Macabre: Graverobbing in the 1820s Tabletop Roleplaying Game
Role-Playing Games

Macabre: Graverobbing in the 1820s Tabletop Roleplaying Game

Macabre is a rules-agnostic tabletop role-playing supplement that details the actual history of graverobbing in the early 1800s.

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DMDave Publishing
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MACABRE

A Graverobbing Supplement for Any Tabletop RPG

“The dead are worth more than the living. In Edinburgh, 1820, you’re here to prove it.”

The year is 1820. Edinburgh is a city of sharp contrasts—New Town elegance perched above Old Town rot, where poverty festers in wynds and closes. Doctors, surgeons, and anatomy schools have a hunger no harvest can fill: fresh human bodies. The law will not provide them.

That’s where you come in.

MACABRE is a system-neutral supplement that drops your players into the desperate, dangerous trade of Resurrectionism—the black-market procurement of corpses for dissection. Built for any TTRPG and offered with optional OSR and Fifth Edition versions, it blends historical accuracy with grimdark style.
Inside you’ll find:

  • The City at Your Feet – A GM’s guide to Edinburgh circa 1820–1832, with districts, hooks, and people to meet (or avoid).
  • The Resurrectionist’s Day – Tools for creating characters, finding leads, managing contacts, and balancing legal cover with illegal work.
  • Six Playable Archetypes – From the brute Hauler to the silver-tongued Face, each with advantages, flaws, and starter kits.
  • Personality & Backstory Generators – d100 traits, d20 ideals, bonds, flaws, and wealth-tiered life events.
  • The Job – A step-by-step guide to running a body-snatching operation, from lead generation to the final sale.
  • Risks & Hazards – Human, animal, environmental, and structural dangers—plus optional supernatural threats for those who want them.
  • NPC Generators – OSR-style archetype tables for allies, rivals, and clients across every class of society.
  • Historical Reference Appendix – Currency, wages, key events, and notable figures from 1800–1832.











Whether you run gritty historical intrigue, grimdark fantasy, or Victorian horror, MACABRE gives you everything you need to drop players into the muck, mud, and moral rot of the anatomy trade—where one wrong step could mean the gallows… or a full purse.

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