Structure for a Colonial Horrors Games

The New World is a place of lurking horrors.  Ancient monsters crouch within the primeval forests of eastern America  The Native Americans avoid the swaths of land that are cursed or possessed by spirits that skulk and hunt humanity, but the European settlers of early New England hold no such knowledge and awaken slumbering evils.  And then there's the horrors they bring with them from Old Europe, riding like parasites across the seas, to infect a new land with their blights.

The New World needs monster hunters.

As I think through what a Colonial Horror sandbox could look like, there are some interesting challenges presented by a class and level game like LOTFP or D&D, and the sandbox model.  Why are heavily armed strangers allowed to roam around?  If experience points come from dungeon gold, how is that going to work in a Colonial setting?  What about game balance vs party levels?

I'd probably place such a game around 1650.  The Dutch still hold New York, English settlement is thriving in Massachusetts, and there's intense competition with French fur traders coming out of Quebec and Montreal.  I like the idea of an English authority figure - perhaps the aide of a governor - writing home to hire a band of Old World monster hunters to help bolster the colonies.  The campaign begins with the player's ship of passage pulling into Boston harbor or Plymouth.  The characters, at the start of the game, are just as "new" to the New World as the players themselves.  It seems to be a great way to avoid a pre-game info-dump and let the setting unfold naturally through play and exploration.

It also accounts for why a heavily armed band of miscreants is wandering from village to village, with papers from the governor, that let them seek out and prosecute creatures of evil and haunts of the night, Solomon Kane style.  Should they be called 'witch hunters'?  I'm not terribly interested in doing Salem the RPG, though I suppose some stance on historical witch craft is required by the setting.  It could go a lot of ways.

How about levels, experience, and danger?  I'm thinking of flattening the danger curve, so the sandbox is filled with a range of potential horror scenarios of similar (dangerous) levels - like all the adventures are suitable for character levels 1-5.  The horror referee should be indifferent to player survival, as long as the scenarios are developed such that players can succeed in resolving a situation with methods beyond straight combat.  Running and regrouping is often the best tactic in a horror game!  Because the danger level is high, the rewards would be equally large.  It'd feel a lot different than the typical fantasy game, where low level characters mug goblins for their copper pieces at sword point, and hold the kobolds upside down to shake coins out of their pouches.

One necessary addition might be something like a henchman or inheritance rule.  The lethality for beginning characters could be high.  The rewards would be good enough such that survivors will quickly level up in an old school system.   A mechanism for henchman or beneficiaries to step in for dead characters would get the job done.  Maybe I shouldn't worry about it.

There's a poll going on right now, regarding which setting sounds more interesting for horror - Gothic Yorkshire or early America.  England has ruined castles and monasteries, and mist shrouded creepy moors.  Now I've given myself an interesting direction regarding how a Colonial game could look - exorcists and monster hunters from the Old World, traveling to the colonies to stalk the horrors of the New.

Alien Races for the Weird Horror Sandbox

Here's more work from my continuing exploration of Silent Legions - some sample alien races.  The book is targeted at helping the referee brainstorm, build, and run a modern-day Lovecraftian sandbox, but I'm going to use the material for something in the 17th century - either Colonial America or Gothic Yorkshire.  I went into the process knowing that I wanted to do something that reflected themes of folklore.  I'm calling the alien races "angels", "faeries", and "devils", although those tags were just to help guide some of the idea creation.  I'm pretty happy with how the book has been helping the development.

Race 1 - Angels

The "angels" are ethereal beings that have lingered on the earth since the prehuman past.  The earth-bound angels are exiles from their own species- perhaps from a crashed vessel from elsewhere in the galaxy.  They can possess humans as vessels and thus pass through human society perfectly disguised.  A handful of relics or artifacts from human lore and mythology are eldritch weapons from the time of the fall.  They've influenced human civilizations through the creation of organized religions, and they once controlled entire empires before they were actively hunted by the other alien races.  These days they focus on controlling small cabals and secret societies within human institutions, remaining aloof from the other alien races that hunt them.  They are Machiavellian in nature, admiring treachery in their human minions and controlling them through blackmail.

