Archive
My Top Five Monster Books (that I worked on)
In an earlier post, I wrote about my love for monsters and picked out a few of my favorite rpg monster books. A lot of you got back to me with your own favorites, either in the comments section or through Facebook or other means, and now I have quite a few more books to look at – so thanks for that!
This time, I’ll be looking at some monster books that I’ve written or co-written. I’ll explain what I hoped to achieve with each one, and you can judge for yourselves how well I succeeded or failed. As always, I’d love to have your thoughts on each one, especially what you think would have made it better.
There’s more to this request than simple nostalgia, or a need for validation. You see, I’m gearing up for a new project (more than one, in fact: #secretprojects) and I’m studying previous rpg monsters books to figure out what features turn a good one into a great one. I’ll be issuing a formal announcement about the project some time in the next few weeks, but until then, tell me what would make a monster book irresistible to you. What are the must-haves, what are the cut-aboves, and what are the mind-blowing, come-look-at-this, can-you-believe-it features that turn a monster treatment into something that you have to use as soon as you can, and that you will talk about for the rest of your gaming career?
Creatures of Freeport
https://greenroninstore.com/products/creatures-of-freeport-pdf
A great attraction of this project was the opportunity to work with my friend Keith Baker. Before Keith created Eberron, Gloom, and the other games that have made him rightly famous, we worked together in a video game studio in Boulder, Colorado. We were both impressed by Green Ronin’s Freeport setting: I mean, D&D with pirates – what’s not to love? I had been thinking of ways to expand and improve the way monsters are covered in tabletop rpgs ever since my Games Workshop days, and Keith was a whiz at the complex process of creating monster stats for the 3.5/d20 system.
We added three sections to the standard treatment. The first set out the kind of information about the creature that might be available on a successful knowledge check, the second covered various magical, alchemical, and other uses for the dead creature’s remains, and the third presented a selection of adventure hooks.
The book got some good reviews, and we were both quite happy with it. But I’m still left with the feeling that it is possible to do better.
Atlas of the Walking Dead
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/566/Atlas-of-the-Walking-Dead?affiliate_id=386172
Eden Studios’ zombie survival-horror game All Flesh Must Be Eaten came out just at the start of that heady (brain-y?) period in which zombie horror began to take over the zeitgeist. Since the undead have always been one of my favorite classes of monsters, I jumped at the chance to pitch them a monster book.
I took myth and folklore as my starting point here. Over the years, I had read an enormous amount on the subject, especially on the creatures of folklore around the world. I found that the walking dead – which I defined as all kinds of corporeal undead, not just zombies – broke down into a number of classes, with variants from different parts of the world. For each type, I started with a short piece of atmospheric fiction to set the scene, defined the base creature in terms of the game’s rules, and added a short section on variants. In many cases it was necessary to define new traits (Aspects in the game’s lingo), and as in Creatures of Freeport I finished up with a selection of adventure hooks.
GURPS Faerie
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/faerie/
Like all the GURPS worldbooks, this was as much a setting as a bestiary. Faeries are found across the world under a range of local names, and like the walking dead they break down into a number of distinct types. In addition to chapters on faerie lands, faerie magic, and faerie nature, I wrote a chapter of templates for the various types with variants on each. Following the format established by previous monster-centric sourcebooks for GURPS, a chapter on campaigns and adventures took the place of adventure seeds per template.
I like this book because faeries are another favorite class of monsters, and because it allowed me to examine their folkloric context in greater depth than a bestiary-style book would have permitted. Faerie is a tone as much as a class of monster, with its own feel and its own tropes, and to neglect this would have been to do the subject matter a grave injustice – and who knows, possibly to suffer spoiled milk and bedbugs for the rest of my life!
Werewolves: A Hunter’s Guide
https://ospreypublishing.com/werewolves-a-hunter-s-guide
Is this an rpg monster book, really? There’s not a rule or a game stat in sight, but I think of all the Dark Osprey line as systemless rpg sourcebooks. I took the example set by line editor (and future designer of the excellent fantasy skirmish game Frostgrave) Joe McCullough in his book Zombies: A Hunter’s Guide, and set my werewolf book in the same alternate reality.
