Ken Writes About Stuff: Vol. 1 [SUBSCRIPTION]

Ken Writes About Stuff Vol. 1

KWAS Vol. 1 is a collection of 13 supplements written by master Lovecraftian writer and GUMSHOE guru Kenneth Hite. Discover hideous creatures, uncover an occult Nazi bell or join the men in black with this baker’s dozen of fear and fun!

In the ENnie-award winning Ken Writes About Stuff series, Kenneth Hite turns his considerable writing talents and encyclopedic knowledge of game design, history, the occult and all things Mythos to bear on new topics. From hideous creatures to GUMSHOE innovations, from Moon Dust Men to martial arts, Ken illuminates the dark corners of the genre with 4000-word supplements.

Each PDF includes a deep delve into some deeply weird topic, plus crunchy bits for your GUMSHOE game. If you’re a fan of Suppressed Transmissions,Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents, The Nazi Occult or Day After Ragnarok, KWAS is a must-have.

All episodes are available in epub, mobi and PDF format.

KWAS Vol. 1 features:

• Hideous Creatures: Deep Ones, an in-depth look at everyone’s favourite underwater creatures.

• Ken's take on martial arts, in the GUMSHOE Zoom: Martial Arts, intended to model the sorts of stories (usually movies) in which martial arts combat takes center stage in at least one scene.

• Hideous Creatures: Hounds of Tindalos, in which Frank Belknap Long’s greatest creations emerge from the angles of time, slavering and frumious.

• Die Glocke, about a mysterious bell-shaped device built deep in a Silesian mine shaft by the SS.

• Hideous Creatures: Mi-Go, about the fungi from Yuggoth, the half-crustacean haunters of the hillside, the malevolent alien miners … are also opponents of the Yellow Sign and tireless questers for science.

• Moon Dust Men - employees of the program President Eisenhower established in 1953 to locate, contain, and coordinate everything known about the alien presence on Earth.

• Hideous Creatures: Ghouls - charnel predators, or changeling denizens of Dream, follow their tunnels from the sands of Arabia to the catacombs of Paris - or just stay in Boston for some fine New England cuisine!

• Looking Glass: Mumbai - We look at India’s mightiest metropolis, from its legendary crime syndicates to its glamorous movie colony — and we look beneath it, for vampires and conspiracies and Mythos maneuverings.

• Hideous Creatures: Shoggoth. Infinitely plastic and ductile — slaves of suggestion, builders of cities — more and more sullen … intelligent … amphibious … and imitative!” If something can take any shape, what is its true nature? Are the shoggoths slave machines or biotech Singularity? Are they one or many? Tekeli-li!

• GUMSHOE Zoom: Mind Control. This is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful GUMSHOE Zoom I’ve ever known in my life. Presenting detailed rules for brainwashing, memetics, telecontrol, and brain hacking, and for gear from the Microwave Auditory Effect gun to subliminal flashers to tinfoil hats, it brings the fight inside your head.

• Hideous Creatures: Star Vampires. “The human blood on which it had fed revealed the hitherto invisible outlines of the feaster.” Invisible outlines that shall be expanded upon, extended even, into all sorts of dimensions. Are they summoned demons or feral predators? Are they kindred or competitors to Colin Wilson’s Space Vampires? Herein we trace the Shambler From the Stars, with bonus Night’s Black Agents statistics and a scenario seed.

• Lilith. “Satan here held his Babylonish court, and in the blood of stainless childhood the leprous limbs of phosphorescent Lilith were laved.” Lilith as Queen of the Vampires, Lady of the Night — or as First Rebel and First Heroine? We look at the many faces of Lilith, as a Trail of Cthulhu titan (Elder Goddess or Great Old One), Night’s Black Agents vampire queen, Mutant City Blues super-Typhoid Mary, and at her role in the center of the First Esoterror Operation.

• There is also a bonus edition, available only with this collection: Foul Congeries. This issue opens the books on Lovecraftian monsters that have never taken stat-block form before in any game, including the Ultraviolet Devourer, Vampirish Vapour and Worm-Cultist.

You can get Vol. 3 of KWAS here, and check out KWAS Vol. 2 here.