Chaosium buys out Cubicle 7's World War Cthulhu and Cthulhu Britannica Lines

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I have all the material C7 put out for WWC but not the London material. Might have to rectify that.
 
I just sold off WWC: The Darkest Hour and my Cthulhu Britannica: London Boxed Set, not because I didn't like them but because I need some focus in my Cthulhu collection. Still, this is good news for those interested in this line of products.

WWC is going to be of even more interest to some now that Modiphius seems to be making their Achtung! Cthulhu line 2d20...
 
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This is win-win as far as I am concerned. C7 clearly are too busy to do those lines justice and probably got a chunk of change to sell these off, Chaosium are pretty busy too but Call of Cthulhu is at least one of their top priorities so they can probably get around to these faster than C7 can, and Chaosium can probably get PDFs of the old stuff available comparatively quickly as a stopgap.
 
Warthur said:
This is win-win as far as I am concerned. C7 clearly are too busy to do those lines justice and probably got a chunk of change to sell these off, Chaosium are pretty busy too but Call of Cthulhu is at least one of their top priorities so they can probably get around to these faster than C7 can, and Chaosium can probably get PDFs of the old stuff available comparatively quickly as a stopgap.
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Hopefully:thumbsup:.
 
It did, Golden Goblin Press. Chaosium still publishes some monographs for it as well as providing some free resources. I haven't seen the Golden Goblin stuff since it is a bit on the pricey side. I would like to see it all back under Chaosium (and a bit cheaper) but that seems unlikely.
 
Lofgeornost said:
It did, Golden Goblin Press. Chaosium still publishes some monographs for it as well as providing some free resources. I haven't seen the Golden Goblin stuff since it is a bit on the pricey side. I would like to see it all back under Chaosium (and a bit cheaper) but that seems unlikely.
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If Chaosium licensed it out, it is likely because they didn’t see it as a priority publication for themselves, sadly. I think historical (outside of the 1920s) supplements might be a bit hit or miss for them.

The really big historical era they will hopefully publish soon is the 1890s - which is essentially London based too. I think the UK market is significant for Call of Cthulhu/Chaosium.
 
Lofgeornost said:
It did, Golden Goblin Press. Chaosium still publishes some monographs for it as well as providing some free resources. I haven't seen the Golden Goblin stuff since it is a bit on the pricey side. I would like to see it all back under Chaosium (and a bit cheaper) but that seems unlikely.
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I was able to snag it when Bundle of Holding had it in August of 2020. Maybe it will be revived.
 
Biggest market outside the US AFAIK is Japan. The revenue stream from there kept oldChaosium going for a long time. Gaslight never tests very well in the US and the UK market while substantial is nowhere big enough to support much more than a Gaslight core book and scenarios through Miskatonic University publications via DTRPG.
 
Arcane_Avatar said:
Biggest market outside the US AFAIK is Japan. The revenue stream from there kept oldChaosium going for a long time. Gaslight never tests very well in the US and the UK market while substantial is nowhere big enough to support much more than a Gaslight core book and scenarios through Miskatonic University publications via DTRPG.
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Quite likely, though I wouldn't discount the French and Scandinavian markets, either. But what are your conclusions from the above? That we should expect Japanese releases of World War Cthulhu and Cthulhu Britannica?
...frankly, I'd be really interested to read a verbatim translation of a Japanese sourcebook on the 30ies, and even more of a sourcebook of WW Chthulhu:thumbsup:.
 
No, the Japanese market doesn't seem to do RPG releases quite like anyone else. There is a big market, i believe, for write ups of games (can't remember exactly what they are called) and they are put out under a Chaosium licence. This means that the revenue stream while CoC related is not quite the same. Although there are a number of scenarios set in Japan as well. Germany particularly, in Europe, seems to have a thriving Call of Cthulhu culture with many excellent scenarios and supplements. France, while displaying some beautiful work on Call of Cthulhu material, seems to have a revenue problem. Don't know if it's lack of sales or the high cost of the design makes the pricing model non-viable though.
 
Arcane_Avatar said:
No, the Japanese market doesn't seem to do RPG releases quite like anyone else. There is a big market, i believe, for write ups of games (can't remember exactly what they are called) and they are put out under a Chaosium licence. This means that the revenue stream while CoC related is not quite the same.
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Those are replays:thumbsup:.
 
