(or more properly, “The Descent of Skills, and Selection in Relation to Call of Cthulhu)

So, the other day I was busy converting an old, old scenario across to work with one of the newer editions of the Call of Cthulhu rules. I’ve done this a few times and I am always amazed at how little change there has been to the core set of skills that Sandy Petersen dreamed up for the game over 30 years ago. In all that time, while there have been some additions and modifications to the set of non-combat skills, overall much more has stayed the same.

But, there are a couple of notable cases where things have just dropped off the radar completely … and one of these (Linguist) was something I stumbled across during my scenario conversion. That got me wondering … just how many tweaks and changes have there really been to the CoC skill set over the past 30 years? How many things have, like Linguist, sort of just disappeared never to be seen again. Curious, I embarked upon some research — pulling out a bunch of books and character sheets and lining them up against one another. Based on this I found I could draw up a nifty (if large) “family tree” for CoC skills, like this:

(click on the image for a larger JPEG version)

Because it’s hard to see much detail when zoomed right out, here’s a close up section of the “family tree”:

So … what does this family tree say about the way in which Call of Cthulhu has evolved over the years? Well … I guess it largely confirms what I thought. There are a whole bunch of skills that are in the current edition (and even the forthcoming 7th edition) which hark all the way back to Sandy’s 1981 version of the game. A couple have gone through some minor but weird changes — who would have thought “Spot Hidden” was originally “Spot Hidden Object”? It used to be much easier to Dodge in 1st Edition CoC (base chance was DEX x 5 not DEX x 2).

How many things — other than Linguist — have gone the way of the Dodo? Well, not many really … Operate (other) died early on. Pick Pocket seems to died out with 5th Edition rules in 1992. A number of things have merged and changed name too.

I also discovered a few oddly persistant skills lurking somewhere around the periphery, occasionally dropping in and out. The weirdest one I noticed was Sailing: this was suggested in the 1920s Guidebook that came along with the 2nd Edition back in 1983, but never really made it onto any character sheets and was not carried into the 3rd Edition (1986). But in the same year, when the first Gaslight came out, Sailing was in there … but it dies out again when we come to 4th Edition (1989). Then, almost a decade later, Delta Green resurrects it again in both the core book (1997) and in Delta Green: Countdown (1999). Talk about a skill that just won’t give up and die!

Anyway … in case anyone has any use for this poster of the CoC Skill “family tree” … you can use either the larger image version obtained by clicking the image above. Or you can grab one of these PDFs:

  The Descent of Skills (as a single, gigantic page)

  The Descent of Skills (split over 12 pages, ideal substitute for wallpaper)

Welcome to 2014 … I hope it is all you want it to be.

The beginning of a new year is always a great opportunity to look back on everything that’s happened in the past 12 months … and for Cthulhu Reborn that has been a lot. We’ve launched our first commercial PDF product, run a series of interviews with some of the most influential Lovecraftian game designers, mapped out the evolution of Call of Cthulhu skills, created a family of insane handwriting fonts, and … er … a whole bunch of other stuff.

As always, more than half of what has kept us busy over 2013 is still in the pile marked “waiting to be released”, with our art, writing and design work currently upcoming in products from three or four different publishers, not to mention several projects we plan to release ourselves via this blog. It’s all rather dizzying in fact … but a good kind of dizzy (like when you’ve just finished your fifth Space Mead daiquiri). The pic below gives a few hints and teasers about things that are “coming soon” from Cthulhu Reborn, with a few other highlights from 2013 mixed in for good measure.

It’s been pretty quiet here on Cthulhu Reborn … but as usual that isn’t a sign that we’re not working hard on Lovecraftian project but rather a sign that we’re TOO busy to find time to blog. Right now CR is working hard on multiple projects for Chaosium, something for Sixtystone and a project for Golden Goblin Press. On top of that we’ve been working in the background on some freebie projects for release here … and hope to make a big announcement on that front soon.

For now, though, I thought I would post a bit of information about the various commercial projects that will feature art or writing from us … starting with the excellent Tales of The Crescent City by Oscar Rios’ Golden Goblin Press.

Most folks would probably already know that Cthulhu Reborn was lucky enough to be involved with designing handouts/props for Golden Goblin Press’ first book, Island of Ignorance (which can be seen here … and downloaded in deluxe high-res format for free). Working on that book was a great experience, not least because the whole team — and Oscar in particular — was so damn enthusiastic and so devoted to making every aspect of the book the best it could POSSIBLY be. Ultimately that enthusiasm not only created an impressive book (which went on to win an award as Best Adventure published in 2013) but delivered it pretty much exactly to the original schedule. This is a feat which few Kickstarter projects EVER manage … and I’m very proud to have been a (small) part of the team which achieved it!

Obviously not content to rest on his laurels, Oscar is back again with a second Kickstarter, this time seeking to publish a book of scenarios set in 1920s New Orleans. And once again Cthulhu Reborn has been asked to contribute most of the handouts (some samples below).

Tales of the Crescent City looks set to be another great book, and a project that I am very excited to be involved with for several reasons. For one, it takes as its template one of my favourite Call of Cthulhu scenario collections of recent years — Miskatonic River Press’ Tales of the Sleepless City. But maybe the biggest drawcard for me is that the New Orleans book revists one of my all-time favourite scenarios (by one of my all-time favourite writers): Kevin Ross’ 1989 adventure “Tell Me, Have You Seen The Yellow Sign.” Not only has Oscar somehow coaxed Kevin into writing a sequel adventure to this classic scenario of decadence and depravity, but as as stretch goal (already unlocked) he has arranged for Kevin to revise and remix the original scenario as well!

I am really looking forward to really sinking my teeth into handout design for Tales of the Crescent City over the next couple of weeks … but in the meantime, the Kickstarter itself still has a few days to run (at the time I write this). So, if you are at all interested in Lovecraftian scenarios set on the crumbling streets and haunted environs of New Orleans … I’d suggest you definitely consider backing the project. While it funded within hours of going live, there are still additional stretch goals that will add even more scenarios … and that’s something that benefits all backers (including me! :-))

The other day I promised to provide a few hints about projects that Cthulhu Reborn has been working on for different Call of Cthulhu publishers … and in a few days I hope to be able to provide a bunch of information about something special that I have been working on for Sixtystone, that is veeeeery close to being ready to go. The great thing about that project is that not only have I done some funky work on character sheet design … but Sixtystone have also trusted me to completely design the look of the book, create the layout and provide most of the art! Watch this space for more soon!

