Tales of Mythic Adventure Episode 13 – What Chaosium did next

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What Chaosium did next 0:00-6:30

The natural order of things is returned and Tales of Mythic Adventure is back!

Chaosium is of course the legendary games company founded by Greg Stafford in the mid-seventies, and is the publisher of Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Heroquest, and soon-to-be the publisher of Thirteenth Age in Glorantha. Chaosium is also a fiction publisher and soon-to-be the publisher of the new version of Credo, the game of dueling dogmas, among other things. And just before Gen Con Moon Design Publications – consisting of Jeff, MOB, Neil Robinson and Rick Meints, joined the Chaosium ownership and have taken a management positions there, hence the ToMA hiatus.

MOB points out that Chaosium is one of the very few companies in the role game playing space that can be called iconic, legendary and veteran. Chaosium is almost the last survivor of the first group of RPG games companies founded in the 1970’s. Greg Stafford has stepped down as president of the company, but remains as chairman of the board. Sandy Petersen has stepped down as vice president of the company but is still a director. Both are also creative consultants in the company.

God’s War and Hero Wars 6:30-8:45

This segues nicely into Chaosium’s involvement with Sandy Petersen’s forthcoming Gods War game, and also the hugely successful Cthulhu Wars. Jeff says that has two great Cthulhus sitting on the window sill of his Berlin apartment and live on air offers to measure the figures using the satanic metric system (seeing as he is in Europe). The measurement from base to wing-tip of the great Cthulhu figure is an incredible eighteen centimetres (which is a bit over seven inches for the users of non-satanic measurement systems), making this a ‘bigatures’ rather than a miniature. There will be similar immense bigatures for the new Gods War game.

Welcome to the new Chaosium 8:45-19:15

  • Jeff Richard is now the vice-president and creative director for Chaosium and oversees licenses.
  • Rick Meints is now the president and is currently focused on kickstarter fulfilment.
  • Michael O’Brien (MOB) is the vice-president in charge of product development and community outreach.
  • Neil Robinson is the CFO and generally makes the trains run on time.

So, you could say Jeff and MOB are on the creative side, with Neil and Rick on the operational side.

The new management’s primary goal is to ensure that the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Kickstarter campaign is fulfilled. Since becoming president of Chaosium, Rick has introduced weekly updates to the Kickstarter backers, and the transparency of these updates has been extremely favorable.

The Fiction Line 15:00-19:15

Well-known and respected fantasy fiction writer and editor James Lowder has been appointed consulting editor for the Chaosium fiction line. Some outstanding issues will be resolved and fiction line will be relaunched in 2016. Jeff and MOB are very excited about the possibilities in the fiction line – in the past, Chaosium has published a lot of extremely good fiction, and is even the publisher of some of the classic works of Alfred Dunsany. Some reprints from the back catalogue are planned, along with a number of new titles formats. Very few of the Chaosium fiction titles had been published in e-book versions; something else to improve on.

Gencon slight reprise 19:15 – 26:00

Back at Gencon, Moon Design Publications won the Diana Jones Award for ‘best in show’ at Gencon, awarded by a mysterious cabal. Jeff hopes that the judges are invisible yogic masters hanging out in the centre of the earth with Jim Morrison. Moon Design has a moral quandary over the physical award (a Perspex pyramid) as Will Wheaton added a piece of masking tape to it in 2013 when he won, and nobody can quite work out if it should be removed or celebrated, or even if Moon Design should add their own piece of masking tape. MOB and Jeff also mention the other awards Moon Design and Chaosium were nominated for and won, something they are obvious quite tickled about.

It’s only the 25 minute mark, but to wind up, MOB announces that Tales of Mythic Adventure will be moving to a new half-hour format. There will continue to be guests, and, going forward, there will be a broader focus to reflect the larger product line with Chaosium now part of the mix. So, next week, Jeff and MOB talk to Mike Mason, line editor of the Call of Cthulhu line about what to expect in the forthcoming Seventh Edition…

Rick Meints says:

October 11, 2015 at 9:13 pm

Flying Buffalo – 1970, Chaosium – 1975, Games Workshop – 1975, Steve Jackson Games – 1980.

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