Archive
The Twelve Books of Christmas: Part One
You can find links to buy a lot of my work on the My Books page, but in the run-up to Christmas I will be showcasing a dozen of them that make ideal gifts for the geek in your life. The first is Colonial Horrors, a curated anthology of tales from the earliest years of American horror.
The book was first published last October in hardback, and a paperback edition was released a few weeks ago: Amazon also offers a Kindle version. It is a curated anthology, with an introduction discussing the origins of horror fiction in America, and individual notes on each story.
There are seventeen tales in all, published from 1684 to 1927, all of them chosen for the light they shed on the Colonial era and its role in American horror. Just as the European Gothic features the wild mountains, crumbling castles, and ruined monasteries of that continent, so the American Gothic looks to the dark forests, inward-looking towns, and stifling religion of the colonies. From the accounts of the Salem witch trials in 1692 to the 2015 movie The VVitch with its old-fashioned typography, from the earliest tales of the Jersey Devil to the beloved and oft-adapted tale “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the collection covers both the familiar and the unexpected.
Unexpected, you say? How about this:
- The legend of the Jersey Devil began in a religious dispute between two publishers at the start of the 18th century;
- The contributions from Cotton and Increase Mather, well known for their involvement in the Salem hysteria, were believed by their authors to be nonfiction;
- America’s first Gothic novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, is remembered today only by a handful of academics;
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, a descendent of a Salem judge, wrote horror tales as well as moral commentary;
- The cult movie The Blair Witch Project was based (very loosely, as it turns out) on a reported haunting.
But don’t take my word for it. Here are extracts from some reviews:
“For lovers of American literature and horror fiction fans, this important anthology reveals how the religious beliefs, historical events, and folktales of the colonial period influenced the writerly imaginations that led to the evolution of the modern horror genre.”
– Library Journal (starred)“A well-curated collection of creepy, spooky, and downright weird pieces by a core group of American authors. As the nights grow cooler and the shadows longer, stoke the fire and curl up with this excellent example of true American horror.”
– Booklist“Rather than the gothic castles of Europe, these feature witch trials and dark and foreboding forests. The colonial period was truly the birthplace of American horror, as these stories point out.”
– The News-Gazette (Champaign, IL)
Colonial Horrors can be found at any online retailer and at many good bookstores. The publisher, Pegasus Books, has this to say about it.
Tomorrow, and every day until Christmas, I will be covering another title. If you’re not done with your Christmas shopping, or if you are expecting to receive some gift tokens, take a look: you might find something you like.
Click here for Part Two: Nazi Moonbase.
Click here for Part Three: Werewolves – A Hunter’s Guide.
Click here for Part Four: Theseus and the Minotaur.
Click here for Part Five: The New Hero, vol. 1.
Click here for Part Six: Knights Templar – A Secret History.
Click here for Part Seven: The Lion and the Aardvark.
Click here for Part Eight: Thor – Viking God of Thunder.
Click here for Part Nine: Tales of the Frozen City.
Click here for Part Ten: Blood and Honor.
Click here for Part Eleven: The Dirge of Reason.
Click here for Part Twelve: More Deadly than the Male.
2017: The Year in Review
2017 was not the best of years, but it still brought several things on which I look back with pride – and a few things that make me look forward to 2018. Here are the year’s professional highlights from my point of view:
HAWK: Freedom Squadron
I have blogged before about my love of aviation, so when My.com approached me to work on this bullet hell shooter game I was intrigued. I crafted the main storyline about a ragtag band of heroes coming together to help a peaceful nation resist its brutal neighbor. Released last January, the game has topped five million downloads and seen a billion enemy planes destroyed. It is available at the iTunes Store and the Google Play Store.
Fenix Magazine
This tabletop roleplaying magazine from Sweden has a mix of Swedish and English content, the latter provided by renowned writers like Kenneth Hite, Pete Nash, Will Hindmarch – and lately, me. I highly recommend checking out their all-English Best of Fenix volumes, which are available in PDF form from DriveThruRPG and other online retailers. I describe their content as “thoughtful articles for grown-up roleplayers,” and whatever games you read or play, you will find something useful and interesting within their pages. I contributed to four issues in 2017, and I have plans to continue in 2018.