In the meantime, though, I thought I would talk a bit about something altogether different … I am working on a project for Chaosium (as yet unannounced, so I can’t say too much) that involves creating a mountain of prop documents with a “1920s Arkham, MA” feel to them. Readers of this blog will know that I’ve done lots of period props before … but the sheer scale of this particular job was quite astounding. Below is an example of the kind of thing that I have created.

Doing a lot of this type of work in a short time frame has been quite an interesting experience, and it has really honed my skills at … well, at making brand new things that look like they are really old. Over time I have developed quite a selection of techniques for using digital tools — designed to make crisp and precise artworks — to make things that are not at all crisp or precise. I thought that folks might be interested in seeing how different techniques can come together to make something like the example above look old … so here’s a quick run-through of how I approach creating designs like this.

Although the techniques I mention below make particular reference to features in Adobe Illustrator (my tool of choice), I’m sure that most if not all of them are also available in other drawing packages. BTW: for all images shown on this page, you can click to see larger versions.

The first key design decision for prop documents is the choice of fonts … its usually pretty easy to find fonts that look vaguely period-specific, even using free fonts or the standard set that comes with modern Operating Systems. Usually I try to find a period-specific referemce image of the type of prop I’m designing, then pick fonts that are “close enough”. Here’s the “Burial or Removal Permit” prop in its raw form — just a bunch of text formatted with some vaguely 1920s-looking fonts:

While that already looks pretty reasonable, there are a few things that stop it looking truly vintage. One of the first things I like to do is to tweak the inter-character spacing in text (technically called the “tracking”) of the text. Modern fonts and computer typesetting seems to usually create text where the letters are quite tightly spaced, but old hand-set type was much, much looser — doubtless there’s some historical reason for this. Once you’re used to looking at true vintage typography, samples spaced in a “modern” way just jump out at you as non-authentic. Fortunately, modern drawing and typesetting tools give you a fair amount of control over a number of parameters (including tracking), so you can tweak away to create that wider-spaced look. Here’s a screenshot of Adobe Illustrator’s way of doing this:

And here’s what our sample looks like with some wider character spacing for most of the text:

To my eyes, this is already starting to look more like an old document. The next thing to address, though, is the crispness of the lettering — most fonts (and typesetting software) aim to create things that look crisp, but here we want something that looks a bit rough around the edges. One easy way we can make things look less crisp is by adding a stroke (basically a line) to the outside of the text. Adobe Illustrator lets you pick the width of the stroke as well as its colour, so you can achieve several different degrees of de-crisping:

And here’s our prop with thin black outline strokes added to all the lettering.

See how that beautiful crispness of the original typeset text has been grunged up a little? But we can go even further … Old typesetting methods were pretty error-prone: real-world offset type would pick up ink unevenly and if there was dust or other grime around the place it was pretty easy for lots of randomness to creep into the outline of letters. If you don’t believe me, go look at some scans of 1920s newspapers! Adobe Illustrator has a nifty way of similarly adding randomness to shapes — and thankfully also to lettering — by means of its “roughen” filter. This basically divides up a shape or letter outline into lots of small segments and randomly perturbs each one by an amount within a range you specify. Here’s how you can use it to add some randomness to our text:

And here’s what the prop looks like with everything grunged up just a bit. This effect can easily go overboard, so it’s important to show some restraint (otherwise the text can get entirely unreadable) — here I am telling Illustrator that it can only perturb the outline of text by at most 0.1mm but that it can randomly shunt things around 79 spots per inch around the perimeter of the letter.

The next thing I usually do to make text seem even more “indistinct” (in a vintage printing kind of way) is to give it a variable level of opacity to model the differing amounts of ink that were picked up by different parts of the type. While some letters will have picked up a whole bunch of ink, dust and grime will have caused other letters to pick up less than they should, and in extreme cases maybe left part of the letter entirely free of ink. We can digitally do something similar using my all-time favourite feature of Adobe Illustrator — the Opacity Mask. You can read detailed descriptions of what these are elsewhere I’m sure … but effectively Opacity Masks let you specify how see-through an object should be at different points across its surface by providing ANOTHER monochrome bitmap or shape (the mask). Wherever the mask is white, the original image will show through perfectly; where it’s grey it will show through partially, and where the mask is black the source image won’t be visible at all. When your mask looks like this:

you can create a subtle effect which makes you subconsciously see grimy old type instead of nice, new computer typeset type. You put the mask on top of the text you want to make grungy, select the two and tell Illustrator to go:

Here’s the result for our prop — it’s pretty subtle, but quite effective.

There’s still another way in which we can try to emulate some of the grungy effects of real-world printing. Depending on the type of paper being used, real-world samples tend to bleed a little bit around the edges (this happens even with inkjet printers a bit) — that makes the edges seem sort of a bit blurry or faded. We can model this using an “outer glow” effect in digital drawing tools. Here’s the same prop but with a small amount of black outer glow added to all text:

Notice how this makes everything seem just slightly blurry … but in a way which looks like something printed a long time ago. Finally, we can add in some realistic paper texture to make things looks like a real-world document:

When adding paper, I have found it is usually a good idea to make the text ever-so-slightly transparent (maybe setting opacity at 90%). That way, some of the paper texture still shows through even in the printed parts, and it generally looks more like a printed document instead of a piece of paper with some text perched in front of it.

And that’s our prop … I hope this brief tutorial walk-through of the vintage prop creation process is helpful or instructive to other designers and artists out there. I have used all of these techniques (sometimes separately, sometimes together) to create a LOT of different period props — when it works, they can look very convincing indeed! At least to my eyes . . .

I’ve mentioned previously on this blog that Cthulhu Reborn has been busy over the past year or so working on a range of different projects for Call of Cthulhu publishers. Well, guess what … one of them finally got released :-)

Cathulhu is a 68 page book from Sixtystone Press which offers a rather unique setting for Call of Cthulhu — one on which the players take on the roles of Feline Investigators, battling the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos with poise, elegance and velvet paws. It’s a pretty unusual little sub-universe for CoC gaming, but strangely one that actually quite works. I have to admit I was slightly skeptical … and then I read the scenario included in the book, and it all clicked into place. Ah, so … it’s just like a traditional investigation … only with cats and cat-related antagonists.

