Listen to Us on the Miskatonic Uni Podcast!

Bill & Dean from Cthulhu Reborn were invited to chat to the lovely folks at the Miskatonic University Podcast. You can listen to the long and detailed interview either on the MUP site, or wherever good podcasts can be streamed.

We talked a lot about Cthulhu Eternal — why we made it, what it can be used for, and how anyone can use it as the basis for their own game or Lovecraftian scenario. Chances are if you have a question about our stuff we have at least touched on it in this chat.

More Australian Aeons on the Way

Hot on the heels of Australia’s immensely disappointing Indigenous Voice referendum outcome, we have been working to rejig our release schedule to bump a few Aus Indigenous themed scenario releases to the the head of the queue. That’s great news if you’re keen to see more of our “Australian Aeons” PDF scenarios … a line we started last month with “Thou Didst Let Fall”.

Coming this month, we have “Dead Flowers” by Stuart Boon … and next month we will be releasing “Red in Tooth and Claw” by Chad Bowser. Both of them are amazing (and quite substantial) scenarios — we hope you check them out when they drop.

Because the Night Belongs to Horrors (Part 2)

Continuing (and concluding) the interview between Jo Kreil — my fellow APOCTHULHU co-conspirator — and Kevin Ross. As explained in part 1, Kevin contributed an entire chapter to the APOCTHULHU core book devoted to The Night Land, a dark futuristic world described by William Hope Hodgson in a 1913 novel of the same name.

Jo: What drew you to the Night Land as a setting for APOCTHULHU?

Kevin: It’s a really great setting. As others have said before, this is what the Earth would look like if the Great Old Ones and their monstrous followers rose up and took over; or imagine the whole world was Mordor and there were several Saurons around. The Watchers are these gigantic mountain-like figures with weird features, and they’re all held in check or in stasis by equally strange phenomena (lights shining up out of the ground, a halo around their head, giant torches burning in front of them). The story itself is a quest through this horrible night-black wasteland to rescue a woman who may be the reincarnation of the narrator’s lost love.

I’ll be honest, one of the things that ended up striking me about the Night Land as an RPG setting was how much it reminded me of the old Gamma World RPG we played back in the 80s, only much much darker. As I was writing the [forthcoming –ed] scenarios I realized I was having the PCs exploring these old haunted ruins and coming across technology that was completely alien to them since the people of the Great Redoubt seldom if ever ventured outside the protective circle, and they never visited any of the strange sites around them for fear of running afoul of the Evil in the land. That whole set-up, of questers exploring these places and encountering weird monsters and finding and learning to use this alien tech, it all reminded me of Gamma World. I also liked the idea of writing something that was a mix of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, with a bit of Lovecraftian/cosmic horror mixed in, without falling back into the tropes of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Jo: Are there any other stories of Hodgson’s you think would fit APOCTHULHU?

Kevin: I can’t think of anything offhand, but The House on the Borderland features an end-of-the-world vision that jibes with what’s shown in The Night Land. At one point I’d considered writing a Cthulhu adventure with a house that travels through time as a result of its “possession” by a fragment of Yog-Sothoth. That would have echoed both House on the Borderland and Night Land, and in fact might have been a good bridge between the settings/games.

Now that I think of it, I suppose you could create an APOCTHULHU setting in which climate change has melted the icecaps and you have survivors on ships traveling the globe looking for shelter, while other ships full of cultists hunt for sacrifices for the countless marine horrors that now roam the seas. A nautical version of the Night Land, if you will. Hmmm… DEAN?!?!

Jo: Can you tell us about any other projects you might have in the works?

Kevin: Right now I’m working on the last of three adventures for the Night Land setting book Dean’s going to publish perhaps later this year. This book will have the sourcebook from the APOCTHULHU core, expanded somewhat with tips on describing the setting, inspirational sources, and a much-expanded bestiary. It will also have three full-length adventures, the last of which is basically a huge sandbox campaign that introduces a whole new region of the Night Land. I’ve had a lot of fun writing for the setting, and I hope other people enjoy reading it and playing in it.

Keeping in the Hodgson vein, earlier this year there was a Kickstarted roleplaying game called “Grey Seas Are Dreaming of My Death”, which recreated a haunted Sargasso Sea setting explicitly inspired by Hodgson’s writings. I backed it, and since I was working on the Night Land at the time and was on something of a Hodgson kick, I contacted the creator and offered to write an adventure for it. He agreed, so I wrote a brief one-nighter scenario called “The Song of Damned” which combines elements from HPL’s “Call of Cthulhu” and E.H. Visiak’s novel Medusa. That should be out later this fall.

I’ve pretty much retired from writing Call of Cthulhu material these days, but Chaosium still has a couple of books’ worth of adventure and setting material for the Down Darker Trails western setting which I wrote and/or edited. Sixtystone Press still has the three-volume Colonial Lovecraft Country setting I wrote and edited for them many years ago. And there’s a short piracy campaign for Modiphius’s Conan RPG called Waves Stained Crimson (with my old pal Todd Woods) that is still awaiting publication.

 

Thanks to Kevin for agreeing to share his wisdom about Hodgson and the process of digesting The Night Land for game usage. If you’re curious to get a look at the sourcebook material for “The Night Land”, you might consider checking out the PDF version of the APOCTHULHU core rules, available right now on DTRPG. That book will be released in print later in the year (and all early purchasers of the PDF given a discount code for the print book).

The expanded standalone book of Night Land material — including Kevin’s trilogy of scenarios — is still in the writing stage, but we’re hoping to have something out (in PDF at least) around Christmas. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, though, there’s more than enough in the material Kevin’s written for the core APOCTHULHU book — along with the nifty all-new map of The Night Land we’ve included — to run plenty of Night Land scenarios of your own devising. If you make anything cool … let us know about it. We’d love to hear about your experiences with the setting!

Because the Night Belongs to Horrors (Part 1)

It’s been a little over a fortnight since we launched the PDF of the full APOCTHULHU rulebook. The response has been fantastic — well exceeding what we had dared to hope for in terms of sales. We’ve also got some great feedback and some nice ratings and reviews (although we’re always on the lookout for more in any of these categories!)

One topic that has been specifically called out in virtually every piece of feedback and review that we’ve received has been Kevin Ross’ source material adapting The Night Land, a dark Post-Apocalyptic novel written by William Hope Hodgson. The rich imagination of Hodgson certainly lends itself to roleplaying, and it’s a shame that his novel buries this under so many layers of archaic language and attitudes. The feedback we’ve been getting agrees with my own personal opinion (mentioned when Miskatonic University Podcast interviewed Jo Kreil, APOCTHULHU co-creator, and me). Namely that Kevin has distilled all the key horrific concepts and nightmarish imagery in the Hodgson novel down to a perfectly-packaged form for games (while simultaneously slicing away all the elements that make the novel so unapproachable).

We definitely do have further plans for The Night Land setting. Kevin will be expanding on the sourcebook material (which forms a chapter in the core APOCTHULHU rulebook), pairing it with a trilogy of scenarios and publishing this wonderful amalgam as a self-contained book. At this point in time, the additional writing for this expansion is still ongoing — Kevin’s sketched out a lot of great material for the scenarios and has written one in full, but is still hard at work writing the others.

Because we’ve had so much interest about this RPG version of Hodgson’s world, I asked my co-conspirator Jo to pay a virtual visit the vast pyramid Kevin has built for himself somewhere in the American Midwest and ask him a few questions about The Night Land, the material he wrote for APOCTHULHU and his thoughts about Hodgson’s writing in general. The first half of Jo’s interview appears below — I’ll put up the second half tomorrow.

Who the heck is this Kevin guy anyway?

Kevin Ross is someone whose name should be well-known to pretty much everyone who’s ever bought a Call of Cthulhu supplement. He has been writing, compiling, and editing material for the game for over 30 years. He helped create the Lovecraft Country series of books, designed the game’s infamous — and now ubiquitous — Yellow Sign symbol, helmed the award-winning 3rd edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight, and created the award-winning Down Darker Trails (old west) and forthcoming Colonial Lovecraft Country (18th century American) settings. In short, he is one of the defining voices whose insane screams echo across the game’s long history, right down to this very day.

