Chaosium Inc’s Call of Cthulhu is one of the best-known RPGs in gaming with numerous official products as well as third party expansions to the franchise. While the majority of these produce outstanding products, some of those third party publishers have collected money via crowdfunding, then gone months between backer updates, and have yet to fulfill their commitments. Around Gen Con 50, Chaosium made announcements that addressed several of these unfulfilled third party products.
What are third party products? The Call of Cthulhu RPG is popular and Chaosium cannot produce enough material to meet the demand. To fill that void, they grant other publishers licenses to produce CoC-compatible materials. For most of these agreements, the third party develops their product based on CoC with only limited input from Chaosium, and Chaosium collects royalties from the third party’s sales. This system usually works well, producing some innovate extensions to the CoC franchise; however, some companies have obtained a license, crowdfunded revenue, but failed to deliver the agreed upon products to their backers.
In a move that might reflect concerns about these delays, Choasium updated their licensing policies in June to address commercial licenses. The revised language canonizes “release and revenue targets” and requires “regular reporting, and close work with our line editors”.
What was late? Per Chaosium’s website, they cite four Call of Cthulhu products by three different third party publishers that collected money through Kickstarter between 2012 and 2014.
What are the third party publishers doing to fulfill these products? Per posts on the Chaosium website and the individual Kickstarter campaigns, each of these projects is moving forward at a slow pace. Miskatonic River Press, who collected revenue for Punktown, have ceased operations and hired Chronicle City to complete this project. Shane Tyree campaigned for both CoC: The Writing Dark projects and, “he has taken delivery of the core rewards (the card sets) and is actually in the process of fulfilling, albeit very slowly as his constrained finances permit.” The Horrors of War Kickstarter revised their delivery projection to 2018.
What has Chaosium done to address these undelivered products? As Chaosium stated on their site about The Writing Dark campaigns, “We are well within our rights to terminate Shane's agreement. But we don't want backers to be prevented by Chaosium from getting what they paid Shane to produce. Because he has the actual product in hand and sincerely states that he still wishes to deliver, we have instead issued Shane a special license extension. ...” Based on the press releases, this appears to be Chaosium’s direction, to allow the third party publishers more time to fulfill these Kickstarters so the backers get what they’ve paid for.
What’s occurred since these updates from Chaosium? For Punktown, there was “a Beta PDF of the entire book” sent to backers on October 20th. I spoke to Angus Abranson of Chronicle City (and EN World) and he shared his timeline for completing Punktown, "all feedback is due back by 20th November. Hopefully we'll be getting the final PDF to backers in early December and have a print proof back back early-mid December. If all is good with the print proof then physical copies will start being ordered and shipped to backers." Shane Tyree of The Writing Dark posted an update on Kickstarter and in the comments his wife, Christina, added, “I'm trying to fit a little bit into the budget to send some [backer rewards] out every month now that we're starting to get our heads back above water. I can't promise it will be a lot going out, but we're trying to keep doing what we can.” The Horrors of War Kickstarter states that Pagan Publishing should have a sneak peak PDF ready by Christmas and “the full Horrors of War manuscript can, I believe be done by GenCon 2018.” However, the next update was promised by the end of September, but there is no additional information on the campaign page as of this writing.
Will these projects deliver and will Chaosium’s policy change prevent this from occurring in the future? Unfortunately, there’s no way to know at this point, but we will continue to report on these situations.
contributed by Egg Embry
What are third party products? The Call of Cthulhu RPG is popular and Chaosium cannot produce enough material to meet the demand. To fill that void, they grant other publishers licenses to produce CoC-compatible materials. For most of these agreements, the third party develops their product based on CoC with only limited input from Chaosium, and Chaosium collects royalties from the third party’s sales. This system usually works well, producing some innovate extensions to the CoC franchise; however, some companies have obtained a license, crowdfunded revenue, but failed to deliver the agreed upon products to their backers.
In a move that might reflect concerns about these delays, Choasium updated their licensing policies in June to address commercial licenses. The revised language canonizes “release and revenue targets” and requires “regular reporting, and close work with our line editors”.
What was late? Per Chaosium’s website, they cite four Call of Cthulhu products by three different third party publishers that collected money through Kickstarter between 2012 and 2014.
- Punktown: An RPG Setting for Call of Cthulhu and BRP Gaming by Miskatonic River Press. Launched 2012-11-19 and collected $13,564 from 280 backers. Their original promised delivery date was August 2013.
- Call of Cthulhu: The Writhing Dark - Playing Cards and Tarot and Call of Cthulhu: The Writhing Dark - Extended Edition by Shane Tyree. Launched 2013-11-12 and 2014-05-02 respectively. They collected a total of $131,304 from 2,027 backers. Their original promised delivery dates were April 2014 and August 2014.
- Horrors of War Kickstarter: A Covenant with Death by Scott Glancy of Pagan Publishing. Launched 2014-08-01 and collected $26,823 from 525 backers. Their original promised delivery date was February 2015.
What are the third party publishers doing to fulfill these products? Per posts on the Chaosium website and the individual Kickstarter campaigns, each of these projects is moving forward at a slow pace. Miskatonic River Press, who collected revenue for Punktown, have ceased operations and hired Chronicle City to complete this project. Shane Tyree campaigned for both CoC: The Writing Dark projects and, “he has taken delivery of the core rewards (the card sets) and is actually in the process of fulfilling, albeit very slowly as his constrained finances permit.” The Horrors of War Kickstarter revised their delivery projection to 2018.
What has Chaosium done to address these undelivered products? As Chaosium stated on their site about The Writing Dark campaigns, “We are well within our rights to terminate Shane's agreement. But we don't want backers to be prevented by Chaosium from getting what they paid Shane to produce. Because he has the actual product in hand and sincerely states that he still wishes to deliver, we have instead issued Shane a special license extension. ...” Based on the press releases, this appears to be Chaosium’s direction, to allow the third party publishers more time to fulfill these Kickstarters so the backers get what they’ve paid for.
What’s occurred since these updates from Chaosium? For Punktown, there was “a Beta PDF of the entire book” sent to backers on October 20th. I spoke to Angus Abranson of Chronicle City (and EN World) and he shared his timeline for completing Punktown, "all feedback is due back by 20th November. Hopefully we'll be getting the final PDF to backers in early December and have a print proof back back early-mid December. If all is good with the print proof then physical copies will start being ordered and shipped to backers." Shane Tyree of The Writing Dark posted an update on Kickstarter and in the comments his wife, Christina, added, “I'm trying to fit a little bit into the budget to send some [backer rewards] out every month now that we're starting to get our heads back above water. I can't promise it will be a lot going out, but we're trying to keep doing what we can.” The Horrors of War Kickstarter states that Pagan Publishing should have a sneak peak PDF ready by Christmas and “the full Horrors of War manuscript can, I believe be done by GenCon 2018.” However, the next update was promised by the end of September, but there is no additional information on the campaign page as of this writing.
Will these projects deliver and will Chaosium’s policy change prevent this from occurring in the future? Unfortunately, there’s no way to know at this point, but we will continue to report on these situations.
contributed by Egg Embry