Anyway … my involvement with Cathulhu began almost a year ago when Sixtystone commissioned Cthulhu Reborn to design a character sheet for the book. From there it sort of snowballed until we ended up in the position of providing not only the entire book layout, both covers … and about 2/3rds of the interior art. In case you’re curious about how the book looks, I’ve put together a montage of a few randomly-chosen pages:

Cathulhu is available right now from RPGNow and DriveThruRPG. You can buy it either as a PDF or a softcover book (or a bundle of the two).

BTW: you shouldn’t confuse this book with Call of Catthulhu, which is a non-BRP system from Faster Monkey Games for playing Lovecraftian-themed games with cat characters. That game, recently expanded via a successful Kickstarter, also looks good — but I prefer the Sixtystone book. I guess you’d expect that :-)

I hope that folks enjoy Sixtystone’s Cathulhu, and that people find the layout and art scheme we have chosen to be one which adds to the idiosyncratic “vibe” of the setting. And Catnip for all!

Unquestionably one of the most loved and enduring pieces ever written for Call of Cthulhu (or any Lovecraftian RPG) is the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. Despite the fact that it was written almost 30 years ago when the field was in its infancy it still tops most polls and was mentioned as a defining moment by pretty much every gaming luminary I interviewed for the State of the Tentacle series earlier this year.

About six years ago, a group of highly creative and talented folks hatched a plan over on the forums of Yog-sothoth.com. Their plan was to create a “Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion”, a book filled with source material, helpful hints and ideas, and all sorts of other stuff that would be helpful to a Keeper who was running this classic campaign. The project was headed up by Bret Kramer (WinstonP on the forum) but rapidly attracted a huge array of willing contributors.

Originally the plan was to release the Companion as a Chaosium monograph … but the book grew and grew and grew. And grew. Pretty soon it was obvious that this would be far beyond the normal monograph length. Since then lots of different methods of publication have been considered and many different road-blocks encountered. But the original team kept going and today their monumental efforts FINALLY bore fruit — not as a Chaosium book, or even as a book published by one of Chaosium’s licensees, but as a FREE resource released to the community.

You can go to this page to download your own copy of the 572 page book. The current version is slightly pre-release still (in as much as the creative team is still busily editing the layout to incorporate voluminous copyreader notes) … but even in this form it is a beautiful piece of work and something that no Call of Cthulhu Keeper should be without.

I had a very small involvement with this project — quite late in its development I was approached to contribute quite a few handout designs to the Companion. The book includes several new scenarios (side adventures and a prequel) as well as significantly fleshing out one of the key clues from the original published campaign. I was priveleged to be able to contribute some of these newspaper articles, reports, but … most of all lots of hand-written notes. You can see some of my designs peppered through this post. Alternatively you can see ALL of them on this portfolio page.

I sincerely hope the Cthulhu gaming community enjoys and celebrates the free release of the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion. But even moreso I hope everyone appreciates the enormous volume of work that has been put into this project by a staggering array of talented folks. It’s quite unbelievable that something so vast is being given away for free … and I strongly urge everyone whose game benefits from the work of these selfless many to consider somehow supporting their future works or indeed financially supporting Yog-Sothoth by way of a donation to keep the community going.

Now … go out and find out what happened to that Carlyle Expedition.

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”!

One of the thing I like most about designing props for Lovecraftian games is that it gives me the intriguing opportunity to design the “look” of some small part of the Lovecraftian world — whether that be the way that a particular period newspaper will look when read by Investigators, or the way in which a low-quality smart-phone video of a Mythos manifestation might look. Sure they are only small bits of “invention” … but I like to think that by creating little aspects of the Lovecraftian universe in a form that is highly evocative of a historical or geographic reality, players of the games might get drawn into the game just that little bit more.

The most fun things to create visually are things that have some kind of “place” in the weird alternate New England that Lovecraft created as a setting for his stories — what is often called today “Lovecraft Country”. Fortunately there are a LOT of Lovecraftian game scenarios which use this setting in some way or other, so I get asked to make newspaper reports, weird hand-written witch diaries, and other assorted Lovecraft Country paraphernalia suprisingly often.

One of the most extensive pieces of creation I’ve done to date is a whole raft of material set in Kingsport, including an entire “look and feel” for the local newspaper, the Kingsport Chronicle. I’ve previously blogged about that monumental piece of (ongoing) work.

A more recent request for newspaper props — to help illustrate the scenarios in the upcoming Golden Goblin book “The Island of Ignorance” — took me to the more obscure town of Aylesbury. One of the scenarios in that book called for a newspaper prop to be created, an article from the local Aylesbury paper “The Aylesbury Transcript”. Being a (presumably) much smaller town than Arkham or Kingsport, I figured the style for this prop should evoke a “small rural local rag” … Surprisingly it’s pretty easy to find some good scanned examples onling of rustic newspapers from the 1920s — reading them really brings home the “small town” remoteness of these places in the era (the front page might include a column of dozens of single sentence news entries like “Joe Blogs is building new paving for his farmhouse” or “Miss Johnson is leaving on Tuesday to visit relatives in California”).

For the prop in question (pictured as part of the montage below), I ended up basing a design on “The Turners Falls Reporter” (a small-town Massachusetts paper). As I was creating it I realized this wasn’t the first time I’d visited Aylesbury for a prop … other work for a different Call of Cthulhu licensee book (still unreleased) had taken me there a year or so earlier, as shown below.

While the newspaper clipping created for the scenario really only shows a small part of a page of “The Aylesbury Transcript”, the process of creating it involved mocking up an entire masthead for the newspaper, as shown below. I figure that if anyone else ever wants to create a prop involving this newspaper, they should feel free to use this design free of cost (high-res version available here).

Other Projects

In other, non-Lovecraft-Country news, there have been several other really neat projects which I have been priveleged to support in recent months by way of pieces of design work. I was lucky enough to contribute a small selection of art pieces for the forthcoming “Horror on the Orient Express”, 2nd Edition. This has always been my favourite of Chaosium’s CoC campaigns, so having the chance to contribute to its relaunch (albeit in a minor way) was a hugely satisfying experience — thanks, in no small part to the professionalism of editor Mark Morrison (who is a real pro who’s contributions to the game’s long history are frequently undervalued IMHO).

