Telling Stories

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

I previously and somewhat cryptically alluded to the fact that I have Vampire: The Masquerade to thank for my current career. While that is true, my road from picking up that marble & rose cover book in 1991 and cashing my first paycheck as a game designer isn’t a direct one. There were lots of turns, temporary rest stops, and more the a few dead ends. Nevertheless, I could have quite easily found myself in another line of work had it not been for Vampire.

I was a TSR fanboy, having come into the role-playing hobby via D&D like so many others. At the time, roughly between 1980 and 1990, TSR games were the easiest to find in local hobby shops and toy stores. I played D&D, Top Secret, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Marvel Super Heroes, and even the much maligned The Adventures of Indiana Jones. West End Games’ Star Wars and FASA’s Shadowrun both dropped as I entered my final years of high school and were a nice diversion from D&D, but we always drifted back to rolling d20s and killing monsters.

I graduated high school in 1990 and played in an AD&D campaign during my freshman year. It was fun, but not as fun as it had been in the past. Part of it was being an “adult” and on my own for the first time. There wasn’t a lack of opportunity for entertainment on a weekend or even a weekday night in college (and many of those opportunities also included beer and women), so the dew was off the RPG rose then. And doing anything for a decade is bound to get a little tiresome. I found myself seriously considering dropping RPGs as a hobby and doing something else for fun.

My time at the State University of New York came to an abrupt and unexpected ending in June of 1991. As it turns out, despite the fact I was paying the SUNY system, they still expected you to show up to class once in a while. MY GPA was in the toilet and the university suggested that I try something else—anything else—some place other than there. Much to parents’ dismay, I had been kicked out of college, but it was suggested that if I got my grades up, I could apply for readmission. In September of 1991, I enrolled in the local community college with hopes of returning to the SUNY system for the Spring ’92 semester.

I didn’t do any gaming while at community college, but I did pick up the occasional RPG book or issue of Dragon magazine. Old habits die hard, after all. One of those issues was the November ’91 issue (the same month as my 19th birthday), Dragon #175. That issue featured a Role-playing Reviews covering three horror RPG products: Dark Conspiracy, “Blood Brothers” (for Call of Cthulhu), and some game called Vampire: The Masquerade from a company I’d never heard of before.

I liked a good horror film or book, but I wasn’t particularly enamored of vampires. I had read Interview with a Vampire by then and had seen The Lost Boys and Fright Night, but was far from a fang fan. I was more of a ghost story guy. But, in the review, author Allen Varney summed up his piece with “If you’re up for a potent and even passionate role-playing experience, look for this game.” That stuck with me. Maybe my problem with RPGs was that my tastes had matured and I needed something more than killing orcs and taking their stuff? I promised myself I’d track down Vampire: The Masquerade and see how it delivered a potent and passionate experience.

The problem was I couldn’t find a copy. My friendly local game shop, Man at Arm Hobbies, did have a copy of Nightlife (co-written by Bradley McDevitt whom I now work with at Goodman Games). I liked Nightlife, especially since it was by default set in New York City (right in my backyard) and you could play a ghost (see previous paragraph), but it wasn’t quite what I’d hoped or was looking for.

Somehow, I eventually tracked down a copy of Vampire. It might have been on another trip to Man at Arms or maybe different store. And while I can’t remember where I bought it, I do remember where I read it for the first time. I was sitting in the dining room at my friend Carl’s house, flipping through the book. The opening in-world fiction written to Mina Murray from Dracula opened the floodgates of my imagination. This was something different. But the real moment that changed my life came on p. 36 in the section entitled “Automatic Success.”

In short, Vampire included the mechanic where if the number of dice in your dice pool equals or exceeds the difficulty of the task you need to perform, you automatically succeed. In other words, if the Difficulty is 5 and I have 6 dice in my dice pool, there’s no need to roll. Other RPGs had suggested you don’t need to roll to accomplish easy tasks anyone can do, but this was the first time I’d seen a mechanism that allowed you to succeed on things that might be challenging for the average person.

It’s been 34 years since I read that section and I still remember how much it blew my mind. That was the moment I stopped thinking of myself as a lapsed DM and as a potential Storyteller.

The rulebook only got better as I read it further. As a confirmed punk with music tastes that included Dead Kennedys, The Misfits, Black Flag, The Damned, The Exploited, etc., I found lyrics to songs I knew and loved leading off sections of the book. Hell, the entire milleu of the game was “Gothic-Punk.” It was almost as if these White Wolf folks were cool like me!

The former DuBois Hall where my ongoing Vampire chronicle began.

When January of ’92 rolled around, I’d gotten my GPA up and was welcomed back to SUNY New Paltz. I left all my D&D books at home when I packed for my trip back to the dorms. However, tucked into my back was my copy of Vampire: The Masquerade and a bag of d10s. I had big plans that semester, ones which ultimately led to a Vampire chronicle that lasted for years in different incarnations with different players, a chronicle that began on regular Sunday nights by candlelight in the now-former DuBois Residence Hall.

Vampire kept me in the hobby for another decade and made me rethink what you could do with a tabletop RPG. And while I did drift out of the hobby again for a time in the mid-2000s, the lessons I’d learned from V:tM stayed with me. I never again considered dropping the hobby for good and when I came back in 2008, I found myself on the path to becoming a freelance game designer and writer. Had it not been for discovering Vampire when I did, I know the odds of me returning to the hobby would have been slim and I might not currently have the job I do in the industry. Let’s just say I owe a boon to Vampire, in all its shapes and forms, and it’s a debt I’m happy to oblige.

Embracing the Past

/ Michael Curtis / 2 Comments

Nostalgia is a razor that cuts both ways. It can be comforting, a way to remember the good times of the past, yet it is also looked upon with a measure of contempt. Reveling in nostalgia too much is a sure-fire way to be accused of living in the past at the cost of the present. But when the present is terrible, nostalgia can be a coping mechanism, a way to make it through the days, weeks, months, but hopefully not years, before the pendulum swings again and brighter times return.

