Further Rumor And Speculation About Chaosium Games

Sandy Petersen, of Call of Cthulhu and Cthulhu Wars fame, game an interview to the owner of Yog-Sothoth.com the other day about the changes going on at Chaosium.



It is an interesting interview, I suggest giving it a listen. Some of it lines up with my own blatant and baseless speculation about some of the classic Chaosium lines like Pendragon and Runequest at least being distributed through Chaosium once again. I know that the rights to Runequest and Glorantha have been assigned over to Moon Design (who in turn has been licensing the Runequest name to the Design Mechanism people. But while Runequest is under and excellent stewardship with Design Mechanism, they don't seem to have gotten the penetration into the American marketplace that the game had once upon a time. Would Chaosium distributing Runequest get the game the attention that it once had? Maybe. I think that a lot of the lack of luster that Runequest has had of late is lingering from the Mongoose era. It seems that the once mighty RPG is having difficulty in recovering from the "control" of Mongoose.

This is all still rumor, of course, but I think that it could help not only Chaosium, but the individual game lines as well. Gamers could see the reunion of these lines and their original publisher as the return of a dream team, and it would give a spark to everything. There really is no lose in this situation.

With the resurgence of interest and popularity of "old school" games, there is a lot that Chaosium could do to ride on that wave again. Even a publisher like Flying Buffalo has produced "facsimile editions" of their early editions of Tunnels & Trolls and Monsters! Monsters! for new audiences. Chaosium already publishes Runequest 3e in everything but name with their Basic Fantasy monographs: Basic Gamemaster, Basic Creatures and The Magic Book (unfortunately it doesn't look like the Player's Book is offered through DriveThru/RPGnow). The Magic Book also makes a nice supplement for Magic World and the BRP gold book as well.

Doing a Runequest 2e "facsimile" would probably make for a lot of very happy gamers. I know that I would personally love a copy.

Now, with further rumor-mongoring...

I have heard that there is renewed interest as well in Greg Stafford's other Arthurian role-playing game. For those who may not know, Chaosium once produced a licensed RPG based on the Prince Valiant comic strip, using another stripped down variant of the BRP system (closer to the rules of Pendragon than Runequest, but still built from the same foundations). Obviously they couldn't bring this back as Prince Valiant, but the system is really (I mean really) good for that sort of low/no magic style of fantasy play and would make for a great game even stripped from the previously published setting. It wouldn't even have to be an Arthurian game. Maybe a game in the spirit of Prince Valiant's a-historical approach, you could set the game in the court of Charlemagne and introduce Viking and/or Native American warriors to the mix. Yeah, I know that it sounds like a fan-favorite comic from the 80s (please keep in mind that this part of this post isn't even rumor, it is me saying what I would love to see done with the game).

Could we see a new/old "Courtly" fantasy game from Chaosium? Maybe. Time will tell.

The Things That You Hear: Licenses And RPGs [UPDATED With Link]

When you're a blogger, or you have contacts within the tabletop gaming industry, you hear a lot of things that never make it out to the general public. Who isn't paying their bills and their freelancers tends to be the thing that you hear about the most. Which publisher lost a licensing deal over non-payment, that sort of thing. DMs on Twitter and private chats on Facebook and G+ give up some of the details on what is going on behind the scenes. Sometimes you pick up things around the gaming table. If you want this information to keep coming you learn to be discrete about things. You want your information to keep coming, after all. This is when a blogger should behave like a journalist and protect their sources.

For example, a piece of information that I have been sitting on for a while now is that one of the well known publishers, known mostly for their science fiction games but also with some fantasy showings, is planning on dipping its toe into the realms of super-hero games by landing a fairly major (to our smaller niche of gaming) comic book license. Will this get past the negotiation stages? I have heard that it has, but as we all well know that doesn't assure that a final product will make the game shop shelves. We will know it when we see it, however. I hope that the game does make it. The license will hold a certain amount of nostalgia for those gamers who are comic book fans, I think, and it will definitely make for an interesting game.

UPDATE: It appears that, while no announcements have been made, there is a holding page for the game on the company's website (http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/valiant/). If you want to keep secrets quiet, you shouldn't go live with your web pages. Actually, I looked for this a couple of days ago and couldn't find it. Hat tip to an astute reader for finding the link.

SECOND UPDATE: I've added some screen shots of the page. Just in case.

I am always leery of licensed games because, whether gamers like it or not, they are going to go away sooner or later. At some point the license will stop being profitable for someone in the equation and the game will go away. Yes, there is always the idea that licensed games will, by their nature, bring non-gamers into the fold, but I don't know if this is a prevalent as it would have been 10 or 20 years ago. Sure, there will be some crossover interest from people with the inclination who had never before gamed but I don't know that it is a big of a market as it once was.

Regardless, let's watch and see if there are any big announcements about a new license at the GAMA Trade Show, Origins or Gen Con this year. If this game is going to go through, that is when I would assume that it would start to be talked about.

UPDATE THREE: Expect to hear more soon.

Do you have a tip one something big coming up? Let me know about it privately and I will keep all of my sources confidential.