In Curseborne, which Onyx Path Publishing funded last year, you play as Accursed, descendants of monstrous lineages lurking in a modern world that closely resembles our own. This is the Onyx Path team’s return to Horror game design after years of shepherding the World of Darkness 20th Anniversary lines, as well as Chronicles of Darkness and other games including They Came From Beneath the Sea! and Dystopia Rising: Evolution.

We had a chance to talk to the team a bit about this new Player’s Guide project and some of the material within.

What does the Player’s Guide offer that isn’t in the Curseborne Core Rulebook?

The world of Curseborne is much richer and deeper than we could (or would even want to) cover in the core rulebook, so the Player’s Guide gives us more room to poke in the corners and see what skeletons we can disturb, as well as presenting different playstyle options that switch up the core Curseborne experience. At a high level, the Player’s Guide contains:
• Nine new families of Accursed, as well as Orphans (those without a family)
• A look at how the different Families gather and interact, as well as roleplay advice for each Lineage and family
• New Role Paths, Lineage Torments, and spells for each of the Lineage’s practices
• More information on Venators, including creating Venator player characters
• Templates allowing players to quickly build or randomly roll new Curseborne characters

What can you tell us about the new Families in the Player’s Guide?

There are nine new Families in the Player’s Guide. Here’s a brief rundown of each.
• The Eurydicae are a Family of Dead who become obsessed with broken people and try to replicate their lives.
• The Tormentors are Dead who track down those who have abused others and deal out vigilante justice.
• The Menders are a Family of Hungry who try to improve the life of someone and then feed off their newfound success.
• The Plague Doctors are Hungry who feast on diseased blood and flesh.
• The Prenderghasts are Outcasts who believe they’re the servants of the Fae and use servitude to others to infiltrate and uncover the secrets of their origin.
• The Napoleons are Primal werepigs who seek out and hoard Heirlooms.
• The Nest are a Family of Primal wererats who use their affinity for cold to tear down a corrupt world.
• The Gate Openers are Sorcerers who want to destroy cursed objects through destroying Heirlooms, thinking that unleashing their contained curses will improve the world.
• The Memori are a Family of Sorcerers who seek ways into and out of lost eras of time.

This book includes information on creating Orphan and Venator player characters. Can you tell us more about that?

When we released Curseborne, there were a few people who mentioned wanting to play “just” a Hungry or “just” a Dead, without necessarily associating with a Family. Plus, we foresaw characters who were ousted by their Family, or never knew their original Family in the first place. So for those players, we offer Orphans. Instead of having a Lineage-bound Family, Orphans have Community Paths, based around the circumstances and experiences that left them outside the Families in the first place.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a game about monsters if we didn’t talk about those that hunt monsters, and those are the Venators in Curseborne. And the moment we presented monster hunters, there were people who wanted to play them, which is the perfect thing to add to a player’s guide. Of course, in Curseborne, nothing’s ever easy, and Venators are tangled up in the web of curses that afflict Accursed and everyone else in the world. In this book we dig into how Venators differ from Accursed in terms of character creation and mechanics (including how Venators use magic, and new spells just for Venators), and present five Paths to reflect the different Venator organizations (called Operations).

What can you tell us about the creative team on this book?

The creation of the original Curseborne book was a massive team effort over the course of several years, with Danielle Lauzon doing a lot of the hard work taking a sprawling design and turning it into the fantastic book we ended up with. She was very eager to work on the Player’s Guide, and Eddy Webb (one of the people who has been involved with Curseborne since the beginning) stepped up to help her out as a co-developer. The writers are also a diverse team, pulling from people who worked on the original game, those who were heavily involved in previous horror games like the World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness, and some brand-new to our world. All in all, it was a fantastic team who poured their hearts and souls out to make the best possible player’s guide we could.

For those that missed the original Curseborne Kickstarter, what options are available to get caught up today?

The Player’s Guide Kickstarter has some great add-on options so folks can get the core rulebook in PDF, print-on-demand, traditional print run, or deluxe hardcover. You can also get the Curseborne dice set and the Storyguide’s screen, and even a compilation of the twelve antagonists we’ve released monthly throughout 2025 in our Tasty Bit Compilation. Everything you could want or need for the game is available through this Kickstarter campaign!

Now that the Player’s Guide Kickstarter has funded, what stretch goals are you hoping to achieve?

We’re very close to releasing an anthology of short stories, and Lauren Roy had so much fun working on it that we’d love to do even more Curseborne fiction. Another anthology would be a great addition to our growing world. The original campaign gave us both a setting book and an adventure book, and we’d love to get a few more adventures into the world. There are so many different kinds of stories you can tell in Curseborne, and we’re eager to show you all the ways you can play, and to help people get a Curseborne chronicle up and running as quickly as possible, or to just enjoy a couple of sessions. If the campaign really takes off, though, the sky’s the limit!

Thank you to the Onyx Path team!

Head over to Kickstarter.com to check out the campaign for the Curseborne Player’s Guide. If you missed the Core Rulebook campaign, you can get both books and more now.

13th Age first debuted in 2013. Now, over ten years later, you’re providing a second edition. What’s your design philosophy for the new edition? How has your approach changed?

My first thought was that the design philosophy of the new edition is pretty much the same as the first edition, especially because my starting point was to make all books published previously entirely compatible with the new edition. It’s more a matter of living up to the game’s original good intentions!

After thinking awhile, I realized there are at least three ways our design philosophy has shifted.

First, when we designed the original game, Jonathan and I thought the book was a one-off. We attempted to put everything people would need to play in the 13th Age core book (monsters, treasure, game master advice, characters) because we had no intention of publishing support products. Neither of us wanted to run a roleplaying line, and after WotC’s weird twilight zone neither of us really wanted the game we’d designed to play together to be run by other people.
But the design and publishing process took a long time! By the time the physical book was published, we realized that people wanted support material. And I’d changed my mind and decided to run the game line. In a nod to one of the games that had sparked our imaginations—the Arduin Grimoire and it’s Everything-All-The-Time approach—we’d even taken advantage of a chance to work together again and kickstart the game’s first sequel, 13 True Ways.

This time, we know we’re writing to an audience that has some appetite for other 13th Age books. There’s still a strong incentive to try to fit everything into what has become a two-book core set (Heroes’ Handbook and the Gamemaster’s Guide), especially since Jonathan isn’t planning to work on the 13th Age line, just as he stepped away from it the first go-round. But we know there are other books coming that will provide more 1st level monsters or provide a fully playtested new multiclassing system.

Second, another difference come out in in 2E’s art. In 13th Age 1E we said that there were big variations in how elves, dwarves, humans and other kin looked. But with Aaron McConnell and Lee Moyer as our two creative partners who supplied all the art, the original core book supplied one consistent approach rather than examples of various ways heroes and monsters might look in different campaigns. This time around we’re working with a large number of artists with strikingly different styles. Lee is still pulling things together with lighting and staging, but our diverse artists have created a wonderful mix of people and monsters. The game is set up for every campaign to have its own unique stories, and now the art does a better job of expressing that range of possibilities.

The third shift is also reflected in the art. Every 13th Age character has their own One
Unique Thing, the thing that marks them as a special hero different from everyone else. In 2E, we’ve had fun illustrating some of those unique heroes instead of sticking closely to generic F20 style. Examples? A winged dwarf by Simone Bannach! A tiger-striped tiefling sorcerer by Dagmara Matuszak! These are our characters, and the Kickstarter backers who supported us most generously have added more that we haven’t unveiled yet.

Can you explain what the 13th Age’s setting is like for someone who has never played the game before?

It’s a high-fantasy game and first level characters start as highly competent heroes. That’s not just game mechanics, it’s also the fact that each hero gets to choose one or more relationships with the most powerful NPCs in the game world, the Dragon Empire. The “icons” are archetypal fantasy characters who show up in some incarnation in many fantasy worlds: The Archmage, the Elf Queen, the Emperor, the Lich King, the Prince of Shadows. The world of the Dragon Empire is shaped by the relationships and conflicts between these icons and their followers, and the player characters get a stake in these relationships even at first level.

The Dragon Empire setting of the game is what we call “half-designed!” Our philosophy is that we game designers aren’t telling the story. Each individual campaign is telling its own story, so our setting and its various bestiaries and adventures and other supplements aren’t creating canon. The core book provides an entertaining paragraph or two on the places on the map, but these locations are presented as open-questions, ideas that specific campaigns can take in different directions. This approach would be kinda lame if we didn’t provide interesting examples that people might want to use! The setting-paragraphs provide fun ideas that are meant to start new stories and create opportunities for surprising twists in individual campaigns. Like, the Festival Scene illustrated by Laura Galli.

What kind of rules are new for second edition?

The icon relationship rules that give players narrative control weren’t executed well in first edition. So the biggest rules change in 2E was to explain the icon connection rules clearly, put them entirely in the players’ hands (until the player rolls a twist while changing the narrative!), and providing around 35 pages of examples detailing all the ways that icon connections can be used. That’s in contrast to the zero pages of examples we included with 1E.

We’ve done a lot of work on the player character powers and spells, because our original impetus for creating a second edition was noticing that there were spells and powers that hardly anyone ever played with. We aim not to waste the reader’s time, every page and paragraph is meant to be interesting somehow, so the 1E powers that were effectively dead-space needed to improve.

For example, I’ve always been frustrated by bards. Our new bard is magical, musical, helpful, and surprising. Each bard hero chooses three of six possible instruments/magical styles to master, gaining songs and leadership abilities and magical powers from each of drums, dance, voice, strings, brass, or flutes.

We also streamlined some of the combat rules, upgraded monsters that were too vanilla to justify their place in a game line, and cleaned up the battle building math so that experienced groups will get more of a challenge. Check out the cover of the Heroes’ Handbook by Aaron McConnell & Lee Moyer.

Combat. How does a typical round play out?

Battles start unfair! The math is deliberately slanted towards the monsters, so when everyone rolls initiative and takes their character’s first turn (everyone gets a standard action, move action, and a quick action) the odds can seem bad. My players love to use this refrain when they see what’s against them in the first round: “This is a bullshit game, you’re a bullshit ref, this is a bullshit system, I hope you’re happy you’ll finally get a TPK.” But it’s not true. At the end of the first round of combat, I put the escalation die on the table, the biggest d6 I own, set to 1. Only the heroes* add the escalation die to their attacks, and it goes up again at the end of each round, so what seems at first to be a hopeless situation almost always resolves into heroes doing heroic things and feeling good about themselves.

Overall, combat is a streamlined experience that tries to keep the fun elements of d20-rolling fights and skip the boring stuff. No one has to count squares. You’re either engaged with an enemy, near them (one move away), or far away (probably able to reach them in two moves). The combat is crunchy enough for those of who like crunch, but storytelling touches and unpredictable monster mechanics keep things interesting for the GM as well as the players. (Gamemasters’ Guide cover by Aaron McConnell & Lee Moyer.)

*Dragons also use the escalation die!

Tea or coffee?

Until a couple years ago, I would have said coffee. But I’m now more often caffeinated by yerba mate. I’m drinking from cans and tea bags, not the traditional Uruguayan gourd.

What’s next for you?

For something of a change, I do know what’s next!

I’m working on finishing art direction for the two 13th Age 2E core books and making changes suggested by playtest feedback. That’s going to take me through 2024. Some time early in 2024 I’ve got an Armello boardgame expansion to design to follow up on that board game’s Kickstarter success; it’s a deckbuilding quest game of anthropomorphic animals fighting each other to replace their corrupt King!

There’s another card game I’ve been tinkering with in off hours, but I may not get to that until later.

First, there are several 13th Age supplements I need to help finish including one called Bestiary 3: Icon Followers that I need to finish writing myself. After the Bestiary, I’ll start serious work on a book of new 13th Age classes that I call Further Adventurers. Not all the classes in it will match the way the core classes are constructed. Some of the new classes will be micro-classes, with just enough content for a memorable one campaign experience, not intended to create a range of possible characters like the barbarian, cleric, or wizard.

Danielle Lauzon is a freelance writer, developer, and game designer. She’s been working in the tabletop games industry for over 10 years. Having worked on many of the Flames Rising crew’s favorite games, including Hunter: The Vigil, Avatar Legends, They Came from Beneath the Sea!, Witch: Fated Souls, and more.

What were your biggest inspirations for At the Gates?

I took a lot of inspiration from a lot of places. Sometimes, you don’t even realize something inspired you until you look back on it. I think my biggest inspirations are Final Fantasy 9 and Lufia 2. I know that second one is kinda ???, but I played it again after so many years a few years ago and it was such a great “generic fantasy rpg” that I felt really drawn to the story beats over the setting. I wanted to show those story beats in an RPG.

What is the Earthbane Cycle and how does it connect with At the Gates?

The Earthbane Cycle is Onyx Path’s overall name for the series of fantasy games we are making. The first game we made in the series is the World Below, and now At the Gates. All the fantasy games in the Earthbane Cycle are loosely connected in a really broad timeline. We’re talking millennia and eons rather than decades or centuries. It is a cycle, so we made sure that any game could fit anywhere in the cycle, then we planted connections within the games that if you get a chance to read them all, you might see them, but you still might not. And that’s about all I can really say about it, even though *we know* what the actual timeline is.

If you were pitching the game at a convention, what kind of one-shot demo would you run?

I think there are two great ways to showcase At the Gates in a single session: 1. Start the characters on a seemingly simple mission only for them to find some kind of world-ending plot that only they can deal with. 2. Put the characters in a position to negotiate with large political powers as they see that nothing is simple, there are no right answers, and maybe picking the best of two bad situations is the only thing they can really do.

What kinds of Characters make for the best stories in At the Gates?

Unequivocally, the characters in At the Gates are heroes. They might be reluctant heroes, or people who do not yet realize they are heroes, but the game demands people who are comfortable doing the right thing, even when it’s hard.

Can you give us a list of the character professions in the game?

Sure! Each profession fills a role within the group, and each one can do more than one thing competently, so two people can play the same profession and have very different experiences.

– The Diviner is our main support profession. I call them the healer profession a lot, but that’s not exactly right. They have healing capabilities built into their Arts, but they may take a Pillar of magic that is more about crowd control and manipulation than about healing and support. Even if they do take the Pillar that gives them access to healing magic, they may specialize in the death side of things, becoming a powerful necromancer.

– The Harrier is a damage dealer, skirmisher, scout, spy. They are capable of control, getting access to the same Pillar of magic that would make a diviner a controller. Their Arts center around taking movement opportunities and getting into places they shouldn’t be, making them excellent at breaking and entering and sneaking around.

