Interview: Marzio Muscedere (Part II)

Part I of this interview can be found here. 

5. Can you talk a little about the process of turning Zothique into a RPG? I'm interested not just in the game mechanical side of things but also in your experiences working with CASiana Literary Enterprises. Did you find it easy to translate Zothique into a roleplaying game?

For me, the RPG writing process usually starts the same way: with a deep dive into the source material. For Zothique, that meant going back into Clark Ashton Smith’s stories and reading them with a critical eye. Luckily, I’ve always been a note-taker when reading, highlighting passages, turns of phrase, perspective shifts, metaphors – anything that catches my attention.

So when I returned to my old CAS collections, they were already filled with highlights and margin notes (sacrilege, I know) and those became the foundation for the game. From there, I began organizing everything into categories – locations, creatures, gods, artifacts, NPCs, spells, etc. – and slowly drew the setting out piece by piece, ensuring that every element carried the same atmosphere of doom, decadence, and fatal beauty that runs through Smith’s work.

Stats come last. For me, stats always come last. I don’t fret over them. No one remembers your adventure because a creature had AC 15 instead of AC 12. Now, I’m not saying stats aren’t important – bad stats can certainly break your game – but I’m not sure they can make your game. People remember your adventures because of how they made them feel when reading and playing.

I’ve always tried to make my games feel lived in – dripping with atmosphere and history – and I don’t mean paragraphs of exposition. I mean placing items, objects, strange writings, or locations that hint at something more, something ancient, something mysterious. In my opinion, good RPGs don’t feel like they were created just to run characters through like a carnival ride or funhouse. Good RPGs feel alive and mysterious, with the weight of ages upon every item and location – steeped in secrecy and the lingering sense that others have come before.

As for working with CASiana Literary Enterprises, it has honestly been a privilege. Chris has been supportive since day one – a great guy to work with and genuinely passionate about Clark Ashton Smith’s legacy. They’ve been open, helpful, and just as excited as I am to bring Smith’s world to a new generation of readers and players. I really think people are going to like what they see.

6. Why did you decide to use Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadowdark as the rules for your game? I know you're very familiar with DCC but why Shadowdark rather than, say, Swords & Wizardry or Old School Essentials?

I made the decision early that I would not create a new RPG system for Zothique, but rather bring existing systems into Zothique. The setting is the constant; the rules are the lens. My goal was for the world to remain entirely faithful to CAS – its geography, its gods and necromancers, its tone of grandeur and decay – while allowing players to experience it through systems they already know. That’s why each version, whether written for 5E, Dungeon Crawl Classics, or Shadowdark, is fundamentally the same world. The dice may differ, but Zothique itself does not.

Choosing those specific systems came down to both philosophy and practicality. Dungeon Crawl Classics was a natural fit – its pulp roots, Appendix N inspiration (I know, CAS doesn’t appear there… but that’s an argument for another day, lol), and focus on strange sorcery and peril align perfectly with Smith’s fiction. Plus, it is what I do. 5E made sense because it’s the most widely played system and one I know intimately from years of conversion work for Goodman Games and play. Shadowdark, on the other hand, was chosen out of the many requests for me to do so. The more I spoke of my upcoming project at cons or online, the more I was asked to bring the setting to Shadowdark. So I looked into the system – and I loved it. The aesthetic, the tension, the fast, streamlined play - I think it fits Zothique perfectly.

It’s important to note that I’m not bringing Zothique to these game systems – I’m bringing these game systems to Zothique. Regardless of which ruleset you prefer, the world itself remains the same – true to Clark Ashton Smith’s original vision. The laws of Zothique do not change, only the dice that measure them do. In short – the rules serve the setting – not the other way around.

And why stop at three systems? Because, frankly, if I didn’t, I think I’d go mad.

7. Can you talk a little more about the rules and other game mechanics of the various versions of the Zothique RPG? What's unique about them? Are there any elements you're especially proud of or think would catch the interest of old school gaming fans? 

Zothique isn’t a new RPG system – it’s a setting designed to haunt the games you already know. Built to run seamlessly with Dungeon Crawl Classics, 5E, or Shadowdark, it lets players step into Zothique without learning a new rulebook. Familiar mechanics are reskinned in the decadent tone of Clark Ashton Smith’s last continent, supported by new character classes – the Astrologer, Doomed Prince, Tomb Robber, Court Slayer, Sorcerer-Priest, and Necromancer – along with new spells, creatures, and relics. The game introduces a new mechanic – a Doom & Decadence track, a creeping mechanic of temptation and ruin that grants power only at terrible cost. In Zothique, every act of sorcery, every indulgence, and every favor from the gods exacts a price – for nothing beneath the dying sun comes without decay.

8. You're also working on an omnibus of all of the Zothique stories. What can you tell us about that? As a huge fan of Smith, who already owns his collected fiction in several versions, what does this omnibus offer that we haven't seen before? 

The Zothique Omnibus gathers the entire cycle – fifteen stories, one poem, one six-act play, and several rare fragments – in a single lavishly illustrated volume. Artist Lucas Korte brings the dying world to life with over fifteen full-page illustrations of necromantic grandeur and ruin. It’s both a perfect introduction for new readers and a definitive companion for long-time admirers of Clark Ashton Smith’s darkest creation.

9. Is there anything else you'd like to share about this project – something that you really want gamers and fans of Zothique to know about?

What I’d most like people to know is that Zothique isn’t just another fantasy world – it’s the final dream of Earth, brought to life through the words of Clark Ashton Smith. Every page of this project was written to capture that strange beauty and fatal grandeur beneath the dying sun, exactly as Smith envisioned it – decadent, dreamlike, and filled with both wonder and doom. Every rule, map, spell, and description was crafted to feel like something drawn straight from one of his stories – strange, poetic, and tragic in equal measure.

We’re only halfway through the Kickstarter and there’s still so much more to share – more art, more lore, and more glimpses into the last continent. I want to thank everyone who’s taken the time to explore the project, and especially those who’ve backed it and helped bring Zothique closer to life.

And finally, a heartfelt thank-you to you, James, for the interview and for shining a little more light into the dusk of Zothique.

Interview: Marzio Muscedere (Part I)

Even though I spent this past August writing primarily about H.P. Lovecraft and his enduring legacy, when it comes to the Big Three of Weird Tales – Robert E. Howard, HPL, and Clark Ashton Smith – it's actually Smith whom I'd select as my personal favorite. That's why, in another life, I pursued the license to produce a game based on Smith's three most interesting and well-developed settings, Hyperborea, Averoigne, and Zothique. 

Sadly, my plans came to naught, but another inhabitant of the Great White North – Marzio Muscedere – has succeeded where I did not. His company, Marz Press, is publishing an officially licensed Zothique RPG, along with a deluxe illustrated omnibus of all the stories of the Last Continent. I reached out to Marzio to learn more about him, his appreciation of CAS, and the Zothique game he is producing and he kindly agreed to answer my questions, the answers to which will appear today and tomorrow.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you first become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?

