[Swamp '70] George Rodrigue paintings

The paintings of George Rodrigue (1944-2013), depicting life in rural Louisiana have an eerie, haunting quality to them... Definitely inspiring. Check out the site of Wendy Rodrigue (the artist's wife), it has background info on several paintings.

Aioli Dinner (1971)

Doc Moses, Cajun Traiteur (1974)

"A traiteur is a Cajun folk doctor with a special, inherited gift for healing one ailment. In George’s painting, Doc Moses heals earaches. He pours a ring of salt around the patient and touches his ears. Amazingly, only the healer must believe. The patient’s skepticism does not affect the cure." (source)

The Cajun Bride of Oak Alley (1974)

"In 1850, on the occasion of the simultaneous weddings of his two daughters, Durand’s slaves decorated the arboreal alley in a manner befitting his most eccentric nature. Prolific web-spinning spiders were brought in (some say from the nearby Atchafalaya Basin, others say from as far away as China) and were released in the trees to go about their arachnidan business. Then slaves went to their task of coating the dewy, billowing webs with gold and silver dust blown from bellows. And under this splendidly shimmering canopy proceeded the ethereal promenade of the wedding party and its two thousand guests." (source)

Ian Miller's covers for Swamp Thing

Ian Miller's covers for Swamp Thing (issues #104-109) are insane!
(collected by fieldofshit @ tumblr)

Dark Magic in New Orleans: Death on the Bayou

Long time, no post... But that's how it usually goes.

I'm always on the look-out for swampy RPG stuff, and came across an interesting piece, Dark Magic in New Orleans: Death on the Bayou, by Randy Richards, published in Dungeon (#71). It's an adventure for Mask of the Red Death, the 1890s century Ravenloft / Gothic Earth setting.

The players are thrown into the murky waters of voodoo, alligators, and ritual murders.

Marie Laveau

The usual suspects are present: the adventure's background draws heavily on historical Voodoo practitioners such as Marie Laveau and Doctor John, who also seems to be channeling Dr. Curt Connors / Lizard from Spiderman... albeit he relies on dark magic, not science.

I even found an Actual play of this on youtube, by people who can be familiar from the Fantastic Dimensions roster. Ran using LotFP.

[Swamp '70] Swamped in pictures

Panoramio, the amazing photo sharing site, closed own on 4 November 2016. I really liked browsing it, seeing all kinds of places around the world, and it was also great for inspiration. Before it's closure, I went on a manic downloading spree and amassed some very nice photos of nature and buildings in Florida, for later use with my Swamp '70 project. Unfortunately, with Panoramio now offline, it's hard to trace back some of the authors. I can only hope that most of them will use the tools provided by Google to save their archives!

Also, it seems that direct links to user profiles are still working (although not accessible through the main site).

One of the best collections of photos of rural Florida were taken by Ken Badgley, and I cannot thank him enough for sharing his unique shots of decaying houses and old buildings. Some of this shots have this eerie-even-when-the-sun-shines quality, which I'm aiming for.

I was also able to pull some GREAT historical photos from the The National Archives.

 

[Swamp '70] The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water

"Swamp '70" is the tentative working title / tag I've given to the 1970s occult game I'm brainstorming.

So, do you know this classic public information short from 1973? Pure genius. And it is a perfect creature or plot hook for the Swamp '70 setting.

"Do not play near the swamps, Hannah!" "No, Collin Smith Jr., you definitely cannot go fishing at the old pond!" "Don't go into the woods!" "Be careful, Jeffrey!" -- but the warnings and cautionary tales of parents are lost on the children... Kids keep disappearing under mysterious circumstances. Is it possible that a malevolent being is preying upon the children of the town? A serial killer, a twisted pedophile? Or maybe...

The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water?!

The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water is a disembodied entity that can form an empathic link with a sentient being and amplify in its victim such characteristics as unwariness, show-offishness, foolishness & carelessness. It inhabits perilous abandoned places. Typical examples include quarry lakes, junkyards, desolate buildings or even a poorly maintained playground. Dangers are plenty, yet subtle: slippery mud, crumbling concrete, loose stones, corroded iron. The Spirit is like the Imp of the Perverse: its influence leads the victim (most commonly, a child) to death. This is the only thing that can satisfy the Spirit's cravings.

"When the quarry operations stopped, the original quarry pit filled with water.
This was used for a "swimming hole" by local folks but it was dangerous.
Several people were drowned in the old quarry..."

The exact origin of the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water is unknown. One possible explanation that it is the hungry ghost of the first victim of the place, damned to haunt it for eternity, replaying the events of its own death over and over again. Another explanation is that once people retreat from a place, it slips into abandon, and otherworldly forces claim it as their own... 

System considerations for a 1970s occult game

...a culture that translates warm blood into cold statistics.

There is this idea I return to from time to time, which is a playing an occult-themed game set in the 1970s. Something I'm constantly collecting inspiration for, brainstorming stuff. These are mostly details little atmospheric parts and little atmospheric parts, be that comics, movies, books, anything.

And there is also the question of mechanics, something I'd like to elaborate on in this post.

