The idea for Gaelia came to me a long time ago. At the time I was in high school, playing RPGs with my childhood friends on the weekend, and listening to Ok Computer compulsively. Our main games were Pathfinder first edition and Call of Cthulhu and, after playing a concerning amount of Bloodborne, and not getting past the Bloodstarved Beast (I got too scared by the jumpscaring werewolf in Old Yharnam), I had a vision for a campaign.

A tall man, clad in a leather trenchcoat and a tricorn hat, prowls through the abandoned halls of an ancient library, studying the dusty tomes as the eerie blue light of a huge moon peers through the spiky, gothic frame of a nearby window. Suddenly the ground shakes, and an enormous pale creature, three stories tall, with a myriad of thin, sinewy limbs and a huge tentacled cranium, screeches outside the building, while gazing at the cold midnight sea. The Hunter wraps one gloved hand around the wooden handle of a flintlock pistol, and an armored gauntlet around the shaft of a hefty, rusted axe. He sprints towards the window, and leaps out in a shower of glass shards, ready to pounce on the horror on the beach.

I had to make this happen, but I did not have the means. Pathfinder lacked the freedom of investigation I wanted, and Call of Cthulhu lacked the deep and strategic combat one would need to fight monsters that not only threatened your physical form, but also your mind, and your soul. I did not want fights to be solved through brute force and splashy magicks, I wanted them to require a good deal of human ingenuity, the only tool we truly can rely on when fighting against insurmountable odds.

The first idea I had was to staple a Pathfinder character sheet and a CoC one together, and switch from one to the other depending on the context of the session. Yeah, we all have bad ideas, but this was on a league of its own. I never went through with it, because even seventeen year old Dave recognized it as a disaster waiting to happen. There had to be a better way, but it was a long and winding way, obscured by fog, and haunted by whispers I could not fully make out.

It was I think July 2018, when I sat down on my couch with a single paper sheet and a pencil, and began sketching out what would become the basis for Chains of Gaelia: the Primeval, the Progeny, the Beasts, Traits, Classes, the d10 and the 8 starting hit points. Sanity, Mana, and, most importantly, Karma Cards. I still have that sheet of paper in my library, next to my printed prototype copies of the Quickstart Guide, which took eight years to make their way from my mind into the real world. It’s difficult to put into words the weight Gaelia has had on my life, it has become such an integral part of it that it’s tough to focus on how things were without it, probably because my frontal lobe had not fully developed at that time, you know how it is.

And here we are, eight years later. It’s Halloween, and I feel like reminiscing. The launch on itch this summer has gone better than I ever could have hoped for, with more than a thousand views on the project and almost seven hundred downloads. 

Chains of Gaelia is a game about fighting with all you have against horrors that seem impossible to face. Today, as genocide, rampant injustice, discrimination and fascism gnaw at us from every angle, I believe that Gaelia has something important to say. I believe that this game that I made is the rusty axe I can wield against the monsters, it is my small contribution to a time of difficulties and despair. It is a testament to my belief that even in the darkest times, there can be a sliver of hope, that we have the means to fight back together against the monsters that lurk among men. It is my belief that indeed, we can break these chains.

We have nothing to lose, and a world to win.

Thank you for reading. 

Play Chains of Gaelia on Halloween, or else.

Dave