In addition to his Lovecraftian game writing, Kevin has also contributed material to Modiphius Entertainments’ Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of RPG, and been involved as an editor on several fiction anthologies.

“The House of Silence” by Anna Helena Szymborska

The Interview (part 1)

Jo: Tell us a bit about your APOCTHULHU setting?

Kevin: My setting is an adaptation of William Hope Hodgson’s novel The Night Land. The novel postulates an Earth millions of years in the future, when the sun has gone out, leaving the world drowned in utter darkness. This would be bad enough in and of itself, but the world has been overrun with gigantic evil forces, and humanity has mostly been wiped out or died out. Now the few million people left live in a gigantic pyramid, the Great Redoubt, surrounded by a protective energy circle that keeps out the forces of evil that inhabit the pitch-black world. The latter range from enormous mountain-sized Watchers (think Great Old Ones in terms of size and potency), as well as a number of smaller but no less deadly creatures, such as horse-sized Night-Hounds, various bands of sub-humans, bloodthirsty giants, shoggoth-like “black mounds”, and the enigmatic shrouded Silent Ones.

Jo: What drew you to this project?

Kevin: Dean has been after me to write something for Cthulhu Reborn for some time, but my interests have been drifting farther and farther from explicitly Lovecraftian subjects so I’m afraid I haven’t been very cooperative. When he was asking around for suggestions for post-apocalyptic inspirational material for the APOCTHULHU project I rattled off a list that included The Night Land. I think I’d actually given him one of my extra copies of the book when he’d visisted here last summer, so he knew I was interested in the book, and he half-heartedly asked if I wanted to write it up for APOCTHULHU . Now, I have to admit I’ve had difficulties actually reading the damn book (see below), but I took this as a challenge to finally muscle through it, as I’ve always believed it would make a helluva great setting for an RPG.

“The Battle” by Anna Helena Szymborska

Jo: For those unfamiliar with him, tell us a bit about Hodgson. He is sadly overlooked by many weird fiction fans.

Kevin: Hodgson was a British writer in the early 1900s. He had been a sailor in his youth, but he ended up hating the hard life on the sea, so he quit to go into a career in physical fitness, as well as writing fiction. Many of his stories and a couple of his novels deal with nautical settings, and a number of his horror tales are set in the Sargasso Sea. His novels are The House on the Borderland, The Ghost Pirates, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, and The Night Land. (Amusingly, Arkham House published an omnibus volume collecting all four novels, and a copy of this book, or a damned good facsimile, shows up in the second episode of the Lovecraft Country series on HBO.) Lovecraft and several members of his circle were big fans of Hodgson’s, when they could find his work. Hodgson died in Belgium in WWI; though he had been seriously wounded and taken out of action, he returned to the front and was killed in a shelling attack.

Jo: What is the Night Land exactly?

Kevin: The setting of Hodgson’s novel is one of the grimmest fantasy settings imaginable, with all manner of terrifying creatures and strange locations. Unfortunately, he affected a deliberately archaic style when he wrote it, and the style makes it extremely hard to read. I know, I tried several times and never got more than a quarter of the way through before giving up in frustration. Fortunately, a guy named James Stoddard rewrote Hodgson’s story in a modern style, trimming off the fat and boiling 500 pages of story down to less than 300. THAT’S the version I read and reread while writing the Night Land sourcebook for APOCTHULHU . I later went back and checked the sourcebook for accuracy by giving a close skim/read of Hodgson’s original, finding a few places where Stoddard added a few things, but otherwise finding it to be a faithful and much more palatable version of the story. I know of a number of people who’ve struggled with reading the original, and even Lovecraft and other writers have decried the unnecessarily archaic style and the excessively sappy love story element of the plot; the latter didn’t bother me, but the former is torturous.

(interview to be continued tomorrow)

State of the Tentacle: Sans-Detour

It’s been a little quiet recently with the “State of the Tentacle” interview series here on Cthulhu Reborn. This has been partly due to the fact that we’ve been busy with other things … but has mainly been because everyone in the Lovecraftian RPG scene (including all the folks we want to interview) is really, REALLY, busy. The past few months alone have seen no less than five huge Kickstarter projects for Cthulhu-related gaming books, and if you layer on the top of that the fact that several new companies have come onboard as Cthulhu licensees … this is starting to look like something of a boom period for the hobby.

With all that in mind, we’ve decided it’s probably time to wrap up the “State of the Tentacle 2013” … but not before we publish one more, very special, interview.

One of the things that prompted the idea of interviewing the current crop of Lovecraftian RPG publishers and authors was an interest in where this hobby is going, both in terms of the types of books being produced and the production values that are being brought to those books. Right from the start one group of folks we here at CR were very keen to talk to were the good people at Sans-Détour, the current French licensee of Call of Cthulhu. In just a few short years, this company has grabbed everyone’s attention by producing some of the most beautiful and artistically-rendered Lovecraftian books that have ever been created. Many English-speakers (myself included) have looked on in awe and envy at the quality of the Sans-Détour 30th Anniversary edition of the CoC rules; and have gasped at the gorgeous S-D presentation of Masks of Nyarlathotep, complete with a super-deluxe limited edition which came in a custom-designed leather satchel! With an Elder Sign!

But it’s not just the super-high production values which distinguish Sans-Détour’s books … it’s also the company’s commitment to bringing out (or reprinting) compelling new gaming material, borrowing the best from the English-language version of the game but also mixing their own equally-detailed French setting. They also have an enviable programme of engaging with players at events and conventions. All these things make Sans-Détour just the kind of guys whose brains we would love to put into Mi-go brain cases and quiz for a while about the future of Lovecraftian gaming. Thankfully they were willing to undergo the procedure. We wish them a speedy recovery 🙂

Introduction

Daryl Hutchinson

We we actually fortunate enough to speak with not one, but three of the leading figures at Sans-Détour. By way of introduction, these august gentlemen were:

• Samuel Tarapacki, Co-founder of Editions Sans Détour, and the guy in charge of communication. Samuel (who’s 49) has been a Call of Cthulhu player for 31 years and was the writer of the two campaigns published in the French 6^th edition rulebooks, which aim to provide refreshing stories for both old and new players. In his words: “Working on the French Call of Cthulhu RPG line has been a dream come true… if you work hard, never give up, anything goes!”
• Christian Grussi, Co-founder of Editions Sans Détour, in charge of Art direction. Christian (40 years old) also has a long term involvement with Call of Cthulhu player, having played for 27 years. He is author of the French 6^thedition and also wrote the French 1920s sourcebook “Au Coeur des Années 20”. He also designed / wrote the beautiful French gamemaster screen published in 2008 and later re-published by Chaosium in English in 2012.
• Piotr Borowski, Co-founder of Editions Sans Détour, and the guy in charge of financial management. Piotr (36) has played Call of Cthulhu for 22 years. In his words, he’s “proud to be working on this game and taking charge of the management of an impressive game legacy.”

Now, introductions aside … let’s hear what these knowledgeable French gentleman had to say!

Cthulhu Reborn: With over three decades of history to Lovecraftian Roleplaying, what do you see as the key milestones and mis-steps that have been made during its evolution?

courtesy: neatorama.com

Sans-Detour: As paradoxical as it sounds, the most defining feature of Call of Cthulhu’s history is the fact that its rules have never really changed from the original system. This continuity has provided not only a high degree of compatibility between the different versions and editions of Call of Cthulhu, but also provide a “bridge” of sorts between the US and Europe. No matter whether you are a newcomer to the game or a veteran, no matter which country you live in, you are playing the same game with the same rules. The game is a common thread of inspiration that binds us all across time and space.

Right from the very beginning of the game, Call of Cthulhu gamers have welcomed books which explore different historical eras (such as Dark Ages and Gaslight), strange places (like the Dreamlands) and different geographical settings (the “Secrets of” series).

Even after 30 years of published sourcebooks, gamers still retain the same level of curiosity about the expanse of the Call of Cthulhu universe.

While the game has gone through some evolution over its history, essentially it plays the same as it did on the first day it was published. Investigators are still powerless figures battling against overwhelming and cosmic threats.  Their fight is something that can never truly be “won”, but is crucial to saving just a little bit more time for humanity … even if it’s just another 30 years.