My name’s Marzio Muscedere, and I live in a land of nightmare and sorcery deep in the steaming jungles of southern Canada – well, maybe not all that, but I do live in the southernmost tip of the country.

I first got into role-playing back in 1984, when one of my best friends – and forever DM (he still is, by the way) – scored that sweet D&D red box with the Elmore cover. We were in the fourth grade and instantly hooked. We played every chance we got – hours and hours on end. Marathon sessions, campaigns that ran for years in real time. We sailed and reaved across Oerth, where we were the scourge of the Flanaess. We delved dungeons, put every creature to the sword, and hauled away every coin that glittered. I’m sure we mangled half the rules, and I couldn’t pronounce most of the words in the books, but none of that mattered.

As we grew, we tried all kinds of other RPGs between D&D campaigns – West End Star Wars, Top Secret, Rifts, Chill, Torg – you name it. Then, in my teen years, I stopped playing. Twenty-three years went by without a single die roll. Still, I never completely left the hobby. I’d haunt used bookstores, collecting old modules just to read them. Then around 2014 I stumbled onto Dungeon Crawl Classics and that reignited everything – both my love of gaming and my drive to write. Since then, I’ve had over twenty published works and started Marz Press, where I’m now running my fourth Kickstarter.

2. When did you first encounter Clark Ashton Smith? What was the first story of his that you read?

That’s a great question – and honestly, I wish I remembered exactly when it happened. My story’s probably a familiar one: I started with Conan, but back then it was all the Tor paperbacks. From there I found Lovecraft, then eventually the real Conan through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collections. And somewhere along that path, I found the last and greatest of the Weird Tales trinity – Clark Ashton Smith – or rather, I like to think he found me.

Like the poisonous gleam of a forbidden jewel, his decadent, doom-laden prose pulled me in and never let go. And his vocabulary – I often joke around that the Canadian school system failed me – for here was a self-educated man living in a wooden cabin with no running water who knew more words than anyone I’d ever met!

As for the first story I read, it was “The Abominations of Yondo,” which I ended up using as inspiration for the adventure that won me the contest that led to a contract with Goodman Games. It’s still one of my all-time favorite CAS stories.

3. When did you first come across Zothique, and what was it about the setting that made it so appealing to you?

I really can’t pinpoint when I first came across Zothique – other than to say I discovered it later than many other sword-and-sorcery worlds. And I’m glad that I did. Experiencing Zothique as a more mature reader allowed me to appreciate it in ways I never could have when I was younger. The poetic and purple prose, the at-times perplexing vocabulary, the purposeful absence of a central protagonist, the decadent and dreamlike atmosphere, the world’s inevitable decline into oblivion – all the things that might have turned me off as a younger reader are exactly what captivated me as an adult.

Aside from all that, what makes Zothique so appealing to me is the simple fact that it’s a world at the end of time. It breaks from so many other fantasy settings by embracing fatalism over heroism. In Zothique, there are no true heroes – only doomed figures and decadent sorcerers reeling toward ruin. And unlike many other dying-earth settings, there is no trace of our modern world here – sorcery and superstition have completely supplanted science. Zothique lies in the far future, when the sun itself is dying and civilization has risen and fallen countless times. It is a place of alchemy, necromancy, and forgotten gods – equal parts sin and sorcery – where even the most powerful march toward their own inevitable doom.

I’ve also always loved how there’s an entire side of Zothique that remains just off camera – a vibrant, lived-in world intermingled with an age where corpses walk and dead gods whisper from the mouths of idols. Beyond the necromancers and ancient tombs, you can still feel the pulse of life – the bazaars and bustling marketplaces, the jewelers and innkeepers, the caravans hauling spices and silks across dying seas. There are peddlers of fine wines, traders of strange gems, and merchants and mercenaries far traveled from outer lands.

All of it persists amid the decay – a civilization both decadent and alive, teetering between the everyday and the eternal. It’s that tension, between the living world and the shadow of its own ending, that makes Zothique feel so different from other settings.

For role-players, Zothique is wonderful because it isn’t a world that grows or evolves – it is a world that erodes. This gives it endless room for imagination. Every mountain could hide a forgotten city; every desert could hold a necropolis; every sea, an uncharted isle. It’s a sandbox at the edge of time, filled with tragedy, wonder, and peril.

4. At what point did you decide to produce a roleplaying game set on Zothique?

I wanted Conan. I’ll admit it – I really wanted Goodman Games to get the Conan license so I could write a Conan RPG and adventures. But the more I thought about Conan, the more I found myself turning to Clark Ashton Smith for inspiration in the adventures I was already writing.

And then it just kind of clicked. Here was a world so different, so hauntingly beautiful – why not turn it into an RPG setting? Like most things that have real merit, it came down to creating something you truly love. Zothique is the world I want to play in, so I’m creating it.

My hope is that you’ll want to play in it too – and so far, I’m glad that there are people who do.

Interview: Jeff Talanian

1. How did you first discover the works of H.P. Lovecraft and what was it about his writing that captivated you?

Greetings, James, and thank you for the opportunity to chat about one of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft. So, when I was a young teenager in the early- to mid-1980s, I was playing in a local AD&D group that was run by a childhood friend by the name of Andrew. One week, my friend Bob, whom I am still friends with to this day, wanted to run something different for the group as a one-shot. It was Call of Cthulhu, by Chaosium. I played a scientist armed with a pistol, and my guy either died or went mad – I don't recall the specifics. But I loved the content, and it led me to looking up the story "The Call of Cthulhu," by Mr. Lovecraft, and it's since been a lifelong fascination. So, I discovered HPL through gaming. I think it was about 1983 or 1984.

2. Lovecraft’s influence on Hyperborea is unmistakable. What elements of his cosmic horror do you think best lend themselves to tabletop roleplaying?

The crushing sense of futility in which mankind must come to terms that he is an insignificant ant in comparison with the Great Old Ones; that no matter how much he achieves, whatever lofty heights he attains, there is something larger out there that views man with indifference, if even at all. It is a different mindset than some previous presentations in which player characters can actually achieve a god-like status or even become immortals with all the benefits derived therefrom. In a true cosmic horror campaign, for no matter how much power and glory you achieve, you are still no more than the aforementioned ant in the grand scheme of things.

3. Lovecraft is often associated with "modern" horror, but Hyperborea is firmly sword-and-sorcery. How do you blend the alien terrors of the Mythos with the more grounded violence and heroism of pulp fantasy?