In their natural state, angels look like gaseous wisps of glowing white light, with many spider-like arms waving in the air (giving a vague appearance of wings).  Angel-possessed humans have great strength.  Open questions:  there is a terrestrial element that is quite deadly to them (what is it)?  And what are they doing here in the campaign area - perhaps a lone angel-possessed human (a captain of industry) is performing salvage operations to recover some vital mineral or ancient relic.

Race 2 - Faeries

The Fey are a gruesome, amphibian race that lives in caves and dwellings in fresh water.  In their natural form, they look like giant toads with a humanoid torso and head instead of a toad head.  Their skin is translucent and they have large over-sized heads.  If killed, their forms melt away, and their underwater structure dissolve away if left unattended, leaving little or no evidence.  The Fey have influenced human DNA and inadvertently activated psychic (or clerical) powers in humans through abductions and guided breeding.  They view humans like lab animals fit only for experimentation.

The Fey are divided into 'courts' and most of their energy is directed at avoiding treachery from within.  They use mind-control technologies to project glamours that hide their true forms from human sight, but folklore-myths like the nuckalevee, water horse, drowning fairy, or Rawhide Rex point to a deeper truth.  The Fey have accumulated vast mineral wealth in their underwater cities.  They still abduct humans and keep human slaves for debased entertainments.

Race 3 - Diaboli

The Diaboli are a cthonic race that escaped an alternate dimension - a place known to humans as Hell, Limbo, or Pandemonium.  Their activities are focused on cleaning up evidence of their presence on earth, and preventing incursions from their former masters (one or more of the elder gods in the pantheon).  Humans are disgusting and loathsome to them, but the Diaboli have taught sorcery to discrete individuals and train such humans to assist in keeping their presence on earth a secret.  Knowledge of the true nature of the universe is their greatest strength, and they wage a shadow war against the other aliens on earth (and the baleful influence of the elder gods).

The diaboli admire secrecy and deceit, striking at their enemies from the darkness.  Their gross appearance limits their influence over humanity, outside of the bizarre cultists and mad wizards who heed their fevered whispers or make 'deals' with them for knowledge and power.  Their physical form is that of a legless crawler with skeletal, telescoping arms and hands, and a circular mouth like a bladed maw.  They're able to burrow through the earth, and defend themselves with a poison stinger (in addition to their prodigious mastery of sorcery and magic).

A Pantheon for a Weird Horror Campaign

I decided a cool project this winter would be to work on a weird-horror sandbox style campaign.  Some of the ideas in a recent kickstarter, Silent Legions, inspired me to pick up with blogging again.  Silent Legions is explicitly based in the modern day, but I'll be using the sandbox creation ideas for a historical game featuring the LOTFP rules.  I'm not 100% sure on the setting, but I'm leaning towards Colonial America (mid-17th century, maybe 1650?) or Gothic Yorkshire, an area to which I'm inexplicably drawn.  Looking below, I think I can make the pantheons work in either locale.

I thought it would be fun to give the mythos some overtones of European folklore and Judeo-Christian mythology - many of the eldritch beings and alien races have been confused with demons, angels, faeries, that kind of stuff.  I'm starting with the pantheon.  There are two groups of elder beings - a loosely associated collection of demons, and then a handful of independent gods.  For now I'm making four of each.  These are just the briefest of sketches - they'll get developed further as I add alien races, cults, artifacts associated with them, etc.  I'm going to elaborate the pantheon organically as other setting elements come together.

The Demon Pantheon
The traits of the demon pantheon are "maltheistic and relics".  They are carryovers from an earlier reality, and are completely malevolent towards humans.  I'm thinking the beings of the demon pantheon are outsiders, originating beyond the world in another dimension, which has been confused or conflated with Hell through the ages (I'm going call it Hell until I get around to creating the alternate dimensions).  They are creatures of spirit that can only manifest in the physical world through possession of a vessel.  Here are the first four of them:

Descriel, Purple Seer of the 9th Circle
This being sits immobile in the frozen center of Hell, contemplating the heat-death of the universe.  It's portfolio is thirst, cold, and deprivation.  I imagine that mad wizards and sorcerers have been found in their sanctums, frozen solid, after reaching out to Descriel and failing in their ability to handle the contact.

