The following post is by Tomas Rawlings.
Hello fellow cultists! I’m Tomas Rawlings, Lovecraftian fan and game designer. I was the designer of the Chaosium monograph ‘The Dark Mirror‘ and also the indie game ‘Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land‘. I’m working on another project with Cthulhulic themes I’m keen to share with you. It’s about power, fear, loathing and hope (or the loss of).
In short it’s about politics. Yup, that sort of fear and loathing.
We’ve teamed up with political satire site Wonkette to create a card game about the US elections, but early on in the process I couldn’t let the opportunity pass to inject a massive dose of Mythos into the design. After all who doesn’t wish to see Cthulhu for President? As the popular phrase goes: “why vote for a lesser evil?”
Sounds like an odd match, I know, but it absolutely works! The game itself is a satire on the disconnected nature of the democratic process, and by adding Mythos characters and cards into the mix we further push the envelop of that absurdity. Plus who doesn’t want to see Trump vs Cthulhu, or Clinton vs Nyarlathotep?
In the game you take on the role of the campaign manager. You pick a candidate (Sanders, Clinton, Trump, Cthulhu etc) and then try to get them to the White House by contesting each state. Each state has votes up for grabs and you need to use both fair means and foul to get those votes and win. In order to help you communicate with the voters – aka dinner – and also hammer your rivals into submission, there’s a range of Wonk, Trick, and Team cards. Cards include ‘normal’ political ones, and Mythos ones too.
If this sounds like fun, you can join in the project here. We’re super keen to get people like you in as part of the design process, as we’ve got the game worked out and mapped the content, but know there will be many brilliant ideas floating around out there in the ether that we wish to distil into the game. Here’s the campaign video that gives more of idea of the project:
Thanks all, and hope you join us! Join US! JOIN US!
Tomas
(& thanks to Mike for giving us the space to share the project with you!)
A few more links that might be of interest:
An interview I did with VICE on the game.
The Lovecraft eZine 