The Labyrinth's arrival and a Gunslinger preview (Patreon)

Hi gang! I've been head-down for a while now on projects. Our best news at Arc Dream is the arrival of advance copies of Delta Green: The Labyrinth. The full print run is wending its way to victims' homes, due in July.

And see a preview of Delta Green: God's Teeth at today's Kickstarter update.

I've also been working here and there on Jack Frost, which is close to completion. I have a new collection of Dennis Detwiller's microfiction to review for publication as The Way It Went Down Vol. 2. And a new round of edits and revisions for Dennis' groundbreaking King in Yellow campaign Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes.

On the side I've been working on a different game that has been quietly taking shape in my head for many years. 

I'm passionate about the history of the Old West and the American frontier and some Western fiction. Some. I am keenly aware of the troubling and often appalling origins of the Western as a genre and the uses to which it has been put. I am firmly and exclusively a fan of what some call revisionist history and fiction, it being "revisionist" only in the sense that generations of Western fiction and film and commentary had little to do with history at all. I find the frontier fascinating, the devastating collision of cultures over the course of hundreds of years. I have bookshelves heavy with Western histories and some of my favorite works of fiction and TV and film are Westerns. Cormac McCarthy. Larry McMurtry. The Coen brothers. Deadwood. Unforgiven. Stephen King's Wizard and Glass. And I have run incredibly fulfilling Western RPGs for a long time.

A couple of months ago I ran a couple of Twitter polls asking for feedback on my next big side project. Gunslinger won. It's going to be a game that's as much horror as action. And the horror is as much about human behavior and hatred and atrocity as about inhuman monsters. It is not about the Cthulhu Mythos. It has its own disturbing mythology that winds through the mythologies of the peoples of the frontier. 

I'm trying to build it around a very specific set of tones and themes. And that's the main reason I have refrained from posting previews. There are still major parts of the game that are likely to get revised or cut to suit those themes. And some of the tones and themes may get revised or reworked if I find they clash or they work against my goals. And of course my friend Chris Spivey is putting together his own Haunted West! I want to make sure my game is distinct enough from his to complement each other rather than competing or overlapping.

In the meantime, find a link below for a PDF with the first eight pages. I welcome feedback. If it stirs your interest, please let me know.