I’ve been dwelling on the past more than usual these days. A minute of looking at the news or doomscrolling on social media and it becomes obvious why. Add all that to the fact I’ve now seen more than a half a century pass and it’s no wonder I’m in the midst of both a mid-life (more like two-thirds-life) and an existential crisis these days. I don’t feel quite like I’m drowning, but rather that I’m treading water and waiting for the next wave to roll. Throw in a little recent health scare and the nights can be long ones filled with a lot of reflection, self-recrimination, and wondering how and where it all went wrong.

I need a break from all that. I need to reminisce about the good old days a little and maybe, just maybe, get a trickle of dopamine from the brain spigot. Where to begin?

The answer, strangely enough, seems to lie in a more than 30-year-old tabletop RPG. One that was a titan at the time and changed the entire paradigm of the role-playing industry. A game that, laid the groundwork for my current career in the gaming industry. Not directly, mind you, but had it not come into my life at the time it did, I could easily see myself doing something else for both a living and as a recreational pastime.

That game is/was Vampire: The Masquerade, first published in 1991 by White Wolf. And say it arrived exactly when it was most needed and struck all the right cords in my heart, mind, and soul, is an understatement.

Those two sentences just made me feel both sides of nostalgia’s blade. Vampire: The Masquerade is associated with so many positive memories. The games, the music, the friends, the lovers, the times, the unrepeatable sense of power and possibility that lies in the heart of anyone in their 20s. Like a thread in the weave of my life back then, Vampire wove through everything.

And yet, there’s a sense of embarrassment writing about it right now as a soon to be 53-year-old man. Not for having played it or spent so much time thinking about it then and the memories that come from that time, but from that sense that I should have other concerns these days. Why spend a moment thinking about Vampire when there’s 401ks, my next doctor’s appointment, and making sure my professional responsibilities are met? The past is the past and there’s far too little future left to think about “back then” and pretending to be undead. I suppose it doesn’t help that vampires have lost a little of their luster in the post-Twilight and What We Do in the Shadows 21st century.

But you know what? I think I can work through all that. We can’t go home again, but we can cherish those memories. And I’ve learned the importance of making memories, especially shared ones. The worst thing about growing old is that the number of people who share our memories gets smaller every year. Death takes some, friends fall out of contact, and our individual priorities change. In our youth, we mocked the old codgers that sat around talking about the old days, but once you hit a certain point in your life, you realize how important that activity is. Roy Batty’s final words at the end of Blade Runner hit a lot harder when you’re in your 50s, unmarried, and without children. A time will come when you, and everything you’ve seen, done, and dreamed of, are gone. All that’s left, if you’re lucky, is a name on a stone and few dozen people to think about you from time to time—until they too are gone.

I’ve said many times over the past years that Vampire is the perfect game for when you’re in your 20s. You feel immortal and tragically hip then anyway (or at least I did), so you and the vampire have a lot in common. I’ve voiced that opinion enough that I think that’s yet another reason why I feel some embarrassment writing about the game now. It’s been at least a decade since I ran a session of Vampire and my players at that time were all in their 20s and 30s, and it’s been at least 6 or 7 years since I played, having sat in on a convention game shortly after the 5th edition came out to see how the new rules worked and what still felt like the old days.

Now I’m thinking I might be wrong about all that. Maybe there’s something just as pertinent to be wrought from a game of Vampire when age has begun seeping into your bones? Maybe the game can serve as a stage to enact new stories, ones with different themes than those from 1991? Maybe it’s still worthwhile to throw the occasional handful of d10s down on the table and see what happens next? My games were never the “trench coat and katana” kind, but I’m certainly more mature and have seen more horror today than when I was a college student sitting with my friends in a common area of a Dubois Residence Hall’s suite at SUNY New Paltz playing by candlelight.

Maybe it’s time to bury the embarrassment and try something I once loved again and see what other emotions can come from it? Worst case scenario is I waste a little of what time I have left. Best case? New memories and maybe some happiness during a time when that’s a precious commodity.

I started writing this essay with the intent of explaining myself to an audience, but now I realized that was an audience of one. This is me working out my complex feelings about a time I loved and miss more and more with each passing year or latest breaking development in the news cycle. This is not me explaining to you why I’m thinking about Vampire: The Masquerade on a summer afternoon a quarter of the way through the 21st century. It’s me giving myself permission to embrace the past and to do so without shame.

Having received permission, now all that remains is the doing. Best get started then. You can come along with me if you’d like. We might even make a memory or two together as we go.

Tall Tales of Short Beings: The Catskill Gnomes

/ Michael Curtis / 1 Comment

I want to tell you a story
‘Bout a little man, If I can
A gnome named Grimble Grumble
And little gnomes stay in their homes
Eating, sleeping
Drinking their wine
–“The Gnome” by Pink Floyd

When one thinks of gnomes, one is prone to think of them in the context of the Old World, not the New. Whether as earth elementals in the occult philosophy of Paracelsus, a dwarflike creature dwelling underground, or the pointy red-hat waring variety from the book by Wil Huygen, gnomes—outside of Dungeons & Dragons—are creatures of European origin and would seem out of place here in the Americas. Or at least that’s what one would think if they never ventured into the ancient mountains known as the Catskills.

As it turns out, the Catskill Mountains have a long history of being the partying place for a race of short humanlike creatures that are quite evidently not human. Stories of these beings go back to before European contact in the folklore of at least three different indigenous cultures. Henry Hudson, the first European to sail up the river named after him and pass under the shadows of the Catskills, was said to have had his own encounter with these beings. Do they still dwell in the mountains now better known for the Borscht Belt than mythical creatures? Let’s take a look and see what we can do with this bit of folklore.

