Convicts and Cthulhu - a new sourcebook

[Mankcam]

.

[Mechashef]

Many foreigners don't realise that associating Australia with dangerous animals is really a joke.  Our wildlife is really quite safe providing you aren't a moron and act sensibly.

Just follow these simple rules:

• Put soft spikes on your helmet and wear sunglasses if you ride a bicycle
• Don't worry about snakes as they rarely attack people and you usually have time to get medical attention
• Don't worry too much about spiders as you have plenty of time to get medical attention
• Don't go in the ocean and the sharks, jellyfish and blue ring octopus wont bother you
• Don't go near water (i.e. in the water, on the bank or in a boat) if you are further north than Brisbane and crocodiles wont eat you

And never ever pick up a platypus or you may wish you were dead.

The Americas and other places such as Africa and Asia which have creatures like wandering bears, lions, tigers etc are much more dangerous.

[Mankcam]

Best not to mention the Drop Bears heh heh

[rust]

5 hours ago, Mechashef said:

.The Americas and other places such as Africa and Asia which have creatures like wandering bears, lions, tigers etc are much more dangerous.

Not to mention the most dangerous creature of all, our Alpine Wolpertinger. 

[Darius West]

Good work Mankcam, as to how much SAN you lose by living in Australia... well that sort of depends.  If you live by the coast in a city, you probably won't lose too much.  On the other hand, does anyone really know when they have hit 0 SAN?  Especially if it is a cultural norm?

People who have enjoyed Convicts and C'thulhu may also enjoy this little game:

https://www.clockworkempires.com/

It is a colonization game with thorough-going mythos overtones.

[dce]

Folks who have grabbed themself a copy of the Convicts & Cthulhu PDF (or awesome-looking softcover printed book) might be interested to learn that today Cthulhu Reborn has released the second mini-supplement for the C&C setting -- Ticket of Leave #2: Tricolour Terror, by Geoff Gilland & Dean Engelhardt. You can download it right now for free from RPGNow.

This supplement provides 6 pages of detail helpful to creating horror tales which incorporate elements of French explorations of early Australia. The PDF includes historical background, some ideas about French occult interests in the South Pacific, a pair of new professions and a scenario sketch.

While most of the known history of the early Australian colonies revolves around British interests, France was also very active in exploring this part of the world. Britain and France were, at this time, mortal foes (soon to be enemies in the Napoleonic Wars). This fact meant that the constant presence of French ships "sniffing around" the still-unsettled parts of the Australian continent made the colonists feel fearful and not a little paranoid. These fears -- part rational, part irrational -- can readily be woven into fabric of a Convicts & Cthulhu tale. And then there is the well-established French Occult tradition with its intricate web of societies and cults ... are some of those organisations involved in explorations of the new continent? And why is France so hell-bent on owning as much of the South Pacific as they can ... it's almost as if they know something is there ...

To use this PDF you will need the original Convicts & Cthulhu core book -- which is still available in PDF or print as a Pay-What-You-Want title over on RPGNow.

We hope you enjoy this bite-sized addition to the Convicts & Cthulhu setting.

 

Dean (from Adelaide)

Edited October 6, 2016 by dce

[dce]

Folks who are running Convicts & Cthulhu games (or contemplating doing so) might be interested to hear that today Cthulhu Reborn released the third free PDF mini-supplement with cool resources for Lovecraftian gaming in the penal colonies of early Australia. You can download Ticket Of Leave #3 -- Criminal Enterprise right now from RPGNow. This 8 page free PDF expands upon the C&C setting by providing details of the seedy criminal underworld that existed in the townships of early New South Wales, and giving players the opportunity to see life through the eyes of gang members.

The majority of the Europeans living in the penal colony of New South Wales are there because of their guilty association with the world of crime. This is just as true for the gaolers as it is for the convicts they guard. Not surprisingly, incarceration in a large and remote prison has done little to turn felons from their criminal ways (despite brutal attempts to enforce "law and order"). The larger cities are rife with shadowy criminal groups -- some merely thieving to survive, others plotting sketchy political and business dealings. But in a place where the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos are never far away, there is always the chance that "a simple plan" might lead criminals into something far, far more dangerous.

