Abandon All Hope

The year is 1852. The age of steam progresses relentlessly, machines turning obsolete mere years after they were invented. An aging British steamship, its lumbering engines the state-of-the art only 15 years ago, has been sold to rot as a barge at Nova Scotian lumberyard. Your small crew will make the treacherous journey—one this small coastal steamer was never designed for—across the North Atlantic from Queensport to Halifax. All you have to do is keep it going long enough to make the delivery. 

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Abandon All Hope is tabletop roleplaying game intended for play with a gamemaster (GM) and 3–6 players.

 This is a horror game, dealing with sensitive themes including: body horror, religious punishment, suicide, murder, racism, sea peril and shipwreck, and other themes I may be forgetting here, but which you should check for in advance if you think you or your players would be uncomfortable playing with them. Having a frank discussion about the nature of the game and its themes prior to play and an openness to pause and adjust during play is recommended. 

The game mixes the problems of operating a ship in dangerous waters—pitting players against waves, weather, and damage to their ship—with the supernatural horror of the ghosts of those who died on the ship, demons seeking to punish the crew for their sins, and Satan himself rising to drive the ship underwater. 

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Thanks are due to Franz and Victor from BlueSky, who kindly took the time to read a draft and provide some feedback that improved the work.

Thanks also to Amanda Lee Franck, who created Crush Depth Apparition, which this is based on, and granted permission to adapt her work to this new story. Crush Depth Apparition is copyright 2023 by Amanda Lee Franck.

Bible verses from openbible.info and licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0. 

Cover from the public domain. Interior art by Luke Simonds and adapted from works in the public domain.

Text copyright 2025 by Luke Simonds, publishing as Cats Have No Lord.