[Gothic Horror] Jack the Ripper Adventures?

So, some of my friends group and I used to play the old Living Death Organized Play campaign, which was inspired/based on the TSR Masque of the Red Death box set. It was set in an alternate Victorian-era Earth, and was an excuse to use AD&D 2E with a host of modifications to do Gothic Horror. It was fun, but the system was a very clunky melange of elements to try to get the feel right, and the modules were not very well edited. But it was a volunteer-run campaign, so you have to cut them some slack, they had day jobs. We had a lot of fun with it.

So, that was 20 years ago. And I might end up being able to run a one-shot for them. And Jeremy Forbing has done a D&D 5E version of Masque of the Red Death which I really like -- he toned it way down, it has very vulnerable PCs but some mechanics that can be used to increase survivability without sacrificing the feel of the setting; I'm a fan. You can find it on the DM's Guild here if you're interested; please note that this is an affiliate link.

Anyway, since I only get one shot, I thought most Victorian-era-possible scenario for a Gothic Horror game would have to center on Jack the Ripper. I mean... He's iconic.

I'm comfortable coming up with my own stuff and converting stuff freely between systems and editions, but I also am really curious to see how other people have approached the scenario. So I went looking through my accumulated trove of PDFs, mostly acquired through Bundles, Sales, and so on. And Jack the Ripper is probably one of the more common tropes in Victorian adventures. Here's what I've found so far, but I really want to see if there's more I missed. Please let me know if you know of another one! I'm interested in all published adventures, supernatural and mundane, featuring this guy.

• Monograph #339: Return of the Ripper (Chaosium, 1986, Call of Cthulhu 3E): The only Gaslight scenario published in Chaosium's Monograph series, this features a Ripper who is an Englishman, turned into a psychic vampire by Tcho-Tchos and sent back to England to wreak havoc on the Empire. As might be inferred by the name, this also has the original killings taking place in the past, with a new series of copycat killings starting in London in the late summer to early autumn of 1893; there are a huge number of complications and side events. While I probably won't use it as-is, it includes a lot of maps and a huge amount of setting detail specific to Whitechapel and the events central and peripheral to the Ripper killings.
• Sacraments of Evil (Chaosium, 1993, Call of Cthulhu 5E): The title scenario of this collection, "Sacraments of Evil" by Fred Behrendt, takes place in the city of York sometime in the 1890s, when a copycat killer is committing murders. The original Ripper killings get a mention, but this is a derivative scenario. The killer is actually two different killers: one is a man being influenced by a lloigor, an insubstantial supernatural entity, while the other is a madman inspired by the lurid newspaper descriptions of the killings. I really like the misdirection involved, and it's a good fit for the MotRD Gothic Earth setting, but might be too complex for a one-shot, even if I spread it over a few sessions. It would take a lot of work to transpose back to the original Ripper killings.
• Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales (TSR, 1994, AD&D 2E): The box set included three adventures: Red Death, Red Tide, and Red Jack; that last one used the Ripper killings as a plot element. It's well done, and has a really interesting variation on who the Ripper was (which I absolutely love) -- the ghost of the jealous wife of a doctor with a free clinic in Whitechapel, who frequently treated prostitutes there. But the scenario takes place after the original killings, when a series of copycat killings take place in Boston in 1890.
• RM8 Hour of the Knife (TSR, 1994, AD&D 2E): This was a Ravenloft module. The killings are transposed from London to the city of "Peridon... in the domain of Zherisia." Again, the supernatural features heavily in this one, as the killer is a doppelganger, part of a secret society of doppelgangers, performing a ritual to achieve invulnerability. It's a complex plan that sort-of requires it to take place in one of the Domains of Dread; transplanting to London in a MotRD game is possible, but tricky. I like the antagonist, though, interesting possibilities there, but I probably wouldn't get a chance to explore them all in a one-shot.
• Streets of Zobeck (Kobold Press, 2016, D&D 5E): One of the scenarios in this book, "Ripper" by Mike Franke, is inspired by/derived from the Jack the Ripper killings. This is part of Kobold Press' Midgard setting, which is supposed to have elements to allow any 5E game to be set there; the city of Zobeck, the Clockwork City, is effectively a stand-in for Victorian London. The killings are caused by a powerful devil who has bound himself into a magic knife, so he can possess the owner and cause them to do occult killings on his behalf; he uses this to execute individuals who are reneging on their pacts with various archdevils. This killer is definitely a lot more high-powered than normal groups of MotRD characters can handle; the scenario is primarily focused on investigation, but there are a bunch of small fights against supernatural creatures that I can maybe tone down.
• House of Knaves (Danger Magnet, 2018, Ubiquity): A supplement written by Mike Dukes for Leagues of Gothic Horror, this is another scenario which takes place after the original killings. The original killings were implied to be the work of Earl Brison, a founding member of the Quietus Guild, a group dedicated to "artistic" deaths and murders. He had learned to ritually murder in order to gain magical power and extended life, and reformed the Quietus Guild as the House of Knaves, a secret society of Ripper-copycats.
• Red Jack (M. T. Black, 2024, D&D 5E): This is an update/modification to the original MotRD Red Jack scenario which moves the action back to the original killings, but includes Sherlock Holmes. Which, if I'm being honest, I'm not sure I like; I prefer my players to make their own investigations and conclusions, and Holmes might be too tempting an asset not to use.