– The Mage can be either a damage dealer or a physical support character. They are the only ones with access to the Pillar of magic that grants elemental control, and that can be used for a variety of things from setting people on fire, to creating barriers. They excel at controlling the battlefield, and are good at investigations and exploration.

– The Warlord is both a support tank character and a leader. They excel in supporting their allies with shields, healing, and giving the damage dealers more actions. They have the same Pillar of magic that give diviners their healing capabilities, which means they can also raise undead to fight by their side.

– The Warrior is a damage dealer with some tanking on the side. Outside of combat, they are great at crafting, intimidation, and making people do what they want. While warlords are the true leader profession, warriors are a close second.

Can you tell us about some of your favorite Antagonists or other perils characters in At the Gates might encounter?

There are so many good antagonists in this game, it’s hard to pick just one. I’ve tried to answer this question before, and I think the most iconic, and thereby my favorite, antagonists are laughing dews. They are just little funny slime creatures that want to have fun and play pranks. And that’s such a great type of antagonist, where the problem is annoying, but also kind of cute. As far as true perils, I find the Outlands and the things warped by the Void are the most dangerous creatures the characters can face. Well, other than the threat that normal people pose to each other.

Warped creatures by the Void? What can you tell us about them?

The Void is filled with the exact opposite forces from Gaia and the world. Where Gaia is filled with the magics of the elements, people, soul, dreams, and life and death, the Void is filled with primordial magics of chaos, creation, and entropy. When those things come together, chaos explodes into random effects, mutations, and uncontrolled growth. The flora and fauna warp and shift in Outlands (the place where the Void clashes with Gaia), and Void warped creatures are the result of being in those forces too long. We even have a status effect for people who spend too long there that causes their magic to go wild.

Daemons on the other hand are creatures directly from the Void. No one knows if they are native, or what, but they embody those primordial magics. They are alien to Gaians, with different morphology, morals, and ways of acting.

What can you tell us about the creative team on this book?

I picked a great team for this book. I’m not going to reveal what parts each person wrote, but they are free to do so if they wish. I tried to pick folks I knew were into this kind of game (high fantasy, inspired by video games). I didn’t have to look far. David Castro is always a go to for fantasy, as they have been working with DnD material well before we ever hired them. Chant Evans was similarly an easy pick as they have a great deal of expertise. Monica Speca is my partner in systems crimes, and of course I asked her to work on this. Steffie deVaan is always such a great author, I always want her on everything I make. John Burke, Kim Godwin, Claire Weaver, Michele Masala, and Matthew Dawkins all came along for the ride and brought their own unique perspectives to the game in ways that I can’t thank them enough for.

There are several previews of At the Gates out now, what can you tell us about them?

I’m thrilled that people are getting a chance to look through all the setting material and character creation. I always feel like character creation says a lot about a game. What kind of little creature can I make to play with? What limiters does the game put on my original content, and what does it encourage me to make? I love Storypath’s Path system, because it gives general guidelines for the kinds of things that are important to characters, and asks the player to fill in all the little details. We try to make our Paths read like adjectives or descriptors. You have a Heritage that describes where you’re from, and a Perk from that heritage that helps describe your cultural influences. Then an Upbringing that describes what environment you were raised in. Then a Profession that describes how you’ve branched out on your own. Together, these tell a story of who you are and where you’re going.

I especially love the Advanced Profession Paths we created, coming up with a way to show progress in your chosen profession above and beyond the normal way of just spending experience. These modify your existing abilities and ramp them up to 11. Here’s an excerpt for the special advantage the Champion Advanced Profession (for Warriors) grants when you learn it.

Advantage: Killing Stroke

Your movements are a whirlwind of confusion and deception, making it challenging for your opponents to anticipate your strikes. As a result, your foes in close combat suffer a +1 difficulty to defense actions. Additionally, you impose a Minor Complication to anyone attempting to disengage with you. If they fail to buy it off, you may deal one damage.

At the Gates is currently funding on Backerket. What can you tell us about this campaign?

So far, I have been blown away by the response to this game. As of writing this, we are just over 900 backers and have knocked out multiple stretch goals. I couldn’t be more thrilled to see everyone’s joy and enthusiasm for the game, and the backers have been so kind with their praise. The campaign ends on June 6th, and I’ll be traveling that day. So I really hope that we get a little backer train going so I can watch it close out when I get home.

What kinds of stretch goals are you hoping for in the current campaign?

I came up with *so much stuff* I wanted to offer for this campaign that I’m not certain we’ll see it all. We are already going to be making a companion book and we’ll have stretch goals to add new material to it, such as new daemons, new minigames, and some cool artifacts with back stories. We also have some physical addons that I wanted to offer immediately, but it just wasn’t possible at our base funding level. So, we’re offering them as stretch goals. I don’t want to give away too much, but there will be pins.

* * *

The At The Gates Core Rulebook is funding now over at BackerKit.com! Support this game now to check out the manuscript previews and help fund stretch goal content.

You can also get an introduction to At The Gates over at DriveThruRPG by checking out the Ashcan Edition, available now in PDF and Softcover.

Realms of Pugmire is a fantasy game about evolved pets and other animals with a strong connection to humanity, with dogs as the central characters. These characters live in the ruins of our world, using tools, language, and ingenuity to build a new civilization in their image, with the kingdom of Pugmire acting as a center of dog civilization.

Eddy Webb stopped by to tell us a bit about the new edition and the Kickstarter project.

What was the biggest inspiration for a new edition of Pugmire?

It’s a few things. Firstly, it’s been eight years, and even though I’m really happy with how Pugmire came out, I’ve learned a lot both about game design and about the world of Pugmire as a whole. It’s a chance to make some adjustments and tweaks to really establish Pugmire as a line. Realms of Pugmire is something that’s going to have several books coming out of the gate and is designed from the start to be a full fantasy game line rather than just books organically coming out one after another.

Another piece of it is the fantasy game landscape has changed radically since 2015, and it’s a chance to take into account those changes, like virtual tabletops being much more prominent and bio-essentialism of fantasy races being reconsidered. Things that I wanted to push more at the time, but now that the landscape has changed, I can really lean harder in those directions.

Finally, it’s an opportunity to make changes to push the game further in the directions it needs to go, rather than feeling like I needed to stick with a particular system or license. I originally built it as a way to get more people on board with the idea of a fantasy game with dogs. Now, people are on board, so I can start moving things to make Pugmire better, rather than feeling confined to older decisions.

What was the playtesting process like and what did you learn?

The playtesting process has been surprisingly smooth. If anything, the main thing I learned is that people were ready for the changes and I could push them a little further than I previously predicted. Of course I’ve uncovered a lot of small rules tweaks and adjustments, and had some opportunities to clarify things even further, but all in all the responses I’ve been getting have been “Yes, more of this please.”

Has the setting changed or evolved in the new edition?

Not much, no. As I said, I’ve learned a lot about the setting over the years, and this was a good opportunity to recalibrate things a bit. Rather than doing a total reboot, however, I decided the best way to handle things would be to nudge the timeline along an indeterminate number of years. However, over the years I’ve gotten less and less enamored with “metaplot,” i.e. the idea that the setting evolves in such a way that you need to read every previous book to understand what happened and why. If you’re familiar with the original version, you’ll find some nice references and easter eggs of how things have moved along a little. But if you’re brand new to the game, you won’t need to know any of that to understand what’s going on.

What can you tell us about the antagonists in this edition?

Everything that we featured in the original rulebook, you’ll find a version of here, plus a whole lot more. There’s also been some organizational changes. For example, which enemies are undead or Unseen demons are clearly spelled out now, and spells and tricks will better interact with them, so the Guide doesn’t have to guess. Also, we’ve added new keywords like “minion” and “legendary,” allowing you to take any enemy and make them either quickly-dispatched cannon fodder or a terrifyingly powerful antagonist.

What is one of your favorite bits of Pugmire lore or a setting secret?

One of my favorite bits of Pugmire lore is how each group misunderstands each other. The dogs, for example, have specific perspectives on things like how cats use necromancy and how rodents buy and sell things. Then you pick up another book, and while those things are true, they aren’t the whole picture. Each part pulls away another layer of the world, recontextualizing things. In particular, I think the badger clans are a neat bit of world lore that I’m eager to talk more about in future books, although we give a bigger perspective on them this time around.

What can you tell us about the creative team on these books?

I’ve been lucky to work with some incredibly creative and talented people on just about every Realms of Pugmire book. For this version, I hired a (mostly) whole new team of people, because I wanted some fresh voices. One of the downsides of being inside this world for close to a decade is that sometimes I look right through new opportunities to change and push the setting, so having some people who both loved Pugmire and were willing to challenge me and themselves was really important. And they knocked it out of the park!

Are there any Actual Plays where we can see the games in action?

Absolutely! A few groups were able to take an earlier draft of the rules and give them a try. I had to do some rewriting right up to the Kickstarter, but I think folks will get the gist of what’s cool and exciting about Pugmire from these:

I ran a game for Red Moon Roleplaying. It’s a bit darker than most Realms of Pugmire game, but it really showcases how deep and compelling the setting can be.

And some folks have been running “A Ball to Die For” on the Onyx Path Twitch channel.

There are more to come in future, too!

What kinds of stretch goals are you hoping for during the Kickstarter?

We have a few surprises coming up that I don’t want to spoil (particularly if we don’t get to them, which would be sad). However, I’m really excited to see if we can finance a full, working character sheet for Roll20. While we’ve been getting tokens and maps out over the past year or so, lots of people would love to have a fully-featured character sheet to use for online gaming. It’s something we’d love to be able to provide, and a stretch goal is the perfect way to get the money to hire someone to handle that for us.

Realms of Pugmire is currently on Kickstarter.com!

They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave! sees characters ranging from heroic swordsmen and cunning sorceresses to charming minstrels and agile scoundrels, embarking on quests designed to evoke the majesty of fantasy movies and television shows from the 1940s onward. Whether you’re looking to channel an epic like The Thief of Bagdad or grim fantasy such as The Sword and the Sorcerer, Cyclops’s Cave! has everything you need for swashbuckling, noble heroism, and monster slaying.

The Flames Rising crew is pleased to present an interview with Matthew Dawkins, the co-developer for They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave. In this interview, Matthew talks about inspirations for the game, as well as different styles of play, and more!

What is your elevator pitch for They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave!?

Play in a cinematic fantasy game drawing inspiration from everything from the Voyages of Sinbad and The Odyssey through to Conan the Barbarian and Hawk the Slayer. In Cyclops’s Cave, you can play one of six varied fantasy Archetypes complete with cinematic powers, magic effects, and everything that makes fantasy media so hammy, melodramatic, and overwrought. As with the other They Came From games, Cyclops’s Cave treats its inspirations with reverence while pulling on the parts that we find the most fun, to make for a genuinely entertaining roleplaying experience.

What were some of your favorite inspirations when designing They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave!?

My co-developer Michele Masala would probably name a lot of epic fantasy, sword and sandals media like Xena, Clash of the Titans, and a lot more of the early fantasy movies in the Harryhausen mold. For me, I look mainly to the sword and sorcery genre of the 1980s, with the aptly named Sword and the Sorcerer being a primary inspiration.

What kinds of characters make for interesting stories in They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave! games?

The best characters are the ones who jar with the setting, somewhat. Heroes should be exceptions to the world in which they appear, rather than the norm. This is why our Archetypes are things like Champion (who wants to be a lowly warrior?) and Inhuman (because an ogre or gorgon is a lot more fun than a boring old supporting character with rugged looks and a mullet). I can look at any of the characters from the Masters of the Universe franchise, for instance, and slot them into this game.

What are some of the antagonists and other challenges characters in They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave! deal with during a typical adventure?

Well monsters certainly play a large part in Cyclops’s Cave, with a wide array of fantasy staples, including some with twists. I’m particularly happy with how we’ve presented Orcs (Orx in this game) for instance. Characters can expect challenges that meet the classic heroic callings, involving quests against beasts, to find treasure, to seal a romance, or to defend the king against a foul and depraved sorcerer. If it’s been in a fantasy movie, novel, or TV show, you can find it here.

Can They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave! be used for other fantasy genres?

Absolutely. While we say in the book that it most closely emulates fantasy media from the 1930s to mid 1990s (arguing the Lord of the Rings movies are where fantasy cinema started being critically praised), you can stretch it pretty simply to fantasy in space in the form of Star Wars, or make the fantasy more grim, like A Song of Ice and Fire. They Came From games are flexible by design.

What were some of the biggest challenges during the playtesting of this book?

Honestly, I don’t encounter many as I’ve ran so many They Came From games. The most common confusion arises from players who have been taught not to metagame, not to make comedy references, and basically, to take everything at the table utterly seriously. They Came From isn’t a deadly serious game (unless you want it to be), so getting the players to relax into just having fun can something be a challenge.

They Came From Cyclops Cave! is just only half of this Kickstarter project. What can you tell us about They Came From [CLASSIFIED]!?

CLASSIFIED is a game covering one of my favourite media genres: espionage. Bond, The Avengers, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart.. They’re all represented in this game, and for my money, it’s been the most entertaining They Came From to work on. Whether you embrace the camp of The Saint or Austin Powers, or opt more for the seriousness of Smiley’s People or the Ipcress File, CLASSIFIED has you covered.

How would crossovers work with the They Came From… game lines?

The They Came Froms are designed as modular. In other words, the rules differences between each are minimal, and Archetypes, Cinematics, Quips, Tropes, and antagonists can easily be ported from one game to another. For example, I’ve been running a long CLASSIFIED game in which one player is a Survivor from Beneath the Sea! and another is a Mystic from Beyond the Grave!, because both Archetypes fit perfectly well into a Live and Let Die style campaign. With them, the players use their favourite Cinematics and Quips from those games despite the CLASSIFIED backdrop.

What can you tell us about the creative team on these books?

As mentioned, the talented Michele Masala was my co-developer on Cyclops’s Cave!, and he did a wonderful job, especially considering it was one of his first in the developer chair. We had incredible writers on these books too, but I want to give a special shout-out to the artists, who never receive enough credit: Larry Blamire and Durwin Talon for their full-page poster style artworks for Cyclops and CLASSIFIED, respectively, and Aaron Riley for his Archetype pieces, deserve applause. I’m immensely proud of the creators behind both books.

Are there any Actual Plays where we can see the games in action?

Check out Red Moon Roleplaying for an ongoing They Came from [CLASSIFIED]! game (and an upcoming They Came from the Cyclops’s Cave! game), and tune into the Onyx Path Twitch channel this Friday for a Cyclops’s Cave! one-shot!

What kinds of stretch goals are you hoping for?