Although I already knew quite a bit about werewolves, the research for this book led me to the conclusion that there are at least five distinct kinds. Each one got a chapter, supported by case studies drawn (mostly) from genuine historical and mythological sources, and I took a couple of chapters to shoot a glance at other shapeshifters (such as Japanese hengeyokai and Indian weretigers) and to invent various organizations that hunt and/or study werewolves. Of course, I covered werewolves at war, from Norse ulfhednar to the ever-popular Nazi werewolves and various Cold War spin-offs from Nazi research in that area.
The viewpoint is from contemporary urban fantasy rather than medieval fantasy, but that made a nice change, and I didn’t think that it lessened the book’s usefulness for rpgs set in any time or place. It is not aimed at any particular rules set, so there is some work for the GM to do, but I still hope that it offers a good source of information and ideas.
Colonial Gothic Bestiary
https://www.rogue-games.net/bestiary
Colonial Gothic is a very nice historical-fantasy game published by Rogue Games. I met Rogue’s head honcho Richard Iorio years ago when we were both working on the Hogshead Publishing booth at GenCon, and when he published Colonial Gothic I got in touch. A solid monster book is an essential part of an rpg’s core, and I aimed to provide one in the Colonial Gothic Bestiary.
As monster books go, it’s fairly unambitious. The aim was to cover a large number of critters and provide the GM with options, rather than to look at a smaller number in detail. What I like most about it is the way that it reflects the setting in its blend of North American wildlife, Native American folklore monsters, fearsome critters from tall tales, and Old World monsters that might believably have come across with the colonists.
So there you have it – or them. I will look forward to hearing your views, and discussing what features make a monster treatment really shine. And as soon as I can, I’ll be lifting the curtain on my #secretprojects. Bye for now!
The Twelve Books of Christmas: Part One
You can find links to buy a lot of my work on the My Books page, but in the run-up to Christmas I will be showcasing a dozen of them that make ideal gifts for the geek in your life. The first is Colonial Horrors, a curated anthology of tales from the earliest years of American horror.
The book was first published last October in hardback, and a paperback edition was released a few weeks ago: Amazon also offers a Kindle version. It is a curated anthology, with an introduction discussing the origins of horror fiction in America, and individual notes on each story.
There are seventeen tales in all, published from 1684 to 1927, all of them chosen for the light they shed on the Colonial era and its role in American horror. Just as the European Gothic features the wild mountains, crumbling castles, and ruined monasteries of that continent, so the American Gothic looks to the dark forests, inward-looking towns, and stifling religion of the colonies. From the accounts of the Salem witch trials in 1692 to the 2015 movie The VVitch with its old-fashioned typography, from the earliest tales of the Jersey Devil to the beloved and oft-adapted tale “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the collection covers both the familiar and the unexpected.
Unexpected, you say? How about this:
- The legend of the Jersey Devil began in a religious dispute between two publishers at the start of the 18th century;
- The contributions from Cotton and Increase Mather, well known for their involvement in the Salem hysteria, were believed by their authors to be nonfiction;
- America’s first Gothic novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, is remembered today only by a handful of academics;
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, a descendent of a Salem judge, wrote horror tales as well as moral commentary;
- The cult movie The Blair Witch Project was based (very loosely, as it turns out) on a reported haunting.
But don’t take my word for it. Here are extracts from some reviews:
“For lovers of American literature and horror fiction fans, this important anthology reveals how the religious beliefs, historical events, and folktales of the colonial period influenced the writerly imaginations that led to the evolution of the modern horror genre.”
– Library Journal (starred)“A well-curated collection of creepy, spooky, and downright weird pieces by a core group of American authors. As the nights grow cooler and the shadows longer, stoke the fire and curl up with this excellent example of true American horror.”
– Booklist“Rather than the gothic castles of Europe, these feature witch trials and dark and foreboding forests. The colonial period was truly the birthplace of American horror, as these stories point out.”
– The News-Gazette (Champaign, IL)
Colonial Horrors can be found at any online retailer and at many good bookstores. The publisher, Pegasus Books, has this to say about it.
