As we mentioned just before Christmas, one exciting project we’ve been pursuing is making a physical printed edition of Dateline: Lovecraft, our newspaper-themed resource for Investigative Lovecraftian horror games. Based on the overwhelming feedback from our earlier blog-poll, we have pushed forwards with the idea of making the Dateline: Lovecraft core physical product a combo pack with newspaper and guidebook. As shown back in December, we had a batch of the broadsheet newspaper printed for us — and now we also have copies of the guidebook in print.
Check out the pair together! (And no, we’re not planning on selling the Art Deco lamp as a companion-piece to the set 🙂 )
Dateline: Lovecraft Proof
The 100-page guidebook reproduces most of the content from the Dateline: Lovecraft PDF but also includes the first two Dateline EXTRAs, Jo Kreil’s “Help Wanted” and Noah Lloyd’s “Smoke Green”. So that means that the book is complete with loads of helpful indices and ideas for using newspapers in your games AND a campaign frame AND three full scenarios!
We are still thinking about how we want to make the printed combo sets available for sale longer-term … but for now we have a box full of them that we can sell to our loyal blog readers. For now we are only going to be taking orders until the end of February, or until our first box of books and newspapers runs out. So if you want one, get in quick!
To express your interest in buying one of these combo sets, use the form below. For blog readers we are pricing the sets at USD25 plus the cost of our postage. When you fill out the form, we’ll get back to you with the final cost inclusive of postage — but we already know that international postage is going to sting a little. For shipments to the USA we’re expecting the shipping cost to be about USD 18; for shipments to the UK it will be about USD 20. Shipments to Australia will be a lot less, though.
Dateline newspaper shown with a recent Chaosium box set (not included in our product; shown for size comparison only)
We’re quite excited to be able to get print copies of our newspaper out for people to use in their games — to cut into ribbons, bamboozle players, or use as makeshift bedding for your hobo Investigator!
Cthulhu Reborn 
January 22nd, 2019 at 8:45 am
Shame about the lamp LOL
January 22nd, 2019 at 8:47 am
Could you not use a Print on Demand Service through DriveThruRPG or similar?
January 22nd, 2019 at 9:18 am
For the guidebook, yes, POD printing is definitely an option — but not for the broadsheet newspaper. In fact I struggled to find *any* printers who could create those at a reasonable price-point, and even then could only do so by ordering a minimum batch of 50 newspapers.
January 22nd, 2019 at 9:37 am
What about LuLu?
January 22nd, 2019 at 9:59 am
Same. In fact I used Lulu for the batch of printed guidebooks (since I find them sometimes higher quality). They don’t do anything like newspapers — just softcover, hardcover, and photo books.
January 22nd, 2019 at 10:51 am
https://www.newspaperclub.com/choose/broadsheet/traditional
https://printonpaper.com/products/tabloid/
https://www.printnewspaper.com/
January 22nd, 2019 at 1:14 pm
Hey Perry, thanks for doing the leg-work to track down some printer options. In fact newspaperclub was the printer we used for the batch of Dateline newspapers that will be going out in this batch. They did a great job, but they aren’t very useful as a POD printer since their charge for printing 1 copy is something like 4.5 times the per-unit cost of printing a batch. So, they’re a great printer if I want to make another 50 copies and ship them to me … but to try to use them to print lots of orders for 1 copy would end up costing a fortune. It’s just not the way they work.
January 22nd, 2019 at 1:56 pm
Happy do do what I can to make this work 🙂