Moonlight on Roseville Beach - Starter guide

What is Moonlight on Roseville Beach?

Moonlight on Roseville Beach describes itself on the cover as "a queer game of disco and cosmic horror," and that tells you almost everything you need to know. Created by Richard Ruane and published by R. Rook Studio, the game is set in the summer of 1979 on Rose Island - a barrier island off the North American coast. Roseville Beach, the small village at the heart of the game, is a queernorm community: LGBTQIA+ residents are the default, and most people here assume anyone they meet identifies as queer.

By day, your character holds down a job - piano player at the Cedar Point Hotel, opening act at the Cabana, bartender at Rosie's. By night, you and your housemates investigate supernatural mysteries: sorcerers, necromancers, ancient terrors, and entities from beyond our reality that have started troubling the town. The police can't be trusted - the Mainelin County sheriff's department has a long history of raids and violence against queer communities - so it falls to the residents themselves to protect Roseville Beach.

The tone is warm and slightly camp, but it doesn't shy away from the real weight of what it means to be queer in 1979. Beyond the island, the world is hostile. That tension is what gives the game its bite.

How does the system work?

Moonlight on Roseville Beach uses pools of six-sided dice. When a character attempts something risky, they build a pool by selecting one die for simply being a sleuth, then adding more dice for relevant circumstances: not being injured or scared, having a relevant background, having one or two applicable skills, receiving help from an ally who's also at risk, or acting to protect someone they care about.

The interesting part is what happens when you roll. You don't read your total - you assign individual dice to different risk categories, then check each result against its own table. The Goal die determines whether you succeed or make progress. The Injured die determines whether someone gets hurt. The Scared die determines whether something frightens you or your housemates. You can also add a Clue die to learn something extra, and optionally a Trouble die - a bonus die that can pull you out of a jam, but guarantees one of your Troubles shows up in the session.

This means every roll is a negotiation. A pool of five dice might not cover every risk at the table, and choosing what to protect and what to leave exposed is where a lot of the drama lives.

Not everything requires a roll. Talking to a bartender, taking a walk on the beach, reading a handwritten note - none of these are risky, so the GM simply tells you what you find. Only genuinely dangerous actions trigger the dice.

Magic works on its own parallel system. Witches, Familiars, and Strangers build a magic pool based on different factors - whether they have Words of Power, whether they're working at a sacred time or place, whether allies are helping. All magical workings risk Scares and must assign a die to a Control table. On a result of 4 or below, the magic gets out of hand in ways the GM determines.

Characters can accumulate up to three Injuries and three Scares before going Out of Action. Between mysteries, the group handles downtime: recovering conditions, bonding with housemates, training new skills, or making new allies.

What do you need to start?

The one book contains everything: the player-facing rules, a full Game Master's section, and five complete mysteries ready to run. You'll also want a handful of six-sided dice and access to the digital Roseville Beach Keeper, which includes character sheets and a content and safety sheet for the group.

There is no separate GM screen or starter set. The core book is genuinely all-in-one.

Who is this game for?

Moonlight on Roseville Beach is a strong fit for groups who want mystery-driven, character-focused play in a specific and richly drawn setting. The queernorm premise is central, not decorative - if your group is looking for a game that centres LGBTQIA+ characters and stories, this is one of the most thoughtfully designed options out there.

The system rewards narrative thinking over tactical optimisation. Players who enjoy the social and investigative side of roleplaying - building relationships with NPCs, gathering clues through conversation, protecting the people they care about - will feel right at home.

It's less well-suited to groups who want heavy combat mechanics or long dungeon-crawl campaigns. The scale is intimate and local: you're protecting a small village, not saving the world.

How does it compare to other systems?

Call of Cthulhu is the obvious touchstone for cosmic horror investigation, but Moonlight on Roseville Beach is considerably lighter and more relationship-focused. The dice system is gentler and more forgiving, and the emphasis shifts from survival horror toward community and connection.

Fans of Trophy Dark or Blades in the Dark will find some structural similarities in the dice assignment mechanic, though the tone is warmer and the setting far more grounded in a specific social and historical context.

Where do you start?

Read the introduction and setting overview first - understanding Roseville Beach as a place, with its locations and residents, makes everything else click. Then work through character creation as a group: choosing your Origin Story, your Job, and the Strange Events you've already shared with your housemates is best done at the table together, since the connections between characters are built into the process.

The five included mysteries - The Haunting of Flora Bly, Girls Before Swine, Sweet on Jenny, The House in the Woods, and Ravenous Rave - range in tone from gothic to darkly comic, and any of them work as a first session. The GM's section also includes guidance on building original mysteries and NPCs.

For additional resources, the broader indie TTRPG community has written about the game on forums and social media, and actual play recordings are available for groups who want to see the system in motion before their first session.

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The core book is your starting point and everything you need. It's a confident, complete package - rules, setting, and five mysteries in one volume. If you're new to indie horror TTRPGs, Moonlight on Roseville Beach is a genuinely distinctive entry point into the genre.