Ne'er Cast a Clout...

...'Til May be out, etc., etc., etc.

I know there's some debate as to whether that's May (the month) or may (the blossom), but all I can say about the month is that it was yet another busy one. June is shaping up exactly the same, which is why this blog is a teensy bit late in coming.

First: back on the hieroglyphics. Slightly rusty after a bit of a break, and one of our tutors is still insisting on giving us tests every fortnight, but it's still great fun translating dead people's wishes from ancient monuments. (We're currently only having classes every fortnight rather than every week). We even got the joys of rave Godzilla as one of the hieroglyphs - allegedly it was supposed to be a baboon, but the carving was appalling and looked far more like everyone's favourite kaiju bopping on down.

As I knew I was going to be at UK Games Expo, I even plucked up the courage to ask our more serious tutor what the ancient Egyptian for "Don't read from the book!" would be, just in case anyone asked me to sign a copy of Masks of Nyarlathotep. He was very obliging, even though he didn't entirely understand why I was asking and why one of my classmates got a fit of the giggles when I made the request.

In the end, no one asked me to do any signing that required hieroglyphics, but I can now yell the correct phrase in ancient Egyptian at a mummy, should the need arise. It sounds really cool, too...

A goodly bit of May was spent finishing off my last large scale piece of editing for Blue Rose for the foreseeable future. As my job role at Chaosium changed from 1st June, while I can still do bits of freelancing for other companies (and Chaosium are very happy for me to do so), I no longer have the time available for big projects.

Or, rather, I probably could squeeze them in, but they wouldn't get the time, care and attention I like to give to my work, meaning I'm not prepared to do it. Books are needy creatures and require a lot of editorial input - even the really well written ones - and I'm not going to sell the book, the authors, or myself short when it comes to a large project. We all deserve better than that.

I've thoroughly enjoyed working with Green Ronin, particularly Blue Rose's line managers, as their Benevolent Dictator in Chief: first with Steve Kenson and then Joseph Carriker, both wonderful, generous, creative men who encouraged my nitpicking and endless questions. I hope to be able to work on Blue Rose again sometime soon, albeit in a reduced capacity. It's a game I'm very proud to have my name on.

I was also busy editing a Call of Cthulhu scenario that will be available at an upcoming convention (to be announced shortly), and organising various convention visits. I'll be popping over to Poland (Wroclaw) in Mike Mason's stead for DNI Fantastyki as a guest of the lovely people at Black Monk Games, Chaosium's Polish licencees. I've not been to Wroclaw, but my hubby has, so I know all about the gnomes and plan on spending a day hunting out as many as possible!

I was also interviewed for an upcoming Call of Cthulhu magazine (more details when I know the release date), and spent some time implementing playtesting and proofing comments on Children of Fear before we headed off for our day at UK Games Expo.

I always enjoy booth work, especially at larger conventions, where the sheer number of attendees can be a bit overwhelming. Having been doing it for a while now, I also know a lot of people, if only to say hello to and ask them how their current campaign is going. This year, I saw a very old familiar face: Jared Earle of Nightfall Games.

Those of you who know me know that my gaming history is closely tied to Nightfall and SLA, and they were the first people to give me a paying job in the gaming industry. I even still have a photocopy of the first cheque they sent me! So, it was lovely to see Jared and get to spend time catching up with him in the bar on the Friday evening. It had been over two decades since we'd last spoken, but you would never have guessed. Quite significantly (largely because Jared nagged me to stay up late even though I'd been up since stupid o'clock), as midnight came around and I became a full time employee of the Chaosium, I was sitting between Jared and Mike, neatly book-ending my gaming career to date. 

I know I've said it before, and I will say it again: gaming has been very generous to me and has given me the opportunity to work with some wonderful people and to forge some good, and long-lasting, friendships. While I've lost touch with everyone I was at school with, and virtually everyone I was at university with (unless they're fellow gamers), my gaming frienships - the oldest ones at least - have been going for well over two decades now, which isn't too shabby in the grand scheme of things.

And here's to many more years and many more friends to come!

