News update

I’ve got a couple of news items that I wanted to share.  Excuse my brevity, I’m still neck deep in assorted projects and need to get cracking before sleep overtakes me (or I give in to my dark addiction to playing “just a couple more minutes” of Fall Out: New Vegas… and fall asleep doing it,again.

  • There is a new episode of the Miskatonic University podcast – their guest this time is Mike Mason (of 7th Ed. CoC fame).  They also have a news recap, talk about their favorite Lovecraftian films, and reveal some of the secrets of hopping Indonesian zombies .  Yes, hopping zombies.  No, they are not a zombie with pop rocks around the rim.
  • Adam Crossingham has announced that Sixtystone Press is looking for playtesters for Colonial Lovecraft Country.  I’ve had the pleasure of reading Kevin Ross’ manuscript as well as several of the scenarios and I highly recommend it.
  • Did I mention Raiders of R’lyeh?
  • Do you want to listen to Dan Harm’s talk at Treadwells in London from a few months back?  You can now!
  • Shane Ivey has started posting notes from his playtest of the Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man.
  • I’ve sent out a draft of the Arkham Gazette Issue 0 to a proofreader.  Huzzah!  It should be done soon (fingers crossed).

Project(s) update

Here is the rundown:

Fury of Yig play-testing: Complete!

Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion: Two chapters in final proof, eight to go

Machine Tractor Interminable Wait-37: Still slowly pending

 

In other news, Sixtystone Press/The Black Seal have officially announced something I had been working on for a while- The Black Seal’s (Long Awaited) Vietnam Special aka Cthulhu by ARCLIGHT.  They’ve posted a content list here.

The Dreaded Con-Rit!

 

I contributed two pieces- A Mythos Gazetteer for South East Asia and a regional Bestiary.  For the former I confined myself to the fiction (mostly but not entirely Lovecraft) as well as previously published materials, while for the later I attempted some original research (with the help of some material sent to the Black Seal from another contributor).  I was shockingly disappointed with my local library; their collection was sorely lacking when it came to Asian mythology and legend.  Happily google books was a wee bit more helpful, albeit slightly archaic.

Now I’m off to the library to do some more research on [redacted]!

Fury of Yig Playtest- Endgame

We wrapped our playtest of Fury of Yig last night.

Not to give away spoilers, all I can say is that everyone in involved had a grand time.

Investigator deaths: 0(!)

Odds of the sequential die rolls of the investigators at the climax: 1 in 100,000

Impale results using an RV: 1

Wardrobe of one investigator at end of scenario: Poncho, mohawk, boots

World saved?: Yes

General Update 12/9

After seeing others keeping up this sort of thing with much greater regularity (note the recently added link on the right to Badger’s blog about his own RPG writings), I figured I should post, a a minimum, a catch-all update for my various and sundry projects for the benefit of my reader(s?).

Fury of Yig playtest:  Still going great guns (though we’ve barely had any combat, mind you).  The investigators are about 2/3 finished with the campaign, perhaps even further along depending on a few soon-to-be-made choices.  I think the players are having a great time, even if they are a *bit* uncertain of what is going on.  I know I certainly am enjoying running the thing.  I think we’ll keep playing CoC even once ‘Fury’ wraps, perhaps some classic era gaming?  We still had no fatalities, but have have Sanity loss, poisonings, snake bites, gun shots, and a few very unlucky NPC hunters…

Sundry graveyard stuff: I’ve finished nearly all of the on-the-ground research for my Worcester Co. graveyards project and need to begin the volumes of correspondence I’ll probably need to cover all the logistical details I’d like to include (mostly contacting local communities to dig up additional information on cemeteries, getting contact info for local cemetery commissions, etc.  Winter will likely slow down my outdoors work, but if I find some very tempting new site to check out, I’ll no doubt put on the boots and a warm coat…

As for the Lovecraft Country graveyards/cemetery research and writing, I’ve done all the requisite reading of the RPG material and hopefully most of the important fiction, and now need to begin fleshing out my outline.  I’d like to have a draft of something done by say February so that I might get it proof-read and polished up for my target completion date of March.  This is mainly so I can offer it up again to MRP as a second-annual Keith Herber tribute freebie.  I don’t know if they’re interested in doing that again (a la last year’s “Turner Codex” article) but what the heck.  It is good practice for the non-fiction book.

As for the Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion, I don’t have much news but, as ever, remain hopeful of actually having something to report soon.  Adam has completed draft layouts for most of the chapters, the handouts appendix is mostly completed, two more maps are being worked on (thanks Steff!), and copyright free artwork unearthed (thank you Library of Congress digital archive!).  Now I wait for news from Adam.  It is tantalizingly close… but I’d rather be done.

Hmm…. I should probably figure out what my various project codes meant…

TTFN

Playtest update

It has been a while since I’ve updated the status of my playtest for “Fury of Yig”.

We are, err, 13? sessions into the campaign and the investigators have all survived up to this point, though they’ve been shot at once, bitten by a giant snake, and, one of them, looked upon the face of XXXX XXX.

We’ve also had AA meetings, impromptu religious revivals, and a mild bit of numerophobia.  Oh, and lots of plugs for the Double Tree Hotel chain- they have cookies, you know.

Hopefully some day we can release our audio recordings of our sessions- save for two lost due to recorder issues.

Playtesting, session one

Since “Fury of Yig” is still in development, I don’t want to say too much about the details of the session, but feel I should at least note a couple things- We have three investigators- a crime-lab tech, a reporter, and a dilettante (who made his money off a bogus smoking cure). The players dove into the investigation and using a mix of their skills (which nicely overlap, oddly enough) made good progress.

Deaths: 0

Injuries: 0

Sanity lost: 0

(I suspect some of this stuff will change in the next time we play.)

Assorted project updates

Been remiss, but for once this means I’ve been doing some work.  Huzzah.

Project Zero: Finally heard back from Adam C. who is doing the layout.  Unfortunately we’re not at the place I had hoped we’d be by the point (i.e. DONE).  Instead, I’ve worked with Adam to find a pair of experienced volunteers to take some of the load off his shoulders.  Do I have a new estimate for when the Masks Companion will be done.  Sadly not yet.  Hopefully the extra layout gang will have some happy progress news for me soon… I’ll post more when I have it.

Project 1: The Tractor station… I’ve been thinking a great deal about this but that’s about all the actual progress I can report.  I usually have a long period of contemplation followed by a nice sustained burst of work when I get to this point in a project- let us hope that is the case again.  Sorry Dustin.

Project 2: Nothing to report as I’m not putting much effort into this until publisher who shall remain nameless makes progress on other fronts.

Project 3: Done some helpful research on all topics and have a general outline of both the pieces I’m working on for the Unspeakable Oath.  I only have until the 18th to get these done so I’ll be plugging away until then.  I’m happy with what I have so far and am hopeful they will be well received.

“Project 4”: (Do not laugh).  Yeah, I take on too much as once, but I like to work when inspiration strikes.  I had an idea for a piece involving New England cemeteries for one of the CoC licensees.  I’ve done some preliminary research, including mucking about a few old burying yards (one of the perks of living in New England).  Not a priority right now but I think there is enough there to keep this one on the steady burner for a while.

Other stuff: Amusingly enough I finally got in touch with a couple other Cthulhu authors in my neck of the woods only to discover one of them is my neighbor.  Literally.  To celebrate, we’ll be playtesting Dan Harm’s Fury of Yig campaign.  I’ll post oblique updates (since I don’t want to spoil it) as they warrant.