Six Ways To Use (or Abuse) the News for Clues

The subject of newspaper-based clues and their role in Lovecraft-inspired investigative roleplaying games is one that has occupied rather a lot of my attention recently. That might seem like a crazily specific topic to fixate upon … and I guess it kind of is. But the process of putting the finishing touches on our forthcoming newspaper-based product Dateline: Lovecraft has given me plenty of reasons to dwell on such matters.

For those eagerly awaiting Dateline: Lovecraft, the news is pretty good. The newspaper prop which forms the core of the product was completed a month or so back and given a truckload of digital treatment to make the pages resemble realistic OLD pages of type. More recently we’ve been focusing on content to go into a supplemental PDF that will come bundled with the prop PDF, and provide some helpful advice on using it to enhance your game. Included in that PDF is a wealth of index-type info about the prop, some advice on printing massive pages on not-so-massive home printers, a full system-independent scenario to illustrate how newspaper clippings can fuel an adventure, and some more general advice on different ways newspaper clues can appear in a scenario.

The last of these has been my biggest excuse for newspaper-prop fixation. And because the advice that we’ve included really is true for any investigation-based game, and really has nothing specifically to do with Dateline: Lovecraft, I thought it might be a good thing to also share here. You can consider it a special sneak peek at part of our forthcoming product if that kind of elite “backstage pass” thing does it for you :).

Newspaper Clippings as a Scenario Springboard

One traditional (and much-used) way to kick-off an investigative game scenario is the reporting of some weird or horrific local event in the newspaper. This can be a handy way to quickly provide some information about odd goings-on, as well as potentially provide players with a reason to look further into the murky depths surrounding the occurrence.

”I Read The News Today, O Boy”

A minimalist approach to getting Player Characters started on an investigation is to simply arrange for them to read some key article while they are perusing the morning’s news (perhaps over breakfast). To make such scenario launches work, it is always best to ensure that the news story has some kind of personal connection to one or more of the Player Characters. Perhaps someone named in the article is someone that has prior history with them … or perhaps someone whose family is significant to the Player Character. Alternatively, there could be mention of an organization or society that a Player Character has ties with, whether good or bad, or whose name has turned up in other investigations. Another option is that specific details of the occurrence reported in the news article have special significance to the Player Character – if there was a crime scene, perhaps there was some unusual object left behind, whose significance is unknown to the police but obvious to them. The key is to find some way of supplying a clear and compelling motive for having (at least some of) the characters want to get involved.

The Client Arrived With A Clipping

Another way of using a newspaper clipping as a source of background information, is to have the scenario launched by a Non-Player Character coming to a Player Character in search of help – and providing a clipping as background to their request. In this instance, there’s no real need for the newspaper clipping to have any personal connection to the Player Character (although it obviously needs to relate to the specific Non-Player Character). There is also no reason why the clipping needs to be a news story: someone might, for example, point to a cryptic personal announcement from the “Want Ads” and describe how their spouse seemed strangely obsessed with this torn-out scrap in the days leading up to his or her disappearance. Or perhaps an angry “letter to the editor” published in the newspaper was penned by an individual the Non-Player Character wants investigated, in part because of some quirky or unorthodox beliefs that the client can luridly describe. See the box nearby for other ideas about turning different pieces of the newspaper into potential clues.

Dropped or Left Behind By A Stranger

Many investigative scenarios start off with some kind of mysterious event – either someone has gone missing, or some crime has been committed that has no clear suspect, or something odd has happened where many of the key facts remain murky. In such cases, the only clues that any investigator – whether police or the Player Characters – can go on are things left behind by individuals who are somehow involved. Why not make some of those cryptic clues take the form of pieces torn from the newspaper? In this case, the connection between the incident, the individual involved, and the specific newspaper clipping might be something very obvious, or it could be far more indirect and nebulous. An example of the former might be a clipping in which the perpetrator of the current crime is named as the victim’s husband. An example of a more indirect link might be a clipping which advertises a milliner’s shop where the perpetrator of an unholy cult holds ceremonies on specific nights. Such clues might require significant work before the Player Characters understand their true significance – cruel Game Moderators might even drop some of these as “red herrings” which ultimately prove entirely unrelated to the matter at hand.

