By The Intrepid in TiGGR — 14 Aug 2026

Corpse Run

Getting Started

Touchstone

The party cleared the Ashen Spire, banked the loot, and logged out for the night — and woke up here. Clocked in, badged, mortal, and scheduled for Sunday inventory. Nobody knows how. The portal in Receiving flickers sometimes, like a monitor that won’t quite sleep.

Scene

Cassiday’s City of Books — a legendary independent bookstore filling an entire city block, its rooms color-coded and named like realms (because they are one). Acquired eighteen months ago by ShelfCorp, a retail conglomerate with a dashboard for everything. A few blocks away: the duplex, where the party lives now, splitting rent five ways and arguing about dishes.

Goal

Almost never about winning. “Winning” here means: the shift survived, rent made, someone understood, nobody batted the manager into next week — and, underneath it all, the standing question honestly faced: if the way home opened tomorrow, would you take it?

Factions

Not villains — pressures the household must make room for:

The Old World Calling — scrying dreams, portal flickers, a guild that wants its heroes back.
ShelfCorp Initiatives — synergy, metrics, and mandatory fun, arriving quarterly like weather.
Rent — relentless, unlovable, arrives monthly. Cannot be fought, only outlasted together.
The Customers — a chaotic weather system with a return policy.
The Gap — the ache between who you were and what you roll now.
Selling Out — comfort with a price tag: the corporate ladder in this world, or the hero’s welcome in the other one.

Key Locations

Cassiday’s City of Books — the Atlas Room, the Ochre Room, the Fern Room; a dungeon that unionized.
The Rare Book Room — upstairs, climate-controlled, locked. Everyone calls it the Vault. It has started acquiring titles no one ordered.
Receiving — pallets, box cutters, and a loading door that sometimes glows around the edges.
The Break Room — burnt coffee, a wobbling table, and the only honest conversations in the building.
The Café — where a former archmage does latte art and light prophecy.
The Fuzzy Keychain Endcap — rebuilt weekly. Nobody asks why anymore.
The Loading Dock — smoke breaks, shoegaze from an open car door, the best view of the sunset in retail.
The Duplex — five heroes, one bathroom, a kitchen table where everything important happens.
The ’91 Corolla — shared custody, heroic mileage.

How This Setting Bends TiGGR

Then & Now

Every character has two stat rows. Now is who you are here — it’s what you roll, always. Then is who you were on the other side: never rolled directly, never gone. Then stats are instincts, and instincts are where the trouble comes from.

Old Habits (Universal Special Ability, once per scene)

Declare that you’re acting like your old self, and roll with a Then stat instead of Now. Succeed or fail, the GM narrates a mundane complication sized to the gap between the two stats — one point of difference is a raised eyebrow; three points is an incident report and a shelf of fuzzy keychains on the floor. The roll answers “did it work.” The gap answers “how much paperwork.” Old Habits is in addition to each character’s own Special Ability.

Hurt Feelings, Retail Edition

Nobody gets hurt in this game — not physically. Damage is embarrassment, ennui, friction, and fluorescent-light fatigue.

At 0 HP, a character is paused for the scene: a smoke break on the loading dock, a long walk to the far bathroom, going quiet at the registers. Describe how. Full HP next scene — momentum, not attrition.
Supporting cast lose HP when they try something and come up short — Doug’s icebreaker lands on silence, the Liaison’s dashboard fails to intimidate Petra. At 0 they withdraw: an office door quietly closed, an early lunch.
Some pressures (Rent, ShelfCorp) cannot be attacked at all — only endured, negotiated with, or unionized against.
Loose stats: NPCs and forces need not spend all 3 stat points, and a truly outsized presence may hold more than 4 HP, as appropriately outrageous.

The Household Is a Vehicle

The found family gets the vehicle treatment — 10 HP, three stats, one signature ability. Ordinary friction can’t hurt it; per TiGGR’s vehicle rules, only +3-scale events deal damage: a corporate restructuring, an eviction notice, a portal opening in the break room with an offer. Damage to the household is the drama. Repairs happen between scenes, over takeout and one honest conversation at the kitchen table.

The Core Cast (Playable Characters)

Five heroes, one duplex. Use them as written, or as templates — the Then row is a costume anyone can rehang.

Grosh, Shield of the Ninth Vale

A wall of a warrior, now a temp-to-perm contractor in a body that loses arm-wrestling matches to the espresso machine.

	Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
Then	3	0	0	—	The Wall of the Party
Now	0	2	1	5	Contractor (temp-to-perm, allegedly)

Special Ability: Load-Bearing — +1 Mind when assessing what will hold, what will break, or which shelf is about to go, once per scene.

Signature Gear: Laminated Badge — +3 to any roll once per scenario when access, authority, or “I’m supposed to be here” is in question.

Faelith Quicksilver, the Grey Whisper

The guild’s master infiltrator, now the fastest hands in Shipping & Receiving. Old habits die never.

	Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
Then	2	1	0	—	Rogue of the Velvet Guild
Now	1	2	0	5	Shipping & Receiving

Special Ability: Loophole Sense — +1 Mind when reading fine print, schedules, or the manager’s mood, once per scene. (Formerly: Find Traps.)

Signature Gear: A Box Cutter That Never Dulls — +3 to a Body roll once per scenario. Strictly for boxes, she insists.

Brother Aldous, Lightbearer

The party’s cleric — and, somehow, already Assistant Manager. Thriving. Will not apologize for it.

	Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
Then	0	1	2	—	Cleric of the Dawn
Now	0	1	2	5	Assistant Manager (it’s unbearable)

Special Ability: Break Room Ministry — +1 Charm when talking a coworker or customer down, once per scene; if it works, they also recover 1 HP. (Formerly: Healing Word.)

Signature Gear: The Schedule — +3 to any roll once per scenario when exactly the right person turns out, impossibly, to be on shift.

Wren of the Thornwood

A ranger who tracked wyverns across three kingdoms. Now picks online orders. The hunt continues.

	Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
Then	2	1	0	—	Warden of the Thornwood
Now	1	2	0	5	Order Picker, Fulfillment

Special Ability: Favored Terrain: The Stacks — +1 Mind when locating anything — or anyone — in the store, once per scene.

Signature Gear: A Hand-Drawn Map of the Store — +3 to a Mind roll once per scenario. No one else can read it. It is more accurate than the planogram.

Zinnia the Unbound

An archmage who once bent comets. The tower curriculum did not cover small talk; the café is teaching her.

	Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
Then	0	3	0	—	Archmage of the Ninth Circle
Now	0	1	2	5	Barista, Café

Special Ability: Latte Art Cantrip — +1 Charm when a small, perfect gesture would change someone’s day, once per scene. (Formerly: Prestidigitation.)

Signature Gear: The Annotated Handbook — +3 to a Mind roll once per scenario when citing store policy, chapter and verse, like a grimoire.

Supporting Cast (GM-Run NPCs & Forces)

The store’s ecosystem: some of them press, some of them shelter, one of them purrs.

Doug, the Store Manager

Means well, manages poorly. Believes in the team the way other people believe in weather control.

Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
1	1	1	4	Well-Meaning Middle of Everything

Special Ability: Mandatory Fun — +1 Charm when declaring a morale initiative nobody asked for, once per scene.

The District Liaison

ShelfCorp’s quarterly emissary. Not cruel — worse: sincere.

Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
0	2	1	5	Corporate Weather Front

Special Ability: The Metrics Say — +1 Mind when citing a dashboard, once per scene. Cannot be argued with, only survived.

Petra

Thirty-one years on the floor. Knows the store’s bones and the contract’s teeth.

Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
1	2	2	5	Veteran Bookseller & Union Steward

Special Ability: We’ve Read the Contract — +1 to any roll when standing between a coworker and a policy, once per scene.

The Regular Who Knows

Buys one paperback western a week. Once called Grosh by his true name and winked.

Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
0	2	1	3	Suspiciously Well-Informed Customer

Special Ability: A Word to the Wise — Once per scene, drops one true, unsettling hint about the old world or the new one.

Ilium, the Store Cat

Came with the building. Possibly came with the other world. Says nothing, obviously.

Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
1	0	2	3	Feline of Ambiguous Provenance

Special Ability: Door Between Worlds — Is occasionally found in rooms that do not exist. Following him is always a scene.

The Summons

The old guild, scrying across the divide. A glow under the Receiving door. Not an enemy — a question.

Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
0	0	2	8	The Way Home (recurring force, not a foe)

Special Ability: The Hero’s Welcome — Offers exactly what each character misses most; -1 to Mind rolls for anyone actively listening to it.

