#CthulhuThursday Not the 1st Edition, but 1st with the Links…
First off, a picture of Ogrethulu to celebrate the launch of Ogre last week!
Next we have news that a Lovecraftian 1st edition went up for auction on 5th Oct…
Have you ever wanted to own a first-edition H.P. Lovecraft book, to breathe in its sulphurous, deathless pages, preferably while wearing black robes and chanting? Obviously we all do. But only one of us will have the opportunity: Lovecraft’s first edition of his first novel — The Shunned House, 1928 — along with many others, will be going up for auction.
Happy news for board game players…
Join the search to stop innumerable cults worshipping a single, dreaded being in Masks of Nyarlathotep, a new expansion for Eldritch Horror from Fantasy Flight Games, inspired by the classic Call of Cthulhu roleplaying adventure! At the same time, you can experience the adventure anew in your roleplaying group with a new edition of the Masks of Nyarlathotep adventure from Chaosium that brings the definitive Call of Cthulhu roleplaying campaign into the game’s seventh edition.
Finally there is this amazing King in Yellow King image by Geber Luis…
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
I’m Speaking at the new Gamesforum!
There is a new games conference, Games Forum, and I’m really pleased to have been asked to speak at it’s 1st event. It’s on 24th/25th Jan 2018. What it’s about is:
Gamesforum is where the games industry comes together. Join 600 representatives from the PC, console and mobile games business for two full days of talks, meetings and socialising in the heart of London.
If you fancy coming along, this discount code SPK20, which gives 20% off passes.
Hope to see you there!
Article on HuffPo: Meeple Rising: How Digital Technology Is Growing, Not Killing Board Games
As I’ve been working on, playing and also thinking about video games a lot, I’ve got an article on Huffington Post on Board Games:
As a digital game developer there might be a perception that what we do is all about the technology, that we’re always on to the new and shiny “next big thing”. And in part, yes, our industry is driven by changes in technology and they do constantly alter the landscape into which we release titles. So the antithesis of this might seem to be the board game: bits of card instead of GPUs, a couple of dice in place of CPUs, and an instructions manual instead of interactive tutorials. Chalk and cheese.
However the reality is quite different.
On the subject of related articles, there is also a new post on GameTheNews about AI, news and Ogre:
So while AI comes into the view of policy makers now, for science fiction creators it’s been a subject of thought for decades. … the 1977 classic board game Ogre, in part inspired by the Bolo novels, explores a future where AI is transplanted into huge cybernetic tanks so large and inhuman they even scare the humans fighting on the same side. Called ‘Ogres’ these immense tanks face off against each other on the battlefields of the last war. Ogre has both entertained and provoked debate around the subject for four decades now with its fearsome predictions of a near-future blighted by both AI and nuclear weapons.
And also this on Wired about the game Pandemic is good!
#CthulhuThursday Beware the Ides of Oct
We’re back! It’s a busy week for me as we have Ogre launching! However always time for some Cthulhu mischief!
First up the fantastic Achtung! Cthulhu has a free PDF now available, ‘Tales from the Crucible’ about thier heroes fighting the Secret War…
I’ve been really enjoying the work of Loïc Muzy. His Lovecraftian creature artwork is impressive! Here’s a sample…
The Lovecraft eZine has an article about Carnacki – he was a ghost hunter created William Hope Hodgson who’s work was admired by Lovecraft:
CARNACKI operates in shadowy occult realms, on the fringes of science, in places out of sight and out of mind of normal everyday people. But sometimes the darkness touches the lives of others in ways they cannot understand, and they find they need help – the kind of help that only Carnacki can provide.
Carnacki also appears in the 1910 story of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore of ‘Providence’ (see last entry) fame.
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
Ogre is live! Grab it now on Steam! #OctOgre
I’m really pleased to be able to say that Ogre is now live on Steam! The team has been working super-hard to get it to this point and will be working after too as there are things we want to do with it. The game is now live and if you fancy some classic strategy action wrapped in a modern digital telling – this is for you!
Here’s the trailer…
And the mighty tweet from Steam…
Now after all the excitement – it’s back to work!
Cthulhu Thursday – Fixed Edition
I’m sorry to say some evil Mi-Go got hold of a partially completed posted and published it! Shock! Horror! Who knows what next they might do! So sorry about that. I’ve fixed the post now…
On with the show: with some haunting music played by…
https://twitter.com/ThatCthulhuGuy/status/910884505912795136?s=03
I’m really excited for Stranger Things 2 – and guess who has influenced it?
Stranger Things is famously rooted in ’80s nostalgia, but for the season 2 monster, it took inspiration from even further back: early 1900s writer H.P. Lovecraft. The author wasn’t widely recognized during his prime, but after his death in 1937, he achieved posthumous acclaim for his work in horror fiction — something Stranger Things knows well. Now, Lovecraft is regarded as one of the most celebrated 20th century writers in the genre, most notably for works like The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth.