There are two major folktales involving the Catskill gnomes concern one purportedly told by the Mohegan people who made their home in the region and the second involving Henry Hudson.

The first folktale is recorded in Myths and Legends of Our Own Land by Charles M. Skinner, published in 1896. According to Skinner, the Mohegan people spoke of a natural amphitheatre located behind the Grand Hotel, which once stood in Highmount, NY. This place was said to be the gathering site of small beings who “worked in metals, and had bushy beards and eyes like pigs.” These beings would assemble on the ledge above the amphitheatre and dance the night away under a full moon. They were said to brew a potent liquor, one that shortened the bodies and swelled the heads of anyone who drank it. Skinner reports that Hudson and his crew encountered these gnomes when visiting the mountains. The short beings held a party in his honor and invited Hudson and the crew to drink their mountain moonshine. As a result, the crew went away shrunken and distorted, and it was in this guise that Rip Van Winkle would encounter them a century later.

The second folktale comes from a story recorded by S.E. Schlosser in Spooky New York. Schlosser writes that Hudson and crew heard the sound of music echoing from the hills as the Half Moon lay at anchor in the shadow of the Catskills. Hudson and crew went ashore to seek out the source of the music, only to find “a group of pygmies with long, bushy beards and eyes like pigs” dancing and capering around a fire. Hudson recognized the beings as the metal-working gnomes some of the native tribes had spoken of.

The gnomes quickly spotted the party crashers and welcomed them with a cheer. Long into the night, the crew drank with the gnomes and played nine-pins. Hudson sipped only a single glass of the homebrewed hooch and “spoke with the chief of the gnomes about many deep and mysterious things.”

Realizing how late it had become, Hudson looked around to gather his men, only to discover he couldn’t see them. All he glimpsed was a large group of gnomes laughing around the fire. To his amazement and horror, Hudson recognized several of the gnomes as his crewmen, now transformed into short creatures with heads “swollen to twice their normal size, their eyes were small and pig-like, and their bodies had shortened until they were only a little taller than the gnomes themselves.”

Alarmed, Hudson pressed the chieftain for an explanation and he was assured that the change in his crewmen was the result of drinking the gnomes’ brew and that the transformation would wear off when the sailors sobered up. Hudson, fearing what else might be in store for his men, quickly gathered up his miniaturized mariners and hustled them—drunkenly—back to the Half Moon. When the crew awoke in the morning, it was with terrible hangovers, but thankfully back to their normal shapes and forms. In one version of this tale, one of the crewmen was overlooked in the rush to get everyone back to the ship and remained in the gnomes’ company, permanently transformed, ever after.

The tale has a further addendum. In reality, Hudson’s crew mutinied on a subsequent voyage to locate the Northwest Passage. In 1610, after being trapped in the ice for the winter, the crew set Hudson and eight other sailors adrift in Hudson Bay and they were never seen again. Legend says that every 20 years, a fire appears in the amphitheater and the sound of music echoes through the mountains. The gnomes would hold a party every two decades and the ghosts of Hudson and his men would join the festivities at midnight. Until dawn, the ghosts and gnomes would play nine-pins, the sound of the ball rolling like thunder and bolts of lightning streaking across the sky when the pins fell. For those of you keeping track, the next gathering is scheduled for September 3rd, 2029, somewhere near the former site of the Grand Hotel on Monka Hill.

The former Grand Hotel. Is the bald patch on the hill behind it the site of gnome revels?

Meet the Locals: The Catskill Mountains are overlapped by three indigenous language groups. You have (roughly) Delaware speakers to the south and southwest, Algonquin speakers to the southeast, east, and northeast, and Iroquois speakers to the west and northwest. Each one of these cultures has their own mythology that includes short humanlike beings.

Among Algonquin-speaking peoples, you find Pagdadjinini, the little people of the forest. Their name means “wild man” and they’re known to be mischievous, but generally good-natured. In Delaware-speaking cultures, you have Wemategunis, a little people about as tall as a man’s waist. Like the Pagdadjinin, the Wemategunisare are mischievous, but generally benign forest spirits, although they can become dangerous if disrespected. They have the ability to turn invisible and have immense strength. They may help people who are kind or who tolerate their mischievous pranks with good humor.

Lastly, you have the Jogah from the myths of the Iroquois Confederation. The Jogah are a small humanoid nature spirits, sometimes called “dwarves” by Europeans. Their size varies, with some cultures saying they’re only knee-high, while others stating the Jogah stand 4’ tall. However, the Jogah are often invisible revealing themselves mostly to children, elders, and medicine people. There are several different types of Johah, notably the Gahongas who are renowned for their great strength, capable of moving boulders many times their size. According to legends, Gahongas live on rocky riverbanks and in caves. There are also the Gandayah or Drum Dancers, who are always invisible and only the sound of their drums indicate their presence. The Gandayah are known to help the Iroquois peoples with their crops. Lastly, the Ohdows are a gnomes who live under the earth and are said to keep serpents and other subterranean monsters in check.

Any one of these “little people” could have been the gnomes Hudson and his men met that night, but both the Wemategunis and Jogah seem to make the best fit.

Fun Guys from Yuggoth: Strange creatures in the mountains should sound very familiar to anyone whose read The Whisperer in Darkness, H.P. Lovecraft’s story about the Mi-Go, an alien race from Pluto who dwell in the hills of Vermont where they mine minerals not found on their home world. The Mi-Go possess advanced scientific technology and are served by human (or at least human-seeming) agents to hide their presence from outsiders. The Catskills could very well hide a Mi-Go mining colony extracting the same minerals as their Vermont-dwelling kin. And while the Mi-Go themselves don’t resemble the creatures Hudson and crew encountered in the slightest, they demonstrate the ability to perform miraculous surgical procedures on humans. It wouldn’t take much effort for the Mi-Go to greatly modify native humans, altering them to resemble figures from legend. What better way to keep the unwanted away then by “haunting” the mountains with the forest and mountain spirits the indigenous people already believe to be there? Perhaps the physical alterations to Hudson’s crew wasn’t the result of gnome liquor but alien rays targeted at the sailors by hidden Mi-Go? The missing crewman one version of the tale mentions might have been captured by Fungi of Yuggoth and brought (or at least his head was) to Pluto for further examination and interrogation.

