Toward Ecosophy

,,,is finally in print and available for sale.  To borrow the one phrase that applies, what a long strange trip it's been, 

Back in the autumn of 2018, several readers of my tentacle novels asked if I'd considered doing a roleplaying game set in the world of The Weird of Hali. Conversations, followed, and it turned out someone was listening: the publisher of Aeon Games, who contacted me and offered a contract. So away we went. I got quite a bit of help from my readers, from brainstorming ideas to playtesting the results, and finally, in late 2019, the manuscript went to the publisher. 

Then the world went crazy. We had a pandemic, and governments around the world reacted to it in weirdly atypical and mostly counterproductive ways, and supply chains buckled and broke, and -- well, you can fill in the blanks as well as I can. Of course that's more or less what's supposed to happen when eldritch sorceries awaken the Great Old Ones and Great Cthulhu rises from drowned R'lyeh, but I didn't think a roleplaying game would do that...

The last step was a Kickstarter, which was launched a little more than a month ago. From the beginning I fielded emails from readers who would have been eager to chip in, but they were broke because their spouse had been vaccinated and hadn't been healthy enough to work since then, or they were about to lose their jobs because of vaccine mandates, or they'd walked away from a lousy job because it sucked and were getting by on less money, or -- well, here again, you can fill in the blanks as well as I can. So the Kickstarter fell short of its goal. 

I'm glad to say that the people at Aeon Games looked at that, and bellowed, "Damn the tentacles, full speed ahead!" So the PDF version of the game is available right now and the print version is being printed as we speak, for mailing in a couple of weeks. You can order a copy here. The publisher's offering a 20% discount; use the discount code WOH20. 

If the world has gone crazy, you might as well embrace the weirdness. Enjoy! 

***Update:*** I've just heard from the publisher. They had a glitch in the system that got in the way of immediate download of the PDF version, and that's been fixed. They've also added a PDF-only option at a reduced price, which you can find here. 

I'm sorry to say that the announcement I hoped to make today -- the long-delayed Kickstarter launch for the Weird of Hali roleplaying game -- has been delayed yet again. 

Sigh. 

I'll keep the list posted. Hopefully this happens before I die of old age. 

It's been a while now since I finished work on Weird of Hali: Roleplaying the Other Side of the Cthulhu Mythos, after gathering reports from playtesters literally around the world.  Several people have asked whether it's still in the works. The answer is yes. The publisher, Aeon Games, has had to deal with some unexpected delays, mostly relating to the current virus outbreak. That said, I've already completed the page proofs for the text, the illustrations are in process, and the publisher and I are starting to work out the details of marketing. I don't have a firm release date yet, but one should be set fairly soon. 

In the meantime, I'd like to ask for a little help from those of my readers -- i.e., most of them -- who are more internet-savvy than I am. 

One of the possibilities we've been discussing is using a Kickstarter campaign -- not least because both of us watched the similar campaign for Vintage Worlds 2 and 3 succeed. Neither of us, however, has ever run a Kickstarter ourselves. So, O initiates of the squamous, rugose mysteries of the internet -- what have you seen in other Kickstarter campaigns that you liked? What lured you in helpless fascination toward the abyss?  And what have you seen that made you flee in palsied horror, never to return? Inquiring cultists want to know...

I'm delighted to report that the rulebook for Weird of Hali: Roleplaying the Other Side of the Cthulhu Mythos is speeding through the publication process. I've received the first page proofs, with all edits; the very few corrections will be going back to the publisher later this evening. All that has to happen now is layout, final corrections, and publication. Thanks to everyone who contributed advice and playtesting experience, it's been a smooth process and I think the resulting game will be a lot of fun to play. 

I'll post again once I've got a tentative release date. I know a couple of people are already working on supplements and/or adventure modules for WoH the RPG -- for that matter, the rulebook contains a mini-module, "The Tablet from Sarkomand." If anybody else is interested in doing something of the kind, let's talk. 

Also, those of my readers who are writing (or considering writing) stories in the Haliverse, as discussed in a post a couple of days ago, might want to consider using the rulebook as a resource, since it covers a lot of information not given in the novels. In the meantime, if you have questions about any Secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know related to the stories or the game, you know who to ask. ;-)

I'm delighted to announce that the rulebook for Weird of Hali: Roleplaying the Other Side of the Cthulhu Mythos is now finished in working draft. It's kind of chunky -- 107,000 words, 500 pages in double spaced manuscript format -- but then that's what you get when a rulebook has to include three different systems of magic, not to mention rules for mad scientists, car chases, nervous breakdowns, and what happens when your character starts turning into something other than human. A first pass by the publisher, and by an old friend of mine who's played RPGs since D&D was this neat set of additions to Chainmail, turned up a few problems that were readily fixed, and now it's ready for the next stage of the process: playtesting. 