CR: Given the many and varied publishers and product lines that exist in 2013 to support the hobby, what things do you think this “mini-industry” is doing well and what could be done better?

S-D: The roleplaying game enhances and expands the Cthulhu Mythos. Over the past 30 years there have been more game scenarios written involving the Mythos than there have been Mythos novels written in the last century (since Lovecraft’s day) …

It’s obvious from reading these publications that those who write and publish for the game treat the Cthulhu Mythos with a great deal of respect. There is no room for trashy, low-quality books. The Internet has helped greatly in keeping in touch with everything that is being created for Call of Cthulhu, right around the planet. We can look on in admiration at what others have done for the game, and that helps us strive to do better in the next books we create. It’s like a very positive type of artistic “competition” … which benefits players by delivering a constant stream of better books.

The setting of the 1920s and 1930s offers lots of potential for creating books which are rich with historical detail, complete with period pictures and scenarios inspired by real-world events. All of this makes for a game that is immersive and enjoyable.

One thing that this “mini-industry” could do better, though, is to develop more cooperation between the different Call of Cthulhu efforts in different countries. That would let everyone share their best ideas and share the costs of creating beautiful illustrations, conducting extensive historical research, or writing epic campaigns. Sharing those costs would allow everyone to attempt even more ambitious projects.

CR: What do you see as the main factors shaping the direction of Lovecraftian RPGs right now?

S-D: Today, one of the main things which seems to seduce game masters and players alike is the fact that the game is based in a historical setting. This creates the opportunity to extend the game by describing other new historical period and also by writing sourcebooks which provide more detail about the game’s established periods. We meet more and more gamers who are “junior historians” with ideas for new projects and for eras that have never been described for Call of Cthulhu before.

Call of Cthulhu has a big advantage when it comes to gameplay. It is a simple game, but one with enough realism to allow a player to immerse themselves in a role and play a part in great stories. The game balances simplicity and realism in a very effective way which discourages endless sourcebooks being published just to add new rules to the game. That means that every player knows that when reading a new book he will be easily able to quickly find the relevant facts without wasting time learning new rules or flipping through multiple books searching for rules.

CR: What do you see as the main challenges currently facing the continued prosperity/growth of the hobby?

S-D: We, as publishers, have an obligation to make our books more attractive to younger generations of gamers. They need to be simple and easy to understand to readers both novice and expert. A product line that is 30 years old can easily seem overwhelming to someone who is thinking of taking their first step into this universe. Hopefully, experienced gamers can provide a lot of the assistance required to help new players discover this hobby.

When we attend events we see that many younger players know what Call of Cthulhu is or have even played the game themselves. We see it as our job to give those new players the right tools for them to continue to have fun in this game.

CR: If it was up to you, where would you like to see the product lines of Lovecraftian RPGs (whether it’s the games themselves or their support products) go next?

S-D: Call of Cthulhu needs to keep the ability it has right now to talk equally to new and experienced gamers. As long as there are writers to create great adventures and campaigns, the game can continue to forge new ground in the RPG industry. Publishers should strive to make their books more “plug and play” (i.e., easily playable with only minimal preparation time) as that makes them equally appealing to both old and new players and also continues to enhance the benefits of the system’s simplicity.

Maybe there is some scope for simplifying products still further to reduce the work of the game master, making it easier and more fun to prepare for a session.

CR: Hypothetically, if you were to gaze into a crystal ball and look five years into the future of the hobby, what do you expect you’d see had changed in that time?

S-D: People will always love owning beautiful books made from paper coming from ecologically-managed forests

from Sans-Detour revised edition of “Beyond the Mountains of Madness”

The melting of the ice caps will allow us to finally discover the Mountains of Madness, while Deep One colonies spawn and thrive in new underwater realms …

Courtesy: Innsmouth on DeviantArt

But more seriously … we can see a future in which weighty sets of rules are a thing of the past and the focus of publication is directed to historical detail and adventures. Gamers from time-to-time try out new games, but they seem to always come back to Call of Cthulhu proving the value of its easy gameplay and rich universe.

Maybe one day automated translation tools will become good enough that players all over the world will be able to discover and play new books as soon as they are published in any country.

CR: Thanks Christian, Samuel, and Piotr for being Cthulhu’s “French ambassadors”!

State of the Tentacle: Heiko Gill

Those of us in the English-speaking world who play (or write) Call of Cthulhu books tend to think of our hobby as being made up of a community of publishers in the US and UK who produce all the wonderful books we know so well. BUT … this viewpoint does conveniently ignore the fact that in addition to all those books we see being published in English, these days there are also a whole bunch of original Call of Cthulhu titles being published in other languages by European game publishers. While the current French CoC licensee Sans Detour has nabbed a bit of attention recently with its snazzy-looking books … it may surprise some that by far the most active non-English publishers of Cthulhu material is actually German licensee Pegasus Press. Since taking over the German-language license for Call of Cthulhu in 2000, Pegasus have put the publication of original (i.e., non-translated) Cthulhu material serious on steriods … to the extent that there is now a vast array of products and even a successful German-language magazine devoted to Cthulhuoid gaming.

One of the goals of the State of the Tentacle interview series is to try to get out and talk to as many people who make creative decisions about the future of Lovecraftian gaming … no matter what flavour. To that end I am absolutely delighted to be able to speak today with Heiko Gill, the current chief editor of the Cthulhu roleplaying line at Pegasus Press. Pegasus, like several of the European Cthulhu game publishers, have earned an enviable reputataion for the quality of the books they create. Their translations of Chaosium titles like Horror on the Orient Express have set new high watermarks for art and other production values, and their original German gaming material … well to someone who only slightly speaks the language, I’d have to say it sure LOOKS enticing and exciting. So, with all this in mind, I was very keen to see what Heiko — the guy at the helm of this enviable engine of creativity — thinks is important to the future of Lovecraftian gaming!

Introduction

Heiko Gill is a long-term member of the International Cthulhu Cult. Born in 1962, Heiko first encountered the writings of H.P. Lovecraft in 1979 but by the end of 1980 had already read every piece of Lovecraft fiction that had been translated into the German language. By chance, during a holiday to San Francisco in 1985 he stumbled upon the 2nd Edition of the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Ever since that fateful day he has been a Keeper in an ongoing gaming group that has played *a lot* of Cthulhu roleplaying.

Heiko got involved with the “other side” of the CoC world (i.e., producing game material) in the early 1990s by writing an adventure called “New Eden” which centred around some very nasty goings-on during the Boer War. He then submitted a scenario to an adventure-writing competition (a nasty piece about German mass-murderer Fritz Haarmann) and won. Subsequently he was recruited by Pegasus Press in 2002 as a freelance writer, later joined the editorial staff … and since the end of 2011 has served as the chief editor of the Cthulhu product line produced by Pegasus.

Cthulhu Reborn: With over three decades of history to Lovecraftian Roleplaying, what do you see as the key milestones and mis-steps that have been made during its evolution?

Heiko: The greatest “Plus” that Call of Cthulhu has maintained over the years is the continual backwards-compatibility of its published material. Using the current rules, you can easily still play stuff from decades and decades ago … What other game can you say that about? I think of this as an “ongoing-milestone”. Individual milestones were the great campaigns (Day of the Beast, Orient Express and so on) and the development of the whole Lovecraft Country setting.

In Germany the greatest milestone was, of course, the granting of a licence to Pegasus Press, which allowed a whole bunch of enthusiasts to create lots of useful stuff.

A Mis-step, if you can call it that, was the late 1990’s slowdown in the rate of new material being published for the game (not felt so much in Germany, which by that time was already producing a significant amount of its own original German-language material to fill the gap).

CR: Given the many and varied publishers and product lines that exist in 2013 to support the hobby, what things do you think this “mini-industry” is doing well and what could be done better?

Heiko: As a representative of a Chaosium licensee I must confess, that I have only very limited insights in the other “new” Lovecraftian RPGs, because we are bound exclusively to Chaosium’s set of rules. (Which, in the spirit of backwards-compatibility, is no problem at all.)

courtesy mlvwrites.com

It seems to me that these other versions focus individually on other aspects of the game than the “mother-ruleset”, but that is okay, as long as the players are interested in the same kinds of things as the people who designed those games (e.g., Gumshoe and its strong focus on clues and detective work).

