Propping Up the Convict

As mentioned here last week, today marks the third anniversary of the Convicts & Cthulhu setting being released. In those three years we have released 15 supplemental PDFs to flesh out the setting with campaign ideas, scenarios, NPCs, and curious nuggets of historical detail. It’s probably fair to say that, by now, there is enough Convicts & Cthulhu content out there that you could easily run a lengthy campaign set in and around the penal colony of New South Wales

If you don’t already have all 15 of the supplements, they are downloadable either from our Download page (free), or by searching “Convicts & Cthulhu” on DriveThruRPG (“Pay-What-You-Want”).

What makes especially happy about this flourishing product line is that we’ve been able to bring these several hundred pages of content to you *entirely* as Pay-What-You-Want. That means that if you’re not in a position to shell out the (sometimes significant) cover prices for other publisher’s Lovecraftian RPG books — there’s always C&C as a cheap alternative. Heck, if you want to grab it all for free, you can (although chipping a little money our way certainly helps a lot when it comes to keeping the product line going).

On this occasion of C&C’s third birthday we wanted to give all our loyal readers a bit of a birthday present. We also thought it might be a good occasion to try something different — hence was born the idea for the “Convict Document Pack” which we are proud to be releasing today!

So, what is the “Convict Document Pack,” anyway? Well … in simplest terms it is a resource that helps you in the creation of realistic prop documents representing some of the most important records kept about convicts in the colony. If your convict was fortunate enough to be granted a “Ticket of Leave,” he or she would be given a (probably grubby) piece of paper proclaiming this status. Same for the rare cases where penal sentences were pardoned because a convict had done something spectacularly wonderful (or been somehow proven innocent after all). And if your convict survived long enough to serve out his or her entire sentence (assuming it wasn’t imprisonment “for life”), they would receive a “Certificate of Freedom.”

All of these important convict documents are included in this pack, in both flat (print & fill) form and also as fillable PDF forms. For the print & fill blanks we’ve included actual signatures for the two most important colonial Governors of the C&C era.

So … never again shall your convict Investigator’s special status need be a minor detail on the back of his or her character sheet. Now they can proudly carry their documents … and present them to snarky NSW Corp Redcoats who challenge them in the street! Further more, these blank documents make great starting points for GM-inspired handouts and clues as part of scenarios. In a similar vein, we have also included in this pack a fillable blank PDF of the single-page broadsheet newspaper produced in the colony, the “Sydney Gazette.”

Downloading the Convict Document Pack

Depending on your preference, you can download these docs either as a single ZIP file (17MB), or via the individual PDF download links below:

Convict Document Pack Info + Print & Fill templates [6.5MB]

Fillable Convict Prop Documents (blank) [4.1MB]

Fillable Convict Prop Documents (sample text) [4.1MB]

Fillable Sydney Gazette (blank) [2.1MB]

Fillable Sydney Gazette (sample text) [2.1MB]

We hope that these prop document resources will give you a set of handy tools to enhance your games of Lovecraftian horror set in the penal colonies. And if you wind up using them in some especially nifty way … feel free to drop us a note telling us about your brilliant prop-fuelled goodness (emails to feedback <at> cthulhureborn.com).

[As always, these resources are released here under a Creative Commons license which means basically that you can use these prop document templates for whatever personal use you can dream up. If you want to use them for a profit-making endeavor — say, for some splashy new TV Series set in the penal colonies — you’d need to contact us about obtaining a separate license.]

 

A (Small) Bunch of Datelines

As readers of this blog will certainly know, earlier this year we printed a limited batch of physical newspaper/book combo packs for Dateline: Lovecraft #1. These quickly sold out … and we had a lot of fun mailing out dozens of packages to all corners of the globe.

When stocks of these physical packs ran out there were a few folks who (sadly) missed out.

Recently, while cleaning out the back of the Byakhee-stables here at Cthulhu Reborn headquarters (aka sorting through bursting filing cabinets desperately trying to squeeze more inside), we stumbled upon a handful of Dateline: Lovecraft packs that had been left forgotten. These are mint-condition and still in their protective plastic ziplock sleeve. If you would like to grab one of these, drop me a note in the form box immediately below.

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There are only THREE (3) packs up for grabs at the moment, though, so if you want one I’d suggest responding sooner rather than later. We are hoping to get another batch of these made up later in the year, but for now this is all we have.

The packs cost US$25 each plus postage. Now that I have posted a bunch of them I know that postage to the US is US$18, to the UK is $19, and to most parts of Europe is $20.

Dateline: Lovecraft Proof

 

 

 

Convict News Muster

We have been a bit quiet on the news front here on the CR blog, but be assured that there’s still a whole bunch of work being done to create new content for all our established lines, and also to put together brand new settings as well.

Convicts & Cthulhu has been cruising along with small “pay-what-you-want” releases for quite a while. We released a small supplement earlier this year … but I was recently reminded by Geoff Gillan (C&C creator and principal writer) that an important date is fast approaching. Yes, that’s right: on May 30 it will be exactly 3 years since the original C&C book was published. Since then we’ve added reams of content — thirteen Ticket of Leave scenario/setting supplements and a couple of Muster (NPC) supplements as well.

We are also currently working on a 14th Ticket of Leave — to be written by Matthew Ruane and also run by him in two sessions at GenCon 2019. Both sessions are already sold out. By releasing his convention scenario, we’ll be able to help dozens more C&C groups also enjoy his scenario … so everyone wins (except perhaps the investigators who will probably be driven inexorably insane)! There are also vaguer plans for a 15th Ticket of Leave as well.

Despite these upcoming planned releases for C&C, Geoff & I both agree that it wouldn’t be fitting to skip over our “third birthday” without giving some kind of Convict-related gift to all the wonderful people who have downloaded and played our stuff. So, we are going to do something a little different — a document prop pack.

This pack will feature period-realistic versions of some of the key documents which your investigators might run into as clues relating to convicts within the colony. The convict docs will be released as both fillable PDF forms and also high-quality flat images which you can print and write on. And as an added bonus, this pack will also include a blank fillable template for the one-page Sydney Gazette (the one and only “newspaper” printed in the colony).

This pack will be released on May 30 … but the montage image above will hopefully whet your appetite and get you thinking about ways you might weave these beautiful and historically-realistic prop documents into you games of Convicts & Cthulhu!