Convicts Have Broken Loose!

Convicts & Cthulhu has just been released for download via RPGNow: you can grab yourself a copy by following this link. You can also find the promo text there, describing the Convicts & Cthulhu setting and what’s contained in the book.

The lavishly illustrated 96-page sourcebook is available entirely for free … although if you really wish to pay for it, you can make a small donation (whatever you like) to assist with the costs of keeping new Cthulhu Reborn content coming. We’ve enabled this “pay-what-you-want” approach because several folks over on YSDC violently objected to the idea of grabbing this book entirely for free :). Please don’t feel any obligation to donate — it’s purely there as an option if you are feeling especially generous.

[In case it isn’t obvious: you can download the file without paying a cent simply by entering zero dollars in the Pay-What-You-Want box and proceeding to the checkout.]

We have also created a fillable PDF version of the Convicts & Cthulhu character sheet (using the same Autocalc code used in Chaosium’s fillable PDF sheets). See the link below!

  Convicts & Cthulhu era sheet for Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition (US Letter, 2 sided, with autocalculation) [NB: For use with Adobe Reader or Acrobat ONLY]

We hope that you have many hours of convict-filled mayhem as you explore the depraved and corrupt world of the early Australian prison colonies! Horrors of all flavours lurk just around every corner … none so terrifying as the vast swearing vocabulary of the irascable Governor Bligh. Believe me.

 

A Rum Bunch

This is our final “teaser” posting ahead of the release of Convicts & Cthulhu (which is still planned for sometime around June 1). This time around I thought I would provide a bit of an overview of exactly what era is covered in the book, and also what type of game resources we have included.

On the topic of exactly what constitutes the Convicts & Cthulhu “era” … while the era of convict transportation to the colonies of Australia covered quite a broad historical period (all the way from 1788 until the 1840s), we have chosen to concentrate on a much more specific time period, namely 1795-1810. This isn’t an arbitrary decision, but one made based on the fact that some rather unique events and alarming themes prevalent in this era make it an especially good setting for tales of darkness and evil.

While there is a wealth of description in Convicts & Cthulhu, the early days of penal settlement in Australia can be summarised as an initial well-meaning plan which ran off the rails. Despite the fact that the entire idea of a prison settlement meant life was supposed to be hard (for the convicts at least) the first Governor of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip, was actually a somewhat enlightened and sympathetic man who aimed to run things as fairly as possible. Sadly, his tenure was cut short due to illness, leaving the colony somewhat unexpectedly in 1795. The speed of his departure created a problem … no successor had been appointed by the Colonial Office in Britain, thus the responsibility of running things fell to the heads of the military unit created to be gaolers to the convicts, the New South Wales Corps. As noted in the previous blog posting, these men were not especially capable and certainly not as highly principled as the departing Governor … so they did what any self-interested group would do when handed the power of government. They abused it, to make themselves extraordinarly wealthy.

The main way in which the corruption of the New South Wales Corps manifested was in their monopolistic practices and in particular the way in which they insisted on controlling the importation (and also price) of Rum, a popular commodity and trade good. Owing to a lack of coinage in the early colony, Rum was also a commodity that was used as a de facto currency, so controlling its price meant that the military could basically manipulate the “Rum Economy” to their benefit. The practice was not condoned by the Colonial Office back in England, who sent out a series of official Governors charged specifically with cracking down on this practice; but like any good cartel, the New South Wales Corps weren’t going to give up their cash cow without a fight. In the end this rising tension — inflamed by the extraordinary abrasiveness of Governor Bligh — led to actual insurrection, the military coup which is today called the “Rum Rebellion” of 1808. It wasn’t until order was restored two years later that things started on a more predictable and reasonable march towards Australia’s colonies becoming fully-fledged “civilised settlements.”

But who wants to set their tale of dark deeds and madness from beyond the stars in a time of law and order when there’s a decade of corruption and lawlessness on offer? Hence our decision to focus on this part of Australia’s convict history …

Before I sign off, I also wanted to share some information about what we have included in the 96 pages of Convicts & Cthulhu and how you might use it to kickstart a Convict era campaign. Here’s the Table of Contents:

As you’ll note we have tried to include all the normal sorts of things you might find in a Call of Cthulhu sourcebook, adapted for the setting … (so  much less focus on musty old tomes and libraries, and much more on eerie and remote places which have remained untouched since the dawn of time). We’ve deliberately aimed to support lots of different investigator roles — sure, some people will love to play convicts, but you can also play guards or settlers. Or if you are really adventurous you can also play an Aboriginal investigator. The book includes one complete scenario and six detailed scenario seeds (sort of like “Tales of Terror” from The Unspeakable Oath; horrific situations with multiple different Mythos explanations). There exists a much more epic Convicts & Cthulhu scenario, but that will appear in a later publication …

Of course, once Convicts & Cthulhu is in your hands we would also love to see other people contribute to the setting — the book will be released (like most things here on Cthulhu Reborn) under a Creative Commons license, so you can do whatever you like with it as long as you don’t ask for money.