But the other MAJOR thing that has been occupying my time is work for the  shiny new Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. I was asked to contribute character sheet designs for the new edition books … which really is an amazing honour. Originally I thought I might get to contribute a 1920s design … and if I were extremely lucky a modern day one as well. But, as followers of the Kickstarter will know, stretch goals unlocked along the campaign have added a booklet called “Cthulhu Through The Ages” which has notes on running 7th Edition games in numerous others settings — and guess what? All of those settings need new character sheets. So all up I think I many end up contributing something like 9 or 10 different designs. The montage below shows some of the elements that have already been sketched out for these sheets (although there are many things still to finalize).

As someone who tries to create beautiful prop documents for Lovecraftian games, one thing I have developed a sharp eye for is attention to detail in historical accuracy. It really is the difference between a “quickly-thrown-together-handout-for-my-group’s-homebrew” and a high-quality art item you’d expect to see in a published book.

One thing for which I have also developed a keen sense of is the (small) community of people who aim to create props/handouts to the highest quality. The highest exemplar in this field is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, whose work has been featured in their own products but also in recent releases from Miskatonic River Press. A lesser-known, but similarly excellent, source of high-quality prop documents is the GEEDUNK Props sets produced in 2010 and 2011 by Michael Fanara of Little Ferret Films.

Michael designed a series of prop documents to supplement previously published scenarios, employing very similar templates and fonts as those used by the HPL Historical Society. And, even better, he released these props sets for free.

So why haven’t most people heard of the GEEDUNK Props? … Well, the biggest reason is that Michael’s website “went dark” a little over a year ago. This is a great shame, as the GEEDUNK Props represent an amazing resource to Call of Cthulhu Keepers who are looking for some ready-made high-quality props to spice up many of the most-popular scenarios and campaigns published for the game.

In the interests of keeping this excellent set of props “in print” and available under their original (Creative Commons) license, Cthulhu Reborn have decided to create a mirror site for the GEEDUNK Props. This isn’t intended as an attempt to claim these fantastic props as our own … but rather a means to keep them available to the community.

We hope that by making these resources available, Call of Cthulhu gamers will continue to enjoy the fruits of Michael’s considerable efforts … and maybe it might also inspire other prop-makers to aim for the same level of quality when designing their own props.

The GEEDUNK Props sets provide enhanced props for the following campaigns and scenarios:

• Edge of Darkness (from the CoC 5th and 6th Ed rules)
• Masks of Nyarlathotep
• Beyond the Mountains of Madness
• Fungi From Yuggoth
• Secrets of San Francisco
• Pagan Call (a Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign published for free on the C:DA site)

Click here to go to the mirror and take a look.

Well … it’s been a while since I last updated this blog. But rest assured my silence certainly does not mean that I haven’t been busy working on a range of exciting Cthulhu-related projects. Some of these are for (hopefully) free publication here on Cthulhu Reborn, but many are jobs for Chaosium and other Call of Cthulhu publishers. My post today is about one of these.

I’m sure by now that many people have heard about the “new kid on the block” in Call of Cthulhu publishing, Oscar Rios’ Golden Goblin Publishing. The flagship product which launched this new endeavour was a successful Kickstarter for a book called “Island of Ignorance (The Third Cthulhu Companion).” This book collects a miscellany of interesting source material along with five highly-regarded scenarios. On all fronts this is an excellent book. If you were a Kickstarter backer for a printer copy, you probably have yours by now — and if you weren’t a backer you can now buy a copy (either PDF or softcopy) direct from the Golden Goblin Store.

Now my role in this wonderful project was as the supplier of props/handouts for the various scenarios in the book. I made a gallery of these designs available a little while ago, after several folks expressed curiousity about what handout goodness they would get if/when they bought the book. But … the good folk over at Golden Goblin were also keen that these props be made available in PDF form, so that nobody need risk the spine of their beautiful book to photocopy handouts for their game. So today, I am happy to release — in conjunction with Golden Goblin — the “Islands of Ignorance” PDF prop pack.

You can download the prop pack for free using the link below. It spans to 26 pages and is a smidge over 14MB. Every prop from “Island of Ignorance” is presented here in higher-resolution/larger size than the versions included with the book itself. Plus, as an added treat for loyal goblins, you get each handout in two versions — one which is the basic prop design with minimal textures and fx, which the second is the textured versions. I hope you and your players enjoy these handouts …

  Island of Ignorance Prop Pack [26 pages, 14MB]

Feedback

We here at Cthulhu Reborn always love hearing about the insane things folks do with our props/handouts/scenarios/character sheets. If you want to share something cool, feel free to send us a (Lovecraftian, ie eerily portentious) note using the form below.

(or more properly, “The Descent of Skills, and Selection in Relation to Call of Cthulhu)

So, the other day I was busy converting an old, old scenario across to work with one of the newer editions of the Call of Cthulhu rules. I’ve done this a few times and I am always amazed at how little change there has been to the core set of skills that Sandy Petersen dreamed up for the game over 30 years ago. In all that time, while there have been some additions and modifications to the set of non-combat skills, overall much more has stayed the same.

But, there are a couple of notable cases where things have just dropped off the radar completely … and one of these (Linguist) was something I stumbled across during my scenario conversion. That got me wondering … just how many tweaks and changes have there really been to the CoC skill set over the past 30 years? How many things have, like Linguist, sort of just disappeared never to be seen again. Curious, I embarked upon some research — pulling out a bunch of books and character sheets and lining them up against one another. Based on this I found I could draw up a nifty (if large) “family tree” for CoC skills, like this:

(click on the image for a larger JPEG version)

Because it’s hard to see much detail when zoomed right out, here’s a close up section of the “family tree”:

So … what does this family tree say about the way in which Call of Cthulhu has evolved over the years? Well … I guess it largely confirms what I thought. There are a whole bunch of skills that are in the current edition (and even the forthcoming 7th edition) which hark all the way back to Sandy’s 1981 version of the game. A couple have gone through some minor but weird changes — who would have thought “Spot Hidden” was originally “Spot Hidden Object”? It used to be much easier to Dodge in 1st Edition CoC (base chance was DEX x 5 not DEX x 2).

