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About a year ago, my friend and co-designer, Darth, sent me the picture you see below. I asked him what it was, and he said “a dice game.” It didn’t look like any kind of dice game I’d ever played, so my interest was piqued. Then he said it was a Lovecraft dice game, and I reminded him of all the different cult-magic, tentacle-faced game variations that already existed. But, he assured me this one was unique. I thought he had gone mad. How could he possibly bring something new to the Lovecraftian game table?

Original Chaos of Cthulhu concept art…madness!

The next day he sent me the following picture, and the idea started to appear a little less insane. He went on to explain how each player had a set of dice that made up their monster, which was used to fight other player’s monsters and also act as your hit points. I had never seen anything like it. I had to know more. I had to play it.

Early sketches of complete Old Ones

So, I set out to make my own copy to dive into the madness. I rolled my mix-matched abomination and instantly loved the game mechanic of matching dice rolls to activate my monster’s various abilities. What I loved even more was that I could add and subtract my dice values to make new numbers, so I could set my own strategy. It was awesome!

The very first Elder Dice mockups!

During one of the first rounds of public play testing, it didn’t go quite as planned. A game that was designed to last 15-30min (maybe 45-60 in extreme cases) ended up lasting 3 hours. It was a battle of attrition, and we learned learned a lot from it. Through many more play tests and discussions the game became more balanced, strategic, and aggressive. We came up with multiple win scenarios. Players helped us brainstorm ideas for bringing order to the chaos. (That’s where the player aid mats, action tokens, and secrecy screens came from.) And then, out of it all it came the most popular suggestion: the dice should be giant to show off the stylized art.

We set out to make Chaos of Cthulhu a unique, collectible dice game that stands out from other Lovecraftian projects, and I believe we succeeded. We just didn’t succeed enough to fund…this time. But, we did learn a lot from the experience. With a better understanding of how Kickstarter works and some slight adjustments to the game, we’re setting out for another campaign in mid-to late July, 2015. I hope to see you again then!

I greatly appreciate all the support we’ve received on this first campaign and want to keep the momentum going. If you have any suggestions for web sites, or places you we should contact for previews, reviews, or interviews in the gaming, horror, or Lovecraft world, please leave your comments in the Chaos of Cthulhu Facebook Group. Plus, we’ll send out a few more updates in the coming months to keep you informed of the progression leading up to July’s re-launch.

Thank you all, and we’ll see you back here very soon!

Yours in mischief,

Travis Watkins

Who are you and what do you do? My name is Jack Eggers, and I happen to be the living god Ammon Ra (it’s mostly a title, don’t let it throw you:). Being the living god Ammon Ra doesn’t pull in the kind of cash you’d expect, so for the last few years I’ve worked in call centers scheduling state-funded medical transportation and utility notification.

Where do you live? For the last 12 years I’ve lived in Portland, Oregon. I’m half convinced Portland is a kind of wildlife refuge for, errrrr, artists like myself.

Where did the idea for the Mininomicon come from? Making inappropriate use of office supplies, I tried to make a pocket-sized edition of the Necronomicon (of course). For some reason it just didn’t seem small and cute enough, and I noticed that folding a standard sheet of paper in half over and over resulted in tiny leaves with the same proportions as the original sheet. A half sheet of paper so reduced and stacked up looked uncannily like a tiny book…

As a comic illustrator the idea of tiny eldritch artwork and spells called me to fill in all the tiny pages. I made the original Mininomicon for a friend to wear to the 2014 H.P. Lovecraft film fest in Portland.

Afterwards I posted photos of it to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society Facebook page. The response really surprised me, with requests and commissions, so I spent a couple months prototyping ways to make quality tiny tomes that I would be proud to offer to fellow cultists (um, rather, enthusiasts…). Things like quality letterpress printing and paper-thin skive leather made it all tantalizingly attainable.