From News to Clues

Here are a handful of ideas for using different pieces of a period newspaper as a source of clues for an investigative scenario. This isn’t intended to an exhaustive list by any means, and scenario writers and Game Moderators are encouraged to be creative in finding new and unusual ways to format clues. Not every newspaper clue needs to be a screaming headline news piece on the front page, after all …

• Local News Articles: Is that person mentioned in the article someone important to the plot? Did the reported events occur at some local place of significance? Is there something important in eye-witness accounts that constitutes a clue?
• Long-Distance News Articles: Is that strange person mentioned in the article originally from the Arkham region? Or has relatives locally? Is some unique artefact described in the clipping coming to Arkham for some reason? Does that strange organization also operate locally, with similar practices? Might someone in the Arkham region see this article and be inspired to take some action?
• Editor’s Mailbag / “Agony Aunt”: Does the opinionated polemic written by the editor describe local people or common local practices that relate to the plot at hand? Did the perpetrator of some heinous crime first write a semi-delusional letter to the newspaper foreshadowing their crimes?
• The Want Ads: Classified advertisements can hide a wealth of obvious or cryptic detail. What is really behind that strange Lost & Found listing? Why does that advertisement promise a mortgage deal that seems far too good to be true? Why is someone looking to purchase something strangely obscure and specific, and promising extravagant compensation?

• Display Advertisements: Is there some peculiar minor detail about the products shown in that store’s lavish advertisement? Does that new documentary film screening at a local picture house somehow describe people or places important to the investigation? Is it possible the local business mentioned in the advertisement might have some specialist information or equipment that is relevant to the current story?
• Memorials / Funeral Notices: Is one of the persons recently deceased somehow tied in with the current plot? Or someone with the same family name? Does the memorial notice mention the deceased was a long-time member of some organization or association pertinent to the story?
• Society / Magazine-Type Columns: Why does that society figure photographed at a charity gala have the same surname as the low-life criminal currently under investigation? Is there something more to the upcoming celebration being planned by that oddly-named society? Is there something odd about that old abandoned house that is the subject of the Historical Society’s repeated efforts to save despite local objections?
• Puzzles: Is there something sinister encoded into the cross-word clues? Or is there some significance to the strange glyphs that someone has written in place of letters in that copy of the cross-word found at the murder scene?

Clippings as a Mid-Scenario Clue

You don’t need to limit your use of newspaper article clues to merely the kick-off of a scenario or tale – with a bit of imagination you can use news clippings as a great source of much-needed information during the middle stages of an investigation.

Inky Research

Investigative scenarios have a habit of leading Player Characters into dusty library stacks or museums in search of vital pieces of information – newspaper clippings can serve as one evocative means of delivering those key clues. Investigating characters might have a particular reason for hitting the newspaper morgue, or perhaps they are just in the market for some details about the past actions of some person or organization and willing to scour every possible historical document. Either way, the clues they seek could be trapped in the pages of a musty old newspaper. Conceivably, a Game Moderator might even use historical newspapers to provide clues relevant to a scenario set long after the 1920s – perhaps even in the modern day. In that case, the ink-stained fingers and dusty stacks of newsprint might make way to digital databases and careful online searches.

Found: On A Study Desk, Circled In Red Pen

In the midst of an investigation the Player Characters may be on the trail of a suspicious individual, tailing them from place to place but never quite catching up with them. That’s not to say that they can’t pick up clues from places their suspect has recently visited – and the quintessential newspaper clipping frantically marked with hand annotations can be a great method for drawing some attention to key information. Of course, it could equally well be a deliberate ruse perpetrated in an effort to mislead the Player Characters – but until they’ve investigated, who knows?

