The Delays Of Cthulhu

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.

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.

  • 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
 

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Egg Embry

Egg Embry


They are extremely far behind on their own delivery of their Runequest 2 (classic) Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/runequest-classic-edition

They are well over a year delayed delivering all the supplemental books and 4 months past the June 2017 extended deadline they gave themselves. So this is not just a 3rd party problem.

Myrdin Potter -

That's interesting, thanks for sharing it. You said "supplemental books", do you know what's been delivered so far versus what's been delayed?

Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer
EN World All-Ages Reviewer
The FirstFable RPG, Monster Slayers, Mouse Tails, Little Wizards, Hero Kids, Little Heroes, Dagger, and Pip System
 

Obryn

Hero
I got my playing-card deck of The Writhing Dark a while back (not the tarot version). Really attractive cards, beautiful wax-sealed envelope. And it came with some postcards that are proudly displayed at my desk at work.

I had stopped checking that kickstarter; I figured it had been fulfilled. But it actually looks like I was just one of the lucky ones.

e: It's weird; I have only backed one Kickstarter that crashed and burned (as opposed to simply being really really really late). And that was for another deck of cards.
 
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I got my playing-card deck of The Writhing Dark a while back (not the tarot version). Really attractive cards, beautiful wax-sealed envelope. And it came with some postcards that are proudly displayed at my desk at work.

I had stopped checking that kickstarter; I figured it had been fulfilled. But it actually looks like I was just one of the lucky ones.

Obryn -

I'm glad to hear that your cards arrived! It helps every backer to know that the system is working, even if slowly.

Egg Embry, Wanna-lancer
EN World All-Ages Reviewer
The FirstFable RPG, Monster Slayers, Mouse Tails, Little Wizards, Hero Kids, Little Heroes, Dagger, and Pip System
 


Bill Mize

Villager
As someone who backed the initial 7th Edition CoC Kickstarter, AND the current Delta Green Kickstarter, I think that when it comes to this property Hurry Up And Wait is the default setting. Now granted, it's always been worth the wait, in my book, but that doesn't make you want to stop hitting F5 to refresh the project page to see if there's any sort of update.
 


Bill Mize

Villager
Sandy's own Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder is almost a year late:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1816687860/sandy-petersens-cthulhu-mythos-for-pathfinder

Having said this, the project did go a bit overboard, the book is now 512 pages long and @$35 quite a steal. Hopefully we'll get the final pdf later this month or early next month. When the physical tome arrives I don't have a clue of...

A year?! A YEAR?!
Please, that's just getting warmed up, compared to other Call of C'thulhu supplements! Holler when it reaches THREE years! :)

I'm not a Pathfinder guy, so this didn't hit my radar, but yes, that is a ridicuously good deal.
That's one reason I'm willing to wait for Delta Green.
My initial investment was for the core rulebook (The Agent's Handbook) in hardcover.
After a while, it became TWO volumes.
Then after another period of time, it has now become two volumes, hardcover, in a custom slipcase.
Maybe if I wait long enough it will become a jetpack or Tesla or something.

- Bill
 

Flexor the Mighty!

18/100 Strength!
They are extremely far behind on their own delivery of their Runequest 2 (classic) Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/runequest-classic-edition

They are well over a year delayed delivering all the supplemental books and 4 months past the June 2017 extended deadline they gave themselves. So this is not just a 3rd party problem.

I love the reason, "Sorry we are so late but I went to a lot of cons...". Now I realize cons are not just fun and game for them but damn. this stuff is why I've always held off on KS projects. Most probably go smooth but the debacles are what you remember. Then no updates for months.
 

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