- Fenix 2/17 included a reprint of “As God is My Witness,” a systemless article on the Medieval practice of trial by ordeal which was first published in Imagine magazine in 1984, and “CSI: Fantasy,” a new article on forensic folk-magic from European tradition.
- For Fenix 4/17, I wrote “Bloodthirsty Blades,” a review of cursed swords in myth and fantasy literature, with some ideas for the GM to make them into a major part of a roleplaying campaign.
- Fenix 5/17 included “When is a Dragon Not a Dragon?” taking examples from myth and folklore to show how dragons can be more than just a powerful boss monster.
- Fenix 6/17 included “Creating Cults,” an examination of cults and cultists, examining the structure, organization, and goals of six different types of cult for a fantasy campaign.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 4th Edition
Toward the end of the year, British tabletop RPG publisher Cubicle 7 announced that they had won a license from Games Workshop to produce a fourth edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the game that arguably started my career thirty-odd years ago. I am not allowed to go into too much detail, but I have contributed some writing to the core rulebook and I am currently in the planning phases of a project called The Enemy Within Director’s Cut. I will be going back over the beloved campaign, making some changes based on the experience of thousands of games played over three decades, and adding some new material to bring this version more into line with the vision that Jim Bambra, Phil Gallagher, and I developed for the original. That is all I can say for now, but keep an eye on this blog and the Cubicle 7 web site for more details.
Colonial Horrors: Sleepy Hollow and Beyond
Another proud achievement this year was the publication of this anthology of early American horror fiction, all set in or around the Colonial era. I tracked down some great stories by writers famous (Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft), obscure (Charles Brockden Brown, John Neal), and better known for writing outside the horror genre (James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne). The book has garnered some good reviews, and I am hoping to edit more anthologies in a similar vein.
Colonial Horrors: Denver Life Interview and Appearances
Hanna Smith of Denver Life magazine recently interviewed me about Colonial Horrors. You can find the interview here.
I’ll be at The Bookies bookstore in Denver on October 29th for a reading and signing. It’s at 4315 E Mississippi Ave, a block east of South Colorado Boulevard: I’ll be there from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.
Halloween night I will be reading and signing at Denver’s famous Tattered Cover bookstore in LoDo. The address is 1628 16th Street (at Wynkoop), and I will be there from 7:00 pm.
I will be updating this post with more information, link, and reviews as they become available.
If you aren’t in Denver, you can find the book at your favorite bookstore or e-tailer. I have posted some links on the My Books page.
Colonial Horrors: Goodreads Giveaway!
I’m looking forward to the release of my anthology Colonial Horrors in October. Between now and Halloween, I’ll be posting details of promotional events, including some readings and appearances that I will be doing in the Denver area. The first, though, is global: a Goodreads giveaway where you can win one of three copies that are up for grabs.
Here’s the publisher’s blurb for the book:
The most spine-tingling suspense stories from the colonial era—including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and H. P. Lovecraft—are presented anew to the contemporary reader.
This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the Colonial era’s stifling religion and its dark and threatening woods.
Today the best-known tale of Colonial horror is Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” although Irving’s story is probably best-known today from various movie versions it has inspired. Colonial horror tales of other prominent American authors—Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Fenimore Cooper among them—are overshadowed by their bestsellers and are difficult to find in modern libraries. Many other pioneers of American horror fiction are presented afresh in this breathtaking volume for today’s reading public.
Some will have heard the names of Increase and Cotton Mather in association with the Salem witch trials, but will not have sought out their contemporary accounts of what were viewed as supernatural events. By bringing these writers to the attention of the contemporary reader, the book will help bring their names—and their work—back from the dead. Featuring stories by Cotton Mather, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, H. P. Lovecraft, and many more.
The book was inspired by the success of the TV show Sleepy Hollow – now canceled, alas – and my involvement with Colonial Gothic, Rogue games’ tabletop roleplaying game of adventure, horror, and conspiracy at the dawn of American history. As I read more about the period, I found a whole body of literature – some famous, some long forgotten – and discovered the native soil of American horror fiction.