Arcane_Avatar said:
Biggest market outside the US AFAIK is Japan. The revenue stream from there kept oldChaosium going for a long time. Gaslight never tests very well in the US and the UK market while substantial is nowhere big enough to support much more than a Gaslight core book and scenarios through Miskatonic University publications via DTRPG.
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So a giant evil tentacle god is popular in Japan?? Couldn't have guessed that in a million years!
 
Bunch said:
So a giant evil tentacle god is popular in Japan?? Couldn't have guessed that in a million years!
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Yeah, I always wondered what Japanese CoC adventures are like if the investigators lose:devil:!
 
AsenRG said:
Yeah, I always wondered what Japanese CoC adventures are like if the investigators lose:devil:!
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You know the sketch from Kids in the Hall with alien probing? Kinda like that.
 
Arcane_Avatar said:
Biggest market outside the US AFAIK is Japan. The revenue stream from there kept oldChaosium going for a long time. Gaslight never tests very well in the US and the UK market while substantial is nowhere big enough to support much more than a Gaslight core book and scenarios through Miskatonic University publications via DTRPG.
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It has been reported that the biggest market for Chaosium is Japan, but it wasn’t clear what they liked to buy. As far as I am aware, there has only been one supplement about Japan (although it was a very large one).

Cthulhu by Gaslight is in the works. Although as with all Chaosium supplements we don’t know when it will be ready, I don’t actually think it is that far away. If the US audience is paramount, well, I guess it could crossover a bit with the Down Darker Trails supplement (give or take a decade or two), but Call of Cthulhu has always been an international game of any era. Personally, though, anything where you can draw inspiration from Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, Aleister Crowley and The Golden Dawn and the late 19th century gothic literature that Lovecraft himself loved, has got to be a winner for the game.
 
AsenRG said:
That's some personal horror right there...:shade:
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For those who haven't seen it it consists of two guys talking about their job probing humans anally. One guy questions why we do this. The other has no questions and doesn't want to rock the boat. The questioning one notes "All we've learned after all these years is that 1 in 10 kind of likes it."
So I suspect the ending to japanese Cthulhu investigations is 90% screaming in terror and 10% screaming in ecstasy.
 
Also River's of London, though not exactly Cthulhu, it is investigative with elements of horror, mystical, magical etc and is BRP system like CoC.

www.chaosium.com

Rivers of London RPG update: playtesting the rules

Even when the game you’re developing is based on a tried and tested system, you still need to playtest it to make sure that all the tweaks and additions you’ve made work the way they need to.
www.chaosium.com www.chaosium.com
 
Trippy said:
It has been reported that the biggest market for Chaosium is Japan, but it wasn’t clear what they liked to buy. As far as I am aware, there has only been one supplement about Japan (although it was a very large one).
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Various articles and reports I've read state that Call of Cthulhu is the most popular import RPG in Japan, and they're selling corebooks and supplements, including some produced locally by the local affiliate/distributor. Apparently, the oneshot and pick-up-and-play nature of CoC lends itself well to net-cafe and manga-cafe play, as enough living space to host an RPG is pretty rare for young people in Japan, especially in the cities. The cosmic horror theme is also supposedly especially popular with the Japanese female roleplayer demographic, though every explanation for that I've seen was pretty much pure supposition on the part of the article writer.

I did a bit of half-hearted research about two years ago, when I got curious as to why I was suddenly seeing a lot of Mythos references in my manga reading. "CoC has become very popular in Japan and is influencing nerd culture there," was not the answer I was expecting, but it's the one I found!
 
I believe that the Japanese RPG scene is very into 'replays' written and, I think, illustrated books telling a story based on Call games.
 
Psychopomp said:
The cosmic horror theme is also supposedly especially popular with the Japanese female roleplayer demographic, though every explanation for that I've seen was pretty much pure supposition on the part of the article writer.
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I don't have an explanation, nor am I looking for one, but I can only say the following: of the local RPGers who are fans of horror games, exactly one isn't female:shade:.
Again, I don't claim to have an explanation, but it's an observation I've stored in "curious facts to be used on occasion" folder:devil:.


Also, I'm now persuaded I should have moved to Japan, or some other part of East Asia, and probably years ago. Those people have a great taste in games:grin:!
 
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