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For our Chaosium Interviews series here Jeff Richard gives an overview of the books in the RuneQuest RPG line, and what order you should get them. He's talking with James Coquillat.

From our Fan Use and Licensing Q&A: Q: I want to use the image of an Elder Sign or the Yellow Sign in my work. Is this allowed? A: Chaosium's Star Elder Sign and Yellow Sign designs are copyright to Chaosium, and cannot be used without permission*. The "Star" Elder Sign is the Chaosium Arcane Symbol, created in 1983 for the second edition of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game and is © copyright 1983 Chaosium Inc. The Chaosium Yellow Sign was created by Kevin Ross and is © copyright 1989 Chaosium Inc. nb there are other versions of Lovecraftian elder signs available; these here are the ones that are Chaosium's IP. The Yellow Sign as seen recently in HBO's '30 Coins' *if you ask us, we're very likely to say yes.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/372888/Black-Spear-RuneQuest

As is well known, Chaosium (Greg, Sandy, and Lynn) designed West End Games' Ghostbusters RPG, which pioneered d6 dice pool mechanics later used in such games as the Star Wars RPG. But Chaosium never owned the licensing rights to Ghostbusters, and doesn't own them now.

Just remember that when it comes to distances in Glorantha, everything is probably 1.6 x bigger than the map scale in km would suggest because...

What are the three Weirdest things in the world of Glorantha? Let Chaosium's Gloranthan guru Jeff Richard, co-author of The Guide to Glorantha and The Glorantha Sourcebook, give you his take on that. He's talking to James Coquillat as part of our Chaosium Interviews series.

In order to participate in The Garhound Contest the only requirement is you belong to a cult that is recognised as a husband-protector of Ernalda. Typically that means Orlanthi and Yelmalions, as they live in the surrounding region. The Lunar-backed candidate in the Melisande's Hand scenario in RQ3's Sun County is actually an Argan Argar worshipper, AA being another of E's husband-protectors.

Award-winning Chaosium licensee TYPE40's amazing 3D digital gamer props are now available directly at Chaosium.com! These 3D digital gamer props are a great way to enhance your tabletop experience. Players can explore the props for clues in Augmented Reality or on their phone with no download or app required. Immersive, exciting and easy to use! Each prop comes with a set of digital reference cards with handy in-game mechanic information for the Keeper, as well as a unique QR code, allowing players to access the digital prop on their phone from anywhere in the world! TYPE40 founder Allan Carey says, "I’ve been playing Call of Cthulhu since 1987 and it continues to strike fear into my heart and drive my imagination. I love it."

John 20:25

James Coquillat talks to 7th Sea RPG creator John Wick about the role of violence, combat and conflict in TTRPGs. Part of our Chaosium Interviews series on YouTube.

Tying all these together, I can see an Eurmali cheerfully spinning up their Illusion magic so an Ernaldan noblewoman and her Babeester Gor bodyguard could swap places. The Eurmal cultist would do it for the lols alone, just as long as they could go along to watch the comedy that ensues. (In fact, isn't that the plot of that popular Boldhome burlesque play, Freaky Fireday?)

Diagetically, it is the Gloranthan god Yelmalio who decides which gifts and concurrent geases are bestowed on those who follow him. Why particular gifts and geases are given is ineffable. Non-diegetically, that is, at the gaming table, a random roll is made on both the Gift and the Geas tables, with the usual caveat that MGF applies.