Publisher Pegasus Books has done a bang-up job of design and production, creating a book that I’m very proud of. Here are a few more links:
Colonial Horrors at Pegasus Books
Amazon
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble
Waterstone’s
Books-A-Million
Goodreads
Cthulhu 1776: Converting Colonial Gothic to Call of Cthulhu
A few months ago I posted about the release of the Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft sourcebook. The shadow of the Colonial period looms over much of Lovecraft’s writing, reflected in his descriptions of Innsmouth and Arkham and taking a more active role in stories like The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dreams in the Witch-House. At an early stage in its development, Colonial Gothic itself was pitched to Chaosium as Cthulhu 1776. With the release of Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft, players can experience black-powder fantasy adventures against the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos.
With the return of Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen to Chaosium, the original Lovecraftian tabletop RPG looks set for a new lease on life. Based on Chaosium’s excellent Basic Roleplaying ruleset, Call of Cthulhu has been the leading Mythos-based RPG since it first appeared in 1981. Colonial Gothic is new by comparison, but the game’s core books can offer Call of Cthulhu players and Keepers the chance to explore the dark past of Lovecraft country.
One of my major concerns while developing Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft was ensuring that the game stats for the Mythos creatures were accurate and playable. I’m not ashamed to admit that I used the Call of Cthulhu rulebook as a reference, and while it was not the only factor in developing the creature stats, it proved a very useful numerical benchmark. I came up with the following rough system for converting between Call of Cthulhu and Colonial Gothic, and I am sharing it here because I think it could be useful to players of both games.
Colonial Gothic to Call of Cthulhu
Using this system, the Call of Cthulhu Keeper can turn many of Colonial Gothic’s adventures and sourcebooks into resources for an 18th-century Call of Cthulhu campaign, or just for a time-traveling side-track from one of Chaosium’s established timelines. The following titles are of particular interest to Call of Cthulhu fans:
- Second Edition Rulebook: contains general historical and setting information, equipment, prices, common character types, etc;
- Gazetteer: describes each of the Thirteen Colonies up to 1776, with notes on local mysteries and other items of interest;
- Boston Besieged: includes a detailed sourcebook on Boston during the siege of 1775-1776;
- The Philadelphia Affair: describes the city at the time of the Second Continental Congress and the drafting of the Declaration of Independence;
- Player Companion: includes detailed templates which are easily adapted to create period Investigator types for Call of Cthulhu;
- The Bestiary: presents a range of non-Mythos adversaries for rounding out Colonial-era adventures;
- Many other sourcebooks and adventures are available in print, PDF, ePub, and Kindle formats.
STR = Might * 1.67
CON = Vigor * 2.27
SIZ: generate from scratch, referring to similar characters/creatures in the Call of Cthulhu rules.
INT = Reason * 1.75
POW: generate from scratch, referring to similar characters/creatures in the Call of Cthulhu rules.
DEX = Nimble * 2.17
Skills and spells are hard to convert directly because of differences in the two game systems. However, with a little imagination an experienced Keeper should have no difficulty in coming up with numbers that work, based on the attribute scores, the overall concept and the relevant Colonial Gothic skill, spell, and Trait descriptions.
Call of Cthulhu to Colonial Gothic
A Colonial Gothic GM can use this system to help convert additional Mythos horrors from Call of Cthulhu sources: the copyright status of the Cthulhu Mythos is complex, and limited the range of creatures that could be covered in the Colonial Gothic sourcebook.
Might = STR * 0.6
Nimble = DEX * 0.46
Vigor = CON * 0.44
Reason = INT * 0.57
Resolution: generate from scratch, based on Reason score and POW * 0.5.
Vitality = (Might + Vigor) * 2.5, rounding down.
Skills, spells, and Traits can be adapted from Call of Cthulhu descriptions. Several new Traits, specific to the Cthulhu Mythos, are listed in the Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft sourcebook. The GM will find additional Traits in the Colonial Gothic Bestiary.