I’ve backed Cult Simulator on Kickstarter as it looks amazing!
I also got this from Reddit, not strictly Lovecraftian, but creepy!
The next image has a spoiler note attached! It’s for Alan Moore’s providence. Stop reading now if you’ve not read it and want too!
This is one of the ghouls from Providence #7. There is more on the photoshoot here.
Ghoul photo via Mitch Jenkins and SusannaPeretzFx
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
Ogre Update
We’re about a week out from the release of Ogre now and we’re all working hard and getting very excited! We’ve been getting some great previews of the game…
One great tweet of renowned artist and geek Winchell Chung:
We’ve had a great by Ogre fan K-Slacker…
Plus a great article by the man himself, Steve Jackson, in Bell of Lost Souls…
So if you’ve not added it to your wishlist on Steam – now is the time!
Game Dev Quick Links – Sept 2017 Edition (Where I read lots of game dev stuff so you don’t have too!)
Welcome to the September edition of quick links for the Bristol Games Hub newsletter. Let’s dive in…
Fixing our broken internet culture is increasingly key issues for those working in the industry. GI.biz are doing good work in opening up discussion on this and from my POV, no it should not just be the price of making games.
For sure, we could all just treat this as being ‘the cost of doing business’; some parts of the Internet are toxic (Reddit sure as hell being a prime offender) and serve to encourage and validate hugely anti-social and abusive behavior.
The indie games are too damn cheap so says the excellent SteamSpy – and he’s got a point! We spend a huge amount of time and energy to create a game and while pricing is not a science, we should be unafraid to ask what we think it is worth.
And here lies the problem outlined in the title. The indie games are too damn cheap.
You can find indies in any other big entertainment market: movies, comics, music. Everywhere else small creators face the same problem: making the ends meet with a relatively small audience. It’s never easy for a small guy and it will never be, but in most other industries indie products are still sold at the same price as big AAA titles from established brands and companies.
Besides, it’s inefficient. Some studies point to 35 hours per week being the maximum one can work at peak productivity. One study found that eight 60-hour weeks produces as much as eight 40-hour weeks, yet game developers swap stories of 80-hour-per-week months.
So why do we do it?
PS. Like this? more here! Also sign-up to our newsletter too!
It’s #CthulhuThursday – Santos vs Cthulhu & more…
Hello fellow worshipers of mythos, it’s Cthulhu Thursday again. We start with this amazing image thanks to the Pulp Librarian:
https://twitter.com/PulpLibrarian/status/906924021979205633?s=03
We also admire how wool can be used to describe the indescribable…
Also of note is that episode of the Lovecraftian comedy, Quiet & Bold is online (start with Pt.1 here…) so you need to give it a listen ‘cos it’s amazing…
PS. I’ve now got all 3 hardbacks of Providence and it’s quite a read. Amazing. I’m planning to write much, much more on this… stay tuned…
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can b
e found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
The Masks We (and Cthulhu) Wears… It’s #CthulhuThursday
Welcome once more to Thor-sday, a day named after a god of thunder when we look into the works of other, darker, gods. We start with an image of Nyarlathotep, noting it’s always hard to depict things who text descriptions are often based on them being, well, hard to depict…
Nyarlathotep by Henlp (Source)
On theme, the Companion to the classic Call of Cthulhu RPG ‘Masks of Nyarlathotep’ has been released. The Lovecraft eZine has a review:
Lary DiTillio and Lynn Willis’s Masks of Nyarlathotep: Perilous Adventures to Thwart the Dark God is probably the single most celebrated campaign ever created for Chaosium’s unhallowed-groundbreaking Call of Cthulhu RPG. Recipient of a Best Roleplaying Adventure award, Masks of Nyarlathotep remains, as its credits declare, “a roleplaying classic,” over two decades after its first appearance in 1984. It’s also immensely long: Writer Jim Hauser tells of one complete playthrough that took 1 ½ years. … The Companion is as gargantuan as you’d expect, given that it’s almost four times as long as the original text…
Back to another image now. This one is the ‘namesless city’ and I like the vibe going on here…
Nameless City by Will Pottorff (Source)
Finally I want to post a link (I think again?) to a review of Alan Moore’s Providence (Pt1). I’ve read parts one and two and am waiting for three. Then I’ll pen my thoughts. This is a good review, but note it has spoilers!
Many of you reading this will have seen all of the individual issues by now, so you will know if I’m correct in assuming that Providence is – on the evidence of this volume – -shaping up to be one of Alan Moore’s most important works.
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
A Great Becoming... 