I drew a lot of inspiration from HPL's brothers-in-arms, as it were – Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and no small amount of inspiration from other authors such as Abraham Merritt and Fritz Leiber. As Howard and Lovecraft became closer friends, as evidenced by the letters they exchanged, we started to see the influences of cosmic horror played out in Howard's fiction, which was a subtle shift away from some of his earlier themes of more heroic, action-oriented yarns. This also applies to Smith's work, which borrows from Lovecraft's work, but in a lot of cases, HPL was borrowing from CAS (see Tsathoggua). So, even though HPL was writing a lot of his works from a modern (for his time) perspective, and other authors have since done the same, I think it should be recognized that authors such as REH and CAS were taking these same concepts and themes and applying them to other worlds and other times of a more fantastic bent.

4. What’s your favorite Lovecraft story, and why? Has it ever directly influenced an adventure or mechanic in Hyperborea?

"The Shadow Out of Time" is not only a personal favorite, but also one that I have derived a great amount of inspiration from for the entire Hyperborea adventure game itself. In 2008, in the aftermath of Gary Gygax's passing, whom I'd been working for three years as a writer, I found myself back to square one. I decided to make my own game that I would enjoy playing with my beer-drinking buddies, and if other gamers liked it – great! If they didn't, then to hell with them! I wanted my game to be built out from and inspired by earlier systems by Gygax and Arneson, and I wanted its setting to have a Bran Mak Morn, Conan, and Kull feel to it, but with a heavy dose of the weird fiction produced by Howard's friends, H.P.L. and C.A.S. At the time, I was rereading all of Lovecraft's works, and when I read "The Shadow Out of Time," I had an epiphany. It was inspired by the following passages:

I learned—even before my waking self had studied the parallel cases or the old myths from which the dreams doubtless sprang—that the entities around me were of the world’s greatest race, which had conquered time and had sent exploring minds into every age. I knew, too, that I had been snatched from my age while another used my body in that age, and that a few of the other strange forms housed similarly captured minds. I seemed to talk, in some odd language of claw-clickings, with exiled intellects from every corner of the solar system.

There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come, and one from an outer moon of Jupiter six million years in the past. Of earthly minds there were some from the winged, star-headed, half-vegetable race of palaeogean Antarctica; one from the reptile people of fabled Valusia; three from the furry pre-human Hyperborean worshippers of Tsathoggua; one from the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos; two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity.

Here was a story showing me exactly what I needed to do with my setting and how I could pull it all together – whether you are talking about Kull's Valusia, the Elder Things of Antarctica, or Tsathoggua worshipers of Hyperborea – it was all there! I then began to conceive of an idea of an adventure game setting in which all these elements could be pulled together, and more!

5. You’ve cited not just Lovecraft but also Howard, Smith, and Merritt as inspirations. What do you think the shared thread is among these authors and how does Hyperborea pay homage to that tradition?

I think that each and all they were incredibly imaginative writers who dared to write for a genre that was largely shunned, and they were excelling at it. I believe they wrote "up" to their readers, and never catered to a lowest common denominator to increase sale. Their themes were complex, thoughtful, and induced a range of emotions from curiosity to dread to fear. Sure, I have tried to pay homage to this in my works and the works I'm overseeing, and I hope that my stuff has honored the great pulp tradition (at least in gaming form).

6. What does pulp fantasy offer that contemporary fantasy often neglects or downplays?

Contemporary fantasy has largely been stuck in Tolkien's back yard for many years. It's not a bad backyard to be trapped in, because the good professor was one of the greatest practitioners of literature to ever do it, and there have been some wonderful homages to his works. Pulp fantasy is different. It often features a single viewpoint protagonist, it's usually not about saving the world, and it has a more immediate, realistic feel to it, even if the things experienced are beyond the mundane. They often feature an unexpected twist at the end that results in the death of the protagonist or worse, so you are almost always at the edge of your seat when reading these fantastic tales.

7. You've continued to refine and expand Hyperborea across its editions. Has your approach to incorporating Lovecraftian elements evolved over time?

I think conceptualizing a world setting in which Lovecraftian elements are real and present is something that I am always trying to see improved or evolved, as you put it. For example, a ranger in Hyperborea is not a specialist versus humanoids and giants; rather, he is a specialist against otherworldly creatures whose objectives do not accord with the welfare of mankind. So, rangers in Hyperborea hunt Mi-Go, the Great Race, Night Gaunts, and so forth. The content we produce touches on this, in a world that has seen mankind nearly wiped out by a star-borne contagion and now clings to a meager existence in which these many horrors abound.

8. Do you think there's such a thing as too much Mythos in an RPG? Can it become over-familiar or even cliché?

I think if it is done well, with purpose and a vision that is worked hard for, it can never be too much. Imagine, if you will, how many people in the last two millennia have studied the classics, reading and rereading The Odyssey and The Iliad. So, I don't think the Mythos will ever get old, but as readers become more savvy, they will discern between quality pastiche and silly pastiche.

9. As a game designer and worldbuilder, what lessons have you learned from Lovecraft’s approach to mythmaking and the unknown?

I learned that we, as designers and world builders, should not feel bound to the religions and myths of the ancients when conceptualizing and exploring antemundane concepts. Anyone can create a world or a setting that draws inspiration from known works but also has the audaciousness to explore and develop strange new worlds and realities. You just have to have the stubbornness to do it, dismissing naysayers and detractors. Do what thou wilt, my friends.

Thank you for having me, James. Cheers!

Interview: Mike Mearls

I've known Mike Mearls for a long time. We both toiled in the freelancer salt mines back in the late '90s and early 2000s, but Mike managed to make the leap to full-time game designer that I never did. Until 2023, he was employed by Wizards of the Coast, where he worked on Dungeons & Dragons in both its Fourth and Fifth Editions, rising to the post of the latter's Creative Director. After WotC, Mike went to Chaosium as Executive Producer of RPGs before recently being hired by Asmodee's as its new head. 

One of Mike's last projects at Chaosium was Cthulhu by Torchlight, which brings aspects of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos into Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. I recently asked Mike some questions about Cthulhu by Torchlight and its design, which he very kindly answered.

1. With Cthulhu by Torchlight, you've gone from developing the Fifth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons to adapting those same rules for cosmic horror. What challenges did that pose, philosophically or mechanically?

The biggest challenge was figuring out how to approach horror in modern D&D. 5e sets the characters up as heroes taking on powerful enemies early in the game. Trying to make the characters feel weak or powerless runs against the game’s design, and I’m not sure that gamers playing 5e want that. If they wanted the full Call of Cthulhu experience, they could just play that game. The key was finding a way to make Mythos entities distinct without leaning into making them just more powerful than other creatures. With how D&D 5e scales, a tougher monster just has a higher Challenge Rating.

I also wanted to include a mechanic that evoked sanity from CoC without duplicating that game directly, again to preserve a more heroic feel. To that end, I took the concept of passions from the latest edition of RuneQuest and Pendragon and brought them into 5e. A passion in Cthulhu by Torchlight explains why your character charges headfirst into danger. It gives you a reason why your character pushes dangerous spots that even a hardened adventurer would avoid.