An obvious choice would be Call of Cthulhu, but, frankly, I'd rather not, as I don't plan the game to be solely Lovecraft-themed. Of course, CoC can be used for any horror game (and my planned game obviously has a share of "Lovecraftianisms" in it), but still, I'd prefer something else, something that's not connected so strongly with the oeuvre of ol' H.P.

There is always my long-time favorite and go-to weirdo occult system, Unknown Armies. And there is the third edition coming soon. But, once again, it is associated with a very specific worldview, and a post-modernist approach, which I like, but the game I'm planning is, on the contrary, is rather modernist.

No time to explain, get inside the circle!

There are tons of horror systems out there. E.g. there is even  The World of Tales from the Crypt RPG, which would be thematic if I wanted to emphasize my game's connection to 1950-1970s comics. Then you have the generic horror systems like Chill (see also Cryptworld from Goblinoid Games), and even World of Darkness or, why not, WitchCraft could get a mention.

But if the game is set in the 1970s, why not have something that stems from the 1970s as well (yeah, this is a weird logical step, but you get the point)? Besides, I have a thing for the wave of OSR games coming out lately; their aesthetic and sensibilities resonate well with the game I have in my mind. I'm not afraid of this game turning into a dungeon delve into the old sewers either. That would be awesome. Though I don't plan it to be the main focus.

There are several sources I can use / plunder:

1. Fantastic Heroes & Witchery. I've mentioned this several times before. It has basically everything I need, though it lacks a couple of generic "investigator" / "citizen" type classes. The specialized classes and races are awesome, though. And there are the optional rules for dabbling in the dark arts, "Incantations" and "Severe Sorcery". 
2. David Baymiller of the OSR Library has a whole bunch of resources under the moniker Mythos & Mayhem. Including "civilian" classes, although I probably wouldn't need so much detail. + The much needed "Ritual Spells" and "Anyone can cast magic" sections.
3. There are approx. twelve million "Lovecraft goes OSR" titles from various game designers. As mentioned above, I don't want to go full CoC/Lovecraft, but these games still might be inspirational. I don't have Realms of Crawling Chaos, though I should definitely check it out. A game for Sword & Wizardry was announced today, called Eldritch Tales. 

And so on, and so forth.

Overall, the system has to be able to handle some weird, non-human classes, as well as your humble everyday citizens and meddling kids; it has to have a ritual magic system with dire consequences; rules for 1970s technology (guns, that is). An OSR system can do all this, although with the usual inherent caveats.

We'll see.

Addendum: Man-Thing / Scenic Dunnsmouth crossover

Just a short addition to my previous post:
a Man-Thing / Scenic Dunnsmouth crossover would be   a w e s o m e .

Scenic Dunnsmouth by Zzarchov Kowolski is an adventure module, focusing on a single (randomly generated via the innovative kit featured in the book) village, located next to a swamp: "within the rot are mysteries to be solved, evil to be fought, and the Weird to be encountered". I don't want to spoil the adventure, but I think it's okay to say that both the Dunnsmouth and the Citrusville swamps are locations of cosmic importance... If you read & run the adventure, you would agree that adding a hulking, good-natured, cryptic Man-Thing to your Dunnsmouth campaign is a logical step!

It came from the Swamp in 1972

Another entry on highly inspirational comics!

Diversions of a Groovy Kind posted a handful of flabbergasting splash pages from the Man-Thing stories that appeared in Marvel's "Adventure into Fear", #10-19. I have only read a couple of issues from the solo "Man-Thing" comics, so it's high time to delve into it again! Especially that these iterations of the Man-Thing represent something that really makes me tick: weird, bizarro, anything goes ventures, great art, and, well, the 1970s.

Groovy!

#13, "Where Worlds Collide" sparked my interest, as the first page features a bunch of cultists engaged in some sort of a ritual-slash-pep-talk. They are led by Joshua Kale (Jennifer Kale's grandfather -- magic runs in the family!) and not only do they know of the Man-Thing, but consider it...

...humankind's last hope! (Fear #13)

Don't let the purple robes and the occult paraphernalia misguide you - these are the good guys. Then all kinds of dangerous stuff happens, including a jump to a demon dimension and some exorcism - there's a good re-cap here.

Obviously, in the Hammer Studios version of "Where Worlds Collide", Joshua Kale would be played by Cristopher Lee.

Or maybe Cushing. Whoever is available.

Why am I talking about all this?
Basically I want to play an RPG that is inspired by

1. occult-tinged comics, like the Man-Thing, Scorpio Rose, Dr. Strange, Dr. Orient, some Dylan Dog maybe?
2. swansong-era Hammer Horror, especially those few set in contemporary settings ("Dracula AD 1972") and their Wheatley adaptations,
3. folk horror (this is a huge topic to get into right now, but I LOVE all this stuff),
4. etc.

This could be an Unknown Armies game - it is a modern setting, after all. Or possibly something to run with the Weird Tales classes from Fantastic Heroes & Witchery? It has rules for both "human" and "inhumane" player characters, stats for firearms, a plethora of spells to pick from (of course, magic in this game would be more ritualistic)... And overall, I feel it's a better fit as far as theme and atmosphere go.