Colony of Death

Colony of Death
Weird Fantasy Roleplaying in 17th Century Maryland
Mark W. Hess

Available at https://www.drivethrurpg.com or lulu.com, which is where I got it, I believe.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Colony of Death, Weird Fantasy Roleplaying in 17th Century Maryland, is a supplement for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) including a setting and several adventures.  As it is a supplement for LotFP, it is recommended for folks 18 years, or older.  In fact, on the title page, it states precisely this.

Taking a quick side-trek, I lived in Maryland for three years, in a town between St. Mary's City, which this supplement is for, and Washington, D.C.  It was really fun reading about places I have actually visited and reading about a cryptid that I actually heard tales about!  If y'all get a chance to visit, take the time to do so. There is (or was before the covids) a reenactment from the colonial times in a rebuilt village.  Lots of cool history.  Plus, if you have any interest in visiting churches, some of the oldest Catholic ones in the USA are here).

Back to our regularly scheduled review.

As this supplement is for LotFP, which is a standard OSR game, this setting can be used for any OSR game.  I don't own LotFP, and when I run the adventures in this book, I will use real D&D, White Box, Blueholme, or something similar.

The book starts with a quick introduction and then gets into the colony of Maryland.  George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, was granted the lands on which to build St. Mary's City.  Lord Baltimore wanted to prove that Catholics and Protestants could live, and work, together without fear of the hangman's noose or burning pole.  When the colony is settled, there were natives inhabiting the lands.  The natives were mostly friendly with the English. 

A page and a bit of the next page include a timeline from 1608 through 1650, when the adventures in this book take place.  Included in the timeline, which very well could affect interactions within the settlement, are accounts such as:  witchcraft being made illegal in 1635 (burn them all!), the Susqeuhannock indians, along with New Sweden, going to war with Maryland in 1644, a Protestant uprising during the English Civil War, ending with King Charles getting a "nip off the top" in 1649, somewhere around the shoulders; of course the Prots decided to attack the Caths in this period.  Puritans set up their own settlement in 1649, as well, which will put even more pressure on what was intended to be an exercise in Catholic-Protestant harmonious living.

This is where we stand - the year is 1650, St. Mary's City, once the home of peaceful coexistence between Protestant and Catholic English, and some friendly Natives, has suffered ten years of warfare.  Can the two groups of Englishmen repair the breach?  What about the Indians?  Will they continue to coexist with the English, or will they want war?  Can Maryland protect the interests of its various inhabitants against the aggression of neighboring New Sweden and Virginia?  The colony is ripe for adventure!

After the timeline, there is a listing and a bit of info on St. Mary's City, Providence, and Kent's Island.  These are the only cities listed and referees are encouraged to add villages, trading posts, etc.

Next, we get a page and a half about the people in the colony, as well as a very small hex map of the region, from criminals and indentured servants, to the local native tribes, to the European settlers.

Following, we have two pages on New World diseases.  Every month, characters make a saving throw to not catch a disease.  That's pretty hardcore.

The next two pages are encounter tables.  All good OSR settings need encounter tables.  Colony of Death, being a good OSR setting, has them.  The tables include real life critters like black widows, pirates, black bears, and rattlesnakes, but it also includes some disputed critters, such as sasquatch and the very, very Maryland cryptid, the Goatman!  When I read this far into the book, after I bought it a couple of years ago, I was tickled!  There are eight pages detailing these critters, following.  I wish more art was added in this section as there is a lot of white space, which could have been filled with line art, even if it is old timey clip art.

This ends the primarily setting information.  Several adventures follow, many of which include more snippets of setting information.

St. Mary's Shoemaker adventure includes a map of St. Mary's City, as well as some businesses in town.  The adventure involves the characters trying to solve a murder mystery.

The Hell's Bell adventure finds the characters discovering an unknown German village.  Hopefully one of the players chose German as a language slot!  This adventure is very Lovecraftian - village of hicks in the woods who are a little too closely related on the DNA scale, if you know what I mean.  What is with the bell?  Why do people keep going missing?

The Hand and Eye of Loki take the adventurers in the lands claimed by New Sweden.  Again, people are going missing.  Are Indians killing settlers, or is it something more mysterious?

To Burn a Witch is the next adventure.  Providence is a Protestant town, through and through.  The characters arrive just when a local gal is about to pay the price for wallowing with the Devil.  She is young and beautiful.  Is she guilty?  Is she innocent?  Will the characters rescue a damsel in distress or let her burn?

Another side trek.  Did y'all know that before he got famous for being a king and having the Bible, which was forever to include his name, translated into English, James was hip to the ways of witchcraft?  He wrote a book about it.  Sometimes the only way to deal with a witch is to burn it.

The Appendix of the book includes four pages of common names, broken down by both male and female, and by language - Algonquin, English, German, and Swedish.

A two-page spread map follows the first appendix.  It is a lovely map, 10 miles per hex, but unfortunately all of the important settlements are in the gutter of the page.  Splitting the map in two and leaving half an inch per page for the gutter would make the map so much more useful.

The final appendix discusses tobacco as currency, and growing tobacco.  This is another historical shout-out since tobacco was actually used as currency in the Maryland colony.  There are rules for running a tobacco plantation and the consequences due to soil depletion.

There is another cool town in Maryland you can visit called Port Tobacco.  It is in a Charles county, right off US301 highway.  It's another place you can visit in real life if you happen to travel through the area.

In conclusion I will say that I love Colony of Death.  Love it, love it, love it.  It is not perfect and I certainly have gripes, but I can wholeheartedly recommend that any referee who wants to set a campaign in the New World, pick this up.

⇒ GRIT: ★★★☆☆:  Being a mere 58 pages, with half of that relegated to adventures, this book doesn't give a whole lot of wallop.  What it does include, though, will whet the referee's appetite for sure.  I would love to have seen more details on the culture of the local natives.  I really would have liked to see a price list for items for sale in both St. Mary's City and the trading posts.  It is mentioned that prices are included in the LotFP rulebook, which I don't own.  As tobacco is the currency in the colony, having a list of gear which can be purchased, with the corresponding price in tobacco, would have been excellent.

⇒ VIGOR: ★★★★☆: As with GRIT, since the supplement is so short, you won't get years of play with only what is included.  However, what is included will get a game group quite a few sessions I believe.  Adding in things like trade routes between the various colonies could increase the vigor of this product.  I also would have liked to have a page or two of adventure hooks.  The adventures included are delightsomely dark and twisted, but what about more "normal" adventures?  A list of adventure hooks is always gold.

⇒ GRACE: ★★☆☆☆: The book is perfectly functional but not beautiful.  The cover is pretty cool, with a Schneller Geist flying over what appears to be a homestead next to a hill.  Internally, the book is well-layed out with a single column on most pages but two in the few places where it makes sense to have two columns.  The line art is functional but there should be more when there is a half page of white space.  The map, as noted, really, really needs to be split into two.  This map is my biggest gripe about the book.  If the author decided not to include art to fill up the white space, removing the white space would give another page, which could be used for adventure hooks, price lists, or something else.