Game Design

As you may recall, as part of Kickstarter’s “Witchstarter” promotion last October, I launched a role-playing game project titled Children of the Elder Sign.* It’s been a bucket-list idea for more years than I can remember, and this seemed a perfect motivation to tackle it at last.

The idea is basically “What if Hercules, et al., were offspring of Lovecraft’s pantheon instead of the Greek/Roman gods?”

Wilbur Whately is an example from Lovecraft’s fiction, of course. (See “The Dunwich Horror.”) And as the villain of the tale, he has a nefarious goal.

But what if he were recast as the protagonist? Better yet, what if his goal were merely to survive? What would it be like to be a half-monstrous character trying to hide in human society, similarly to My Favorite Martian, Resident Alien, etc.? Or ever on the run ala The Incredible Hulk, The Fugitive, or Poker Face?

(And how is it I just now noticed that Bill Bixby starred in two of those things?)

Further, what if instead of designing the setting for only one of my role-playing game lines, I did it for all four?

I’ve read all of Lovecraft’s fiction and poetry a couple of times over the years, so I set about first working on a D6xD6 setting chapter as a way to summarize it, with plans for full Bookmark No HP, d4ce, and D13 RPG versions by October 2026.

As I recall, there’s a bit in Samurai Cat where he finds the Necronomicon and starts reading it, and its curse won’t let him stop. Page after page he reads, with always another page to turn, until the book grows so heavy that it slips out of his grasp and breaks the spell. Writing the D6xD6 chapter has been something like that. The more I revisited the source material, the more I discovered I had forgotten, and I even stumbled upon public-domain stories in the mythos by 11 other authors concurrent with him or just after, and five preceding him.

I had hoped to finish that D6xD6 draft in February, then boil it down to Bookmark No HP RPG size. But come May, with the D6xD6 draft still growing, I decided that if I wanted to get something to my Kickstarter backers anytime soon, I’d better turn to the Bookmark No HP version first.

Fitting a setting within bookmark format is always a fascinating challenge! It’s like writing a formalist sonnet. Or a magic spell. There has to be something of real substance, but based upon dependable mechanics. Otherwise the sonnet, magic, or game just fizzles. And there are lots of “rules lite” games out there that fall limp, like trying to kick a field goal with a deflated football.

Yesterday, after two months of play-testing, revising, editing, and layout, I posted the print-and-play BNHP version to my backers. I’ll get it up on DriveThruRPG eventually, but if you’d like it on the cheap, along with hefty discounts on related stuff … *

*The Kickstarter is still accepting late pledges; here’s the link.