I’d love to fund a sourcebook of sufficient size to handle explosive action movies of the Schwarzenegger variety, but we shall see!

Find out more information and back this project at Kickstarter.com!

Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition is now available for pre-order on BackerKit, and is nearing its debut. As fans review the text one section that has gotten a lot of questions is the Native compact, SWORN. Fans wanted to know whether or not that was written by an indigenous designer, and the answer is “Yes.” In fact, not only did Allen create SWORN, he also helped me refresh all of the existing compacts and conspiracies in the game, too.

Anticipating questions, I interviewed the compact’s designer, Allen Turner, to promote the HTV2E Kickstarter back in February 2020. I’ll be resharing all the interviews I conducted with the Hunter team when the game is available. You are encouraged to re-read Allen Turner Discussing SWORN in Hunter The Vigil Second Edition.

Today, I want to shift gears and talk about this from a developer’s perspective.

To frame Allen’s interview, I talked about how:

“It was my goal from Hunter 2E’s inception to ensure the corebook presented different playing styles and groups to ensure you could either envision yourself as a member or create your own to suit your needs.”

That’s the quotable version of what I hope the game accomplishes overall. A modern, monster-hunting game about sacrifices, hard choices, and banding together when the chips are down is something I felt should be reflective of the diversity present in our communities today. This is not “a” hunter’s story: This has the potential to be “your” story about hunting monsters in your own backyard, and there are a lot of tools provided so you can do just that.

For me, no Americana-flavored game set in today’s world can be complete without the inclusion of indigenous peoples. There is so much historical content focused on the ghosts of the past, but very little modern. There are also a lot of entrenched biases: Allen’s name is in the credits, but his name doesn’t “sound” indigenous. (If you thought that, at any point, that’s a great opportunity to do a little self-examination.) Allen worked on ALL the compacts and conspiracies, too, with the exception of the two Slasher-facing groups, and SWORN is the only one he worked on that gets called out.

SWORN does stand out, because again–there isn’t a lot of modern Native content, and because of that, its 1,500 word write-up is in the spotlight.

When I hired Allen, I didn’t make a ride-or-die decision to work with him based on SWORN. I just created space, then told him I wanted a Native compact, and let him decide what to do because I trusted him as a designer. We had all kinds of conversations about the game’s concept, but ultimately I left the decision to him. I simply created space by adding new compacts and conspiracies in the book. (Something I did seek prior approval for.) I didn’t tell Allen I only wanted him for that space, and then tell him what that space should look like.

To better understand my approach, let me use a dinner table analogy. A lot of times, with respect to any conversations about diversity and representation, there’s a fear that something will be taken away. Right? There’s an idea that there’s only eight seats at the table, so if you need better representation, you’d remove two guests and add two more assigning where they sit, what they eat, etc.

Instead, I look at the dinner table and say: “Oh hey, where’s that table extension? Let’s just make the table bigger.” Then I send an invite, and I do my best to throw a fun dinner party by asking them why they’re excited to come and what they want to contribute. I don’t demand or assume everyone wants to write about “their” culture; I try to find ways to create spaces that allows creatives to choose.

Sometimes, there’s an unspoken pressure for creatives to only work on content related to their cultural or identity-related viewpoint. This introduces a ton of problems because there is no monolithic or authoritative view of a culture or identity. There just isn’t and hasn’t been for a very, very long time (if there ever was one). Seeking “one” view creates shortcuts and often reinforces stereotypes instead of creating opportunities to learn. For example, did you know about Relocation?

“People from Native nations all over the country were pushed to the city during Relocation back in the late 1950s. That was an interesting time because you suddenly had a lot of people stuck in an urban environment, in the ghetto, trying to survive while navigating all sorts of restrictions and rules they didn’t have where they came from. In particular, there just wasn’t the density of people back in rural and reservation areas (although many reservations were also dirt poor).” — From an Interview with Allen Turner

Additionally, Allen understood the gravity of his assignment. Not only did he create an intertribal space, he also consulted multiple members within his communities and playtested the material with LARP designer Gabriel De Los Angeles and game designer/writer James F. Sambrano, too. Subscribers can watch their actual play on the Onyx Path Publishing Twitch Channel.

I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and say it’s okay if you didn’t know what Relocation was. As we grow as people, as we consume more media, we learn more about ourselves, our cultures, our orientation, and our identities. Sometimes, we are going to get things wrong. (I know I have.) Sometimes, we might get something “right” without fully understanding what that means, too. Or, what’s right for 2021 is going to be hilariously outdated in 2026. The pressure to “be correct” also fosters a creative viewpoint to create stories, games, comics, even movies based on, to quote Victor Raymond, essentialism rather than mutual respect.

I hope you find opportunities to create spaces in your own life that are based on mutual respect. Maybe then, you’ll find yourself as blessed with an amazing, talented friend and collaborator as Allen has turned out to be. When Hunter The Vigil Second Edition comes out, can you do me a favor? Help me honor all of Allen’s work and the rest of the team’s. This was a licensed property–a game I don’t own–so you also have Onyx Path Publishing and the folks at Paradox in approvals to thank, too.

Again, thank you for listening. I’m not really comfortable talking about this aspect of my development, because it is something I learned how to “do” after a lot of trial and error. So, thanks again, Allen, for helping me edit this post and understanding why I had to write it. May your own table always be filled with good food, great people, and interesting conversation.

For updates about the game, I’m going to direct you to The Onyx Path website. Or, pre-order Hunter The Vigil Second Edition on BackerKit.

What prompted you to start Queen of Swords Press?

A combination of some not great experiences with other publishers and a driving ambition to see if I’d be good at it — not unlike what motivated me to start writing fiction to begin with. I believe my exact phrase when I came up with the idea for the press and started planning was, “I cannot be more dysfunctional than some of the people that I’ve been dealing with.” I think that I have so far been proven correct on this.

What is QoS’s most popular title so far?

Most popular in terms of both sales and longevity: Silver Moon. Even granted that it was a new edition of my first novel, it’s our best seller. In fact, it just got picked up by a new small distributor in the U.K. and it will be getting a new German edition next year which will be released by Ylva Publishing. People still tell me that it was their coming out novel, which is just the most amazing thing to hear. The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater and Foxhunt by Rem Wigmore have some serious buzz right now though, so they might catch up soon.

Is there a specific genre QoS specializes in?

Two years ago, I would have said that we leaned more fantasy and horror than SF, but now I’m putting out our second SF title in a row (Obviously, Aliens by Jennie Goloboy). Since I do most of the marketing, we pick “books Catherine likes to read and can sell,” but I’m discovering that my taste is more eclectic than I realized. Our current readership is generally looking for well written and memorable LGBTQ+ protagonists, much like I do myself, so that’s always a good starting point. In general, I would say that we publish solarpunk, steampunk, character-driven science fiction, unusual fantasy and Gothic horror. But there’s always something new under the sun that I may not have seen yet and might promptly fall in love with.

How many copies of a book do you need to sell to consider that book a success?

How many copies of a book do you need to sell to consider that book a success? I think there are a number of ways to consider a book successful. Sales are certainly very important, but I wouldn’t say they were the only thing that I consider. So, for instance, Silver Moon sells the most copies and has become something of a cult favorite, but The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater is our first book to win an award (2021 Sir Julius Vogel for Best Collection). Alex Acks’ books are very popular with steampunk and alternate history fans and Rem Wigmore’s Foxhunt looks like it might turn out to be one of our biggest longterm successes on multiple levels. For me, a book’s success is measured by it finding its people as much as it is by sales figures or other kinds of acclaim. That said, our average title needs to sell 100-200 copies to cover the cost of production, which is a handy metric to have.

What is your biggest challenge as a small publisher?

Time and money and the way that they impact planning. We are financed by a combination of my day job earnings, our book sales and our Patreon. Since the latter two just about cover costs and help us grow a bit, but are not enough to support me and my family, I need to keep working until they do. So, between writing and teaching and working and publishing and promotional events, life is very…full.

Do you have a dream author/group of authors you want to publish?

I mean, kind of, but not really? There are certainly authors I hope to work with some day but we’re still a pretty small operation and most authors are, understandably, going to be chasing bigger opportunities. What I’m looking to do in the here and now is to build up a press that’s appealing to authors telling the kind of stories that I want to read because if they do well and are happy, they tell other authors. And we go from there!

If you’re interested in learning more and keeping up with current projects, we have a monthly newsletter that you can sign up for on our website. We’re also on most major forms of social media (I haven’t mastered TikTok yet) as @qospress.

Our thanks to Catherine Lundoff for taking time out of her busy schedule to chat with us.

Queen of Swords books are available from the Queen of Swords website: QueenofSwordsPress.com and DriveThruFiction.com.

Matt Forbeck stopped by to tell us about about the upcoming 5th Edition OGL version of the RPG, currently funding on Kickstarter!

What were some of your favorite inspirations for the Shotguns & Sorcery setting?

I often describe the setting as a combination of the work of two of my favorite authors: J. R. R. Tolkien and Raymond Chandler. They were the godfathers of high fantasy and hardboiled detectives, respectively. That’s why I call the genre for the setting “fantasy noir.”

How necessary are the Shotguns & Sorcery novels to get into this setting?

While I’d love for everyone to read all the Shotguns & Sorcery stories, you don’t need to crack any of them to play in the setting. The 5E Sourcebook includes snippets of fiction to help set the tone and get the players into the right mindset for the game, but that’s all you need to get started. The book stands on its own.

What kinds of adventures can a group get into with this book?

The book centers on adventures inside Dragon City, a massive metropolis built on top of and inside a mountain surrounded by a gigantic horde of zombies. So, it’s urban fantasy with the emphasis on fantasy. The heroes can also venture outside of the city, but that’s the most dangerous kind of work.

What was the biggest design challenge when working on this book?

My son Marty handled most of the actual game design work for this book, with some guidance from me. I’d say the hardest part was coming up with firearms rules that handled the way we wanted them too. The weaponry in Shotguns & Sorcery is a bit more advanced than you’d find in the typical 5E setting, so it took a bit more work.

What was the playtesting process like for Shotguns & Sorcery 5E?

We mostly handled it internally. The wonderful thing about working with a system like 5E is that it has such a long legacy of game design behind it and has been played by hundreds of millions of people, so you’re working off a rock-solid platform.

How did the playtest feedback affect your design goals?

We used “getting the game to feel like Shotguns & Sorcery” as our lodestone throughout, and when we thought things weren’t working, we always steered back on course by that. Given that the setting actually started out as a proposal for a line of books for 3E, it wasn’t such a hard move to make.

What piece of Shotguns & Sorcery lore was your favorite to expand or add to this book?

We dug a bit deeper into the investigator and their role in a 5E game, and that was a delight. It brings up all sorts of different ways to play the game that aren’t “knock down the door, kill things, and take their stuff.” I mean, you can do that, but it’s not the focus for the setting.

Solidifying the naming conventions for the setting was a bit of fun too. I did some of that work when building the setting for the stories, but it’s another thing to say, “Hey, in your game, this is what you should try to make it feel as authentic as you like.”

What can you tell us about the creative team on this book?

My son Marty did most of the heavy lifting on this book, design-wise. Turns out he has a flair for it, possibly due to growing up in the tabletop games industry. I’m handling the editing, layout, development, and project management.

Most of the art comes from Shotguns & Sorcery: The Roleplaying Game — the Cypher System edition that came out last year. It was packed with all sorts of stellar stuff, and we didn’t see the need to redo it. Instead, we want to show it off to a new and hopefully bigger audience.

Jeremy Mohler — who published that version of the game through his company, Outland Entertainment, supplied a lot of that art himself and served for art director for the book. To top that off, he created a stunning new cover for The 5E Sourcebook, which features the heroes from the stories facing off against a zombie horde. It’s just gorgeous.

Shotguns & Sorcery for 5E is currently funding on Kickstarter.com! It has reached its funding goal and is on to stretch goals. Don’t miss out!

Onyx Path Publishing has launched a Kickstarter for a deluxe edition of The Apocalyptic Record. A setting supplement and sourcebook for Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition. We’ve had a chance to discuss this project with the co-developers Matthew Dawkins and Leath Sheales.

What were some of your favorite inspirations for Apocalyptic Record?

MD: Beckett’s Jyhad Diary is one of mine, in terms of style and intention. From a Werewolf standpoint, I’ve always enjoyed the impressive nature of the forthcoming Apocalypse, how at times it feels hopeless to fight it, at other times all you have in Werewolf is the fight to slow or prevent it. The entire Werewolf metaplot, spread across its many, many books, inspired me to co-develop this one.

LS: The Prophecy of the Phoenix is a big one for me, running all the way back to Werewolf: The Apocalypse 2nd edition. Here’s this overarching prophecy that all Garou know, with signs of the end times, and like all good mythic prophecies it seems clear and specific but is really quite vague and open to interpretation. Various signs were more or less true depending on the person considering them. And that got me thinking about the idea of cyclical apocalypses, and the number of times the signs rose and fall, and how the Garou could never be sure if the signs they saw this time were *the* Apocalypse, or just another prelude to an apocalypse. Think about the first sign of the Apocalypse, the decimation of kin, and think about how this must have appeared to the various indigenous tribes of North America and Australia over the centuries. Similarly, the fourth sign is the children of humans falling against each other. Unfortunately, wars between human nations aren’t exactly rare in our history, are they?

What was the research and pitch process like for this book?

MD: I recall discussing with Rich Thomas the possibility of making a Werewolf book akin to Beckett’s Jyhad Diary, where we could round off the metaplot built up over the last 30 years, ahead of the release of a new edition. I sold it as a massive “thank you” to the long-time fans of Werewolf, who would recognise in this book characters, events, and powers they may have played, interacted with, or used in their chronicles over the last three decades. In terms of research, our amazing team of writers were each assigned sections to write on their respective Auspice chapters, and a Storyteller’s metaplot chapter, too, and given advice on the books they’d need to refer to to make their chapter pop. As an example, the Ahroun writers were referring to books such as Rage Across the Amazon, while the Ragabash writers had books like Book of the Wyrm and the Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook to refer to.

LS: This takes me back. In mid-2018 Matthew asked if I’d be interested in developing a book like Beckett’s Jyhad Diary for WtA. From that initial conversation we quickly sketched out some of the core structures for Apocalyptic Record. We agreed that having a single chronicler didn’t suit the Garou Nation like it did vampire society, that Garou were an oral tradition with many viewpoints and voices. It was in this discussion that we settled on a guiding point for the writers – “No objective truths”. That is to say, characters have their views and opinions, all of which are subjective, and all of which have degrees of value, are all of which are their truths. Gaia isn’t going to appear and tell a character that they’re wrong.