Anyway … back to creating the last few pieces of art for Convicts & Cthulhu … watch this space for a download link in the near future!

 

Genesis of the Convicts

Good news on the Convicts & Cthulhu front — layout is nearing completion, which means that we now have a final page count for the book. It will be a 96 page freebie, making it the most ambitious project we have undertaken (either free or paid). There’s still some work to be done redrawing maps etc, so I am still estimating a release date around June 1.

Given that it’s going to be out pretty darned soon, I figure I should provide a few more details about what this book aims to cover and how it come into existence. While I would love to be able to say that it was my brilliant idea to write something about the dark dealings of the Cthulhu Mythos in the convict colonies of Australia, that would be a complete fabrication. In fact it was Geoff Gillan who first approached me with the idea when I was running a project to create a book of Call of Cthulhu scenarios set in unusual eras of Australia’s short but lurid history. Geoff has a university degree in history, so he is always surprising me with amazing things about the past — in this case his first suggestion was to create a scenario or campaign revolving around the Rum Rebellion of 1808.

Now … for those of you who aren’t that familiar with the early history of Australia, let me summarise the fairly dark and scurrilous circumstances which led to the first European settlement on the Australian continent. It all came about because of two things that happened in the 1770s — the first was the discovery by England of the surprisingly fertile eastern coast of Australia; the second was the rather unsporting decision taken by Britain’s colonies in America that they would (thank you very much) really prefer to be independent. The first was important because until then the only parts of the Australian landmass that Europeans had encountered were not the sort of places they were enthusiastic about colonising. The second was important because the loss of the British colonies in America meant the end of the practice of transporting convicted criminals to serve sentences in America (a system that had proved successful in alleviating some of the crowding in London’s slums as well as removing “undesirables” from England althogether).

With the discovery of the fertile eastern coastline (dubbed “New South Wales” by Cook, its discoverer), Britain had a ready-made spot where it could continue to export all its less-than-upstanding citizens that fell afoul of the law. There are a number of common misconceptions about transportation: one is that those who were sent out to the Australian colonies were the very worst of the criminals. In fact, criminals who were convicted of *really* bad things like murder were much more likely to simply be executed in Britain … those who were sent out to Australia were more like petty thieves, those convicted of prostitution, or similar crimes. But this still constituted a very large number of rather shady characters. Another misconception is that everyone who came to the early Australian colonies was a criminal — in fact, right from the beginning the convict population only comprised about a third of the people in the colony. There were many, many military gaolers and almost as many free settlers (folks who saw the new colony as a chance to farm the land).

In setting up the early colony, one of the hardest things was trying to find people who wanted to serve as its military gaolers. After all, the chance of being sent halfway around the world to look after a bunch of reprobate criminals was hardly the kind of assignment that many people would find an excellent career move. So, as a result the calibre of military personnel that came to serve in that capacity — forming the now-infamous New South Wales Corp — were not the most decorated of soldiers. In fact, most of them were only marginally less corrupt than the people they were guarding (and in many cases had been assigned the job as a punishment for some misdeed, often desertion).

All this created a rather unusual kind of environment … isolated, filled with degenerate people, and perched on the tip of a continent about which Europeans knew almost nothing. This is fertile fuel for tales of lurid depravity, dark deeds, and horrific encounters. In short, an environment well suited to being backdrop for a Call of Cthulhu story. To quote Convicts & Cthulhu:

Keepers seeking dark-hearted men and women to serve as adversaries in a Call of Cthulhu scenario will find a wealth of riches in the early penal settlements of New South Wales. Almost by design the majority of the population of this isolated place is made up of the detritus of Britain and its Empire – the inconvenient members of its society that do not fit into the accepted mould of respectability. Within this body of free-thinkers, rebels and reprobates there are no shortage of advocates of beliefs in strange and unnatural gods. Some of those keep their black religious practices to themselves, but others are eager that they spread out like a cancer. It is that latter group that is behind several different subversive “cults” currently thriving in New South Wales.

