And now for something completely different...

In 2022, I wrote the VISITOR AT THE 13TH HOUR, a playbook without a game. It was one of a handful of playbooks I ended up writing for BUG BOY AND THE TEAM FANTASTIC, a game which did not then and does not now exist (beyond those playbooks, anyway). The VISITOR was a curious one: the witches from A WRINKLE IN TIME smashed together with Gandalf, and with the well-known truth that you should treat strangers kindly (for they might be gods) and my own childhood memories (fantasies?) of strangers after dark. It was originally released for one of the Reliquary Street Station jams, on the theme of THE ODDEST HOUR. And then I forgot about it for a while.

Eventually, I gathered the three playbooks I'd written into COLLECTED BUG BOYS. I thought about coming back and doing some more of them, and never got around to it. Maybe I will at some point, or maybe not. Who knows. But in the process of tidying up VISITOR for that rerelease, I started thinking about it again. The character stuck with me -- or the scenario, anyway. So I thought about it. And I kept thinking about it. And I started putting together some ideas, and then just when my ideas started to come together, the Reliquary Street Station folks hosted a new jam. So I did the obvious thing:

I wrote a book of spells.

THE BOOK OF 13 HOURS is, in some way, the VISITOR reimagined. It is a fuller experience of contact with the VISITOR, anyway, a way to bring the VISITOR into your own space. It is not the VISITOR as I wrote the VISITOR two years ago. For that, you can check out the collection.

Anyway. This has been a long time coming.

Play safely.

Che