Through Wednesday, November 4 the October Horrors continue as we revive (for a second time!) the June 2021 Yellow King RPG Bundle featuring The Yellow King , the reality-bending supernatural GUMSHOE game from Pelgrane Press, as well as other Carcosan creations. Designed by Robin D. Laws (Cthulhu Confidential, The Esoterrorists) and funded in a June 2017 Kickstarter campaign, the brain-bending YKRPG uses the fast-playing “Quickshock” GUMSHOE system. Investigate the malign influence of Carcosa in mysteries of reality-changing horror across four different timelines inspired by the famous horror stories of Robert W. Chambers collected in The King in Yellow.
The Yellow King RPG is divided into four sequences. Each sequence has a different setting and a new group of player characters, but there are thematic and personal links between each part of the campaign, and each one builds on decisions made in the previous sequences. In the first sequence, Paris, the players play American art students in Bohemian 1890s Paris. In The Wars they’re doomed soldiers in the absurdist meat-grinder of the Continental War that’s engulfed Europe. In the present day of Aftermath the characters are freedom fighters in an alternate America, trying to rebuild society after their successful overthrow of the tyrannical Castaigne regime. Finally, in This Is Normal Now, the players are ordinary people in a world that looks just like our present reality – except….
Investigate the malign influence of Carcosa as it infects and warps reality. Battle against alien monsters and corrupted human servitors. Discover the nature of the King, his court, and his daughters. Some sequences also have specialized mechanics for aspects of play; The Wars covers battlefield hazards, giant war machines, and alien weapons, Aftermath has mechanics for political manipulation and furthering agendas. There are about 40 Investigative Abilities in total, but each sequence uses a much smaller subset. Your character has about 15 General Abilities, again customized to the sequence. Character generation uses a template system; note also that The Yellow King uses the QuickShock system for quicker combat resolution.
Play The Yellow King if you want to explore the surreal horror of Carcosa; you want to shake up your campaign regularly, switching up settings and relationships; you like improvised weirdness, cryptic villains, and metafictional horror.
This bargain-priced June 2021 revival once again presents the complete Yellow King RPG and a congeries of Carcosan creations. Pay just US$17.95 to get both titles in this revived offer’s King Collection (retail value $60) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks or MP3 music tracks: the complete four-volume Yellow King RPG and the six atmospheric tracks in James Semple’s The Yellow King Suite.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $27.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get this revival’s entire Scholar Collection with four more titles worth an additional $61, including a big compendium of stunning YKRPG handouts, Absinthe in Carcosa; Kenneth Hite’s erudite edition of the original Chambers book, The King in Yellow: Annotated Edition from Arc Dream Publishing; and two volumes of Carcosan fiction by Robin D. Laws: the alternate-history novel The Missing and the Lost and the story collection New Tales of the Yellow Sign.
This revived June 2021 Yellow King RPG offer dies like songs the Hyades sing must die unheard, or maybe as tears unshed shall dry and die, in Lost Carcosa Wednesday, November 4.