Tomorrow, and every day until Christmas, I will be covering another title. If you’re not done with your Christmas shopping, or if you are expecting to receive some gift tokens, take a look: you might find something you like.
Click here for Part Two: Nazi Moonbase.
Click here for Part Three: Werewolves – A Hunter’s Guide.
Click here for Part Four: Theseus and the Minotaur.
Click here for Part Five: The New Hero, vol. 1.
Click here for Part Six: Knights Templar – A Secret History.
Click here for Part Seven: The Lion and the Aardvark.
Click here for Part Eight: Thor – Viking God of Thunder.
Click here for Part Nine: Tales of the Frozen City.
Click here for Part Ten: Blood and Honor.
Click here for Part Eleven: The Dirge of Reason.
Click here for Part Twelve: More Deadly than the Male.
2017: The Year in Review
2017 was not the best of years, but it still brought several things on which I look back with pride – and a few things that make me look forward to 2018. Here are the year’s professional highlights from my point of view:
HAWK: Freedom Squadron
I have blogged before about my love of aviation, so when My.com approached me to work on this bullet hell shooter game I was intrigued. I crafted the main storyline about a ragtag band of heroes coming together to help a peaceful nation resist its brutal neighbor. Released last January, the game has topped five million downloads and seen a billion enemy planes destroyed. It is available at the iTunes Store and the Google Play Store.
Fenix Magazine
This tabletop roleplaying magazine from Sweden has a mix of Swedish and English content, the latter provided by renowned writers like Kenneth Hite, Pete Nash, Will Hindmarch – and lately, me. I highly recommend checking out their all-English Best of Fenix volumes, which are available in PDF form from DriveThruRPG and other online retailers. I describe their content as “thoughtful articles for grown-up roleplayers,” and whatever games you read or play, you will find something useful and interesting within their pages. I contributed to four issues in 2017, and I have plans to continue in 2018.
- Fenix 2/17 included a reprint of “As God is My Witness,” a systemless article on the Medieval practice of trial by ordeal which was first published in Imagine magazine in 1984, and “CSI: Fantasy,” a new article on forensic folk-magic from European tradition.
- For Fenix 4/17, I wrote “Bloodthirsty Blades,” a review of cursed swords in myth and fantasy literature, with some ideas for the GM to make them into a major part of a roleplaying campaign.
- Fenix 5/17 included “When is a Dragon Not a Dragon?” taking examples from myth and folklore to show how dragons can be more than just a powerful boss monster.
- Fenix 6/17 included “Creating Cults,” an examination of cults and cultists, examining the structure, organization, and goals of six different types of cult for a fantasy campaign.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 4th Edition
Toward the end of the year, British tabletop RPG publisher Cubicle 7 announced that they had won a license from Games Workshop to produce a fourth edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the game that arguably started my career thirty-odd years ago. I am not allowed to go into too much detail, but I have contributed some writing to the core rulebook and I am currently in the planning phases of a project called The Enemy Within Director’s Cut. I will be going back over the beloved campaign, making some changes based on the experience of thousands of games played over three decades, and adding some new material to bring this version more into line with the vision that Jim Bambra, Phil Gallagher, and I developed for the original. That is all I can say for now, but keep an eye on this blog and the Cubicle 7 web site for more details.
Colonial Horrors: Sleepy Hollow and Beyond
Another proud achievement this year was the publication of this anthology of early American horror fiction, all set in or around the Colonial era. I tracked down some great stories by writers famous (Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft), obscure (Charles Brockden Brown, John Neal), and better known for writing outside the horror genre (James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne). The book has garnered some good reviews, and I am hoping to edit more anthologies in a similar vein.
Colonial Horrors: Denver Life Interview and Appearances
Hanna Smith of Denver Life magazine recently interviewed me about Colonial Horrors. You can find the interview here.
I’ll be at The Bookies bookstore in Denver on October 29th for a reading and signing. It’s at 4315 E Mississippi Ave, a block east of South Colorado Boulevard: I’ll be there from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.
Halloween night I will be reading and signing at Denver’s famous Tattered Cover bookstore in LoDo. The address is 1628 16th Street (at Wynkoop), and I will be there from 7:00 pm.
