(Crowdfund Quest) The Bad Year

Crowdfund Quest is a new column that takes us on daily expedition into tabletop crowdfunding with a look at a current project in the tabletop gaming world.

The Bad Year is a collection of 53 system-neutral horror investigations, 52 of which can be played as stand-alone one-shots or combined to create an interwoven campaign with the 53rd played as the finale.

Being system neutral allows the investigations to be played using your game of choice - Call of Cthulhu, Monster of the Week, The Magnus Archives, or other games that use a more modern urban setting. Each adventure in the book consists of a double-spread, with one side of the page containing the mystery and the other a clue map which lays out the whole investigation at a glance, with how all clues, obstacles, and action sequences link to each other.

There are seven overlapping plotlines woven throughout the book, giving you plenty to explore during your bad year. Each adventure includes links to the appearences of recurring NPCs, locations or plotlines, making it easy for you if you want to play through a specific plotline.

Some of the overlapping plotlines include:

The Grand Occulation: A rare astrological event unleashes horrors on an unsuspecting city, while twelve relics offer untold power to those bold enough to find them.

the Seven Ancient Cults: For centuries, these clandestine sects have conspired to keep the city in their thrall; now they emerge from the shadows.

The Ninth Circle Gang: An uneasy peace in the city’s criminal underworld gets an infernal shake-up.

Dr. Rachel Rossum: Nothing will stop this obsessed scientist in her hunt for immortality - even death,

The mysteries are written to work with any supernatural horror setting so they can be easily dropped into any ongoing campaign or location, but the book does provide you with a default city to use if you’d prefer.

Hallowcroft, Massachusetts

A small city that lurks in the woods of New England, the fictional town of Hallowcroft has never drawn much attention from the wider world. Its history goes deep, and the roots of the evil that resides there go even deeper. Now, as the Grand Occultation aligns in the stars above, casting a great shadow over Hallowcroft, all the horrors that lurk in the city’s shadows are unearthed, and every supernatural terror you can imagine threatens those that live there. And it’s happening… roughly at the rate of one-a-week!

hallowcroft takes its cues from monster-of-the-week horror investigation TV shows such as The X-Files, Buffy rthe Vampire Slayer, Grimm or Supernatural. A modern city with gothic touches, big enough that anything could be there, but small enough that it can still feel isolated. The Bad Year is set in 1998-9, as the dawn of the digital age runs headlong into the lingering ghosts of the 20th century.

The Bad Year is currently funding on Kickstarter and runs until 25th June 2026.