The "Bright Horror" of The Wildsea

With my back(b)logged posts out of the way, it's time for a Cartoika of Curiosities original, and what better game to start with than the one this blog owes its name to, The Wildsea by Felix Isaacs, Mythworks, et al.!

I've been one of the foremost fans of The Wildsea since its early days in 2020 (before its original Kickstarter campaign, and years before the likes of Quinns Quest covered it), and in the years since, it's garnered renown for many things: a wildly imaginative setting, stunning artwork, and a pretty great narrative ruleset, to name a few (it even won an ENNIE for writing!).

 

Genre-wise, it's quite the mishmash, what with its oddball take on nautical fiction and New Weird-style fantasy and various other influences; people have called it everything from post-apocalyptic to (ugh) leafpunk, but here I want to focus on a particular way of looking at it that I think often goes under-discussed, despite how richly it features in the game, and that is the particular form of horror the game embodies: bright horror, to use the designer's own terminology. 

In this post, I hope to shine a spotlight on some of these darker aspects of the game and setting, and hopefully convey some advice on how to actionably make them manifest in your game! 

Anyway, what does "bright horror" even mean? It's a made-up genre label obviously, but that's true of all of them. 

 

Per the technical breakdown of The Wildsea featured in the Told by Wild Words system reference document (along with various interviews Felix Isaacs has given out over the years), bright horror means that "terrible things happen, but there's always hope." And yeah - The Wildsea, by default, certainly does not style itself in the usual visual or descriptive trappings of horror media, and it's no sin to play the game as an upbeat swashbuckling adventure with a unique nature-themed flavor.

 

Still, nautical fiction is rife with horror (especially the British sort that Felix would be familiar with, apparently; I wouldn't know, I'm Polish and don't read really books that aren't TTRPGs), and the game has many terrible things, if not traditionally spooky ones - except maybe ghosts. Hey, even Pirates of the Caribbean had those harrowing scenes with undead pirates, right?

 

 I distinctly remember that one of the first ever things I saw of The Wildsea, and what directly hooked me on the game, was Pierre Demet's awesome illustration above - a lone wildsailor, going up against one of the game's most iconic beasts, the leviathan squirrel by the name Old Ornail.

It's an incredibly cool picture to be sure, but imagine being in this situation yourself - armed with a spear and grappling hook, balancing on rickety rope-bridges, going alone up against a hungry monster many times your own size. That has got to be terrifying on some level, surely! 

 

The idea that the Wildsea is a scary and dangerous place is not limited to just narration and presentation, either -  the mire mechanic, invoked when the player characters are subjected to the grislier and nastier parts of the world (from loneliness to cannibalism), brings out their more unsavory personality aspects and fear responses, and mechanically makes it difficult to oppose them. It rhymes ever so slightly with classic 'madness' and 'corruption' mechanics familiar to horror TTRPGs - you can tell Felix Isaacs started out with Call of Cthulhu as one of his first games!

Indeed, we know from both access to earlier playtest documents, from Felix's anecdotes, and even the Wild Words SRD that The Wildsea was an even darker game at one point - it's a more vibrant place now for sure, but it never left its grim roots, either. If anything, supplements like the Storm & Root expansion and the Red Right Hand scenario double down on the game's potential for horror - submersible crews have to contend with rising Pressure and various unsettling events happening aboard their deep-delving vessel (something I understand a lot better after playing a bunch of Barotrauma with friends recently), while those who find themselves in the skies on an airship will quickly realize just how lonely, isolated, and exposed they are to both mundane and supernatural threats (from hungry marauders to even hungrier stars in the night sky), the eyes of the Watchers locking upon them. And while I don't want to spoil what Red Right Hand entails exactly, it's definitely the darkest of the three published scenarios so far.

 

 I'll let the scenario book speak for itself here.

(In fact, I was even directly responsible for altering the flavor of one of the Surgeon's aspects to be a little less gruesome - back during the playtest they had access to a Mindbreaker Leech companion that could compel people's thoughts against their will, a change that Felix later called a watershed moment when it became the current Whisperspit Leech.)

This illustration of the Watchers mechanic from Storm & Root is one of my favorites in that book.

And then there's this place.

 

But even the base game provides plenty of tools for spooky moments - look no further than the reach of the Kremich Surge, with its horrible weather, unsettling island locals, and whatever That Which Hungers is.

It even features a unique optional rule for handling healing in a grittier and more...ominous manner.

I recently finally got to join a Wildsea campaign as a player, and there is a nonzero chance we end up starting out in this area. Scary!

All of that is well and good (or unwell and bad, depending), but what about that whole bright part of bright horror?

 

Going back to the definition, "terrible things happen, but there's always hope."

 

There are wonders out on the Wildsea, not just horrors. Mire can always be escaped. There are great ups to offset the great downs. It's what pushes the wildsailors to keep exploring instead of giving up and settling in port forever.

 

Some of my favorite stories in media and tabletop have very much involved great triumphs and great tragedy in equal measures - it's what got me to watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica (I'm still waiting on that final movie! It keeps getting delayed!) and play and run a total of four different Girl by Moonlight campaigns - that's more than I've done any game, and GbM isn't even my favorite! Relaxing in safety with your close friends feels greatly elevated when it offsets such dire scenarios.

 

Of course, leaning into all this should, above all else, be a table-wide decision about campaign tone and game topics (via something like lines & veils, which the book already recommends) - the most archetypal session 0 subject I can think of!
Once you are in play though, how can you invoke some of this? Even after this many years, I wouldn't say I'm an expert either at horror generally or this specific bright sub-type, but here's some ideas:

• Make note of the PCs' mires and drives, and look for opportunities for them to show up in the game (though it is also something the PCs should be proactive about as well, the drives at least)
• Mire generally shouldn't be marked (or burned) more often than once a session, even in a gritty game, but once it they are active, make sure the players don't forget about them (such as by imposing the associated cut penalties, and weaving them into action/reaction descriptions). 
  
  
• When describing scenes, lean into the extreme naturalism of things - bugs swarm and buzz (I get upset by them at least), spores and pollen upset the skin and nostrils, crezzerin sears the body like acid and has deleterious mental effects.
• Being a wildsailor can, at the worst of times, be quite the sensory barrage (anybody who experiences autistic meltdowns can attest this), which makes the nicer experiences (pleasant plant smells, fresh and tasty food) and resting in a safe and peaceful environment that much more relieving.  
  
  
•  I didn't even mention whispers, but I think there's great potential to get a little eldritch and esoteric with them as well - they are living words that lurk in your skull after all, so what does it feel like to be host to one? Or to suddenly obtain a foreboding one in a tense situation?
  
  
• Lean into the spiritual side of the sea - restless ghosts and vengeful spirits are a staple, in both how they can offer great spooky moments and profound, heartfelt ones, helping the souls pass away or offer closure. I'm sure there's ways to spin such encounters positively as well - ghostly wonders feels like an under-explored concept with huge potential! 

  And of course, if you have any ideas of your own, I'd love to hear them!