I will be updating this post with more information, link, and reviews as they become available.
If you aren’t in Denver, you can find the book at your favorite bookstore or e-tailer. I have posted some links on the My Books page.
Colonial Horrors: Goodreads Giveaway!
I’m looking forward to the release of my anthology Colonial Horrors in October. Between now and Halloween, I’ll be posting details of promotional events, including some readings and appearances that I will be doing in the Denver area. The first, though, is global: a Goodreads giveaway where you can win one of three copies that are up for grabs.
Here’s the publisher’s blurb for the book:
The most spine-tingling suspense stories from the colonial era—including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and H. P. Lovecraft—are presented anew to the contemporary reader.
This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the Colonial era’s stifling religion and its dark and threatening woods.
Today the best-known tale of Colonial horror is Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” although Irving’s story is probably best-known today from various movie versions it has inspired. Colonial horror tales of other prominent American authors—Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Fenimore Cooper among them—are overshadowed by their bestsellers and are difficult to find in modern libraries. Many other pioneers of American horror fiction are presented afresh in this breathtaking volume for today’s reading public.
Some will have heard the names of Increase and Cotton Mather in association with the Salem witch trials, but will not have sought out their contemporary accounts of what were viewed as supernatural events. By bringing these writers to the attention of the contemporary reader, the book will help bring their names—and their work—back from the dead. Featuring stories by Cotton Mather, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, H. P. Lovecraft, and many more.
The book was inspired by the success of the TV show Sleepy Hollow – now canceled, alas – and my involvement with Colonial Gothic, Rogue games’ tabletop roleplaying game of adventure, horror, and conspiracy at the dawn of American history. As I read more about the period, I found a whole body of literature – some famous, some long forgotten – and discovered the native soil of American horror fiction.
Publisher Pegasus Books has done a bang-up job of design and production, creating a book that I’m very proud of. Here are a few more links:
Colonial Horrors at Pegasus Books
Amazon
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble
Waterstone’s
Books-A-Million
Goodreads
Cthulhu 1776: Converting Colonial Gothic to Call of Cthulhu
A few months ago I posted about the release of the Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft sourcebook. The shadow of the Colonial period looms over much of Lovecraft’s writing, reflected in his descriptions of Innsmouth and Arkham and taking a more active role in stories like The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dreams in the Witch-House. At an early stage in its development, Colonial Gothic itself was pitched to Chaosium as Cthulhu 1776. With the release of Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft, players can experience black-powder fantasy adventures against the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos.
With the return of Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen to Chaosium, the original Lovecraftian tabletop RPG looks set for a new lease on life. Based on Chaosium’s excellent Basic Roleplaying ruleset, Call of Cthulhu has been the leading Mythos-based RPG since it first appeared in 1981. Colonial Gothic is new by comparison, but the game’s core books can offer Call of Cthulhu players and Keepers the chance to explore the dark past of Lovecraft country.
One of my major concerns while developing Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft was ensuring that the game stats for the Mythos creatures were accurate and playable. I’m not ashamed to admit that I used the Call of Cthulhu rulebook as a reference, and while it was not the only factor in developing the creature stats, it proved a very useful numerical benchmark. I came up with the following rough system for converting between Call of Cthulhu and Colonial Gothic, and I am sharing it here because I think it could be useful to players of both games.
Colonial Gothic to Call of Cthulhu
Using this system, the Call of Cthulhu Keeper can turn many of Colonial Gothic’s adventures and sourcebooks into resources for an 18th-century Call of Cthulhu campaign, or just for a time-traveling side-track from one of Chaosium’s established timelines. The following titles are of particular interest to Call of Cthulhu fans:
- Second Edition Rulebook: contains general historical and setting information, equipment, prices, common character types, etc;
- Gazetteer: describes each of the Thirteen Colonies up to 1776, with notes on local mysteries and other items of interest;
- Boston Besieged: includes a detailed sourcebook on Boston during the siege of 1775-1776;
- The Philadelphia Affair: describes the city at the time of the Second Continental Congress and the drafting of the Declaration of Independence;
- Player Companion: includes detailed templates which are easily adapted to create period Investigator types for Call of Cthulhu;
- The Bestiary: presents a range of non-Mythos adversaries for rounding out Colonial-era adventures;
- Many other sourcebooks and adventures are available in print, PDF, ePub, and Kindle formats.
