Holiday: The Shattered Cheer
A dark-whimsical fantasy campaign for the 2024 fifth-edition rules.
Levels 6–12 • Currently in development
The Premise
Once, the realm of Holiday was bound together by the Great Holiday Spirit, a divine being of memory, celebration, generosity, courage, renewal, and communal joy.
During the Festival of Eternal Cheer, the rulers of Holiday's four greatest kingdoms betrayed the Spirit and shattered its essence into four divine Fragments. Each ruler claimed one, leaving the Spirit weakened and the realm itself beginning to fracture.
The heroes must journey through the corrupted kingdoms of Holiday, recover the Fragments, confront the rulers who took them, and uncover the deeper darkness behind the Betrayal.
The Journey
Each kingdom presents a different expression of what has gone wrong in Holiday—and asks the heroes to confront a different question about what celebration means when its purpose has been distorted.
Halloween — Fear & Courage: A kingdom caught in the belief that fear is the only thing keeping its people safe.
Thanksgiving — Scarcity & Plenty: A land where abundance has become control, hoarding, and hunger.
Christmas — Control & Wonder: A realm where wonder is increasingly measured, recorded, engineered, and enforced.
New Year's — Certainty & Renewal: A kingdom trapped between the desire to know the future and the need to allow something new to begin.
The Great Restoration: The choices, alliances, victories, failures, and consequences of the previous kingdoms converge in the campaign's final act.
Designed for the Table
Holiday: The Shattered Cheer is designed as a complete campaign for characters progressing from levels 6 through 12 using the 2024 revision of the fifth-edition rules.
The campaign includes custom Minor Holiday Sparks, original species and player options, kingdom-specific campaign structures, persistent consequences, and choices designed to carry forward into later acts.
The campaign is being developed for Game Masters to run from the published material without requiring additional explanation from the designer.
Whimsy with a Darker Edge
Holiday combines whimsical holiday fantasy with darker themes of fear, scarcity, authoritarian control, loss, grief, and supernatural horror.
The campaign treats its holiday realms as fictional fantasy interpretations rather than statements about the cultural, spiritual, historical, or personal importance of real-world celebrations.
Currently in Development
Holiday: The Shattered Cheer is currently in development and preparing for extensive external playtesting.
Future development updates, previews, and playtesting opportunities will be shared through BooneBerry Press.