As Above, So Below: One last option could be that the gnomes were just as much strangers to the mountains as Hudson and his men. Their small stature would greatly benefit any race dwelling underground, making any number of legendary subterranean civilizations as the possible origin of the gnomes. Derro (the Shaver Mystery ones, not the D&D kind), former Hyperborean slaves a la Mike Mignola’s Hellboy depictions, faeries, troglodytic humans driven underground, or even lost Tibetan tunnel diggers who’ve gone native could all be the real gnomes in question.

Strange Vapors: The account mentions that the crew played nine-pins with the gnomes, which seems odd even in an already strange account. It appears the game was in progress when Hudson and his crew arrived on the scene, leading one to wonder where the gnomes got the all the elements to play the nine-pins, let alone hear about this European game. Maybe that’s because the gnomes were all in the minds of the European explorers? The fires spotted by the Half Moon may have been some sort of natural phenomenon akin to the “swamp gas” used to dismiss UFO sightings by Project Bluebook. A subterranean gas, one with hallucinogenic effects and flammable or phosphorescent properties, may have leaked from deep underground and affected the men when they investigated. The missing crew man could have wandered off, perhaps falling to his death off a cliff or down the crevasse that the gas emerged from, his body never found.

Henry Hudson, Wherefore Art Thou? I can’t end a post involving Henry Hudson in a starring role without briefly touching upon the circumstances of his disappearance from the mortal realm. As noted above, Hudson, along with his son and seven crewmen, where set adrift in a small shallop (a type of open boat) in James Bay in 1611 by mutinous crewmen after having been force to overwinter there while exploring Hudson Bay. The nine men briefly pursued Hudson’s former ship, the Discovery, before the vessel raised sails and left the shallop behind. That was the last known sighting of Hudson and the rest. Searches conducted in 1612 and 1668-1670 failed to find any sign of Hudson or his men. Author Dorothy Harley Eber collected testimonies in the 20th century from Inuit residents of the area that revealed the existence of old stories dating back centuries that might shed light on Hudson’s fate. The stories spoke of the arrival of an old white man with long white beard and a young boy who were taken in by the Inuit people, despite their never having seen a European before. The old man soon died, and the boy was tethered to one of the homes so he wouldn’t run away. The ultimate fate of the boy and the man’s corpse were unknown.

Article from the Toronto Star, Fri, Sep 21, 1962

In the late 1950s, a 150 lbs. stone was discovered near Deep Rive, Ontario, more than 350 miles away from James Bay. The stone was carved with the initials “H.H.”, the year 1612, and the word “captive.” While the date of carvings couldn’t be determined, the style of the letters was consistent with 17th century English maps. Hudson, like the crew of the H.M.S. Terror and Erebus two centuries later, was swallowed by the Great White North, leaving only legends behind.

Weird Americana Connections: The Catskills aren’t the only place in the American Northeast that’s said to be home to small creatures associated with oversized heads. Just across the New York/Connecticut border come tales of a much more ferocious type of short humanoids, ones who’ve been said to attack people. Join me next time when we put are noggins to work delving into the legend of the Connecticut Melon Heads.

Old & Cold: The Human Hibernators

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

No release from my cryonic state
What is this? I’ve been stricken by fate
Wrapped up tight, cannot move, can’t break free
Hand of doom has a tight grip on me
–“Trapped Under Ice” by Metallica

This week’s bit of gamified folklore comes to us from an obscure Yankee tall tale out of Vermont. It first appeared in an 1887 edition of the Montpelier newspaper, Argus & Patriot, and discusses how the residents of a small Vermont village deal with their elderly and infirm when the cold winter months settle in. These events are said to take place in the town of Calais, about 20 miles from Montpelier.

According to the story, six people, five of whom are “past the age of usefulness” and the sixth “a cripple of about thirty-years-old” are drugged unconscious in January. Upon being declared “ready,” the six are stripped of their clothing except for a single garment and brought outdoors after nightfall. There, the insensible six are laid on logs and exposed to the cold winter air. Onlookers watch as their skin slowly turns blue, then return to the cabin as if a horrible mass murder by exposure hadn’t just been committed.

The next morning, the men folk go out and build a box some ten feet long and five feet high and wide. Lining the box with straw, the frozen bodies are placed inside, covered with a cloth, then packed with more straw. The box lid is firmly nailed into place to “protect the bodies from being injured by carnivorous animals that made their home on these mountains.” A team of oxen then drag the body-filled container to the foot of a steep ledge, whereupon spruce and hemlock boughs are piled atop it. The pile is then left to the elements, where it would be covered by snow that “would lay in drifts twenty feet deep over this rude tomb.”

Come May, once the weather turns warm again, the work party returns to the pile, removes the boughs, opens the box, and cleans out the cloth and straw, exposing the bodies once more. These inert forms are played into troughs made from hollowed out hemlock locks and filled with tepid water. Boiling water is then added from kettles in which hemlock had been steeped “in such quantities that they had given the water the color of wine.”

After a hour-long soak in the troughs, color returns to the bodies and all those gathered around begin rubbing life back into the six. After another hour, the muscles of the face and limbs begin to respond, followed by gasps of breath as the now revivified six return to consciousness. A few draughts of hard spirits finish the defrosting process and soon all six are wide awake and taking. A hearty meal finishes the thawing out of these elders who are “in no wise injured, but rather refreshed by their long sleep of four months.”

