Why Folklore Americana?
There’s something I keep coming back to, and it’s this: America doesn’t just have myths—it buries them. We pave over legends, drown gods in rivers, and pretend we were never afraid of the dark. But I remember the stories. The ones that weren’t in history class. The ones told on back porches, around late-night campfires, in the woods behind the house where no one’s supposed to go.
That’s where Folklore Americana comes from.
This game isn’t just another retro horror RPG. It’s a love letter to the America we forgot, or maybe never really knew—the one clawing its way out of the dust bowl and the hollers, the one humming strange songs in juke joints and hobo camps, the one where the Devil wears a preacher’s smile and Paul Bunyan’s bones are rotting in a forgotten logging camp.
I wanted to write a game about the real America. The haunted one. The hungry one.
The Influences
If Sleepy Hollow was me playing with myth through a gothic folk horror lens, Folklore Americana is me ripping the roof off. I’m pulling from Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, and whatever rusty piece of Americana gets stuck in my boot. You’ll see bits of Old Gods of Appalachia, yes, and maybe a little Hellboy by way of Woody Guthrie. But it’s also personal. My family came over in the 1700s. Swiss Anabaptists. French trappers. Pennsylvania Dutch. Mountain folk and broken dreams. This land knows me—and I know some of its stories.
This game is rooted in that. In rail riders and faith healers, snake oil men and gravediggers, in a version of America where folk magic works—but at a cost. Where forgotten demigods like John Henry and Molly Pitcher are dying in the dust, and the only thing left standing might be you and your friends, trying not to get swallowed by the land.
What the Game Is
Folklore Americana uses a version of the system we built for Sleepy Hollow and modified from the Year Zero Engine, but it’s more streamlined, tougher, and more lived-in. Characters belong to Callings—roles like the Preacher, the Rambler, the Granny Witch, and the Rail Rider. Each one brings their own scars and secrets. The rules focus on survival, atmosphere, and storytelling. Gear matters. So does your name.
This is horror, but not the kind with jump scares or monsters in closets. This is dread. This is looking out across an empty field and realizing something out there remembers where you come from.
Why Now?
Because the stories are slipping. Because I think people want something real again—something older than TikTok and cleaner than nostalgia. I want this game to be a campfire in the middle of the woods, where people can gather and tell stories that scare them a little and say something true in the process.
So yeah—this one's for the ghosts, and for anyone who's ever felt them close.
Come all ye sinners. We’ve got work to do.