We both knew that the Auspices were key to how we’d divide the book into chapters. The Garou have so many different tribes, septs, and ideas, but it keeps coming back to Auspices defining roles – or defining what roles an individual rebels against. From there, we figured out the subjects that made sense for each Auspice and what we wanted to writers to cover, without telling them who or what had to tell the stories covering those topics.

Which Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition books had the most impact on the development of this book?

MD: That’s an excellent question, because all of them did, in some way or another. I think Book of the Wyrm stands out for me, not only because I contributed to it, but because it does such a fantastic job of revealing the Apocalypse, Gaia, and the Wyrm from the perspective of the enemy. It’s an incredibly captivating, motivating book.

LS: No one book stands out as directly more important to the Apocalyptic Record‘s story than any other. However, personally, I’m going to say that two books had the most impact on the Apocalyptic Records – Changing Breeds and Book of the Wyrm – both of which are key because they’re the books where me (CB20th) and Matthew (BotW20th) started working on the Werewolf line!

What were some of the biggest challenges during the research phase of this book?

MD: Without doubt, the biggest challenge was knowing what not to include. Werewolf’s metaplot is a little more discreet than Vampire’s, oddly, and therefore we had to dig deep to find the parts we wanted to shine a new light on, and think carefully about elements that haven’t aged well, or are best left resolved (or unresolved, as they case may be), by time. Our writers were all incredibly enthusiastic to present this plot, or that characters, but occasionally it’s the job of the developers to say “let’s bench that idea from 1994 and go with this one from 1997 instead”. As an example, you couldn’t pay us to revive the Swords of Heimdall. Times have changed, and some things weren’t a great idea when they were first presented.

LS: The biggest challenge for our writers was the sheer depth of re-familiarising themselves with what came before. Although the 20th anniversary editions of the WtA books were the first place we directed them, I don’t think any of our great team of writers limited themselves to those books. They all dug deeper into the lore, finding the voices for the characters they wrote, talking with each other about ideas and who would write what to avoid doubling up on the same topics, or to ensure they came at those topics from different directions.

How useful is the Apocalyptic Record for previous editions of Werewolf: The Apocalypse?

MD: Very much so, I would hope. This book expands existing metaplot seeds laid down in previous editions, revisits old places and names from way back when, and gives real depth to plots we may not have looked at in up to 30 years. There are elements from books like Rage Across Appalachia and Rage Across New York here, as well as characters from the Tribebooks for Werewolf. There’s a lot to find and use in this book, for Storytellers and players alike.

LS: The Apocalyptic Record is full of story hooks and campaign ideas. It gives so many start points for games, or events and characters to drop into ongoing campaigns regardless of edition. Chapter Six also looks over nearly 30 years of books and plot – that is, across all editions – and pulls out key elements from each one for players and Storytellers to dig their claws into. I’ve been a fan of Werewolf the Apocalypse since the corebook of 1st edition and I find that chapter to be an invaluable resource. There’s been so much written about the Garou that I admit I hadn’t remembered all the nuances that the writer pulled together for that chapter!

What kind of content is there for fans of the Changing Breeds?

MD: We include several spokespersons for the various Fera throughout this book, sometimes as allies, sometimes as victims, other times as enemies. While the game’s name is Werewolf, a lot of people love those Corax, Kitsune, and Bastet, among others, and it wouldn’t be right to cut them out. They have a voice here, hopefully leading to their inclusion in more Werewolf games.

LS: Garou are the focus of the Apocalyptic Record, but we know they don’t occupy the Earth alone. (Much as they’ve tried at various times in their history!) Various Fera appear within chapters – sometimes commenting on the Garou, other times interacting with them, and occasionally critiquing them and their actions. One of the themes running through the book is that the Garou can’t do it all alone. A common analogy with the Garou is that they’re hammers and they see every problem as a nail. This has a lot of truth to it, but in this age, with the new generations and the pace of technological and societal change, they’re coming to actually understand that they can’t do it alone. They need other tools to get the job done, and they need to look to mend the bridges they burned with the Changing Breeds.

What piece of Werewolf lore was your favorite to expand or add to this book?

MD: I love anything that takes us into the Umbra and explores spirit, totem, or even lune interaction with the Garou. It’s something a lot of Storytellers struggle with, because by their ephemeral nature, Umbral entities are alien and bizarre to the average werewolf (and Werewolf players). I think we did a fantastic job making these types of creature relatable, and hopefully explain their place in the world a little better. Plus, I enjoyed that we killed one of the many up and coming Pentex director candidates from Book of the Wyrm in this book.

LS: I’ve already mentioned the Prophecy of the Phoenix, which I wanted to revisit and weave through the book. It’s there in several ways, some of which only become apparent as you read more of the book. The second thing I wanted emphasised, which you may or may not think of as lore, was the way the lupus breed Garou view the world. These wolf-born Garou can easily be dismissed as simple because they lack human upbringing and schooling, but that overlooks the richness of their senses, the information that scent and hearing convey from the world beyond human concepts and speech, and the value they bring to werewolf society. Our writers did a wonderful job in showing these aspects of lupus existence.

What can you tell us about the creative team on this book?

MD: Our writers on this one were a fantastic mixture of established hands and new voices, from Bill Bridges and Ethan Skemp, who have both led the Werewolf line at various points, through to Alison Cybe, Cat Evans, Erica Mahoney, Michele Masala, Nik May, James Sambrano, and of course, my co-developer Leath Sheales. The range of experience was an incredible boon, because it allowed some in-character voices to have the authority of their experienced authors, while new pups and tales of the first change could be written up by people first approaching this material. I’m very proud of all their work.

LS: They were amazing and wrote so much good material directly into their first drafts. So much so that Matthew and I only had to give drafts a light touch for redlines and 2nd drafts. What the writers produced was clear and evocative, and most of what you read in the Apocalyptic Record came straight from first drafts with just enough developer tweaks and polish to bring all the stories together and make it shine.

Now that the Kickstarter has been funded, what kinds of stretch goals are you hoping for?

MD: Icons of Rage has been announced, and this is one I’m really looking forward to. I’ve no doubt we’ll fund it, and in my view, a book of characters – supporting cast and antagonists alike – for insertion into your chronicles is something any Werewolf Storyteller can make use of. It also gives us the chance to expand on characters created for Apocalyptic Record and revisit old favourites from historic editions.

LS: As the Apocalyptic Record is the capstone of the WtA 20th anniversary line, my wish list would be for any books that add to the playing experience and open up options that haven’t had as much attention across the different editions. Exploring more around the Bunyip, looking into the lost Croatan, and probably many more threads that I’m not recalling right now would be on my list.

They Came from Beyond the Grave! is a dramatic, hammy, and horrifying tabletop roleplaying game encompassing the shock, terror, eroticism, and humor of 1970s horror. This game allows you to play with all the magnificent content from the movies of Hammer, Amicus, and Roger Corman, and promises fun and thrills of the horror movie genre!

We had the chance to ask developer Matthew Dawkins about this project. You can also check out some actual play videos from the recent Onyx Path Virtual Gaming Convention too!

What were some of your favorite inspirations for They Came From Beyond the Grave?

I’m a fan of horror movies through the ages, and I dare say every one of them has touched this game in some way. My chief points of reference, however, are Asylum, a portmanteau horror feature by Amicus; Dracula A.D. 1972, starring the ever wonderful Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing; and The Beast Must Die, which mixes the dark house thriller with a murder mystery, a werewolf hunt, and better-than-average representation for a movie of its time.

How did you pitch this game? Was it always a stand alone RPG or did that come later on in the process?

I pitched Beyond the Grave! after the success of Beneath the Sea! on Kickstarter. I hadn’t anticipated these RPGs being a line of games when I initially developed Beneath the Sea!, but everything fell into place after seeing how versatile that game was, along with how well it was received online and at conventions.

How compatible with They Came From Beneath the Sea! is this RPG?

They’re perfectly compatible, with Archetypes, Quips, and Cinematics seamless in their ability to crossover between games. I want any They Came From games to have this element, where they can expand the previous game or stand alone.

Do you have to own or be familiar with TCFBtS to play this?

You do not have to own They Came from Beneath the Sea! to own this one. It’s its own product.

TCFBtG uses the StoryPath System, how different is it from the rules in Scion 2nd Edition or Dystopia Rising: Evolution?

The rules at their core are the same: d10s dice pools, 8s and above as successes, Complications and Enhancements, etc. However, They Came from Beyond the Grave! has the added bonus of Cinematics, Tropes, Quips, and Trademarks, which can be added or removed depending on the player wishes and the tone the Director (GM) is aiming for.

What were some of the biggest challenges during the playtesting of this book?

Not having the benefit of in-person conventions in 2020! I got to do some playtesting with it at the end of last year, thankfully, and it translates well to online play as our game at the Onyx Path Virtual RPG Convention showed and as Red Moon Roleplaying’s ongoing actual play (very nicely produced!) likewise demonstrates.

What can you tell us about the creative team on this book?

I like to hire a diverse team of established and new authors. The writers on this one are the following stellar talents: Michael Barker, John Burke, Dixie Cochran, Rachel Cole, Joshua Alan Doetsch, Klara Horskjær Herbøl, Jason Inczauskis, Danielle Lauzon, Lauren Roy, Bianca Savazzi, Robert Walker, Eddy Webb, and Rachel Wilkinson. Oh, and myself.

Are there any live plays where we can see the game in action?

Absolutely. Enjoy the following links and follow Gehenna Gaming and Vorpal Tales on Twitch, as they’re both running campaigns of Beyond the Grave! right now: https://youtu.be/qLEFXntIa3g is our Onyx Path Con game, and https://youtu.be/RDYzNbk7VkQ is Red Moon Roleplaying’s first episode.

What kinds of stretch goals are you hoping for?

I really want us to expand the bestiary for this one, as horror movies of the 1970s really broke the mold on what you might see appearing. Plus, any monsters we add to this can also be used in They Came from Beneath the Sea!

They Came from Beyond the Grave! has reached its funding goal and is now on to stretch goals. Read the manuscript and check out other previews today at Kickstarter.com!

The Rise of the Last Imperials chapter takes place at a crucial time in Chinese history during the 17th century. Can you give us a brief overview of the background for this era?

Oh, boy. That’s a big question. The super short version is: The ethnically-Han Ming Dynasty had pretty much run its course; the last three (arguably four) emperors were ineffective, leaving a power vacuum for angry peasants of all ethnicities to fill. They did, established the Shun Dynasty, and sacked Beijing, then immediately got steamrolled by the ethnically-Manchu Qing Dynasty and their Mongol allies. The royal survivors of the Shun attack on Beijing fled to the south and established the short-lived and fractious Southern Ming Dynasty.

So, at the time of Rise of the Last Imperials in Dark Eras 2, most of China is under Qing rule, with a chunk of the south continuing to claim dominion over China. It is a period of massive upheaval and change, creating a challenging, but exciting backdrop for hunters to go looking for monsters.

When you were conducting your research, was there anything you learned that interested or shocked you?

There’s SO MUCH going on during the 17th Century. I had to cut a million things. At one point, there were six different people claiming to be the Emperor of China. Dozens of important figures die under mysterious circumstances, including the Taichang Emperor. The last competent Ming Emperor, the Wanli Emperor, is a wild ride on his own. At the beginning of his reign, he was fighting three simultaneous wars and winning. He did so many things and was just one of the best Emperors of the whole dynasty…up until 1600 when he just stopped. He didn’t go to court, he didn’t issue proclamations, nothing. He was still around for another 20 years, but not in any meaningful way. Why is a whole mystery and could honestly be a chronicle in itself.

Another potential chronicle that I couldn’t include (because it was in the wrong time period) would be about the Great Tianqi Explosion in 1626 that killed 20,000 people in Beijing. We know basically nothing about what happened other than the explosion happened and that it killed the Tianqi Emperor’s last heir. Elaborate assassination? Military experiment gone wrong? Who knows! If I ever have the free time for it, I might turn it into a chronicle for folks through the Storytellers Vault. No promises.

I was able write some details about the granddaddy of the Manchu Dynasty, Nurhaci, but his whole story is way more complicated and interesting than I could add in due to space constraints and because he dies before Rise of the Last Imperials takes place. I don’t know if there’s enough detail to build a chronicle around him; Nurhaci unified the Jurchen people and created a number of systems that ultimately led to the Qing conquest of China and are noteworthy. As an interesting punctuation to this, it took a cannon to kill Nurhaci.

You presented a lot of material showing the depth and breadth of the many peoples who lived in 17th century China. What advice do you have for players who want to create characters based on your work?

One of my goals in writing the chapter was to ensure that people understand that China is far from a monoculture, especially during the 17th century. Race, religion, ethnicity, and who who backed during the most recent wars are all important in this setting. The biggest piece of advice I can offer to players here is to understand that these biographical details are more than just a short blurb in your backstory; they impact how your character experiences the world. A Manchu hunter in the Southern Ming regions will be an outcast and subject to arrest or worse. Likewise, a Southern Ming loyalist will have issues outside of those regions, and a former Shun soldier will be hated everywhere regardless of their ethnicity.

At the same time, there are many examples of collaboration and cooperation between the many peoples of China. Beijing is super cosmopolitan at this time, with massive numbers of Manchu, Mongol, and Han people, as well as the largest population of Hui (mostly-Han Muslims) in China. Uyghur, Kazakh, Hui, and Han people work together in the western provinces. A chronicle of hunters from the same ethnicity will play very differently than one where there’s a mix of backgrounds.

Players and Storytellers should will want to discuss during Session 0 to decide how much they want these elements to impact their chronicle. If you have a multi-ethnic cell, do you want to rotate who the spokesperson is to minimize complications? If all the characters share a background, what will you do when you encounter someone from a different culture? Additionally, I strongly encourage people to read up on these folks — learn about their history and culture. All of the groups that I mentioned — and ones that I didn’t — still exist in China and would love for people to remember that fact. For players who prefer video, YouTube! is a great resource here; the internet has given voice to a large number of folks, allowing their stories to be told. Even the relatively small Tanka people have a number of documentaries online.

One of my major references for the era was The Manchu Way (Elliot 2001), which I highly recommend to folks looking for details of the Manchu people and how they reshaped China. The book is almost 600 pages, so while it’s a valuable resource, I don’t expect anyone to read it unless they’re vested in the history. Again, YouTube! can help here.

Finally, I’m definitely not saying you can’t play a Han character; the Han people are great and make up the majority of China, both during Rise of the Last Imperials and now. What I am saying is that China is not a monolith. The North is different from the South and the West. China has 56 recognized ethnic groups. Explore the diversity of culture in your chronicle; you’ll find a lot of interesting stories to be had.