Ticket of Leave #3 - Criminal Enterprise provides Keepers with resources to portray the seedy criminal underworld, and allow players to take on the roles of gang members. The PDF includes backgrounds and CoC 7th Edition stats for a ready-to-use gang of nefarious folks; it also includes a detailed scenario sketch which focusses on a double-crossing smuggling mission that leads the criminal investigators into the clutches of some rather unsavoury Mythos forces.

We hope that folks who are running Convicts & Cthulhu games will find this a useful (freebie) addition to the setting.

 

Dean (from Adelaide)

[dce]

Cthulhu Reborn is delighted to announce the release of the fourth in the Tickets of Leave supplements for Convicts & Cthulhu. This PDF -- our largest yet, weighing in at 14 pages -- is titled "The Vanishing Ensign". It's written primarily by Geoff Gillan (with minimal tinkering from yours truly).

Ticket of Leave #4 collects together two different types of game resources -- an overarching campaign frame, and a much more detailed sketch for a specific scenario. Both of them revolve around a real-world historical incident: the Grand Muster of 1807, an attempt to undertake a huge survey of the full extent of the (badly provisioned) military forces in the colony of New South Wales. Everybody who lived in the colony was well aware of the short-comings of the force of troops that had been sent out by the Colonial Office to keep the peace, and even more aware of the poor quality of military equipment at their disposal. This "census" was supposed to prove to those back in London that this far-off colony really *was* on the brink of rebellion, anarchy, or invasion by the French. Of course in the world of Call of Cthulhu, there are much more terrifying things that might consume the poorly-defended fledgling colony before any of those ...

In addition to providing resources to allow a Keeper to use the circumstances of Bligh's muster as the basis for an ongoing series of scenarios, Ticket of Leave #4 also presents a detailed sketch for one specific scenario, an investigation into odd anomaly -- a soldier who turns up on every record book, but cannot ever be found. Rather than presenting just one Mythos explanation for these dark events, three different Mythos "solutions" are offered, allowing the Keeper to pick something that ties in best with his or her ongoing game.

Ticket of Leave #4: The Vanishing Ensign is available right now at RPG Now. Because this supplement is considerably larger than those we've previously released, we've chosen to make this a "Pay What You Want" title rather than simply a free download. You are, of course, more than welcome to grab it free of charge (with our blesing) -- but if you do want to chip a dollar or two our way to help us keep making these titles, your donation would be very welcome!

We hope your players enjoy scouring the grubby streets and bushland of early New South Wales, in search of that damn Vanishing Ensign.

 

Dean (from Adelaide)

 

 

[Darius West]

Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is also so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies; and all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises and adventures, the incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.

Mark Twain, More Tramps Abroad, London, 1897

,,,Like the time an insane Irishman, convinced of his own royal blood, nearly got the acting Lt. Governor of the Tasmanian Colonies hanged through sheer force of personality.  True story...

 

[dce]

Those who have been following Cthulhu Reborn's ongoing series of mini-supplements to the Convicts & Cthulhu setting, may be interested to learn that we've just released the fifth installment in the "Ticket of Leave" series -- ToL#5: The Damned & The Degenerate. This PDF completely overhauls and massively expands the character generation guideliness from the original C&C book.

ToL#5 is avalable right now via RPGNow as a Pay-What-You-Want PDF.

This supplement weighs in at 24 pages (and as such really doesn't qualify as a "mini-supplement" anymore). Unlike previous "Ticket of Leave" titles which have focussed on expanding the setting by introducing narrative elements like scenario seeds, this supplement revisits the character options/templates for the colonial Australian convict setting and adds almost 30 new occupation types.

Ever wanted to play an indigenous "bush constable" who works with prison guards to track down escaped convicts? What about a convict who was a professional gambler before being caught? Or one of the colony's fearless explorers charged with the task of filling the huge blanks on the maps? Alternatively, maybe you'd care to play a French spy who has been paid to infiltrate the colony to find out the strength of the British military presence in Australia? All of these character types -- and lots, lots more -- are now at your fingertips.

To complement the character creation templates, we've also peppered the PDF with examples of real-world ordinary characters who held those professions: these fully-statted write-ups are based on real historical figures (since the real lives of people in the colonies is far more rich and colourful than any fiction we could dream up). Also included are some notes on unusual character options -- like early bushrangers (escapees that decided to try to survive off the alien land), or free wives that accompanied their convict husbands[*] ...

