Adventures Into Darkness

[ghost-angel]

The Upside:

 

Adventures Into Darkness is a supplement that meshes two closely related, but usually completely different, genres: Golden Age Superheroes and Lovecraftian Horror. Lovecraft wrote mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Pulps were huge, and the Pulps lead to the creation of Comics towards the end of the 1930s - the Golden Age of comics.

 

Golden Age comics tend to be altruistic, hopeful, though often violent (especially compared to the Silver Age later on), but Heroes were still Good Guys through and through. Lovecract's horror on the other hand embodied the unknown, and the dangers of delving into that unknown.

 

Ken Hite takes these two elements and creates an interesting collaboration of the two. The whole book comes from a What If point of view, mainly What If Lovecraft lived longer and wrote for comic books.

 

Like any supplement that actually draws from real history and real facts Hite has made up a great deal of history to present this mixing of genres as fact.

 

Introduction. The book starts with a history of Lovecraft getting into comic writing, pulling real names from both his life and from early comic book creators. It presents a nicely decent What If alternate history for the publishing world, but it's actual gaming usefulness stops there.

 

The next two chapters go more into fictional history, but this time presented with write-ups and back stories (both in the comics and how they were created) for Heroes and Villains of Lovecraft's comic line. Seventeen Heroes and twelve Villains are presented. The creation stories of each Hero is interesting, making up how each comic book personality came to life and who was involved. The write-ups themselves are presented by Darren Watts - and very nicely capture the simplicity and elegance of the Golden Age Hero, a few well defined abilities and make the rest up as needed.

 

There's an Issue Listing next, a fake price guide to a fake series of comics. Interesting, nice flavor, could have gone in the back as an Appendix.

 

The next part of the book is the really good stuff. This is the mixing of the Golden Age of comic book heroes - when there were no rules to follow or break - and Lovecraftian Horror - where no piece of knowledge is safe to have. The one thing that has always bothered my about Lovecraft mixed with Gaming is that most groups take it is liberty to see how they die. Interesting for about three minutes or less. It's not even a Heroic Death. It's just "look something weird" and then you die or go insane, or both. It's not at all what Lovecraft Mythos is about. Smart Characters stay home. Where ignorance saves their lives.

 

Ken, on the other hand, goes into some of the psychology behind Lovecraft and the idea that the Universe Just Doesn't Care. It's not malicious, it's just too big. Mix that with Golden Age Heroes who were unmistakable Good, usually with a good right hook - and you wonder if you can actually give the universe a solid uppercut to save the day.

 

Turns out - you can. Ken presents several different angles of approach for Horror Gaming as an Honest Hero. Fists, Fears, And Futility draws on the similarities between horror and comics - namely the physical aspect of both (fists and slime), the issues of identity (which side of the Hero is their true face? the mask or the mild mannered whatever), and ultimately the futility (as Ken so nicely points out, no matter how many Nazi's you bash, there's always one more Axis Plot out there). This approach hi-lights the visceral aspect of both genres and how they can be put together for gaming.

 

Strange Visitors Fallen From Another World explores the idea that the Superpowered may get their abilities from either something sinister, or as after effects of something sinister. Playing up the arbitrary Uncaring Universe then all Powers are essentially random accidents that eventually do more harm than good. While this is more Iron Age than Golden Age (turning Heroes into Victims) it can be used as an interesting venue for deconstructing what makes the Hero.

 

The Thing In The Cowl, this might actually go nicely with the previous idea and takes the bent that the Golden Age Heroes are sinister, and what happens if their modern descendants discover their brutal pasts (after all, in the Golden Age shooting a villain isn't the wrong choice). Or perhaps that the Mythos itself is the source of Superpowers, Ken nicely suggests a few effects each horrific member of Lovecraft's cadre of uncaring evil could provide.

 

Leaving behind all the bleakness, The Fantastic World goes over those Lovecraftian Heroes who fought against the dark and won, and there were several. Which naturally is prime-time gaming fodder of the highest order. Golden Age heroes don't have time to stop and question their motives - only defeat the very apparent evil in front of them.

 

Four Colors Of Darkness goes to capture what the actual Golden Age comics contained - and it wasn't all shiny and family-friendly. Heroes killed in the Golden Age, but they didn't do so to just anyone. If the Heroes seemed dark, the Villains are much worse - and easy to tell most of the time as many Villains looked the part with physical deformities, and other tell-tale aspects. It is this evil that Ken suggests be played up, letting the Heroes shine that much brighter, in full confidence they were doing Good.

 

An Arbitrary Universe covers, oddly enough, the rules behind Horror and Comics. One of the main rules is - there aren't any. Each story brings up what is needed to tell that story, Lovecraft's Mythos isn't completely consistent, and Golden Comics routinely invented and dropped powers as needed for the story. It was an age of creation and wonder - no rules to break meant that if the Hero needed to do something he did it! Gamers, of course, want a little more continuity, and this section covers a way to mix the Issue To Issue attitude of the comics with Continuity of gaming.

 

Along with the last is Strange Tales, where-in both genres explore the just plain Weird side of things. Lovecraft's stories were full of really weird things, whimsy is as important a factor as structure. In here Ken invites the gamer to let go of the need to actually explain everything, it's all good. Especially the unexplainable.

 

Nestled into all of that, for those gamers who want them for Horror Gaming, is a section of Hero System Rules for Sanity written by Steve Long. For those Hero System fans who anxiously await Horror Hero to come out someday, this little two-page section of Sanity Rules is worth the cover price alone.

 

There is an afterword where Ken comes clean, admits to making up all kinds of stuff in the history, the price list and what really happened in the late 1930s with Lovecraft and Comic Books (nothing). But then, you realize that making it all up to put the characters in the first half of the book in some context is really what the book is all about.

 

The Downside:

 

The fake Price Guide I could have done without, or would have put it at the end. At best it's a cute distraction. The book gives a lot of advice on what to run, and what elements to include, but isn't very explicit on how to run some of these elements for a group. Including some fully fleshed out scenarios would have made the book close to perfect.

 

The Otherside:

Aside from the Character Stat-Blocks and Steve's Sanity Rules there isn't a lick of Game System in this. Which makes all the advice, history, and story Ken puts down immediately useful to anyone running any system who wants to explore the crossing of Horror and Superhero genres.

 

In my opnion, Ken is the only author to really grab what the Horror in Horror Gaming should be about, and I consider this an invaluable book of advice for exploring just what's out there in the dark.

[Doctor Agenda]

Re: Adventures Into Darkness

 

Sounds like my cup of tea. Is it already available?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Adventures Into Darkness

 

Yes, in the online store here at Hero, and I believe other Online shops as well.