Does the miniature size of the book make the spells inside any less evil? The magic (magics? magicks?) is still quite potent and potentially insanity inducing (no attempt at interpreting the script should be made – down that path lay only madness) but it’s a lot like the radium painted on old clock faces – it should be of such a low level that only the workers binding the books should be in any danger (…that would explain so much…)

We know you sprinkled some humor into the pages; give us some examples of the easter eggs we might find and some back story to them. Tentacles show up a great deal in the ancient parchments, so naturally you can find the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the Mininomicon. There’s also something that looks a lot like the Darwin fish with a tiny line of evolution images that begin in the water and end with the unlucky (fortunate, I mean fortunate!) human grabbed by ravenous tentacles. There’s also a Jackalope, and a betentacled Hello Cthulhu (the ultimate cosmic horror). HPL, Cthulhu and an Elder Thing make appearances as well. There’s a four-dimensional hypercube page to help speed up the madness. There’s something that seemingly bears some resemblance to Marmaduke, causing our translators to suspect that the “50 names of Marduk” often featured in reprinted Necronomicons may, in fact, be a mistranslation.

Which two Lovecraft monsters would you want to see do battle? How do you see the fight playing out? Cthulhu and Dagon are the big contenders in my mind. Dagon is an actual Elder God mentioned by name in the bible (I know, right?! hint, that fishy symbol you can see on the backs of so many cars is a LOT older than 2000 years…). Cthulhu’s got space friends so I worry that Dagon might not be victorious in that encounter.

What else do you make by hand? Apart from the occasional costume appliance (Alien chestburster or space age Egyptian headdress…) I’m mostly an illustrator with comic book leanings. There are a few leather-bound items I’m working on like the carbonite-frozen Han Solo notebook. For the last year I’ve also been working on trying to make Necronomicon prayer flags.

Where can we find more of your work and goods? I’m featuring some Mininomicons in my Etsy shop, Small Magic Bindery (www.etsy.com/shop/SmallMagicBindery). My site www.ammonra.org features my old comics and art (lots of warning pages for the NSFW stuff) on embarrassingly outdated web pages. Or Facebook on /thelivinggodammonra and /smallmagicbindery. I’ll also have a great many Mininomicons at the upcoming 2015 CthulhuCon in Portland, April 25-26: http://cthulhucon.com/cthulhucon-pdx

Have you ever wondered which Old One you’re most like? Just how Cthulhu are you(lu)? Now you can find out!

Who are you and what do you do? My name is Daryl Toh, or Daz for short. I am a freelance illustrator and comic artist. Yes, I do work at home in my pajamas and have lots of green tea to keep me sane.

Where do you live? I am currently residing in Malaysia.

Why are you a Lovecraft fan? Ever since I picked up  “At The Mountains of Madness”, I become interested to learn more about H.P. Lovecraft’s other works, and since then joined the fish people, I mean friendly cultists, I mean legion of fans waiting for the stars to align.

Which two Old Ones would you want to see throw down? I don’t know which Old Ones but the Outer Gods like Ubbo-Saltha and The Colour Out Of Space would make a spectacular cosmic battle at night, if they don’t consume us in the end.

What were some of your favorite Elder Gods to illustrate for Chaos of Cthulhu? The Colour Out Of Space, Hastur, Elder Thing and Yig were my favorite in terms of design and color choices.

Can you a give us a little commentary on some of the designs. All the monsters were designed to look like a fresco  you might find is say from the Minoan civilization or Pompeii –  with flaked and chipped off plaster and paint from it. Cthulhu, or Dagon work so well in this direction, but the more challenging ones were the serpents like the Hound of Tindalos and the Hunting Horror; those were loosely based on Mayan or Aztec designs. The only Celtic influenced, is Yig.

Have you worked on any other Lovecraft projects before? This is actually my second Lovecraftian themed project. The first is called ‘Outer God’ written by Luc Labelle where I did most of the artwork. ‘Outer God’ is a psychological horror comic about a new pyramid discovered under the sands of the Sahara and a marriage falling apart. You can pre-order it starting March 31, 2015 through Luc’s site and on Comixology.

Where can we find more of your work? You can find more of my work at my official Tumblr site: http://tohdaryl.tumblr.com/

Well, we’re back from an amazing weekend in Austin, talking to people about our games and welcoming new members into the Imp House family. It was an exhilarating, exhausting, and inspiring experience! We were able to play Chaos of Cthulhu with tons of new people, and we shot some video* of the game in action on the show floor; check it out:

*Keep in mind that the demo versions of the game are prototypes. For instance, the final Elder Dice will be twice the size of those used in this video! Also, we did not know anyone featured in this video prior to the show – and, no, they are not paid actors.