One of the best things for me about the Cthulhu Mythos is how adaptable it is. You can take almost any setting or genre and inject the Mythos to great effect. Unnamable creatures from beyond the pale of imagination are just as sanity-shattering to modern investigators as they were to those in the 1930s, or the Victorian era, or medieval times. But the Mythos does not belong only to the past. Clearly, since the investigators (not to mention all of human society) are still around, the stars have not yet been right, which only means that they will be in the future.

But how far in the future? Next month? Next year? Ten year from now? How about fifty or a hundred?

When I think about the possibilities inherent in mixing the Cthulhu Mythos into a sci-fi setting, my creative juices start boiling. I LOVE this idea and have for some time. Certainly, it's been done before in dribs and drabs. The movie Event Horizon is certainly one example, though the possibilities were squandered when the evil from between dimensions turned out to be just another creature to be shot at and blown up. Several manga and anime series have taken better shots at the concept, my favorite being Silent Möbius (the manga or the movies, as opposed to the TV series). But nothing has yet quite captured the near-future distopian mixture of society collapsing under its own "progress" sped along by the subtle (or overt) influences of malevolent entities that man was not meant to know ... sort of like Ghost in the Shell meets The Dunwich Horror by way of Constantine.

Well ... no one has made a MOVIE like that. But WildFire LLC has published CthulhuTech, probably the best iteration of a futuristic Mythos we've seen anywhere. And it has me just aching to follow up on some ideas I've been carrying around for year ... a laser whose very color is so abhorrent that it firing it eats away at your sanity ... an astronomical computer so advanced that it can project where in the galaxy the stars ARE right at any given moment ... and arcology built to be a giant mystic rune/dimensional gate, fueled by the despair of the people living in it ... oh, and so much more.

The stars are not right, but they are going to be. Will another few decades or centuries of progress make mankind more or less capable of resisting the call from beyond when that time comes? Are other people as intrigued by that notion as I am?

Stan!

Want to learn more about CthulhuTech? Read on...

• Atomic Array: Episode 013: CthulhuTech RPG


• Mad Brew Labs: CthulhuTech: The Game That Almost Wasn't


• Critical Hits: When Horror Meets Awesome: CthulhuTech


• Kore Dice: Interview with CthulhuTech’s Mike Vaillancourt


• Stan!: The Stars Will Be Right


• Arcane Underground: The Saga of CthulhuTech (Updated)

Drop by BattleCorps to pick up your copy today!

I just posted this on my blog, and realized that it probably would be of interest to the Super Genius Games audience, too.

We found out this week that The Littlest Shoggoth is also about to ship from the printers. Yes, Virginia, that means that this "Holiday Tale of the Cthulhu Mythos" WILL be available in stores in time for you to put one in the stocking of your favorite investigator, cultist, or Great Old One.

To celebrate, here's a preview look at a a piece of art from the book.


Gee, he doesn't LOOK so small in that picture. I guess you're just going to have to pick up a copy of The Littlest Shoggoth to find out exactly what's going on.

Don't worry, I think you'll enjoy the WHOLE thing.

I'm thinking about making some Littlest Shoggoth wallpapers and user pics ... y'know, just cuz I can. Keep your eyes peeled to the Super Genius Games site for more news on those and other preview materials.

Stan!

Here's a friendly quiz to help you find out! 

http://quizfarm.com/quizzes/new/GizzyKB/which-cthulhu-mythos-charactergod-are-you/

Hyrum.

Dan Harms reviews The Doom from Below here:

http://danharms.wordpress.com/2008/11/28/on-the-shelf-review-the-doom-from-below/

He was a little lukewarm on Murder of Crows, but he digs Doom. :)

Thanks Dan!

The Geniuses.

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We'd like to thank the AWESOME people over at Flames Rising for their review of The Doom from Below. They give it a 9/10 and to say we're ecstatic would be an understatement. :)

Todd Cash, the reviewer, lays out his thoughts here:

http://www.flamesrising.com/doom-from-below-review/

The Geniuses.

Both books have been sent to the printer and should be shipping to our warehouse at the end of this week/beginning of next week. Then it'll be in stores just in time for your Holiday shopping needs. Each book will retail for $12.00 USD. As a reminder for what to look for, here are the covers and back cover copy.

