Interview: Pete Rooney's What Lurks Between The Trees

Park rangers and occult horror

As long as I've known Pete, he's been tinkering on some game or adventure. Whenever I've had the opportunity, I've joined one of those playtest game sessions (and always end up wishing those opportunities came around more often). He's finally ready to share something with the world: What Lurks Between The Trees. You play as Park rangers who are secretly tasked with holding back otherworldly forces. He made it sound so fun that I jumped at the chance to do editing/layout so that I could get an early look at the game. Without further ado, I'll give you my brief interview with Pete on What Lurks Between The Trees.

Tell us a little about the first spark for this idea and how to developed.

I had been kind of going through the struggle that every writer does sometimes and it was hard to nail down an idea of what I wanted to do. I went through a binge of analog horror stuff like MONUMENTMYTHOS and then read a lot about the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park by Trevor Rogers. Mix that with some real life spooky things in national forests reported by the Missing 411 books and I was like, it’d be really cool to play kind of like an SCP organization… but of course with no budget!

How did the game change over time?

It started originally as kind of a B/X clone with actual classes and such, then it kind of morphed into possibly using the Year Zero Engine, but after some re-tooling and some input by my buddy Josh Yoder (of H2O-Pocalypse) I decided to do it more of a simple D6 system inspired by things like the West End Ghostbusters or WHPA 13. I also was struggling whether I should make it funny or horrific, I went with the latter.

What is your favorite moment from playtests?

So many good moments, but one of the biggest was just having people really embrace the park ranger aspect of trying to help people and drawing upon their hobbies they roll for in character generation to really ask some cool questions, like amateur brewer checking to see if this alcohol was any good. I think my actual favorite moment was testing an investigation called The House in the Cave, which will probably be released for free after the kickstarter, and the players slowly realizing how horrific the actual happening was, and a player messaging me on Discord after saying he actually had nightmares from the game. That was 100% a highlight to me!

Thanks for sharing. Anything else you'd like folks to know?

First, I want to know if the Kickstarter goes live on July 28th at 9AM! Any support is appreciated, even sharing it! I had a real blast making this game, excited to put out some free content for it after it hopefully funds!

Questions questions

What Else’s Going On?

The Secret of Kythe Hollow

Throughout the Shudder Mountains there are many local traditions, but in one sleepy village there is what is known as “The Tradition.” Will the party of traveling adventurers unravel The Secret of Kythe Hollow before an ancient and malevolent evil spreads across the land and consumes the townsfolk and all that they hold precious?

Dungeon Dwelling Creatures