The story is of course a tall tale, one of the few ones whose origin was traced to its original source. You can read the full account of the story and the efforts to locate its source here and here. It would be reprinted in 1940s in publications such as The Boston Globe, Yankee Magazine, and The Old Farmer’s Alamac, leading to some researchers to wonder if their might be medical advancements waiting to be discovers in Vermont mountain folk medicine.

And while the story might be fake, there’s no reason we can’t have some fun with it at the gaming table.

Backwoods Medicine: Although the story doesn’t specifically say so, there must be something at work here other than the cold. Our narrator explains the so-to-be-hibernating folks have been drugged unconscious, and it’s not a far jump to assume whatever put them under was something stronger than Grandpa’s white lightning. The folks of Calais know something about herbalism or even alchemy and can whip up a powerful potion. The easy (and lazy) explanation would be that this is something they learned from the indigenous folk, but given this tale involves people of European extraction and not members of the native population, doing so takes us into potentially offensive waters. It’d be better if this concoction comes from the Old Country.

Vermont was the stomping grounds of the French, the Dutch-British, and the English, with the area around Montpelier settled by newly-minted Americans from Charlton, MA in 1781, any of whom could have brought secret knowledge to the region. The draught could have its origins in Dutch alchemy (maybe first decanted by a Van Helsing ancestor?), English witchcraft, or pulled from a French grimoire and brought to the New World with a secret cabal of magicians.

Any pharmacological corporation in existence would love to get a sample of this drink. And in the world of today’s questionable business practices, they might be willing to take illegal steps to both acquire it and ensure they remain the sole owner of the chemical formula. This could lead to an adventure featuring backwoods cunning folk vs. experimental drug-amplified corporate leg-breakers up in the Vermont mountains.

Wood Magic: The story goes to great pains to mention that both spruce and hemlock play a part in the hibernation process. In the case of hemlock, what is being referred to is Eastern Hemlock, a tree found in the Americas, not the poisonous plant that took out Socrates. Both spruce and hemlock are conifers, evergreens associated with longevity. Among the Seneca and Micmac peoples, there are stories emphasizing the hemlock tree’s role in providing warmth, aiding in magical transformation, and holding winter at bay (spruce also appears in that role). Spruce trees are associated with renewal, protection, resilience, strength, connection to the gods, longevity, good luck, immortality, fertility, and magical protection in various cultures. It’s no wonder both trees are mentioned in this tall tale. Perhaps the real magic isn’t in the concoction that the hibernators consume, but in the wood that surrounds them as they hibernate? And what happens should the spirits of spruce and hemlock near Calais turn against humanity? Seems like instead of six hibernating bodies you’d end up with six corpses. Perhaps ones then animated by vegetation spirits and used as an instrument of revenge?

Communication with the Otherworld: In northern shamanic traditions, trance states are used to contact the spirit world and what’s more trance-like than a five-month long nap under a pile of snow? Perhaps the chosen six—including one with a physical disability, a condition not unknown among and possibly even a necessary requirement of a shaman—act as an oracle committee who undergo a prolonged trance state to deal with magical forces. They emerge from their hibernation trance in May with hard-won knowledge about the coming year and prophecies about the future of the village. Perhaps a player character seeking new magical knowledge might have to undergo hibernation to acquire lore from the spiritual or the divine world?

Sometimes Asleep is Better: Taking a page from the lycanthrope, maybe our six sleepers are afflicted with a curse or other supernatural aliment that is dangerous when it manifests. When the first half of the year arrives, they undergo a mystical transformation (one hesitates to say “weremoose,” but I’ll be bold) that makes them dangerous to kith and kin. The only way to prevent the six from running amok is to knock them out until the dangerous period has passed.

Weird Americana Connections: Folks sleeping away there lives in the mountains isn’t limited to just Vermont. Another famous case of this occurring–with an even longer duration–was reported to have happened in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The tale was famously reported by Washington Irving and is known to most Americans today. But sleepy Dutchmen aren’t the only things to be found and feared in the Catskills. Join us next week as we look at Catskill Gnomes.

Groundhog Day: Out of the Shadows

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

Let’s begin our weekly gamification of folklore a few days late by looking at the American holiday of Groundhog Day. As I noted in this post, I won’t be providing game mechanics in these posts, but with a little mental elbow grease, the following material could easily be incorporated in an Unknown Armies, Mage: The Ascension, Shadowrun, or similar campaign involving modern magic and/or occult investigation.

Give me some toads’ n’ frogs’ hips
I’m gonna, gonna, put it all together
I’m gonna, gonna mix it up together
I’m gonna, gonna whup it all up good
I’m gonna, gonna kill that ol’ dirty Groundhog
–“Groundhog Blues” by John Lee Hooker

Groundhog Day is observed every February 2nd here in America. On that day, the groundhog emerges from it burrow and its actions predict whether or not winter is coming to an end. If the day is clear and the groundhog sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If it doesn’t, winter will come to an early close. Our most famous groundhog prognosticator is “Punxsutawney Phil,” a resident of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, which also where the tradition arose here in the States. Other communities throughout the United States have their over regional counterparts to Phil (in my neck of the woods is “Holtsville Hal,” the latest in a line of groundhogs living at the local ecology center) and it’s not uncommon for contradictory predictions to occur among them.

Groundhog Day has connections to the Old World, both to the Christian feast day of Candlemas (also on February 2nd) commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the temple and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc, which marked the vernal equinox and the beginning of the growing season. Groundhog Day is also tied to other animals’ actions acting as weather divination. In France it was the bear that returned to its den for forty days if the sun rose, while in Germany it was the badger.

When German immigrants arrived in the States, they brought that tradition with them. However, perhaps a dearth of badgers in Pennsylvania, the groundhog took on the prognosticator’s role and has since claimed the holiday for its own.