How many things — other than Linguist — have gone the way of the Dodo? Well, not many really … Operate (other) died early on. Pick Pocket seems to died out with 5th Edition rules in 1992. A number of things have merged and changed name too.

I also discovered a few oddly persistant skills lurking somewhere around the periphery, occasionally dropping in and out. The weirdest one I noticed was Sailing: this was suggested in the 1920s Guidebook that came along with the 2nd Edition back in 1983, but never really made it onto any character sheets and was not carried into the 3rd Edition (1986). But in the same year, when the first Gaslight came out, Sailing was in there … but it dies out again when we come to 4th Edition (1989). Then, almost a decade later, Delta Green resurrects it again in both the core book (1997) and in Delta Green: Countdown (1999). Talk about a skill that just won’t give up and die!

Anyway … in case anyone has any use for this poster of the CoC Skill “family tree” … you can use either the larger image version obtained by clicking the image above. Or you can grab one of these PDFs:

  The Descent of Skills (as a single, gigantic page)

  The Descent of Skills (split over 12 pages, ideal substitute for wallpaper)

Welcome to 2014 … I hope it is all you want it to be.

The beginning of a new year is always a great opportunity to look back on everything that’s happened in the past 12 months … and for Cthulhu Reborn that has been a lot. We’ve launched our first commercial PDF product, run a series of interviews with some of the most influential Lovecraftian game designers, mapped out the evolution of Call of Cthulhu skills, created a family of insane handwriting fonts, and … er … a whole bunch of other stuff.

As always, more than half of what has kept us busy over 2013 is still in the pile marked “waiting to be released”, with our art, writing and design work currently upcoming in products from three or four different publishers, not to mention several projects we plan to release ourselves via this blog. It’s all rather dizzying in fact … but a good kind of dizzy (like when you’ve just finished your fifth Space Mead daiquiri). The pic below gives a few hints and teasers about things that are “coming soon” from Cthulhu Reborn, with a few other highlights from 2013 mixed in for good measure.

It’s been pretty quiet here on Cthulhu Reborn … but as usual that isn’t a sign that we’re not working hard on Lovecraftian project but rather a sign that we’re TOO busy to find time to blog. Right now CR is working hard on multiple projects for Chaosium, something for Sixtystone and a project for Golden Goblin Press. On top of that we’ve been working in the background on some freebie projects for release here … and hope to make a big announcement on that front soon.

For now, though, I thought I would post a bit of information about the various commercial projects that will feature art or writing from us … starting with the excellent Tales of The Crescent City by Oscar Rios’ Golden Goblin Press.

Most folks would probably already know that Cthulhu Reborn was lucky enough to be involved with designing handouts/props for Golden Goblin Press’ first book, Island of Ignorance (which can be seen here … and downloaded in deluxe high-res format for free). Working on that book was a great experience, not least because the whole team — and Oscar in particular — was so damn enthusiastic and so devoted to making every aspect of the book the best it could POSSIBLY be. Ultimately that enthusiasm not only created an impressive book (which went on to win an award as Best Adventure published in 2013) but delivered it pretty much exactly to the original schedule. This is a feat which few Kickstarter projects EVER manage … and I’m very proud to have been a (small) part of the team which achieved it!

Obviously not content to rest on his laurels, Oscar is back again with a second Kickstarter, this time seeking to publish a book of scenarios set in 1920s New Orleans. And once again Cthulhu Reborn has been asked to contribute most of the handouts (some samples below).

Tales of the Crescent City looks set to be another great book, and a project that I am very excited to be involved with for several reasons. For one, it takes as its template one of my favourite Call of Cthulhu scenario collections of recent years — Miskatonic River Press’ Tales of the Sleepless City. But maybe the biggest drawcard for me is that the New Orleans book revists one of my all-time favourite scenarios (by one of my all-time favourite writers): Kevin Ross’ 1989 adventure “Tell Me, Have You Seen The Yellow Sign.” Not only has Oscar somehow coaxed Kevin into writing a sequel adventure to this classic scenario of decadence and depravity, but as as stretch goal (already unlocked) he has arranged for Kevin to revise and remix the original scenario as well!

I am really looking forward to really sinking my teeth into handout design for Tales of the Crescent City over the next couple of weeks … but in the meantime, the Kickstarter itself still has a few days to run (at the time I write this). So, if you are at all interested in Lovecraftian scenarios set on the crumbling streets and haunted environs of New Orleans … I’d suggest you definitely consider backing the project. While it funded within hours of going live, there are still additional stretch goals that will add even more scenarios … and that’s something that benefits all backers (including me! :-))

The other day I promised to provide a few hints about projects that Cthulhu Reborn has been working on for different Call of Cthulhu publishers … and in a few days I hope to be able to provide a bunch of information about something special that I have been working on for Sixtystone, that is veeeeery close to being ready to go. The great thing about that project is that not only have I done some funky work on character sheet design … but Sixtystone have also trusted me to completely design the look of the book, create the layout and provide most of the art! Watch this space for more soon!

In the meantime, though, I thought I would talk a bit about something altogether different … I am working on a project for Chaosium (as yet unannounced, so I can’t say too much) that involves creating a mountain of prop documents with a “1920s Arkham, MA” feel to them. Readers of this blog will know that I’ve done lots of period props before … but the sheer scale of this particular job was quite astounding. Below is an example of the kind of thing that I have created.

Doing a lot of this type of work in a short time frame has been quite an interesting experience, and it has really honed my skills at … well, at making brand new things that look like they are really old. Over time I have developed quite a selection of techniques for using digital tools — designed to make crisp and precise artworks — to make things that are not at all crisp or precise. I thought that folks might be interested in seeing how different techniques can come together to make something like the example above look old … so here’s a quick run-through of how I approach creating designs like this.

Although the techniques I mention below make particular reference to features in Adobe Illustrator (my tool of choice), I’m sure that most if not all of them are also available in other drawing packages. BTW: for all images shown on this page, you can click to see larger versions.