Naziel, Murderous Arm of Torment, Prince of Malady
Naziel is a brutish demon of destruction.  It reeks of steaming jungles and the stench of blood.  It commands an army of lesser beings, and is frequently represented in stone idols as a blend of humanoid and bestial features.

Ohaniel, the Voracious Autarch
Ohaniel manifests as a spirit that possesses its cultists, turning them ravenous and insatiable.  Maybe those touched and abandoned by Ohaniel continue on as cannibals, like the wendigo myth.  The entity is associated with rage, hunger, and death.

Osetsopez the First Serpent, Crimson Dragon of Ruin
All of the primordial myths have snakes, dragons, and serpentine beasts of chaos, echoes of the first serpent.  Osetsopez is an agent of ruin and corruption, stalking the cities of men in borrowed flesh to foment destruction through war and vice.

The Independent Gods
There are four independent beings, not associated with the infernal pantheon.  Gnot and Bondaena are physical beings in the world, while Kehotek is a spirit of the barren wastes, and Kentharlzola descends from the depths of space.

Gnot the Sublime, Many Faced Destroyer of Worlds
Gnot is an embryonic being from the depths of space, crashed on earth in Neolithic times and regaining its power slowly over geologic time.  Its egg sac appears like a black, leathery geode, and has been steadily growing through the millennia.  If I place the campaign in England, Gnot is the being within the Black Cyst that lies in the depths of Harrow Home Manor.

It's traits are "immanent and wounded", and its portfolio is silence and pain.  Things to think about!

Kehotek the Sevenfold Seer, Opener of the Blind Gate
Kehotek is "indifferent and dissociated" and associated with visions and parasites.  I'm going to attach various cults of transcendence to Kehotek.  Cultists of Kehotek seek to transcend reality through mysticism and visions.  They infect themselves with progressively more disgusting parasites to achieve gnosis with Kehotek.  It grosses me out just thinking about the 'divine' worm infestations carried around by the cultists.

Kentharlzola, Winged Speaker of Flames
Kantharlzola is a deity woven through Middle-Eastern myths and the folklore of the deserts.  It is the phoenix, the efreet, the winged salamander, the fiery Ahura.  Contact with Kentharlzola is capable of imparting wisdom and knowledge of magic at the cost of years of life; cultists of the phoenix are withered beyond their years.

Bondaena the Hollow Sea, Anvil of Life
Bondaena is a monstrous leviathan in the ocean depths.  It is a forerunner of the life still yet to come on earth, protean and changeable.  It is a harbinger of mutation and disease.

Like I said, I expect these to change as I add other pieces to the setting.  I'll come up with better names, and elaborate the beings as I create some of the alien races, cults, and artifacts.  The tables in Silent Legion were fairly helpful in directing my imagination and brainstorming.  We'll see how it goes next week when I start developing some alien races.

Note:  I'm going to add a quick poll around what sounds more interesting for a horror-themed sandbox - Colonial America or Gothic Yorkshire.

The Twilight Zone Sandbox… with Pirates

Earlier in the week, Talysman over at the Nine and Thirty Kingdoms mused how the old Twilight Zone episodes were like mini weird tales, featuring a strange or horrific twist at the end.  It got me to thinking how easy it would be to 'file off the serial numbers' and use the weird element from the episodes for a short game situation.

I've been spending a lot of time here thinking out loud about Arthur, and Britain, and Feudal Japan, but I never really stopped kicking around ideas for a Colonial or Caribbean themed game (Goblins of the Spanish Main?) with privateers or buccaneers in the 1600's, and I'm slowly building out notes for using it for a setting - I have a kick-off adventure for the campaign already outlined.  If I were to build a Caribbean saltbox/sandbox area, could some of the encounters use weird twists inspired by the excellent writing from The Twilight Zone?

