d30 eerie/weird garage rock bands

This is a supplement for the d50 Delinquent Werewolves from Outer Space post. Because your Delinquent Werewolves need some sick tunes to blast in their cars and clubhouses.

1. The Aztec Mummies
2. The Bad Vibrations
3. The Berenices
4. The Black Lagoon Divers
5. The Blowers
6. The Crypt Keepers
7. Doctor Tarr & His System
8. The Draculalas
9. The Eeries
10. The Frankenhookas
11. Gordon & His Flashers
12. Ilse & Her She-Wolves
13. Jack Chick & His Tracts
14. King Tut & His Curses
15. Las Máscaras
16. The Milkshakers
17. The Mortsafes
18. The Nudes
19. Los Pornados
20. The Quasi-Mods
21. The Reefers
22. Santo & The Vampire Women
23. Satan’s Fingers
24. The Saucerians
25. The Screamers
26. The Suburban Rejects
27. The Teen Wolves
28. The Tiki Twisters
29. The Torturers
30. Victor Noir & His Admirers

d50 Delinquent Werewolves from Outer Space

I guess you roll three times and that's your character for any game of "I Walked With a Teenage Tiki Pin-Up Surfer"?..

1. Abductee
2. Alpha Bitch
3. Beach Bum
4. Beatnik
5. Biker
6. Brainiac
7. Carnie
8. Cat-Creature
9. Catholic School Dropout
10. Deceptively Square
11. Drag Queen
12. "Exotic"
13. Franken
14. From Outer Space
15. Ghoul
16. Goo Goo Muck
17. Graverobber
18. Grease Monkey
19. Greaser
20. Gun-Toting
21. Hobo
22. Hooker
23. Junior Delinquent
24. Leather-Clad
25. Mod
26. Mutant
27. Pin-Up
28. Psychic
29. Psycho
30. Psychonaut
31. Punk
32. Reefer-Mad
33. Rock'n'rolla
34. Roller Derby Champion
35. Satanist
36. Stiletto-Wearing And Stiletto-Wielding
37. Suburban Escapee
38. Surfer
39. Tattoo-Artist
40. Tiki
41. Trucker
42. Twins
43. Undead
44. Vampire
45. Voodoo
46. Werewolf
47. Witch
48. Witchdoctor
49. Wrestler
50. Zombie

Edit:

nooo, I forgot to put "Cheerleader" on this...

Edit 2:

nooooo, and I forgot to include "From Hell" and "Demonic"!

Nest of the Circuit Roaches - a small sci-fi horror adventure!

I wrote (by hand!!) a small sci-fi horror adventure, Nest of the Circuit Roaches. It takes place on a space station or planetary outpost, and the party is tasked with cleaning out the titular Circuit Roach infestation before the swarm drains all the data & electricity.

It's system-agnostic, OSR in soul, and a good fit for Mothership, Traveller, Stars Without Number.

It's free/PWYW at itch.io!

There are a couple of versions. The main version is the hand-written "pocketmod" booklet. But I also included a typed-up one-page dungeon and some other files and maps for ease of use.

The title came from the wonderful "Generic Room Stocker" by Michael Raston. Great inspirational resource, highly recommended.

Magnum, P.I. + Pulp Cthulhu [Random game idea]

Mustaches vs tentacles on Hawaii! So, yes, just take the basic idea of Magnum, P.I.: it's the 1980s, the group of protagonists are security experts, bodyguards, private investigators (some of them Vietnam vets) etc., who work for a mysterious rich patron (who only communicates through recordings or the trusted estate manager). Initially, their job includes perimeter checks at the mansion, low-key investigative work... but eventually the weirdness ramps up as the mysterious patron's missions become more mysterious and plunge the team into the depths of cosmic madness.

Yeah... just a random game idea for this lazy Saturday afternoon.

I kinda dig the [something + Cthulhu] formula. You know, like Scooby Doo + Call of Cthulhu.