Homesickness Track: its 8 HP is a homesickness track, depleted only by genuine moments of belonging here — an honest answer, a kept promise, a night the duplex feels like a keep. It cannot be fought; when it reaches 0, the way home opens anyway — and becomes a door instead of a demand.

Vehicles

Two vehicles, one of which has wheels.

The Duplex

Peeling paint, radiator songs, five names on a lease meant for three. Home, for a value of home that keeps appreciating.

Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
1	0	2	10	The Found Family, Structurally

Special Ability: Someone’s Always Home — +1 to any roll made during a kitchen-table conversation, once per scene.

The ’91 Corolla

Two hundred thousand miles and one working speaker. It has never once failed to start. Nobody talks about why.

Body	Mind	Charm	HP	Role
2	0	1	10	The Party’s Trusty Steed

Special Ability: Runs on Loyalty — +1 Body when getting someone to work, home, or away from either, once per scene.

Scenario Seed Tables (2d6)

Roll 2d6 on any table (or several) to spark a shift. Remember: 7 is most common, 2 and 12 are rare and extreme — let the odds guide the weirdness.

Shift Weather

Roll (2d6)	Result
2	Inventory night. All hands, all night, and the counts refuse to reconcile.
3	The Liaison is in the building. Nobody saw them come in.
4	A local author event: folding chairs, a microphone that shrieks, an ego to manage.
5	Payday. The duplex plans one nice thing and defends it fiercely.
6	A new hire starts today, and something about them is faintly luminous.
7	An ordinary busy Saturday. The line moves. The coffee holds. All is well (for now).
8	The scheduling system glitches; half the staff is accidentally on break at once.
9	Rain for three days; the store fills with people who need shelter more than books.
10	Corporate announces a surprise visit “sometime this quarter.” Morale curdles.
11	The store’s founder — retired, mythical — is spotted browsing in the Fern Room.
12	Every clock in the store shows a different time. The Vault has acquired a new title.

Customers

Roll (2d6)	Result
2	Attempts to return a book purchased at a different store, in a different state, in a different decade.
3	Wants “the blue one.” Will accept no further questions.
4	A child, alone, looking for a book to make a hospital visit shorter. Handle with care.
5	Films everything, narrating loudly for an audience of eleven followers.
6	Demands the manager, then apologizes to the manager, then demands a different manager.
7	Genuinely just wants a good book. Recommending one is the best part of the day.
8	A first date is going badly in the poetry section. Both parties keep glancing for rescue.
9	Knows more about the staff schedule than the staff. Means well. Probably.
10	Tries to sell rare books that are suspiciously warm to the touch.
11	Asks Zinnia for “the usual” — and orders it in flawless High Arcanic.
12	Speaks the old tongue, buys a map of the coast, and leaves a tip in coin that shouldn’t exist.

ShelfCorp Initiatives

Roll (2d6)	Result
2	Pilot program: shelf-mounted cameras “for loss prevention insights.” Petra has thoughts.
3	SmileMetrics™: badges now track “customer delight events.” Nobody knows what counts.
4	Mandatory team-building: trust falls in the Atlas Room, 7 a.m., attendance tracked.
5	The café menu is standardized. Zinnia’s signature drink is now “non-compliant.”
6	New uniform polos arrive in a color that exists nowhere in nature or the old world.
7	A memo about memos. Genuinely nothing else this week. Suspicious.
8	Self-checkout kiosks appear overnight. One of them hums in a minor key.
9	A “flexible scheduling optimization” quietly cuts everyone’s hours except Aldous’s.
10	The fuzzy keychain endcap is declared a “flagship engagement zone.” It must be defended.
11	Corporate wants to license the Vault’s inventory. The Vault, per the manifest, disagrees.
12	ShelfCorp announces the store’s “rebrand.” The name Cassiday’s is on the block. So is the block.

Leaks from the Old World

Roll (2d6)	Result
2	A sword turns up in lost-and-found. It is unmistakably Grosh’s. It is very light now.
3	The receipt printer produces one line of runes between transactions. It’s a name.
4	Wren finds wyvern tracks in the dust of the top stockroom shelf. Fresh.
5	A shipment arrives from a supplier that does not exist, invoiced in silver.
6	Someone shelved a book about the party’s last campaign. The ending is wrong.
7	A faint smell of pine and woodsmoke near Receiving. Gone by lunch. Probably nothing.
8	Ilium is found sleeping in a room that isn’t on the map, on a cushion no one bought.
9	Faelith’s old guild-sign is chalked on the loading dock, waist-high, freshly drawn.
10	For one full minute, every fantasy novel in the store is nonfiction. Then it passes.
11	The Regular Who Knows leaves a tip: a map of the store with one extra door drawn in.
12	The glow under the Receiving door resolves into a knock. Three raps. Patient. Familiar.