By David Larkins, Pendragon line editor. A new edition of the Pendragon RPG is coming! The intention of this series of design journals by Pendragon line editor David Larkins is to trace the path of development, starting in the early 1980s and culminating with the forthcoming new edition of the Pendragon RPG, which will be first to be wholly published by Chaosium in a quarter-century. Pendragon Design Journal #1: Where It All Began Pendragon Design Journal #2: Bringing the Light Pendragon Design Journal #3: A Modular Approach Pendragon Design Journal #4: Refining Traits and Passions Pendragon Design Journal #5: Honor and Glory Pendragon Design Journal #6: Combat! Pendragon Design Journal #7: The Social Game Pendragon Design Journal #8: The Battle System Pendragon Design Journal #9: Of Horses and Squires The Pendragon RPG is, at its core, a game of knights, and as such we have taken a look at the game from a personal, knightly level in past Design Journals. For this entry, we’re going to pay a visit to the Gamemaster’s Guide and zoom out a bit to discuss what we like to call “Arthurian acts.” Arthurian acts are the elements that most often come up in tales of King Arthur and his knights. They represent an idealized view of knighthood and the world they operate in, and in many ways are what elevate the stories—and Pendragon by extension—beyond a more grounded take on medieval history and into the realm of legend. We’re talking about things like tournaments, feasts, epic hunts; seduction and fine amor, the niceties of court politics and what happens when a cruel and arbitrary lord violates these. “Genre tropes,” as one might say. For example, one thing I often find myself explaining to folks new to Pendragon is that, unlike in most other RPGs, having your character captured by an enemy is usually the more interesting choice. Many seasoned gamers balk at captivity, and rightfully so, for in most RPGs captivity represents a total loss of agency (and often your cool gear!). In Pendragon, the Arthurian act of captivity ends up driving the story in fun directions (and all being well, you get your stuff back at the end). The section on captivity in the Arthurian Acts chapter talks about what a knight can expect when taken prisoner. This applies to Player-knights, of course, but also to Gamemaster characters that the Player-knights might take prisoner themselves. After all, claiming ransom is almost always preferable to outright killing your opponent, if you can help it. The text points out that, if you are clearly on the losing end of a fight (reduced to fewer than half your Hit Points, to put it in game terms), it is never dishonorable to seek quarter. The duties of both captor and captive are discussed…as are the story seeds that may grow from such a situation. For example, the classic Arthurian development is for a lady of the captor’s household to help in freeing the prisoner(s). Sometimes her motive is love, sometimes it is political. A half-dozen story seeds such as this are laid out in the section, hopefully providing some food for thought to Gamemasters looking to make captivity fun and exciting for all. Other sections discuss similar social mores that modern players often grapple with, such as how to visit a foreign court (and what happens once you’re there), or how to exercise soft power through diplomacy or seduction. Speaking of courtly intrigue, a few years ago I wrote a supplement for Pendragon called The Book of Feasts, which formalized for the first time a system for running grand feasts (a staple of Arthurian literature) and putting them on par with other acts such as tournaments, hunts, and battles. Fans of the system that was introduced in that supplement will be pleased to know that a slightly revised feasting system is now included as part of the game rules. We’ve even written it so that you won’t need the Feast Deck to generate events…though the Feast Deck isn’t going away, either! You can use the existing deck without issue, and we have plans in the works to put out more card sets in the future, starting with a small deck in the Starter Set. Of all the sections in the Arthurian Acts chapter, the one I’m personally most excited about is the bit on tournaments. Everyone loves a good tournament scenario, but previously rules for running the events have been scattered through various supplements. Here, at last, we have gathered together as much as we can about using tournaments in your game: rules for quick tournament resolution, as well as lots of details on tournaments through all the Periods of the campaign timeline. We have a fun sidebar providing dozens of sample prizes to offer the champions, sourced from documents dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries—perhaps your knight will win a sword and pair of steel gauntlets, a golden rod topped with a ruby…or even a golden vulture! The Master Tournament Table tells you everything you need to know about tournaments of all sizes, from Neighborhood to Regal, including the number of knights in attendance, the value of the prize on offer, the Glory for participating and for winning, and the cost and Glory from sponsoring a tournament. Detailed rules follow on how to run jousts and melees, including rules for joust scoring and special tables for when you fumble…or worse, when both knights fumble! It’s getting close to a year since we started this journey through the many exciting facets of the new edition of Pendragon. Next month, we’re going to shift gears slightly as we begin to take a look at how we put together the forthcoming Pendragon Starter Set. And we’ll also talk about what you can expect to find in the 2022 Gen Con Starter Set Preview! ART BY MARK SMYLIE

In this interview with Lynne Hardy, Line Editor for Rivers of London and Associate Editor for our Call of Cthulhu line, Lynne shares tips about how to best use travel in your TTRPG adventures, using examples from her recent work, the Call of Cthulhu epic campaign The Children of Fear. Lynne is talking with Chaosium's James Coquillat.

As noted, the 475 year-long 'Solitude of Testing' ended with the arrival of Duke Dorasor in 1575. But by then the Sun Domers of Prax had long adapted to their fate on foot ("things will have to change in order to stay the same"). The Lunar enforced peace brought more horses to the River of Cradles region. RQ3's Sun County describes how one militia company, styling themselves as 'Rogar's Riders', have recently taken to riding horses, but this is seen as dangerously radical.

Troy Lavallee leads an all-star cast including Ross Bryant, Noura Ibrahim, Kate Stamas and Rob Kerkovich through character creation to kick off the start of Call of Cthulhu's Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign!

