When I did “The World Between for Fictive Hack” I took some Gothic conventions that Jack Shear identified and added…

When I did “The World Between for Fictive Hack” I took some Gothic conventions that Jack Shear identified and added a few more. If you want to make your game a little more Gothic, consider adding one or more of these conventions to home in on that flavor. Since they are all baked into the setting already, that’s easy; this can help really focus in on using them.

It was originally done so you could roll 2d10 to randomize it. =)

2. An imperiled heroine who’s life and/or virginity is at stake.

3. A Catholic setting (generally Spain or Italy). [Use the Church!]

4. Focus on terror (psychological fear) or horror (disgust) or both.

5. A long-buried secret from the past can no longer be repressed.

6. Monstrosity (human or inhuman) or villainy (often a patriarchal figure of power).

7. Violence and sexuality that passes beyond the border of the socially acceptable.

8. Incest.

9. Doubling (dopplegangers, mistaken identities, etc.)

10. A decrepit castle, monastery, fortress, dungeon, or other medieval structure as part of the setting.

11. The Inquisition and the misuse of religious authority.

12. Specters, ghosts, or phantasmal visions (remnants of the past that cannot be repressed).

13. Mysterious veiled women.

14. Fragmentary narratives (framed narrative, missing text, etc.)

15. Enclosure, premature burial, and imprisonment.

16. The sublime power of the elements.

17. Setting as character; buildings or landscapes are an active part of the story.

18. The tenuousness of sanity, its vulnerability.

19. Enlightenment as willful ignorance of folk wisdom, dismissed as superstition.

20. The authority of breeding and class in determining quality and values.