The Yellow King RPG

The Yellow King RPG is a tabletop roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press, written and designed by Robin D. Laws, the designer closely associated with GUMSHOE mystery games. It is explicitly inspired by Robert W. Chambers’ 1895 story cycle The King in Yellow, especially the forbidden play whose reading warps sanity and reality. Pelgrane’s edition was crowdfunded on Kickstarter from June 21, 2017, to July 21, 2017, raising £167,341 from 2,288 backers against a £23,000 goal.

The published game is built as four full-color hardback books in a slipcase, plus a separate GM screen. Its structure is unusually specific: a campaign can move through four linked sequences in which players may create connected versions of themselves across time and alternate realities. Paris begins in Belle Époque Paris, around the first publication of the sinister play; player characters are American art students drawn into absinthe, occult salons, decadent aristocracy, and Carcosa’s influence. The Wars shifts to an alternate 1947 European conflict, casting characters as soldiers on an eerie battlefield shaped by the Yellow King and his rebellious daughters. Aftermath stays in that reality but moves to present-day North America, after an insurrection has overthrown a Carcosa-loyal dictatorship; the characters are former partisans trying to rebuild civic life while hunting remaining monsters. This is Normal Now returns to a version of our present, where ordinary people uncover reality shifts and conspiracies tied to the Yellow Sign.

Mechanically, The Yellow King RPG uses GUMSHOE Quickshock, a variant of Pelgrane’s clue-centered GUMSHOE system. Investigative abilities are designed so relevant clues are obtained rather than missed by bad rolls; uncertainty moves to interpreting evidence, spending ability points, and resolving dangerous tests with a six-sided die. Its wound system separates physical and psychic harm into story consequences, reflecting influence from GUMSHOE One-2-One. Pelgrane describes the combat rules as player-facing and new for this line.

The game’s published support is also concrete. Absinthe in Carcosa, written by Laws, won the 2020 ENNIE Gold award for Best RPG Related Product, while The Yellow King RPG itself was nominated for Best Production Values. Later Pelgrane titles tied to the line include Black Star Magic, Legions of Carcosa, Fifth Imperative, and Not All of Us Made It. What distinguishes it is not simply King in Yellow atmosphere, but its engineered passage from 1890s artists to soldiers, revolutionaries, and modern witnesses of a single invasive Carcosan pattern across a deliberately fractured horror chronology.