Lightbulb Moment: Now Its Significance Is Clear

As investigative scenarios proceed, the Player Characters slowly build up more and more detail about what is really going on. At key points, their understanding of the true nature of a person, place, or organization might suddenly make some stray piece of (previously innocent-seeming) detail suddenly take on a whole new meaning. One way of building such a “lightbulb” moment into a scenario is having a key clue built into an innocuous newspaper clipping which the Player Characters read that morning over grapefruits and boiled eggs, then promptly forgot about … Sometime later, their fevered brain recalls that stray piece of information when it seems – impossibly – to tie in with a hidden conspiracy whose concealment they are just starting to peel back. Time to race home and hope that newspaper hasn’t been put out with the trash!

Keep an eye out for the release of Dateline: Lovecraft (hopefully sometime in the next couple of weeks).

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Ever Get Lost On The Streets Of Arkham?

The haunted college town of Arkham is perhaps H.P. Lovecraft’s second-most famous literary creation (after the great tentacled one, of course). Thus it’s not surprising that many Lovecraftian tabletop games send investigators off on dark, doomed quests to peer into dim corners of Arkham. More often than not, they don’t come back.

The primary gaming sourcebook describing Arkham is Keith Herber’s excellent Arkham Unveiled (published 1990). While long out of print, the same material (slightly revised and diluted) is available in H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham.

When we came to creating the first product in the Dateline: Lovecraft line, we naturally thought of Arkham (and the Arkham Advertiser) as a great setting for our newspaper-based scenario-fuel resource (see this posting for more on the upcoming title).

The process of researching content to go into the large newspaper prop took us to a range of weird real-world historical places. It also forces us to take a really, REALLY close look at Herber’s depiction of Arkham — not just in the sourcebook, but also in scenarios written, co-written, and edited by Herber.

What we found — particularly in the original printing of Arkham Unveiled — was a lot of evidence of the meticulous care with which  Herber created his game “sandbox”. He clearly put a huge amount of care and attention into making something useful, but also faithful to the spirit of Lovecraft’s writing, and internally-consistent. Many of the scenarios which have made use of Arkham (or built on Keith’s sterling work) haven’t made much of this amazing attention to detail … but there’s more than enough information buried in the various published materials to portray Arkham as a vibrant and well-drawn backdrop for scenarios.

The problem is finding the right details when you need them.

While Chaosium’s books do include a few helpful indices in the main Arkham sourcebook, these don’t cover the primary scenarios (some of which, surprisingly contain a wealth of background and setting detail not in the sourcebook). They are also somewhat limited in scope. During the creation of Dateline: Lovecraft we were often stymied when trying to remember where some obscure historical personage was mentioned in passing somewhere in the text. We dearly wished someone had created a comprehensive set of indices to all the people, places, and addresses referenced. One weekend, I broke and compiled such a beast, exhaustively poring over the published texts and compiling what turned out to be a lengthy set of alphabetically-sorted notes.

Today, Cthulhu Reborn is pleased to release (a tidied up version of) those notes as the Herber Arkham-O-Pedia. You can download the 43-page PDF right now, entirely free of charge. We are releasing this as a reference work that might help other writers (or even players) navigate the detailed description of Arkham and its ill-fated populace. The PDF is released under a Creative Commons license, making it free for you to re-distribute or to exploit for any non-commercial purpose.

The PDF comprises six parts:

1. An alphabetical index of all the People mentioned somewhere in Arkham source material or scenarios (with references to help you track down said references);
2. A similar alphabetical index of all Arkham Businesses, Organisations, and Facilities
3. A similar alphabetical index of Neighboring locations close to Arkham
4. A similar index of all Arkham street addresses listed in source material (or the pull-out newspaper in Arkham Unveiled)
5. A similar index of Arkham telephone numbers
6. A short treatise on the system of street numbering used in different quarters of Arkham, and an alphabetical listing of Arkham’s streets and the numbering convention that applies to each one.