All up, this PDF replaces the few scant pages devoted to character creation in the main Convicts & Cthulhu with a comprehensive set of interesting and colourful options for player investigators or Keeper NPCs.

You can grab it right now from RPGNow -- because this is much longer than we really intended for the "smaller" Ticket of Leave releases we've made this another "Pay-What-You-Want" title. However, in the interests of keeping the whole C&C line as accessible as possible, we are more than happy if folks (particularly BRP-Central-ers) want to grab it for free -- consider anything you contribute to be a small (and very welcome) donation to help Cthulhu Reborn keep these coming ...

We hope you enjoy filling your Convicts & Cthulhu games with all manner of ... the damned and the degenerate

 

Dean

[*] This is a weird historical detail that I never knew about -- some convict men transported to Australia were accompanied by their (non-convicted) wives, who effectively came out as free settlers. Because convicts were often assigned to settlers as a kind of free labour force this led to a number of unusual cases of men being assigned to their own wives as workers.

 

[dce]

Those who have been following the (rapidly-expanding) Convicts & Cthulhu product line that Cthulhu Reborn has been publishing, might be interested to hear that we've just released the sixth supplement in the "Ticket of Leave" series. Ticket of Leave #6: Night of the Convict Dead is available right now over on RPGNow.

This supplement differs slightly in format from some of the previous "Ticket of Leave" titles in that it devotes most of its 15 pages to a somewhat-ready-to-run scenario (the eponymous "Night of the Convict Dead"). This is supported by some historical source material which can be extrapolated by Keepers for other purposes. It also featurs some awesome new artwork from Reuben Dodd (see above).

The subject matter of this supplement is simple: it's about death in the early penal colonies of Australia. Because of a combination of rampant disease, poor hygiene, horrific and barbaric punishments, and the occasional hanging, Death is a pretty frequent visitor to the colonies. This creates some practical problems, mostly relating to the sanitary disposal of so many corpses. Remarkably, the early colonies seem to have approached this in an entirely haphazard way -- while there were allocated burying grounds, the arrangement of graves within those spaces was pretty random, and no official records were kept of who was buried where. Because gravedigging was a job given to convicts -- who hardly had an incentive to do a good job -- many graves were dug much shallower than is ideal. This created noxious odours whenever the weather got hot, and attracted pigs and goats from neighbouring farmlands, who sometimes dug at graves.

All of this adds up to a setting where there is an ample supply of corpses, and not too much care taken in keeping track of them ... and in the worlds of the Cthulhu Mythos, that can only spell trouble. After all, how much easier would the "researches" of young Herbert West have been if he had a ready and limitless supply of source materials sitting right at his doorstep?

The scenario component of this "Ticket of Leave" explores a detailed investigation where an unlucky bunch of investigators are given the task of getting to the bottom of a sudden rash of dead bodies discovered in several places around the colony. In each case, two corpses were discovered in close proximity -- one a recent victim of violence, but the other ... well those all look to have been dead for a considerable time. Do your plucky investigators dare to plumb the depths of this macabre mystery -- and, more importantly, can they act fast enough to stop -- The Night of the Convict Dead?!

As a side-note, this release also marks a special occasion for "Convicts & Cthulhu" -- it's one year ago today that the core C&C book was first released. As we described over on this blog post, since that time that book and its supplements have sold around 3,600 PDFs and softcover books -- which is an amazing achievement for a tiny publisher like Cthulhu Reborn. We are heartily indebted to the many, many people who've grabbed our book, whether as free downloads or accompanied by an ever-helpful donation. We hope that Convicts & Cthulhu has brought some quirky fun to your gaming table!

Ticket of Leave #6: Night of the Convict Dead is downloadable right now via RPGNow -- as with other larger titles we have made this a "Pay-What-You-Want" title. Of course we are more than happy if folks (particular readers of this forum) want to grab it free of charge -- but equally, if you'd like to chip in a small donation to help keeping the C&C line going, everything that you're able to contribute is very, very much appreciated.

We hope you enjoy the "Night of the Convict Dead" ... and trust that you will put on a suitably creepy-sounding voice when you declare "They're Coming To Get You, Convicts!"

 

Dean (from Adelaide)