Tomorrow: the corruption of the early colony of New South Wales, and the circumstances leading to the military coup (!)

Tenuous Ties to Tarantino

One of the things that Geoff and I have tried to do in writing the Convicts & Cthulhu sourcebook is to make sure that the historical detail included for the setting is more than just the facts and figures. It’s easy enough for Keepers to look up mountains of that kind of information themselves using Wikipedia or many other online sources. And while that stuff is interesting and helpful, it doesn’t do much to give you a sense of what life was really like in the historical setting. Finding and capturing that kind of detail is much harder.

A source that I have found especially rich for the Australian convict era has been the sometimes lurid folk tales and folk songs that were created by the convicts of the day and passed down the generations (verbally at first, then published in the late 19th Century). I happened upon one great example late in the writing of Convicts & Cthulhu — the Ballad of Jim Jones at Botany Bay. It’s lyrics offer an insight into the harshness and dangers of the convict life, as well as the uncertainty of being sent half-way round the world to the infamous prison colony. All of that stuff is what makes this era such a great one for Call of Cthulhu (in my humble opinion, of course :)).

The Ballad of Jim Jones at Botany Bay

Come gather round and listen lads, and hear me tell m’ tale,
How across the sea from England I was condemned to sail.
The jury found me guilty, and then says the judge, says he,
Oh for life, Jim Jones, I’m sending you across the stormy sea.
But take a tip before you ship to join the iron gang,
Don’t get too gay in Botany Bay, or else you’ll surely hang.
Or else you’ll surely hang, he says, and after that, Jim Jones,
Way up high upon yon gallows tree, the crows will pick your bones.

Our ship was high upon the seas when pirates came along,
But the soldiers on our convict ship were full five hundred strong;
They opened fire and so they drove that pirate ship away
But I’d rather joined that pirate ship than gone to Botany Bay.
With the storms a-raging round us, and the winds a-blowing gales
I’d rather drowned in misery than gone to New South Wales.
There’s no time for mischief there, remember that, they say
Oh they’ll flog the poaching out of you down there in Botany Bay.

Day and night in irons clad we like poor galley slaves
Will toil and toil our lives away to fill dishonored graves;
But by and by I’ll slip m’ chains and to the bush I’ll go
And I’ll join the brave bushrangers there, Jack Donahue and Co.
And some dark night all is right and quiet in the town,
I’ll get the bastards one and all, I’ll gun the floggers down.
I’ll give them all a little treat, remember what I say
And they’ll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.

Ironically, it was only after reading this folk song lyric that I realised that not only did I own a recording of it (by Bob Dylan in 1992) but I had also recently heard it in a major film … Quentin Tarantino’s sort-of-Western crime thingamy “The Hateful Eight.”

If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know that at a pivotal point in the plot (just before all Hell breaks loose) Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character — a captured criminal — sings a haunting song (and plays it on an antique guitar). Although it’s hard to make out the words … that’s “Jim Jones at Botany Bay” (even though the film has nothing to do whatsoever with Australian convicts; you’re welcome to speculate for yourself why it was included).

[Trivia Note: this scene was also famous because due to a miscommunication on set it also ended with Kurt Russell destroying an antique 1870s guitar on loan from the museum of manufacturer Martin. Ooops!]

Convicts Being Released Soon

Thanks to everyone who got in touch about our announcement for our next freebie PDF product, Convicts & Cthulhu. It seems that even despite the setting (Australia’s early colonial prisons) not necessarily being something too familiar to everyone, people can see the potential for this grim setting to work as the backdrop for a Lovecraftian campaign or scenario. That certainly matches the experiences of playtesters who have found the historical darkness and debauchery of the setting serves as a convenient and believable “camouflage” for all sorts of cult and otherworldly manifestations.

As of today, Convicts & Cthulhu has officially entered layout; it also has a cover — see below.

The text of Convicts & Cthulhu runs a little over 50,000 words and includes a mountain of historical info, lots of ideas for Cthulhu Mythos manifestations and worshippers in the colony, six detailed plot seeds (each with three variant versions) and a fully-fledged introductory scenario. Plus there will be custom CoC 7th Edition character sheets (actually these are already designed). All-up we’re guessing that the sourcebook will be about 64 pages brimming with convict-era horrors, and it will be available free of charge here on the blog or via RPGNow. We are currently aiming for a release in early June … in the lead up to that, however, I am hoping to post a number of “sneak peeks” here on Cthulhu Reborn, to help you decide whether you want to download Convicts & Cthulhu when it hits the streets (we obviously hope you will!)