[Secret Jackalope!!] Perils of the Bleak Forest, being a Survivor’s Guide for the Recently Exiled

After the Secret Santicorn, the OSR discord server is doing Secret Jackalope! I requested a random generator of pulpy lost races, and Stefan "The Moth" delivered a set of amazing sci-fi tables. My prompt was from Phlox (author of the blog Whose Measure God Could Not Take), who requested "an in-character description of a monster, from an in-universe monster manual"! This prompt proved to be tricky, because it's more about creative writing than game design... But I did my best, and came up with this Veins in the Earth-like "world building through bestiary", an in-universe survival guide for people who are exiled to a cursed forest covered in volcanic ashes.

Happy Secret Jackalope to everyone!

“Perils of the Bleak Forest, being a Survivor’s Guide for the Recently Exiled”

Grey-barked Crooked Willows

When the thirst becomes unbearable, look for crooked willows with the dark grey bark, for the roots of these abominations reach down into the moist strata of the soil deep under the ashes. Dig deep, and have a vessel ready to capture the drops of life-giving liquid.

Beware, though, that among these trees, some are sentient and thirst not for water, but for the very blood of exiles like you and me. You can tell them apart by the swaying motions of their branches that do not adhere to the blows of the howling winds.

The crooked willow cannot uproot, but the reach of its branches is longer than you expect. They strike with deadly precision, like a whip; then entangle and draw their victim close to their trunk; and then their bark cracks open and the black tendrils desiccate thy body.

Nighthowls

As far as I could establish, the lupine howls that we hear during the darkest nights are not anchored to any body or beast; they are but resonances of the air and murderous intent. When you first hear them, there still might be a chance to flee, but choose the direction wisely. The Nighthowls travel in spirals. If you cannot hear them, they cannot hurt you. But even if just the faintest sound gets through, the mind is flooded with nightmarish visions and never recovers.

Some say the Nighthowls’ victim becomes the eye of the sonic storm from then on, but I do not believe this.

Opaque Beast

Twice the size and thrice the strength of a bear, this fearful monstrosity is in fact one of the lesser perils of the land. It never attacks, unless its eggs are threatened. The Beast’s yellow eyes absorb light – that’s why its appearance is foreshadowed by a fog of dusk. Somewhere in the center of this darkness is the nest of the Beast, where it lays eggs. The obsidian shells hide nutritious yolk, enough to feed three men for three days.

Miscast table: Necromancy!

The necromancy chart might seem tame in comparison to some of my other miscast tables... but the stakes are still high. After all, we are talking about the manipulation of life and death!

Necromancy and life-force altering spells

1. “They are coming to get you, Barbara!” All undead within a [caster level] mile radius learn the whereabouts of the caster and the taste of their bone marrow or blood. They will relentlessly pursue the caster for 2d12 hours.
2. From now on, the caster, although living, can be Turned or commanded as undead by Clerics. When a Turning attempt is made in the character’s presence, they are automatically included in the effect, even if they are not specifically targeted. While Turned, the caster is only able to speak in grunts and beastly growls. This lasts until Remove Curse or Cure Disease is employed.
3. The caster’s life force is drained. Their body desiccates and becomes wrinkled. Hair turns gray or falls out. Character level is unchanged, but 1d2 hit dice are lost. Re-roll hit points with the remaining.
4. The caster’s body becomes dead meat. It starts to decay, cannot heal naturally. Only a Cleric of higher level than the caster can heal them magically. After [caster level] days the caster’s body is revitalized, can heal again, but the effects of putrefaction can only be undone by high-level Clerical magic.
5. The Mark of Undeath! The caster and every living creature in [caster level times 5’] are marked to rise as zombies 24 hours after their death (every living creature, so be prepared for zombie gnats, rainworms and moles as well). The victims are unaware of this fate. The mark is revealed by Detect Evil and erased by Dispel Evil.
6. The flow of necromantic energy corrupts the caster’s natural healing abilities. The next [caster level] times the character rests, subtract the amount they would heal from their maximum hit points.