STR = Might * 1.67
CON = Vigor * 2.27
SIZ: generate from scratch, referring to similar characters/creatures in the Call of Cthulhu rules.
INT = Reason * 1.75
POW: generate from scratch, referring to similar characters/creatures in the Call of Cthulhu rules.
DEX = Nimble * 2.17
Skills and spells are hard to convert directly because of differences in the two game systems. However, with a little imagination an experienced Keeper should have no difficulty in coming up with numbers that work, based on the attribute scores, the overall concept and the relevant Colonial Gothic skill, spell, and Trait descriptions.
Call of Cthulhu to Colonial Gothic
A Colonial Gothic GM can use this system to help convert additional Mythos horrors from Call of Cthulhu sources: the copyright status of the Cthulhu Mythos is complex, and limited the range of creatures that could be covered in the Colonial Gothic sourcebook.
Might = STR * 0.6
Nimble = DEX * 0.46
Vigor = CON * 0.44
Reason = INT * 0.57
Resolution: generate from scratch, based on Reason score and POW * 0.5.
Vitality = (Might + Vigor) * 2.5, rounding down.
Skills, spells, and Traits can be adapted from Call of Cthulhu descriptions. Several new Traits, specific to the Cthulhu Mythos, are listed in the Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft sourcebook. The GM will find additional Traits in the Colonial Gothic Bestiary.
Converting Dice Rolls
The AnyDice converter provides a useful tool for examining probabilities: it converts the results of any dice roll into percentages. To see the probabilities for a 2d12 roll, enter output 2d12 in the top window and click the Calculate button immediately beneath.
My Complete and Utter Colonial Gothic Bibliography
Are you a fan of black-powder fantasy? Do you enjoy the backstories of movies and TV shows like Sleepy Hollow and National Treasure? Do you prefer Joseph Curwen and Keziah Mason to Randolph Carter and Charles Dexter Ward? If so, you might like Colonial Gothic.
I haven’t worked on tabletop roleplaying games much over the last few years. While the industry has always been rich in ideas, it is increasingly cash-poor. This earlier post goes into some of the reasons why. But when I came across Colonial Gothic back in 2009, I was intrigued. Thanks to mysteries like the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony, events like the Salem witch trials, and classic American horror fiction from writers like Washington Irving and H. P. Lovecraft, the Colonial era is a rich environment for historical fantasy, and historical fantasy has always been one of my favorite genres. Add in the extensive body of conspiracy theory surrounding the Templars in America, the Freemasons and the American Revolution, Franklin’s alleged occultism – not to mention local legends and Native American lore – and you have a setting that can support just about any kind of fantasy and horror adventure.
The game can be played as Cthulhu 1776 – which was one of its earliest incarnations. It can involve nerve-wracking investigations of the great and powerful. Players can fight an occult war for America’s freedom, confront witch-cults and monsters, and even seek the hiding-place of the Holy Grail in lost Templar colonies.
While Colonial Gothic has received some great reviews and built up a small but passionate following, it has yet to break out from the pack of indie RPGs and achieve the success I think it deserves. But check it out, and judge for yourselves.
