- Stop the Bleed. Protect the Citizens. Keep the Secret.
Candela Obscura is a Horror Tabletop Roleplaying Game published by Darrington Press in 2023 using their Illuminated Worlds system.
The central conceit of Candela Obscura is that you are a member of a titular secret order of paranormal investigators that hunt down and eliminate or secure various paranormal or extradimensional threats that have crawled their way into the Victorian, war-torn Fairelands and specifically the large coastal city of Newfaire; its unofficial capital. But many dangers await even the most prepared hunter of the unknown and unexplained; the monsters and ghosts of Newfaire are deeply entrenched and often very slippery, and they are far from the only organization of paranormal research or extermination, and that's before you deal with the cities themselves; built city over city on top of one another from hasty rebuilds and desperate uses of mind and reality warping magick to save them. Who knows what now lurks in dark alleys and undercities? Only those mad enough to go looking for them.
Candela Obscura was revealed in May of 2023 and officially released in November of the same year, with a quick-start adventure offered for free on Darrington Press' website. The Game is heavily inspired by and takes some mechanics from games like Call of Cthulhu, Blades in the Dark and Vaesen, and is the first roleplaying game published by Critical Role's publishing arm; Darrington Press. True to its roots, the company began an Actual Play series, also titled Candela Obscura, concurrent to the main campaign that uses the game as well.
Candela Obscura provides examples of:
- Ancient Conspiracy: The many paranormal organizations in Newfaire are as old as they are inscrutable at times.
- Benevolent Conspiracy: Candela as an organization pre-dates Newfaire, and was born of the few scholars of the old city that fell upon major magickal nodes throughout its major boroughs; and as such have been secretive, but ultimately entirely altruistic organization who cares more about keeping the good people safe rather than anything else.
- Four Is Death: When a player character is inflicted damages, they are counted as "Marks" on the character's sheet. Four marks in the same category results in a scar and once a character receives a fourth scar they are retired from the game, usually but not exclusively through death.
- Gaslamp Fantasy: The setting of the Fairelands is explicitly set within turn of the 20th century technology and architecture, with electricity being a fairly new invention, and many conventions of the time being treated as fact.
- Game Master: In this game, they are referred to as "Lightkeepers"; an in-game term for retired members of Candela.
- Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: The alchemists of Oldfaire once used extremely powerful magick for nearly everything, and as a result nearly put the entire city underwater due to a great deluge. The residual effects of this wanton use of magick still reverberate centuries later in the corrupting influence known as The Bleed; something that Candela fights desperately to contain.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Candela can sometimes work with Newfaire's Office of Unexplained Phenomena, but the OUP's relentless bureaucracy and addiction to procedure will clash hard with Candela's more free-wheeling, quick thinking approach.
- The Rival: The Exoteric Order of New Sciences (EONS) are the most obvious ones with Candela; while both see value in research and containment into the paranormal, EONS are far, far more interested in potentially harnessing them for their own monetary gain.
- Scars Are Forever: so forever they come in three different categories depending on what happens to your investigator during a case; physical, mental, and supernatural.