Suspirian School of Ballet

How about a procedurally generated dungeon (akin to The Gardens of Ynn & The Stygian Library) set in the surreal and murderous dance school of the 1977 Suspiria?

During the day, the Suspirian School of Ballet (or the Chthonic Academy of Choreography?) is a tough place, where you have to put up with the cruelty of the teachers and the other aspiring ballerinas.

But at night... everything changes to even worse. You wake up screaming and sweating in your dormitory, only to find that the building is completely different. Corridors twist into a maze of madness, new rooms or macabre dimensions and unfathomable purposes appear. Unnatural lights shift around, and the curtains sway in the air as thousand phantoms. Shadowy silhouettes on the walls chase after you.

Somewhere in the very heart of this labyrinth is the Source of it all, a terrible, terrible secret... To escape this madness, you must find it and fight it.

Gameplay

Nighttime

Nighttime is crawling the vast labyrinth of the School. Only the Dormitory is fixed. Every night all other locations are generated randomly.

One exclusion: the characters can form a bond to a Nighttime location or encounter, to make it permanent and revisitable. Perhaps it's a dead girl's ghost who wants revenge. Or a hallway where healing water is tricking from the statue of a nymph. This has a cost: any place or entity the characters are bonded to will attract the attention of the unkind forces of the school.

This exclusion mechanic lets the players to define little goals or quests for themselves.

Daytime 

Daytime is downtime. Lick your wounds. Survive the torturous dance lessons. Find new weapons and do research in the library. Nighttime events bleed into the day, and each time you bring back more and more darkness. But perhaps certain Nighttime encounters are solvable from this side (kill the teacher who bullied that girl into suicide?).

Locations

1. "Normal" areas of the School, but twisted by the unkind forces (school rooms, offices, halls, staircases, dance rooms, bathrooms, library, cafeteria, dormitories, storage rooms, small gardens, orangeries...)
2. What was here before the School (Inquisitorial torture rooms, prison cells, dungeons, magic laboratories
3. Nighttime-born areas, lairs of the unkind forces, intrusions from other dimensions

Illumination

One of the strongest visual driving forces of Argento's Suspiria is the use of lush, baroque, unnatural lightning in each scene. I think it's possible to implement this in the game as well.
In each location, the Referee rolls for random illumination. This color influences what events or encounters happen, and how they play out. Some locations or circumstances call for two or more illumination rolls, and the influences bleed together.

1. RED is blood, aggression, death
2. PURPLE is madness and witchcraft
3. GREEN is poison, mutation, sickness
4. YELLOW is pain and torture incarnate
5. BLUE is deception and lies
6. DARKNESS is the Void you wish you could fill with any of the above

Encounters

1. Ghosts of pupils tortured and bullied to death
2. Mean girls
3. Living shadows
4. Phantom force
5. Dancing plague
6. Black-Gloved Killer
7. The Witch

Ideas for Extra Flavor

1. Language of sighs & whispers
2. Blades signal death
3. Spells contained in shards of stained glass

There's a lot to work out here, but at least I jotted down some basic ideas. Emmy Allen's stuff is a constant source of inspiration for me, and so are horror movies, weird fiction... I think this combination could work pretty well.

[Laird Barron] Swift to Chase

Swift to Chase is my favorite Barron collection. It has some weak stories, but I just absolutely love the interconnected narratives concerning the lives and afterlives of Alaskan teenagers. Cosmic slasher horror forever - literally. Time is a flat circle. Jessica Mace is a kick-ass character as well, and I'd love to see more stories about her. Jessica was assaulted by a serial killer, but fought back, shot it, and lived to tell the tale. This episode is a linchpin around which many of the stories revolve, or relate to, in some way.

So let's break this down!

I: Golden Age of Slashing

Screaming Elk, MT -- The opening of the collection is, unfortunately, one of the weaker ones... It's a good introduction to Jessica Mace as a character, but the story itself is a so-so report of her encounter with a haunted traveling circus.