The first key design decision for prop documents is the choice of fonts … its usually pretty easy to find fonts that look vaguely period-specific, even using free fonts or the standard set that comes with modern Operating Systems. Usually I try to find a period-specific referemce image of the type of prop I’m designing, then pick fonts that are “close enough”. Here’s the “Burial or Removal Permit” prop in its raw form — just a bunch of text formatted with some vaguely 1920s-looking fonts:

While that already looks pretty reasonable, there are a few things that stop it looking truly vintage. One of the first things I like to do is to tweak the inter-character spacing in text (technically called the “tracking”) of the text. Modern fonts and computer typesetting seems to usually create text where the letters are quite tightly spaced, but old hand-set type was much, much looser — doubtless there’s some historical reason for this. Once you’re used to looking at true vintage typography, samples spaced in a “modern” way just jump out at you as non-authentic. Fortunately, modern drawing and typesetting tools give you a fair amount of control over a number of parameters (including tracking), so you can tweak away to create that wider-spaced look. Here’s a screenshot of Adobe Illustrator’s way of doing this:

And here’s what our sample looks like with some wider character spacing for most of the text:

To my eyes, this is already starting to look more like an old document. The next thing to address, though, is the crispness of the lettering — most fonts (and typesetting software) aim to create things that look crisp, but here we want something that looks a bit rough around the edges. One easy way we can make things look less crisp is by adding a stroke (basically a line) to the outside of the text. Adobe Illustrator lets you pick the width of the stroke as well as its colour, so you can achieve several different degrees of de-crisping:

And here’s our prop with thin black outline strokes added to all the lettering.

See how that beautiful crispness of the original typeset text has been grunged up a little? But we can go even further … Old typesetting methods were pretty error-prone: real-world offset type would pick up ink unevenly and if there was dust or other grime around the place it was pretty easy for lots of randomness to creep into the outline of letters. If you don’t believe me, go look at some scans of 1920s newspapers! Adobe Illustrator has a nifty way of similarly adding randomness to shapes — and thankfully also to lettering — by means of its “roughen” filter. This basically divides up a shape or letter outline into lots of small segments and randomly perturbs each one by an amount within a range you specify. Here’s how you can use it to add some randomness to our text:

And here’s what the prop looks like with everything grunged up just a bit. This effect can easily go overboard, so it’s important to show some restraint (otherwise the text can get entirely unreadable) — here I am telling Illustrator that it can only perturb the outline of text by at most 0.1mm but that it can randomly shunt things around 79 spots per inch around the perimeter of the letter.

The next thing I usually do to make text seem even more “indistinct” (in a vintage printing kind of way) is to give it a variable level of opacity to model the differing amounts of ink that were picked up by different parts of the type. While some letters will have picked up a whole bunch of ink, dust and grime will have caused other letters to pick up less than they should, and in extreme cases maybe left part of the letter entirely free of ink. We can digitally do something similar using my all-time favourite feature of Adobe Illustrator — the Opacity Mask. You can read detailed descriptions of what these are elsewhere I’m sure … but effectively Opacity Masks let you specify how see-through an object should be at different points across its surface by providing ANOTHER monochrome bitmap or shape (the mask). Wherever the mask is white, the original image will show through perfectly; where it’s grey it will show through partially, and where the mask is black the source image won’t be visible at all. When your mask looks like this:

you can create a subtle effect which makes you subconsciously see grimy old type instead of nice, new computer typeset type. You put the mask on top of the text you want to make grungy, select the two and tell Illustrator to go:

Here’s the result for our prop — it’s pretty subtle, but quite effective.

There’s still another way in which we can try to emulate some of the grungy effects of real-world printing. Depending on the type of paper being used, real-world samples tend to bleed a little bit around the edges (this happens even with inkjet printers a bit) — that makes the edges seem sort of a bit blurry or faded. We can model this using an “outer glow” effect in digital drawing tools. Here’s the same prop but with a small amount of black outer glow added to all text:

Notice how this makes everything seem just slightly blurry … but in a way which looks like something printed a long time ago. Finally, we can add in some realistic paper texture to make things looks like a real-world document:

When adding paper, I have found it is usually a good idea to make the text ever-so-slightly transparent (maybe setting opacity at 90%). That way, some of the paper texture still shows through even in the printed parts, and it generally looks more like a printed document instead of a piece of paper with some text perched in front of it.

And that’s our prop … I hope this brief tutorial walk-through of the vintage prop creation process is helpful or instructive to other designers and artists out there. I have used all of these techniques (sometimes separately, sometimes together) to create a LOT of different period props — when it works, they can look very convincing indeed! At least to my eyes . . .

I’ve mentioned previously on this blog that Cthulhu Reborn has been busy over the past year or so working on a range of different projects for Call of Cthulhu publishers. Well, guess what … one of them finally got released :-)

Cathulhu is a 68 page book from Sixtystone Press which offers a rather unique setting for Call of Cthulhu — one on which the players take on the roles of Feline Investigators, battling the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos with poise, elegance and velvet paws. It’s a pretty unusual little sub-universe for CoC gaming, but strangely one that actually quite works. I have to admit I was slightly skeptical … and then I read the scenario included in the book, and it all clicked into place. Ah, so … it’s just like a traditional investigation … only with cats and cat-related antagonists.

Anyway … my involvement with Cathulhu began almost a year ago when Sixtystone commissioned Cthulhu Reborn to design a character sheet for the book. From there it sort of snowballed until we ended up in the position of providing not only the entire book layout, both covers … and about 2/3rds of the interior art. In case you’re curious about how the book looks, I’ve put together a montage of a few randomly-chosen pages:

Cathulhu is available right now from RPGNow and DriveThruRPG. You can buy it either as a PDF or a softcover book (or a bundle of the two).

BTW: you shouldn’t confuse this book with Call of Catthulhu, which is a non-BRP system from Faster Monkey Games for playing Lovecraftian-themed games with cat characters. That game, recently expanded via a successful Kickstarter, also looks good — but I prefer the Sixtystone book. I guess you’d expect that :-)

I hope that folks enjoy Sixtystone’s Cathulhu, and that people find the layout and art scheme we have chosen to be one which adds to the idiosyncratic “vibe” of the setting. And Catnip for all!

This just in.

Plucky American game designer and layout artist Badger McInnes has just launched a startling humanitarian fund raising drive … to FEED THE SHOGGOTH.

Yes, that’s right. Finally, the world will be uniting to FEED THE SHOGGOTH. Finally a cause that we can ALL get behind.

