The Hawkins paper is an intriguing add-on to the wildly successful Dracula Dossier kickstarter run by Pelgrane Press. It is described as follows:
The original 1894 Operation Edom brief, key memos, secret military maps of Transylvania, précis of reports from Balkan battlefronts and German academies alike, surveillance photographs, and plans for the next century’s battle for control of the Un-Dead — these are the Hawkins Papers. Hidden away for 120 years, once they’re unlocked, you have eyes-only access to them! If we unlock this stretch goal, every backer gets the evocative, enigmatic — dare I say revelatory? — Hawkins Papers in PDF when we unlock a certain safe in Exeter …
The idea is to create a bunch of realistic looking prop documents, both in PDF form … and also as physical props for some higher level backers. My part in this endeavour is to create evocative designs for the documents (written by other, far more qualified folks :)).
Designs for a selection of the Hawkins Papers are shown below … hopefully these give some indication of the quality and scope of prop-support that have been given to the Dracula Dossiers. If the idea of using these in your game of Nights Black Agents (or, actually, in any game) appeals … go check out this page on Pelgrane’s website for more info. You can also buy the PDFs and/or books from there!
Meteorite Letter, 1891 (2 sides)
Typewritten Letter from “The X Club”, 1892 (4 sheets)
First Letter to Dracula (1893)
Original Letter from Dracula (1893, 3 pages)
Second Letter to Dracula (1893)
This is a hand-written letter, formatted in the 19th Century style (where people made their letters as little “booklets” by folding pages in half). Hopefully this little piece of historical accuracy isn’t too distracting to a modern reader … in case it’s not obvious, in the images below the ordering of “pages” is as follows — the first image has Letter Page 4 on the left and Letter page 1 on the right; the second image has Letter Page 2 on the left and 3 on the right.
Handwritten Letter from Sister Agatha (double-sided)
A Page from Renfield’s Diary
Complete with coded message … and a squashed fly 🙂
Index Card from 1890s collecting three newspaper clippings
In order to allow for a physical prop to be created, this has been designed in pieces (each newspaper clipping is a separate image) and then digitally compiled into a montage for the final card image.
A Gossip Column from 1894
First Duke Notes (c 1895)
This one uses a hopefully-Victorian version of the EDOM logo (which exists in a modern form elsewhere in the product as a streamlined icon combining a crown, a cup and a droplet).
Letter to Stoker, 1896 (2 sheets)
(Messy) Typewritten Report of Medical Experiment, 1907 (3 sheets)
Treaty Ports Letter (1922)
British Intelligence Memo from 1940
A newspaper clipping from 1951
A memo from 1965 (slightly worse for wear)
Typed Memo from 1977
Transcript of Intercepted Phone Conversation (197os)
Although not very obvious (unless viewed at larger size) this design features a few dozen needle-sized holes punched out of the page, spelling out text.
Goetic Org Chart
Flash Message Intercepts
Dating from 1977, the Hawkins Papers includes a collection of 17 intercepted (and decrypted) signals relating to Operation Edom. Here’s a montage of the punch card files recording a few of these intercepts.
Check out the Dracula Dossier bundle (or maybe “mega-bundle” would be a more accurate term) from Pelgrane for more Hawkins Paper goodness, the entire text of the “unredacted” version of Stoker’s classic tale, and the huge and sprawling campaign framework that ties them together … it’s the sort of wildly ambitious project that sort of raises the bar for RPG products in terms of complexity and scope.