Converting Dice Rolls
The AnyDice converter provides a useful tool for examining probabilities: it converts the results of any dice roll into percentages. To see the probabilities for a 2d12 roll, enter output 2d12 in the top window and click the Calculate button immediately beneath.
My Complete and Utter Colonial Gothic Bibliography
Are you a fan of black-powder fantasy? Do you enjoy the backstories of movies and TV shows like Sleepy Hollow and National Treasure? Do you prefer Joseph Curwen and Keziah Mason to Randolph Carter and Charles Dexter Ward? If so, you might like Colonial Gothic.
I haven’t worked on tabletop roleplaying games much over the last few years. While the industry has always been rich in ideas, it is increasingly cash-poor. This earlier post goes into some of the reasons why. But when I came across Colonial Gothic back in 2009, I was intrigued. Thanks to mysteries like the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony, events like the Salem witch trials, and classic American horror fiction from writers like Washington Irving and H. P. Lovecraft, the Colonial era is a rich environment for historical fantasy, and historical fantasy has always been one of my favorite genres. Add in the extensive body of conspiracy theory surrounding the Templars in America, the Freemasons and the American Revolution, Franklin’s alleged occultism – not to mention local legends and Native American lore – and you have a setting that can support just about any kind of fantasy and horror adventure.
The game can be played as Cthulhu 1776 – which was one of its earliest incarnations. It can involve nerve-wracking investigations of the great and powerful. Players can fight an occult war for America’s freedom, confront witch-cults and monsters, and even seek the hiding-place of the Holy Grail in lost Templar colonies.
While Colonial Gothic has received some great reviews and built up a small but passionate following, it has yet to break out from the pack of indie RPGs and achieve the success I think it deserves. But check it out, and judge for yourselves.
Products
Lovecraft (2015) – co-author More Information
Bestiary (2013) – co-author More Information
Locations (2012) – developer
The French & Indian War (2012) – developer
Flames of Freedom: The Philadelphia Affair (2011) – developer
New France (2011) – developer
Organizations Book 1: The Templars (2010) – author More Information
Templates (2010) – author
Flames of Freedom: Boston Besieged (2010) – co-author, developer
Gazetteer (2010) – author
Articles
“Converting Between Call of Cthulhu and Colonial Gothic,” (2016) – author Download article
“La Llorona: A Legend of New Spain,” (2015) – author Download article
“The Puckle Gun,” (2014) – author Download article
Also Visit
The Rogue Games Colonial Gothic page
The Rogue Games Store
The Colonial Gothic Facebook Group
The Colonial Gothic Google+ Community
Other Bibliography Posts
My Complete and Utter Warhammer Bibliography (Warhammer, WFRP, HeroQuest, AHQ)
My Complete and Utter Warhammer 40,000 Bibliography (WH40K, Adeptus Titanicus/Epic Scale)
My Complete and Utter Cthulhu Bibliography
My Complete and Utter D&D/AD&D/d20 Bibliography
My Complete and Utter GURPS Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Vampire: the Masquerade and World of Darkness Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Fighting Fantasy and Gamebook Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Dark Future Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Video Gameography
My Complete and Utter Bibliography: The Rest of the RPGs
My Complete and Utter Bibliography: Odds and Ends
La Llorona: A Legend of New Spain
Download PDF version (Colonial Gothic)
Download PDF version (GURPS)
Known in English as the Weeping Woman, La Llorona (pronounced “yo-RO-nah”) is a legend of Mexico and the Spanish Southwest. The Weeping Woman is a type of ghost or demon that can be encountered anywhere in New Spain. According to the TV series Sleepy Hollow, a sub-type is also found occasionally in the Thirteen Colonies.
This article explores the legend of La Llorona, looks into a few variations, and suggests a range of ways to use this legend in Colonial Gothic adventures.
The Legend
Almost every Spanish-speaking population north of Mexico City has its own version of this tale. The details vary, but the ending is always the same.
Her name was Maria, she lived a long time ago, and she fell in love with a handsome ranchero. Because of him, she drowned her own children in a river.