That Which Lies...




The Smallest Shoggoth of All...

Of all the Mythos creatures roaming around lost R'lyeh, Squammy the shoggoth is the smallest, least frightening of them all. Tired of being teased and picked on, he sets off for the world of man to prove he's got what it takes to be a real monster.

The Littlest Shoggoth is a heartwarming tale of holiday horror. With its non-Euclidean verse and sanity-blastingly cute illustrations by award-winning writer and cartoonist, Stan!, it is the perfect addition to any collection of seasonal stories ... or occult tomes.





Hyrum.

When I first saw the following video of an oddly Cthulhoid-looking rare "elbowed" squid, I thought there was a really good chance it was a hoax. I mean, it's just clear enough to be creepy ... but fuzzy and shaky enough to prevent you from taking a REALLY close look at the creature. Given that it was taken deep under the Gulf of Mexico, and given the recent debates about opening up new drilling, I half expected to see the thing carrying a "No Drilling" picketing sign.

Then I was pointed toward a National Geographic article about it, and I had to admit that this was a pretty dang reliable source.


Stan!

As Murder of Crows and Midnight Harvest enter into wider and wider circulation, and The Doom From Below prepares to ship from the printer, we're starting to see more and more reviews. They are, by any measure, fairly flattering in their assessment of our work so far. However, even MORE flattering on a personal level is the fact that so many of the people writing about our adventures have NOTICED some of the things we've done very purposefully to make Super Genius Games adventures a bit different from those you'll get from other publishers.

Our products are shorter than those you usually see for Call of Cthulhu products, usually around 32 pages and having more physically in common with classic D&D adventures than with Masks of Nyarlathotep or Beyond the Mountains of Madness. That was a specific choice. We wanted to produce products that were not only easy to use, but easy to decide to purchase ... almost impulse buys. And something you could run for your group on relatively short notice, without needing to commit to many sessions (probably over the course of many months) to complete.

However, perhaps the biggest intended difference is the scope of the adventures. Rather than being tales writ large on the cosmic scale, involving the movers and shakers of the Cthulhu Mythos, our adventures for the most part are focused on smaller horrors. That's not to say they're necessarily less dangerous for the investigators -- the result for them will be the same whether they fail in the face of a Great Old One, a member of a servitor race, or a cabal of cultists. There's only so "dead" you can get (reanimation not withstanding). But it always seemed odd to me how many of the Call of Cthulhu adventures focus on the actual return or direct influence of deities or major entities. In a setting where all things must wait until "the stars are right," astrological alignments seem to happen with alarming frequency.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE playing in those kinds of big, apocalyptic games. But I ALSO love to play in ongoing campaigns where the characters can develop over a period of time and a series of adventures. I've had the good fortune to play in two or three fairly long-running CoC games, and they are among my favorite campaigns of my long gaming career. But many people out there just don't understand how you can play a Lovecraftian game as a campaign. "Aren't those the games where everyone goes crazy or dies at the end of every session?" they often say.

"Not necessarily," I usually answer. "That's certainly ONE way to play, but you can also do something more in line with a standard RPG campaign."

"Really?" They often seem incredulous as they ask this. "How?"

Well, the Super Genius Games adventures are in part intended to help answer that question. Our INTENT is for you to be able to use many of our adventures as the basis of an ongoing campaign ... say, one that meets once or twice a month and has continuity in both characters and story. A campaign where the investigators start out relatively unaware of the Mythos and learn more as they go, where the level of Mythos involvement ramps up over time and may eventually lead to a cataclysmic event.

Certainly, you can do this with the basic Call of Cthulhu game, but it was not built specifically for long-term play with a single character. Although investigators DO gain skills over time, the improvements are small in nature, and it is unlikely that a player will notice a significant change in how the character feels mechanically. And players who are used to modern RPG characters, where each level introduces some new or improved facet to the character may feel something is missing from the game.