Right now, there’s work going on to make a “7.0 ruleset”. From what I know of this material (and I was a playtester last year), there are great improvements possible, but also – maybe – some problems with respect to my Holy Grail (which, as you may know by now is backwards compatibility with earlier material).

CR: What do you see as the main factors shaping the direction of Lovecraftian RPGs right now?

Heiko: I wish I could say something ethical, esoterical or simply philanthropical, but I think the main factor shaping something is money. If you can make more money by leaving everything as it is – you will do that, if you can make more money by changing, you will change something. My personal position is, that there is always room for a change, if it enhances the gaming-fun of the players/Keepers (therefore in Germany we’ve had over the years a series of “optional rules” to try this out).

courtesy theorderoftheironphoenix.com

CR: What do you see as the main challenges currently facing the continued prosperity/growth of the hobby?

Heiko: Backwards compatibility. Nothing else. That must be a part of every change. It is the one and only unique characteristic of Call of Cthulhu.

CR: If it was up to you, where would you like to see the product lines of Lovecraftian RPGs (whether it’s the games themselves or their support products) go next?

Achtung! Cthulhu miniature sold by modiphius

Heiko: I’d love to see more of the German-language Call of Cthulhu stuff translated into English. Ok, that sounds selfish. But it wasn’t meant to be.

And I’d like Cthulhu Stuff set in WW2 (though in Germany you couldn’t do that because of the problems you may run into by using the obvious Nazi-background). That may be on its way already with “Achtung! Cthulhu”.

CR: Hypothetically, if you were to gaze into a crystal ball and look five years into the future of the hobby, what do you expect you’d see had changed in that time?

Heiko: I see an established 7.0 Rulebook and in a perfect world (as we live in) it will be backwards compatible.

CR: Thanks Heiko for being Cthulhu’s “German ambassador”!

A Second Lash at: Kenneth Hite

A month or so ago, gaming legend Kenneth Hite dropped by to share his thoughts on the past, present and possible future of Lovecraftian Roleplaying. If you missed that fantastic interview, you can read it here. So popular was this entry into the “State of the Tentacle” series that we couldn’t wait to get Kenneth back to share some more of his insightful views on the Cthulhu world. Thankfully he was willing to oblige.

CR: The (proposed) 7th Edition of Call of Cthulhu seems to have sprung from the premise that there is potential benefit to be had in reforming the venerable mechanics by either streamlining them or making them more player-facing. Notwithstanding the perils of radical redesign, are there any obvious features from more recent RPGs that you believe could potentially enhance CoC? Any lessons from the ill-supported d20 Cthulhu rules that could be usefully rolled back into the parent game?

Kenneth: With Call of Cthulhu as perfect as it is, I hesitate to suggest changes at all. Any changes you might make would work for some sorts of campaigns, but be needless cruft for others. That said, introducing “cell system” mechanics a la Conspiracy X for organized investigation groups, or the mass-combat system from Savage Worlds for high-action games, or the Madness Meters from Unknown Armies for games focusing on the Investigators’ own spiral into insanity, or Passions from Pendragon for games more about interpersonal conflict, the character generation in-process from Rafael Chandler’s Scorn, tactical rotes from Hunter: the Vigil — lots of good games have at least one good mechanic you could attach to Call of Cthulhu to further focus play, if you liked.

As far as d20 Call of Cthulhu, it was so focused on translating the game into levels-and-XP language that I don’t think it had any spare energy for adding better mechanics. However, Scott Glancy’s setting chapter in that book should be required reading for anyone writing a setting of any kind, and could be nigh-seamlessly ported into a new Call of Cthulhu edition.

CR: At present Trail of Cthulhu is arguably  the Lovecraftian game which is experimenting most with pushing the boundaries of traditional Cthulhu gaming formats. Going forward, do you imagine that the game will continue to “hop around” as it has between a diverse range of innovative but disconnected new re-imaginings of Lovecraft? Or do you imagine growing some of the more successful books (e.g., Bookhounds)  into supported “product lines” of their own?

Kenneth: Although Simon makes all final decisions at Pelgrane, I think we’re very unlikely to fork our own audience by creating sub-lines. Bookhounds of London remains its own thing; Robin’s upcoming Dreamhounds of Paris likewise for Surrealist dreamscaping; my upcoming Deathless China won’t spawn a line of wuxia supplements. The “product line” mentality, I suspect, is one of those things we need to wean ourselves (and our audiences) off of in the publishing side. Plenty of novels and films stand alone; we should try to create RPG books that can do likewise, and I think the Pelgrane “setting-driven campaign frame” model is a real winner in that regard. I’d much rather put my own creativity into coming up with a new and innovative re-imagining of the source material, as you put it, than grinding out “Bookhounds of Los Angeles” and “Bookhounds of Zagreb” and so forth.

That said, the PDF supplement is the ideal means of testing the waters, or of getting one good idea or adventure out there. It’s not at all unlikely that I might provide some more Bookhounds-centric or at least very Bookhounds-useful material, for example, in an upcoming issue of Ken Writes About Stuff.

CR: How much priority do you think publishers of Lovecraftian roleplaying games should put on recruiting new gamers to the Cthulhu-end of the RPG hobby? Any thoughts on what might make such games more attractive to brand new people? What about existing gamers who have never dipped their toe into Lovecraftian horror? And, any ideas about how to entice more of the “big name” game designers to want to spend some time with Cthulhu?

Kenneth: I think every publisher should at least think about recruiting new gamers, or at the very least try to avoid driving away new gamers. But that said, realistically, there aren’t any Lovecraftian-side publishers with the resources to adequately test, develop, and market an introductory product. Also, Call of Cthulhu is a pretty successful introductory game as is: short rules section, easy-to-understand core mechanic. It could use a presentation makeover (remember how very lovely the d20 Call of Cthulhu book was?), but other than that I don’t have any good ideas about how to make such things more attractive to new gamers: I suspect the answer is “a very expensive targeted marketing campaign.”

For existing gamers, if they haven’t heard of Call of Cthulhu or Cthulhu-gaming in general, they aren’t going to leave their dungeon no matter how nicely someone asks. If they have heard of it, the almost entirely positive word of mouth Call of Cthulhu (and, gratifyingly, Trail of Cthulhu) has received will tempt them or it won’t. There’s very little I or anyone can do besides work very hard to make good games, and build the network of players — the more people play your game, the more people want to play your game. A lot of that latter component is very hard, very thankless work: recruiting people to run games at GenCon and other conventions, prize support, demos in game stores, and on and on. Every company could be doing more of that, especially and including us.

Per your last question, some of the biggest names — Monte Cook, Robin Laws, Mike Selinker, Reiner Knizia, John Scott Tynes — have already designed Cthulhoid games! For those who haven’t, I suspect the answer to that question is “pay them or challenge them,” just like it is in any field. This is why the absence of major indie-game designers in the Cthulhuvian lists is so surprising: Cthulhu is a reliable sales driver at their level of the market, and successfully transferring Lovecraft’s cosmic horror into narrative game play is incredibly challenging.

CR: Thanks, Kenneth for coming back! Now I guess we better let you go and actually write some of this wonderful-soundings stuff!

State of the Tentacle: Paul Fricker

Hot on the heels of our interview earlier this week with Mike Mason, one half of the design team for the draft 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu, we are extremely pleased to welcome the other half of that team, Paul Fricker. Paul has done a significant amount of remarkable writing for the game even prior to taking on the challenge of revising its rules. His contribution to Chaosium’s monograph line is consistently named as one of the highlights of that range and his mind-bending scenario writing has received much praise, not least for his self-published Dockside Dogs PDF which has already raised over £1000 for charity.

With all that experience writing, playing and Keeping Call of Cthulhu … not to mention continually challenging the limits of the game … we were very interested to hear about how Paul thinks sees the past, present and future of Lovecraftian gaming in general.

