Dunwich, Anno Domini 1988
For my Vampire the Requiem game (that eventually was run as a Mage the Awakening game!) I wanted a setting outside of my home county, but in the UK. I finally decided I would use a fictional setting. While this can be restrictive to players, I felt that could be overcome by allowing the players to help me create and imagine the setting. Vampires seemed to go well with Thatcherism, so I chose 1988 as the year for the game.
Being very fond of my home county of Suffolk I toyed with the idea of a Suffolk setting. Unfortunately Suffolk has few large towns – really only Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, and Felixstowe. I had used Bury St Edmunds for my Changeling Chronicle "Three Crowns" and in several Ars Magica sagas, so I wanted something different. Also, I lived in Bury St Edmunds in the time the game is set, and I wanted to avoid running a game that used the NAH, my old RPG group, as NPCs. It was fun in Changeling but I wanted Vampire to feel different.
Then I thought of Dunwich. Dunwich is still remembered in the titles of the local diocese, and in the 13th century was a major town, prospering at a time when Ipswich was in recession. The Great Storm of 1287 silted up the harbour, and the town went into terminal decline. As the years passed, the coastal defences were not maintained, and the town was lost to the sea as the cliffs eroded.
There is practically nothing left of the old town of Dunwich today, just a gravestone from the last church to vanish. The village of Dunwich still exists a little inland as I recall, and I took the Student Parapsychology Society to the site of Dunwich a few years back, but there is really little to see.
However, as well as inspiring the name of Lovecraft's fictional Dunwich, Massachusetts, which gives the name an eerie and gothic tone immediately, Dunwich has become home to all kinds of legends and stories. While marine archaeologists and historians deny it was ever the great city with fifty churches one reads about in romantic Victorian books, it certainly was a major town, and if it had not been for the Great Storm of 1287, it would today be a major East Anglian port and cathedral city.
In my World of Darkness, that is exactly what happened. I have set about recreating Dunwich for the game, but Dunwich as it might have been, in 1988.
Dunwich in the Game
- The fictional history of Dunwich.
- Ghosts of Dunwich
- Research & Media in Dunwich
- Nightlife of Dunwich – not yet complete, but you can read about the clubs.
- Explore The Seafront – a melancholy place off-season.
- Churches of Dunwich
More to follow as I find time.
Real Dunwich Links
Lovecraft's Dunwich
While nothing to do with the real Dunwich in England, or my fictitious Dunwich 1988, Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror is a must-read for Call of Cthulhu fans and anyone interested in horror writing. Oh, and we really should mention the awesome (tongue firmly in cheek here) movie adaptation back in 1970, starring Sandra Dee. Yog Sothoth Neblod Zin!
Last Updated 9th October 2024. Previous update was 13th December 2005.
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