Meme-Free Zone

I wasn't expecting this today, but here's another RPG bundle in the run-up to Christmas. This is "the Cypher System horror game of an eldritch alternate Appalachia," which seems to be inspired by the work of authors such as Manley Wade Wellman - basically, small-town 1900s American horror - and by a series of podcasts describing an alternate history set against this background. I have no idea if the podcasts are readily available outside the USA.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Appalachia


  

I'm not really into horror much at the moment, but it's cheap, nicely presented and looks like a playable system. Mostly the mythology it draws on originates from Native American tribal sources and European legends. Since this is largely inspired by a podcast series I'm linking to it below, it might be worth checking it out before you decide if you want to buy.

https://www.oldgodsofappalachia.com/

This is a massive bundle of Cthulhu Mythos RPGs and settings from Cthulhu Reborn, a project to create a D100-based system based wholly on open rules sets and source material from Lovecraft which is definitively out of copyright - a lot of material in previous Mythos games has come from authors and works whose copyright status is unclear or definitely not available for free use. The basic offer is material set mainly in the 1920s, the extended offer includes multiple rules system and adventures in different eras from the past to the far future.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/CthulhuReborn

 

I think that this is an extremely good offer, which takes the Cthulhu Mythos back to its roots and provides everything needed to run, write (and possibly publish) your own adventures without having to worry too much about inadvertently falling foul of arcane copyright law. It's relatively cheap and contains several thousand pages of useful material, if you have any interest in role-playing in this genre it's well worth a look.

This is another horror bundle featuring Ghastly Affair, the "Gothic Game of Romantic Horror in the fevered age of Marie-Antoinette and Napoleon." 

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Ghastly

  

This one is quite interesting, although it does have its origins in systems that put numbers on everything - I'm a little boggled that these include stats for Death and for Lucifer. it's primarily focused on Gothic horror, but claims a lot of other things as inspiration including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, etc. - a list of fictional characters that might be inspirational puts Faith Lehane immediately after Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. It has quite a lot about weird science and weirder magic, horrible illnesses (including several that often get overlooked in RPGs, such as rabies), and period architecture - the last is there because a major theme of Gothic horror was strange crumbling manors and their denizens. While the military history of the era is mentioned in the timeline, it's mostly there as background, and this isn't the game you want if you want to re-enact Sharpe or Master and Commander. On the other hand, it would work very well for ideas like a Napoleonic-era version of The Beguiled and other war-adjacent dramas.

The bottom line is that you get a huge amount very cheaply, and it's full of ideas that could be useful for any game or fiction with similar themes. This is one I definitely recommend, but I should really add a disclaimer that I sometimes forget - I get to download this stuff free, if you don't your mileage may vary.

Another Bundle of Holding offer: the Huckleberry Bundle, featuring the "mythic Wyrd West RPG about tragic cowboys in a world doomed to calamity."

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Huckleberry




This basically seems to be cowboys (and other interested parties) in a world full of chaotic monsters. I don't think it's really a game that interests me much, but it's well-presented and you get quite a lot for your money, It's just not a genre I particularly like.

Seeing this makes me suspect that we are now in the run-up to Halloween with these offers, which usually means a lot of horror.