last, but comments and storefront wording suggest print stock can be intermittent.

Core rules and play structure

TEETH is based on the Forged in the Dark ruleset. That means the useful expectation is not grid tactics or long pre-planning, but mission-shaped play where characters take action under pressure, absorb consequences, and deal with fallout. The fit is natural: monster-hunting and occult work become jobs with complications rather than static encounters waiting in rooms.

The setting pushes those procedures toward a different texture than Blades in the Dark. Crews are not simply chasing coin and turf inside a haunted city. They are Crown-adjacent hunters moving through cursed countryside, strange social spaces, wilderness danger, corrupt institutions, and local monstrosities that can make each expedition feel like a grotesque case file.

Characters, roles, and advancement

The official page describes Hunters as killers, trackers, and academicians. That role spread is important because it tells readers this is not only a combat game. A good party needs people who can stalk things, understand signs, survive the land, navigate elite and local society, and decide how much loyalty the Crown actually deserves.

Because TEETH uses a FitD foundation, advancement and campaign identity are likely to matter through accumulated consequences, changing capabilities, and the cost of repeated missions. The best page pitch should frame characters as specialists under institutional pressure rather than generic adventurers in historical costume.

Signature mechanics and procedures

The signature appeal is the way TEETH adapts FitD mission pressure to monster work, political secrecy, and a campaign clock implied by the winter-to-spring frame. Flashback-friendly problem solving, consequence-driven rolls, and crew-like obligations are a good match for hunters who need to improvise while everything around them is diseased, hungry, or socially compromised.

The other signature is tonal. TEETH is not clean Gothic dread. It is comic horror with cursed pies, fancy balls, monstrous corruptions, nightmare beasts, and bureaucratic or royal motives sitting beside genuine peril. That makes it easier to compare against both grim horror games and more stylish mission games.

What play feels like

At the table, TEETH should feel like a sequence of ugly jobs in a place that keeps revealing worse reasons for each job to exist. A session can move from scouting the moors to bargaining with locals, tracking a creature, absorbing corruption, attending a grotesque social event, and discovering that the official mission is only part of the truth.

The comedy matters because it gives the horror a different bite. The game can be foul, absurd, and theatrical without becoming weightless. Groups that enjoy the idea of competent hunters trying to remain composed while the world gets more anatomically and politically wrong are the best audience.

Running the game

The GM load is medium. FitD procedures reduce the need for exhaustive encounter prep, but TEETH still wants a strong grasp of tone, faction motive, local weirdness, and consequence escalation. The official maps, playbooks, and modules are useful because they give the GM concrete material instead of leaving the premise as a mood board.

The main GM risk is flattening the game into either straight monster-of-the-week combat or pure joke horror. TEETH needs the mission pressure, institutional motives, and ugly countryside to stay active. When those parts work together, players get clear choices about duty, profit, survival, and how much of themselves they are willing to let the hunt consume.

Campaign fit

The core game is strongest as a campaign or short arc. The official page explicitly calls the setting designed to support many campaigns, and the winter-to-spring deadline gives the line a useful seasonal campaign spine. The supporting modules also make one-shots plausible, especially if a group wants to try the setting before buying into a longer run.

Longer play should work best when the GM alternates field hunts with social or institutional pressure. If every session is only tracking and fighting a monster, the game loses much of what makes its historical and political setting distinct.

Reception and awards

The official itch page reports a very strong user-rating signal: 23 ratings averaging about five stars as of July 20, 2026. Community comments there are small but positive, with readers calling out the design and concept and asking about sheets and physical copies. That is not the same as broad mainstream review volume, but it is a useful indie-store sentiment signal.

Formal award evidence is cleaner for the broader line than for the core book alone. TEETH: False Kingdom appears among the 2025 ENNIE nominees for Best Setting. I would not label the core game as award-winning from that alone, but the nomination strengthens the case that the setting line has recognized craft and ongoing support.

Where it is strongest

• Groups that want Forged in the Dark mission structure in a historical monster-hunting frame.
• Tables that like horror with grotesque comedy, institutional hypocrisy, and social pressure.
• Short campaigns where a cursed region, seasonal deadline, and repeated hunts can build momentum.
• Readers comparing indie FitD games and looking for something stranger than another heist crew.

Where it can frustrate groups

• It is too specific for tables that want generic fantasy monster hunting.
• Groups that dislike black comedy may bounce off the tone even if they like horror.
• Players looking for tactical grid combat may find FitD consequences less concrete than they want.
• Physical availability may be inconsistent, so buyers should confirm current stock before planning around print.

Content and safety notes

Expect body horror, corruption, monsters, occult artefacts, violence, imperial or Crown exploitation, class pressure, wilderness danger, and a comic treatment of grotesque material. The tone can make upsetting details feel playful, which makes session-zero boundaries especially important.

Best starting path

Start with the official itch.io page if your group wants the current bundle of PDFs, maps, and playbooks. Use DriveThruRPG if that is your preferred library. If the table is not sure about the tone, sample one of the smaller TEETH modules with cut-down rules before committing to the full campaign book.

Research notes

Last checked July 20, 2026. Main sources: the official TEETH itch.io product page; the TEETH Kickstarter campaign; the DriveThruRPG product page; and the 2025 ENNIE nominees page.