LD50 -- Now this is a good one. The characterizations are great. Gritty and raw. The story and its resolution might not be a groundbreaking idea, but it's good enough and it's only a background for Jessica anyways.

Termination Dust -- A disjointed account beginning with Jessica's encounter with the Eagle Talon Ripper, with some more stuff thrown into it. I think this story really starts to shine when you return to it after finishing the whole collection.

Andy Kaufman Creeping through the Trees -- My favorite Barron story. He does a great job creating a unique voice for the narrator - cheerleader and alpha female Julie V - without it becoming a parody. Then there is high school weirdo / genius / fixer figure Steely J (one of his many "incarnations" throughout the collection). Barron weaves urban legends, Mean Girls, pop culture into a single strain, leading to a most horrific climax... I absolutely love this story.

II: Swift to Chase

Ardor -- This story picks up the Alaska themes, but otherwise I feel it's a bit underwhelming and uninspired. I usually skip it during my Swift to Chase rereads...

the worms crawl in, -- This one is quite a mess! But the mess has certain hypnotic qualities, as the paranoid ramblings and stream of consciousness quickly blow this tale of domestic violence into cosmic proportions - only to collapse back into the mundane?

(Little Miss) Queen of Darkness -- Back to the horrific lives of the Alaskan teenagers of Eagle Talon! We revisit those fateful nights, and see the aftermath, or one of the aftermaths... The account is once again radically divergent from all the others: maybe it's an unreliable narrator, or perhaps what we read is the description of how it all went down in one of the personal pocket hells.

Ears Prick Up -- Given the collection's overall coherence, this story is kind of a weird choice... A piece told form the point of view of a genetically/robotically enhanced combat dog, set in a pseudo-Roman futuristic science fantasy world. At the same time, the title of the whole collection comes from it ("My kind is swift to chase, swift to battle"). This story loosely fits into Barron's pulp / gonzo line of output, it also lines up along stories like "Vastation". And it is a great story in its own right, with the stream of dog-consciousness just driving it forward.

III: Tomahawk

Black Dog -- Barron's stories often have a romantic / existentialist (?) streak. They are about outsiders, damaged people, individuals who don't necessarily fit into society. "Black Dog" is about two of these people going on a date and sort of just clicking? It might sound lame, but actually this is a great short story, almost purely in dialog form, with an eerie horror undertone.

Slave Arm -- "...and begin, again," Barron writes, and once again recounts the story of a party turning into a slasher massacre. I love the enumeration he provides: a 100+ names of everybody who's here: "Your friends are here. Your enemies are here. Everybody you’ve ever slept with is here." After the massacre comes the lengthy period of DEALING with the trauma. Survivor's guilt. Flashbacks. A very strong story, especially in combination with the others in the collection.

Frontier Death Song -- Barron's take on the Wild Hunt motif. Of course, filtered through Alaska, horror and 1980's rock radio. It is a good story, although, weirdly, I don't enjoy the link with the folklore motif much.

Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle -- And finally, one more long account of the various horrific events that befell the Alaskan teenagers. I absolutely LOVE this story. It's such a mad ride, and a perfect final for the collection. Of course, given what we've already learnt, this is just one of the possible outcomes. This story is permeated with the fallout of our favorite Barronian cosmic horror conspiracies, leaning towards slasher / pulp. Clandestine experiments, secret government organizations, Planet X... I get a buzz from reading and re-reading it.

Clive Barker's Undying

Recently, inspired by Noah Gervais' excellent analysis of Clive Barker's games, I've started playing Undying.

There are so many things I love about this game! The atmosphere, the story, the environment design, the journal entries... But at the same time, unfortunately, I'm not really into, uh, actually playing it. It's a very hard game, and I have to reload and retry a LOT. It's survival horror, so resources (like ammo or health kits) are scarce. And I grow tired of it quickly. I usually play at most 20-30 minutes in one go, then take a day-long break..