2. What was the core idea behind Cthulhu by Torchlight? Was it more about bringing Mythos horror to 5e or exploring how 5e could stretch into horror-adjacent modes?

The idea was to lean into the Mythos as a threat fully rooted in 5e’s approach to heroic fantasy, with some extra flourishes to make it stand out. There are two main ways the book does that.

First, it includes a framework for building mysteries and investigation into 5e. It’s a style of play that is common to Call of Cthulhu, so it felt like a no-brainer to bring that to D&D.

Second, the monsters in the book dabble in mechanics that you usually only see in really powerful 5e creatures. Stuff like legendary actions and legendary resistance show up a lot more often in Mythos creatures, especially at lower levels. It’s obviously not horror, but throwing 5e characters into the deep end of the pool helps create a sense of danger and threat that the Mythos brings to the table.

3. The inclusion of passions is a striking choice. What specifically inspired their use and how do they interact with the theme of cosmic horror as opposed to the courtly drama of Pendragon?

It all started with the realization that a lot of D&D players approach the game from a tactical mindset. They weigh options based on risk and reward. If you apply that calculation to the Mythos, the typical adventurer stays home.

I wanted a simple mechanical hook that explains why an adventurer steps into a creepy, abandoned mansion. Horror is filled with examples of characters who let their obsessions override their common sense. Thinking of Pendragon, with its elegant mechanics that create situations where a knight’s nature becomes their worst enemy, felt like a great match. Plus, I’ll jump on any excuse to take a design cue from Greg Stafford.

4. Meanwhile, the "dreadful insight" mechanic replaces insanity with obsession. What was your thinking behind this shift and how does it change the player experience of a Mythos-corrupted character?

I’ve played a lot of D&D over the years. One of the game’s strengths is its ability to cater to a lot of different players at one table. Dreadful insights are designed to shift how a character acts based on their exposure to the Mythos, but in a way that lets players find their comfort level.

Someone really into roleplay might take an insight and run with it, using it to color everything their character does. Another player who focuses on mechanics can use it strictly by its mechanical definition as a passion, an option that can give them some mechanical benefits if they follow it.

5. The Mythos often centers on helplessness in the face of the unknowable. How do you reconcile that with the more heroic power curve of 5e?

That’s one element of the Mythos that I had to leave by the wayside. D&D is very much a game where the players determine their own fate, and helplessness is obviously a bad match for that. I leaned into the idea that the characters are the one force that can stand up to the Mythos. I took a lot of inspiration from Ramsey Campbell’s fantasy stories, specifically his Ryre stories. Ryre is basically your classic sword and sorcery wanderer looking for wealth, and he ends up matched against eldritch horrors. What I love about those stories is how much Ryre disrupts things. He comes into an area where something truly Wrong is tolerated or endured and puts an end to it. That felt like a good starting point for mixing D&D with the Mythos. 

6. You’ve converted Mythos tomes and creatures to 5e. Did you find you had to reinterpret anything significantly to make them fit without losing their alien menace?

The hardest part was coming up with specific mechanics for D&D. So many Mythos creatures in Call of Cthulhu – quite correctly, to be clear – ask a Keeper to roll a die and kill that many investigators. For D&D, I needed to find some ways to add more texture to them. For entities like Dagon, I tried to think of how they would wreak havoc across an area simply by moving through it. I gave them abilities designed to make it seem like a natural disaster had swept over an area. Hopefully that gives DMs a clear sense of what’s at stake.

7. Did working on Mythos material change how you think about fantasy in general? What does horror make possible in fantasy RPGs that more traditional adventure sometimes doesn't?

In a lot of ways, this book synthesized a lot of what I’ve been thinking about fantasy. I mentioned Ramsey Campbell earlier, and his fantasy stories have been a big influence on me. Working on RuneQuest and Glorantha with Jeff Richard over the past year has also pulled me into a more mythic approach to things.

I think horror, with its direct refutation of the rational and scientific that sometimes bleeds into D&D, is a good way to bring a more mythic feel to a campaign. There’s always an urge to bring the rational and scientific to D&D. Look at all the "Ecology of …" articles that showed up in Dragon magazine over the years.

Horror refutes the idea that we can rationally measure, understand, and control the universe. I think that element is key to keep fantasy powerful and vital. There’s an impulse in gaming to pile layer upon layer of explanation on top of everything. Players want to ask why and get a good answer. I think that undermines what makes fantasy interesting and vital. Horror is a good excuse to pull that away and instead focus on the mythic, the idea that the world is far more malleable and contextual than we might want it to be.

8. What lessons from your previous time working on D&D did you bring into Cthulhu by Torchlight and were there any assumptions you had to leave behind?

The biggest lesson was to include an option that let players turn into a cat. This is the third time I’ve done that in a book, and I always see gamers excited about it. We have four cats, and there’s something aspirational to how they are domesticated animals that somehow run our household.

A funny assumption I had to leave behind – that I knew all the rules! It’s been years since I wrote anything for D&D, and I was lucky enough to work with two people who are absolute experts at the D&D system. Ian Pace developed the rules and nailed down the technical end of the manuscript, making sure that everything matched the D&D house style and that our rules synched with the D&D rulebooks. Chris Honkala, also known as Treantmonk on YouTube, brought his deep understanding of the D&D system to the project. He whipped the game mechanics into shape, making sure that they matched up with the power level of the game and would work well within the context of high level play.

9. The readership of this blog is obviously more geared toward earlier editions of D&D. Do you think that Cthulhu by Torchlight would still be of interest to players and referees of those older versions of the game and, if so, in what way?

If you play AD&D, Shadowdark, B/X, or OSE, I think the book still has a lot of value for you. The monsters and Mythos tomes need adjusting to get their numbers in the right place, but the general direction of the effects should provide plenty of fodder for DMs. Passions and dreadful insights can copy across to those takes on D&D almost directly, with maybe some tweaks to get the benefits of a passion to match up with your specific D&D-like.

Even with their grittier feel and less forgiving mechanics, I think earlier editions would benefit the most from using the monster design as a starting point for a conversion.

Interview: Geoffrey McKinney

The release of Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa, an imaginary fifth supplement to OD&D, in 2008 caused quite a stir at the time – so much that I devoted four posts to reviewing it on this blog. What set Carcosa apart was its singular vision of old school fantasy roleplaying seen through the lens of an idiosyncratic interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft. Since I was already devoting the entirety of this month to HPL and his legacy, I thought it might be interesting to ask McKinney a few questions about Lovecraft, Carcosa, and roleplaying games. 

1. What first drew you to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and how did they shape your vision for Carcosa?