So that was the experiment - I scanned only the first 10 or so episodes of The Twilight Zone season 1 (which I had watched earlier this year) and picked out a few where I got an immediate hit on an adventure hook to see if the idea would work as a weird vignette in a nautical sandbox.  Consider there are over 150 episodes to mine for inspiration!

Here are some ideas:

Mr Denton on Doomsday
This is the episode where the two gunfighters confront each other, and realize they're both using the same steady-hand / speed elixir from the snake oil salesman; there's also a theme of fate intervening.

Sandbox:  A patron is obsessed with finding an old hermit in the mountains of Hispaniola to learn the secret of finding the legendary crystal skull, lost oracle of the Maya.  The one-armed hermit offers dire warnings about seeking the relic and receiving its visions, but the group sets off for the Yucatan coast, avoiding Spanish forts to land on the deserted coast and hunt for the crumbling Mayan ruin.  The group guides the patron to the chamber of the skull, and the patron loses his hand in a gruesome way, just like the old hermit, a heavy price for consulting the pagan oracle.

Escape Clause
This one involved a hypochondriac guy who makes a deal with the devil for immortality, but then gets life in prison for the murder of his wife.

Sandbox:  A timid man who became immortal and then turns into a daredevil / thrill seeker makes for an interesting recurring character - he's long since bored and his death-wishes constantly endanger everyone around him.  He may start out like a 'normal man' sailor who always seems to come out of scrapes okay, no matter how dangerous the assignment for which he volunteered.  The only thing that frightens him is the prospect of captivity - life in jail, in fact.

The Lonely
A convict consigned to a distant planet falls in love with an android.  His rescuers shoot the android in the head when they come to get him.

Sandbox:  Marooning and madness are fantastic pirate themes.  This vignette involves finding a castaway that doesn't want to leave the island without his "wife", although the players can't find any evidence of her during the day.  Wifey only shows up in the dark of night, when it's time for her to feed - and she doesn't want her "husband" taken away from her, either.

Time Enough At Last
Poor Burgess Meredith is finally left alone with all those books, only his glasses break.

Sandbox:  This one made me think of the The Curse of the Black Pearl, that first Jack Sparrow movie - the theme involves wanting something really bad, paying a heavy price to get it, and then not being able to enjoy it once you have it through irony - like the pirates claiming the cursed Aztec gold.  I could riff off a similar theme around wish fulfillment.

Judgment Night
This was the u-boat captain who wakes up on board a merchant ship, and keeps relieving a u-boat attack from the other perspective.

Sandbox:  My first thought was to have an exploring group discover a careened ship, and a broad trail leading to a nearby fort where the crew has set up defenses; they urge the party to join them in the defense, because some horrible pirates will be attacking soon.  As clues pile up, the party realizes their fellow defenders were all vicious pirates themselves, now strangely humbled; perhaps only the pirates can see and experience the ghostly attackers?  I don’t know yet, just thinking out loud, but I like the thought of simulating what it would be like to get pulled into someone else's nightmare.  In fact, all of the defenders are phantoms.  The party spent the evening in the company of ghosts consigned to relive the hellish horrors they themselves inflicted on others, after they were cursed by a powerful Obeah woman murdered on their last raid.

Buccaneers in the Time of Dragons

Lately my reading into colonial history has taken me to the 17th century Caribbean basin, and the rise of buccaneers, and later pirates.  One striking component, as you read about the life stories of notorious buccaneers and pirates, is how their rise to glory or infamy parallels the murder hobo career of characters from D&D or your favorite retro clone™.  They start out as poor fighting men, usually ex-hunters or military, who turn to raiding to earn a better life.  Early success wins them a ship, and as their name grows, more and more men flock to their banner and they become capable of launching larger raids - sometimes with multiple ships or small armies of buccaneers, eventually sacking major towns and forts.  In the twilight of their career, they take their fortunes and retire to governorships,  plantations, or high stations in the military - or they're killed in action.  It's a 50-50 proposition.

The issue I see with such a campaign arc in D&D is that it doesn't handle large scale combats very well, and certainly not if characters are just low level participants.  I imagine smaller raiding and boarding actions can be handled tactically, using the standard rules, but it would become unwieldy once more than 50 or so combatants per side are engaged.