Also, so far it feels very linear in a way. Of course, the maps are complex, there are many doors and corridors... but ever so often when you want to go through a door where you are not supposed to go at the given moment of the game, it is jammed ("it won't budge," the protagonist announces). And there is lot of backtracking. E.g. early on in the game you have to go out to the garden through a door in the west wing of the building. When you get there, you learn that the key is in the east wing, so you have to backtrack, then explore the east wing. Ugh. Am I spoiled by tabletop RPGs? :)

[Adventure] The Belly of Gargantuel

I had some time on my hand and a surge of creativity, so yesterday I finally put together my notes and ideas for a small weird adventure location.

Behold...

The Belly of Gargantuel

This PDF describes the rotting carcass of a giant sea monster. It can be used as a one-shot, or slotted into an on-going campaign or hexcrawl. Inside, there are three new gross / weird monsters, an insane sailor who made the belly of the beast his home, treasure, and some other things industrious adventurers can profit from.

Gargantuel was a gigantic sea monster (a whale? a prehistoric serpent? the Kraken? Leviathan itself?). She used to roam the high seas, destroying ships and devouring everything. Some of the people she swallowed survived in her belly. One of them, the sailor Torsti Seppänen, actually managed to turn the place into a comfortable habitat.
One day, Gargantuel passed away. Her body now lies out in the open, luring the carrion-eater, the curious, the foolish. Strange creatures and artifacts await in the mounds of decaying flesh, and the insane Torsti Seppänen will do everything to defend his “home” from intruders.

I hope you like it and find it useful. Comments, opinions, suggestions are welcome!!!

[Laird Barron] The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

Overall, this is a very strong collection, and it's the one that really got me into Laird Barron.

Blackwood's Baby --- Hunt goes horrific for this hardboiled (anti-)hero, Luke Honey. The story has some formulaic elements, but they all come together very nicely.

The Redfield Girls --- This is a change from most of Barron's stories, as the protagonists are not gritty pulp men-of-action, but a "close-knit sorority of veteran teachers", who rent a house by a lake. Strange hauntings occur.

Hand of Glory --- One of my favorites in this collection. Back to a Barronian hardboiled narrator, a 1920s mafia hitman, who ends up being the pawn in a war between various occult factions. Barron even ties in Eadweard Muybridge into the conspiracy, to great effect.

The Carrion Gods in their Heaven --- Another good one! Two lovers hole up in a cabin in the woods... but what lurks in the darkness? Once again, Barron takes a formula, but gives it a couple of twists, and ends up with a great story.

The Siphon --- An interesting story, with some imagery lifted from modern techno-thriller, but in the end going back to the occult roots.

Jaws of Saturn --- A very strong story. I like it how many of Barron stories feature similar characters, return to the same locations, but instead of being repetitive, they explore these from different points of view and reinforce the horror. Some of the best apocalyptic imagery in Barron's oeuvre here.

Vastation --- Stream of (cosmic) consciousness! I love this mess of post-apocalyptic sci fi horror something.

The Men from Porlock --- Back to the 1920s; this action story pits a group of lumberjacks against a weird cult (The Children of Old Leech, of course). I once made a hex-map interpretation of this piece. Ties in strongly with Barron's novel, The Croning.

More Dark --- Hard to comment on this one. I like the moody writing, but I don't care about the meta-fiction aspect (this story is about Barron and his horror author mates hanging around at a con, waiting for Ligotti to make an appearance).

[Laird Barron] Occultation & Other Stories

2010

The Forest -- Creepy & crawly, Barron at his best. Also, a good one to go back to from time to time, as it features the recurring mad scientist duo, Toshi and Campbell. Weird science horror with a very personal line.

Occultation -- The title story is actually one I don't care about much. It's not bad, though, two young rebels hanging out in a motel room; eerie horror ensues... Get Gregg Araki to direct!