Some say she killed them – and then herself – out of grief and rage when her ranchero abandoned her. Others say these children were from an earlier marriage, and she killed them so she could be free to marry again. According to a third version of the tale, her children drowned by accident when she left them alone to go to a dance with her new beau. All versions agree that her spirit cannot rest and she is cursed to spend eternity wandering and weeping, searching for her lost children along the banks of rivers and canals.
Ever since, people have seen a beautiful woman dressed in white walking beside rivers and canals at night, her hair disheveled and her eyes red from crying. Many have heard her weeping, and a brave few have gotten close enough to hear her sob “Ay, mis hijos!” – “Oh, my children!”
Some versions of the tale are darker still. It is said that bad luck will soon befall anyone who sees the Weeping Woman, or that she will steal, and even drown, any children she finds in the course of her wanderings.
Origins
It is not known whether the legend of La Llorona is based on an actual event. However, it is enticingly similar to both an Aztec legend and a story from the life of Hernan Cortez. It also evokes an even darker being from Mexican folklore.
La Malinche
La Malinche (also known as Malinali, Malintzin, and Doña Marina) was one of twenty women given to Cortez by the people of Tabasco in 1519. She served the Conquistador as a translator and advisor, eventually becoming his mistress and bearing his first son, whom he named Martín. She spoke Mayan as well as the Aztec language, Nahual, and helped Cortez form local alliances and head off potential rebellions. Cortez is reported to have said that after God, Doña Marina was the main reason for his success in Mexico. Contemporary Aztec records almost never depict Cortez without her by his side, and they sometimes show her alone, apparently acting on her own initiative and authority.
Unlike Disney’s Pocahontas, though, Doña Marina did not keep her European paramour. Cortez abandoned her to marry a good Spanish lady. While it is not recorded that she killed her children, and some sources claim she died in 1529, other sources hint that she did not suffer her abandonment meekly. In some later fiction she lives on as a vengeful resistance leader, and even as a vampire.
Cihuacoatl
Cihuacoatl was an Aztec goddess, the most prominent of several patron deities of childbirth and motherhood. It has been said that the Aztecs honored a woman who died in childbirth as highly as a warrior who died in battle.
According to Mexican folklore, the goddess was seen shortly after Cortez appeared, weeping for the loss of her children – an omen of the fall of the Aztec empire at his hands.
Cihuacoatl had a son named Mixcoatl, who became a god of the hunt and the stars. She abandoned him at a crossroads, but regretted her decision and returned weeping, only to find a sacrificial knife where her son had been.
The spirits of women who died in childbirth serve Cihuacoatl. Known as civitateo (“divine women”) they haunt crossroads at night, steal children, and cause seizures and other illnesses.
Although these Aztec legends do not correspond exactly with the commonly-told story of La Llorona, it is easy to see how they may have influenced its development.
Game Statistics
La Llorona can be many things, ranging from a tragic ghost to a vengeful goddess. Providing full Colonial Gothic statistics and rules for every conceivable variant would take an article far longer than this one. Instead, the following paragraphs suggest a range of possible approaches to creating a version of La Llorona that fits with the tone and magic level of the individual campaign.
The Colonial Gothic rulebook provides 2nd Edition rules for ghosts, and the Bestiary covers banshees. Either one would make a good basis for La Llorona, though the banshee’s Moan trait should be cut. For a more corporeal version, the GM might use the vampire from the rulebook (without any traits except for Night Vision and Undead) or the revenant from the Bestiary. Having selected the basic stats, the GM can then add traits as desired, to create his or her own vision of La Llorona.
The Weeping Ghost
When creating La Llorona as a ghost, the main decision to be made is how (or indeed, whether) the living can interact with her. At her most harmless she may be a spectral vision as insubstantial as smoke, to be laid to rest when the Heroes learn her sad tale, find her remains and those of her children, and give them a Catholic burial.
A more dangerous version may use mind-affecting magic of some kind to hypnotize children and send them walking glassy-eyed into the river – or to possess single mothers, especially those driven to the brink of despair by their circumstances, and force them to re-enact her crime. The lives of those she kills may be an offering to the angry spirits of her dead children, or she may simply be locked into an obsessive pattern of behavior, condemned to repeat it endlessly until she is stopped.