In the spring of 1980, I bought the D&D Basic Set (with the rule book edited by Dr. Holmes and with module B2) and the Monster Manual, and I started playing D&D with some friends who had already been playing for a few months. In the second half of August 1980, I had enough money to buy the Players Handbook, but when I got to the toy store, I decided to instead buy the brand-new Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia (DDG). The Cthulhu Mythos section melted my 10-year-old brain. The gloppy Erol Otus illustrations are still my favorite Mythos illustrations of all, and his Shub-Niggurath is one of the best D&D illustrations of any sort.

The dark, mysterious text accompanying Otus’s art deepened my fascination. In fact, the sixth word of the first sentence left me unsure whether the Mythos was a 20th-century creation or whether some unhealthy ancient men actually believed in and worshiped these beings: “The Cthulhu Mythos was first revealed in a group of related stories by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft.”

The six pages of the Cthulhu Mythos immediately seeped into our D&D games, adding a generous helping of Cthulhoid gods and monsters; dark magics to conjure, dominate, and banish them; and human sacrifice.

Carcosa is basically D&D seen through the lens of “DDG’s Cthulhu Mythos, all the time”.

2. In what ways do you see Carcosa as diverging from Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, and in what ways do you think it reinforces it?

Carcosa is definitely the version of the Cthulhu Mythos presented in Deities & Demigods, and as such does not strive to be “true” to Lovecraft’s stories. Carcosa is pulpy, sword & sorcery D&D fun. Sure, the setting is dark and bleak, but you can (for example) blow Cthulhu away with technetium pulse cannons rather than cower and hide.

3. You incorporate many of the Great Old Ones and other Mythos entities. Did you approach these beings differently from how Chaosium might?

All the monsters in Carcosa were taken from the 1974 D&D game, inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods, or they crawled out of the dark corners of my own imagination. I have never played Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, so I am not familiar enough with it to compare it with Carcosa.

4. The setting of Carcosa feels like a fusion of Lovecraft, planetary romance, and pulp science fiction. Do you think Lovecraft’s legacy fits naturally into that blend, or did you have to reshape it?

I like to refer to Carcosa as “weird science-fantasy”. Virtually everything in it grew from the seeds in the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods. Carcosa’s psionics sprang from DDG’s description of the Great Race. Carcosa’s high-tech grew from DDG’s descriptions of the Primordial Ones and of the Great Race. Of course, Lovecraft’s “The Shadow out of Time” and At the Mountains of Madness include these elements. I would not say I reshaped Lovecraft’s legacy but rather fleshed it out.

5. Do you think there is room for wonder in Lovecraft’s cosmos or is everything inevitably tainted by dread? Does Carcosa reflect that?

There is definitely room for wonder in Lovecraft’s cosmos, particularly when looked at through Dunsany’s Pegana and some of his other early tales. My own favorite of my books is the Carcosa module, The Mountains of Dream. I tried to infuse it with that Dunsanian/Lovecraftian sense of wonder and awe.

6. In traditional D&D, magic is a tool. In Carcosa, it is a moral and metaphysical hazard. How much of that came from Lovecraft, and how much from your own take on sorcery?

At risk of sounding like a broken record, it came from the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities & Demigods. Of DDG’s seventeen pantheons, only the gods of the Cthulhu pantheon are unanimous in demanding human sacrifice (DDG, pp. 136-137). Couple that with DDG’s description on page 48 of the spells contained in the Necronomicon. For example, “It would appear that spells are given for summoning all of the Old Ones and their minions, and some spells for their control and dismissal, although these latter are not always effective. The spells are very long and complicated, and not entirely comprehensible without long study and research.” Carcosa’s sorcery attempts to flesh out these four paragraphs from DDG.

7. How did you approach the balance between evoking Lovecraftian horror and making a setting that is actually playable and engaging at the table?

The gods, monsters, sorcery, and setting itself of Carcosa evoke Lovecraftian horror just by existing. The player characters can arm themselves with advanced technology and/or with sorcery and psionics to lay waste to the blasphemous abominations that are practically everywhere on Carcosa. It is not about being afraid of Cthulhu and his ilk. Instead, the player characters can strive to amass enough might and firepower that Cthulhu and everything else becomes afraid of them.

8. Would you ever consider returning to Carcosa or Lovecraftian themes in a future project or is that ground you feel you have already covered?

Generally speaking, every time a DM puts something such as purple worms, black puddings, mind flayers, Juiblex, Kuo-Toans, gibbering mouthers, slaadi, etc. into his campaign, he is injecting some good old Lovecraftian horror into his game. As for me writing additional Carcosa books, that is out of my hands. If the Muses sing to me again the dark songs of Carcosa, then yes. We must wait and see what implacable Fate decrees for the future.

9. Have your thoughts on Lovecraft’s work or worldview changed over the years?

I have read and re-read Lovecraft since the early 1990s. While I enjoy his works as much as ever, I have come to agree with Lovecraft that his four favorite authors (Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, and M. R. James) are even better. I highly recommend the following:

by Lord Dunsany:

• The Gods of Pegana
• Time and the Gods
• The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
• A Dreamer’s Tales
• The King of Elfland’s Daughter

by Arthur Machen:

• “The Great God Pan”
• “The Inmost Light”
• “The Shining Pyramid”
• The Three Impostors
• “The Red Hand”
• The Hill of Dreams
• “Ornaments in Jade”
• “The Great Return”

by M. R. James:

• Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
• More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
• A Thin Ghost and Others
• A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories

by Algernon Blackwood:

A great many of his weird stories, preeminent of which are:

• “The Willows”
• “The Wendigo”
• Incredible Adventures

Interview: James Edward Raggi IV (Part III)

Parts I and II of this interview can be found here and here, respectively.

7. In a media landscape increasingly shaped by risk-aversion and corporate IP management, where do small, transgressive publishers like Lamentations of the Flame Princess fit in? Is there still a place for the truly weird? 

I said something a little earlier that's not as true as it used to be. While it is mostly true that people look at the censorship of the past and think it was ridiculous, there's a creeping attitude rising up that looks at some stuff from the 1970s on, wondering how they got away with doing what they did. Like somehow it is wrong these things exist. The '70s were wild for movies. I was too young to see anything in those days (well, I remember Star Wars) but going back ... Blazing Saddles and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salò and Pink Flamingos and I Spit on Your Grave and Wizard of Gore and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS and Clockwork Orange and Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now and Exorcist and Death Wish and Last Tango in Paris and and and and and and ... you could just make the most outrageous stuff and somehow there was a way to get it done and get it to audiences. And not just on the lowest independent level, either, there are some major films in just that list there. 

There's a reason I called the second game box, the one after I realized I could do this full time, the “Grindhouse Edition.” This is the feel we're after. Anything can happen, and whether any particular work falls within someone's parameters of good taste is not our concern. 

Whether there is room for that today is entirely up to the public and their willingness to dig a little bit to find it. It might not be on the most convenient platforms. You might even have to order direct from the publisher. That's what allows this stuff to still exist now and into the future in a cultural climate that seems to demand you conform to Group A or Group B's standards in order to have an audience. 