The Lagerstätte -- An amazing story about loss. Death of a loved one, and how to cope. The imagery of the Lagerstätte (pitch-black mineral deposits) that everything is sinking into keeps haunting me. Reminds me of the "tomb world" from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?...

Mysterium Tremendum -- Enter the Black Guide, the most important tome of eldritch lore in Barron's cosmos. Hiking trip goes w r o n g. "There aren't any goddamned dolmens in this part of the world", yeah, right... Lots of connections with Barron's novel, The Croning.

Catch Hell -- Creepy black magic ritual story. Rosemary's Baby style.

Strappado -- Another favorite, once again proving that the darkness is best conveyed through personal / psychological horror. And another take on the theme of loss, survivor's guilt, and so on.

The Broadsword -- A long, slow-burning story of transformation. The Broadsword is a great locus of the Barronian world, a decrepit hotel building, where weird things happen (of course). It features in several stories.

--30-- -- This is a story about two scientists working in a creepy wilderness area (once a place of cult activity). Can't wait to see the movie adaptation, They Remain!

Six Six Six -- Okay, this is another story I keep forgetting. I wrote up --30-- and published the post, and then realized there's one more entry in the collection... I can barely remember a thing about it. It feels like a faint afterthought to a strong collection. But maybe I just need to re-read it!


Reviews/write-ups by other people:
Stomping on Yeti
Oddly Weird Fiction
Skulls in the Stars

[Laird Barron] The Imago Sequence and Other Stories

Laird Barron is probably my favorite contemporary horror author. I love his style, I love his themes. I devour his works with my gaping maw, or something to that effect. I keep re-reading his collections and novels, hunt down anthologies with his work.

Unfortunately, despite (or due to) my unruly appetite, sometimes I forget which story is in which collection, or mix up titles... Talk about short attention span (although the taste & aftertaste of his stories lingers for long).

Thus, I've decided to go through some of his books and write up my thoughts. Maybe the information will stick better this way.

My first exposure to Barron's work was his third collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, but let's do this in order of appearance instead.

Warning: some spoilers, but I'll try to hide them.

2007

Old Virginia -- For some reason, I'm not too keen on stories featuring military protagonists. Give me a private detective or a mafia hitman anytime, but spare me the officers. This story is covert military ops meets MK ULTRA meets Baba Yaga. A solid story, but not one of my favorites.

Shiva, Open Your Eye -- Told from the viewpoint of an eldritch abomination wearing human flesh. Tons of evocative cosmic horror passages. I read this story as a set up Barron's main recurring entity, the Old Leech... Also, the part when the narrator shows what's in his barn: I envision it as an episode from the Hannibal TV series.

Procession of the Black Sloth -- Oooh, I love this one. A meandering, hallucinatory slow-burner set in Hong Kong. Ennui, decadence, terror. Your mileage may vary, but I love this combination.

Bulldozer -- I didn't care much about this one at first, but it grew on me! The story is based on Barron's favorite theme: hard-boiled hard-knuckled antihero going up against something with terrible consequences. Pulp western horror.

Proboscis -- Meh... Some good details, but this story just doesn't come together. More hard-knuckled dudes (this time in a modern setting), menaced by an unknown (and unknowable) force.

Hallucigenia -- This is the most terrifying story in the collection. There is supernatural horror all right, but the worst part that really gets to you is the simple human terror of looking after a paralyzed loved one. Not for the fainthearted.

Parallax -- I've seen this story get lots of praise. It is intricately woven and masterfully disjointed. But I can't get into it.

The Royal Zoo is Closed -- This is a story I read, then instantly forget.

The Imago Sequence --  Another one of Barron's "tough guy vs. cosmic horror" stories, this time done extremely well. The narrative structure is more traditional, but creepy and hard-hitting nonetheless.





See also the write-ups by oddlyweirdfiction.com for a different take!

[LotFP & the rest] Weirding up Cure Light Wounds?

