Lovecraft on the table top
In the last few years, there has been an explosion in Lovecraftian games. How did we get to a whole generation of board and card games that revolve around the Mythos? How does the Mythos fit various game mechanics? What are the differences between games based on Lovecraft’s Mythos and other similarly constructed games?
Kenneth Hite has designed, written, or co-authored 100+ roleplaying works, including Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London, The Dracula Dossier, the Delta Green RPG, Night’s Black Agents, The Fall of Delta Green, and Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition. His other works include the two-volume Tour de Lovecraft, Cthulhu 101, The Cthulhu Wars for Osprey, the “Lost in Lovecraft” column for Weird Tales, an annotated edition of Chambers’ The King in Yellow, and four Lovecraftian children’s books. Half of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast and an Artistic Associate at Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre, he lives in Chicago with two Lovecraftian cats and his non-Lovecraftian wife, Sheila.
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In 1998 Scott Glancy left a perfectly functional career as an attorney to join up with the role-playing game publisher Pagan Publishing, the nerd equivalent of running away to join the Foreign Legion. Today Scott is the man in charge of Pagan Publishing (much in the same sense that the last surviving legionnaire can be said to be in command of Fort Zinderhoff). Pagan’s most recent project is “Horrors of War,” an anthology of scenarios set during the Great War for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. Scott is a contributing author on the award-winning Delta Green series of Call of Cthulhu rpg supplements and has had Lovecraftian fiction published in several short story collections including the recent "Book of Cthulhu II," "Shotguns v. Cthulhu," and the upcoming “Swords v. Cthulhu.” You can hear his recorded games sessions on Role-Playing Public Radio, and listen to him bloviate on the Unspeakable Podcast and Podcast at Ground Zero.
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Leeman Kessler is a Nigerian-born actor living in Gambier, OH with his wife Rachel and daughter Amanda. Since 2010, he has been performing as HP Lovecraft on stage as well as online with his web-series Ask Lovecraft. He has performed at NecronomiCon-Providence and at Cthulhucon. You can hear him and his wife on their podcast Geekually Yoked.
Wendy N. Wagner is a writer and part of the Hugo award-winning team behind Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Autumn Cthulhu, She Walks in Shadows, Farrago’s Wainscot, Cthulhu Fhtagn!, and The Lovecraft eZine. Her second novel, Starspawn, is a Lovecraft-inspired Pathfinder Tales adventure due out August 2016. An avid gamer and gardener, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her very understanding family. Follow her on Twitter @wnwagner.
JEFF BURK is the cult favorite author of SHATNERQUAKE, SUPER GIANT MONSTER TIME, CRIPPLE WOLF, and SHATNERQUEST. Like the literary equivalent to a cult B-Horror movie, Burk writes violent, absurd, and funny stories about punks, monsters, gore, and trash culture. Everyone normally dies at the end. He is also the the Head Editor of ERASERHEAD PRESS’ horror imprint, DEADITE PRESS and the host of the JEFF ATTACKS podcast. Born in the Pennsylvania backwoods, he was raised on a steady diet of Godzilla, Star Trek, and EC Comics. He now resides in Portland, Oregon. His influences include: Sleep deprivation, comic books, drugs, magick, and kittens.