We hope that this free reference work will help people create new and intriguing Arkham-based material that both draws upon Herber’s work, and also aligns with some of the core designs that make it such a compelling depiction.

BTW: it is worthwhile mentioning that although the Herber Arkham-O-Pedia makes reference to content that appears in several books published by Chaosium, the PDF does not contain any material copied verbatim from those works. Nor does it contain any game content.

Download the Herber Arkham-O-Pedia Here

 

 

Brand new Greek-Language CoC7 sheets

Well, it’s been a bit quiet here on the blog … although there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes activity here at Cthulhu Reborn Underwater Lair, including the launch of a few new projects. I hope to share some news about cool new future releases sometime in the coming days.

We are also still working on the next in the Convicts & Cthulhu “Ticket of Leave” PDFs, although it is starting to look like that may not be released in April as planned but spill over into early May. It will be themed around colonial medical horror — so it’s strangely ironic that its delay is due to key folks getting ill. Maybe it’s evidence of the Curse of the Convict Sawbones at work!

One small activity that we *have* recently completed is the translation of both the 1920s and Modern-day CoC7e character sheets into Greek. This came as a request from a fervent fan of CoC who lives in Greece — where there is no current local publisher for the game — and wished that he and his players could use sheets in their local language. We were happy to oblige … with a lot of translation notes (we don’t speek Greek!). And since it’s always possible that there are other Greek-speaking gamers out there who might like to use these same sheets, I figured I would make them available for download here.

So … I present to you, the PDF version of the Greek-language 1920s CoC sheet, and the PDF version of the Modern-day equivalent. These files are also available on the Cthulhu Reborn downloads page (along with a lot of other cool character sheet designs). There are also JPG versions of front and reverse sides as well, if those are what you’re after.

(Some) Gentlemen Prefer Crime

We are super excited to be able to announce the release, today, of the latest in our “Ticket of Leave” supplements for the Convicts & Cthulhu setting for Lovecraftian roleplaying in the penal settlements of early Australia. This, our eighth “Ticket of Leave” is titled Gentlemen Convicts and weighs in at a respectable 20 pages — and it is available right now as a totally free download here on the Cthulhu Reborn blog.

This PDF release also marks a bit of a milestone for Convicts & Cthulhu in that it brings the total amount of supplemental material we’ve released more than 100 pages. When combined with the original 96 pages in the original C&C book, that means that there is now about 200 pages of pro-quality Convict-related Lovecraftian material that is available for download effectively for free. [A few of our titles are “pay what you want” on RPGNow, which means that you certainly *can* pay a small donation for them if you want, but you can get them free if you want as well]

The eighth Ticket of Leave covers an intriguing, not often discussed, aspect of the early Australian penal settlements — the so-called “Gentlemen Convicts”. These were persons of high standing in Britain who (for one reason or another) still found themselves on the wrong side of a sentence of transportation. Sometimes this happened because the wealthy gentleman (or lady) was truly guilty of a crime — perhaps quite a serious offence — yet despite using the full force of their power and influence to try to manipulate the (highly-corruptible) judicial processes of the day, had somehow still been convicted for it. But equally well, a “Gentleman Convict” might find themselves transported not so much because of their actions as their politics: wealthy persons who had connections to upstart anti-establishment political organisations (such as those advocating free rule for Ireland, or better treatment of Scots), could sometimes find themselves spontaneously found guilty of “sedition” and whisked off to the penal colonies. In some cases all they had done was dare to publish a pamphlet. A third group of “Gentlemen Convicts” were persons of influence who crossed swords with other, even more powerful, members of the upper British classes, and had incurred the wrath of someone with true power. Even the high station of such upstart minor nobles was not enough to protect them from trumped-up charges and a hurried kangaroo trial, and a one-way trip to Australia.

