It’s about three years now since the publication of Witch Hunt 1649. The games have been used in more than 20 universities and schools, have been downloaded by individuals from 24 countries, and have raised more than £2000 for CRASAC. I still have fun using Witch Hunt 1649 with students. But there are things I rather wish I’d done differently, like not committing myself to posting every purchase personally, or leaving myself in charge of marketing (very much not my forte). From a design point of view, I’m mostly still happy with the decisions I made for The Dregs of Days, but I have some small regrets, like having shied away from making witch trials too brutal for players.
I’m very excited, then, that The Dregs of Days is getting a second edition. This one will be published by Central Michigan University Press, which prints educational games. They’ll take over the marketing and distribution, and postage costs for US buyers will no longer be so prohibitive! The game is changing in various ways: there will be beautiful new artwork by Bill Spytma, shiny components like reputation/welfare trackers and a metal coin, and a new curriculum guide. I’ve also made updates to gameplay, including adding new Fate cards for 2-player games, adding a 3-player mode without allies, adding 8 new characters and revising the trial system. You can support the printing of the second edition here:
In other news, I recently published an article with Adam N. Coward in the journal Folklore. It’s about the supernatural stories of the Welsh minister Edmund Jones (1702–93), and is freely available. This article was inspired by a manuscript in the British Library, an early draft of a work on spirits that Jones would later publish. It has stories about meetings with fairies, ghosts, and other mysterious apparitions, like a herd of horned cattle which turn into a galloping white horse. It also has the only penis drawing I’ve ever encountered in an eighteenth-century manuscript … The penis sadly didn’t make it into the final draft of the article, but we do offer an analysis of how Jones’s work reflects changing attitudes towards the supernatural in the eighteenth century, which is almost as fun.
British Library, Stowe MS 992, fol. 11v.