New Submissions Guidelines for Chaosium - CoC etc

[MOB]

At its heart, Chaosium is a roleplaying game company. Since RuneQuest came out in 1978 and Call of Cthulhu followed in 1981 we've been producing award-winning roleplaying games with artistic integrity. The who's who of RPG writers have all contributed to make our games great. We'd love for you to join our tribe!

Do you have a scenario ready to go, or an amazing concept? We would love to hear from you. We are accepting submissions for Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest and more.

http://www.chaosium.com/blog/new-rpg-submissions-guidelines-released

[MOB]

We have also just released new Submissions Guidelines for the Chaosium Fiction line (and appointed James Lowder as the Executive Editor)

Chaosium was born out of fiction. Greg Stafford discovered Glorantha through his writings which led him to founding the company. Only a few years later, Chaosium turned H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous story of the Cthulhu Mythos into our most award winning RPG game, Call of Cthulhu, written by Sandy Petersen.

We have carried on their tradition with our Fiction line. And James Lowder, the Chaosium Fiction Line Editor, has prepared our fiction submission guidelines for both experienced and new writers alike.

Do you have a story written? We would love to hear from you.

The Mythos was the line’s core when it launched in 1993 and it will be the core of our relaunched line starting in 2018. We may publish other types of work from time to time and may expand the line in the future, but for submission purposes, we’re considering Mythos works.

http://www.chaosium.com/fiction-submissions

 

 

[Insanity]

A question concerning the word count and handouts.  If the scenario has handouts that are text (letters, telegrams, etc), should those be written out in the submission and do they count towards the word count guidelines?

[Rick Meints]

The word count is only used for approximately estimating page count. It is an average. It is a guideline. If you have a project that requires a large series of maps then we might try to shoot for a lower word count. What would be helpful of course, would be a submission that details how many pages of handouts might be included. Once again, a larger number of handouts, say 8 pages worth, would be great to know of at the start so we can possibly shoot for a lower word count. Thus, if you are predicting 8 pages of handouts, letting us know that is better saying 500 words on the handouts. Many handouts have far fewer words on them than a normal page of text.

You may be wondering why we prefer books with page counts that are multiples of 32. The simple reason is that you get the best prices for printing large numbers of books with those page counts. Print on Demand is very different when it comes to the size of paper used during printing. The paper size used is basically the size requested (A4, US Letter, etc.). Industrial sized printing presses, the ones used to print 1000's of books at a time, use much larger rolls of paper. After printing that paper is folded and trimmed into 32 page "gathers". If you print a book that is 34 pages in length on a big printing press they will print a 32 page gather and then have to work with a smaller, harder to handle two pages tacked onto the end during binding. That is almost as much work as doing a 64 page book which has two 32-page gathers. 

You may have noticed that some Chaosium books have a few pages of adverts in the back while other Chaosium books have none. Yes, that is sometimes how we get a 124 page product up to the preferred printing length of 128 pages. (32 x 4)

[Mike M]

Just to further elaborate on Rick's helpful notes - 

Having an estimated word count is useful  - we want the estimate page count, but please do include the estimate word count too (and yes, handout text should be included in the word count).

Thanks