Introduction

Paul Fricker has spent the last few years working on the 7th edition of Call of Cthulhu. Prior to that he was part of the UK group, The Kult of Keepers, writing and running scenarios at numerous games conventions in England and Germany. Some of those scenarios were published, the first of which was Gatsby and the Great Race (a Chaosium MULA). Gatsby’s unique selling point is that it blends multiple games for up to 24 players at once. ‘My Little Sister Wants You to Suffer’, a science-fiction scenario, was published in Cthulhu Britannica by Cubicle 7. Last year Paul published Dockside Dogs, a modern-day gangster scenario, in aid of Cancer Research. You can buy a copy from DrivethruRPG — all the money raised goes to Cancer Research.

Cthulhu Reborn: With over three decades of history to Lovecraftian Roleplaying, what do you see as the key milestones and mis-steps that have been made during its evolution?

Paul: First and foremost, all credit to Sandy Petersen for creating the game. Since then, if there has been evolution, its been in scenario design. Thankfully some writers have moved away from the rigid scenario structure that was so prevalent in the 80s, in which players are moved as if on a conveyor belt from one location to the next; pick up the clue–move from location A to location B, pick up the next clue – move from B to C, and so on. Of course there have always been good scenarios with a more open plan structure, just take a look at The Haunting [one of the scenarios in the Call of Cthulhu rulebook, called “The Haunted House” in early editions]. When you begin play you’re told about that house, and as soon as you set foot it in you’re screwed!

For me, the key milestone in Lovecraftian Roleplaying is the work of Pagan Publishing. Those early days of The Unspeakable Oath were exciting times. I recall discovering an issue in the Virgin store in Meadowhall, Sheffield, if memory serves me right. I ran ‘Convergence’ (the scenario that spawned Delta Green) in the early 90s, it really was a breath of fresh air. There is a lot of bad mythos fiction out there, but I love the Delta Green fiction, which for my money is better than the game books they produced. I’m just finishing Detwiller’s latest novel, Through A Glass, Darkly, and the quality has not diminished.

CR: Given the many and varied publishers and product lines that exist in 2013 to support the hobby, what things do you think this “mini-industry” is doing well and what could be done better?

Paul: Even back in the pre-internet-1980s there was a circulation of photocopied fanzines and the like, but nowadays people have the means of production and distribution literally at their fingertips. This is a mixed blessing; hopefully the good stuff rises to the top of the pile. The outcome is that there can be a game to satisfy every niche, and I think that is a good thing. I see many of the new small press games more akin to a Call of Cthulhu Scenario in terms of the investment in preparation and playing time. This makes them easy to pick up, play a few sessions then move on to something else, just as we would with a traditional scenario.

CR: What do you see as the main factors shaping the direction of Lovecraftian RPGs right now?

Paul: The main factor that is shaping the direction of Lovecraftian RPGs is all the previously published material and our preconceptions about how to play. We’re all immersed in what has gone before and see that as the way that things should be done. There are good things in the Call of Cthulhu back catalogue, but I’m sure there are many innovations for us to look forward to. I do not mean change for the sake of change, but genuinely new and exciting ideas. The game I’m most excited about right now is Monsterhearts. I’ve sat down and played it a few times at conventions and in the space of 4-hours we’ve created characters and a story from scratch. The game mechanics and the fiction just flow seamlessly together, supporting one another effortlessly. It’s a great example of innovative game design.

CR: What do you see as the main challenges currently facing the continued prosperity/growth of the hobby?

Paul: Seems there’s a flip-side to every challenge. One might argue that computer gaming has drawn people away from pen-and-paper rpgs, but on the other hand, computers have also been a great boon in enabling roleplayers to get in touch with one another.

One of the sad things I see is the self-imposed divisions among roleplayers. For goodness sake folks, we’re a niche hobby. When I hear people complaining about ‘indie-gamers’ or ‘trad-gamers’ doing it ‘wrong’, I’m reminded of the Judean People’s Front in [Monty Python’s] Life of Brian. Splitters.

CR: If it was up to you, where would you like to see the product lines of Lovecraftian RPGs (whether it’s the games themselves or their support products) go next?

Paul: Much as I love Call of Cthulhu, I think the size of the book is enough to put off some people nowadays. When I began with second edition, it was a slim volume that I read cover to cover. Seems to me that people have more things to do with their free time now than they ever have, so you have to grab them quick or they move on. So I think there’s an opportunity for slim, grabby products. The irony does not escape me; 7th edition Call of Cthulhu will be a big book. I would also like to see a slimmed down version, something a bit more than the quickstart rules, more akin to the second edition that I started with.

CR: Hypothetically, if you were to gaze into a crystal ball and look five years into the future of the hobby, what do you expect you’d see had changed in that time?

Paul: One thing I see now is an increased use of Skype and Google Plus hangouts for gaming. I figure not many people are willing to drive 100 miles to a stranger’s house for a game, but would be happy to join the same people for an online game. That said, I think there will always be a place for face-to-face gaming. There is no replacement for sharing leisure time with friends.

CR: Thanks Paul!

State of the Tentacle: Mike Mason

One of the ‘hot topics’ in the Call of Cthulhu world right now is the proposed 7th Edition of the game. It has been debated ad-infinitum on online forums and referenced several times in earlier interviews in this series. Because of this level of interest, we here at Cthulhu Reborn were keen to speak with the creators of this next step in the evolution of the most venerable Lovecraftian RPG … not to quiz them about what the new rules might be (you can read information about that lots of other places), but to get a bit of an insight into their creative vision of Cthulhoid gaming and where it might be going longer-term.

We are very pleased today to be interviewing Mike Mason, one half of the core design team for Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition … but also an experienced writer and publisher with a long association with Lovecraftian roleplaying and the broader RPG industry.

Introduction

Mike Mason is the co-writer of Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Rulebook and co-writer of the (also upcoming) Call of Cthulhu Investigator’s Handbook. Previously, Mike was the developer, editor and co-author of Black Industries (now FFG) 40K RPG DarK Heresy. His stint at Black Industries included working on and publishing The Inquisitor’s Handbook, Disciples of the Dark Gods, GM Screen & Pack, and Purge the Unclean. Mike also published the small press zine The Whisperer, which focused on Call of Cthulhu and Lovecraftian things, bringing out Gaslight and Dreamlands specials in the zine’s run. Previous work for Chaosium included editing on the Ramsey Campbell’s Goatswood scenario book.

Mike has also worked for Games Workshop, managing the annual Games Day & Golden Demon show, running numerous 40K and Warhammer tournaments, as well as setting up a UK gaming community programme to support gaming clubs in schools, colleges and libraries. In his spare time he also set up and ran the UK’s Kult of Keepers; a cadre of writers and keepers who organised and ran numerous Call of Cthulhu games across UK and German RPG conventions.

Cthulhu Reborn: With over three decades of history to Lovecraftian Roleplaying, what do you see as the key milestones and mis-steps that have been made during its evolution?

Mike: It’s all very subjective as something liked by one person can easily be disliked by another. For me, highlights would be sitting down to play Masks of Nyarlathotep for the first time and my character finding himself on the (very) wrong end of an Outer God. Another highlight is Sandy’s Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, which is often (wrongly in my opinion) seen as a poorer cousin to Masks. I’m looking forward to the revamped Horror on the Orient Express – having run it all the way through twice for two very different groups I’m keen to see it back in print. I think a key milestone was Chaosium’s opening-up of their licensee arrangements, which has resulted in some cool companies doing some cool products.

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I’m not sure the MULAs were a misstep as they have provided an accessible entry point for new writers – which is important and should be applauded. However, it would be nice if MULAs could receive some editing and development work prior to print. I would advise all potential MULA authors to visit the forums and see if they can’t find someone willing to read and edit their work before sending it to Chaosium.

Obviously Sandy’s work on the Call of Cthulhu rules are a key milestone. Both myself and Paul (Fricker) took them very seriously when working on the 7th edition. It’s kinda surprising to see how the rules have actually grown between the 1st and 6th editions. Numerous additions have been bolted on, some as core content, others as Spot Rules, and so on. In my experience and in conversation with numerous players, much of this added content was either forgotten or ignored in the heat of playing the game. 7th edition has been about trying to restructure the rulebook so that all the rules are in one place in a logical order. Allowing players to choose the optionality they like has also been important – everyone plays Call of Cthulhu in ‘their own way’ – so ensuring the rulebook worked for as near as 100% of people as possible was a major task. Having a world-wide play test was always something I wanted to do, and I’m pleased that so many gaming groups answered the call and joined in the play test – my thanks to them. Everyone’s feedback was useful and provided good food for thought.

