Séance Table
A virtual tabletop for horror roleplaying
Compatible with Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition
Séance Table is a virtual tabletop built for one thing: running horror the way it deserves to be run. The Keeper directs living scenes: light, weather, sound and cutscenes. Players sit in fullscreen darkness with their character sheet, their dice, and a sanity score that will not survive the night. No grids. No tokens. No spreadsheet with a dragon on it.
Scenes that breathe, staged live from the Keeper's booth A voice that is not your own Sanity: measured, and duly lost
For Keepers
A control panel for atmosphere: switch locations with a crossfade, cue thunder from the soundboard, reveal a handout to one investigator and not another, trigger a cutscene mid-sentence, and speak through a voice that isn't yours.
For Investigators
A fullscreen scene, your character sheet, and clickable d100 rolls with push, bonus, and penalty. Video of your companions in period frames. The handouts you've earned, and the creeping suspicion you've missed one.
The Rules of the House
An independent table, at home in 1920s cosmic horror. Character sheets compatible with 7th edition: stats with half and fifth values, HP, MP, Luck and Sanity, all tracked by the house. Groups, scheduling, chat, and notes live here too, so the campaign survives between sittings.
Every clipping below is a feature of the house. Collected from the press by a correspondent who has since stopped answering letters.
The Orpheum, photographed mid-performance. The figure was not in the programme.
Patrons swear the actor's voice "was not his own. It came from somewhere older." The management declines to explain its methods.
Live voice changer · speak as the dead and the deep, live, with no extra software →
Hollow Hill Manor. The lamp was lit; the house had stood empty for a decade.
Thunder on a cloudless night. Rooms that darken mid-sentence. Stagehands were sought for comment; none could be found on the premises.
Scene & sound direction · light, weather and thunder obey a single click →
Confiscated from Room 6. The addressee had never arrived in town.
Each visitor receives only the pages meant for them: photographs, deeds, confessions. What one investigator reads, another may never see.
Per-investigator handouts · every soul reads only the pages they have earned →
Room 4, photographed by the landlady. The string was rearranged by morning.
The persons they have met, the rooms they have entered, the letters they have received, pinned and strung by the investigators themselves. The management supplies the corkboard and holds its tongue: the theory is theirs to ruin.
The Clue Board · your players pin, string and solve the mystery themselves →
Row F, photographed after the interval. Seat 13 was accounted for; its occupant was not.
He alone heard the whispering. He alone saw the lights fail. His companions report a perfectly ordinary evening.
Private sanity effects · whispers and visions only the afflicted receive →
Removed from the pier after its third prediction proved correct.
One hundred faces on the wheel. Push your luck, and the house remembers. Some rolls, the Keeper keeps hidden even from you.
Real 3D dice · d100 with push, luck and rolls the Keeper keeps hidden →
The scribe's study, photographed at three in the morning. The page was still warm.
The house keeps the campaign's book of its own accord: every sitting, every clue surrendered, every fate recorded in order. Open it between sittings; the chapters are already written.
The Chronicle · the campaign writes its own book while you play →
The Society's gallery. Sitters report that the frames answer back.
Members report seeing and hearing one another as clearly as across a card table, though separated by whole counties, each face framed in the Society's own portraiture, each voice arriving on the instant.
Video & voice built in · no Zoom, no setup, every face framed at the table →
The Society's ledger of sittings. No member recalls marking the 26th.
Dates are proposed, votes are tallied, and when a sitting is fixed the Management writes to every member, calendar invitation enclosed, then writes again the day before, and once more as the candles are lit.
Scheduling that runs itself · votes, calendar letters and reminders, zero herding →Not everything the house does warrants a headline. The small notices below are features too, every last one.
A statement from the Management, on the subject of artificial intelligence.
The Mechanical Muse
There is a fashionable word for machine-made art, and it is not kind. We understand the complaint, and we make no apology. We built this house with the machine, and we run it with one.
Not every Keeper paints masterworks. Not every Keeper has the hours to describe every room, every face, every letter in a scenario. The machine does, so that your evening is spent at the table, on the game and the people around it, where the hobby actually lives.
And we are only getting started: we are building tools that help a Keeper carry an entire scenario into Séance Table: text, portraits, maps and handouts, with the machine doing the lifting. Bring the book; the house will set the stage.
Art assisted · dread entirely human
The doors are open during Early Access. Create your account, convene your circle, and light the candles tonight. No summons required.
To: All Keepers and Investigators STOP The house is receiving guests STOP Admission free while Early Access lasts STOP
Create Your AccountAlready seated? Log in here. No charge is made for carrier pigeons lost to the fog.
From the Management · to whom it may concern:
Séance Table began as a love letter ♥ to classic 1920s cosmic horror, to the craft of a well-built scenario, and to every table that has ever gone quiet because the Keeper lowered their voice.
We ran our campaigns on the usual virtual tabletops, and they are fine machines, built for another game. Battle maps. Token armies. Initiative trackers. Horror kept having to queue behind the grid, and dread does not survive a queue.
So we built the table we couldn't find: one where atmosphere is a first-class rule: the lights obey the Keeper, the sound arrives on cue, and a scenario is staged, not administrated. Not one-size-fits-all. One size: horror.
— The Managementa Keeper, like you