If you were to go outside of D&D to borrow ideas from a system that handled ship-to-ship combat, chases, boarding actions, and similar aspects of high seas action, what would it be?  I also think it beneficial to shift the scale as appropriate; perhaps the distance-based combat ship-to-ship starts abstract, but when the ships reach boarding range, play moves from a strategic scale to a tactical scale and the players resolve the remainder of the combat using standard rules.

I'm not averse to looking at Sci Fi either, I imagine a starship-based game could have similar issues where the combat needs to shift from ship-to-ship combat to personal combat.  Not everyone can be the captain, after all.  I might be missing some game approaches that handled transitions and troupe play.

Incidentally, following the muse a bit, I've been sketching notes for a short horror scenario in colonial waters that involves a derelict Spanish vessel drifting along the coast.  Was it part of one of the famed treasure fleets, lost in a storm, or is something else at play?  The adventure hook is being asked to join a merchant's expedition, either out of Jamestown (to the north) or up from the Bahamas, to find and recover the derelict after it was spotted by a vessel just making port; adventurers are needed for the kind of fighting and exploration of which the regular sailors are ill-prepared.  Although it's free form, some of the potential encounters involves French pirates, native villages along the coast, and a dark horror from the Mesoamerican hinterland.  It's shaping up to be great fun. But it's got me thinking again how an actual saltbox type campaign might be played out.

Picking the Next Setting

I've had a setting project on and off for over a year now called the Black City - most long time readers have come across Black City posts, I'm sure - and I'm expecting to send some adventurers into the Black City sometime in the next few weeks, hopefully after we wrap up the current Cthulhu scenario.  The Black City is a mix of Vikings and science-fantasy and Lovecraftian aliens in the frozen north.  It's got plenty of weird stuff, but one thing I miss is the classic gothic horror elements that don't quite fit.  Furthermore, I've been searching for something that would work well in the 17th century (1620's or so) as an early modern setting for D&D style adventures, but with a splash of guns and rapiers instead of heavy plate and battle axes.  So while the Black City moves into active play, I'm about ready to add a second project to the queue where ideas that don't fit into the Black City campaign have a place to go.  If my Black City pace is any indication, this next setting will be ready to play around 2014 (kidding, I hope).

The early modern  has a different set of challenges than the microcosmic "points of light" trope in a purely fantastic setting.  It's a populous age with more long distance travel and potentially less space for monsters; depending on the approach, it likely requires more than hastily sketching out the home town village and the local dungeon filled with orcs and goblins.  I'm going to step through some of the ideas I've been considering and point out my view of the challenges.  Maybe even the dear readers can help me choose.

Library of De La Torre
The idea here was that a famous adventurer in the mold of Solomon Kane has recently passed away, bequeathing a library or journal to the party at the start of the campaign.  During his career, this adventurer had explored dungeons and tombs and combated horrors in the dark corners of Europe, but much of the treasure was still left behind.

Opportunity:
The library is a platform to do an info-dump, seeding a target rich environment, since the players would get leads to various adventuring sites right at the campaign start and could engage in a highly player-driven campaign.  Contrasted to the typical micro-sandbox, I was calling it a "wide area sandbox".

Issues:
Would require wide-area maps of 17th century Europe created, high level background on many areas of Europe during the 30 years war, and systems to facilitate mundane travel, staying at inns, and so on, including how to keep travel interesting.  Too much historical research is a risk.  A dozen or so one-page dungeons for distant adventuring sites would be needed.

Colonial Hex Crawl
Reading some accounts of Dutch New York and French-Canadian fur traders from Montreal got me thinking how early 17th century America was basically a dangerous hex crawl to the European explorers.  The concept here would be to sketch out a few Dutch settlements and trading posts as home bases, and build a sprawling hex crawl that covers New York through the Great Lakes - a blend of wilderness and Iroquois and Algonquin territory and competing nations and traders.

Opportunity:
American folklore and mythology is underrepresented in gaming materials and there's a great chance here to build out a horror mythology in the new world similar to Lovecraft or Stephen King, just placed much earlier in the country's history.  Plus I live right in the area these days.