Products
Lovecraft (2015) – co-author More Information
Bestiary (2013) – co-author More Information
Locations (2012) – developer
The French & Indian War (2012) – developer
Flames of Freedom: The Philadelphia Affair (2011) – developer
New France (2011) – developer
Organizations Book 1: The Templars (2010) – author More Information
Templates (2010) – author
Flames of Freedom: Boston Besieged (2010) – co-author, developer
Gazetteer (2010) – author
Articles
“Converting Between Call of Cthulhu and Colonial Gothic,” (2016) – author Download article
“La Llorona: A Legend of New Spain,” (2015) – author Download article
“The Puckle Gun,” (2014) – author Download article
Also Visit
The Rogue Games Colonial Gothic page
The Rogue Games Store
The Colonial Gothic Facebook Group
The Colonial Gothic Google+ Community
Other Bibliography Posts
My Complete and Utter Warhammer Bibliography (Warhammer, WFRP, HeroQuest, AHQ)
My Complete and Utter Warhammer 40,000 Bibliography (WH40K, Adeptus Titanicus/Epic Scale)
My Complete and Utter Cthulhu Bibliography
My Complete and Utter D&D/AD&D/d20 Bibliography
My Complete and Utter GURPS Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Vampire: the Masquerade and World of Darkness Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Fighting Fantasy and Gamebook Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Dark Future Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Video Gameography
My Complete and Utter Bibliography: The Rest of the RPGs
My Complete and Utter Bibliography: Odds and Ends
Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft
Preorders opened yesterday for the new Colonial Gothic sourcebook, Lovecraft. It is available in PDF, ePub, and Kindle formats as well as the physical book. It’s also something I’ve been looking forward to for some time, and here’s why: it is the first time in almost 25 years that I got to work with Tony Ackland.
If you are a fan of Games Workshop’s products from the 80’s, you’ll be familiar with Tony’s work. Tony was instrumental in establishing the look and feel of the Warhammer world, and I worked very closely with him on the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. We also hung out a lot after work a lot, playing Go and talking about everything from World War II aircraft to the campaigns of Napoleon to fossils to classic horror books and movies. A significant quantity of Bass Ale was involved too, I recall.
It’s hard to pick a favorite out of Tony’s enormous output from those years, but I was especially impressed by his monster illustrations for the hardback 3rd edition Call of Cthulhu rulebook published under license by Games Workshop in 1986. For many British players, it was the first edition they could actually afford: the earlier boxed sets, imported from Chaosium in the States, were ruinously expensive.
When he retired, Tony taught himself to use a drawing tablet by creating pictures of – you guessed it – creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos. Every few days, it seemed, his friends would find another batch of unnamably blasphemous goodness in their email. And that’s when I had an idea.
I had been helping Richard Iorio of Rogue Games with the Colonial Gothic product line for a few years. We had talked about a Lovecraft-themed product often. While set in his own “present day” of the 1920s and 1930s, many of Lovecraft’s stories harked back to Colonial times, and in fact Richard had pitched “Cthulhu 1776” to Chaosium before deciding to launch Colonial Gothic through his own company. Tony’s illustrations were an opportunity too good to miss – and I think these new images hold up very well against the Call of Cthulhu bestiary from almost 30 years ago. I’m delighted to see this book come out, for personal reasons as well as professional.
The book covers the best-known gods and beasts of the Cthulhu Mythos, but there are many things that we couldn’t touch for copyright reasons (click here for more on the complex copyright issues surrounding his work and those of the other Mythos authors). If you should happen to want to use another Mythos creature in a Colonial Gothic adventure of your own, converting the stats from Call of Cthulhu is a fairly simple matter. Here is a rough method based on creatures that are common to both systems: the GM may need to make minor adjustments according to personal taste and preferred play style, but this will provide a reasonable starting-point.
Note: these guidelines are given for personal use only, and are not intended to challenge any copyrights held by Chaosium, Inc, or any other party.
Attributes
Might = CoC STR x 0.6
Nimble = CoC DEX x 0.46
Vigor = CoC CON x 0.44
Reason = CoC INT x 0.57
Resolution has no directly comparable stat in Call of Cthulhu. I recommend picking something suitable, bearing in mind that the human average is 7.
Skills
Start with the governing attribute score and adjust according to the needs of the adventure. For more accurate conversions, Call of Cthulhu uses a percentile skill system, so GMs with good math skills can calculate the odds of 2d12 results and come up with a conversion table if they wish.
Attacks
Colonial Gothic non-weapon attacks are attribute-based, so it is easy to assign attack damage. If the GM doesn’t mind a little work, it is possible to derive a damage score by cross-referencing CoC damage with damage from weapons that are common to both Colonial Gothic and Call of Cthulhu (or another Basic Role Playing game, such as Runequest).