Yelmalio's blessings are ineffable, and Sun Domers of Prax still occasionally receive the Kuschile Archery gift and the other horse-related gifts/geases, even though they gave up rearing horses and their cavalry during the Solitude of Testing, hundreds of years ago.

Five scenarios for new Call of Cthulhu players and keepers! Doors to Darkness is now available on Roll20! Doors to Darkness is a collection of five scenarios for Call of Cthulhu. Explore the signature setting of 1920s New England through these tales of eldritch dread designed for brand new Keepers—if you’re new to Call of Cthulhu, this is your next step! Premium maps and player handouts are provided for each scenario, with both player and Keeper versions (with the secrets!). Additionally, 10 diverse, pregenerated investigators are included, allowing new and returning players to dive straight into the one-shot adventures on game night. The Scenarios Those who dare to open the doors to darkness will discover just what secrets and dangers lie within the five scenarios! The Darkness Beneath the Hill - A house renovation in Providence, Rhode Island lures the investigators into ancient earthly secrets. Genius Loci - The investigators explore the Danvers State Asylum in a desperate attempt to help a friend in need. Servants of the Lake - Pursuit of a missing friend finds the investigators sequestered in a roadside motel where not all is as it seems. Ties That Bind - Strange rock formations appear in the fountain of a wealthy Arkham resident, leading to a wellspring of forbidden knowledge. None More Black - The death of a Miskatonic University student leads the investigators into unsavory neighborhoods and dark business dealings. Product Information Roll20 Enhancements: All maps, handouts, art, and character sheets fully integrated and ready for the virtual tabletop. Maps with GM layer information and dynamic lighting support (requires plus / pro subscription). The Darkness Beneath the Hill Module (2-6 investigators plus Keeper) Genius Loci Module (2-6 investigators plus Keeper) Servants of the Lake Module (2-6 investigators plus Keeper) Ties That Bind Module (2-6 investigators plus Keeper) None More Black Module (2-6 investigators plus Keeper) Sharing Nightmares Addon (Advice for Keepers) System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Length: Short Campaign Installation: 5 Modules + 1 Addon of Keeper Advice Play Call of Cthulhu with Roll20! Throughout 2022 we'll be adding more Call of Cthulhu releases to Roll20 on a regular basis. Other current titles include: Call of Cthulhu Starter Set - $24.99 Call of Cthulhu Quickstart Rules (inc. 'The Haunting' scenario) - FREE Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook - $54.95 Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook - $44.95 Call of Cthulhu Keeper Screen Bundle - $19.95 Harlem Unbound - $44.99 The Lightless Beacon - FREE Dead Light and Other Dark Turns - $14.99 Gateways to Terror - $19.99 Mansions of Madness Vol 1: Behind Closed Doors - $42.99 Malleus Monstrorum Cthulhu Mythos Bestiary - $59.99 Reign of Terror - $34.99 The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic - $39.95 Plus, for the month of May, check out Roll 20's special 10th Anniversary Bundle for Call of Cthulhu. Save 40%! For useful tips and advice about playing Call of Cthulhu and other Chaosium games online, see our helpful Getting Started with Online Gaming guide.

Prepare for high adventure and swashbuckling heroism with 7th Sea! Don't miss this special live stream event featuring London Carlisle, Becca Scott, Noura Ibrahim, and Josephine McAdam. And with 7th Sea creator John Wick himself as the GM! Streaming on http://twitch.tv/ChaosiumInc, 6pm PT / 9pm ET Wednesday June 1st.

Call of Cthulhu creative director Mike Mason shares advice on the many things to consider when trying to find and develop your own personal Call of Cthulhu Keeper Style. He's being interviewed by James Coquillat as part of our Chaosium Interviews series. Level Up your Call of Cthulhu game with our Keeper Tips book, out now!

