"The Shadow Out of Providence" Kickstarter

So I am excited to be participating in a project called "The Shadow Out of Providence", a book being Kickstartered by Ezra Claverie.  Ezra is not just a long time chum of mine, he's also a significant PlaGMaDA contributor and a great help to the project.  The book is about the way Lovecraft writes, I think, but it isn't striving to be Lovecraft.  From Ezra:

...it is “Lovecraftical” (to coin a term). It treats Lovecraft the writer, the thinker, and the cultural phenomenon, rather than the sliver of his work on which most writers fixate (one that he sometimes dismissed as “Yog-Sothothery”)...

Three separate fictional universes challenge the reader: if the oldest and strongest source of fear is the unknown, what, in each setting, counts as unknown? 

The book has stories which wander in and out of reality, confusing what's true and what's not.  The story in which I am featured is a fake interview between myself and Ezra, in which I talk about an underwater art installation I am making about the reservoir which flooded the town of Dunwich.  Reality has been tweaked to fit the HPL in a way that I found unsettling when I first read the article.

This is not a conventional parody, but a metafictional re-working of Lovecraftical material, especially Lovecraft’s intellectual concerns—such as the power of print and visual media, the unknown as a source of fear, and ignorance (willful and otherwise) as a defense against the new.

Plush-Cthulhu jokes are out. Shoggoth-literacy jokes are in.

There also might be some Cthulhu-horror gaming material involved, if the project takes off...

Oh.  And I almost forgot to mention that the book has a bunch of original artwork by Erol Otus. 

A poor, beleaguered shoggoth by Erol Otus

Game Aid Archive in full swing

Here's a new blog featuring the work of Chris Strasser, http://gameaidarchive.blogspot.com/

Chris does a good job of detailing the why's of the pieces he's put up, which is important.  It's these sorts of detailed explanations that make documents come alive.

"PlaGMaDA article on the Escapist"

Robert Rath has written a great article on the Play Generated Map and Document Archive at the Escapist.   It does a great job of summing up my intentions for the archive.

Thanks Rob!

PlaGMaDA spot on Bonfire Dog...

http://bonfiredog.co.uk/bonfog/2012/03/29/plagmada/

Last Chance on the Kickstarter

By the time you read this there will be less than twenty-four hours left to jump in on the first PlaGMaDA/Hutchingsonian Presents Kickstarter.

So The Hutchingsonian Presents has reached the super bonus goal of $4000 for Everything is Dolphins, meaning that everyone from the PDF Pledge level on up will be receiving a free PDF of scenarios. These scenarios should be just as good as the book itself, with more amazing art by a second group of smart artists.

Should be pretty cool.

And because the process of making should be as interesting as the process of playing or reading, I'm going to be doing something extra cool: Some of the artists will be invited to do a handful of illustrations for a scenario and then I or Ray (the EiD author) will have to tie them together into a coherent adventure. How ridiculously awesome will that be? Why is the dolphin wearing that comical hat?, let's find out...

Two days left on the Everythying is Dolphins Kickstarter

And we are just $500 short of our super bonus goal. Kickstarter is here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timh/everything-is-dolphins-an-rpg-and-art-book

No big, though - this is pre-sales and not begging. We made the goal and things are good.

Nice mention of the project here, too.

Everything is Dolphins: Superchief article

Superchief.tv has a write-up on Everything is Dolphins. My favorite bit:

The ludicrous idea of playing dolphins lends itself well to forming the imaginative space that the best RPG experiences require. Pretending to be non-anthropomorphic animals is such a foreign idea that it puts me in a bizarre mindset for actual game play – it’s almost allows more childish, primal play. I mean, seriously, when’s the last time you pretended you were an animal? Imagined that you didn’t have arms? The game taps that way of thinking and puts dice on it.

The Kickstarter for Everything is Dolphins is ongoing.