In His House in R'lyeh, Dead Cthulhu Wonders If You've Read His Memoirs?

I love H.P. Lovecraft's stories.

I haven't read them all and while I don't, in fact, love them all, I love a lot of what he has written.  Despite the fact that he is somewhat racist and anti-semitic in some of his tales, as a whole, he was a writer of some fantastic weird fiction.

That being said, I think it's very safe to say that Lovecraft is a good description of a cult author, in I feel that a lot more people know about Lovecraft than have actually read his works.  Admittingly, I hadn't read anything by him until I was introduced to him back in late 2003 (the same year I started reading Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams).  I also to not claim to be an expert on anything Elder God or Old Ones related, just want to put that out there before I started gushing over various tomes of Lovecraftian lore.

The "industry" also has quite the love affair with H.P. Lovecraft.  Everything from in-game references (Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Cthulhu Saves the World, Alone in the Dark), movies (In the Mouth of Madness, Prometheus), to board games (Arkham Horror, Munchkin: Cthulhu, Mansions of Madness).  I feel like saying that Lovecraft's lore, specifically the lore dealing with Cthulhu is a multi-million dollar-a-year industry, but that just might be me talking out of my ass.

There's so much good stuff out there that I would love to get my hands on (refrained from saying "tentacles"), all of it requiring money for one, that I have to keep reminding myself that I don't know a whole lot of people (especially people who live near me) that would have as much fun as I would spending an evening playing a game based on stories by Lovecraft.  A few weeks back, one of my friends Cletus posted on facebook about a Cthulhu game on kickstarter called Cthulhu Wars that looked pretty amazing, not including all of the add ons and "reach goals."  After looking over the kickstarter page, I had to force myself to leave the page and "forget" about it for the three days it had remaining in fear that I would plunk down $139 for a game that I probably wouldn't play too often because the people I do play games with haven't read much of any Lovecraft and would probably rather play Cards Against Humanity or Munchkin.  Don't get me wrong, I love CAH and Munchkin, but it wouldn't be as much fun playing a Cthulhu game with people who don't get the references.  Kind of like listening to a "Weird Al" polka and not recognizing any of the songs: it's still fun, but not as much fun as if you knew the songs to begin with.

I'm not sure where to go with the rest of this article, if it really needs to go anywhere else.  Maybe it's finished?  And so it shall be.

Happy Monday all!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Playing Games on the Pavement