Marching On

You'll probably be unsurprised to hear that March was a busy month here in the writing hovel. As well as moving up to the advanced class in hieroglyphics, the last few weeks have seen a few changes, the biggest of which is that my contract with Chaosium is now on a full-time, permanent basis.

I think I can safely say that, when I sent those early Talislanta scenarios off to Wizards of the Coast, I never envisaged that, 25+ years later, I'd be working for one of the most iconic gaming companies in the field. As I think I said 18 months or so ago when I was first taken on as Assistant Line Editor for Call of Cthulhu, it's a great honour to be able to bring old classics to a new audience and develop new material for such a well-loved, and respected, game. Plus, I get to work with some wonderful people. I still have a lot to learn, but I know Mike (Mason) will steer me in the right direction!

I actually managed to get to one of the North East Ancient Egypt Society meetings this month. (Usually I'm away or already booked for something else.) This one was about the recent findings at Deir el Medina, the craftsmen's village for the Valleys of the Kings and Queens. The most fascinating part of the talk was about the partial mummies they discovered, particularly the torso of a woman with numerous symmetrical tattoos, and the disarticulated woman's thighs with a tattooed lotus flower garter belt. So, as you can imagine, that set the old brain a-whirring...

I've been working on numerous game-related things this month, most of which I can't tell you much about, but it included more development work, sending things out for proofing and compiling things into new collections, along with some more art and map direction. And things are only likely to get even busier as I move into my updated role.

The other highlight of the month was, of course, my trip to Berlin for the company summit, followed by CarcosaCon. It's always fun to be back in Berlin, and this time, we got to release the Berlin: the Wicked City sourcebook PDF while we were there. (Where we were staying for the summit was in the same area the first scenario in the book is set, so we all wandered down to the Elephant Gate at the Zoologischer Garten to take some celebratory photos!)

Held in the wonderful Zamek Czocha, CarcosaCon was the first Call of Cthulhu convention run by the lovely people at Black Monk Games, Chaosium's Polish-language licensees. Funnily enough, my husband, Richard, had already been there three times for various College of Wizardry LARPs over the last two years, so I was aware of what a spectacular venue it was, but it was even better to see it up close and personal, rather than just through photographs.

If you're going to hold a horror game convention in a castle, then it really needs to have secret passageways. Czocha has loads of them, often hidden behind movable bookshelves. It was always lovely to see gamers pop out from a bookcase, dirty great grins plastered across their faces.

You also need dungeons and wine cellars, spiral staircases, a mirror room, lots of portraits of people who are probably definitely not vampires (honest), a tower with a narrow, winding staircase and amazing views, a well in which to drown unfaithful wives, an actual oubliette and a small horde of cats and bats. And a gazebo, which, because of the wonderful sunny weather, you can sit out in and play games. (And yes, there were a couple of Knights of the Dinner Table gazebo jokes - this was a games convention, after all)

As is always the case at these conventions, I was lucky enough to spend time with some old friends and have the opportunity to make new ones in between panels, interviews, running a game and the copious quantities of good, hearty food served up by the castle's catering staff. The Polish Cthulhu players were a wonderful bunch, as were all the other gamers, some of whom had travelled quite a way to be there.

I also got to know Andrew and Sean from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, who are responsible for the jaw-dropping Masks of Nyarlathotep Gamer Props Set and the wonderful Call of Cthulhu and Whisper in Darkness movies, both of which they showed in the library at the castle over the course of the convention. I also got to hear the opening act of their beautifully produced Masks of Nyarlathotep radio play - it's always a bit odd to hear dramatizations and live-plays of things you've worked on, but I'm thoroughly enjoying listening to the rest of this one now I'm home.

So, April is going to largely be a month of finishing off outstanding projects for other companies, but that's a tale for another day...

Season of Mists and Mellow Games Conventions

Now that Hallowe'en has come and gone, we're really hurtling towards winter (as can be attested by the knocking sounds currently coming from the radiator next to me as the heating turns itself on again).