Traits
Most creatures of the Cthulhu Mythos have Fear and Horrific Visage to reflect their effect on an observer’s Sanity. The severity of each of these Traits should be proportional to the creature’s SAN loss rating in Call of Cthulhu. Use the creatures from Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft as a guide. Other Traits are at the GM’s option: the book lists several new Traits for Cthulhu Mythos creatures.
My Complete and Utter Cthulhu Bibliography
I had been playing AD&D for about four years when the first edition of Call of Cthulhu was published in 1981. Although I wasn’t terribly familiar with Lovecraft’s work at the time, I liked the fact that it was a horror game set in the real world of the 20th century. Initially I thought it could be used to play Hammer-horror style games, but as I read more Lovecraft I quickly came to realize how perfectly Call of Cthulhu was designed for Lovecraft’s more cerebral style of horror – and most importantly, I think, how first edition Call of Cthulhu forced players to think beyond combat as a first response.
Although my college gaming group continued to focus mainly on AD&D, I started to run an occasional Call of Cthulhu campaign. As I’ve already said in various places (including the previous post), Call of Cthulhu went on to become a major influence on my writing for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
Although Games Workshop published various titles for Call of Cthulhu during my time there (the best, in my opinion, was the hardback rulebook with bestiary art by Tony Ackland), I only got to work on one GW CoC product, and that was before I joined the staff. At work my time was fully taken up, at first by WFRP and later by other games, so everything I wrote for Call of Cthulhu, I wrote on my own time. I did send an adventure to Chaosium around 1986-87, and I got a very nice letter back from Sandy Petersen saying he wanted to use it in the Second Cthulhu Companion, but it was cut at the last minute and it languished in a to-be-developed pile until 2015, when I finally got the opportunity to develop it into a tie-in novella for the Arkham Horror boardgame called The Dirge of Reason.
Although my bibliography for Call of Cthulhu is shorter than for many other games, I still regard it as one of my favorites. Although opportunities to write for it didn’t come my way very often, it’s still a great game and, as I’ve said before, a milestone in the history of tabletop RPG design. I think of it as the first game of the second generation, when RPG design crawled out of the dungeon, stood upright, and began to do more than just hit things with swords.
Fiction
The Dirge of Reason, Fantasy Flight Games, 2017 – author Buy it here
The Investigators of Arkham Horror, Fantasy Flight Games, 2016 – contributor Buy it here
Cthulhu Britannica, Cubicle 7 Games, 2014 – promotional postcards (Kickstarter)
Products
Achtung! Cthulhu: Under the Gun, Modiphius Entertainment, 2019 – author Buy it here
Cthulhu Confidential, Pelgrane Press, 2016 – editor Buy it here
Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft, Rogue Games, 2015 – co-author Buy it here
Green & Pleasant Land, Games Workshop 1987 – contributing author
Articles
“Converting Between Call of Cthulhu and Colonial Gothic,” blog, March 2016 Download free here
“A Green, Unpleasant Land,” blog, January 2016 Download free here
“Out of the Ordinary,” Shadis #41, Oct 1996
“Mind Over Matter,” Shadis #38, Jul 1996 Download free here
“Spirit of the Mountain,” White Dwarf #99, Apr 1988
“Trilogy of Terror,” White Dwarf #97, Feb 1988
“The Worm Stones,” Fantasy Chronicles #5, November 1986 – co-author
“Ghost Jackal Kill,” White Dwarf #79, Aug 1986
“Crawling Chaos,” White Dwarf #68, Sep 1985 – contributor
“Haunters of the Dark,” White Dwarf #67, Aug 1985
Video Games
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Bethesda Softworks 2005 – pickup writer (in-game documents)
Other Bibliography Posts
My Complete and Utter Warhammer Bibliography (Warhammer, WFRP, HeroQuest, AHQ)
My Complete and Utter Warhammer 40,000 Bibliography (WH40K, Adeptus Titanicus/Epic Scale)
My Complete and Utter D&D/AD&D/d20 Bibliography
My Complete and Utter GURPS Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Vampire: the Masquerade and World of Darkness Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Fighting Fantasy and Gamebook Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Colonial Gothic Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Dark Future Bibliography
My Complete and Utter Video Gameography
Graeme Davis 