Today I’m excited to share my thoughts on American Artifacts, a worldbuilding supplement for one of my favorite role-playing games, Hobomancer from Hex Games.
Speculative Fiction With a Historical Twist
We all seem to love fiction rooted in historical detail; recent well-known examples include the National Treasure movies and books by Dan Brown. I love weird historical fiction so much I’ve built my brand on it: “Speculative Fiction With a Historical Twist.” A commonality of works that are part of this trend is the embroidery of real (or apocryphal) historical information with tropes of various fiction genres—action, adventure, mystery, and fantasy. You’ll even find this practice in literary fiction. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and China Miéville’s The Last Days of New Paris spring to mind as examples.
The Secret Lives of Famous Artifacts
Often such stories feature revered objects from the past, drilling down to a granular level of detail about their creation, history, and exploits through time. They take on a kind of magic from proximity to important events and our regard for their owners, the history the objects “witnessed,” or even the value of the artifact itself.
So, as you can easily imagine, American Artifacts caught my eye. Originally published as several shorter books, The Complete Collection gathers all sixty-six entries into one volume. Encyclopedia-style entries describe each object, its history, and how to use it in a Hobomancer game. I think the stats could be adjusted for many other systems, and some of the artifacts would work well thematically in games like Deadlands or Monster of the Week.
The American Artifacts
I didn’t want to break the illusion (and my heart) by fact-checking the artifacts, but many are well-known real things. Babe Ruth did, indeed, use a baseball bat to play the game. Hank Williams died in a blue 1952 Cadillac convertible. If you went to the Baseball Hall of Fame, I expect you would find a Babe Ruth bat. The book states the car in which Williams died is displayed by the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, AL, USA. That sounds reasonable. However, American Artifacts makes all the lore sound reasonable as it skillfully segues among documented history, scurrilous rumor, and complete fabrication. There’s fun in that!
While I’m doubtful Ben Franklin invented an automaton or Teddy Roosevelt owned an actual big stick, its intriguing to think “what if?” And while Tesla’s ray gun sounds totally made up, I think that one is real. Whether the artifacts are legit in our mundane reality or not, I sure want them to be!
Artifacts for All
This collection covers America’s history, tapping government, science, entertainment, and popular culture. From Crispus Attucks’s Musket Ball to Warren Zevon’s Perfect Sandwich Recipe, American Artifacts shares objects of renown from all eras.
Take, for example, Orville & Chuck’s Pack of Gum. Orville refers to inventor Orville Wright and Chuck to test pilot Chuck Yager. How can they have a pack of gum in common? Well, it’s magical, obviously. The entry for this item explains Orville bought a pack of Beeman’s in 1903 and was chewing a stick when he flew an experimental aircraft at Kitty Hawk, NC. The rest is history. Except what happened to the lucky pack of gum. It next appears in Charles Lindbergh’s pocket in 1927 for a ride in the Spirit of St. Louis. Thereafter it seems to have blessed countless American aviators through the years.
No pilot would admit it, beyond a slight wistful feeling of luck while chewing, but somehow they all know: sometimes “The Right Stuff” can be as simple as an old pack of gum.
American Artifacts
The entry concludes with game rules for using Orville & Chuck’s Pack of Gum. Basically, it enhances luck.
Recommendation
The narrative style is entertaining and breezy, with just enough seriousness to pass the artifacts off as genuine, if you don’t look to closely. Original art and fascinating public domain images support the con, err, I mean, illusion of magic items sitting in museum display cases, old barn rafters, and interdimensional portals across the nation. Oh, that it were so!
Recommended for tabletop role-playing gamers, history buff, and writers looking for story prompts.
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