Groundhog Day is not an old holiday. The first written record of it appears in 1840. As holidays go, Groundhog Day is a lighthearted one. It’s a time to remind ourselves of our agrarian past as we become more and more disconnected with it. But despite its less-than-serious nature, there’s still ample material to use for our gaming purposes.

Timely Connections: As noted above, Groundhog Day and Candlemas fall on the same day. In the Neo-pagan traditions, the lesser sabbat of Imbolc, which celebrates the end of winter and is closely associated with the Celtic deity turned Catholic saint, St. Brigid, occurs on February 1st.

Supernatural Associations: Groundhog Day and the groundhog itself are potent symbols of both weather and divination. Divination rites performed on February 2nd could be supercharged as a nation awaits Punxsutawney Phil’s predication. Groundhog bones might have exceptional divination properties and be highly sought after by seers and other prophetic mages. Likewise, weather control rituals and spells may be more effective on February 2nd or require some bit of groundhog to perform. Imagine the sort of supernatural weather fronts and the consequences of such as dozens of magical practitioners all work weather magic on Groundhog Day with conflicting desired results!

Totems and Supernatural Patrons: Magic practitioners might align themselves with Groundhog as a totem, supernatural patron, or spirit guide in order to harness their power. In addition to their connection with divination and weather, groundhogs are also associated with survival, nesting, grounding oneself, hibernation, rebirth/renewal, determination, self-reliance, and productivity. Not to mention they have some hefty incisors to defend themselves if you mess with them!

Powers of Darkness: Given the role the groundhog’s shadow in the holiday, there’s an innate connection to be played with in regards to shadows, shades, and gloom. A groundhog’s burrow might serve as portal into the Shadow World, allowing things and spirits to cross between the physical world and the shadow realm. Anyone indulging in Jungian shadow work could encounter the groundhog in dreams, visions, or synchronistic encounters in the mundane realm. Of course, groundhog is famously terrified by its own shadow, so perhaps such an encounter means the character is going about things all wrong or that the groundhog must first be slain (either symbolically or in actuality) before the shadow worker can progress further along their path.

Post-Modern Magic: The 1993 film Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray’s character is forced to relive the same day over and over again, has become part of the cultural landscape. If you were to tell someone your life had become “a Groundhog Day,” they’d likely grasp that it means you feel like your life is in a rut, forced to do the same thing every day. Groundhog Day has become associated with time, especially temporal loops in our cultural mindset, giving it metaphysical resonance as well.

As a result, magic involving time is more potent on February 2nd now. The groundhog, itself, is now a powerful symbol to work sympathetic magic through. A curse that causes the victim to repeat the same mistakes might require a pinch of dirt from a groundhog hole or a few hairs from the back of a woodchuck.

Horror: Groundhog Day doesn’t immediately lend itself to the horror genre outside of comedic horror. One could get a couple miles out of the idea of Punxsutawney Phil becoming possessed by a demonic spirit and tearing the crowd apart live on national television, but otherwise the holiday is a feeble hook to hang an idea on.

The best way to use Groundhog Day in a horror game might be as a sign or omen of worse things to come. If on February 2nd it was discovered that something terrible had occurred to Punxsutawney Phil and all his regional counterparts, it could be an indicator of woeful events on the horizon. With Groundhog Day’s association with time and weather, perhaps it means that the Fimbulwinter is upon us or that time itself is coming to an end.

Tongue Firmly in Cheek: For a more comedic or lighthearted way of tapping into Groundhog Day, the holiday or animal might could become the symbol of those opposed to progress. Groundhog Day’s association with a fond look back at our agrarian past might be adopted by a cabal of neo-Luddite revolutionaries who want to “burrow” into the modern world and bring it down in order to return us to our pastoral past. This “Brotherhood of the Burrow” might mark the sights of their guerilla sabotage with spray-painted images of the groundhog or adorn their secret hideout with its toothy visage.

As a symbol of Americana, a fiendish cabal of sorcerers seeking to bring the nation to its knees might conspire to steal Punxsutawney Phil, the Liberty Bell, and other national symbols to be used as part of a mighty ritual conducted atop George Washington’s head at Mount Rushmore.

Weird Americana Connections: With Groundhog Day’s prophetical role in weather predication, it makes sense that folks in Vermont observe the holiday with keen interest in order to know if it’s time to take their old folks out of hibernation or if they should wait another six weeks for defrosting them. Don’t know about human hibernators? I’ll be looking at them next time.

Folklore is for All Folks

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

One of the reasons I decided to start blogging again is because my love for folklore has been renewed. In a time when forces are striving to tear us apart, I’m making a concentrated effort to focus on that which brings us together. I truly do believe that we all seek the same things in life: the freedom to love, to build a solid future for our families, to live in a world where serenity is more common than strife. Unfortunately, there are—and always will be—bad actors who encourage division for their own gain.

Folklore, the stories that make up our cultural identities, transcend politics. That’s not to say they can’t be used to advance agendas, but at their heart, folktales are symbols of our hopes and fears, not only a culture but as human beings. That’s what I love so dearly about folklore and why I keep coming back to it in my own work.

I’ve tapped the wellsprings of American folklore in the past, most famously in The Chained Coffin, an adventure I wrote for the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG that transformed Appalachian culture and folktales into a sword & sorcery fantasy world. The success of the adventure led to the creation of the Shudder Mountains (which incidentally gives this blog half its name), further expanding on the folklore of its real world counterpart as a fantasy setting. The Chained Coffin and the Shudder Mountains as a whole were well-received, but the fact that many people who are natives to the Appalachian region loved it meant a lot to me. Not bad for a semi-citified boy from New York! I believe the major reason it was embraced by those folks was because it treated Appalachian culture, and more importantly the people of Appalachia, with respect. Amazing what a little a little common cutesy can accomplish, huh?

