Saturday, February 18, 2023

OSR Review & Commentary On Welcome to St Cloud By Miguel Ribeiro For The Wretchedverse Rpg Line or Any OSR Horror Rpg

 

"A surreal horror scenario, heavily inspired by David Lynch’s cult TV show Twin Peaks (1990), but it leans on other sources, like John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980), The League of Gentleman (1999), Carnivàle, (2003) and 1970s slasher flicks."































" There isn’t a specific mythology, and even the amount of supernatural and/or paranormal phenomena can be easily modified to suit different tastes. This is the Wretchedverse release with new plot hooks, more random events, locations and NPCs and a cover by Jon "Basic Expert" Torres"'


Welcome to St Cloud By Miguel Ribeiro is the latest offering by the folks at the Red Room and it's a very large beast of a campaign clocking in at well over two hundred pages. This is not a small campaign town or city. Welcome to St Cloud is a huge homage to all things David Lynch and it's easy to see why. St. Cloud is the type of town that can be dropped into your modern day OSR campaign with little issue but really works with is the Wretchploitation rpg or the Wretched Darkness rpg. Reading through Welcome to Saint Cloud it becomes obvious that Wretchploitation is really the rpg that I'd use to run this campaign; "Welcome to St. Cloud is somewhere in-between a campaign setting and a scenario and can be adapted to any system, though it is meant to be a scenario for the Wretchedverse, especially for our horror/ dark urban fantasy game Wretched Darkness. It is surreal horror in nature since it was heavily inspired by David Lynch's cult TV show Twin Peaks (1990), but it leans on other sources, like John Carpenter's The Fog". The reasoning for this is simple with such an early Nineties asthetic Wretchploitation pivots easily into position to run this campaign. 
Welcome to Saint Cloud is devided into campaign sections with major plot hooks under each section 
St.Cloud is a town with secrets and lots of them. Each NPC has stats and then secrets as well as plot hooks. Let's take one our average highschoolers in St.Cloud; " OCCUPATION: Student/ Halley's Department Store Parttime Clerk (Sports Department) Common Citizen Level 3 Health: 5 Defense: 12 Move: 12 Resolve: 6 Experience: 1 +3 bonus to Brawling rolls, +2 to Damage DESCRIPTION: He's still a student at St. Cloud High at 19, maybe not because he's a complete imbecile, but because he can't imagine doing anything other than being in school. He's a very robust and tough young man and star of the school's football team. He's Simon Black's friend and escapade partner. Mike enjoys a good bar fight and dares any man in St. Cloud to try to knock him down. He used to date Donna Anderson. Although she has a relationship with Joshua Keller, Mike still goes out with her once in a while. SECRET LIFE: He knows about Glenn Cleveland's parties and wants to be invited, but his older brother wants to keep him 94 out of it. Mike can't understand why, but without an invitation, there's no way to get in. Mike Nelson has a Mickey Mouse tattoo on his chest. It's not really a secret, but he only shows it to people he believes he can trust, usually girls, most of the time Donna. He will take off his shirt and moves his chest muscles in a way that creates the impression the mouse is dancing while saying strange, nonsensical phrases in a low-pitched voice. What does it mean? Absolutely nothing, but it's weird and leads Donna to sexual ecstasy, so it must be some kind of power. PLOT HOOK: Mike Nelson becomes determined to crash one of Glenn Cleveland's secret parties, putting himself in danger and causing conflict with his older brother Andy." 
"Welcome to Saint Cloud" is a lower tier power level campaign and it wears its subtly proudly as weaves in an out of it's plots. Welcome to Saint Cloud isn't a boring campaign at all but plays like a hybrid between Lynch's Mulhuland Drive, Twin Peaks, and even a bit of the first Hellraiser film. 
Welcome to Saint Cloud walks a fine line between adventure resource & full on deadly campaign. The town of St.Cloud is full realized & fleshed out. And now that it's been properly brought over to the Wretchedverse I'm intrigued to see what else the Red Room does with it. 
Welcome to Saint Cloud has a ton of plot hooks, adventure content, and real possibilities to keep a horror or even an investigative campaign going for years. The quality is up too the standards of other Red Room products & the town is perfect to enhance any OSR or Wretchedverse horror campaign. 

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