8. Do you think roleplaying games have a unique potential to explore uncomfortable or disturbing subject matter, more so than, say, literature or film? If so, why? 

I think they have less potential. RPGs are all location and situation and setup, and then it's through play that things actually happen. The “emergent story” format of RPGs means that whatever comes out at the end is something of an accident, or the result of a succession of coincidences. 

Literature and film and any medium where someone has complete control over the flow of the entire story means they can take uncomfortable subjects and do different things with them deliberately and drive the point home through narrative and thematic context. 

If the typical RPG group comes across the goings-on in, say, Salò, there's going to be an exploration of a very different kind of violence than the film invites us to explore, I dare say. 

9. Finally, if Lovecraft were alive today, do you think he’d approve of Lamentations of the Flame Princess? Or would he recoil in horror? 

The more interesting question is if Lovecraft were alive today, what would all these people who have appropriated his work and in some cases owe some substantial portion of their incomes to their use of his work, think of him?

Can you imagine Lovecraft stepping through a time portal from the mid-1930s, with all the attitudes from then intact, seeing what's become of his work, and deciding to try to get writing jobs from the publishers selling books based on his work? That would be much more amusing.

As for what Lovecraft would think of LotFP? Oh he'd hate it. He's from a wealthy family that fell on hard times, and apparently carried himself with a sort of upper class manner, thought of himself as a gentleman, and for the first forty years of his life he was deeply conservative, and I'm this racial mongrel (Italians and Poles were two immigrant groups he didn't much care for) kid from the projects who is a fan of and influenced by and I guess producing the lowest of the arts.

And one of those influences is the old pulp author H.P. Lovecraft. I love you, man.

Interview: James Edward Raggi IV (Part II)

Part I of this interview can be found here.

4. Do you feel that the mechanics of traditional RPGs (e.g. levels, hit points, spells) can fully accommodate Lovecraftian horror? Is there a built-in tension between the player agency they provide and cosmic indifference?

Traditional RPGs are the perfect vehicle for Lovecraftian horror. What better way to portray an uncaring universe than a game where the person running the game is (supposed to be) a neutral arbiter and dice decide everything? It's when you start getting into narrative mechanics (hero points, karma, whatever) that this starts to break down.

Thing about an indifferent universe is not just that it doesn't care if you fail and die ... it also doesn't care if you live and thrive.

5. You’ve been an outspoken defender of freedom of expression in RPGs, even when that means publishing work that some find offensive. How do you see that ethos connecting with Lovecraft’s own disregard for popular tastes?

I think this is a bad comparison. Lovecraft had his idiosyncrasies but I don't think much of what he was doing was pushing the boundaries of good taste. The violence, or its aftermath, in his stories weren't really detailed or dwelled upon, and he didn't go anywhere near sexuality or use profanity.

6. LotFP often revels in going beyond the boundaries of "good taste." Is that purely a stylistic choice or is there a deeper creative or philosophical motivation behind it?

Both. I grew up with horror movies and those 70s/early 80s Savage Sword of Conan comics, not to mention Howard Stern. I also grew up with the Satanic Panic and a little later on the PMRC and all the nonsense from the FCC and MPAA throughout my life.

I recently got the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers on Blu-ray, and I watched it, then listened to the commentary ... and they went on about they had censorship problems because, gasp, the two lead characters were both divorced.

We look at what couldn't be done in mass media in the past and we scoff at it. “How silly they were!” And the people that fought to overcome those restrictions, we see them as important people in the history of their art. Heroes, I'd call them.

But then people act like what is restricted today is serious business and totally justified, and anyone who fights against these modern restrictions are bad people who want bad things.

No. It's the same thing. It is absolutely the same thing.

One of my favorite movies is Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. And when the female lead is introduced, she's been put in the stocks. Her crime? Dancing on a Sunday. And after getting the fancy boxed set version and rewatching it this year, that's become my favorite way to describe what everyone gets upset about.

Oh, you used a bad unacceptable word!

Dancing on a Sunday.

That picture is unnecessarily graphic!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You've expressed irresponsible social views!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You made a joke about a sensitive topic!

Dancing on a Sunday.

You're displaying a political point of view I find unacceptable!

Dancing on a Sunday.

Remember the whole Janet Jackson Superbowl controversy? Literally dancing on a Sunday!

I don't even like ratings. Ratings change how people create, both in concept and altering a “finished” product after the fact to attain certain ratings, because ratings shape the potential audience. That's not serving an informational function, that's censorship. Fuck em all.

I know I'm on the far end radical about this sort of thing. Everyone's got that one thing they're fanatical about and this is my thing. People should just be able to do shit creatively without being able to worry that they're going to be actually restricted because of it.

A couple of my favorite stories about censorship:

Back in the day, the movie Nekromantik (a movie about necrophilia) was banned in Finland, so a festival organizer arranged a ferry trip to Estonia so people could see the movie. How ridiculous is that? I learned about this story in 2015 when attending a festival in Helsinki to see the movie. Who benefitted from making Finnish people go to Estonia to watch a movie?

For many years the first three Cannibal Corpse albums were banned in Germany, and no songs were from those albums were allowed to be performed live. There were police monitors at their shows. They'd play the songs anyway, just under different names. That ban was lifted in 2006, but just a couple years ago Germany banned the Cannibal Corpse coloring book. A coloring book!

I've got no sympathy for anyone who argues for restricting the availability of creative work. The fact that all of this is still an ongoing concern makes me more confrontational about it. The books, movies, and music that I like pretty much guarantees that some of this stuff was always going to be a part of LotFP, but the fact that there are people who want to penalize people for making up stuff they don't like makes me do it more.

And we do get penalized for it. The first Free RPG Day book we put out was trashed by a number of the participating stores. We were later kicked out of Free RPG Day entirely because some other publisher threatened to pull out if we were allowed to continue to participate. One of our titles got trashed by a British distributor, and we only caught wind of that because one of the distributor's employees publicly complained that the bosses didn't let her look at it first, they thought it was so bad. Our stuff regularly gets denied from DriveThru, sometimes for reasons I can't fathom.

And of course there's the reputational factor, “Oh, they do that sort of thing.” Well yes, but not only that sort of thing. You work outside of someone's comfort zone once and they're going to try to punish everything you do because of it.

I just don't understand the impulse to look at something and decide that the public shouldn't get to decide for themselves whether they accept it or not. And it's the worst when it comes from someone who makes things themselves; it's the basest form of cowardice, trying to argue for caps on imagination and be in favor of more restricted thinking in creative work.

Aarrrghhh I get so angry, even when it happens to something I don't care about, even when it happens to something/someone I don't like. I don't understand why anyone does that, and I don't understand why anyone goes along with it.

And yes, that includes pretty much whatever example anyone reading this is thinking of. Blatant plagiarism is about all I can get on board with restricting.