The Revenant
A solid, physically manifested version of La Llorona presents a different kind of threat. She has the inhuman strength of a lunatic and high grappling skills, which she uses to drown interfering mortals or simply break their necks. In a simple adventure, destroying her physical form stops her for good; for a longer and more challenging campaign thread, she simply comes back the following night, or month, until her tormented spirit is laid to rest by a Catholic priest or by Aztec-derived magic.
The Goddess
In a higher-powered campaign, La Llorona can be a vengeful manifestation of the goddess Cihuacoatl, imbued with all the terrible power that implies and determined to take the life of one Spanish or Anglo child for every Aztec who died at the hands of the Conquistadores. Alternatively she could be another Aztec deity, taking her own sacrifices since Catholicism replaced the bloody Aztec rites by which she was formerly appeased. In a Robert E. Howard-style horror story, she could be one of the last priestesses of such a terrible deity.
The GM has free rein in designing such a powerful entity. The legends of the civitateo give these creatures a shifting array of attributes including clawed hands and feet and the ability to wither limbs and cause fits and wasting diseases. One interpretation of these creatures may be found in my own Atlas of the Walking Dead, published by Eden Studios for their zombie survival RPG All Flesh Must Be Eaten.
The Mortal
In a low-magic or no-magic campaign, La Llorona may be entirely mortal – an 18th-century serial killer driven to madness by a life of abuse, or by the horror of having killed her own children to save them from an abusive father, or starvation, or some other threat. She may even believe that she has become La Llorona of the stories.
Adventures
An encounter with La Llorona can enhance even a non-fantastic Colonial Gothic campaign. Rarity gives supernatural incidents – or incidents that merely seem to be supernatural – a greater impact in a non-magical setting.
Of course, the GM can always decide, in the best Scooby-Doo tradition, that the apparent haunting has a perfectly mundane cause: the “ghost” turns out to be a madwoman escaped from a local asylum, a kidnap victim leading into a mundane plot, or an attempt to play on a local legend to keep prying eyes away from a hidden gold strike or a planned robbery.
In a more fantastic campaign, La Llorona might be one of several types of restless dead, given an added authenticity by her ready-made backstory and her long history in the real world.
Bibliography
De Aragon, Ray John. The Legend of La Llorona. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2006.
Beatty, Judith S. La Llorona: Encounters with the Weeping Woman. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2004.
Davis, Graeme. Atlas of the Walking Dead. Loudonville: Eden Studios 2003.
Perez, Domino Renee. There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.
Online Resources
“La Llorona,” Handbook of Texas http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/lxl01
“La Llorona – Weeping Woman of the Southwest” (3 pages), Legends of America http://www.legendsofamerica.com/gh-lallorona.html
PDF version of this article (Colonial Gothic)
PDF version of this article (GURPS)
TV and Video
The Crying Woman (Spanish La Llorona), dir. Ramón Peón , 1933.
Supernatural, Season 1 Episode 1, The CW (Warner Bros.), 2006.
Grimm, Season 2 Episode 9, Universal, 2012.
Sleepy Hollow, Season 2 Episode 5, Fox, 2014.
Colonial Gothic: Player Companion
Yesterday was Halloween, and Rogue Games took advantage of the occasion to open preorders for Colonial Gothic: Player Companion.
If you don’t know Colonial Gothic, it’s Rogue Games’ tabletop RPG of intrigue and supernatural horror at the dawn of American history. If you’re a fan of Sleepy Hollow – the TV series, the original story, or any of the movies – and you enjoy tabletop RPGs like Call of Cthulhu, you’ll find a lot to like about Colonial Gothic.
I call it “the American Revolution as imagined by H. P. Lovecraft and Dan Brown,” but that’s just a starting point. It can be played like a tabletop version of Assassin’s Creed III, or as “Cthulhu 1776,” or even as “WFRP 1776.” We’ve heard from teachers who use it as a classroom tool, discarding all the supernatural elements to give students a first-person perspective on the birth of the nation.
Rogue Games’ website offers more information about the game, and there are active fan communities on Facebook and Google+.