Last month bestselling TTRPG creator M.T. Black gave an inspirational keynote address at the second Australian Roleplaying Industry Awards (ARPIA) ceremony in Melbourne, Australia, which was sponsored by Chaosium. There is much to learn from M.T. Black's own journey as a TTRPG creator. So, with his kind permission, we are sharing his speech here for the benefit of fellow independent creators in the Miskatonic Repository and Jonstown Compendium community content programs. "Hi, my name is Craig and I’m a freelance game designer and indie publisher who goes by the pen name of M.T. Black. I mostly work on D&D-related stuff and I’ve had a bunch of contracts with Wizards of the Coast, but I’m focusing on my own IP these days. I’m also part of the organizing committee for the Australian Roleplaying Industry Awards (ARPIA) and I’m very pleased to be able to share a few words with you this evening. I started playing RPGs in 1983, nearly forty years ago, and I’ve always been keenly interested in the commercial side of the hobby. There have been a couple of times over that forty-year period where it seemed as if the industry was close to extinction. And so it’s been both surprising and thrilling to see the recent growth in the RPG hobby, which is now bigger than it’s ever been. I’d like to share a few statistics with you: For 2013, the trade magazine ICv2 estimated the North American RPG retail market to be worth $15 million. For the year 2020, they estimated the market at $105 million—a sevenfold increase. Australian statistics are harder to come by, but Creative Victoria did a survey of Australian RPG game creators recently. About 50 people/companies responded, and reported a combined income of over $10 million for 2020 and 2021. Wizards of the Coast claims there are more than 50 million D&D players, and the company (which includes Magic the Gathering) accounts for 70% of Hasbro profits. They just purchased D&D Beyond, a digital D&D toolset, for $146 million, which gives some indication of how profitable the game is. Between 2009 and 2020, only four TTRPG projects had ever exceeded one million dollars on Kickstarter. In 2021 alone, eleven projects did so. Roll20, the popular virtual tabletop RPG platform, had one million users in 2015 and now has over ten million users. All this growth raises an obvious question—how can you increase your share of the pie? I think that’s a legitimate question! After all, you are not coal barons looking for another billion. Game designers have some of the highest levels of income insecurity that I’ve seen, and it’s perfectly reasonable to ask how we can improve the situation. To provide one answer to that question, I hope you’ll permit me to discuss my own experience briefly. I’ve been playing RPGs for a long time, but I’ve only been publishing since 2016. I got my start on the DMs Guild, which is the official D&D community content platform. I mostly wrote adventures. Anyone looking at my products in early 2016 would not have predicted I’d one day sell 100,000 books on the platform! Sales were slow back then. By the end of the year I had written 14 small adventures selling for $1 or $2 each, and I tried an experiment. I bundled them as the Complete Adventures of M.T. Black for $10, hit the publish button, and went to bed. The next morning, I woke up and saw it was the number 1 title on the platform, a position it held for 5 months. It stayed in the top 10 for about 2 years and has now sold over 10,000 copies. And it really opened doors for me in the following years. The thing to note is that I didn’t make any game design changes to get these improved results. What I’d done was implement a common marketing technique called a “sales promotion,” although I didn’t have that vocabulary back then. I achieved greater sales by marketing the game better, not by making the game itself better. I completely understand if that feels like a bitter pill to swallow! What was really fascinating, though, was the reaction of my peers in the creator community. Most were supportive and wanted to talk about promotions etc. But a couple of people were actively hostile and tried very hard to convince me not to use any marketing techniques on the Guild, even something as obvious as bundling up related products. As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve encountered this attitude time and again amongst indie game publishers. They are very serious about their craft, they want game designers to be properly compensated, but they are positively allergic to anything related to marketing. And they sometimes actively discourage other designers from going there as well. What are the objections? I think I’ve encountered two. First, there is the idea that marketing is implicitly dishonest and therefore inherently immoral. A few years ago there was an [Australian] consumer affairs show called The Checkout, which had a segment called “Package vs Product.” They showed you the packaging of a food product from the supermarket, with the photo invariably depicting a sumptuous feast. They then opened the package, and the food itself looked like dog vomit. For some indie designers, this is the essence of marketing—disguising dog vomit as a sumptuous feast. Someone who uses marketing, in this view, is both cheating and also implicitly admitting that their game is dog vomit. I would say in response that marketing can be performed in either an honest or a dishonest manner. You can be noble or you can be sleazy. You can enlighten or you can deceive. Like many things, marketing can be turned to good or bad. The second objection follows on from the first. It is that marketing corrupts the natural economy of the industry. What I mean is, if marketing is elevating the dog vomit game into the top 10, it is also unfairly displacing the sumptuous feast game. Some folk seem to believe that, without the distorting influence of marketing, sales of a game will roughly match the quality of a game. That is, the RPG market could and would operate as a kind of meritocracy. The cream would rise to the top. This argument mostly fails because it is built on a massive assumption—that a cultural market free of outside influence operates as a meritocracy. We can say with some confidence that this idea is false. A few years ago, a sociologist named Matthew Salganik got curious about cultural markets. He noted: Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively different from "the rest;" yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. He and his colleagues set up a brilliant social experiment to understand what was happening. They recruited 15,000 teenagers and allocated each of them to one of eight virtual worlds on a simple social media platform. They then gave the participants access to 48 unknown songs that they had to listen to and rate. Participants were then given the choice to download the song or not. The average rating represented the song's quality, while the total number of downloads represented its popularity. Salganik then correlated these two measures and looked for patterns. The results were fascinating. The song's quality had some influence over popularity, but it was very limited. Salganik said, "The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible." Instead, they found that the popularity charts in the different worlds all behaved in a wildly different manner. A song that might have been a hit in one virtual world may have only been a mediocre performer in another virtual world. The charts in each world evolved unpredictably, despite identical songs, identical initial conditions, and statistically indistinguishable populations. What this suggests is that cultural markets (such as Itchio or DriveThruRPG) are not natural meritocracies. If you strip away outside influences, the popularity charts will evolve in a random and unpredictable manner. The cream does not rise to the top on its own. Let me ram home the point—in your ideal world that has no marketing, the success of your product comes down to the roll of the dice. That all sounds a bit hopeless, and some creators react very strongly against these findings. But if you believe what sociology is telling us, what can you do? It’s here that I believe there is a positive role for marketing. I can’t find the source, but someone once said that marketing is the act of putting your product in front of the people who might like to buy your product. If we think about it that way, and behave in an ethical manner, then good marketing benefits the game player as well as the game maker. Rather than an act of deception, it becomes an act of communication. The game player gets to learn about a game that they might like, while the game maker gets a potential sale that contributes toward just compensation for their work. As a game player myself, I want more and better information about games. I know there are games out there that I would love if I knew about them. As an ARPIA judge, I’ve just spent six months looking hard at your work, and it is no exaggeration to say it is world class! Yet most of the products, with a few notable exceptions, are missing one crucial thing. What are they missing? Customers! Not enough people are seeing your games. Not enough people are buying your games. Not enough people are playing your games. I hope this talk will cause some of you to reappraise your relationship with marketing. Because you deserve to get paid for your work, and the world deserves to know about your game. Thank you very much." M.T. Black is one of the most successful content creators in the DM's Guild, the community content platform for Dungeons and Dragons. In addition to a number of adamantine and platinum best sellers there, he is co-author of the official D&D 5e release Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. M.T. Black has also published in the Miskatonic Repository, with his Call of Cthulhu scenario The Room with No Doors.

