WHAT'S REAL IN STRANGE TALES OF NEW ENGLAND

Strange Tales of New England features an abundance of locations and foes, many based on genuine New England Lore. But mixed in with that is my own lore that I created. My goal was to thread it seamlessly so people could not tell the real from the fabricated. I am not sure how well this succeeded in the eyes of others, but I am inclined to think I pulled it off because I often have trouble distinguishing my own lore from actual legends when I go through the book. So today I am going through some entries in the book showing which ones are real and which are made up. I can only go over a few entries as the book is filled with lore and to go over every single one would mean an enormous blog entry. 

First up is Old Man Blood of the Blood Forest of Lancaster: 

This one is real, and there are urban legends surrounding Arthur Blood murdering campers. However there are also legends and history involving bloody raids during King Philips war that the book doesn't cover. King Philip's War is mentioned numerous times in the history section of the rulebook and in a few other places. It was tempting to make that a central part of the setting, but I didn't want everything in the game to come down to that one conflict (GMs who want more lore though should definitely consider looking into at as background, because it was one of the most brutal and deadly wars between natives and settlers). 

Another interesting one is the Beast of Greene, a creature who haunts near the
lakes in Maine. This is one I made up, but by coincidence there is a Beast of Greene, which refers to an incident in 2006 where the carcass of an animal, later believed to be a dog, was found in a neighboring town. Here is the entry on the Beast of Greene:

Next up is The Bridgewater Triangle and its dark inhabitant John Selee. This is more a blending of two legends. The Bridgewater Triangle is famous, there are documentaries and books about it. And John Selee is supposedly a real person, a wizard who used satanic imps to build a saw mill in Easton during the 18th century. There is even a plaque to the commemorate the event. Easton is inside the Birdgewater Triangle and given the exorcist themes, I thought he would serve as a suitable heart for the location (especially since there are also urban legends of satanic murders occurring there to this day). To touch on King Philip's War again, the obvious choice would have been to make the hear of the Bridgewater Triangle Metacom or King Philip. But I thought a satanic wizard fit the theme of the setting better. It was a fifty-fifty split though in my mind. 

Now I want to look at one of the entries from the Boogie Men and the Damned section. Most of the book focuses on locations, but there are ten boogie men and ten cults. These are more like floating entries that the GM can use wherever they want or when they become relevant due to player actions. One of my favorites was The Live For Evers. Here is the blurb from the book on them: 

Believe it or not this is based on real events. You can look up the Live For Evers under various spellings and find all kinds of information. They were a real Christian cult based in Sutton Massachusetts. And while all of the entries required some degree of elaboration on my part, these needed surprisingly little. The backstory involving Ebenezer and Lucy Fletcher was real. 

I think that is enough for today. I may go over some more in the future.