There are a few honorable mentions. I cast my net far and wide to try to find any possible element from the case I could use to make the game interesting, and I came across a few items.

• White Dwarf #62 (Games Workshop, February 1985): This issue of the venerable UK gaming magazine includes the Classic Traveller scenario "An Alien Werewolf in London" by Jae Campbell. In it, the killer is a Vargr, a wolflike alien from the setting, who is addicted to combat drug which has driven him into fits of homicidal rage. This is all caused by an extraterrestrial Temporal Matter transmitter, which as far as I know never showed up in any other Traveller article or product.
• The Unspeakable Oath #16/17 (Pagan Publishing, 2001): This issue of the US periodical featured a one-page item, "Arcane Artifacts - Jack the Ripper's Knives" by Ben R. Leeb. The description pins the cause of the murders on a ritual to a corpse-god requiring prostitutes to be murdered to provide the wielder with magical power.
• London By Night (White Wolf, 2002, Vampire: The Masquerade): This Victorian Age Vampire supplement has a lot of detail on Victorian London, but it is slanted heavily towards vampires, naturally; still useful detail for a Gothic Horror game, and plenty of detail on Real World items as well as items from the World of Darkness setting. It has a two-page infobox, "Who was Saucy Jack?", which covers several popular Real World suspects as well as suggesting supernatural possibilities relevant to the World of Darkness.
• Leagues of Gothic Horror (Triple Ace Games, 2016, Ubiquity Engine): This core book for the line mentions Jack the Ripper several times, in completely different forms. One character background mentions the Ripper as a werewolf. The Ripper is also mentioned as the archetype for the Serial Killer (a creature template in the Bestiary section) which would imply a completely-human killer. Then, later on, the Ripper is revealed to be Leather Apron, a mystical leather apron formerly worn by Aztec priests during sacrifices which has developed an unholy thirst for blood. It has caused several murder sprees, of which the Jack the Ripper killings are only the most recent. Still later in the same chapter, the Ripper is implied to be Sir William Gull, Freemason and Physician-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria, a favorite Ripper suspect among enthusiasts. Following a stroke in 1887, he developed an unnatural hunger that eventually led him to perform the killings; his family, finding this out, had him lobotomized by a fellow Freemason who could be trusted to keep the secret, and then committed to an asylum which has later burned down. This plot thread is further developed in the supplement Guide to the Walking Dead. Finally, in the section on "Dark Places," an adventure seed involving later Ripper-style killings has the Ripper dead, but possessing an innocent to continue his killing spree. That guy gets around!
• Guide to Vampires (Triple Ace Games, 2017, Ubiquity Engine): This supplement to Leagues of Gothic Horror has a number of vampires to populate your LOGH game, including Jill, a streetwalker who managed to "survive" a vampire attack but is now a thrall, whose nightly hunts have been called "New Ripper Killings!" in the press

Rippers and Rippers Resurrected for Savage Worlds use the Ripper as a foundational concept for their Victorian Gothic action-horror escapades.

Ironic: I just bought this today…

GothmogIV said:

Ironic: I just bought this today…View attachment 372899

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Is it good?