Back in 2016 another project of mine had me casting my folklore net far wider. That was Secret Antiquities, a ‘zine that took bits of Americana to create a backdrop in which the forces of the Anti-Sam contended against Uncle Sam for the heart and soul of America. This again was intended for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics, and while it was fun to write, I don’t think it worked as well for the rules system. It did give me the opportunity to turn Uncle Sam, the Old Man of the Mountain, Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow, and other American icons into magical patrons.

My general and American-related folklore bookcase.

People kept asking if I would ever release more Secret Antiquates, but while the desire was strong, the flesh was less than willing. I spend 40+ hours every week steeped in DCC RPG and the idea of spending more time on it during my days off wasn’t appealing. Still, the idea working with folklore again was never far from my mind. Then two things happened which made me consider returning to the gamification of folklore more seriously.

The first was the 2024 election, the long consequences of which we’re just beginning to experience. During the pandemic, I found a certain comfort in folktales and folk horror, and decided to break out this mental life jacket one more time for the reason I noted above: focus on what brings us together rather than tears us apart.

The second was that my gaming group has kicked off the new year with a Vaesen campaign. For those of you unfamiliar with Vaesen, it’s a tabletop RPG set in “Mythic Scandinavia” during the 1800s. Players take on the role of occult investigators trying to solve mysteries, mysteries caused by “the Vaesen,” a collective term for all manner of monsters in Swedish folklore—trolls, giants, sea serpents, ghosts, etc. It’s fairly rules light and, with its focus on investigation and problem solving over beating your foes to death with a club or sword, a far cry from the sword & sorcery world of DCC RPG that keeps my lights on and the heat coming out the baseboard.

When the Vaesen campaign began, I started rereading some of the books on my folklore bookcase and it wasn’t long before my eye wandered across all the other books that filled those shelves. There was plenty to be mined here, a lot of it from my own backyard (in some cases, almost literally). Maybe it was time to dip my toes back into that wellspring? Not as Secret Antiquities, but something in the same vein, but different.

I hemmed and hawed some more, asking myself if it was worth the effort, but not coming to any solid conclusions. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was taking my morning walk when—and this is 100% true—a bald eagle swooped down from the sky and soared right over me.

If that was a sign that it was time to delve back into American folklore and do something with it, I don’t know what is.

So it’s back to the books to start turning Americana into game material once again. I’ll likely begin with a system neutral format, presenting bits of folklore and offering suggestions how it can be turned into something on the game table but without specific game mechanics. That may change in the future as I familiarize myself more with the Vaesen mechanics or my anxiously awaited copy of Weird Heroes of Public Access arrives, so we’ll see. I plan to post once a week on folklore, starting tomorrow and continuing regularly on Tuesdays (I did consider doing a “Folklore Friday” but Fridays are a terrible day to get eyes looking at a blog).

While this isn’t ideal news for people asking for more Secret Antiquities, it’s something. And I do try to “never say never.” All I can do is keep reading, keep writing, and most of all, keep myself in a positive state of mind, and the future will sort itself out.

New Beginnings

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

Today is Imbolc for neo-pagans who celebrate the Year of the Wheel. For them, February 1st is a time of new beginnings, the time when the dark of winter is fading into the bright days of spring. It is a time to make plans for the future and to look forward to the warm days ahead.

Although I’m personally not a follower of the “Old Ways,” I do love celebrating and acknowledging the yearly changing of the seasons. Lately though, it feels like the dark days of winter are more tenacious and it’s harder to rekindle the light. I decided this year to keep my own tiny flame alight and hope that if enough of us do the same, maybe we can get a bonfire going that with drive back the darkness.

I’m not artist, but I’ve been told I can twist a phrase or two in an entertaining fashion. By day, I work for a game company and help bring to life stories for others to enjoy. Or at least provide them with the tools they need to tell their own tales. Stories are that rare form of magic that almost anyone can perform and, even better, enjoy.

As the world keeps changing at a reckless pace, I see I need a safe harbor to keep my own stories. A sanctuary for my imagination that’s not dependent on some tech bro’s latest plan to monetize what should be a public utility. A cobweb-strewn storehouse filled with weird crates labeled in unusual alphabets. This blog has gone through a number of incarnations (much like myself), but for the first time in a long while I feel like I’ve found its intended purpose.

I can’t make any promises of what will end up here. I help create games for a living so expect to see a lot relating to that. I’m a fiend for folklore, a lover of the urban legend, and a fan of the unusual. In a former life, I was a researcher and I still find the process of drilling down into the past and hunting out truths in old books exhilarating. I’m always looking to see what makes the world tick, even if I can only grasp a tiny fraction of the universe’s clockworks.

Mostly though, I’m an odd soul who tends to associate with other weirdoes. They’re some of my favorite people, especially the ones who’ve not only embraced their inherent strangeness, but cultivated it into beautiful expressions of their souls. Now, more ever, the world needs weirdness that manifests in positive ways. I hope you find some inspiration here to do just that.

Just Who Is This Guy?

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment
Michael stares longingly at the sea. Photo by Steven Newton

Michael Curtis is a product of Long Island, NY, but don’t hold that against him (and you really can’t tell by his accent). So far, in the time between the cradle and the grave, he’s been a writer, an award-winning game designer, a deckhand, a stockboy, a warehouse worker, a bartender, a library clerk, a video editor, a stunt double for a 600 lb. black bear, the frontman for a punk band, a doppelganger, an actor, a web designer, a dishwasher, a writer of extremely questionable horoscopes, a house painter, a production assistant, and an archivist. He presently works as a Director of Product Development for Goodman Games, a tabletop role-playing game company.

He keeps this blog because somebody has to and he didn’t see you volunteering. Michael currently lives on Long Island, is married to the sea, owns a questionable number of books, and a reasonable number of cats.

