First off, sorry for the long hiatus. Gotta love that mental health. I’ve definitely thought about this blog a lot and have chatted with some content creators, but my motivation just hasn’t been there. Sometimes we just need to take some time and not beat ourselves up when we don’t measure up to that engrained Protestant work ethic.
Anyways, enough of that rambling. I wanted to share Crush Depth Apparition by Amanda Lee Franck. I picked up this survival horror zine after seeing the cover art on the former bird app. Which was also done by her! And just a quick gush, the art throughout the book is fantastic. It has this sort of damp look to it, like it’s a fragile drawing that is floating on the surface of the ocean. Micah Anderson did the layout and just really kept it simple and clean, letting the story and Amana’s art shine. The cleanest of the layout also helps me to focus easier on the pages and PDF, it’s not distracting and the font choice and spacing makes it easy to read and not get lost in walls of text. Editing was done by Jack Fortune, and A+ on that, cause believe I was looking for grammar.
They wanted another demonstration, so we dove, below the grey sky and the grey waves, down into the silent sea. That's when it all changed. That's when we started seeing things. That's when the haunting began.
The zine mixes history and creativity together to create an amazing dance between reality and invention. I’ve always loved historical fiction and the way that history becomes a playground for our imaginations and this sort of realm where boundaries of fact and fiction blur into a beguiling tapestry. John Philip Holland did design the first submarine acquired by the U.S. Navy, and it was his design that dominated World War I. But the first submarine was probably the one constructed by Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel in the seventeenth century. Not important for this, just a fun fact. Plus this isn’t a history book, this is a story about the crew of the Electra on her maiden voyage to England to prove her usefulness to the British Admiralty.
This is a story about undertaking something no one has ever achieved.
This is a story of survival in darkness.
This is a story of the Dive.
Character Creation
Crush Depth Apparition is extremely easy to pick up and play. Character creation consists of choosing two training areas: general training and special training. General training, medicine, engineering, or athletics, gives a +2 to relevant rolls. Special training is of course, more specific. You can either choose a system such as dive planes, or navigation etc. and add +3 to relevant rolls with those slightly broader systems, or you can narrow it down even further to choosing a specific piece of machinery such as any item from the Vital System Tracker that is on the Submarine Character sheet. (Yes the Submarine is its own character). This will grant you a +4 to relevant rolls.
How to Play
Ready for this. 1d20. You roll this whenever you try something you might not succeed on and add any bonuses from training. The difficulty is set by the Gm but difficulty can range from medium, roll a 10 or higher. Hard 15 or higher, and almost impossible 20 or higher. If the players come up with just a really amazing plan there is the option to roll with advantage.
The Submarine and TIME
The other thing you need to play is a copy of the Submarine Character sheet/map. This outlines speed, fuel, battery charge and the dive tracker. This is where the time the player’s actions take really comes into play. After 24 hours without surfacing, carbon dioxide buildup will begin to affect the crew. I don’t want to get too much into the nitty gritty of damage and repair, but the table of possible effects is simply fantastic and really lends to the tension and role play of the game.
Remember, it’s a horror game!
This isn’t just about getting the Electra to England and demonstrating her prowess. This is a HORROR GAME! We are one week into this transatlantic voyage. A small crew…alone in the vastness of the ocean…a perfect backdrop for the unexpected. The first time the Electra drives, an open, watertight door appears somewhere on the submarine…a sort of 40-foot passageway that is running perpendicular to the submarine. It looks to be the interior of…another submarine…and at the end there appears to be a second closed watertight door. BUT FIRST WE ROLL THE LEVEL 1 HAUNTING TABLE! AND THEN YOU ROLL AGAIN EVERY 30 MINUTES! Each description is *chef’s kiss. And it’s not just that, they also have an escalation that occurs when the players interact with it.
Again not wanting to give anything else away, but this then moves into the level 2 Haunting, and finally the level 3 Haunting. There is so much delicious description in between all of this that lends to absolutely perfect tension filled role playing.
Final Thoughts
This game is one shot material. Potentially a 3-shot, depending on how you pace. But I don’t see the ability to run a long campaign or anything. This game is purely role play and mechanics light. Which is my favorite, but I know not for everyone who wants to be devoted to a character and see progression. For the most part…and maybe this is just the way I run horror one-shots, I don’t see survival as being the main goal for the players. So making sure that you are with a group that is okay with character death, and having that dark roleplay is important. This would definitely call for some safety talks before play, with some content warnings for darkness, suffocation, drowning, claustrophobia, etc.
But check it out for yourself! And check out Amanda’s other work on her itch. She’s also got a couple other fun games at amandalee.itch.io