While the “Gentlemen Convicts” were always a numerically small proportion of the overall convict population, they were immensely influential. Their wealth back in Britain meant that, despite the fact that they were indeed convicts (at least by law) they were treated somewhat better than any other convict. Sometimes such convicts travelled with a letter from a wealthy patron in England addressed to the colonial Governor — when they arrived in New South Wales, the government would usually immediately grant them a “Ticket of Leave” which meant that, unlike all other convicts, they would be free to live in their own accommodation and spared a life of harsh physical labour. Other wealthy convicts achieved the same level of freedom by literally buying it. Regardless of how it was obtained, such freedom established the “Gentlemen Convicts” as a sub-class of their own. This was reinforced by the loose associations and organisations they set up amongst themselves.

“Gentlemen Convicts” offer an intriguing opportunity for characters in a roleplaying game. They might be key NPCs in a game, paradoxically a person who is a convict, but also someone who may have more privileges than the investigators. Alternatively, for players who would like to play a convict character but don’t necessarily want to roleplay the harsh treatment of the lower class prisoners Gentlemen convicts provide a useful alternative character type.

The “Ticket of Leave #8” PDF contains some historical background on the Gentlemen Convicts as well as five capsule biographies which illustrate the breadth of this unique social sub-class. The supplement is rounded out with a lengthy scenario seed which centres upon a mysterious supernatural figure that seems to have taken an unnatural interest in a secret society of Gentlemen Convicts. Can the investigators figure out the true motives of this gruesome stalker in time, or will his bloody trail of murder and dismemberment end with every member of the society dead and in pieces? This scenario seed is the longest that we have included in a free C&C supplement — about 11,500 words in all. That’s actually almost as long as a full scenario manuscript!

Because of licensing reasons this “Ticket of Leave”, like the previous one, has been produced in two versions — one which includes Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition statistics and one which does not. The version linked here is the STATTED (CoC 7e) version, which is likely to be what most readers want. The non-statted version will shortly be available via RPGNow. When we published the previous “Ticket of Leave” we were a little worried that splitting things into different versions like this might be off-putting to our customers but sales/download figures seem to indicate those worries were unfounded — which is quite a relief!

We hope that this free PDF will enliven and inspire your own tabletop RPG adventuring in the worlds of Convicts & Cthulhu. If you decide to run the scenario seed, or even pull it apart to create an awesome game scenario of your own devising, we’d love to hear about it! And (since this is Northern Hemisphere convention season), if you decide to run Convicts & Cthulhu at your local Con, you should certainly get in touch — we are always happy to throw some free merchandise your way if you’re willing to write up an account of your incredible gaming experience playing in the C&C setting!

ENnies, ENnies, Everywhere

It’s that time of year again when the tabletop RPG world goes into a frenzy as voting opens for the annual ENnie awards.

While Cthulhu Reborn doesn’t have any of its own products up for illustrious prizes, pieces of our work are scattered through quite a number of different (at least 5) books which are up for awards. Because these come from several different publishers, it probably not appropriate for us to suggest, dear reader, that you vote for one book over the other … however I would especially single out the book The Things We Leave Behind by newcomer small publisher Stygian Fox. The team behind that volume are a bunch of small-scale fan-friendly folks (like us), and the book of modern-day scenarios they created is IMHO perhaps the best new book published for Call of Cthulhu in the past year. Plus they are currently selling it at a 25% discount during the ENnies voting period!

Regardless of who you vote for … I would strongly urge you to consider casting your vote. The poll is open until 21 July, you can get there by following this link.

Pulp in any Language is … Pulp

One of the several Lovecraftian books that is up for an ENnie is Chaosium’s Pulp Cthulhu (nominated for Best Supplement). Recently we were approached by a Call of Cthulhu gamer in Poland and asked whether we’d be willing to translate the official Pulp Cthulhu character sheet design into his native language. Well, he offered to do the translation part — which is just as well, since our knowledge of the fine Polish language is sadly lacking. But, we were more than happy to re-typeset the sheet so that it works for Polish gamers.

