Bear Witness

Your eldest daughter got a speeding ticket. Your middle son has tennis practice at the same time the twins have ballet. Your youngest child is a pirate today and will not be persuaded otherwise. You’re concerned about your spouse’s late nights – are they really working overtime, or is that new secretary at the office distracting them? You’re bored and frazzled; no one ever told you being a stay-at-home spouse was this much drudge work. You’re starting to think about going back to university.

Oh yeah, and there’s a girl in the sub-basement whose broken body could be a gate to the Other Side.

(Or: it is a beautiful day in the suburbs and you are a horrible cultist.)

Bear Witness

Bear Witness is a solo RPG based on the 2008 film Martyrs by Pascal Laugier that uses a deck of playing cards and a d20.

Writing and Design: Jacqueline Bryk
Art: Fabian Lelay
Editing and Development: Wes Franks
Sensitivity Editing: Sereia Spinner
Playtesters: Lilith Nix, Magnolia Woods, Dora Rogers, Malleable Dollhound, Maven Grey, Rachael Lindman, Chad Walker, Chris S., Liam Conway

Content Note

This game deliberately rips the politeness off of far-right suburban middle-class cruelty and personalizes it in the form of a cult that tortures young women to force them to view the afterlife, if there is one. It is meant to be both brutal and banal, with very little player payoff, even as the character might get everything they think they want.

As such, please be aware that it contains instances of the following: psychological and physical torture, cult/high-control group abuse, domestic abuse, religious abuse, spiritual nihilism, dehumanization, imprisonment, and personal justifications for all of the above. In addition, it may contain harm to children, infidelity, natural disasters, and the death of an elder.

Take care when playing. You know your own limits best.

What the neighbors are saying

"Bear Witness sets the world before you just a hair off center, and invites you to peer into the dithered aberration between reality and the dark. It's rare that a tabletop book pulls off being genuinely haunting to read, let alone fills you with the deep sense of wrongness found only in the most alienated suburbs and overdeveloped outskirts. There's an elegance of form here too, a quiet confidence that runs through the piece."
-Nemesis, Sandy Pug Games

"Bear Witness is a bleak and terrible experience. But this is no straightforward dive into a nightmare, instead, the game is designed to do something far more complex and far more ambitious.

It is, at core, an invitation to sincerely reckon with our capacities for violence and the mundane horror of normalization in which we can rationalize away the worst kinds of moral atrocity.  What lies beneath the surface of suburbia is not a natural state of being, or an apolitical bliss to which we might all aspire. No, behind those identical doors are stories of immense suffering, obfuscated and hidden away. Through its mechanics and careful attentive writing to the ethical and moral nuances such a game requires, Bear Witness both indicts us and challenges us to move beyond simple moralism as if the capacity for evil was something remote, and far away from us all.  Are you prepared to look at yourself, to gaze into the abyss? Are you prepared to Bear Witness?"
-Jon Greenaway, podcaster and author of Capitalism: A Horror Story

"Jax is the first person I would trust to understand that a hypothetical suburban middle-class killer cult would not be anomalous to the suburban middle class, but rather representative of it. Bear Witness makes clear that our systems, our families, and our communities are complicit and participatory in violence toward the most fragile among us, and that violence looks like daylight on a quiet street."
-Eclipse, Darling Demon Games

"A mindfuck dive into the horrific banality born of privilege. This solo game dropped me into a headspace I never wanted to be in. The emotions are real and you'll feel like you've been imprisoned in the mind of a delusional maniac. Then you realize that the only mind in play is you're own, Bear Witness just gave you a little push."
-Brian Liberge, author of Last Kiss and Ace Adventure

"BEAR WITNESS is unnervingly creepy, darkly illuminating, and wildly inventive. When you slip on your character's kitten heels, UGGs, HOVA sneakers, Birkenstocks, or Emme Parsons mules to live the life of your average, everyday, high-performing cult-keeper next door, you'll definitely unlock something new and unexpected in yourself. This solo role-playing game is ideal for writers needing a sinister nudge, for gamers looking to explore their darker suburban cul-de-sacs, or anyone who wants to drag their repressed macabre sides into the light."
-Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

"Bear Witness sneaks up on you: it gently unsettles, coaxes you deeper, and then lands its vicious punches. It doesn’t aggressively force you into the darkness, but it doesn’t need to; all its mechanics are doing is nudging you toward a darkness with which you’re already intimately familiar—if you’re willing to allow yourself to recognize it, and your place in it. Its subtlety is as extraordinary as its ruthlessness, and if you can engage with its challenges, its unique rewards are very worth the profound discomfort involved."

-Sunny Moraine, narrative podcaster and author of Your Shadow Half Remains

Interview with creator Jacqueline Bryk

Stephen Wall of The Delapore Media Podcast spoke with Jacqueline Bryk about Bear Witness, developing the game, their play-throughs, and the setting and inspirations fueling the horror TTRPG.

Bear Witness with Jacqueline Bryk: An Interview with a Horror TTRPG Designer