In addition to Dark Eras 2, you’ve worked on other games and have been in the hobby gaming industry a while. Can you tell us more about them?

I’ve been working in the industry for about four years now and have three books out, with another eight that are waiting on art, layout, or other arcane mysteries. For folks outside the industry, that might sound kind of weird, but it seems pretty typical. There are all sorts of important steps that books have to go through in order to arrive at your FLGS (friendly local game store), so the lifecycle of a book’s development is often many times longer than it takes to write the content.

As far as the actual books I’ve worked on, I’ve done a lot of work on Mage: The Ascension and Scion Second Edition, both of which are a lot of fun. When Mage: Technocracy Reloaded comes out, folks will have access to a bunch of hypertech gadgets, most of which have my fingerprints all over. I’m a fantasy writer, former Army Ranger, and scientist, so sci-fi gadgets for a pseudo-magic paramilitary organization were right up my alley. I blew right past my word count making cool stuff! This gave my developers headaches since they didn’t want to cut anything, but needed to trim the words down. Fortunately, Satyr and Travis are magic and made it work.

Over on the Scion Second Edition front, I worked two upcoming books: Dragon and Titanomachy. This allowed me to delve into pantheons that weren’t in Scion: Hero or Scion: Origin, as well as explore the core pantheons from different angles. One of the core pillars of Scion is that “All Myths Are True”, which means that we can complicate the material that we’ve already presented with contradictory lore. In this vein, I wrote about ostensibly the same God from two wildly different perspectives. Titanomachy goes into this in detail and has an adventure that really gets into some of the fun complications created by All Myths Are True.

Are you working on any new games? What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on six tabletop RPGs, most notably Fifth Season Roleplay (based on N.K. Jemisin’s amazing fantasy trilogy), Victorian Mage, and Trinity Continuum: Adventure! I can’t really go details for those, but I can offer up that I have a TON of books coming out this year.

Assuming that the world of print goes according to schedule (Hah, hah!), I’ll have somewhere between 20 and 40 books out in 2020. I have a bunch of queer sci-fi and fantasy stories being published in a monthly anthology called Trinity (no relation to the RPG) by Blue Forge Press. Each month will have stories by men, women, and non-binary writers (hence the title). January’s edition is already out. Also from Blue Forge Press, I have one-story previews of my upcoming queer sci-fi short story collection Bi Robot that should debut any time now. If you ever wondered what life and relationships might be like in a post-human world, you’ll enjoy these tales.

Also this year, I have two serialized novels: Gunsmoke & Mirrors, a military fantasy tale about a mercenary crew that learns the world is bigger than they thought (it’s not Hunter: The Vigil, of course, but it’s not not Hunter), and @ and &, a pair of gender-fluid mages trying to survive in a world that keeps getting weirder. I want to emphasize to players and copyright holders that these are neither official novels nor fan fiction novels; they take place in their own worlds, with their own lore and whatnot. I didn’t set out to create a Hunter: The Vigil or Mage: The Ascension novel, but working on both game lines created echoes in my original works.

FlamesRising.com would like to thank Monica and Hiromi for their time. To explore Rise of the Last Imperials set in the Chronicles of Darkness, be sure to check out Dark Eras 2.

The name “Rachel Caine” has graced dozens of best-selling novel covers. With over fifty books in multiple genres for teen and adult audiences, we have to ask: What does a typical day look like for you? And, how do you keep writing such amazing books?

Well…to be honest, my typical day now is not my typical day a year ago. So I’ll tell you first what it was a year ago!

Generally, I liked to get up at about 5 am, shower and dress, make coffee, and hit the words. I usually wrote pretty steadily from about 5:30 to noon (with 15 minute breaks every two hours), then took a long break and answered emails, did social media, etc. Sometimes I did it at my house, sometimes in a coffee shop, sometimes sitting in a waiting room for car repair, etc. Just wherever I was, I wrote. (Headphones help.)

Normally my afternoons were reserved for errands, lunch, time with my husband, friends, etc. Then I’d reply to more emails in the evening while watching TV with him.

BUT, a year ago I was also doing a heck of a lot of appearances and travel—about once a month I was on the road for something. So I had to discipline myself to keep the same schedule on the road, too, whenever possible.

Now…it’s just different. I was diagnosed in 2019 with an aggressive, rare cancer called soft tissue sarcoma, and that upended my whole life. By September 2019 I was in very harsh and aggressive chemotherapy (ask me about my experience with Red Devil plus Ifosfamide!), followed by emergency surgery to remove about 5 lbs of muscle and tissue from my left side torso. Then recovery, including extensive physical therapy to learn how to lift my left arm again.

I’d like to say I’m out from under it, but…I’m not. My sarcoma only paused for about a month after all that effort, then came right back, more aggressive than ever. Because it’s so tenacious, we’re trying to find a cutting-edge drug solution of PARP inhibitors and immunotherapy infusions to slow it down or stop it completely before we try another surgery.

So while I’m working again, you can say there’s a lot weighing on me at the moment, and writing is slower than before, and more difficult. I can’t get up at 5 am anymore; I absolutely need at least 8 to 9 hours of sleep to let my body continue to fight. I’m not traveling anymore or doing personal appearances because of the risk to my health from a suppressed immune system. My whole life is different, and trying to bring order to this mental and physical and emotional chaos is … challenging.

But I’m up and working daily, even if the work isn’t coming as fast as I’d like.

Just to be clear: I really am okay for now. I’ve got great doctors, a good plan, a last-ditch surgical effort if the PARP inhibitor program fails. I don’t know if I’ll ultimately be victorious; the odds are cloudy, to be sure. But I wouldn’t be a writer if I wasn’t stubborn as hell.

Of all the genres you’ve written in, which one is your favorite and why? Do your personal preferences ever change?

Oooh, I love them all (or I wouldn’t write them!) but I have to say that YA will always have a special joy for me. I love thriller for the intellectual and emotional challenge, but YA is just pure fun.

You have a new book coming out called Honor Lost that you co-wrote with another stellar author, Ann Aguirre. Can you tell us about it? Is it part of a series or a stand-alone book?

Honor Lost is the last in a 3-book series we’ve written together, and we’ve had SUCH a good time with it! Funny story…this all started on Twitter.

I had an idea that I’d noodled around with but never made much progress on; it was a partially completed synopsis for a book I wanted to write, but I hadn’t figured it out completely.

Then one day on Twitter, Ann Aguirre (whom I’ve known for years, in both Urban Fantasy and YA) wrote that she wanted to write an action/adventure love story about a girl in love with a spaceship … and I was *shocked* because that was my synopsis! So I immediately emailed her, and she said, “Oh, well, you’re already writing it, so go ahead,” and I asked if I could send her the synopsis and see what she thought. She kindly agreed, and loved the idea, and I asked her if she wanted to write it together. We just clicked! We agreed on everything about the series, including the diversity of characters and an unconventional kind of relationship.

So we set aside time to write the first 3 chapters together in a Google doc; it took less than a week to finish and get it to our agents. We wrote the whole first book in about a month. It was SO fun!

If you’re a fan of sweet romance and space opera and interesting, non-traditional relationships, this is the book for you. Sentient space whales and a galactic ecosystem that runs on music! The first book is Honor Among Thieves, then Honor Bound, and finally Honor Lost.

A lot of authors write books for Young Adults. What is it about this audience that excites you as a storyteller?

There’s a pure joy in telling stories for this audience for me. There’s no audience so passionate in their love for a story, for one thing, and the amount of love and excitement I get back from young adults is so wonderful.

And as rewarding as it is to write for adults…there’s also no honor like being someone’s first well-loved book. All the awards in the world can’t substitute for that.

How does your writing process change when you tell stories like Honor Lost with another author?

Honestly, it gets easier! Ann and I work really well together—so well it’s almost scary. We don’t separate the writing up by chapters or characters, we just jump in and write as we can, and it’s just such fun to log in and find that your writing partner has upped the ante on you. If I run into trouble (as I did, last year, see my first response!) then Ann helps me take up the slack, which makes me feel a lot less alone and pressured. But ultimately, because we have the same vision and the same feeling for the book, we’re in sync the whole way.

You’ve also got a new adult thriller out called Bitter Falls. What can we expect to fear in this novel?

So, Bitter Falls is the fourth in this thriller series (Stillhouse Lake). In it, Gwen Proctor is the ex-wife of a serial killer determined to protect herself and her family from all the threats coming at them, whether that’s from the grieving relatives of her ex’s victims, Internet armchair detectives, or very real stalkers.

In Bitter Falls, Gwen’s search for a missing young man leads her into an ever-increasing darkness where no one is who they seem, and exposes her children and lover Sam Cade to more danger than they’ve ever faced before. There’s a remote lake, in particular, that I found very frightening!

A lot of writers talk about how storytelling has changed in the past twenty-or-thirty years. Are there narrative techniques you explore for audiences now that you wouldn’t have when you first started?

Hmm. Great question, but I’m not sure how to separate craft from culture on this one. I started out writing third person point of view; I switched to first person on some projects where I felt it was appropriate. I’ve always written more with a focus on action than on elegant prose, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a technique.

I guess the biggest departure, stylistically, are my thrillers, which I write first person, present tense (everything else I’ve written has been either third or first person, past tense). That was a very deliberate choice, in that I didn’t want the reader to have that underlying sense of security that past tense imparts—after all, if it’s in first person, the narrator must have survived to tell the story in past tense (normally). So I felt it really brought an immediacy and tension to Gwen’s story that I loved.

I don’t know if that’s a change in overall narrative writing, though; it seems more of a craft development for me, personally. I do think the speed of storytelling has changed pretty dramatically, though. We live in a media-influenced world, and storytelling can’t be nearly as leisurely paced now as it was fifty years ago without alienating a lot of readers.

How important is research to your storytelling? Do you find that changes from book to book?

Absolutely! I need research of some kind on every book I do (I don’t even want to confess how many True Crime documentaries I’ve watched and books I’ve read on serial killers for these thrillers) but it does vary a lot. For instance: my Great Library Series in YA (which starts with Ash and Quill). That’s an alternate history story in which the ancient Great Library of Alexandria was never destroyed. Going into the research, all I knew was that there was a library, it was huge, and somehow it burned.

But the research really shaped that book completely, because “library” is kind of a misnomer … it wasn’t a public library as we think of it today. More of a storehouse of political and intellectual power, controlled directly by the Pharaoh of Egypt. Built from intimidation and outright theft (because, after all, manuscripts were handwritten and rare and expensive). Only select few could use the Great Library in full; most scholars were restricted to specific areas of study. And the general public couldn’t enter at all. Censorship was a matter of course. So was bribery and corruption.

So…if you build a world where that remains the norm, that politics and knowledge are completely intertwined, that knowledge really is power in a very real sense…you get a very different kind of world than what we have now.

Research is cool.

Since you’ve written several series, including Morganville, Athena Force, and Revivalist, do you find yourself automatically plotting series even when you’re focusing on one book? Why or why not?

I do write stand-alone novels like Prince of Shadows, but I find I really gravitate to writing series. They can be as short as two books (Red Letter Days) or as long as the Morganville Vampires Series (15 books) but I love exploring and developing characters. That’s harder to do in a single book. But I don’t automatically plot them that way. Generally, if I’m proposing a series book, I do it in increments of three, so there are usually mini-arcs through three books at a time.

The exception is the Stillhouse Lake series, which I initially meant to be a stand-alone, but changed my mind in the writing to be a two-book series, and then I just kept expanding (and, luckily, my publisher was very happy with that). So now I’m working on book five (Heartbreak Bay) and plan to do six.

If you could recommend one book you’ve written to help new readers get to know you, which one would it be and why?

It so depends on the reader! I’d say, broadly, that if they love fun action/adventure, try the first book of the Morganville Vampires series—Glass Houses. If they like action/adventure with a sexier twist, try Ill Wind, the first book of my Weather Warden series. If sprawling epics with immersive worlds, how about Ink and Bone, the first book of the Great Library series, or Honor Among Thieves from the Honors series. And finally, if horror adventure is your jam, try Working Stiff from the Revivalist series, or Devil’s Bargain from Red Letter Days! Thrillers? Stillhouse Lake.

With all these novels, do you find it more challenging to pen short stories for anthologies like Unbound and Hex Appeal?

No, I really enjoy doing short fiction! I especially love doing stories for themed anthologies. I find short fiction is something of a palate cleanser for me, and I like short form a lot.

I’m sure all your fans are dying to know: pick three of your favorite protagonists. Which one would win in a battle of wits? A straight-up fight?

Oooh, good question! Never bet against Gwen Proctor in a straight-up fight (from the Stillhouse Lake series). Claire Danvers from the Morganville Vampires series can think her way out of a problem and fight. Finally, Jess from The Great Library has a special place in my heart because he’s as tenacious and committed as they come. I wouldn’t bet against any of them, actually.

Vampires, witches, or zombies?

Why choose? I’ve written them all!

If you could go anywhere in the world for a fabulous, all-expenses paid writing retreat, where would you go? Why?

I’d love to go back to the UK for my writing retreat, to London. I feel very at home there, and I really love the energy of the city. Though Barcelona, Spain is a close second!

What’s the best way for fans to keep up with you, your work, and new announcements?

Join my mailing list at my website (bottom of the home page) for updates and new releases at rachelcaine.com! Also, follow me on Twitter @rachelcaine, and like my Facebook fan page, and we’re also on Instagram @rachelcaine.


Interested in Rachel Caine’s books? Visit your favorite bookseller or library and lose yourself in adventure.

Today, Monica wraps up her series of interviews by chatting with game designer Chris Allen who worked on The Slasher Chronicle.

Introduce yourself. In addition to Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition, what other games have you worked on?

Hi! I’m Chris Allen, and I’ve worked on a wide range of games over the years. A lot of what I’ve done recently has been with Onyx Path Publishing – Werewolf: The Forsaken Second Edition, Trinity Continuum: Aeon, several chapters for the Dark Eras line, etc. – but back in the mid-2000s I also contributed to several role-playing and miniatures games from Mongoose Publishing.

The Slasher Chronicle is presented as a sample setting for Storytellers to use in their Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition game. Tell us why a Storyteller should consider running a slasher-based chronicle.