Just in case there are other readers of Cthulhu Reborn who would also like to have a Polish Pulp sheet … here’s the front and back. Click on the thumbnails to download full-sized images.

Making the Modern, More Modern

Hot on the heels of our announcement yesterday about the future direction of Cthulhu Reborn, we are delighted to announce the release of the first of our free “fan material” PDF supplements for Call of Cthulhu: “The Stars Are Right!” Scenario Upgrade Pack. It’s available as a free download right here on Cthulhu Reborn.

As many readers would be aware, ever since the 1990s Call of Cthulhu has (notionally at least) supported games set not just in the default 1920s setting, but also those in modern day. Chaosium haven’t released a huge number of scenarios set in the modern day, but the best of those they have released are probably those in the anthology titled “The Stars Are Right!” This book was first released in 1992 as CHA2337, featuring seven scenarios written by some of the best writers that were writing for the game at that time. This included some classic material by Richard Watts (perhaps one of his all-time greatest scenarios), Kevin Ross, John Scott Tynes, Gary Sumpter, Fred Behrendt, Steve Hatherley, and André Bishop. A second edition of the book was released in 2004 (as CHA23100) which includes a few minor tweaks to the original scenarios but also adds two new adventures, one by David Conyers and one by William Jones.

While “The Stars Are Right!” is doubtless a classic book — and probably one that is sitting on the shelf of every Call of Cthulhu Keeper who has ever thought of running modern-day games … its scenarios are mostly now almost 25 years old. In those two decades, quite a number of things have changed — particularly in the way that technology has altered everyday life. If you were born after 1992, take it from us: some things really were different back then. Because the text of the scenarios in “The Stars Are Right!” haven’t really been updated much since the time of their first publication, some of their plot elements feel kind of … dated, or anachronistic.

This is where our “Scenario Upgrade Pack” comes in — we’ve long thought that one easy way of modernising these classic scenarios would be to refurbish them with all-knew prop-quality handouts which better reflect the way in which modern day investigators might hunt down clues. So, for example, converting the numerous “newspaper clipping” clues into articles formatted like online news sites or mobile phone feeds. Or converting a clue hidden in someones (physical) address book into the same information squirreled away in their iPhone’s “Contacts” list. While these changes are largely cosmetic, they do go a long way towards covering over some of the things that do feel a bit “old-fashioned” about the scenarios.

Of course, not everything can be fixed with nifty props. So, for several of the scenarios we have also suggested some plot tweaks that might help to replace some anachronistic references (mostly to technology) with things that are more 2017-appropriate. For most of the scenarios, little or no major “surgery” is required — but there is one exception to this rule. Steve Hatherley’s rather intriguing scenario “Fractal Gods” has as its core backstory the notion of a electronic “zine” which is sent to subscribers via floppy disks sent through the mail. That feels more like a 1990s thing than anything that would happen in the 21st Century — so we’ve suggested an alternative backstory and plotline that hopefully feels a bit more contemporary.

Finally, because most Call of Cthulhu gamers seem to now be using the current (7th) edition of the game, we have included some game statistics for each of the scenarios which brings them in line with that edition. Mostly the conversion between editions is super easy, but we thought it might save some time-poor Keepers a few minutes of mental arithmetic.

If you’re not sure if it’s for you, check out the montage of handouts above– just a fraction of the 48 handouts we’ve included in the pack. BTW, because some of the scenarios in “The Stars Are Right!” are pretty light-on for handouts, we have invented a few additional pieces here and there inspired by textual descriptions in the scenarios themselves. Hopefully these capture the intentions of the original scenario writers.

