Claws & Teeth - The Lands of Night RPG

20/09/2026

After a year of writing, designing and proofreading, The Lands of Night tabletop roleplaying game is ready for playtesting 🎲

That is why I am now looking for players and GMs who would like to join the Lands of Night community, run a one-shot in the setting for their own table and provide feedback on their experience.

Claws & Teeth — The Lands of Night is a non-magical standalone d20 setting that invites you to explore and survive an alien world where fantasy, sci-fi and weird fiction meet institutional horror 💫

If this sounds like something your table would enjoy, send me a message 😊

28/08/2026

Every few decades, a girl appears who seems ordinary until something changes. Before that change, she may live a normal Cradle life: work rotations, training, friendships, lovers. After it, people begin to speak a new name behind closed doors: Dream Eater.

The change most often follows a close encounter with a Klaus—survived, witnessed or narrowly avoided. After that moment, the girl may begin to sense danger before anyone else: disturbed sleep, sudden certainty and an ability to “read” events and sense danger, commonly when relating to Klaus attacks, that later proves accurate. Some Cradles quietly treat her as an early-warning asset; others treat her as a risk.
After the change, close physical or emotional intimacy can carry a second pattern—one people struggle to describe without sounding like Wanderer camp-talk. Partners speak first of pleasure: a deep afterglow, a feeling of being steadied, warmed through, briefly well. In some cases it even looks like luck made flesh: a bruise fading too fast, exhaustion lifting, an old ache going quiet for a period.
Only later does the other part become visible and this is where the stories turn. A lover may become tired, foggy, hollowed-out—sometimes still smiling, sometimes craving the closeness that caused it—while the Dream Eater seems temporarily sharper, steadier and more wakeful. What frightens people isn’t romance; it’s the sense that something moved between them—an exchange. Two bodies briefly braided, and when they unhook one body has more and the other has less.
In the Cradles, where synchronized thought is treated as danger, that possibility curdles fast. Some call her a parasite. Others call her a remedy with teeth.

25/08/2026

In the Lands of Night, healing is practical, relying largely on the medicinal properties of local flora and fauna (listed in Section II – Part E).
Medical treatment most often draws on Heal for direct care, Survival for field handling under poor conditions, Craft (pharmaceutical) for salves, tinctures, antiseptics and dosage and Knowledge (earth and life sciences) for diagnosis, infection, pathology and biological context.
Where appropriate, Field Medic class features apply in addition to the baseline rules.

23/08/2026

Claws & Teeth - The Lands of Night RPG uses 3.5/d20 mechanics to create characters shaped by Cradle routines, travel windows, permission systems and the long Night. You grow into the kind of person a Cradle notices, depends on or fears.
________________________________________

Step 1: Choose Origin Status
Cradle Citizen
You were raised inside a Cradle. You grew up with schooling to age twelve, Night drills, curfews, ration discipline, communal labor and baseline weapons training as civic obligation. You understand instinctively who grants permission, who keeps records and what happens when rules fail.
Wanderer
You were raised Outside. You learned survival without walls, councils or guarantees—moving with caravans, rivers and temporary camps, living by vigilance and improvisation.
________________________________________
Step 2: Choose an NPC Foundation
All characters begin with three levels in an NPC foundation class. These levels represent upbringing, training and early competence—not an established career or renown.
Cradle Citizen: disciplined baseline adult; drilled in duty and routine
Expert: trained craft, trade or professional competence
Seneschal: administration, permits, logistics, diplomacy, record culture
Wanderer: road survival, barter sense, vigilance, evasion, campcraft

Only after you have taken your NPC foundation levels, do you take levels in an approved Player Class.

So let's have closer look at the LoN NPC classes

20/08/2026

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” (John Donne)

For that reason I would like to share the books that form the setting’s roots, and five series that carry a vibe which might suit your character or story.
These are not definitive lists. There are many other literary, cinematic or socio-historical threads you can pull at to make the Lands of Night your own, and I encourage you to do so!