As usual, it's been a busy month here, with me largely wrapping up work on Children of Fear (well, attempting to: I've still got some art and map direction left to do on that one, but it's soooo close now, honest).

Besides that, there was a goodly bit of PDF proofing going on for the upcoming Call of Cthulhu supplement: Terror Australis. For those of you who fancy a trip Down Under in the 1920s, I can safely say that there's plenty in the book to suck your investigators' faces off, as well as a few Mythos threats for if the local wildlife isn't quite deadly enough... (Seriously, everything on that continent is going to try to kill you, one way or another.)

What else? Let me consult the Oracle (the desk diary I keep everything written in so I know what I've been up to and what appointments I have coming up. I also have a mini-Oracle in my handbag for when I'm on the go).

Oh, yes: hieroglyphics.

Every year for my birthday present, my lovely Hublet gets me membership for the Lit and Phil in Newcastle (the largest private library in England outside London). I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but it's one of my happy places, and they do an amazing range of talks and courses on literally pretty much everything. As I was glancing through the Autumn newsletter a few months ago, I spotted a most intriguing entry: a notice that a 10-week beginner's course in Middle Egyptian hieroglyphics would be starting in October.

To be honest, I thought I was seeing things (or had fallen into one of my own Cthulhu scenarios...), but no, it was genuine, so a couple of weeks ago I arrived at the Lit and Phil, notebook in hand and far too excited, ready for the first class. It was wonderful. Okay, there are way too many birdy-things to draw (that really don't look much like the actual hieroglyphs by the time I've done with them), but it's like a giant puzzle solving game wrapped up in a dead language, which means my brain is really enjoying itself working out what's going on. And I have been most restrained - no Mummy jokes at all (I'm sure they've heard them all by now).

I have missed two classes due to being away at a convention and the accompanying con lurgy from hugging too many strange Europeans and Americans, but the tutor is lovely and sent me the lectures so I could get back up to speed. This meant downloading several Egyptian grammars onto both the desk top and iPad so I could figure out some of the more esoteric points (caused, in part, by Powerpoint slips due to version variance), which also made me inordinately happy (both the grammars and the puzzle-solving). And last night (yep, I was learning hieroglyphics on All Hallows Eve - squeeee!), Masks of Nyarlathotep came in handy as we were reading the cartouches of several pharaohs, including Sneferu and Menkaura...

I know I'm incredibly lucky to live close to such a wonderful resource as the Lit and Phil, and to have a job where doing something like this officially counts as research! Just don't ask me to write any curses or spells in hieroglyphics for you. Certainly not Cthulhoid ones anyway - Middle Egyptian has no letter L (that was only introduced by the Greeks at a much later stage because they needed one), so there'll be no invoking of Nyarlathotep, on paper at least. (Hmm, maybe that's precisely why there's no letter L...) 

As to that convention: October is Kraken time, so off we trundled to Schloss Neuhausen to be thoroughly pampered and over-fed by Peter, Yardena and their staff while we played games, drank far too much beer and gin (including one that tastes like strawberry laces), and gossiped with like-minded individuals. We headed to the Schloss a few days early for the pre-convention convention, which largely consisted of the folks who'd attended mini-Kraken in May this year. It was good to be back in the middle of East Germany (as was), among friends and in a very welcoming, relaxed atmosphere.

Kraken is a pretty tiny convention, with only room for around 80 people. Unlike many conventions I attend, even though I was a guest, I didn't feel like I was "on" in the way that I usually do - you know, performing for the attendees, always with a mind to professionally representing whichever company and product I happen to be working with/on at the time. Like OrcaCon, Kraken is definitely somewhere I get to be me, and hang out and game with people I like. Yes, it is work - I hosted a panel on what was coming up for Cthulhu and ran four games, three of them in a 13.5 hour period on the Sunday (confirming that I'm getting too old for that sort of nonsense, although all the games were great fun) - but it doesn't feel like work, if that makes sense?

