Tag: Horror

Though the core book is not a new release, the Wretched Darkness line has just started with Welcome to St Cloud. Here’s a promo video for our horror/ dark urban fantasy game.

Welcome to St Cloud is A surreal horror scenario, heavily inspired by David Lynch’s cult TV show Twin Peaks (1990), but it leans on other sources, like John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980),  The League of Gentleman (1999), Carnivàle, (2003) and 1970s slasher flicks. There isn’t specific mythology, and even the amount of supernatural and/or paranormal phenomena can be easily modified to suit different tastes. This is the Wretchedverse release with new plot hooks, more random events, locations and NPCs.

What’s presented here is a detailed description of the titular small town of St. Cloud, WA, and its inhabitants, which provides multiple story seeds. In the end, there’s a much more developed but unstructured plot hook that encompasses a series of events set in motion after the death of a local pre-teen girl.

The final chapter, (Not) Wrapped in Plastic, is a plotline designed for those who want to play St. Cloud with a distinct Twin Peak’s feeling, but without instantly giving away the whole story.

If this and some of the characters’ descriptions sound familiar at a glance (you’re right, of course, it does!), that’s only a superficial similarity, however.

Indeed the inspiration isn’t masqueraded, but St. Cloud can be run even if in your group there are players familiar with Lynch’s work since the characters and the town’s dirty little secrets are pretty different from the source. What remains very similar are the eerie atmosphere and the overall semblance of a soap opera gone insane.

Now available only at Big Geek Emporium (since the fascists at Drivethru have banned from their woke store)

Welcome to St. Cloud

The Wretched Darkness Quickstart is now available at Drivethru.You can get it here. You can also get it from Big Geek Emporium by downloading the Quickstarts Bundle here. The same free bundle is also available at Drivethru and includes quickstart for all of the Wretchedverse games.

So, what is Wretched Darkness?

Wretched Darkness is a mature horror role-playing game where players take on the roles of anti-hero characters who must face the unknown and confront the supernatural and the paranormal head-on. Wretched Darkness may be played as a dark fantasy game or you can make it into an actual horror experience. Players can choose from several factions for their characters, some already featured in previous Wretched games, such as the Knights of Cydonnia, BurroughsTech, the Araknyd Brotherhood and the Daughters of Ksenia, and a few new ones, like the Warden Foundation and the Children of the Night.

By default, the game is set in modern times, in urban environments, where danger lurks at every turn and death is never far away. However, you can use it to play horror games in different timelines. Combine it with Wretched Époque or Wretched Country for a 19th-century terrifying experience, pair it up with Wretched New Flesh – Postcards from Avalidad for a near-future surrealistic horror campaign, jump into the far future by using Wretched Space, or set it in any other age. This book presents you with a sandbox-style setting inspired by the works of masters of horror, such as Clive Barker, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, John Carpenter, George Romero, Wes Craven, Dario Argento, Tobe Hooper, Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava, but expect sources of inspiration as varied as William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, William Gibson, Paul Auster, exploitation movies and Leonard Cohen’s poetry.

As a Game Master, you will find here tools and game mastering hints for running any style of horror game, such as Giallo, gore, supernatural, psychological, apocalyptic, surreal, sci-fi horror and more. Wretched Darkness uses a revised version of the Wretched mechanics, an old-school set of rules designed for playing characters that are not necessarily good or virtuous. The revised rules are still entirely compatible with previous versions, but they include new mechanics for sanity and the use of magic, as well as several new classes and playable races, such as Incubus/ Succubus, Loup-Garou, and the Wampyr. Player characters are also more vulnerable than they were in previous Wretched games: The Hit Point increase was downgraded (now, by default you don’t roll for Hit Points when you level up, you only get 1 additional point per level) and the level cap is set at 10. 

Yeah, I know, it comes a bit late; the game was already released. The plan was for the trailer to have been released at the time of launch, but things don’t always work as expected… Well, in the meantime, our friend Griffith Morgan offered to do the voice-over and video and it seems soon we will have a trailer. Probably in time for the release of first Wretched Darkness scenario, Sub Umbra. For now, you can listen to the audio:

While researching for a book on secret societies and occult sects at the library of a 19th-century eccentric millionaire, a Portuguese journalist found evidence the Knights of Christ, who succeeded the Templars in Portugal, had retained much of the esoteric knowledge from the disbanded order.

However, this was merely the surface-level finding. The records of a 17th-century Portuguese knight revealed the order of Christ’s progress in harnessing ancient knowledge to manipulate telluric currents from the Axis Mundi. However, the information contained within the document is not comprehensive, and several sections are missing. The whereabouts of the missing paragraphs remain unknown. Upon further inspection of the record, clues to their location were uncovered. This prompted the journalist to seek assistance from other students of the occult in order to solve the mystery. Unbeknownst to him, this action opened a Pandora’s Box of underground conspiracies, attracting the attention of secret societies around the world, all of whom have set their sights on Portugal with the intention of obtaining the power of the ancients.

Sub Umbra is a scenario for Wretched Darkness, or other horror-themed OSR games

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/421954/Wretched-Darkness

Apparently, things have been quiet in the Red Room, “apparently” being the keyword. Actually, a lot has been done over the last few weeks. Welcome to St Cloud, a Lynchian campaign setting, that is ready for release minus a cover by the Basic Expert. It will probably be available next week. EPIC!, Sílvia’s Wretched Space/ Cha’alt/ Alpha Blue scenario for Venger’s game jam is ready. We’re only waiting for Venger to take a look at it. Meanwhile, Joe Coombs and Joseph McSkeever have been working on their own projects, and Silvia is about to start writing a new Bastards scenario.
As for me, I have been revising the new Wretched rules with the help of Matthew “Lordamatteus” Thomas (right now, he’s doing the editing). I have commissioned a cover and interior illustrations from Joe Tanaka, a Spanish artist who is also going to do a Cha’alt webcomic for Venger Satanis. This week I have started writing a new scenario, this one for Wretched Darkness, inspired by Umberto Eco’s Foulcaut’s Pendulum. So, a lot has been going on!