For many years scientists world-wide have slaved in vain, pouring coloured liquids from one test tube to another, in an effort to finally once and for all find the solution to ending global Shoggoth hunger. And now, finally, somebody is doing something about it! More power to you, Mr McInnes!

Or … maybe I am reading FAR TOO MUCH into Badger’s Kickstarter, launched today:

Either way … I would highly recommend anyone who is EITHER interested in high quality Cthulhu-themed card games OR interested in ensuring Shoggoths everywhere don’t need to go to sleep hungry tonight, check out Badger’s most excellent Kickstarter campaign. Some of the rewards at higher backing tiers look especially awesome, and unlike several other recent KS campaigns which I have opted out of, non-US postage is not insanely over the top!

Also … in related news … the inestimable Mr McInnes has just recently posted on his blog some neat details of the design work he did for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition rules. If you have an interest in gaining an insight into the many, MANY little design decisions that go into producing a beautiful layout for a game book, you could do far worse than check out Badger’s blog.

That’s me, signing out … back to feed my pair of Welsh Highland Shoggoths before taking them on a walk to the albino penguin pits!

This post is perhaps a bit left-field for Cthulhu Reborn, but I figure that if there’s one thing that every reader of this blog wouldn’t mind hearing more about … it’s free stuff that can potentially be useful in enhancing Lovecraftian tabletop RPG sessions.

So, in the spirit of sharing links to (potentially) useful freebie things, I’m going to talk for a bit about a source for limitless FREE (and good) Dark Ambient music. Now I know the idea of using spooky or atmospheric music to “set the tone” for a gaming session is certainly nothing new. I have read lots of posts on forums over the years with recommendations for movie soundtracks and the like which would make great backdrops to a Cthulhu game gathering. Heck, there have even been a few commercial CDs specifically put out to accompany Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu books.

Over the years I’ve tracked down loads of excellent CDs and MP3s from artists in the curious musical sub-genre called “Dark Ambient” — it’s that sort of intersection of minimalistic background sounds with drony hypnotic sounds and general disturbing spookiness. I was even remarkably fortunate enough last year to see one of the geniuses of this style of music — Lustmord — perform live [here's a snippet of his live show on YouTube].

Anyway … up until recently, my collection of Dark Ambient music has been limited to what I could easily track down (and buy). But then, by chance I stumbled upon the existence of an incredible resource: a net-label called “GV Sound”. Now a net-label, for those who haven’t run into one before, is a kind of record label that exists only online and (usually) releases stuff for free. They are usually themed around a musical style or collection of styles, and the label adds value by only releasing things that are .. well up to their standards. So, grabbing music from one of these labels is much less hit-or-miss than just randomly downloading an MP3 released independently by “some random guy or girl”. But it’s still free music.

I don’t really know much about the “GV Sound” net-label except what it says on their website: “GV Sound Netlabel is open to Dark Ambient, Drone, Noise, Ambient Music.
We provide free distribution of independent Music under Creative Commons License with free dowloads.” The label seems to be based in either Russia or Ukraine, and a lot of the music it releases also seems to come from that part of the world, and has been releasing free music at a rapdily-increasing pace since 2011. At the time I write this they’ve clocked up 294 releases totalling over 2200 files (a little of 11 DAYS of music, of varying types of darkish ambientness).

If this sounds like your sort of thing, I would very much suggest scooting over to the Internet Archive (archive.org) which collects most of the GV Sound releases on this page. You can download ZIP versions of entire albums, or listen to the music online using an in-browser player supplied by archive.org. If you just want to a quick sample of what this is about, maybe this page would give you a taste of what this label is all about. The same music is also available on other music sharing sites like Bandcamp. I’ve listened to just a fraction of what’s available for free … but I’m very impressed with the general quality. Releases vary in style across everything from pure drones to spooky piano pieces to noisy and disturbing soundscapes. Lots of it could be suitable for use in Lovecraftian games. Some of the track titles (at least the ones that aren’t in Cyrillic letters) seem to hint at Cthulhu-related inspiration to some of the music, too.

One of the more remarkable of the GV Sound releases was a compilation of different forms of Ambient music they put out to celebrate the numerologically signiciant date 11 November 2011 (11/11/11). This compilation runs for … well 24 hours, covering the entire day in 11 minute chunks. The “Light Side” half consists of 56 tracks and the “Night Side” half has 70. Quite an achievement.

On a related (but not quite freebie) note … I should also give a mention to another Cthulhu-related ambient musical artist, who has also released some great music intended to be either a background soundtrack to Lovecraftian games or just music to listen to while you read HPL’s fiction. The music is released under the name Seesar, and here’s a link to my favourite of his (their?) releases on Bandcamp.

So … I guess there’s no reason NOT to try to scare the bejeebus out of your players next time you gather together (in a darkened room) to roll the dice to save the world from the Great Old Ones. Save it for another week, anyway :-)

One of the thing I like most about designing props for Lovecraftian games is that it gives me the intriguing opportunity to design the “look” of some small part of the Lovecraftian world — whether that be the way that a particular period newspaper will look when read by Investigators, or the way in which a low-quality smart-phone video of a Mythos manifestation might look. Sure they are only small bits of “invention” … but I like to think that by creating little aspects of the Lovecraftian universe in a form that is highly evocative of a historical or geographic reality, players of the games might get drawn into the game just that little bit more.

The most fun things to create visually are things that have some kind of “place” in the weird alternate New England that Lovecraft created as a setting for his stories — what is often called today “Lovecraft Country”. Fortunately there are a LOT of Lovecraftian game scenarios which use this setting in some way or other, so I get asked to make newspaper reports, weird hand-written witch diaries, and other assorted Lovecraft Country paraphernalia suprisingly often.

One of the most extensive pieces of creation I’ve done to date is a whole raft of material set in Kingsport, including an entire “look and feel” for the local newspaper, the Kingsport Chronicle. I’ve previously blogged about that monumental piece of (ongoing) work.