The funniest thing about the Kraken is that I only attended my first one this time last year, yet it feels like I've always been going there (and several people were very surprised when they found out about my inexperience with this con). I have every intention of going to both mini- and big-Kraken next year, provided we're allowed off this island after you know what horrific debacle comes into force in 2019. If it does. Who the heck knows - the people "in charge" certainly don't seem to, that's for sure. People keep inviting/encouraging me to move to Germany, and it's tempting, let me tell you!

Ah well, such is life. Better get back to this here art and map direction - it isn't going to do itself!

Flaming June

In terms of temperature here in our little corner of England, June was definitely quite a warm one.

It was also quite a busy one again, what with Women in Tabletop in Tabletop Gaming Month getting into full swing. Chaosium's contribution was a series of 24 brief interviews with some of the women who have worked with the company over the years in a variety of roles, be that writing, editing, artwork, layout or publishing as a licensee. Links to each interview can be found here.

This was an important project for me as, although women have been in gaming since the beginning, we are constantly having to fight to be included at the table and, it seems, these days more than ever. Gaming needs diverse voices if it is to thrive, and my hope is to try and encourage women and other under represented groups not to self select against getting involved by seeing that you don't have to have qualification X and have been gaming since Y to contribute on a professional level. I also wanted to highlight that there's more to game production that writing and artwork, so if your forte lies elsewhere, there's still no reason you can't get in there.

Of course, such a project comes with the inevitable downside in these days of social media: trolls. I was dreading the potential backlash we were going to get for daring to raise our heads above the parapet, but, apart from one misogynist at the very beginning and one at the end, we seem to have avoided that sort of nonsense. Unless I didn't see them, which is always a possibility. I had to seriously consider whether we should even take part, primarily from the viewpoint of the safety of the other women involved because, as the curator of the project, I have a duty of care towards them. If that doesn't underline the need for Women in Tabletop Gaming Month and other programmes to raise the visibility of minority groups within gaming, I don't know what does. I sincerely hope the day comes when we don't need to go out of our way to say "Hey, look we're here and we deserve to be treated with equality and respect. You know, like we're actual 'normal' people." But, sadly, today is not, apparently, that day.

On a more positive note, though, I learned so much by reading the interviews that came in and was inspired by each of the stories the women involved were generous enough to share with me and you. We had industry stalwarts from back in the day through to young new voices just getting started, and the thing that shone through more than anything (to me) was their passion for their work. Passion can be inspirational, and sharing your love of your industry/hobby will hopefully encourage new blood into it, or old blood that may have drifted away to give it another shot.

Other than Women in Tabletop Gaming Month, it was also Free RPG Day, so I was down at my FLGS running Scritch Scratch, mine and Chaosium's contribution to the gaming swag this year. (If you missed it, it's now available here as a free pdf with links to POD). I'd already run it for them twice over the years, so it was nice to have a trio of folks who hadn't had the delights of playing it before come to keep me company. As it has been round the block with me a few times over the last two years, I keep threatening to stop running it but, like Sean Connery and James Bond, I've come to the conclusion that I should never say never again!

As Scritch Scratch is very much a character piece until the horror kicks in, it's always a fun one for me to run as I can sit back and watch the players bicker and scheme as that group of pregenerated investigators. It's also fascinating to see how people interpret the characters you've written, and what they pick out of the backgrounds to build their portrayal around. It seems to have gone down well on the whole, and it was a great honour to be asked to turn my go-to convention scenario into something more.

What else?

Back to the last two chapters of Children of Fear, that's what! In June, I managed to complete the first draft of Chapter Eight and began the final bits of research for Chapter Nine. So far, there are ten chapters, the last of which contains various appendices, so that one's already largely written. The first six scenarios have all been tested by various groups (the first chapter is the introduction, of course), and the first three scenarios have been fully tweaked and corrected. (I'll correct the rest once the final round of playtesting is complete.)

It's been a long time coming and it's almost three years since I first discussed the campaign with Chaosium at Gen Con. Obviously, little projects like the newly released Masks of Nyarlathotep got in the way a bit, but it's full steam ahead to get this one finished before the summer is through. (It's also almost two years since we started on the somewhat epic task of bringing Masks up to date with the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition rules system. Time does, indeed, fly.)