On the other hand, there are now a whole handful of alternative Lovecraftian RPGs on the market. From material that you can use to expand your existing Call of Cthulhu game (in the recently released Basic Roleplaying volume from Chaosium) to whole new games like Trail of Cthulhu and Cthulhutech. The most recent entry into the realm of Lovecraftian roleplaying games, may also be the one that is most easily adaptable to the standard campaign model -- this is because Shadows of Cthulhu is powered by the True 20 game rules, themselves a variation on the core OGL/d20 System rules. In other words, the rules for Shadows of Cthulhu are constructed with long-term campaign play in mind.

Gamers who come to Shadows of Cthulhu will be building their investigators with the preconception that the character will survive long enough to advance in levels and gain new abilities. That's just the way the game is played. Even more than the d20 Call of Cthulhu published by Wizards of the Coast back in 2002. That volume was more about using the d20 System to play game in the classic Call of Cthulhu style than it was about being able to use the Cthulhu Mythos as the basis for an ongoing campaign style of play. Shadows of Cthulhu does BOTH, making the Super Genius Games adventures especially good for adaptation. An adaptation that, as I look at the game, would be relatively easy to perform (for ANY Call of Cthulhu adventures, not just ours).

Stan!

From today until Great Cthulhu tells us otherwise, all of our officially licensed Call of Cthulhu adventures in PDF format are on sale for $4.99. With the nights a little longer, and a little colder, what could be better than some investigation and insanity? Not only is $4.99 an insane deal for some Call of Cthulhu goodness, but each adventure also includes pregenerated investigators so you can get into the asylum right away! You can download each of the adventures here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/index.php?filters=0_0_0&manufacturers_id=97

Hyrum.

Deep in the New England woods lies a perfectly circular chasm plunging hundreds of feet into the earth. Is it a marvel of nature or the remnant of some ancient maleficence? As the investigators explore the depths of this haunted pit they face geologic dangers, bizarre subterranean creatures, and a message from the dawn of time. Will they find the courage to overcome The Doom from Below?

The Doom from Below contains everything a Call of Cthulhu group needs for an evening's worth of Mythos-inspired fun, including pregenerated characters! It is the latest in an innovative new series of Call of Cthulhu scenarios and supplements from Super Genius Games. The Doom from Below is available in PDF format at RPGNow.com and DriveThruRPG.com. It is currently on sale for $4.99 and you can download it here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?cPath=293&products_id=58821

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Now that The Doom from Below is off to the printer it will be going on sale tomorrow in PDF format. Price is TBA right now.

Hyrum.

According to the Nation Geographic society, "on the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen "structures" are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnet." Scientists are calling it "dark flow", I think it's the Court of Azathoth.

Read the whole article here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081105-dark-flow.html

Hyrum.

As I was working over the weekend, I listened to the Halloween episode of Yog Radio, the "cephalopodcast" from Yog-Sothoth.com, quite probably the best source for Call of Cthulhu information and support (excepting the official Chaosium site, naturally).

It's been a goal of ours to get our products included in the news and round-up sections of the podcasts ... and for the most part we've succeeded in that. It helps that we've gotten such strong and vocal support from the folks at Chaosium, I'm sure. But beyond a mention in the "what's new" sections, I hoped to eventually get the Yoggies to review our products occasionally. I'm sure not everything we do will catch their fancy, but I think that for the most part our products are going to be good enough and have broad enough appeal that they'll be worth a closer look. It's just not always easy to get others to see things the same way we, as creators, do.

Well, I didn't have to wait long. At about the hour-and-forty-minute point in the show, they actually HAD a full-on review and five minute discussion of Murder of Crows. And they seemed to like it. (I think that "jolly interesting" was my favorite comment ... that is, if I heard it right.) They had some nice things to say about the adventure, pointed out some ways that we could improve our products going forward, and generally seemed to get what we were going for. And listening to that made me giggle more than a little (though not particularly maniacally).

The review aside, it was a terrific show altogether. Over two hours worth of Lovecraftian fun. If you aren't listening to Yog Radio, you really should be. The shows come out about once every month or two and are ALWAYS filled with insights and entertaining bits ... and a deep down love of Cthulhiana.