As you’d expect, The Player Companion includes a lot of new player options, including skills, weapons, spells, and combat. There are also completely new systems for character advantages and disadvantages, social level (very important in those times), plus an updated version of the character templates from the old ebook release to make character (and NPC) creation quicker and easier. It comes in both print and PDF versons.
Following on from the Bestiary, this book is part of an effort that has been close to my heart for a while: to build out from the 2nd Edition Rulebook and provide Colonial Gothic with a strong suite of core books that give players and GMs the ability to tailor the game to their own preferences. Richard and I are already talking about a GM’s book to complete the set.
Richard is also working hard on the third installment of the Flames of Freedom campaign, to follow on from the critically acclaimed Boston Besieged and The Philadelphia Affair.
As for me, I’m working on a super-secret project that will see me working with an old friend from my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay days. All I can say about it for now is that it’s going to look amazing, and I expect it will cause quite a stir when I can finally talk about it.
So if you like the idea of facing down scheming Freemasons, monsters from folklore, and Things Man Was Not Meant To Know as you uncover the secret history of the 18th century, give Colonial Gothic a try. We think you’ll like it.
Here Be Monsters
The Colonial Gothic Bestiary was released today. You can read the first review here – it’s a very welcome 5 stars from RPGnow.com.
I’ve been pushing for this book ever since I first got involved with Colonial Gothic three years ago. This year, following the release of the second edition Rulebook, the time is finally right. Colonial Gothic’s range of adventures and sourcebooks has always been well received – almost none has averaged lower than a 4-star rating from the industry’s most influential review sites – and now we can release core books to support and grow the system itself. Richard and I decided that the first new core book should be a bestiary, and we plan to follow that up with a Players’ Guide and a GM’s Guide over the next couple of years. Watch this space. In addition, we will continue to support the acclaimed Flames of Freedom campaign and we will keep on producing ground-breaking adventures and supplements like Jennifer Brozek’s time-bending adventure The Lost Colony.
To some, a bestiary may seem a strange choice for the first core supplement. Colonial Gothic is a horror game, after all, and the Rulebook includes a good selection of creatures for horror adventures. Even so, some important creatures were missing: local legends like the Jersey Devil, creatures from Native American tradition like the wampus cat, and local wildlife like the alligator. The book also includes summoned and enchanted creatures like the homunculus, two kinds of golem, and – of course – demons, devils, and undead aplenty.
There are more than 50 creatures in all, but Colonial Gothic fans need not fear that we are turning the game into Colonial D&D. We’re not. Each creature has been chosen with a careful eye to how, why, and where it fits into the Thirteen Colonies and what it can bring to Colonial Gothic adventures. Each creature description includes notes on what it offers the GM, and more extensive notes are given for each creature class. Finally, there are two indices – one alphabetical and one by class – listing the creatures in the Rulebook as well as in the Bestiary, to make it easy for the GM to find exactly the right creature for a particular adventure or encounter.
As I’ve said before, I have a long-standing love of historical fantasy and horror. I thought Colonial Gothic was a good idea the first time I heard of it, and it’s good to know that Richard and I are not alone. There are active groups on both Facebook and Google+ providing us with feedback and discussing everything from real-but-suspicious historical events to TV shows like Sleepy Hollow to the best miniatures and scenery for 18th-century games. You can also find Colonial Gothic news on Twitter (#ColonialGothic).
I think 2014 is going to be a good year for Colonial Gothic. Richard and I have a number of ideas in the works. If you know Cotton Mather isn’t a personal hygiene product and Salem isn’t just a brand of cigarettes, if you ever wanted to save Joseph Curwen and the Whateleys of Dunwich from their own folly, if you want to know how Washington used Masonic secrets to win American independence – and what the Templars thought about his doing so – we think you will enjoy Colonial Gothic.
You can find the Bestiary – and the rest of the Colonial Gothic range – on sale at the Rogue Games online store in PDF, ePub, Kindle, and dead-tree format. The various ebook versions are also available from your favorite download store. If you shop at, or run, a Friendly Local Game Store, please get in touch. Rogue Games is committed to supporting brick-and-mortar game retailers.
Graeme Davis 