The thing is, big projects take a lot of time to complete, starting with the research, then on through the writing, editing, commissioning artwork, layout, proofing and printing stages. Other, smaller projects and real life have a habit of mugging you on the way past, meaning what was already going to be a long haul gets even longer. Sometimes, you wonder whether you'll ever get to the end of it. But you do, eventually, although it can be a really weird anti-climactic feeling when you finally hand it off to the next step in the chain. Until you see the finished product, of course - then it all becomes worthwhile!

The Merry Month of May

Blimey, here we are again and, like the rest of this year, May sort of went tearing by in a bit of a blur.

I'm happy to report that the first pass edit on the Aldis City Sourcebook went off to Joe Carriker (Blue Rose's lovely line developer) a little over a week ago and it's full of fun, interesting and useful stuff for your Blue Rose game.

Although I've played the game before (as I mentioned in January's post), I've not actually taken the plunge and narrated it yet. Now, after quite a few requests from gaming friends, I'm about to put that right at this year's Continuum games convention. It can be a bit intimidating sometimes to run something you've worked on, particularly in an editorial capacity, as people can expect you to be an expert on it. Because I hop around systems quite a bit with my job, that isn't always the case - I'm an expert for as long as I need to be for that given project and then I have to go and be an expert on something else. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing what the Continuum crowd make of it, and as long as we tell an entertaining story together, I'll be happy.

It looks as if the second volume of the Miskatonic University short story anthology I submitted a piece to is going to go ahead now, so more information on that when I get it. I'm really pleased the story should see the light of day as I had fun writing it. And there are a lot of other interesting looking stories in there, too!

We were lucky enough to go to a new mini-gaming break at Schloss Neuhausen, Germany, in May as well. The schloss is home to October's Kraken convention, a small but perfectly formed retreat where you get fed and watered to a ludicrous extent in very mellow and beautiful surroundings while gaming, socialising and learning to throw axes (yes, really). There were no axes at the mini version, but there was copious cake and beer, and an opportunity for me to test out my new Call of Cthulhu convention scenario. (As Scritch Scratch is this year's Free RPG Day scenario, I thought I'd better write a new one!)

In glorious sunshine on two consecutive mornings, I ran the players through a strange tale inspired by an actual event I attended at a local museum earlier this year as part of their After Dark programme (not uncoincidentally also the name of the scenario). Both sessions went really well, which was a relief as the scenario itself had been quite stubborn in taking shape, meaning that I was still writing it a few days before the convention started. (I also had to pay a visit to one of our local beaches for props for it as well...)

Often at conventions, I don't get a chance to play anything or be anything other than "on" in a professional capacity. What was really lovely about the mini-Kraken was that I did get to play games and just be sociable. As a result, I got to try three games I've been wanting to have a crack at for ages (Tales from the Loop, Ten Candles, and Blades in the Dark) and got to make some lovely new friends. All of the games were great fun, although sitting huddled under multiple blankets in the schloss' freezing undercroft in the pitch dark while slightly tipsy on G&Ts listening to the mice scrabbling about in the darkness behind you definitely made Ten Candles a particularly memorable experience!

A large proportion of May was dedicated to getting everything ready for Chaosium's contribution to Women in Tabletop Gaming Month. With 18 interviews in total (a 90% response rate!), the series highlights the contributions women have made to Chaosium over its lifetime, from established names to those at the beginning of their gaming industry careers. As well as promoting the stellar work these women are doing, I hope it also encourages other women to get involved as content creators, be that as artists, writers, editors, graphic designers, or in layout and production - all of which are essential roles in getting games out there for people to enjoy. As I'm writing this is June, I know the first two interviews have gone live, and I'm going to cheat and say you can find them over on the Chaosium blog.

And I can finally say that Masks of Nyarlathotep is on its way to the printer gods and should be out in pdf form some time in July. I may have mentioned before how pretty it is and there's a whopping amount of play contained in its two volumes. It'll be good to see it in actual physical print come the autumn. I hope people like what we've done with it, but regardless, it was a tremendous project to work on in terms of experience.

