Forgotten Futures 4 Rewrite and PDFS

[ffutures]

I've reached a point with this now where I've either fixed everything or am blind to my own errors (probably the latter), so I'm going to go public with links to everything, if you spot any problems PLEASE let me know about them. I'll be putting links to this on my site and uploading the files to other sites in a week or so once I'm sure there are no huge problems.

One thing I'm aware of is that a few illustrations that have some white space may look slightly yellow. This is actually something that's gone wrong with the current releases of Adobe Acrobat, hopefully other PDF viewers won't have a problem. You may be able to fix it by messing around with Acrobat's accessibility settings. These are free downloads as usual, but there's a Paypal tip link on my site if anyone wants to use it - please include a message saying what the money is for! This has ended up as SIX files:

The Carnacki Cylinders
https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff4/FF4-Worldbook.pdf
The worldbook with some updates and minor second thoughts, lots of new art including pictures of all major characters and creatures, etc.

The Pentacle Files
https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff4/FF4-Adventures.pdf
The adventures with lots of new art and some revisions, including a new adventure by Alex Stewart.

Carnacki the Ghost Finder
https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff4/FF4-Carnacki.pdf
The original stories with illos from the magazine appearances of the first six stories. There's also a little chapbook I found in the British Library that is a mashup of the first four stories, plus a poem which has nothing to do with Carnacki, which Hodgson's American publishers printed in 1910 to register the copyright. It's basically a clip show of exciting bits and not incredibly coherent, but interesting if you like REALLY obscure literary curiosities. I've also put that on line as a separate file for the literary scholars:
https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff4/FF4-Chapbook.pdf

The Electric Pentacle Handbook
https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff4/FF4-Pentacle.pdf
A brief history of Carnacki's most iconic invention with notes on the technology, scenario ideas, some floor plans and an instruction manual which can be printed as a little booklet.

And finally, a floor plan for Carnacki's laboratory as described in The Hog - might be useful to someone.
https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff4/FF4-Laboratory.pdf

Comments

[kedamono]

Excellent, they all look wonderful. I might get a wild hair and run a session of this at a con. Is there a scenario suited for a one-shot game?

[ffutures]

The third one with the haunted studio is probably the best for a one-off, I think. There's some real supernatural stuff, a mystery, etc., but it isn't incredibly dangerous if characters don't do anything stupid. But the mystery does involve activities some players may find offensive, so read the GM's introduction first!

The first one is potentially a bit dangerous for characters, but it's a fairly simple situation so once they figure it out they should hopefully be OK - I never had a character die when I was running it, but someone did end up trapped inside a pentacle with a monster tying to get in a couple of times.

The second one is more of a comedy of errors than anything else, may be a little slow paced for a con game but it would work well for players who want to get into the setting and a traditional country house mystery of sorts.

The scenario ideas and Alex Stewart's adventure are probably a little long for a convention game, you'd need a good few hours to play them, I think.

[kedamono]

That sounds like a plan. I'll probably use three of the provided characters, Carnacki and two of his friends. But I'll need the distaff side of things as well, so any suggestions for making female characters in this setting? (Yes, genre wise, it was a Boys Own Adventures, but the convention I'm thinking of running this is well represented all types. Hmm, I might go looking for actual women from the time period that don't fit the mold, if you take my meaning.)

[ffutures]

One of the problems with the Carnacki stories is that the stories are essentially a male character talking to male friends. I don't think that there are more than two women mentioned - one is Carnacki's mother, the other is someone's girlfriend who swoons at least once, not an ideal adventuress. I'll be honest, this is a problem with a lot of the literature I've based the game on - there are very few female characters, which makes it difficult to write good NPCs for them.

The second adventure has a female NPC, the medium, who might work as a player character for other adventures, but I can't really think of anyone else in FF4.

In the other Forgotten Futures collections:

FF3 has Enid Challenger, Professor Challenger's daughter, a journalist, writer, linguist and untrained medium, she might be useful but would need more skills.

FF9 has young miss Jane Marple, but she's possibly a bit too young for this one. See
https://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff9/babchars.htm

Can't off-hand think of others.

[kedamono]

I think I found three that may work. They are from the Serials of the 1910s: Dolly Desmond, Lucille Love, and Helen Holmes. These three are firecrackers in all senses of the word. Dolly is a former Telegraph operator that fought bandits, Lucille an adventurer fighting spies, and Helen was just an all around adventurer. So I have my work cut out for me coming up with their back stories and attributes. But I think I can do it.

I only plan to use 4 PCs, but having 6 allows for the players to have some choice for the adventure.

[ffutures]

Don't know the characters, but if they're from the right era they sound very good.