Achtung! Cthulhu Keeper’s Guide

I finally got to see the first books for Achtung! Cthulhu on store shelves recently. On Tuesday April 29 I discovered the Keeper’s Guide and Investigator’s Guide at my Favorite Local Game Store. I’ve put in a fair amount of work in so far on this product line over the last 12 months, and I’m relieved to see the logjam of products I contributed to finally making their way to market.

Of these first two volumes, I worked exclusively on material for the Keeper’s Guide. Most of what I did for this book was to research Word War Two vehicles of all sorts — tanks and planes mostly, but ships to a lesser degree — and convert their capabilities into game-ready stats for the Basic Role Playing system. I also researched and wrote about some basic information on transport and travel before and during the wars to offer some perspective on civilian travel. The BRP System is used by Chaosium for, among other things, their Call of Cthulhu product line. The Keeper’s and Player’s Guides for Achtung! Cthulhu also contain stats for the Savage Worlds system to give gamers options.

I have to admit feeling a bit jaded about seeing my name in print these days – not because it’s happened so often, but because it just isn’t as big a thrill as my younger self imagined. In this particular case it may also be because I’ve had my author’s copies in hand for a while now, so seeing them isn’t much of a surprise.

Being a writer is largely a solitary endeavor. In cases like this, however, I’m working with a team of talented folks, and we chat online every now and then just to keep each other in the loop regarding what’s happening with our respective sections. It’s often inspiring as well, seeing what other people are doing and thinking up ideas of how it might connect to my own work.

Just this week I received an advanced peek at the Achtung! Cthulhu Guide To the Pacific Front, and it looks great as well. Alex Bund and I were the primary writers on this upcoming book, and with my share being over 30,000 words, it’s the single largest word count I’ve contributed to a project to date. It’ll likely be a month or more before the Guide To the Pacific Front hits store shelves, but as soon as I’m able, I’ll share the cover art with all of you here.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Monica Valentinelli for recommending me to the folks at Modiphius Entertainment for this project, to Chris Birch for giving me a shot, and also to my editor on the project Lynne Hardy, for being wonderful to work with and for her patience. It’s been great working with Modiphius; if the fates allow it, I look forward to working on many more projects with them.