We hope that Cthulhu Reborn readers will find these resources helpful. “The Stars Are Right!” is still a title that seems to be in print on the Chaosium site, and is also available as a PDF. If you’re looking for a set of modern day horror scenarios you could do a lot worse — particularly if you can supplement the Chaosium book with the sleek new handouts in our pack. Of course if you already own “The Stars Are Right!” in either first or second edition, you can always brush off the cobwebs and give the scenarios a fresh spin with our suggested tweaks — maybe breathing some new life into those classic tales of “modern” dread.

“The Stars Are Right!” Scenario Upgrade Pack is a 67 page free PDF, and weighs in at something like 15MB.

 

Ticket of Leave #5: The Damned and Degenerate

We are very excited to announce the release of the fifth installment in our highly-popular “Ticket of Leave” series of mini-supplements for Convicts & Cthulhu. It’s available for download right now on RPGNow. This one is entitled “The Damned & The Degenerate” — it’s a bit of a departure from previous PDFs in that it doesn’t aim to expand the world of C&C by adding new narrative elements. Instead it is a comprehensive revisiting of the character generation sections of the original sourcebook. While we originally only had a small number of pages to devote to character templates and skills, the richness of the colonial prison setting lends itself to a very broad range of colourful characters, both roguish and virtuous (but mostly roguish). The opportunity to go back and expand the character rules as its own mini-supplement was just too good a temptation to resist.

Mind you, I *say* “mini-supplement” … but the reality is that when we started looking at the intriguing range of character types that are possible for the colonial Australian setting we ended up with quite a sizeable list. The original Convicts & Cthulhu sourcebook has something like 12 occupation templates — the list for this Ticket of Leave is just over 40. Of course, describing the game statistics and historical context of all those professions takes space. So our “mini” supplement weighs in at 24 pages, and includes a fresh copy of the C&C character sheet.

The set of character occupations in ToL5 is broadly divided into four categories — Indigenous Australian occupations, Convict occupations, Government/Military Occupations and Free Settler Occupations. All the obvious things are in there, but so too are a bunch of interesting and unusal character types. Ever wanted to play an Aboriginal tracker paid by the white colonists to track down escaped convicts? Well, now you have the “Bush Constable”. Ever wondered how “aristocratic” convicts, or convict confidence tricksters might work? Now those are options. And if you’ve ever speculated that maybe there were turncoat foreign spies lurking beneath the thin veneer of the colonies, plotting an overthrow … you can now create exactly such a character.

To illustrate the diverse range of convict-era character types, and also to give Keepers and players ready-made “drop-in” characters, this PDF is peppered with lots of examples of real historical people who performed those jobs in the colonies. These aren’t the high-and-mighty people of the colonial administration; rather they are the day-to-day people struggling to get by. In other words, perfect NPCs and replacement investigators. Full stats are provided for each example character, along with a historically-sourced bio (because the squalid details of real history is actually more horrible than anything we could dream up ourselves).

To round out “Ticket of Leave #5: The Damned and Degenerate” we’ve included some slightly tweaked and better-described rules around handling a few CoC 7th Edition skills in the colonial setting. And we’ve also included some notes on playing a couple of unusual character types. The first of these are early “bushrangers” — desperate escaped convicts (and occasionally deserting military types) who somehow manage to survive off the land. The second is the odd phenomenon of free settler women who came to the colonies to accompany their convicted husbands (now that’s dedication!).

If you are a Keeper or player with an interest in Convicts & Cthulhu, there will certainly be a wealth of character-based material in this PDF that is helpful to running your game. You can grab it right now from RPGNow. As with the previous Ticket of Leave we have decided to make this a “Pay What You Want” release rather than a straight free download — this is really just to reflect the amount of effort that has gone into creating a fully illustrated beautiful 24-page booklet. Of course we are more than happy if our loyal readers want to grab the book for free. But we would graciously accept any higher purchase price as well (and would consider it a valuable donation which will help us maintaining this product line well into the future!).