Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
games for southern boys, hot summer nights, trucker hats on backwards, midnight tattoos, fast cars, and haunted bodies
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I loved Lee Mandelo’s (he/they) debut, SUMMER SONS. It’s got everything I love in a contemporary haunting — dumb boys, southern intrigue, and, like, a ton of queers. When I got my hands on Mandelo’s book I devoured it, but not before it devoured me. (Read my full review on Strange Horizons!)
These games cover southern sensibilities, queer coming-outs, mutual destruction, and blue-bottle haints. We’re diving into the Southern Gothic of game design, and the classist fuck-you that Dark Academia loves to revel in. Here’s a playlist. Let’s get started.
We’re going to start with Peculiar Ground, by Francis Gaskin. This is a Belonging Outside Belonging game that takes old southern ballads and makes them into playbooks, manifesting haunts and creatures of the southern clay to create clawhammer gods and haunted crossroads. A spectacular piece that combines folk ways and games, it’s a perfect accompaniment for Summer Sons’ haunted season.
Summer Sons is about a haunting. It’s about grief and ghosts. Haunted, (by Kit) is the perfect game to play out the horror, drama, and repressed feelings between our main character, AndyBlur, and the revenant that is absolutely not his boyfriend.
We’re going to take a break from the supernatural vibes to recommend a Forged in the Dark game of southern intrigue and organized crime—Copperhead County by Jason Eley. This is a game that doesn’t pull punches, but gives you a way to play thorugh the hardscrabble life and times of folks fucked over by the system. It’s harsh and wicked, and the kind of bullshit Sam Halse will pull when he’s 33 and still angry as fuck.
Let’s get queer. Men and masculinity are put under a microscope in Summer Sons. In between love, sex, hurt, and harm, there’s something found. Andy has to come to terms with his own sexuality, and he’s got issues with himself to sort through. I’m going to bring in Yearning Oracle by Ben Roswell to help play this out. It’s a game about the failures of language, masculinity, and queer acceptance. It’s perfect for this book and all its haunted men.
While Lowcountry Crawl isn’t as contemporary as Summer Sons, it’s still got the gothic vibes that we want to see. With a ton of multicultural dsigners, this zine provides settings and inspirations for OSR games.
Now, Summer Sons takes place at Vanderbilt University, a posh af college near Nashville. The bloody heart of this book beats in ivory towers and everyone fucking hates it. A Cohort of Magpies by Sasha is a supplement for Dialect that will work perfectly for recreating the hallow halls of Vandy. Trade folktales for grades, haunts for office hours, pick up a pokeweed poison, and don’t turn your back on the TA.
Oh, did I…forget to mention… there’s street racing in this haunted, southern gothic, dark academia book?? Silly me! Anyway here’s Night Drifters by Will Uhl, go nuts, be dramatic, haunt your engine.
I’m not going to make a big deal about it, but I’ve also written a couple of Southern Games myself. Play out a fight between the residents of Clear Creek, Kentucky and the nameless corporation trying to strip mine their graves in We Will Stop the Bulldozers. Get your 1900’s Appalachian horror on in this Trophy Dark module, Southern Holler.
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