The Dark Side of Gaming

De Profundis describes itself as “A Game of Mind-Warping Horror in the Style of H. P. Lovecraft.”

This is not an exagerration.

De Profundis is pen and paper product, more specifically a psychodrama as opposed to a board game, role-playing game or strategy game — a means of turning dull, grey times into little moments of eerie fun. At its heart, the idea of the game is to pretend that the world (and yourself) are other than they seem, and to put as much belief and conviction into that pretense as is required to make it feel real.

The Setting

The world of De Profundis is our world, right now. A world of urban isolation and rural wastes. A world in which everything is slightly _wrong_, if you look closely. The strangenesses and horrors lurking within it are yours to uncover, piece by piece. Within that framework, you can decide on any game ‘reality’ you like. Be creative, be imaginative, be wierd, but most of all, be consistent. The game is inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s mythos of elder races, sleeping gods and mad cultists, but that’s not the only option.

If you know the work of Thomas Ligotti for example, then you have another rich vein of darkness to tap into. If you do not know his work, then obtain the collection “Songs of a Dead Dreamer” by any means required. You will thank me forever. Trust me.

In Ligotti’s view, the world is full of terrible things. Night-blooming flowers that frolic under hairy, sniggering stars. Paintings that create the landscapes they depict. A terrible old man in a loft surrounded by puppets and strings. Hidden cities. The Night School, where the classes are taught by a teacher so far sunk into night that he seems only to be the darkest ooze, and only the most advanced pupils can approach him. Colours and festivals and the Theatre of the Grotesque. A book written in words which only a madman can see, let alone read. A day when time paused for aeons, yet only you remember it.

Be creative. It’s what De Profundis is all about.

"Masks" by Harry O. Morris, from "Songs of a Dead Dreamer" by Thomas Ligotti, used without permission.

Multi-player

The game can be played in cooperation with other people, or on your own. For playing collaboratively, the main mechanic of the game is the real-world exchange of hand-written letters. These take the form of missives to your fellow players who, like yourself, are knowleadgeable in a field of matters off-beat or arcane, and cursed with enough vision to come to realise that there may be more to the world than previously thought. These letters are a record of your journey into the truth behind reality, and detail the events unfolding — slowly… always slowly… — within your narrative delusion.

Playing De Profundis like this is not difficult, but does require a little thought. Taking their inspiration from the horror confessionals of HP Lovecraft and his contemporaries, De Profundis letters are intended to represent the ebb and flow of your character’s encounters with the strange side of life, both personally and through the experiences of her correspondents. The dialogues are two-sided conversations, a group of explorers fumbling towards a common understanding of the world, rather than the regular exchange of isolated personal monologues. A De Profundis letter asks questions, provides answers to previous queries, debates theories and carries on discussions — just banging on about your strange day would be the height of rudeness. Characters typically share interests and knowledge bases in common with their players, but are more expert in their fields. As a rule of thumb, if you can bluff it with a bit of research, it’s fair game for your character. Names, similarly, should be different to your own — they should evoke a person whom you can imagine strange events and perceptions occurring to.

Letters are always written by hand, preferably with a fountain pen on cartridge paper, and posted in a similarly attractive envelope. Although obvious real-world concerns mean that it has to be addressed to you personally, once the envelope is opened, there must be no real-world intrusion within the communication inside. Think of the envelope’s name and address as the badge of a conspirator hiding his real existence. Each letter should be entirely in-character, to provide a consistent experience. The envelope is marked with a small red circle in the bottom left corner, so that you can identify it as a proper communication, and wait to open it until you can give it the respect it deserves.

De Profundis

De Profundis letters should not be treated in the same way as urgent demands. They are a game, and require all the dedication and concentration that a game needs. Treat them with respect. Save them, unopened, for a quiet evening moment when you will have an hour or two without disturbance to get into the right mindset, read your friend’s disturbing news, and offer what help, solace and insights you can. There may be times when you receive a strange object or statuette, a photo of an eerie place, a page ripped from a diary, a weird stone, an old book, a phial of some odd powder, newspaper clippings, tapes or some other pertinent strangeness. Treasure these special efforts, and try to return the favour on some occasion. Keep all your letters of course, both the ones you receive and copies of the ones you send. You may want them for consistency, and you’ll certainly want to look back over them from time to time. Don’t force time to reply to one immediately. Reply as soon as you can — but when you have the time to do so properly.

As you develop the story arc of the events happening to you, try to make sure that key events don’t clash with climaxes in your fellow players’ stories. If you are both trying to build a strong dramatic turmoil, the two will clash. If you see that your partner is building up to a peak, ease off a bit, and allow it to happen. It will make everything more intense.

Letters can be about all sorts of things. Common topics include: picking one particular creature or thread of unreality to be a personal nightmare/obsession, and concentrating on it; mysterious or anomalous events; evidence of wider conspiracies; investigative ‘science’ or comparative mythology and religion; researches and experiments; expeditions and adventures; letters from our travels; tales told by family or passers-by; place descriptions and landscapes — the small details of areas that are familiar to you will be exotic to people living in other places; even normal letters that just hint at things to come. As you write, concentrate on the concept that you are writing reality. Do not worry about good narrative, or making the game interesting; worry about the patch of shadow sliding towards your chair. Always keep away from parody, satire, light-hearted adventure, feats of derring-do, burlesque, slapstick, mockery or anything else that smacks of artificiality. If you have to be sceptical, be so in such a way as to encourage atmosphere, not demolish it. These are horrible things happening to your game-life. Treat them as such.

Most campaigns will eventually end in metamorphosis, madness or death of one of the correspondent characters. This will often come after a long chain of smaller climaxes, perhaps lasting months or even years if that’s what it takes. When it comes, the end may be a last terrified letter, dashed off in response to a grizzly impending fate, or retrieved from a new-found notepad; a farewell in case all does not go according to plan; a sudden break; fragmentary notes; case information or news reports. Anything, in fact, so long as it remains dramatic and climactic.

A Note on Solo Play

As well as the standard narrative form, De Profundis can also be played on your own, any time that things are tedious. Train journeys, dull shifts, meetings — anywhere, in fact. All you have to do is cultivate a sense of induced paranoia, and bring the game’s vision of a fractured reality to mind. Look at the world around you as if everything was threatening and unreal, look at every building as if it were haunted by unspeakable evils, look at every face as if it were a mask for monsters, seek out eerie places… just don’t do it too often or too intensely. One benefit of these solo sessions are that they will give you good fodder for your correspondents.

You can also undertake De Profundis journeys for their own sake, vision quests inspired by the game to check out the possible reality of things you have created in your mind. Seek, but be wary of what you find. Madness lies waiting, for the incautious.

De Profundis was translated from Michal Oracz’s original Polish and published in English by the now-legendary London game company Hogshead. If you want to get hold of it though, it can be obtained from Chaosium, Inc, the original publishers of the Call of Cthulhu RPG.