I don't doubt I've forgotten something I was going to tell you, but perhaps I'll have remembered by the end of the month! So, until next time...

In Like a Lion

Once again, it's been a busy month here in the writing hovel. As you can see, I didn't quite manage to get two blog posts out in April, largely due to spending the last weekend of it in Prague with my lovely husband, Richard, on a belated 20th wedding anniversary holiday.

Prague was wonderful, and so inspiring. Steeped in myth and legend, the city gave rise to the golem and was home to loads of hidden alchemy laboratories during the reign of Rudolf II. We even got to visit one that was rediscovered during massive flooding in the city in around 2000 - great fun, and pretty spooky!

Along with its history, Prague has some amazing buildings. Not only are many of them painted with fabulous designs or trompe l'oeil, a lot have Art Noveau decorations, or just out-and-out odd things (plaques and statues) mounted on them - like the one we found of a duck-billed snake! The city is also home to two buildings containing beautiful libraries: the Klementinum and the Strahov Monastery. Although they won't let you into the libraries for a good rummage, you can gaze upon their magnificence, and the Klementinum tour also involves climbing several spiral staircases and rickety wooden stairs (almost ladders in some sections) to get to the top of the astronomical tower, where there are fantastic views over the city.

Another absolute gem was hidden in the grounds of the Petrin, Prague's hilltop park, complete with mini Eiffel Tower from the city's 1891 Exposition. Of course, I'm talking about the Magical Cavern, home of artist Reon Argondian's gloriously over-the-top artwork. If you want some seriously psychedelic and mind-bending images to inspire your scenarios (especially Dreamlands-based ones), take a peep at his gallery... As the first tourist attraction we went to in Prague, this place really got our trip off to a flying start!

Apparently, one of the things I said most over the weekend was "Oo, this would make an awesome setting for a scenario!" Perhaps one day...

In work terms, though, April continued to see progress on Masks of Nyarlathotep. It's going to be a whopper, and no mistake. As I mentioned in the last blog post, going through such a luscious book with a fine-tooth comb is a long, slow process and even then, there will be things we miss. As a friend of mine says, books aren't so much released as escape into the wild when you turn your back for a moment. Still, hopefully we've caught most of the big things!

Besides that, I'm back on editing duty for Green Ronin. At the moment, I'm working on the Aldis City Sourcebook, and it's always a pleasure to dive back into the world of Aldea. The book details the city of the Blue Rose and its eclectic inhabitants, as well as providing some interesting new mechanics to support game play in the world (as discussed in Joe's article) and a very sweet scenario by the wonderful Steve Kenson. My official title as editor on the Blue Rose gaming line is "Benevolent Dictator in Chief," a role I take very seriously indeed! The book is shaping up very nicely, and I'll be continuing to work on it through May.

Sadly, the Kickstarter I mentioned in the last blog post didn't fund. It's always disappointing when interesting projects don't come to fruition, but people only have so much time and money to devote to supporting creators, so it's understandable that not everything is going to get made - at least not yet. Which is what makes it even more frustrating when projects do fund, you submit your work, and never hear another thing from the developer, only vague rumours years later that you have to follow up on the campaign's public announcements page (and even then, you still have no idea what's really going on).

This brings me back to something I've mentioned before, and certainly touched on in the #AprilTTRPGMaker thread over on Twitter: communication is key. Yes, things go wrong, and real life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of projects that are often run parallel to people's day jobs, but not talking to people about those problems, pretending they're not happening, or just disappearing altogether, helps no one. On the whole, people are very understanding and forgiving if you keep them informed about what's going on. But not knowing? That just leads to mistrust in the long run, and makes people very wary of supporting you again in the future.

But, on a happier note: the sun is shining and it's time for a cup of tea. May promises to be another busy month as we gear up for the start of the summer convention season and trying to get various projects finished off and back to the publishers. Now all I need to do is get my new convention scenario written...