A more recent request for newspaper props — to help illustrate the scenarios in the upcoming Golden Goblin book “The Island of Ignorance” — took me to the more obscure town of Aylesbury. One of the scenarios in that book called for a newspaper prop to be created, an article from the local Aylesbury paper “The Aylesbury Transcript”. Being a (presumably) much smaller town than Arkham or Kingsport, I figured the style for this prop should evoke a “small rural local rag” … Surprisingly it’s pretty easy to find some good scanned examples onling of rustic newspapers from the 1920s — reading them really brings home the “small town” remoteness of these places in the era (the front page might include a column of dozens of single sentence news entries like “Joe Blogs is building new paving for his farmhouse” or “Miss Johnson is leaving on Tuesday to visit relatives in California”).

For the prop in question (pictured as part of the montage below), I ended up basing a design on “The Turners Falls Reporter” (a small-town Massachusetts paper). As I was creating it I realized this wasn’t the first time I’d visited Aylesbury for a prop … other work for a different Call of Cthulhu licensee book (still unreleased) had taken me there a year or so earlier, as shown below.

While the newspaper clipping created for the scenario really only shows a small part of a page of “The Aylesbury Transcript”, the process of creating it involved mocking up an entire masthead for the newspaper, as shown below. I figure that if anyone else ever wants to create a prop involving this newspaper, they should feel free to use this design free of cost (high-res version available here).

Other Projects

In other, non-Lovecraft-Country news, there have been several other really neat projects which I have been priveleged to support in recent months by way of pieces of design work. I was lucky enough to contribute a small selection of art pieces for the forthcoming “Horror on the Orient Express”, 2nd Edition. This has always been my favourite of Chaosium’s CoC campaigns, so having the chance to contribute to its relaunch (albeit in a minor way) was a hugely satisfying experience — thanks, in no small part to the professionalism of editor Mark Morrison (who is a real pro who’s contributions to the game’s long history are frequently undervalued IMHO).

But the other MAJOR thing that has been occupying my time is work for the  shiny new Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. I was asked to contribute character sheet designs for the new edition books … which really is an amazing honour. Originally I thought I might get to contribute a 1920s design … and if I were extremely lucky a modern day one as well. But, as followers of the Kickstarter will know, stretch goals unlocked along the campaign have added a booklet called “Cthulhu Through The Ages” which has notes on running 7th Edition games in numerous others settings — and guess what? All of those settings need new character sheets. So all up I think I many end up contributing something like 9 or 10 different designs. The montage below shows some of the elements that have already been sketched out for these sheets (although there are many things still to finalize).

As someone who tries to create beautiful prop documents for Lovecraftian games, one thing I have developed a sharp eye for is attention to detail in historical accuracy. It really is the difference between a “quickly-thrown-together-handout-for-my-group’s-homebrew” and a high-quality art item you’d expect to see in a published book.

One thing for which I have also developed a keen sense of is the (small) community of people who aim to create props/handouts to the highest quality. The highest exemplar in this field is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, whose work has been featured in their own products but also in recent releases from Miskatonic River Press. A lesser-known, but similarly excellent, source of high-quality prop documents is the GEEDUNK Props sets produced in 2010 and 2011 by Michael Fanara of Little Ferret Films.

Michael designed a series of prop documents to supplement previously published scenarios, employing very similar templates and fonts as those used by the HPL Historical Society. And, even better, he released these props sets for free.

So why haven’t most people heard of the GEEDUNK Props? … Well, the biggest reason is that Michael’s website “went dark” a little over a year ago. This is a great shame, as the GEEDUNK Props represent an amazing resource to Call of Cthulhu Keepers who are looking for some ready-made high-quality props to spice up many of the most-popular scenarios and campaigns published for the game.

In the interests of keeping this excellent set of props “in print” and available under their original (Creative Commons) license, Cthulhu Reborn have decided to create a mirror site for the GEEDUNK Props. This isn’t intended as an attempt to claim these fantastic props as our own … but rather a means to keep them available to the community.

We hope that by making these resources available, Call of Cthulhu gamers will continue to enjoy the fruits of Michael’s considerable efforts … and maybe it might also inspire other prop-makers to aim for the same level of quality when designing their own props.

The GEEDUNK Props sets provide enhanced props for the following campaigns and scenarios:

• Edge of Darkness (from the CoC 5th and 6th Ed rules)
• Masks of Nyarlathotep
• Beyond the Mountains of Madness
• Fungi From Yuggoth
• Secrets of San Francisco
• Pagan Call (a Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign published for free on the C:DA site)

Click here to go to the mirror and take a look.

Well … it’s been a while since I last updated this blog. But rest assured my silence certainly does not mean that I haven’t been busy working on a range of exciting Cthulhu-related projects. Some of these are for (hopefully) free publication here on Cthulhu Reborn, but many are jobs for Chaosium and other Call of Cthulhu publishers. My post today is about one of these.

I’m sure by now that many people have heard about the “new kid on the block” in Call of Cthulhu publishing, Oscar Rios’ Golden Goblin Publishing. The flagship product which launched this new endeavour was a successful Kickstarter for a book called “Island of Ignorance (The Third Cthulhu Companion).” This book collects a miscellany of interesting source material along with five highly-regarded scenarios. On all fronts this is an excellent book. If you were a Kickstarter backer for a printer copy, you probably have yours by now — and if you weren’t a backer you can now buy a copy (either PDF or softcopy) direct from the Golden Goblin Store.

Now my role in this wonderful project was as the supplier of props/handouts for the various scenarios in the book. I made a gallery of these designs available a little while ago, after several folks expressed curiousity about what handout goodness they would get if/when they bought the book. But … the good folk over at Golden Goblin were also keen that these props be made available in PDF form, so that nobody need risk the spine of their beautiful book to photocopy handouts for their game. So today, I am happy to release — in conjunction with Golden Goblin — the “Islands of Ignorance” PDF prop pack.

You can download the prop pack for free using the link below. It spans to 26 pages and is a smidge over 14MB. Every prop from “Island of Ignorance” is presented here in higher-resolution/larger size than the versions included with the book itself. Plus, as an added treat for loyal goblins, you get each handout in two versions — one which is the basic prop design with minimal textures and fx, which the second is the textured versions. I hope you and your players enjoy these handouts …

  Island of Ignorance Prop Pack [26 pages, 14MB]

Feedback

We here at Cthulhu Reborn always love hearing about the insane things folks do with our props/handouts/scenarios/character sheets. If you want to share something cool, feel free to send us a (Lovecraftian, ie eerily portentious) note using the form below.