Early on, when we had prepared the first draft of the rulebook, the ideas were pretty radical and the reaction by some quarters of the Cthulhu community was certainly vocal! That’s a good thing as it allowed us to test the water and then redraft. Working on anything 30 years old with such a huge community of fans was always going to be like walking a tight-rope. Some want real change, whilst others would be happy by simply changing the book’s cover and keeping all the content the same. For redraft, we’ve kept the core rules as simple and straight forward as possible, whilst also providing keepers with additional, optional material that can be used if it suits their style of play and gaming group – a toolkit in other words.

CR: Given the many and varied publishers and product lines that exist in 2013 to support the hobby, what things do you think this “mini-industry” is doing well and what could be done better?

Mike: I think expanding the concept of how scenarios are written and run is a good thing. All too often many scenarios follow the same pattern and I like to see new takes on how scenarios are run and put together. Whilst I love big campaigns, I think Cthulhu is often at its best with the one-shot approach, allowing a writer to do something different and put the players in unfamiliar or unconventional situations that differ from investigating the haunted house and so on. I think smaller publishers may have an advantage in being able to be quite radical in the material they could published, whereas there are certain expectations for a Chaosium publication.

Shoggoth depicted by eclectixx @ deviantart

Within 7th edition, we’ve been at pains to advise keepers that what is important in scenario design is their story and not necessarily Lovecraft’s or Chaosium’s story. Whilst the rules provide the standard template for what a shoggoth is, etc., it doesn’t mean that ‘your’ shoggoth has to be the same. If you have a cool idea that is left-field of the standard, then why not go with it? Especially if it’s going to perplex and scare your players. HPL didn’t worry about standardising the Mythos, so don’t feel like you have to sweat it either.

CR: What do you see as the main factors shaping the direction of Lovecraftian RPGs right now?

Probably not the 7th Ed Cover

Mike: Well I guess 7th edition when it finally arrives will give some shape to that question. At the moment, a few people seem overly worried, but really there’s nothing to worry about. It’s totally backwards compatible with previous Call of Cthulhu material (just some minor maths on stat blocks which can be done in the head whilst playing). Also, as I said earlier, we have dialled back the more radical stuff from the first draft. The rule for spending Luck points on altering dice rolls is now a totally optional rule – some groups love this, others prefer to play without it – either way is fine. The pushing rule can really ratchet up the tension in a game, whilst also proving some really memorable experiences.

I think it’s going to be interesting to see how the new Delta Green RPG shapes up, especially as it will no longer be the Call of Cthulhu ruleset.

With all the many different publishers each doing their own settings, its a great time.

CR: What do you see as the main challenges currently facing the continued prosperity/growth of the hobby?

Mike: Well every convention I go to there seems to be a seminar or panel of experts talking about the death of the RPG hobby. Its been the same for well over ten years now and to be honest, nothing has changed in this regard. Computer games haven’t killed the hobby, neither has iPhones, Kindles or motorbikes (etc…)

The key challenge has always been ensuring games are accessible to new players. Some people have the ‘RPG gene’, some don’t. Just like some have the ‘bird watching gene’ and some don’t. We have to ensure that those with the gaming gene have the opportunity to play a game and discover for themselves that they like it. Making sure RPGs are available and accessible is important. That’s often why gaming clubs are important as they provide a way-in for new and returning gamers. The Internet is obviously a big help too – as are podcasts like YSDC and MU Podcast.

CR: If it was up to you, where would you like to see the product lines of Lovecraftian RPGs (whether it’s the games themselves or their support products) go next?

Mike: One of the things I was pleased to write was the chapter on investigator organisation in the 7th edition Investigator’s Handbook. We have a limited number of these existing, Delta Green being the most famous. In the chapter I wanted to open up the possibilities for every group to feel that it was ok for them to create their own organisation, or at least give them a range of ideas that they could build on. Thus, in the chapter, we have all manner of organisations that the investigators could be a part of, including a travelling circus, the R&D wing of a multi-national business, an esoteric order, a collection of ex-military comrades, and many others. I think this opens out the possibilities and I’d love to see what different gaming groups do with these ideas. In time, I could envision some cool campaigns to stem from these ideas, and I’d love to see more published materials along these lines.

I’d like to see a complete revamp of the Dreamlands setting. The stuff Dennis Detwiller has been doing looks great. Like some of your other interviewees, Clark Ashton Smith is a big favourite of mine and I would love to be involved in bringing CAS to life in a Cthulhu setting or supplement. It’s such a rich potential that’s just waiting to be explored. The kick-starter for Achtung! Cthulhu signals another setting that’s been crying out for treatment and I look forward to seeing WWII material. Having said that, there’s plenty that could also be done for WWI of course. I’m also a fan of Gaslight so would love to see more exploration of that setting.

Obviously 7th edition is an opportunity and I hope everyone, whether they are a steadfast player or new to the hobby, finds something they like in there and inspires them to ‘cthulhu’.

CR: Hypothetically, if you were to gaze into a crystal ball and look five years into the future of the hobby, what do you expect you’d see had changed in that time?

Mike: In five years time I imagine all the initial fuss over 7th edition will be long forgotten and people will just be continuing to play Call of Cthulhu. An explosion of cool settings, new scenarios and a couple of new big campaigns will be good. An investigator generator should hopefully be available for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone and Android by then too (well, at least I hope so!).

CR: Thanks Mike!

State of the Tentacle: Christian Lehmann

For this installment of the State of the Tentacle series, we are going abroad … leaving behind the confines of the comfortable world of English-language Call of Cthulhu publishing to talk with Dr Christian Lehmann, a man with an uncommonly keen knowledge of the past, present (and perhaps future) of CoC in France.

squadlala the 13th, deviantart

When I first conceived of the idea of this interview series, one of my goals was to be as inclusive as possible … trying to bring out the views of ALL of the different creative folk who are driving the development of Lovecraftian roleplaying. Those of us in the English-speaking world tend to sort of ignore what is going on in the realms of non-English publications for the game … or at least we *used to* until we started seeing the jaw-dropping production values which European publishers are now bringing to their game books.

So I am quite pleased to be able to break down these invisible barriers a little by talking with Christian, who has had a long-running relationship with French-language CoC pretty much since its beginning in the 1980s. I am hoping to follow this up with some further interviews with current European publishers … just so those of us who never spent points to develop an Other Language skill for ourselves can get a sense of how the endlessly creative minds behind those beautiful rulebooks and supplements view the future of Lovecraftian gaming.

Introduction

Christian Lehmann would already be known to many from his active presence on Lovecraftian gaming forums. In real life he is a trained medical doctor … who CLAIMS to only use his skilled detailed knowledge of the human form in service to his local community (near Paris) as a GP. Any suggestions of strange chitterings coming from his basement laboratory are always soundly refuted, although one wonders exactly how many Jacob’s Ladders one man needs for decoration 🙂

In addition to his day job, Christian is also an accomplished novelist, with over twenty books published in French. At least one of these has been made into a film.

In the 1980s Christian published a well regarded French-language RPG magazine called Chroniques d’Outre-Monde whose mission was to broach more adult themes in RPGs. During the several years the magazine was published, Christian befriended many of the “Great Old Ones” at and around Chaosium in the 80’s (Greg Stafford, Lynn Willis, Keith Herber, Mark Morrisson, etc…), also arranging for numerous English-language Call of Cthulhu scenarios to be translated and published in French. During this time he was also part of the team which incubated the classic Horror on the Orient Express campaign. In recent years Christian has scanned and published many of the letters and faxes that shot around the world during the creation of this monumental box set (this log of correspondence being a fascinating read for anyone who wants to know how such things really come together behind-the-scenes; highly recommended).

And with the rebirth of Horror on the Orient Express as a massively expanded Kickstarter 2nd Edition, Christian has been roped in once again … this time in a more substantial writing role. While us mere mortals are waiting to see the fruits of his labours (and those of many other talented folk) in print, Christian has this keen advice about what to expect from the new edition: “from what I’ve seen, it will kick shoggoth ass.” Enough said.