So, for me, part of the appeal of using a slasher in a Hunter: The Vigil game is the shift in tone and feel that comes with one of these murderous antagonists. They sit in an interesting spot between conflicts with normal mortals and showdowns with eldritch horrors. They’re human vice, human hate, and human violence honed to a cruelly sharp edge, without the excuse or distancing of being an actual, no-shit monster. Some terrifying Slashers can wield supernatural power, yes, but that’s usually an outgrowth of their fundamental malevolence rather than the cause. The notion of hunters, who try to protect humanity (or at least their part of it) from the nightmares in the darkness, having to go up against a threat that shares so much with them – and indeed presents a potential fail-state for hunters who cross the line and go too far – works for me as a great contrast.

Developer’s Note: The Slasher Chronicle presents rules and fiction to customize the introduction of movie-inspired slashers into your game. It also offers alternative rules to provide more flexibility with how much (or how little) supernatural elements you prefer.

Can you give us examples of a slasher-themed movie, novel, or game you think would be appropriate for inspiration?

I mean, most video game protagonists make pretty great slasher fodder if you turn the perspective on its head and take what they do literally – unstoppable machines of death killing their way through crowds of opponents with scarcely a flinch, convinced they have to follow their assigned path without deviation – that’s absolutely terrifying if put in the right context.

Obviously, there’s a whole raft of excellent slasher-appropriate movies out there. However, the thing that stands out for me recently is a book by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cage of Souls. I can’t really dive into it much without spoiling it, but suffice to say there’s a serial killer who plays a major role in how events pan out. What I find most fascinating about them is that for much of the book, it’s not clear whether they actually have supernatural abilities, or if they’re operating purely on smarts and iron will, with the terrifying legend they’ve cultivated making others interpret what they see this serial killer do as inhuman or impossible when it could actually be mundane.

Since the Slasher supplement debuted in 2009, horror has changed and expanded in many ways. Do you feel the slasher genre has as well? Why or why not?

I think it has; art often reflects our cultural mores and neuroses, and those’ve shifted a fair bit over the past decade. I think there’s probably some interesting analysis you could do by looking at all the remakes of old slasher films that came out during and since 2009, examining the particular ways they’ve changed from source material over time.

HTV2E is a modern horror game, and the Slasher Chronicle could be downright terrifying. What tips for Storytellers and players do you have to help them tell a compelling story that’s enjoyable for all?

Social contract is vital – getting group buy-in from everyone on the overall chronicle concept, working out the limitations of what everyone’s comfortable with, and the like. Find a set of safety tools that your table likes. If what someone thought they were comfortable with turns out to cross a line for them when it comes to actual play, it’s not a criticism or rebuke for the Storyteller, it’s just an update that needs to be taken into account. Communication is, as ever, key.

Equally, getting players to feed in suggestions for the sort of horror they’re interested in seeing is important, and players should build their characters with the sorts of hooks and attachments that they want to see reflected in the story to come. No-one wants a dull slasher who feels detached from the player characters and their lives; that doesn’t meant the slasher needs to be coming for characters’ families or the like, but rather that each killing should put pressure on the break points in a player character’s life outside of the hunt, or remind them of important figures or concepts that play a key part in their life.

A slasher who paints works of art in cartilage and sinew has more meaning for the player character who is themselves an artist; the hunter who prides herself on staying fit and battle-ready even in her advancing years finds more conflicting horror when on the trail of a slasher who picks elderly prey.

Hunters and slashers should bounce off each other in interesting ways, ideally so that the players feel their characters are motivated in the Vigil, and so that the slasher can find and exploit the hunters’ weaknesses–or give the hunters the opportunity to hold strong and prove their strengths in the face of adversity.

What advice do you have for hunters who want to track down a slasher?

Look for the Tell. Every slasher has one – it’s their calling card, their obsession, the manifestation of their malevolent purpose made real in the aftermath of the kill. The Tell can be a danger, of course, as getting yourself too much into the mind of a slasher is never healthy, but it can prove vital to identifying and tracking down the killer.

Beyond that, slashers, even those with supernatural powers, are considered human. A monster might fake the veneer of a human identity to hide behind, but a slasher often comes from the opposite angle, and their human identity could well be what compromises them.

If you were running a slasher-based chronicle, what would your story arc look like? Can you walk us through the first couple of sessions?

Good question! A lot would depend on the specifics of the characters my players made, and what they’d be interested in seeing from such a chronicle, but for a starting skeleton of a story I think I’d choose an overarching slasher – or a cause, or patron – who’d serve as a connecting theme across at least one story arc. They wouldn’t necessarily be at the center of the action all the time – I’m keen to have a varied cast of antagonists, and I wouldn’t be able to resist having several slashers crop up – but they’d be the link behind most of what’s going on, culminating in a revelation or showdown at the end of the arc.

The first session, I’d want to start strong out the gate, with the cell already embroiled in the action. The first slasher’s already killed someone important, someone linked to the cell – maybe an informer, maybe an ally – and they have evidence that the next killing will happen soon. Present them with an urgent situation, an implied time limit, and some clues that they can use to figure out what the slasher’s going to do. If successful, they can stop the killer; the confrontation (or the aftermath if they’re too late) lands some hooks clearly indicating the wider story arc villain, to give a sense of foreboding.

Session two is all about consequences. I’d look at the characters as they move on after the confrontation, trying to handle the stresses of what happened and the demands the Vigil places on them. That includes the practical issues – if they’ve killed the slasher, they’ve just killed someone, so are they covering that up? If they captured the slasher, what now? How do they explain this situation to the police? If they are the police, how to they square away the warnings of something darker at work with the likely skeptical response from their agency? Ideally, once the characters maybe feel like they’ve gotten a lid on things and begin to get a little comfortable, that’s when the hammer blow of the next threat comes in to shatter their complacency, and throw them further into the deep end of the Vigil.

I have a fairly loose style as Storyteller, adapting on the go a lot and spring-boarding off the actions of the player characters, so I can never really predict how a story arc will play out.

Thank you so much for answering our questions. What’s next for you? What are you looking forward to?

Well, I’m already busy on more material for Deviant: The Renegades, Mummy: The Curse, and Trinity Continuum: Aeon! I’m also cracking on with some fiction writing, and eyeing a few personal tabletop RPG projects I’ve had on the back-burner for a while. I’m also really looking forward to the UK Games Expo this year, where I’ll be running some games for Onyx Path again – including a session of Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition!

Want to learn more about The Slasher Chronicle? Check out the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter for exclusive previews and more information. Thanks!

To celebrate the release of the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter, Monica reached out to members of her team for a series of in-depth interviews. Today, Monica chats with Meghan Fitzgerald who worked on rules for the new edition. Meghan is a tabletop game designer, developer, and writer (and a librarian, in another life). She’s also the current line developer for Changeling: The Lost and Mage: The Awakening lines from Onyx Path Publishing. She’s also worked on several other Onyx Path-published games, projects for Green Ronin as both writer and developer, and many others in the tabletop RPG industry.

Hunter The Vigil Second Edition is about that commitment a player must make to the hunt. In game terms, The Code is now part of character creation. Can you offer insight into your approach to The Code?

The idea behind the Code for 2e was that, as a hunter, you’re still human and you still have Integrity, but your dedication to the Vigil — a dangerous and horror-filled lifestyle that puts you through the wringer on both personal and practical levels and is beyond any normal human experience — necessarily changes your psyche. You’ve had the veil stripped from your eyes and you decided not to put it back on, for the sake of humanity. It isn’t that the Code is some universal set of laws or anything; it’s that in order to function as a hunter without just breaking down, you have to let yourself be changed in a fundamental way that has this bunch of basic commonalities across everyone who chooses to live this way.

It’s almost like a set of defense mechanisms your psyche relies on to deal with the supernatural — it’s a horror game, of course, which is why even if you’re friends with a vampire, you know going in that being friends with a vampire is going to be complicated, and is objectively a bad idea. It’s the Buffy dilemma: Angel’s a good guy and you love him, but sometimes he loses his humanity and goes on a murder spree, and ultimately as the Slayer that’s on you. And that realization changes you.

Why does a hunter need to worry about who knows the supernatural exists? What risks would they be taking by being open about their need to fight?

Primarily, the Chronicles of Darkness are built on the basic assumption that human beings Do Not Want to Know. It’s not like they don’t see what’s lurking in the shadows, they just willfully forget, because the human mind isn’t made to deal with it. So a hunter who’s open about what they do is on the one hand risking mass panic; but on the other, it’s actually more likely that the majority of people would stick their heads in the sand and assume the hunter was just a murderer or a terrorist making wild excuses for their crimes.

In some ways, that’s kind of true; the questions of “what does humanity even mean? who gets to be seen as a person? how much of a difference is there between hunters and monsters really?” is at the core of this game, and as with everything else in CofD, there are no easy answers. This is why even Network Zero, whose mission is to break down that veil of willful ignorance, does it subtly and gradually in ways that will hopefully desensitize people to the horror and impossibility of it so they can one day accept it as truth.

To reinforce the connective tissue between a hunter and their community, we’ve added a Touchstone. What does that mechanical expression entail?

A Touchstone is a person (or, occasionally, a place or object) that reminds a hunter what they’re fighting for. When you’re neck-deep in the world’s dark underbelly all the time, it can be hard to remember what it feels like to just exist as a human being who’s part of society. So your Touchstones are ordinary humans who aren’t involved with the Vigil, who can ground you when you start to detach from everyday life and get too obsessive.

In mechanical terms, Touchstones help you withstand Integrity loss and help you regain spent Willpower when you defend your connections to them, which reinforces the need to keep your relationships alive and occasionally take a break from monster hunting. Vampire: The Requiem players will be familiar with the way hunter Touchstones work, as they’re pretty similar.

Speaking of personal ties, many players would love to bring their friends and family into the hunt. Besides playing with them in a cell, what other rules (besides Touchstones) allow players to connect with their loved ones?

Players who want to mechanically reinforce relationships with other characters can take Social Merits like Mentor or Retainer, to give those loved ones more specific roles in the narrative and reward players with mechanical benefits to having more connections. One of the fun things about Hunter is the tension between wanting to hold onto your loved ones and not wanting to drag them into the darkness with you or put them in danger, and the stronger your character’s bonds are with those people, the better the drama that comes with that tension will be.

Another interesting question I like to explore in Hunter games is whether to even tell your loved ones about the Vigil or not; telling them means exposing them to horrific things and potentially putting them on the radar of the monsters you hunt, but not telling them means distancing yourself from them and leading a stressful double life, and that sort of thing can make for a fascinating story. Rules-wise, all sorts of Conditions related to (or affecting) those characters can be brought into play during that kind of exploration, which helps resolve those arcs in a satisfying way.

Because Hunter is a horror game, there is a possibility of a player character being traumatized–especially in the Slasher Chronicle. How is trauma (and its recovery) handled in Hunter. Dr. Megan Connell suggested to me that downtime is a great way to include therapy sessions. Mechanically, how would that work for this game?

Hunter mostly handles trauma and its recovery through Integrity and breaking points, and the Conditions that result from them. Losing Integrity is the result of going through traumas of various kinds, and choosing which Condition you suffer is choosing how your character reacts to that trauma. When you resolve the Condition, that’s your character working through it and dealing with it, and recovering from that reaction — that’s why Conditions are designed so that their resolutions create story beats. And when you succeed at avoiding Integrity loss at a breaking point, it’s a sign that your character has learned from their past experiences and can stay grounded even in the face of a traumatic moment.

I think having your character attend a therapy session as downtime in between sessions is a great idea — mechanically, it’s the perfect opportunity to have your character’s therapist as a Touchstone, and in fact I wrote The Therapist as one of the example Touchstones in the book. That Touchstone helping you resist Integrity loss and regain Willpower through your own choices are good ways to represent the sort of work the character is doing in therapy. A therapist is a spot-on example of what a Touchstone is: a character who’s not part of the Vigil and who won’t judge a hunter for what they’ve done or how they’ve reacted to trauma, whether it’s of the kinds we know in the real world or a kind that the human mind wasn’t even designed to process.

What would your ideal hunter look like? Which tier are you most excited to play?

My favorite tier has always been tier one, for that real street-level, personal community feel, although the kinds of Hunter games I enjoy most are those that start at tier 1 and progress to tier 2 and maybe tier 3 over time. Ideal is a tough one! There are so many great Hunter character concepts. My favorite of the Hunter characters I’ve played was a would-be member of the Lucifuge who carried the bloodline but refused to join, instead dealing with partially-uncontrollable demonic powers and nightmares (Supernatural Merits) while trying to save her family; she joined up with Network Zero for a while, but she ended up with the Loyalists of Thule, which is probably my favorite Compact.

You’ve written and developed several games set in the Chronicles of Darkness. What is it about this setting that you enjoy so much? Any previously published games you’re particularly excited about?

The Chronicles of Darkness game lines does such a good job of marrying mechanics to story, that’s my favorite thing about it. It’s crunchy enough to satisfy my mechanics brain, but uncomplicated enough to make it easy to get a nice flow going; the rules don’t get in the way of the drama, and in fact are designed to help you create it. Aside from that, I’m a sucker for psychological and supernatural horror, weird thrillers, urban legends, that sort of thing, which of course is CofD’s whole deal. I really love the “high weirdness” concept that’s baked into it, the way that nothing fits into nice neat boxes and something unknown or something you can’t explain is always just around the corner. For me, it hits the sweet spot between gritty and optimistic—the world has a vast dark underbelly that no one wants to acknowledge and it will mess you up, but there’s always that light at the end of the tunnel that says there’s still hope, even if you have to do or witness terrible things to get there. Which is why I love Hunter so much!

I think the CofD game I’m most excited about right now is Deviant: The Renegades; I’ve playtested it and worked on the systems, and I’m writing for the Devoted Companion, one of the supplements that came out of the Kickstarter. I can’t wait for the core to get released to everyone and hear about all the cool things people do with it!

If you could pick any horror film to make a game out of, which one would it be and why?

I’ll go with The Ninth Gate, because I love a good slow-burn mystery and it has some almost pulpy undertones with the rare book detective vibe; the movie itself I’m ambivalent about, but the basic concept sounds like such a cool game idea: you deal in rare books, weird antiques, and ancient artifacts, and you keep getting caught up in creepy mysteries revolving around these cursed or otherwise supernatural objects. Kind of like a horror version of The Librarians!

Honorary mention to a video game series, though — a game based on the Silent Hill setting would be awesome, too.

What’s next for you?

Right now I’m developing an as-yet unannounced book for the Modern AGE line for Green Ronin, which I’m very excited about, and pretty soon I’ll be starting on development for two books that have been announced for Onyx Path, which are the Hedge book for Changeling: The Lost and Tome of the Pentacle for Mage: The Awakening, both of which I’m also really looking forward to!

Curious about Meghan’s work on Hunter? Check out the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter and get exclusive access to previews and updates!