From our Fan Use and Licensing Q&A: Q: We are doing a fund-raiser for a worthy cause (e.g. a charity, a convention, a campaign) - can we get Chaosium support of that, and under what terms? A: We receive requests from charitable causes frequently, and we cannot support them all. We review all such requests carefully, and would want to see that the charitable activity you are undertaking is properly registered where it is taking place, and that we are broadly simpatico with its aims. If you are producing a fundraiser book or bundle, under certain circumstances and at our discretion, our license fees or royalties may be waived, and we might even host such an item on our website. Some of the charities and charitable causes we’ve supported recently include Worldbuilders (Geeks Doing Good), the Transgender Law Center, the World Wildlife Fund of Australia Bushfire Emergency, the World Health Organisation's Covid-19 Solidarity Fund, the World Food Programme, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, National Bailout Organization, Herefordshire Mind Mental Health Charity, ZERO Prostate Cancer, among others*. *A current charitable activity is donating all Chaosium proceeds from sales of the Jonstown Compendium RuneQuest release The Six Paths to the Transgender Law Center.

Chaosium welcomes Ariel Sawicki to the team as a VTT developer. Born in Poland and presently based in Berlin, Germany, Ariel is working on our VTT implementation for the Foundry Virtual Tabletop. His current projects are getting the RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPGs on to the Foundry platform.

Effective immortality, in an Old Guard sort of way...

The Six Paths is Edan Jones's RuneQuest sourcebook on gender among the Heortling Tribe of Dragon Pass. Beautifully illustrated by 2021 Greg Stafford Award winner Katrin Dirim, it features the cults of Heler, Nandan and Vinga, and includes six example characters exploring the gender identities. Margaret Gill, Katrin Dirim, and Alex Hall all provided guidance, and the new 28 page softcover print edition was prepared by Nick Brooke. This Jonstown Compendium release is Pay-What-You-Want*, with the creators asking you to please consider donating whatever amount you would have paid for this to your local LGBT+ charity. The author share of proceeds will be donated to the UK charity Mermaids, while Chaosium's share will be donated to the Transgender Law Center. *if you order the print version, the minimum you must pay is USD$3.29 to cover the materials cost.