Cthulhu Reborn: With over three decades of history to Lovecraftian Roleplaying, what do you see as the key milestones and mis-steps that have been made during its evolution?

Christian: Role-playing trickled down into France slowly at the end of the seventies. In effect, RPGs meant D&D. Until Chaosium put out Call of Cthulhu and changed things completely.

France has a strange relationship with fantasy, and an even stranger relationship with Lovecraft. Even though Maupassant and other writers have written about the supernatural, «fantasy» in France had a bad press in the second half of the twentieth century and was considered as a sub-genre. Who could seriously give a hoot about elves and orcs and rings of power in the land of existentialism? Dunsany, Howard, Tolkien et al were frowned upon, and their works were not easily attainable.

Lovecraft was another matter: his peculiar brand of pessimism, his depiction of an uncaring universe struck a chord with the French intellectuals and he was always highly thought of, the subject of many a pamphlet or discourse. When Chaosium published CoC, the game became a long-time hit in France, and its rapid translation in French by Jeux Descartes, who was then a publisher and a series of brick and mortar shops all over France, was instrumental in its success. Not only did «Descartes» as they were called (and it’s funny to think that THE French RPG company in those days had the name of a French rational thinker from long ago) import the English-language supplements, but they translated the Chaosium scenarios, as well as scenarios from less-known publishers, like TOME. Arkham Evil and Pursuit to Kadath are thus better known in France than in their native USA ;-).

There were very few original French scenarios published outside of Casus Belli, the Jeux Descartes monthly magazine, so Keepers and players were totally dependent on the original Chaosium output and there was a long period of drought when Chaosium seemed on the brink of collapse at the end of the eighties.

By that time, I had put out a professional rpg magazine «Chroniques d’Outre-Monde», and for the fourteen issues that it lasted, I used my friendly connections with English-speaking authors to publish Carl Ford, Mark Morrisson and Keith Herber in French.

I don’t think the Cthulhu collecting-card game had much following in France, and it certainly didn’t help the hobby as rpgs were for a time pushed back to make way for wave after wave of collectible card-games. Cthulhu d20 was not a success either, and there were long intervals when no new scenario appeared, and Descartes, never managing to reach a sufficient audience to become profitable enough, started to close down shops, and stopped translating new Chaosium material.

So in France, only the advent of the internet and the possibility of getting in touch with brick and mortar stores outside the country, and to keep in touch with the CoC community worldwide, helped to maintain the game alive. To my mind, the arrival of such communities as «TOC, Trouver Object Caché» (french translation for Spot Hidden Object) and yog-sothoth.com is a very important factor for the game. I can now keep in touch with what is happening worldwide, know very quickly when a new supplement or comic or novel or film is in the works. That’s incredibly cool. I mean… I can’t imagine a world without yog-sothoth.com, it’d be a huge disappointment if we one day failed to maintain that sense of community.

Lately, of course, the big big change in France is the arrival on the scene three years ago of a new publisher, Sans Detour, who started to publish translations of Chaosium scenarios in lavish hardback productions, and then new French creations, books for Keepers as well as new scenarios ( from Tristan Lhomme, long-time writer of shorter scenarios for Casus Belli, who took the opportunity given him of writing longer stuff). Sans Detour has prospered, its long term bet of producing beautiful well laid-out supplements proving a great success. I don’t know how they do it, I don’t know what they’ve sacrificed to become such a success while churning out beautiful well-produced books at reasonable prices, but they seem to thrive. At the same time, Trail of Cthulhu and its supplements came out, and continue to come out, practically in synch with the English language line.

Among the missteps, I can’t fail to mention the monograph line, which to my mind is a failure. Publishing is not just making material available, it’s a real work of editing and rewriting and laying-out worthwile material. Chaosium’s decision to do a «quick and dirty» has produced some gems (Oscar Rios’s haunting Ripples From Carcosa springs to mind) but some duds and has, I think, not helped the trademark at all.

Quite problematic too, I find, is the fact that many authors have complained about their dealings with Chaosium, over the years. And I think that Lynn Willis’s passing must be mourned not only because he was a great human being but also because he WAS the Call of Cthulhu editor supreme, and he has not been replaced.

CR: Given the many and varied publishers and product lines that exist in 2013 to support the hobby, what things do you think this “mini-industry” is doing well and what could be done better?

Christian: The industry has survived, and surviving is a success in itself. Chaosium’s decision to open up the licence to other companies has helped the game tremendously, but it has had another effect which I’m not sure they foresaw: everybody’s standards have gone up. When you open up one of the books from Miskatonic River Press or Cubicle 7, you start to expect from all the players, and specially THE major player, excellent quality of writing and layout… Why ask gifted illustrators to paint fantastic drawings if they print out like a grey smudge on a coal-bed?

CR: What do you see as the main factors shaping the direction of Lovecraftian RPGs right now?

Christian: I find that each line reflects in a way the world-view of its seminal authors. Herber and Di Tillio and Ross and Willis crafted the Chaosium line of scenarios: whether they are globe spanning adventures or backwards Lovecraft Country one-shots, they have a certain feel, in which the humanity of the PCs and NPCs, the care for the fate of individuals, are paramount. The Pagan Publishing boys were a different matter entirely, their scenarios were more ruthless, the uncaring universe was back in force, people would be trampled down in the course of things without much wringing of hands. ( Though John H. Crowe’s Coming Full Circle is more Chaosium than Pagan in its care for a very small family of «banal» people around whom the whole campaign will revolve). Trail of Cthulhu has put the Purist back in Lovecraft, The Laundry mingles some of the DG hi-tech cloak and dagger stuff with a very peculiar British humour about bureaucracy and civil servants… Even though they all hail from Lovecraft, they are all products of very diffe-rent writers, and I find them as diverse as books from different novelists working in the same genre.

CR: What do you see as the main challenges currently facing the continued prosperity/growth of the hobby?

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Christian: In the eighties, we briefly thought, and fervently hoped, rpgs would become mainstream. They didn’t. Videogames happened along the way, and they kidnapped Lovecraft, Tolkien etc..; and took them in another dimension. Videogames are fun, videogames are easy to play, video-games don’t need hours of preparation, etc… and their industry thrives on rehashing concepts that have already worked. So… RPGs, and Lovecraftian RPGs, are a niche. Well, that’s good, actually. Because in a niche you don’t have to pander to the needs and diktats of producers and moneymakers. You can write what you want to write, and expect a small but reasonable financial return on your intellectual investment. What I mean is that people in the RPG field don’t get rich, but they can create without barriers. As long as publishers do their job well… The big problem is that the end of many brick and mortar shops make many of us dependent on postage prices and we have seen recently how much this can become a problem. Kickstarter makes it easier for the community to help projects get done, but what happens when a great part of the profit is swallowed up by postage? PDFs are somehow not the same as deadtree editions, I find, and I hope that print-on-demand options will in the near future become more readily available worldwide. That would help the hobby enormously, I think.

I was thrilled when Greg Stoltze and Dennis Detwiller started tu use a Pledge system to get new work in print, and now Kickstarter seems like a very promising venture for the future, but I’m a bit wary of becoming too complacent about KS and having authors and companies compete for donors only to take ages to deliver the final product. I think it is very important to give pledgers a reasonable timing for «when will that f$$$****ing book/game come out?» and I find it is not always the case. KS is a contract, of sorts, and it’s very important not to mess with pledger’s expectations.

CR: If it was up to you, where would you like to see the product lines of Lovecraftian RPGs (whether it’s the games themselves or their support products) go next?

Christian: I think what is missing at the moment is an incentive to draw more new players into the game. Obviously a Del Toro “Mountains of Madness” movie would have that kind of effect. So would novels based on the existing scenarios. I found Nick Marsh’s Horror on the Orient-Express novel [titled The Express Diaries] a great read and it’s a beautiful book, but I’m afraid it’s not well-known enough outside of the circle of players. I would love to write a novel based on my Beyond The Mountains Of Madness campaign, and have talked with Chaz Engan about it from time to time but find it tricky to embark on such a monu-mental task at present.

CR: Hypothetically, if you were to gaze into a crystal ball and look five years into the future of the hobby, what do you expect you’d see had changed in that time?