To celebrate the release of the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter, Monica reached out to members of her team for a series of in-depth interviews. Today, Monica chats with Cassandra Khaw, who wrote the fiction and designed monsters for the game. Cassandra is a scriptwriter in Ubisoft Montreal. Her work can be found in F&SF, Lightspeed, Tor.com, Strange Horizons. She has also contributed to titles like Sunless Skies, Fallen London, Wasteland 3, and She Remembered Caterpillars, which won the German Game Award for Best Children’s Game. Hammers on Bone, her first novella, was nominated for the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award. Food of the Gods was nominated for the Locus Awards.

Hunter The Vigil Second Edition is a modern horror game about a hunter’s commitment to fighting the darkness. In HTV2E, there are more monsters than ever before and are found wherever people live. Your fiction expands the possibilities of Hunter by introducing new characters and cultures affected by the supernatural. Why do you think the average person is so fearful of the unknown? And, does that horror “age” over time? Or do you always think we’ll be afraid of the dark?

I think on some level, we all recognize the fact that we are small and brittle and helpless against the universe. The cosmos is full of more terrors than we can possibly find room to name, and we carry that knowledge through our lives.

For me, fear is a tectonic emotion and our fears are rooted in our marrow. Fear of death, fear of the dark, fear of pain, fear of, I don’t know, clowns. These things, to answer your next two questions, never really go away. I think they come back in different manifestations as we get older, reshaped by our experiences, growing new forms, new faces.

We’ll always be afraid of the dark. We’ll also keep finding new names for that fear.

If you were going to play Hunter, what type of character would you love to play?

Definitely one of the Network Zero folks. At least at first. And then maybe, one day, graduating into being hired by Task Force: VALKYRIE.

In addition to the fiction, you also collaborated with Monica Speca to present monsters found in different environments. What research did you do? What interesting creatures did you find?

A lot of deep diving into the wilds of the Internet, exploring old reference books that I have lying around, and double-checking on myths half-remembered. I found a lot of things, but what I want to touch on is how enormously vast modern mythology is. People are inventing a hell of a lot of cryptids every day, and I really want to see more of those. The SCP Foundation alone is enough to give me nightmares for weeks.

Ghosts and haunted houses are fan favorites for new hunters in HTV2E because they’re often the most accessible. They can also come across as repetitive or something hunters have experienced before. What advice do you have for Storytellers interested in scaring players with new and flavorful descriptions?

A thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately (enough to do a whole novella on the idea) is what we do when we’re given the opportunity to be bad without repercussion. Let’s say there are monsters in the house you’re in. Let’s say there were tensions before, an everyone’s shouting, fighting, frightened out of their minds. How easy is it for old human weaknesses to come out?

On that note too, I think it’d be cool to have ghosts and haunted houses that don’t pivot on the idea of revenge, or the desire to inflict pain. Loneliness, for one, could be used with great effect here. What do you become when you’ve been waiting or lost for a hundred years? What if that didn’t translate to rage but instead, a marrow-deep need for connection? By then, I imagine you’ve lost a lot of your ties to humanity so I don’t think any of these ghosts are going to be like, ‘Hello. Will you be my friend?’

In addition to working on Hunter, you often write horror. Have you written any monster hunting fiction or games of your own? If so, can you tell us about your take on the genre?

Does it count if it is a monster hunting a monster? Because if so, I think my Persons Non Grata series fits the bill. The protagonist is, at least on the surface, an eccentric private investigator with a love for noir terminology. But the truth is stranger than that. John Persons is a monster himself, as complex as his prey, and possibly more tragic. With Persons, I wanted to explore how all those elements might intersection but mostly, what it means to try to talk yourself into humanity.

Like, I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who doesn’t go around with bad thoughts in their head. It’s just a question of whether you act on them, whether you perpetuate whatever horrors were visited on you. I think that’s what makes the difference: the act of choosing to be better than your personal darkness. And Persons explores an extreme shape of that.

You have earned a reputation for incorporating gore into your style and often pen microfiction on Twitter @casskhaw for your readers. Of all the stories you’ve written, which one is your favorite?

Oh, man. That’s tough. It’s like picking a favorite child. But I know I have a favorite among the themes I’ve chosen for my microfiction. I loved writing people animal-spouses, largely because I liked subverting that trope, and the whole idea of the animal-spouses being forced into a horrible situation. How about if they weren’t? And they were shy, or excited, or just in charge of being their beautiful chimerical selves, you know?

Interactive fiction is rapidly returning to players who love stories while having some effect on the narrative. You’ve written and designed this type of game before. Can you tell us about that experience? Is this type of game fun for you to design?

It’s a kind of science and a kind of art all at the same time. The fiction that you need to tell your players is that the sky’s the limit, and all the things you could conceive asking are right there in the drop-down menu of conversation choices. But it’s a lie, of course. Ultimately, you’re trying to lead people to very specific places. So, it’s a balancing act that is enormously exciting because there are just so many bits to handle.

(And yes, it’s fun. Even if I keep coming back to projects and going, ‘OH MY GOD WHY DID I DO THAT TO MYSELF’)

Okay, real talk. If all the things we fear in the dark were real, do you think everyday people would stand a chance against the supernatural? Why or why not?

I think it really depends. I get the feeling that marginalized people, in particular, would do really well in the apocalypse, what with how much this world forces us to fight on a daily basis.

As for everyone as a whole, I don’t know. I hope so. We might not be facing werewolves or vampires in the real world, but we are being beset by climate emergency and fascism. The monsters are here and we need to rise up.

You recently started working with Ubisoft Montreal. What does your new gig entail?

Man, it’s just about everything you can think of. All the text you see? Down to menu descriptions? Those things are in the wheelhouse. But I think what I never expected was the sheer amount of meetings. Man, there are a lot of meetings in triple-A.

What’s the best way to keep up-to-date with your releases? What’s next for you?

Twitter! I’m so god-awful at the whole ‘keeping my website updated’ thing, and I basically live on social media. So wobble to Twitter @casskhaw. If there’s something new, chances are I’ll be yelling a lot about it.

As for what’s next, I’ve got a new haunted house novella coming out in 2021, a secret thing that should be announced later this year, and a biiiiiig collaboration that I’m really, really, really, really hoping I’d be able to talk about soon. It’s with one of my favorite people in the world, and I’d like this to be a THING already now please.

Curious about Cassandra’s stories for Hunter? Check out the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter and get exclusive access to previews and updates!

Nine Stars is an example of a secret compact nestled inside an existing institution — in this case the Hong Kong police force — to deal with slashers, a type of murderous monster drawn from horror movies. Nine Stars uses the resources at their disposal to keep people safe in The Slasher Chronicle while doing so under the radar. Members know the supernatural is real; the rest of the police force does not, however, and that distinction is tricky for hunters to navigate. The compact’s creation was inspired by Chinese crime and detective dramas. It’s an example of a group highly-skilled in investigation and unlocking mysteries — both of which are necessary to hunt slashers in Hunter 2E’s sample setting.

The Council of Bones is a new global conspiracy that taps into a grim belief: that hunters can find the answers they seek if they talk to (and work with) the dead. The Council of Bones is an example of a conspiracy that believes they have “the” answer to upholding the Vigil. Members are occultists, scholars, and professors who search old books and archives for “the truth” about the supernatural, while recognizing there’s a need to help survivors find closure after a tragedy has occurred. Their Endowments gift them with abilities a medium might have — a tool that can have interesting results depending upon “which” ghost they encounter since not every spirit is benevolent.

SWORN is an example of a cultural-specific compact focused on hunting cryptids. If you recall, Hunter: The Vigil First Edition did expand to be more inclusive as the line went on and as new Chronicles of Darkness game lines, like Dark Eras, were added. After all, Hunter is a game anyone can play. Hunter society is (and always will) be a melting pot of identities and backgrounds, and fans have asked for more content. To that end, I was fortunate to find a Native writer and game designer who could design a modern group that resonated with their experiences. I’m so thrilled to introduce the SWORN compact — especially for our Native players! I’d also like to remind Storytellers that it’s totally okay if SWORN doesn’t resonate with your players — not every group will and they’re not supposed to. You are encouraged to utilize the ones that do (or design your own) using the rules provided in the Storyteller chapter.

I’m so pleased to introduce Allen Turner who worked on the compacts and conspiracies with me and created SWORN. He is a writer and game designer of Afro-American, Native American, and Irish descent who lives in Chicago. I had a blast working with Allen. If you want to hire him, visit council-of-fools.com.

Allen Turner on Designing the SWORN compact

My inspiration for SWORN comes from my local community experience. Let me start with a little background. I live in Chicago and have spent much of my adult life in the Uptown neighborhood which is a mostly low income neighborhood (gentrification attempts not withstanding) full of immigrants which also happens to have a long history with the Native community here in the Windy City.

People from Native nations all over the country were pushed to the city during Relocation back in the late 1950s. That was an interesting time because you suddenly had a lot of people stuck in an urban environment, in the ghetto, trying to survive while navigating all sorts of restrictions and rules they didn’t have where they came from. In particular, there just wasn’t the density of people back in rural and reservation areas (although many reservations were also dirt poor).

What stood out to me about the community that came out of that time period is how they formed an intertribal space. On the rez you were typically dealing with homogenous tribal/ethnic groups. To an outsider, for instance, a Lakota, a Dine, and an Ojibwe are all the same culture – they’re just Indian. To Native peoples that is ridiculous. Those groups I mentioned are as different culturally as the French, English, and Lithuanian. Old rivalries had to be set aside in these new communities, and a certain pan-Native culture was adopted that allowed everyone to get along and to look out for each other.

This struggle to come together was also compounded by the fact that many were coming from boarding schools which were run by Christian ministries that routinely worked to scour Native traditions and language from the peoples via all sorts of mental/physical/sexual/spiritual abuse and punishment in order to save their souls. So many were arriving who didn’t know how to survive in the urban area and didn’t necessarily know how to navigate their own old traditions. It was a hard time to be Native and everything around you seemed frightening. (Also, don’t forget that it was illegal for Native people to practice their own religions up until the late 1980s.)

The great thing about this time was that the Civil Rights movement was powering up and the Native community got directly involved. Over the years, numerous groups rose up to engage civil rights issues and a lot of it happened in the Chicago area. By time I came on the scene as a kid in the late 1980s and 90s there were already a bunch of compact-like organizations actively fighting against the monsters of oppression, injustice, and racism. More famously, there were groups like the American Indian Movement which some might compare to the Black Panthers. There were lots of other groups, though, that sprouted up and faded who had more particular interests. Everyone had a cool catchy name and acronym. Some were focused on sobriety, some on police abuse, some on women’s rights, some on education, and others around veterans.

It is those groups who are my inspiration for SWORN – which means the compact represents a lot of things related to the Native experience. There were unbelievable and monstrous events happening to Native peoples during those times (still are), but the people who fell between the cracks were getting the brunt of the abuse: Native women, queer Natives, mixed Natives, children and elders. These people could easily come up missing or murdered and local authorities wouldn’t bat an eye. To this day we have a huge issue with missing and murdered Indigenous women. There were “monsters” everywhere, jumping at the chance to take advantage of our people, in our everyday lives.

Interestingly, these days there are even more monsters. How nice it’d be to be able to say the cause of youth deaths and missing/murdered indigenous women was supernatural. At least then we’d have an identifiable and easily resolvable cause! Unfortunately, finding explanations is not that easy. Native players, in particular, might feel the monsters that SWORN fights represent manifestations of these threats.

A SWORN Hunter’s Perspective

SWORN hunters recognize there are all sorts of boogeymen lurking at the periphery of our community waiting for a chance to strike. SWORN, like The Union, wants to keep their community safe. The big difference between the two is the ideal they are protecting. The Union is protecting an ideal that has, at its core, that “American Dream” with its expectations of peace of mind, the right to white picket fences, a good job, and barbecues on Sundays.

SWORN hunters are fighting for the right to survive and be counted as valid human beings. In this context, a SWORN-focused chronicle can be approached from multiple angles. SWORN chronicles can certainly be about a traditional hunt for a monster-of-the-week game. There are lots of strange creatures populating indigenous narratives; there are also pop culture versions of these creatures that vary wildly from the traditional stories. This is similar to how there is a big difference between a pop culture vampire and a vrydolak or dearg due. So, it is important to spend the time getting the cultural perspective on these creatures before you hunt them; this will lead to far more interesting narratives because the fears they represent are coming out of the culture’s own survival needs.

In a SWORN chronicle, there are also different types of monster encounters. The first thing to consider is that a monster sighting can be treated as an encounter with a part of (super)Nature that has done a good job of staying hidden. In game terms, they are still supernatural but from the compact’s point of view that monster has a place in the ecology. This would be a common idea among cryptid hunters! An interesting tenet of a SWORN campaign is recognizing these situations and trying to resolve them quietly. You don’t want to draw more attention to the creature because it’s connected to your people. What happens when you come across a bigfoot because a stretch of land is being developed? Or pollution near a lake causes tie-snakes who dwell at the bottom to resurface to hunt?

With many of the compacts and conspiracies, those might be cut-and-dried situations. The imperative would typically be to stop the monster at all costs to protect the community. For SWORN, killing the creature outright is not necessarily the way to go. That monster might be recognized as an integral part of the ecology and a member of the community, a relative in trouble. I’d draw a direct comparison to the Lilo and Stitch television show where the monsters are amuck but they are Stitch’s relatives and he wants to keep them safe. However, other people want them destroyed or collected. They have to stop the monster, reduce exposure of it to the general public, and get it to a safe place that is ideal for it. That new place hopefully will reduce its incursions into human territory and human incursion into its territory.

Interacting with other Compacts and Conspiracies

SWORN’s perspective can easily bring them into conflict with other compacts and conspiracies whose motivations for hunting monsters are different from theirs. The best way to highlight this is to give you an example of a potential threat.

Consider a pipeline being constructed in Minnesota. Workers found a strange reptilian cat creature deep in the water. There are Null Mysteriis agents who are working with the pipeline’s scientists so they can dissect and study the small reptilian lynxes. The hunters have captured it and misidentified it as an adult, but it’s actually a baby. Older water lynxes start making their way to the surface looking for the baby and are killing protesters and pipeline workers. Chaos is starting to erupt. Then, Long Night hunters appear to kill off these creatures.

When SWORN hunters enter the scene, they realize this approach will lead to everyone’s destruction if the baby isn’t returned and the others aren’t herded back underground. What other hunters don’t know, is that the creatures’ deaths will awaken the ancient Mishipeshu who will come forth in a moment of Lovecraftian horror that no amount of bullets can stop. SWORN hunters will have to quiet protesters, check the hubris of the Null Mysteriis hunters, calm the blood lust of the Long Night, stop the pipeline, and find a way to appease the ancient underwater panther spirit before it reawakens.