Issues:
Hex crawling can be inherently dull.  The exploration challenges of traveling by canoe, portaging from river to river or past waterfalls, camping, seeking out new settlements for trade and negotiation, seem much more exciting in my head than I think they would play out on the table; there's great risk here in building a campaign solely around such a hex crawl.  Meanwhile, traditional dungeons would be unusual in the new world - although I can envision some strange cave complexes like in the story, The Mound.

Telecanter has been putting up a lot of interesting travel "mini-games" for creating resource challenges during a hex crawl, and small systems like that could be created to make basic travel by canoe a little more interesting than purely narrative.

Goblins of the Spanish Main
This idea started as an example of how a non-standard setting (in this case, island hopping during the age of piracy) could be adjusted to fit the tropes of D&D despite the assumptions of the game.  It got some interest in the comments and ways were identified to manage a few of the problems with being part of a ship's crew, so I'm bringing it back here for more discussion.

Opportunity:
D&D never has enough pirates.  Or ninjas.

Issues:
I've given zero thought to placing a megadungeon in the Caribbean, although going with a 'lost Atlantis' angle might be interesting, or making it related to the fantastic ruins and mythology of Mesoamerica (or both).  Systems to support the swashbuckling flavor could be developed - shipboard combat and swinging on ropes, fighting in the rigging, that kind of stuff.

Harrow Home Manor
Harrow Home is a crumbling manse on the Yorkshire moors, on a remote heath of northeast England.  It's the center of a small gothic sandbox in England (as opposed to placing it in Transylvania or central Europe) and the dungeons would be home to factions of treacherous wizards and undead sorcerers competing over arcane lore.  An ancient sleeping god akin to one of Lovecraft's "great old ones" slumbers beneath the moors, awaiting the time it's reawakened by the cultists to spread death and madness across the world.

Opportunity:
This is the closest to the traditional D&D sandbox - a limited sized region, a small set of villages, abbeys, and coastal towns, and a rugged interior surrounding the titular megadungeon ruin.  What makes this megadungeon "different" is the number of treacherous, insane, wizards and cultists that haunt the cavern depths beneath the old ruins, drawing inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft, CAS, and similar authors.

Issues:
D&D is fairly well-suited for this type of setting, I don't see any major issues.

So there you have it - those are the different ideas bouncing around Beedo's head.  The funny thing is, none of these are exclusive - I could develop my own vision of a "Gothic 17th Century" and place all four of these campaign ideas in the same world over time - so it's really just a question of what to develop first.  Someone on the LOTFP message board mentioned that War Hammer Fantasy uses a dark/fantastic version of early modern Europe, so I'm thinking I should check that out some time for ideas as well - they recommended WFRP 1E.

Seems like a good time for a poll, too - which of these settings would be interesting to read about?  Or drop a note in the comments.  Thanks!

The Spreaders - a Menace for the Colonial Hexcrawl

I've had a busy couple of weeks at work, so blogging is taking a bit of a back seat.  However, we got the Trail of Cthulhu game started last weekend (a report is forthcoming); I've managed to get in some reading for the Colonial Hex Crawl idea; I'm still plugging away on the Black City, currently mapping and detailing The Black City's Tower of Pain.  All fun stuff.

This creature, the Spreaders, gives me great hope in the potential of the Colonial Hex Crawl.  They're dismissed as a rumor, a child's tale to scare hunters and trappers into avoiding pristine campgrounds while plying the waterways in the rich forests of western New York.  There are stretches of river and shorelines that have an evil reputation, and woe to the foreigner who ignores the warnings of a native guide or dismisses Indian tales out of hand.

The Spreaders are small faeries that emerge from their subterranean burrows at night to drag off unwary trespassers.  In concert, a number of these diminutive sprites can cast a powerful sleep spell, ensuring that no sentry or guards disturbs them as they trundle off a victim into the night.  When the victim finally awakens from their enchanted sleep, they'll discover they've been spread eagled on the ground, their arms and legs firmly bound with vines.  Sticks are wedged to keep each finger splayed, the legs spread apart, eyes propped open with twigs, and mouth wedged apart with wood.  It's quite likely a search party would walk right past a victim, covered in dirt and leaves (but for the eyes), or hidden in a bramble, unable to make a sound or move.