It can be interesting to take a good ol' spell that everybody knows and uses, and thinking of ways to make it more weird. I mused about Mirror Image recently, so let's take a look at something else.

Cure Light Wounds is a staple Cleric spell in all iterations of D&D and OSR games, the main reason for "bringing the Cleric along", and so on. There are advocates of getting rid of this spell (and other instantaneous healing effects, like health potions, etc.) to facilitate a more perilous, horrific game environment, where hazards are more "real", because you cannot rely on a quick and easy method of getting those meager amounts of HP back.

Now, I was thinking about making healing spells more interesting. My main line of thought is to make them stand out, make them significantly different from "natural healing". A couple of ideas:

1. Healing spells leave weird scars. Geometric patterns. Scabs in the shape of occult sigils. They mark the healed person as an object of witchery.
2. The accelerated supernatural healing process doesn't get rid of foreign objects (arrowhead, bullets, etc.), but incorporates them into the healed person's body. This might lead to medical complications later on...
   So, magical healing as mutation. Turn this up to eleven -- magical healing is body horror! Make sure you drop your weapon, otherwise you risk fusing with it when the Cleric heals you!
3. And generally, subverting magical healing is an awesome way to horrify your players. If you are using Taint or Corruption like mechanics, make magical healing a source of this malevolent effect. 

Hex map interpretation of "The Men from Porlock" by Laird Barron

(click to zoom)

"The Men from Porlock" by Laird Barron is a kick-ass horror tale. Set it 1923, it's about a group of lumberjacks stumble upon a village, seemingly stuck in the past. The villagers worship the Great Dark and the Old Leech and generally do things cultists do in Barron's stories...

I was re-reading it, and mapped it out for fun. 

The story would make a great Call of Cthulhu one-shot, maybe?

Dark Magic in New Orleans: Death on the Bayou

Long time, no post... But that's how it usually goes.

I'm always on the look-out for swampy RPG stuff, and came across an interesting piece, Dark Magic in New Orleans: Death on the Bayou, by Randy Richards, published in Dungeon (#71). It's an adventure for Mask of the Red Death, the 1890s century Ravenloft / Gothic Earth setting.

The players are thrown into the murky waters of voodoo, alligators, and ritual murders.

Marie Laveau

The usual suspects are present: the adventure's background draws heavily on historical Voodoo practitioners such as Marie Laveau and Doctor John, who also seems to be channeling Dr. Curt Connors / Lizard from Spiderman... albeit he relies on dark magic, not science.

I even found an Actual play of this on youtube, by people who can be familiar from the Fantastic Dimensions roster. Ran using LotFP.

Betrayer

There is this tendency, that I tend to play video games mostly during times when I'm SWAMPED with tons of IRL stuff and work... They are a great way to relax and to procrastinate. To write tabletop RPG-related stuff or to play, you need to be able to concentrate more; while computer games can be played for full effect even when tired.

Lately, I've been playing a game called Betrayer.

It's a first-person action/RPG hybrid, set in 17th century Colonial Virginia...

The whole game is presented in grayscale, with red accents. It seems kinda gimmicky, but it really adds to the whole atmosphere. There is an option to colorize the graphics, but I prefer the original b&w world (you can tune the dark & light balance, contrast, so it's not as heavy on the eyes as you would expect).

You fight using period weapons: bows, crossbows, pistols and muskets - these last two deal high damage, but reload times are very long, a nice realistic touch. Usually you only get to fire each gun once per combat...

You slowly work your way through the game world, fighting possessed Spaniards and flaming Savage Braves (this game is 'colonial' in many ways...), investigate clues scattered around the map, try to learn what kind of evil possesses the land. Sometimes you have to enter into the shadow worlds, a dark parallel dimension, which allows you to interact with the flipside of this horrorshow. In this mode, you can cleanse objects and chat with the spirits of the deceased.

Quite an engaging game, overall, so I really recommend it.