To me, the first step in doing anything creative is to take down the creative walls so there's nothing but clear horizons on all sides, and then you decide what you want to create. If there's someone keeping creative walls up, how do people not feel like they're being physically crushed? How are they not expending at least some of their creative energy attacking those walls?

Hmm. I got very worked up answering this one. But it is the hill to die on.

Interview: James Edward Raggi IV (Part I)

I think it's fair to say that James Edward Raggi IV needs no introduction. He's been publishing old school fantasy roleplaying game materials since 2008, many of which are not only foundational to the OSR but also take inspiration from the works and ideas of H.P. Lovecraft. I asked James a few question relating to LotFP, HPL, and other matters and he very kindly provided with some lengthy answers that will appear over the course of the next two days.

1. Let’s start with the obvious: Lamentations of the Flame Princess has always been described as a “weird fantasy roleplaying game.” What does “weird” mean to you and what role does Lovecraft play in shaping that definition?

Formally it's taken straight from Lovecraft's definition of “weird” from his Supernatural Horror in Literature essay:

“The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”

Basically what Lovecraft called “cosmicism.”

I think the best example of this sort of “weird” in fiction wasn't even made by Lovecraft, but by Algernon Blackwood in The Willows. I put some quotes of this in the old Grindhouse box for LotFP that I thought served as the best short examples:

“We had strayed into some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin.” 

“You think it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought perhaps it was the old gods. But I tell you now it is neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own.”

“There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.”

That's my ideal of what the “weird” should be, but in practical terms it isn't always so. It's sometimes just a slush word to signify some sort of genre crossing, such as mixing fantasy with horror or sci-fi.

Interview: Sean McCoy

My next interview for the The Shadow over August is Sean McCoy, creator of the roleplaying game, Mothership. Mothership is a sci-fi horror game in the tradition of movies like Alien, The Thing, and Event Horizon, all of which clearly show a Lovecraftian influence. Consequently, I reached out to Sean and he kindly agreed to answer my questions not just about Lovecraft but also about Mothership and what it has to offer fans of science fiction and horror RPGs.

1. To what extent was H.P. Lovecraft an influence on Mothership? Were there specific stories or concepts you feel that directly or indirectly shaped the game’s tone or mechanics?

One of my best friends got into Lovecraft when we were in high school. It went completely over my head. But through him I got into Call of Cthulhu. It’s still one of the scariest RPG memories I’ve ever had. That and the idea that your characters could be on this downward spiral rather than becoming more powerful really appealed to me. 

Stories that Lovecraft influenced have had a larger impact on me: Berserk, The Mist, The King in Yellow, Thomas Ligotti, Clark Ashton Smith, The Thing, Annihilation, Amnesia: Dark Descent, Hellboy, Providence, Half-Life, Junji Ito, Event Horizon. At the Mountains of Madness — particularly the manga adaptation by Gou Tanabe — always looms large in my mind. 

2. Lovecraft famously emphasized fear of the unknown and mankind’s insignificance in the cosmos. Did you translate those themes into the actual play experience of Mothership and, if so, how?

That’s a big part of what we’re trying to do. We didn’t want Mothership to feel like a fun romp around the galaxy with talking aliens or knowable alien civilizations like in Star Wars or Mass Effect. We wanted space to feel like a lonely desert highway to nowhere. A lot of this comes down to how we choose what modules we write. 

3. The Stress and Panic mechanics in Mothership are central to the game. Are these meant to evoke the classic Lovecraftian “descent into madness” or did you have something different in mind?

No, by the time Mothership arrived on the scene, Call of Cthulhu had already staked its claim to that territory. And the whole like “person go cuckoo” vibe isn’t our thing. Nearly everyone now openly struggles with their mental health and that’s a positive thing. More people seek help and get treatment. We wanted to find those breaking points where someone snaps because of the immense pressure they’re under. In 1e we moved away from more clinical language when we described panic for exactly this reason. 

4. In Lovecraft's own stories, the protagonists rarely “win." They survive, if they’re lucky. How do you balance that kind of grim narrative tone with the needs of an enjoyable RPG session?

We call it "Survive, Solve, Save: Pick Two." Survive the ordeal. Solve the mystery. Save the day. I think some of it is about your play culture. DCC has players reveling in death due to their awesome funnels and their general 70s airbrushed van aesthetic. Over time, we’re building up a library of more mundane adventures. Ones that are stressful but not necessarily interacting with cosmic horror every week. Additionally, we’re trying to encourage wardens to take a longer view of campaigns. Putting months or years between adventures rather than the typical adventuring day from D&D. 

5. Do you see the derelict ship or space station in a Mothership scenario as an extension of the haunted house or ruined temple in Lovecraft's fiction?

Yeah, I’m obsessed with abandoned and forgotten places but my touchstone for that is largely D&D. Ruined architecture, cold case mysteries, “what happened here?” These questions are always at the forefront of my mind. With At the Mountains of Madness, this forgotten ancient civilization is fascinating to me. Particularly if it transforms your idea of your place in the universe. This is a theme we’re going to explore soon in an upcoming module (tentatively titled Word of God). 

6. How do you view Mothership’s place in the broader tradition of “weird science fiction”? Are there other weird authors beyond Lovecraft you see as inspirations?

The big one for me is Brian Evenson. One of my absolutely favorite authors. His story. "The Dust," in the collection A Collapse of Horses is the closest thing to a direct inspiration for Mothership outside of the Alien franchise. Evenson is a superb author, just so much fun to read. We’re now commissioning our own short fiction and comics for our Megadamage magazine from authors like Patrick Loveland, Anthony Herrera, and Nick Grant, so we hope to be contributing more to weird fiction tradition soon. 

7. Lovecraft’s work often implies a kind of cosmic fatalism – that knowledge brings ruin, that humanity is a passing accident. Does Mothership share that worldview or do you see room for resistance or even hope?

In Mothership, player characters rarely defeat the big evil. But often they live to fight another day or they step the tide another day. They keep back the darkness another day. And even if they perish, someone else will pick up the distress signal or the message or the captains log and continue the work. I don’t view it as hopeless and nihilistic. I look at it like the great work of transforming your life or others is a work for many people across time and space working together whether they know it or not. Which to me is profoundly hopeful. 

8. What are the unique challenges of presenting horror in an RPG context, where players can make choices, derail scenarios, and joke around at the table? Can you keep the tone intact or is that not even a concern?

To us it’s not much of a concern. Whether a player gets scared at the table is so far out of our control that we don’t even think about it. People will joke around and order pizza and look up rules and none of that is conducive to getting scared. That being said, “where is the horror?” is a common refrain among our development team. We want to allow for the possibility that an encounter can be scary, if the group is in the mood, but we make it clear in our Warden’s Operations Manual, that this isn’t some bar to clear in order to have a successful game. Fun is our only bar. 