If you can’t get enough of his rantings here, follow him on Bluesky @manlymikecurtis.bsky.social

Devolution

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

While not a “hexploitation” or a 1970s weirdness book, Devolution by Max Brooks (probably best known for World War Z) does caress the pleasure nerve I have for Bigfoot-related things not involving Go Pro cameras and dudes beating on trees with sticks. I’m firmly in the “I don’t believe they exist, but would love to be proven wrong” camp when it comes to Sasquatches. My heart has broken too many times and the innocence of my youth is long vanished, but that doesn’t prevent me from enjoying the occasional visit to metaphorical (and sometimes even literal) Bigfoot Country.

Devolution shares similarities with Brooks’ World War Z in that it uses the narrative frame of a tale told via surviving evidence and interviews with people after the event it chronicles ended. In this case, the event was “The Rainier Sasquatch Massacre,” which initially leaves open the question of who was doing the massacring of whom here. Any uncertainties are quickly resolved when we learn that the unnamed researcher compiling the book is using the journal of Katie Holland, a resident of the tiny eco-friendly, yet technologically-cutting edge community of Greenloop, as its primary source. The journal was discovered in the ruins of the community in the wake of a natural disaster, a disaster which seemingly forced a population of Sasquatches into contact with the residents of Greenloop with fatal results.

Katie’s journal entries make up the majority of the novel, with each chapter further fleshed out by transcripts from interviews the researcher conducted with those connected to either the occupants of Greenloop or who participated in the recovery and rescue operations post-disaster. Quotes from various real world sources begin each chapter, all of which pertain to some event about to befall the Greenloop residents in the hours and days to come.

I found Devolution to be a quick and enjoyable read, the perfect summertime book to kick back with in the evenings before bed. Brooks crafts a believable narrative, especially the behavior and ecology of the Sasquatches (which he clearly researched and assembled from existing theories of Bigfoot behavior), and has the unintended benefit of being prescient of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the events that strand the Greenloopers are geological rather than biological, the breakdown of systems and the unrest that occurs in its wake isn’t too far off from what we experienced in the early days of the pandemic and might see again in our lifetimes.

As someone who grew up seeing the grainy footage of the Patterson-Gimlin film in a dozen Bigfoot documentaries, Devolution was a nostalgic trip back to my childhood—albeit with a higher body count. The novel spurred me to stream a few vintage Sasquatch movies over the past week and to enjoy even the worst of them (well, maybe not Curse of Bigfoot which was godawful). Much like childhood, itself, it’s easy overlook their flaws and remember fondly a time when it seemed like science would find conclusive evidence of an indigenous North American primate at any moment. Alas, nearly fifty years later, Bigfoot remains the undefeated Hide-and-Go-Seek champion of the Pacific Northwest.  

Anatomy of Witchcraft

/ Michael Curtis / Leave a comment

Anatomy of Witchcraft by Peter Haining (Universal-Tandem Publishing Co. Ltd., 1974) is a prime example of the titillating hexploitation paperbacks being cranked out in the 1970s to capitalize on the increased publicity and fascination with witchcraft and black magic in both the UK and the USA. Subtitled “Satanism, White Magic, Voodoo the ancient rituals are alive today,” Anatomy of Witchcraft presents an overview of the most headline-grabbing religions and magical practices of the 1960s and 1970s. Not only does it delve into the rites and beliefs of black magic, Voodoo, and witchcraft, it presents actual magical workings to demonstrate what the followers of these traditions do—far from the prying eyes of more respectable folks, of course.

The book is dived into nine chapters, but no helpful table of contents is provided. The chapters include and introduction, “Witchcraft in Britain,” “The Growth of Black Magic,” “The Witches of America,” “Evil on the Coast” (a chapter focusing on magic and cults in California), “The Ancient Craft in Europe,” Witchcraft Behind the Iron Curtain,” and “Voodoo—Black Witchcraft,” a title which I’m assuming is a play on words referring the Haining’s emphasis on the possibly harmful manifestations of voodoo as well as the ethnicity of the majority of its practitioners. A final chapter covers “The Rest of the World.” Appendixes follow some of the chapters and contain instructions for a witch’s initiation, a Satanic ritual, and “The Voodoo Blood Sacrifice.”

While a product of its time, I’ll give Anatomy a little credit: it appears better researched than many other hexploitation paperbacks churned out during this period—certainly more than Witness to Witchcraft. Haining does do his scholarly legwork and the book contains a bibliography, which is more than many of them do. Unfortunately, Haining doesn’t directly cite his sources in the text itself and given that he’s gotten into trouble in later years with scholars trying to verify his sources and being unable to do so, we must take everything with a tablespoon of salt.

Haining is an entertaining writer, even if he might be making some of this stuff up to hit his word count, and there are far worse nonfiction hexploitation works out there. While most of the usual suspects are name-checked in the book (Alex Chambers, Crowley, Anton LaVey, Charles Manson, etc.), Haining pulls a few into the mix that I wasn’t familiar with, Americans to boot. Louise Huebner was completely off my radar, as was “Princess Leda Amun Ra”, a figure I look forward to working into something of my own as soon as I possibly can!

Anatomy is particularly well-titled: as with much of the hexploitation paperbacks, there’s plenty of bare flesh on display, starting with the cover and continuing on to the black and white photographic plates inside. An equal opportunity approach to nudity is taken in the photo plates: there’s a few exposed male bottoms dancing around along with bared breasts.

Overall, the book presents a more even tone regarding witchcraft, saving its dire warnings for Satanism running amok in California. Even voodoo is treated with a fairer hand than many other tawdry books on the occult and black magic do, but it’s hardly lacking in racism or free from exoticizing a primarily Black religious faith.

If you’re looking for an easy, only somewhat sensationalized look at occult beliefs during this time, I have no reservations recommending Anatomy of Witchcraft. Just don’t rely on it for any serious scholarship.