Like The Cthulhu Hack. The Dee Sanction is a game where the campaign matters. How close you are to the campaign happens to mean a lot more than getting bound up in the fate of a single character. That’s why keeping notes — even a Journal — matters; the details of your investigations and exploits will have an impact. The individuals serve as catalysts, nothing more.

If you pick up the histories of the period, you will see that time-and-again individuals have flown high and then crashed like Icarus ignoring Daedalus and flying too close to the Sun. The favourites of Court all too quickly find themselves ignored, side-lined, or even imprisoned. John Dee was not immune to this treatment, so why should your characters expect better?

As with The Cthulhu Hack, you’re better to consider The Dee Sanction a Troupe-style game with a dash of the West Marches, where characters come and go, but the game continues nevertheless. For flexibility, the history and Journals mean it’s also possible to not only push on with different characters, but you might even hop back and forth in time.

The core book contains a brief timeline that sets out some of the key periods, from the weakening of the veil into other realms following the break with Rome and the Dissolution of the Monasteries (in the 1530s and 40s), to the decline of Dee (in the 1590s) and the rise of the School of Night. The table can work to tell tales and create stories across the whole period, revisiting old characters or making new ones.

But always thinking, you should never get too close.

Every day during August, I’ll be writing something new on The Dee Sanction and aim to connect the word prompt of the day with the development of the game. Check out the concept, the list and the graphics over at AUTOCRATIK.

During the 16th century, the rich got richer as the poor became poorer still; driven in some measure by the private holding of common land, the rural population were forced to seek employment rather than having the option to grab some scrubland and fend for themselves.

Religion fragmented, becoming a tool of politics more often than not. Both the Anglican and Lutheran perspectives in Europe had their impact on the Church of Rome and the power of the Pope. The weakening of the Church had a rolling impact across the whole of Europe throughout the period and beyond.

And deforestation became a thing. As populations flourished and urban centres expanded, the demand for wood in construction and for fuel skyrocketed. Even as coal gathered popularity, wood remained a necessity and shortages became a thing. Protests about deforestation across Britain increased.

Now, that’s all very real—the unreal challenge arises from the forests as home to the Fae, notably the more bestial sorts, like goblins and boggarts, who occupy the woodlands as a source of food and refuge. Most higher Fae simply use the woods as a means to access their otherworldly homes, but even they rail against the destruction.

In this period, the old traditions fade and humanity begins to forget the ways of their ancestors, pressured by modernity and the threat of heresy. What was wisdom became witchcraft. Hierarchy generated pressure downward on the masses to conform to new wave thinking, the upper echelons acquiring knowledge from books published in English and the infancy of science. The century generated both structure and rebellion, and in the midst of it, the old traditions became dangerous. In turn, that weakening of antiquities wisdom allows the entities of the supernatural to gather strength—oddly, the monopoly of the Church in Europe had had a positive effect on keeping otherworldly entities in check and now that force was fading.

The time is ripe for the supernatural to flourish; enter Safety Lies in Fear during the 40s/50s and The Dee Sanction from the 50s onward, following the travels and travails of John Dee’s career.

Every day during August, I’ll be writing something new on The Dee Sanction and aim to connect the word prompt of the day with the development of the game. Check out the concept, the list and the graphics over at AUTOCRATIK.