9. Are there any lessons you’ve taken from Lovecraft, positive or negative, about how to portray horror in an interactive medium?

So, Lovecraft’s horror is deeply personal, reflecting his worst qualities and odious worldview. His racism and xenophobia, eugenics, fear of the city, he’s just the worst. It’s a reminder that when we’re talking about our fears we’re talking about a really core part of who we are. So, for me as a writer that often means thinking about the things I am deeply afraid of and shining a light on them. 

Interview: Mike Mason

One of first things I wanted to do with the The Shadow over August series was to interview roleplaying game designers and creators who'd worked on RPGs influenced either directly or indirectly by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Obviously, this meant reaching out to Mike Mason, the current creative director of Chaosium's venerable Call of Cthulhu, perhaps my favorite RPG to deal with Lovecraftian themes. Mike kindly agreed to answer my many questions about CoC, Lovecraft, and his own experiences with both.

1. What was your first exposure to H.P. Lovecraft’s writing and how did it shape your personal approach to horror and game design?

I was an eager reader of paperback horror stories in the 1970s, and I imagine I probably read at least one HPL short story during that time without realizing. A few years later in the early 1980s, I discovered the Call of Cthulhu RPG and HPL’s place in the creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, which then sent me off on a mission to track down HPL’s stories as well as those by August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, Ramsey Campbell, and so on. That was my first proper dive into Lovecraft’s writing. At that time in the UK, Granada had just published most of HPL’s works in a series of paperback books, which made it all very much easier to read them.

In reading these stories, I found these were not tales about murderers and crazed killers, or ghosts and goblins, which was the standard fare from popular horror anthologies the era, such as the Pan Horror series of books. The stories from the Lovecraft Circle were something different, dealing with bigger (cosmic!) themes, and were not really about petty human considerations (revenge etc.). The monsters were truly monstrous and unknowable (not mutated animals from atomic bomb testing) and alien. The books had strange books and lore which went well beyond anything I’d read before. All in all, this combination raised the Mythos stories above what I’d been used to reading, so they were more exciting, more involving, and made a deeper impression. It opens the door beyond “horror” fiction into “weird” fiction and I never looked back.

2. In what ways does Call of Cthulhu seek to capture the essence of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror that differs from other horror RPGs?

Being the first TTPRG to bring HPL’s creations into games, Call of Cthulhu was entirely different to every other RPG available. Here, the player characters were normal, average people, not superheroes or muscled-up barbarians, and so on. Here, the characters risked everything to save the day, with little more than a notebook and a pen, they delved into forbidden books for secrets, spells were deadly, and they could lose their minds when confronted with alien Mythos terrors. None of this was like bashing monsters to steal their treasures – the monsters in Call of Cthulhu were often more intelligent than the player characters, which added a new dimension, as the opponents were not only reactive to the players but also proactive. This dynamic shift elevated the game play and made the game stand out from the crowd. 

Today, these same considerations continue to make Call of Cthulhu stand out and attract new people to play. I think Call of Cthulhu is the second most popular game on online platforms like Roll20, and it’s the most played game in Japan. The game’s easy to learn rules and enthralling game play captures the imagination and keeps people coming back for more.

The game is very flexible, so people can play all manner of horror tropes and mysteries with it – be it slow-burn cosmic revelations, one-night only survival horror, or pulpy two-fisted action – people are able to find and develop the style of game they desire with Call of Cthulhu, making it very accessible and broad in scope, unlike many other horror games that tend to narrow their focus down to a single style of play and a single type of experience.

3. Lovecraft’s protagonists are often passive or doomed. How has Chaosium adapted this narrative fatalism into something playable and engaging for decades?

The game is about the players, who are usually the opposite of passive! We’re not retelling a HPL story – together, the players and their Keeper (game master) create a story – built up from the foundation of a pre-prepared scenario, which sets up a mystery or situation that the players engage with, and offers possible solutions to help guide the Keeper, and thereby the players, through to a satisfactory conclusion. The mechanics of the game mirror certain aspects from Cthulhu Mythos stories – humans are vulnerable, weak, and sensitive to the Mythos, which can both kill and corrupt their minds. There’s a downward spiral the player characters can find themselves on, however things are not set in stone and the characters can, sometimes, overcome and win the day with their minds and bodies intact. 

But it is a horror game, so character deaths and awful in-game events do happen too – often to the great amusement of the other players! While it’s horror, it is a game and meant to be fun too. Each group of players finds the right level of game for them. 

The key to the game is ensuring the players have the potential and possibility to win out, even though the odds are against them. This ensures the players have a chance to succeed, even if it’s minor victory. The players have to feel their actions can made a different, otherwise they become passive observers - and that’s no fun for anyone. 

4. The Mythos has been diluted in pop culture to the point of parody in some circles. How does Call of Cthulhu resist that trend and maintain Lovecraft’s original tone?

There’s loads of advice we’ve written into our game books and the Call of Cthulhu rulebooks on exactly this subject– too much to write here! But, in essence – by staying true to the concept of the game and the stories its based upon – keep the horror horrific, ensure the player characters have something worth fighting for, and ensure that the Mythos (be it monsters, cultists, spells, and tomes) remain mostly mysterious and unknowable. From time to time, a situation in the game may be amusing and funny - that’s great, as the players let their guards down a little, which means the next scene, where they face some form of horror, can hit harder. The monsters in the game aren’t plushies! 

5. What do you think Lovecraft would have made of Call of Cthulhu and its popularity? Do you think he would’ve approved or even played it?

I have no idea. HPL was a curious and strange person. I think the game would have amused him – seeing his creations sort of come to life, but then he’d probably get annoyed as we “weren’t doing Cthulhu right!” Or something like that. 

6. What’s one underrated Lovecraft story you think deserves more attention, especially from Call of Cthulhu players?

"The Music of Eric Zann." But, for players, I’d be pointed to "The Dunwich Horror," "The Call of Cthulhu," and At the Mountains of Madness. Perhaps also "The Colour Out of Space."  But then you really should go read some other Mythos authors, like Ramsey Campbell, Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies, and so many more!

7. What do you think the continued popularity of Call of Cthulhu says about the enduring appeal of Lovecraft’s vision, even a century later?

That cosmic horror is something that continues to be relevant to us – perhaps even more so than in HPL’s time. Lovecraft imagined humanity as insignificant in the greater cosmos. Everything we’ve seen and experienced over the latter 20th century and into the 21st has reinforced that idea. Once, we believed the Earth was the centre of the universe – now, we actually realize how small our planet is in relation to everything else, and how precious our planet is – it’s the only one we know that sustains life. Thus, the fear of losing it all, whether by cosmic whim or self-destruction, continues to impact upon us. The world has dramatically changed since Lovecraft’s time and our collective fear is so much greater now. Lovecraft foresaw a glimpse of that fear and channeled it into his stories.