Free APOCTHULHU Fiction #2

Here’s another Lovecraft-related short tale of mankind’s Apocalypse, this time co-written with one of his (then very young) protegés, Robert H. Barlow. Not too many people know about Barlow, but in the latter years of HPL’s life he was a welcome friend to the (basically totally broke) Lovecraft, hosting him on several extended stays in Florida. HPL in turn encouraged the young man in his ambitions to become a weird fiction writer — this Apocalyptic story, “Till A’ The Seas” is one of the products of this shared passion.

When Lovecraft died in 1937, Robert Barlow was named as his literary executor in recognition of the ongoing kindness and generosity he had afforded HPL — though this assignation eventually counted for little as August Derleth approached the monetizing of the Cthulhu Mythos with a kind of singlemindedness that would brook the involvement of no other parties. Still, that’s a story for another day (and if you can see parallels with this money-grubbing theft and more recent developments in the game publishing industry, that is *definitely* a topic for another discussion).

In the meantime, here’s a tale of the end of the world written by the teenaged Robert Barlow, and almost certainly heavily rewritten by Lovecraft.

Click here for the 4-page PDF version of this typeset version of “Till A’ The Seas”, extracted from the WIP APOCTHULHU core rulebook.

 

Free APOCTHULHU Fiction #1

We are right now in the thick of layout for the core APOCTHULHU rules, which will be quite a weighty tome once it’s done. One thing we have decided to include in the front of the book is some representative Mythos fiction which paints some kind of picture of what the “End of the World” looks like from a Lovecraft perspective.

Because the fiction we’re using is all in the public domain, we thought it would be cool to also release the individual (typeset) stories as free downloadable PDFs. So … here’s the first one: H.P. Lovecraft’s odd prose poem of mankind’s downfall. Yep, it’s HPL’s “Nyarlathotep” (1920). In case you weren’t aware this is the piece of weird fiction where everyone’s favourite many-masked Mythos meddler was first introduced, or at least where the name “Nyarlathotep” was first published.

Click here for the 4-page PDF version of this short-but-mindblowingly-effective tale of hinted annihilation.

Another APOCTHULHU fiction freebie tomorrow!

 

Dateline: Unforgotten

There’s been a lot of excitement here in recent months about APOCTHULHU in particular, which has led a few people to contact us wondering what’s going in with support for our long-standing product lines, Convicts & Cthulhu and Dateline: Lovecraft. The short answer is that we are actively working on things for all of those lines as well … but realistically we are a tiny operation and there’s only so much we can focus on at any one time.

We gave a bit of an update about Convicts & Cthulhu recently, so it’s only fair that I do something similar for Dateline: Lovecraft. So here are a couple of newsworthy nuggets about that.

Actual Play Dateline

We mentioned a while back how the awesome folks at Skype of Cthulhu ran through one of the Dateline: Lovecraft scenarios just before Christmas and recorded their mayhem for posterity. The scenario they ran was “Bottoms Up!” (which you can download for free right here), and the sessions were GMed by the amazing Rachael B. Randolph who wrote the scenario.

The recordings of those sessions are now released for free download … so if you have a few hours and want to hear how some cool players went navigating their way through a prop-heavy Arkham scenario of soda-based dread … here are the links:

• Bottoms Up! Session 1
• Bottoms Up! Session 2
• Bottoms Up! Session 3

Upcoming Dateline: Lovecraft EXTRAs!

Speaking of the free scenario PDFs … we do have one in the works, a scenario called “Electrical Man” which deals with some unusual disappearances around Arkham (heck, there seem to be a *lot* of people who go missing there).

We don’t have an ETA on this next release … mainly because we’re still waiting until the incoming from previous Dateline products tips over the line to allow us to commission and produce the PDF. We had a big surge of Dateline income around NecronomiCon last year — which continued when our physical packs got added to the HPLHS Web Store. But since those sold out, things have fallen back to the occasional paid purchase of the core pack or generous PWYW sales for the PDFs. It’s still creeping forward, and we will undoubtedly make it to the target for getting this next PDF out, but if you’re really keen for more Dateline products, feel free to spread the word about it to other gamers to help keep the pennies trickling in.

After the next scenario we still have at least 2 scenario outlines relating to the core Dateline: Lovecraft newspaper which we can spin up into future PDFs if the demand is there.

Availability of Physical Dateline: Lovecraft packs

We mentioned how the physical packs had sold quite well at the HPLHS … in fact we were contacted by those wonderful folks early this year asking if we could make another run of physical combo packs to restock their store. We ordered all the pieces to do that … and when they arrived we made up a good few dozen sets … and then COVID hit. What that’s meant is that international shipping has gotten considerably more expensive (not to mention slower), which means restocking HPLHS in the short term might not be cost effective — we could do it, but we’d lose money on every copy sold.

I’m hoping that in the fullness of time the international shipping rates will revert to a more sensible level and we can do what was originally planned … not least because I now have a small pile of boxes of Dateline: Lovecraft physical packs occupying a corner of my office.

In the meantime, though, I am more than open to selling them individually … especially to folks who are in places where shipping is still vaguely reasonable. If you missed out when we last offered these for sale (about a year ago!) then this might be a good opportunity … contact me via the form below if you have an interest. Or you can click through to the beta version of our Cthulhu Reborn online store and grab one (complete with automated shipping estimate) via the Shopify links embedded on the page.

As per the HPLHS listing, these packs sell for US$35 each plus postage … although if you are a long-time supporter of the blog and have done something amazing for us in the past, I’m sure I can arrange a discount. We also have a few spare copies of just the prop newspaper, which we’re selling for US$12 each plus postage.

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