[LotFP] Cunning Folk, WIP

The setting document on "A Field in Lorraine" keeps on growing and growing -- one day I will put up the extended version. I keep adding stuff that I find as I go, so right now it's a bit chaotic, but with some editing it can be turned into a supplement that others can use as well.

I like Clerics in fantasy games, but in a 17th century weird horror fantasy they seem a bit out of place. "Divine spells", as described, are too "clean". The modus operandi, so to speak, of Catholic exorcists, Jewish cabbalists (as I see, they are best described as a mix of Magic-Users and Clerics), Protestant witch hunters are very different.

And then there are the Cunning Folk, the practitioners of all sorts of witchery and popular magic. This term, although it originates from English culture, can be used as an "umbrella term" for the entire phenomenon (see the entry on Cunning folk & the literature listing in Wikipedia for starters).

English	cunning folk, wise men and women		French	devins-guérisseurs, leveurs de sorts
German	Hexenmeister, Kräuthexen		Slavic	vedmak
Dutch	toverdokters, duivelbanners		Danish	kloge folk
Italian	benandanti		Spanish	curanderos
Swedish	klok gumma (“wise old woman”), klok gubbe (“wise old man”)		Portuguese	curandeiros, benzedeiros, mulheres de virtude (“woman of virtue”)

Cunning Folk are definitely something I want to include in my Early Modern Weird Europe. That's why I included in the first version of "A Field in Lorraine" various ideas and folk magic spells. But now I think this can be made into a class.

Instead of working from a set spell list, the Cunning Folk would rely on two types of manipulations:

1. "Folk magic", encompassing everything from folk medicine recipes to love charms and various practices to help out "around the house". These "spells" are part of an extensive and very convoluted oral tradition. Christian prayer and pre-Christian beliefs are intermingled. Although they are considered to be tried and trusted, there is only a limited chance that any given superstition or cantrip really has a magical effect.
   
   I included a list of such spells in the first version of "A Field in Lorraine".
   
   
   A great variety of spells can be culled from "Long Lost Friend" (or "Long-Hidden Friend", "Der Lange Verborgene Freund"), a collection of pow-wow spells compiled in the 1820s by the Pennsylvania Dutch healer John George Hohman (see the text here). These practices are clearly based on tradition brought along from Europe; mixed with Christian prayer. Includes three folk variants of Hold Person, "Immobilize a Thief": "How to cause male or female thieves to stand still, without being able to move backward or forward?"
   A great read.
   
   But there is also...
2. Magic done with the help of a Familiar.
   Now this is a very different can of worms. A Familiar spirit is low-tier supernatural entity, a small demon, which assists the practitioner. 

These two types can overlap, and the assistance of a Familiar greatly increases the chance of a traditional folk spell to take effect.

An image of a witch and her familiar spirits taken from a publication that dealt with the witch trials of Elizabeth Stile, Mother Dutten, Mother Devell and Mother Margaret in Windsor, 1579.

There is an eerie passage (Q. 4) in "The Discovery of Witches" by Matthew Hopkins from 1647, in which the familiars of a witch are described. They materialize in vaguely animal forms:

"1. Holt, who came in like a white kitling. 

2. Jarmara, who came in like a fat Spaniel without any legs at all, she said she kept him fat, for she clapt her hand on her belly and said he suckt good blood from her body. 

3. Vinegar Tom, who was like a long-legg'd Greyhound, with an head like an Oxe, with a long taile and broad eyes, who when this discoverer spoke to, and bade him goe to the place provided for him and his Angels, immediately transformed himselfe into the shape of a child of foure yeeres old without a head, and gave halfe a dozen turnes about the house, and vanished at the doore. 

4. Sack and Sugar, like a black Rabbet.

5. Newes, like a Polcat."

I hope I will be able to find time to turn this into something.

Ideally, there should be a nice random table for Familiars (maybe taking ideas from the LotFP Summon spell?); some rules that govern the "working relationship" of the Cunning Folk and their Familiars; and ideas for the GM about "Familiars gone bad".