I have three Games Masters lined up to do the initial playtesting, but I'd be willing to see several more give it a spin, I want to make sure all the remaining bugs in the rules are caught in advance of publication, and playtesting to destruction is the best way to see to that. Interested? Let's talk. 

A couple of points: 

First, some things are fixed. The rulebook uses the Mythras system, and the license that allows me to use that system permits things to be added to the simplified Mythras Imperative rules but does not permit anything in those rules to be removed or changed. If you don't like d100 games, or some other aspect of Mythras aka RuneQuest 6 irritates you, that's unfortunate but it's not going to change. Similarly, the revaluation of all values central to the game (and the novels) -- the idea that the Great Old Ones are the old gods of nature and it's the people who are trying to destroy or banish them who are the real threat to all life on earth -- and a good deal of the setting details are also not going to change. 

Second, no, you don't have to have read any of the novels in my tentacular fantasy series The Weird of Hali in order to play, or playtest, this game. It's the same fictive world and the same broad situation, but the goal is to make the game an independent entrance to that fictive world, not just a derivative of the books. 

Third, I'm working on a mini-adventure module, The Tablet from Sarkomand, that I hope to include in the rulebook, and that will also need to be playtested, but it's got some weeks of hard work ahead before it's complete. I'd like to have the rules tested by Games Masters who can improvise or draw up their own adventures for Weird of Hali. One potential incentive is that the publisher has told me he's very interested in publishing adventure modules and supplements for Weird of Hali and other games of the Mythras family; if you're interested in turning your passion for roleplaying games into a source of pizza and beer money, this may be your entry...

So let the games begin. Ave, Cthulhu! Ludituri te salutant! 

Got another favor to ask of my readers. I'm closing in on the completion of the first draft of Weird of Hali: The Roleplaying Game; I've finished the rules for character generation, combat, all three kinds of sorcery, greater and lesser tomes, moon paths and standing stones, sanity, the lack thereof, and what happens when you spend too much time hobnobbing with ghouls; the Creatures section at the back is crawling (not to mention oozing, leaping, flapping, swimming, and lurking) with a world-class collection of eldritch critters -- and yes, fans of Yag-Kotha from "The Tower of the Elephant" will find other members of his species present and accounted for; I've got a few other details to plug in, but there's one serious gap remaining...

Mad scientists. 

Lovecraft made ample use of them in his fiction, and I've examined the research programs of his fine contributions to the field -- Herbert West, Dr. Munoz, Crawford Tillinghast, Charles Dexter Ward, and the nameless orderly whose telepathy machine had such unexpected results in "Beyond the Walls of Sleep;" I've taken similar notice of Jean Averaud, whose intriguing sonic device features in Clark Ashton Smith's "The Devotee of Evil': I've pored over the journals of Dr. Raymond and Dr. Steven Black, who feature in Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" and "The Inmost Light" respectively; and of course studied the grand old man of them all, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Any self-respecting game based on the weird-tale genre, even if it's turning that genre on its head, has to have ample scope for eccentric researchers in isolated country houses or concealed laboratories in urban basements, hard at work on some project that will shake the world if it doesn't blow them to smithereens first. 

Getting the concept is easy enough; getting the details, a little less so. As with other items in the game, I need a good 1d100 table with plenty of options -- if at all possible, 100 of them -- to serve as a random mad scientist research projects generator, for those GMs who want to go that route, and a source of inspiration for those GMs who want to stock an adventure with a mad scientist or two and can simply glance down the chart to see what crazed scientific venture sounds like a good addition to the game. The examples cited above give the following projects:

• reviving the recently dead
• maintaining life in a corpse
• perceiving the unseen realities that surround us all (via radiation)
• reviving the long dead
• making telepathic contact with another mind
• tuning in to the vibrations of pure evil
• perceiving the unseen realities that surround us all (via surgery)
• extracting the human soul
• manufacturing life from not quite raw materials

To that I would certainly add:

• traveling to other planets

(Space travel just hasn't been fun since it got co-opted by huge government programs, you know.) 

But there are plenty of other options, enshrined in old movies, pulp stories, and other suitable pop-culture sources. For copyright reasons, anything first published within the last couple of decades probably won't work unless it's riffing off something well established in the weird-tales genre. On the other hand, anything that dates from the days of black and white movies, pulp magazines, or the like will be particularly welcome. 

So, tentacle fans -- what do you want to see the mad scientists of WoH: the RPG busy cooking up in their laboratories to the discomfiture of player characters and the Radiance alike? Enquiring (if decidedly crazed) minds want to know...