My next goal? To get more of our products mentioned and reviewed, of course. But what I'd REALLY like is for Super Genius to build up enough "Cthulhu-cred" that the Yoggies think it's worthwhile to record an interview with us. THEN I'll know we've REALLY made an impact on the Cthulhu fan base.

Stan!

From all of us at Genius Central, to all of you toiling away in your secret laboratories, a happy and horrific Halloween!

I've been meaning to post here more frequently, and this gives me an excuse to do so TWICE in a single week! (Isn't that amazing?) Really, there's so much going on that it shouldn't be a problem to stop by a few times a week and give you all brief updates. For example ...

Over the past few days I've been trying desperately to put The Littlest Shoggoth to bed (as in "get it ready to send to the printer" as opposed to "give it warm milk and read it a story"). As always, there are surprise challenges that crop up at the last minute ... but things are going well, and I think we'll still be able to hit our "late November" release date. (Of course, having said that here on All Hallow's Eve, I've invited the attention of all manner of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know ... so if you never hear from me again, now you'll know why.)

Once the book is off to the printers, we can start putting out some promotional materials. In meanwhile, have you seen the video I blogged about earlier in the week? Have told other people about it? Go on ... share the pain!

And next week I'll TRY to find time to stop by and chat some more ... maybe give an insight into the project I'm CURRENTLY writing ... or give you some other insights into the world of Super Genius Games.

In the meanwhile, everyone have a wonderful Halloween ... may NONE of your candy bars be "fun size."

Stan!

Unfortunately it won't be hitting in time for Halloween (printing issues suck), but Midnight Harvest should be in stores next week, just in time for some post-Halloween goodness.

Meanwhile, you can download the PDF version now here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=58565

Hyrum.

Greetings, all!

It's been a busy time here at Super Genius Central ... but most of you would never know that because one thing we HAVEN'T been doing is updating our blog.

Oops! Sorry. We'll try to be better about that going forward.

And as a first step in this new direction of open communication, we're proud to present our very first blatant bit of info-tainment designed to make you chuckle and part with a few of your well-earned samoleans. Behold the very first product of the Super Genius Media ....

For those of you who can't see the embedded video, just follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/v/VAtF303MVBc

The Littlest Shoggoth is a product we've been working on since about this time last year, and we hope that it will bring some rugtose holiday cheer to you and your family. This Holiday Tale of the Cthulhu Mythos will be released in late November or early December and be JUST the thing to stuff into Solstice Stockings or wrap and place beneath the Yule Shrub.

We'll certainly have more sneak peaks, and maybe even more promotional freebies as the release date draws near. In the meanwhile, we have a lot of other things on the plate as well ... but news of such things will have to wait for another day.

We've experiments to run, and there's research to be done ... and whoever first posts a reply correctly citing from where that little bit of paraphrasing was drawn will get ... something cool that I haven't yet decided what it will be.

Stan!

Murder of Crows, our first officially licensed Call of Cthulhu adventure has arrived at the warehouse and will ship to distributors next week. It's a few weeks late (thanks Gustav!) but it's out.

Woot!

.

(Cross-posted from http://stannex.livejournal.com/)

Anyone who's had much of a conversation with me about writing knows that I like to trot out that old saw: "I don't always like writing, but boy do I LOVE having written." 

The point being that the process of writing can be grueling and difficult. Finding the right words and putting them down in the most effective order is a painstaking task. At times when it's going badly, it can seem like torture ... and even when it's going well, it can be exhausting. But once it's done (and reviewed, and re-written, and edited) ... it's GREAT to look back and see what you've accomplished.

For the past few days, though, I've WANTED to get a bunch of writing done ... but there were other duties that took precedence. Mostly, these centered around contracting and supervising freelance artists and writers. We've got an ambitious schedule at Super Genius Games, and in order to live up to it, we need to keep several balls in the air at once. So, as much as I WANTED to be writing, it was more important that I do some Creative and Art Direction so that our products later in the fall would come out right. 

Of course, we've made it easier on ourselves by bringing in some SUPER talented creators. People whose quality of writing and art is first rate ... and whose reliability is proven. People I can't WAIT to tell you more about ... but not now.

NOW I want to get back to writing ... and, what's better, I actually CAN! 

-Stan!