B͟o͟o͟k͟s͟ ͟t͟h͟a͟t͟ ͟i͟n͟s͟p͟i͟r͟e͟d͟ ͟T͟h͟e͟ ͟L͟a͟n͟d͟s͟ ͟o͟f͟ ͟N͟i͟g͟h͟t

𝙎𝙖𝙜𝙖 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙭𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙨 - Julian May (1981–1984)
𝙀𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙝’𝙨 𝘾𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙧𝙚𝙣 - Jean M. Auel (1980–2011)
𝙂𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙝𝙖𝙨𝙩 - Mervyn Peake (1946–1959)
𝘼𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧𝙜𝙧𝙞𝙨 - Jeff VanderMeer (2001–2009)
𝙁𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 - Isaac Asimov (1951–1953)

S͟e͟r͟i͟e͟s͟ ͟t͟h͟a͟t͟ ͟m͟i͟g͟h͟t͟ ͟i͟n͟s͟p͟i͟r͟e͟ ͟L͟a͟n͟d͟s͟ ͟o͟f͟ ͟N͟i͟g͟h͟t͟ ͟p͟l͟a͟y

𝙈𝙤𝙤𝙣𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙣 (2022)
𝙍𝙤𝙗𝙞𝙣 𝙃𝙤𝙤𝙙 (2006–2009) / (2025)
𝙎𝙞𝙡𝙤 (2023–present)
𝘼𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙖𝙧: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙇𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝘼𝙞𝙧𝙗𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 [but 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 the 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴]
(2005–2008) / (2024–present; live action)
𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝟭𝟬𝟬 [seasons 1–5] (2014–2018)

02/08/2026

Character Creation
Claws & Teeth - The Lands of Night uses some familiar classes but to pick from like Rogue, Ranger and Babarian, although some have been adjusted to reflect the non-magical nature of this setting. Other classes like the Field Scientist, Salvager and Marshal might be less well known. But LoN also introduces a few classes unique to this setting such as the Wanderer, the Seneschal and the Teller of Truths.
Here's a first look at the character sheet, or "character record". I will post a printer friendly b&w version below as well ✒️

ps. if you would like a pdf version just let me know

14/07/2026

"These are the descendants of the Teat, a colony ship in search of freedom and a better way of life, who thought they had found it on this planet after decades of flight, only for the ship to crash upon it. They survive in these Cradles: semi-subterranean settlements built from the wreckage of their vessel and local stone. Each Cradle is marked by a relic of an age they no longer fully understand: the Beacons, tall spires that blink red light into the endless sky.
Theirs is a world of long cycles: there are roughly two hundred periods of Day followed by fifty consecutive periods of Night. A period is divided into twenty equal units known as hours (a Teat shipboard time measure, preserved because work shifts, ration ledgers, maintenance logs and civic records were already built around it). The full Day-Night cycle is commonly referred to as a year. Winds shift with the cycle; beasts and people do as well. Day brings thaw, growth and migration. Skies in Day are pallid gold or faded blue; in Night they deepen to violet and green and finally red where the spore-clouds gather. The wise time their journeys around High Day; the desperate travel at the edges, when light or dark still remembers its opposite. But all will choose the safety of a Cradle and the stress of confinement over staying outside at Night, if they have a chance to choose.
Each Cradle maintains its own rhythm of toil and defense. By Day, farmers work their fields, traders work their routes and hunters venture out; at Night, the gates are sealed and guards and watchers take their stations."

20/05/2026

The book will be made up of three sections. Players will read Section I and use Section II as reference. GM will also have access to the material in Section III that provides a unique insight into the workings of the society, the factions and history (and the levers and building blocks these provide for telling your story in this setting).

28/04/2026

Here is a sample of the first chapter:

THE FIRST NIGHT
From the forests came the Klaus — pale, sinewy predators adapted to the dark, drawn by warmth and blood — and by the time the sun returned, half of the colonists, caught unawares, had been brutally slain; bodies ripped, intestines consumed. Many more had been drained of all life and fluids by invasive vines that overtook the settlement, burrowing through cracks in walls and windows to envelop their prey.
The survivors named that period the First Night of Claws and Teeth and it taught them three truths. First: knowing how to survive by Day means nothing if you do not make it through the Night. Second: fear calls to the Klaus as surely as heat. Third: walls alone do not save—preparation, timing and memory do.
In the aftermath, people carved homes into stone and hull, sealed the gates to the settlement, now called a Cradle, at dusk and learned to count the long hours until dawn. Thus the Cradles began as mere burrows with rules that evolved to guide them through the first hundred Day-Night cycles and that hold their society together still—because when Night falls, and forests bloom with noctilucent vines and bioluminescent fungal nets, the Klaus appear.

24/04/2026

We have reached the stage where a number of beta readers are going over the material I have created with a fine comb; nitpicking, questioning and making it a better book 🙏
So it will be a while still before I will release this stand alone d20 setting as a pdf. But I would already like to share the front cover with you, because as ever as picture says more than a thousand words. If you are curious about this new TTRPG or interested in what I have been up to the past six months, follow this page and I will keep you posted on all further developments 💫

LoN front cover