Starter Scenario: Sunday Inventory

One closed store, one all-night count, one door that has decided to open. Three scenes, fluorescent lighting throughout.

Scene: Annual inventory night at Cassiday’s. The store is closed, the whole crew is on, and the District Liaison lands at dawn expecting numbers that reconcile. The portal in Receiving has been flickering all week.

Goal: Get the count done, keep the household whole — and when the old world knocks, answer honestly.

Pressures in play: ShelfCorp Initiatives, The Old World Calling, The Gap — and, quietly, Selling Out, in both directions at once.

Scene 1: The Count Begins (Setup)

Clipboards, scanners, burnt coffee. Doug opens with an icebreaker; the building settles into the long hum of counting. Let each character establish themselves with one small task — no rolls unless it turns risky.

The Rare Book Room manifest lists one more title than the shelves hold: a book bound in something that was recently alive (Mind 6 to notice the discrepancy; Mind 8 to find where it’s hiding).
Doug’s icebreaker (“two truths and a lie — about inventory!”) is dying in real time (Charm 8 to rescue him gracefully; or let it die and take the morale hit into Scene 2).
Faelith’s count of Receiving is perfect — too perfect, finished too fast (Mind 8 for anyone to work out how; Old Habits was definitely involved).

Scene 2: The Endcap Incident (Escalation)

Midnight. The Liaison arrives seven hours early, dashboard glowing, and begins “observing.” The glow under the Receiving door is now constant. Everyone is tired enough for their Then to start leaking through their Now.

A pallet jack pins a rolling ladder against the mystery book’s hiding spot. The Old Habits temptation is enormous — and the fuzzy keychain endcap is directly in the blast radius (Body 8 the mundane way; or roll Then Body 3 and let the gap write the incident report).
The Liaison corners Aldous with an offer: a real ShelfCorp management track, his own store within the year (Charm 10 to hear it out without the household hearing it wrong; this is Selling Out, local flavor).
The count is short by exactly one — the book has moved again, and Ilium is sitting where it used to be, looking meaningfully at the Receiving door (Mind 8 to follow his logic; following him is always a scene).

Scene 3: The Knock (Climax)

Three raps on the inside of the loading door. Patient. Familiar. The portal opens between pallets, and a herald of the old guild steps through with the light of home behind them — offering each character exactly what they miss most. The Summons stands at 8 Homesickness, and only genuine belonging depletes it: an honest answer, a kept promise, the kitchen table defended out loud.

An honest answer to “do you want to come home?” is Climactic (Charm 10); naming what this world has actually given you is Dramatic (Mind 8). Success warms the Summons 1d6 (bonuses apply). The Hero’s Welcome still tugs (-1 Mind while listening to it).
At 0 Homesickness, the portal doesn’t close — it becomes a door. Home stops being a demand and becomes a place you could visit, like anyone visits home.
Then: dawn, the count reconciled (off by one, annotated “shrinkage: metaphysical”), the Liaison’s report unexpectedly kind, and coffee on the loading dock as the sun comes up.

Epilogue: Ask each player: your character gets one minute at the open door. What do they say through it — and do they step through, or hold it open for someone else?

Running Corpse Run

Fail forward, gently — failure here is never a corpse run. It’s a smoke break, a bitten tongue, a shift that gets longer and funnier.
Default to Difficulty 8 for anything dramatic; save 10 for the real ones — the offer, the door, the honest answer.
Let Then leak. The best scenes live in the gap: instincts firing in a body and a world that no longer fit them.
The store is a dungeon that unionized; the duplex is the treasure. Threaten the second sparingly and it will carry the whole campaign.
Ask yourselves: “What would happen in a workplace sitcom?” Then ask what the camera would catch someone feeling right after.

Built on the TiGGR system (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0) by The Grey Ledger Society. Corpse Run is an unofficial homebrew setting created for personal use, with affection for every hero who ever worked a register.