Samantha Hancox-Li is crowdfunding a tabletop RPG called Marvels and Prodigies in which rather than investigate and perhaps thwart the strange cult beneath the university, your PC can become its dread sorcerer.
As the pitch notes, “In other systems, the eldritch is to be ‘seen but not touched.’ In Marvels and Prodigies, you find a spellbook, study its contents, and perhaps become a plane-striding sorcerer”. First, though, the game must raise $2,500 in funding.
Marvels and Prodigies will use a d6 dice pool for a system that does not need charts but provides some mechanical dangers (which Samantha describes as ‘real texture’). The sample is that just because a PC can use a rifle to defeat a cult does not mean they can use the same weapon to take on a flying polyp.
There will be two books: The Seeker’s Handbook for players to read, which has the rules, character generation and an example, and The Gardeners Manual for GMs to read.
The second book has a compendium of horrors, advice, spells, monsters, artefacts, grimoires, great old ones and mythos.
In classic Lovecraftian games such as Call of Cthulhu, a steady decline into madness and death is the inevitable result of investigating things beyond the boundary of human experience. In Marvels and Prodigies, there is not just horror in those alien vistas, but wonder and glory too. It is a game for people who want to know what man was not meant to know, to slip this skin called humanity, to venture out onto the black seas of infinity beyond the reach of mortal science. A major inspiration is Ruthanna Emrys and Anne Pillsworth’s The Lovecraft Reread, as well as numerous other Modern Mythos stories.
Backers at $15 get the PDF as a thank-you for the cash pledge.
Both books are physical copies at $25, but sadly restricted to the USA only.
At $35, backers PDFs and physical books. $80, there are five copies of both and five times as many stickers as a retail option.
There’s no mention of DriveThruRPG or a publishing partner with printers outside the States, which explains the sensible decision for the publisher to avoid international logistics.
The other heads-up of note is that AI disclaimer. The cover and some chapters will use AI.
Samantha estimates the PDF will be out as soon as January 2024 and the books a month later. The campaign closes on the 24th of December.
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