Unraveling SWORN’s Internal Politics and Long-Term Goals

Lastly, every compact has internal strife and SWORN is no different. SWORN, in its present state, could be treated as a proto-conspiracy because it has the potential to grow as time passes. Its inter-tribal identity can be a huge pain as well as a boon for its hunters. Due to all the things Natives have had to endure in the wake of colonialism, there are many places where disagreement arises based on differing people’s idea of what is traditional. Factions within the compact currently embrace a range of approaches to accommodate the needs of the hunt. The focus on urban and inter-tribal/multicultural squads doesn’t fly well with those who want to only defend their communities and seek more homogeneity. Such groups might bar entry or passage to other hunters chasing creatures. It’s easy for groups to get stuck trying to figure out ways to approach a creature, because different tribal stories present different options and clues.

Finally, there is the issue of education. SWORN helps other, non-affiliated groups (including other hunters), deal with cryptids; they are especially strong when helping other cultures reclaim their connection to their own indigenous creatures. For this reason, a SWORN hunter might visit Scotland and Ireland, Central Asia and Siberia, Australia, many African countries and Pacific Islands to carry on the compact’s mission. SWORN hunters have a message that says we’re creating monsters every day with how we treat the world and each other. This, of course, would ruffle the feathers of hunter organizations who might treat this line of thinking as dangerous. Should SWORN continue to organize and become a full-fledged conspiracy, they have the potential to unify indigenous groups across the world creating classifications and processes that exists outside colonizer academics and gate keeping.

I like to imagine that SWORN is out there fighting and teaching, trying to make a better world in the service of the Vigil.

I’m curious to see what people do with this compact. I really hope you all find opportunities to explore the world of Hunter through the eyes of SWORN.

Curious about the new Hunter compact SWORN? Back the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter and receive access to exclusive previews of the manuscript.

Vera Vartanian is a writer and analog game designer. Her fiction has appeared in Crossed Genres Magazine, and she has contributed to a wide variety of lines by Onyx Path Publishing, including Scion Second Edition, Exalted Third Edition, and Geist: The Sin-Eaters Second Edition, for which she is the current line developer. She is queer, transgender, and very loud about both. Her Twitter handle is @MsBellwether.

Diving right in! So, Tilts and Conditions. What are they?

Tilts and Conditions are narrative tags. Tilts are primarily action-focused, and represent issues that affect action scenes. At their most basic level, you might compare them to status effects in an RPG: the Poison Tilt, for example, causes the character with it to suffer damage over time. Sometimes, these apply to Environments instead of characters, so everyone in the area is affected by them (Extreme Heat, Earthquake — things like that).

Conditions, by contrast, are generally for things outside the context of high-intensity action scenes, though they could certainly have an effect on those scenes if you bring those Conditions with you into one — Guilt is guilt, no matter what you’re doing. Conditions in particular are extremely flexible as a system — virtually any status that could affect a character in some way can be represented as a Condition, from being love struck to being blackmailed.

Interesting stuff. Do Tilts and Conditions go away after they’re introduced? If so, how?

Tilts and Conditions have certain prerequisites for ending them. For Tilts like Arm or Leg Wrack, for example, it’s tied to specific Health boxes, and healing that damage ends the Tilt. Once that small-c condition is fulfilled, the Tilt goes away. Simple as that.

Conditions are the same way, with slightly looser timing. All Conditions have a Resolution, which is the most common way to end the Condition. For the Guilty Condition, for example, Resolution requires that the character confess wrongdoing or make restitution for it. Conditions can also simply go away if they’ve outlived their narrative usefulness. If you’re Leveraged by someone, for example, and they get eaten by a monster, the Leveraged Condition doesn’t really apply anymore.

Can you explain how characters advance using the Storyteller system’s second edition rules? Is this true for all gamelines in Second Edition or just Hunter The Vigil?

Characters advance by spending Experience, which is earned by collecting Beats; every five Beats collected becomes one Experience. Every Trait has a cost associated with raising or purchasing it.

There’s plenty of ways to collect Beats: fulfilling Aspirations (goals you set for your character), resolving Conditions, dramatic failures, and so on. There’s also optional rules for pooling Beats, so that everyone advances at the same rate.

All game lines use Beats and Experience, though individual gamelines will have different Traits associated with them, and those Traits will have varying costs

So earning Beats is a good thing, which means that savvy players will want Conditions. Is there a type of scene or crucial moment where a player might acquire a Condition?

Any scene can be a source of Conditions! Think about Conditions as a sort of Chekov’s Gun, or like cause and effect. You take an action, and later that action rebounds back and complicates your life. Even otherwise-innocuous things, like seeing something you weren’t supposed to see (because you were poking your nose where you shouldn’t have) could spawn a Condition like Spooked or Shaken. It’s ultimately up to the Storyteller to hand out Conditions, but if players are having their characters get involved, take chances, and do exciting things, they’re sure to start accruing Conditions to resolve.

On top of that, many dice rolls will generate Conditions as well, exceptional successes in particular, so even if you’re not trying to push yourself, you’ll end up with Conditions. That cycle — acquire and resolve — is part of the core gameplay loop, and it provides mechanical hooks for otherwise solely-narrative issues.

You mentioned Persistent Conditions. Some players (and Storytellers) might view that as a hindrance. How do Persistent Conditions affect gameplay narratively? Mechanically?

Persistent Conditions are set apart from their ordinary cousins because, well, they persist — they don’t go away even if time passes. These represent long-term or even permanent issues the character must deal with, represented in the form of mechanical effects attached to the Condition. Resolving these Conditions (if possible or desired) requires significant and similarly long-term effort on the character’s part, forming part of their overall character arc rather than the back-and-forth narrative flow of normal Conditions.

It’s easy to see Persistent Conditions as a hindrance because of this, rather than as an opportunity. However, Persistent Conditions are also an ongoing source of Beats for players, and represent a great hook for the Storyteller to complicate a situation.

Persistent Conditions aren’t right for everything and are not the best way to model a disability. Lots of folks with disabilities use adaptive tools to get along in a world designed by able-bodied neurotypical people. Many disabilities exist on a spectrum — not every blind person is completely unable to see, for example. If your character has the right tools and knows how to use them, there’s no reason to model their disability with a Persistent Condition. Losing those tools somehow might be a source for a regular Condition, mind — that could be an exciting dramatic situation, if the player is cool with it — but just not being able-bodied and neurotypical should not be grounds for requiring a character to have a Persistent Condition to the effect.

Developer’s Note: To Vera’s point, the default baseline for Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition is that anyone can be a hunter. Tilts and Conditions are added/resolved through game play and are rules expressions used in character creation. The text clarifies in a few places that it’s assumed disabled characters know how to manage their disabilities; this does extend to non-neurotypical characters as well and I will make that further clarification. Additionally all Endowments, which are supernatural gifts bestowed on the members of a conspiracy, may be used by any character regardless of their disability. Characters should not be punished for being disabled or non-neurotypical; the Vigil requires commitment, and anyone who makes that pledge is welcome to be a part of hunter society.

Do Tilts and Conditions only matter when encountering an antagonist? Why or why not?

Tilts and Conditions can apply any time, and though Tilts are action-focused, action doesn’t always mean combat. A tense car chase is an action scene. A race-against-time to switch a generator back on is an action scene. Tilts can absolutely apply to those situations. If you’ve busted your ankle (the Leg Wrack Tilt), you’re going to have a hard time driving a car with a manual transmission. The generator might have blown out and started a fire (the Extreme Heat environmental Tilt). Conditions like Lost or Obsession don’t require any enemy action, either.

What decisions should a Storyteller weigh when deciding which Tilts and Conditions to use?

Well, first of all, there’s the question of whether to use a Tilt or Condition — there’s some crossover between the two. The primary difference between the two is that Tilts are action-oriented and don’t generate Beats.

When it comes to selecting a Tilt or Condition, first check to see if any of the sample Tilts or Conditions listed fit the situation. If one does, assign it, you’re done. If more than one does, consider the context of the situation, and how this situation is likely to have ramifications in the future. Always be thinking ahead!

Finally, of course, if no Tilt or Condition seems to fit — make one up. Tilts and Conditions are mechanically simple, so all you need is an effect and a resolution condition. That’s it. Say a character’s been in a car wreck, and sustained a minor head injury. There’s a Stunned tilt, but that only lasts a turn, and the other Conditions and Tilts are either too narratively intense for such a minor injury or just don’t fit. So you come up with the following: Got Your Bell Rung. You’re concussed, and suffer a -2 penalty to coordination and memory. Resolution: rest for 12 hours. Bam. Look at you, you’re a game designer!

Developer’s Note: Storytellers are encouraged to work with players to create new rules that best fit their chronicle. Similar to first edition, Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition retains its “toolkit” mentality to offer ways for customization.

Nests, which are new for Hunter 2E, are dangerous places where monsters live. Mechanically, that danger is expressed through the use of Tilts.

Say a cell of hunters is exploring an old graveyard in the dead of night that’s inhabited by a frightening ghost. What Tilt would you recommend? How do you see that scene playing out? Are there any Conditions the Storyteller should consider?

There’s the classic ghost-hunting lore of the cold spot — ghostly activity causing sudden drops in the ambient temperature — that would be an excellent fit for the Extreme Cold Tilt. You could also use the Heavy Rain Tilt, which penalizes perception rolls, and would work just fine for a supernaturally-thick fog. Spooked is a great standby, because resolving it requires the character to live up to the ghost-story cliche of wandering off at the worst possible moment or otherwise doing something that complicates the situation, so it naturally gives opportunities for the Storyteller to ramp up the tension. Shaken is another good choice, especially if you want players to opt to fail rolls at key moments in the near future.

There are also Ephemeral Entity Conditions. These are special Conditions for spirits and ghosts to influence the world and the people living in it. If you want to get a creepy possession going, this is where you should be looking!

You mentioned resolving Conditions earlier. Can you give us examples of scenes to help crystallize how that might work?

Sure! Let’s consider this example: your players are trying to evade pursuit by running through a junkyard. There’s plenty of hazards here. Let’s say a player tries to squirm through a tight space, and rolls poorly. Oh no! The pile of garbage shifted and is pinning their leg! This is your classic use of the Immobilize Tilt, which in this case would require shifting the garbage sufficiently that they can extricate themselves from it. Once they’ve done that (or had a friend help), the Tilt goes away. You could also use Leg Wrack here, if you want to have deal damage and have a lingering injury caused by a leg being briefly trapped and crushed beneath the weight of the junkpile — that’d have to wait until the Health box for that injury is healed to go away, and would pose a problem for the remainder of the chase!

One of the pursuers might be some kind of terrifying creature; let’s say it’s a werewolf, or something close enough as to make no difference. One of the characters might have caught sight of one shapeshifting earlier, and is Spooked now. The junkyard chase would be a great chance to resolve that by taking a wrong turn, and if the subsequent roll to find their way back to their friends fails, it’s a great opportunity for the Lost Condition. Conditions can easily chain like this, so keep an eye out for opportunities like this to lead characters into ever-more-dire straits.

Whether or not the characters successfully lose their pursuers, of course, you could hand everyone involved a brand new Condition right away as soon as they leave the junkyard: Stinky. You reek. Take a -4 penalty to all social rolls. Resolution: Change clothes and take a long, hot shower.

Which Tilts and Conditions are your favorite to use in game? Why or why not?

As you might have guessed from my citing it multiple times so far, I’m a big fan of Spooked, precisely because it impels further complications from the player. Any Condition with a resolution like that is sure to win my heart, because my style of Storytelling is to build a world, populate it with Storyteller characters with drives and ambitions of their own, set things in motion…and then pretty much let the players tear it apart and react accordingly. Spooked and similar Conditions really feed into that cycle, giving players reason to keep getting involved or to keep getting in deeper, and subsequently having to struggle to extricate themselves — which, in turn, probably causes other problems, and so the cycle continues. Players will never fail to exceed your expectations (this is my secret rule of Storytelling), and anything that gives them excuses to do that is worth its weight in gold as far as I’m concerned.

What advice would you give to a brand new Storyteller who’s intimidated by Tilts and Conditions?

Tilts and Conditions can absolutely feel like a LOT of stuff to keep track of when you’re just starting out. Thankfully, you only have to think about them when you’re handing them out, and a lot of the time, it’ll be pretty self-evident which you should be using. Once you get the swing of things, you won’t even need to look them up; just tell a player “Hey, your character is Spooked,” and you’re done.

Once you’ve given a character a Condition or a Tilt, you basically don’t need to worry about it beyond keeping it in the back of your mind, just in case. Eventually, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you can say something like, “Hey, your character is still Spooked, right? This would be a great time to resolve it…” This is what Conditions really shine at — giving you, the Storyteller, a means to leverage players into taking more dramatic actions or giving them problems to overcome.

What I like to do to help myself and players keep track of things (because I have this problem, too!) is use note cards. I actually have a set of dry-erase 3.5 cards, but regular note cards or even sticky-notes work great. All you need to do is write the name of the Tilt or Condition, a little note about what it does, and the resolution requirements, and hand it off. You can even just write the name — your players can add it if they need to, but once your table starts getting used to the most common Conditions, they probably won’t even need to do that.

Developer’s Note: Storytellers are encouraged to work with players here, too, because ultimately Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition is a horror game. Consent is crucial to a safe and enjoyable experience for all–especially since hunters often find themselves facing down terrifying odds and unknowable horrors.

Reversing that, for the experienced Storyteller what new ways can they use these rules?

Literally anything can be a Condition or a Tilt, as long as it’s caused by or has its origin in something outside the player’s character and an appropriate action (or inappropriate action, as the case may be) will make it go away. If you need to represent some kind of effect and you don’t know how to do it, odds-on a Condition will work. Your character has been tagged by extra-dimensional entities who routinely abduct them? Sounds like a Persistent Condition to me! You can attach any kind of mechanical bonus or penalty to a Condition, and you can attach entirely narrative effects to them as well. You can use Conditions to represent conditional access to resources or locations, especially if there’s a chance that the players will burn those bridges for some reason — the Beat they’ll get for doing so is a carrot to convince them to do something dramatic that will lead to further drama later. You don’t need to lay down track to get players to go where you want them to. You can likely do it just by saying, “Hey, if you do the thing, I’ll give you a Beat,” and that’s what a Condition is.

Excited to learn more about Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition? Stay tuned for more interviews or join our hunter society and get access to manuscript previews by visiting the Hunter: The Vigil Second Edition Kickstarter.