Christian: I hope to see more new companies, I hope to see work from fantastic authors like Oscar Rios ans David Conyers and Kevin Ross and others actually getting into print. I mean, I’m not going to live eternally, and I won’t find much use if my heirs slip a copy of Kevin Ross’s Colonial era supplements in my coffin ( maybe the ghouls will…). I hope that as we grow older, I can still play with my friends, even if we drift apart geographically, by using the Internet. My current group has four players around a table near Paris, and a friend who has moved near Brussels and plays through Skype. I tend to forget he’s not there physically. And I guess this is a great way to connect Keepers and players as new programs help us to transfer the rpg experience through the Internet.

CR: Thanks for your time, Christian!

State of the Tentacle: Sandy Petersen

For the tenth installment of the “State of the Tentacle” interview series we are very pleased to be able to go aaaaaall the way back to the very source of Lovecraftian roleplaying by talking with the man who is responsible for it all, Sandy Petersen. While Sandy left the pen-and-paper gaming industry many years ago to become an incredibly successful video game designer, he still plays Call of Cthulhu regularly. Both because of his inside knowledge of the hobby’s genesis, and also because of his current interests in bringing Cthulhu back to the gaming table (albeit in a slightly different form), we were very eager to have Sandy along to chew the tentacle for a bit. Thankfully he agreed (even before we applied the mind control sorcery :-)).

Introduction

Sandy Petersen is someone whose work should really be very well known to every reader of this blog. But just in case you’ve accidentally stumbled upon this page while searching for knitting patterns or something, here’s a capsule summary of what Sandy has contributed to Lovecraftian gaming. In 1981 he was the original author of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, adapting mechanics from Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying System to deliver a frightening and erudite world in which gamers could roleplay investigators of arcane Lovecraftian horrors. This was at a time when mainstream RPGs were little more than hack-and-slash dungeon crawls, so for a game to propose characters that were physically (and often mentally) frail fighting against odds that were likely to eventually overwhelm them … that was pretty radical. Some would say that it still is.

Sandy remained at Chaosium for the next seven years, acting as both a key writer for Call of Cthulhu and editor of the line. During that period many of the titles that are still regarded as unrivalled classics of the game were published — including the Masks of Nyarlathotep and Shadows of Yog-Sothoth campaigns and the alternate Modern-day, Gaslight and Dreamlands settings. In fact, pretty much every Lovecraftian product released by Chaosium between 1981 and 1989 has Sandy’s fingerprints all over it in some form or other.

Sandy left the world of pen-and-paper gaming, lured to the world of computer games (which was, in some ways, still in its infancy). His first job in this heady industry was with Microprose where he worked on Darklands, Hyperspeed, and even Civilization. He then moved on to a small company called id Software that was just about to launch a first-person shooter called “Doom” that was kind of a horror-story set in space. Sandy brought quite a significant amount of Cthulhu-oid madness to the monsters and levels of Doom, and later applied that to the worlds of Quake. The rest, as they say, is history. But these are but a handful of the highlights of Sandy’s extraordinary gaming credits. He also worked for Ensemble Studios and was a key designer on such genre-defining titles as the Age of Empires series, and Halo Wars.

On the success of this career, Sandy also spent two years teaching game design to graduate students at Southern Methodist University.

At present, Sandy is again back in the world of hands-on game design. He is a partner in a small startup firm preparing a Lovecraftian-themed boardgame for Kickstarter funding. If the Kickstarter campaign isn’t already active by the time you read this … it will be soon! The game is titled Cthulhu Wars, and it has received rave reviews from playtesters … some folks saying that it is the best thing Sandy has done since Call of Cthulhu. And it’s easy to see why, judging from the initial photos that have been released of the game board and the monstrous miniatures (montaged below … but click on the link above to see more).

As they say … Watch the Skies!

Cthulhu Reborn: With over three decades of history to Lovecraftian Roleplaying, what do you see as the key milestones and mis-steps that have been made during its evolution?

Sandy: It might sound self-serving, but the obvious key milestone was the publication of Call of Cthulhu – there really wasn’t any horror gaming before then, and not only was this horror-based, but it was honest-to-goodness Lovecraft, at least as I misunderstood it at the time (I was only 26!).

I think the next big milestone was the development of video graphics and sound to the point that a digital game could be made that was genuinely frightening. This was a gradual process, but certainly by 1993, there were games that creeped people out.

The third important development was the creation of tabletop card & boardgames that successfully channelled Lovecraft. The most obvious success is the Arkham Horror game, but there are others.

Another important step has been the spread of the Lovecraft influence into other genres. There are lots of games nowadays which, while not explicitly Cthulhu Mythos-based, obviously are under the shadow of the Man from Providence.

And one of the biggest upcoming improvements I believe to be the continued expansion of Lovecraft LARPs [Live-Action Role Playing games]. While I have played in, and written, several of these, my trip to the Italian Lucca game convention last year was a real eye-opener. Those Italians are hard-core – EVERYONE in the LARP was in full 1930s costume (including Italian police in what looked to me like fascist uniforms, women with fake mink stoles, you name it). They had even hired a live band to play dance music! The culmination of the evening was a guy wearing a complete Mi-Go “costume” coming out of the night to annihilate the other gamers – he had to walk on stilts for his hands & legs, and even had a voice-box changer to make weird insect-like noises. Must have cost a fortune. The guy who invited me to this told me that in an earlier LARP he ran, his job was to lay sprawled out, a bullet-wound in his head, throughout the four hours of the game. Shades of SAW. Those Italians left me in awe.

Sandy delivering a Masterclass at the Lucca Comics & Games Convention

I think the biggest mistake in Lovecraft gaming is the tendency for many designers to try to transform the players into some sort of “special agent” or super-skilled person with access to tools and techniques far beyond the grasp of we mere mortals. Horror, by its nature, needs to be seen to affect normal humans. In retrospect, looking back at my 26-year old self, I salute him for seeing the need to have the investigators be Jes’ Folks – not government spooks, or privately-funded mercenaries, but doctors, private eyes, and the like.

CR: Given the many and varied publishers and product lines that exist in 2013 to support the hobby, what things do you think this “mini-industry” is doing well and what could be done better?

Sandy: I think the more variety that is offered players in game systems, miniature figures, toys, and fun stuff, the better it is for the entire hobby. I am constantly thrilled when I see something new in this field.

CR: What do you see as the main factors shaping the direction of Lovecraftian RPGs right now?

Sandy: You got me, pal. For roleplaying Lovecraft, I pretty much just play Call of Cthulhu. After all, it is, in effect, my own “house rules”. And learning a new roleplaying system hasn’t been attractive to me since my college days.

<in the voice of the Frankenstein Monster> “Change bad!”

CR: What do you see as the main challenges currently facing the continued prosperity/growth of the hobby?

Sandy: The tendency for humor to start taking over Lovecraftian themes. Look – the Mythos is obviously easy to make fun of (as is all horror). And that is not a bad thing. But I think it would be sad if Cthulhu becomes more of a comedy figure than a terrifying one.

CR: If it was up to you, where would you like to see the product lines of Lovecraftian RPGs (whether it’s the games themselves or their support products) go next?

Sandy: I want to see Halloween costumes. Get with it, guys.

trendhunter.com

CR: Hypothetically, if you were to gaze into a crystal ball and look five years into the future of the hobby, what do you expect you’d see had changed in that time?

Sandy: I think that the game will spread to far more use of Skype-like resources, with people playing over distances. Cthulhu fans tend to be more mature than typical RPGers, and so we are frequently married, with careers and lives, rather than college kids living in a dorm. As a result, we are scattered far and wide, and it is physically harder for us to get together for our Lovecraft gaming fix. Technology is just now able to solve this problem, and I’m happy about it. Now old friends who live hundreds, even thousands of miles away, will be able to get together to play games.

Maybe there will even be a MMORPG [Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game] based on Call of Cthulhu one day. That is a holy grail worth waiting for.

CR: Thanks for your time, Sandy! Are you willing to come back and answer a few follow-up questions?

Sandy: You bet!

[ If there’s something you would like us to quiz Sandy about when we catch up with him again for a follow-up interview, either leave them as comments to this post, PM them user “dce” on either YSDC or rpg.net or email them to questions AT cthulhureborn.com ]