If we lived in a world without adventure games, I think I’d still have written a catalog of monsters. It’s something I’ve been doing all my life. At six I would challenge friends to give me letters or numbers so I could transform those shapes into monsters. At ten I absentmindedly doodled a creature on a worksheet, and the devoutly religious kid I was partnered with got scared because I had invited a demon into our schoolwork. When I was twelve I wrote and illustrated a series of superhero comics, but spent more time drafting a massive codex of colorful bad guys than I did writing stories. My creative energies are perpetually drawn towards horrible creatures, and now I’ve finally turned that preoccupation into 45 pages of the best writing I’ve ever managed to produce.
The book’s cover is another gorgeous piece from Ian Hagan. Each of the twenty monsters within are illustrated by Blake Holland, and laid out in a two page spread designed to maximize the book’s usefulness at the game table. The PDF version is available both in portrait format similar to the print book, and in a landscape format which fits each full spread on a single screen, or sheet of paper if printed out.
With regards to the print edition, please note: Lulu does not have the systems in place that would allow me to provide a free PDF with every physical purchase. I will happily provide complimentary PDFs to anyone who contacts me directly with their Lulu order ID.
What people are saying about Miscreated Creatures:
“I haven’t been that into RPGs in 2020 – imaginary peril is less appealing to me with this much real peril, I guess? But I just read that cover-to-cover.”
Do you remember my old Deadly Dungeons posts? Each entry in the series described a tricky dungeon room for the players to unravel. They were meant to ready to drop into most any dungeon, and novel enough to challenge even a seasoned adventurer. They were the sorts of puzzles that didn’t have a single solution, but rather gave the referee a sense of their workings so the could best interpret the results of their players pokings and proddings.
If that sounds interesting to you, the old posts are still available on the site. Or, if you’d like to read the updated and refined versions of all the original 28 rooms, as well as 12 entirely new rooms, I’ve got a book for you to buy:
In addition to my writing and cartography, the book contains dozens of pieces of new interior art by my sister Roni Whelan, layout by Moreven B., and an absolutely gorgeous cover by Ian Hagen. For real, look at this thing. It’s way too good for me:
I’d love to have Ian make covers for more of my books in the future, but I’m fairly certain that once this cover gets out there I’ll never be able to afford him again. He’s going to be buried under new commissions. This dude’s talent needs to be recognized.
As is my wont, I created a bunch of goofy image edits to help promote the book on social media. Here’s a gallery of them if you’re a fan of hacky GIMPwork:
The first symptom is a popping sound from the belly. It can happen at anytime, and the afflicted never feel it coming. They’ll be having a friendly chat one moment, then pop, and now they’re trying to kill people.
Thus begins Faux Pas, the first in a series of adventures from HOCUS publishing. It’s also the first piece of writing I’ve asked anyone to pay for after 7 years of making free tabletop resources.
In addition to my writing, Faux Pas features the art of Anxy P., and layout from no less a figure than Christian Kessler (of Fever Swamp fame). I also got a lot of help throughout the process from Jarrett Crader (editor of numerous LotFP publications), and OSR luminary Evey Lockhart.
What is Faux Pas?
A system neutral adventure. The players discover a town beset by a mysterious illness with symptoms worse than death. It breeds violence, madness, and mutation. It turns people into things that are no longer themselves.
The Inquisitor General has been warned. He’s on his way here. When he arrives he’ll burn every building to the ground and torture everyone living until they confess to the devil worship that obviously brought this evil into the world.
Will the players discover what’s really going on, and how to stop it, before the Inquisitor arrives? Or will they just loot the place and run away?
What’s the deal with this audio recording?
I imagine ya’ll are familiar with Blogs on Tape? It’s a podcast where I record myself reading OSR blog posts, audio-book style. It allows people to engage with the hobby while they’re exercising, cooking, commuting, or vision impaired.
For the release of Faux Pas, I produced a full-on 30+ minute recording of myself reading the module from start to finish. It’s provided to anyone who purchases the module at no extra cost. For real, we decided we were going to sell this thing for $4 before the idea of throwing in a free recording ever occurred to me.
I’m interested to see how people feel about this. I’d like to do it for future HOCUS releases as well. Which brings us to the next point…
What is HOCUS?
To be honest, we’ve spent the last six months arguing about what HOCUS is, and I don’t know if any of us really understand what we’re doing.
We know we want to focus on pushing out small adventures. Stuff that is as pleasurable to read as it is to run. Rules light role playing for everyone. We’re all OSR people looking to move past the limitations of what it means to be “OSR.”
To quote our founder: “Who the fuck is Gary Gygax?”
How many of these images are there?
A lot. It had been awhile since I goofed around with editing images, and I kinda went overboard.
Plus, it always annoys me when I’m scrolling around on Google+ and I see the same post 10 different times spread across multiple communities. I get that spamming communities is just the unfortunate reality of what it takes to get peoples attention when you’re trying to make a few dollars. But, when I did it myself I hoped it would be perceived as less annoying if each post had its own unique image.
What about those of us who backed the Patreon campaign?
As soon as I’m done writing up this post, I’m going to send a free download link to everyone who supported the Patreon campaign; regardless how much or how long they pledged for. I appreciate your support so much, and I’m glad that I’m finally able to give you a little something back, even the campaign is over now.
Have you written a review of Faux Pas?
This is so in my wheelhouse that I doubt Nick Whelan’s existence. This is clearly some form of tulpa who produces exactly what I always wanted: the kind of thing I’d write, but that I didn’t write and so is a complete surprise to me. I would use this to kick off a campaign. I could see this very efficiently ending a campaign. I would use this in a hex crawl or I would use this as a complication for something a player wants to accomplish.
Short, pithy and punchy. Straight to the point. There is creepy weird shit happening and its about to get worse. No essays on the last century of local history, politics or religion – just stuff that is instantly interesting and fun.
All of this — the font size, the PDF bookmarks, the font styles — comes together to make possibly the most immediately readable RPG product I’ve seen in a long time. A single glance at a page can give you everything you need to run an entire encounter, no page-flipping or ctrl-f’ing required.
-David Shugars
Faux Pas is DOPE AF! I think my favorite niche-within-niche rpg stuff is like “weird art-house but table ready body horror and madness adventure zine” The writing and art provoke that quesy feeling that I fucking love. the addition of an audio track is gold.
The townsfolk are colorful enough that I could picture myself using the village several times through the course of a campaign, and have the events of the module occur during a second or third visit.
Offhand mentions of the practices of the ancient cult and the Creature that Lurks on Mars are the right kind of flavor-that-probably-won’t-come-into-play: short and evocative. Same with God-most-Censorious.