Victims that stumble into the spreader's domain usually do so at the end of a long day of river travel, making camp at a tempting spot just as dusk settles over the river.  Had they performed a more detailed search before dark, they might have discovered a nearby hollow filled with the cast off belongings of previous victims; the rotting remains of canoes and boats stretching back years and decades molder into rot where the Spreaders carried and hid them.  Here and there in the nearby woods are skulls and bones of past victims that unwisely camped near these dark faeries.  And below ground, deep in their diminutive tunnels and warrens, the Spreaders wait for the next evening.

The Spreaders - Malicious Forest Sprites
AC as chain, MV 6, HD 1/2, Atk 1 spell, see below, ML 7, AL C, No appearing (3-18)

Every 5 Spreaders acting together can cast a sleep spell once per day that induces a deep, magical slumber.  10 Spreaders can carry a sleeping victim off into the nearby forest and "spread" them in a secluded spot to die alone.  Abandoned victims lose a point of temporary wisdom per hour due to horror (minimum score 3) and die in 2-3 days from exposure and thirst.

The spreaders don't collect treasure, but the nearby woods usually have a spot where the belongings and canoes of previous victims are dragged and hidden, so there might be incidental treasure in the canoe graveyard.

*The art is from the Fiend Folio (the Forlarren, by Russ Nicholson). The spreaders are from an Abenaki ghost story retold in When the Chenoo Howls, a collection of eastern Native American monster tales.  For children.

Launching the Colonial Hex Crawl

After a positive reception to Monday's post on a 'colonial hex crawl', I started sketching out the ideas this week for it, and I'm really warming to the idea as a mini-project.

I like hex crawls that involve mostly human encounters, because of the wide open possibilities for negotiation and parley in lieu of fight, fight, fight.  The American wilds in the early 17th century had a scattering of frontier forts and trading posts of the Dutch and French, colonies for the Dutch, English, and Swedish, and larger French settlements in Quebec and Montreal.  The native Algonquin and Iroquois populations are both allies and antagonists, and the two nations themselves were made of tribes that competed with each other.  I'm envisioning a wilderness where common encounters could involve patrols of soldiers associated with a fort; fur trappers; traders and merchants; natives of many types - farmers, hunters, traders, and warriors; various Christian missionaries - English Protestant or French Catholic.

The frontier suggests a portable alternate to the gold piece economy - animal furs and pelts were the major currency between Europeans and the natives.  There are plenty of sources that lay out the value of beaver pelts vis-à-vis common goods.  Returning home with stacks of pelts instead of gold pieces and gems is flavorful.

It's easy to map standard classes to period archetypes - fighters and specialists are soldiers, hunters, trappers, outdoorsman, and native guides; clerics are missionaries or native shaman; magic users represent witches, warlocks, and hermetic scholars that have engaged with the dark powers.  (They should probably stay away from Plymouth, or Salem.)  I don’t have strong opinions on the demi human classes, yet, but will probably make them Old World rarities or isolated throwbacks.

Okay, great, I have an idea to make an early modern period work as a frontier hex crawl - what makes it over the top?

The exciting bit is to create an American horror mythos that works for the older period - something like Lovecraft's New England or Ramsey Campbell's Severn Valley, but set in 1630 and heavily flavored with Native American folklore.  The mundane challenges of foreign nationals and hostile natives contrasts with exploring the wilderness and discovering slumbering monsters and awful gods.  Meanwhile, the colonists and traders themselves bring their own civilized horrors with them - the curses of vampirism or lycanthropy cross the ocean with the colonists, escaping into the wilds and preying on peoples not accustomed to dealing with them.  Those two themes - "modern" people encountering ancient horrors in the wilds, and "native" people dealing with the blight of civilization - that's what makes it really interesting for me.


*The awesome Wendigo interpretation is by Monkey Paw on deviant art