A few days late but then we come to the story of my life. Lovecraft has somehow become the embodiment of horror as it relates to gaming. Chaosium has certainly helped that along with a role-playing game and multiple card games. More recently, there has been a spate of board games revolving around the eldritch horrors of Miskatonic County.
My first encounter with Mr. Lovecraft was in a TAB book sales flyer. These flyers meant either to encourage reading or book sales offered nominally priced books aimed at a young audience. Somehow, Lovecraft made the list and I found myself with a copy of the Colour Out of Space and Other Stories. I became a devotee as I was a devotee of Ambrose Bierce and Olaf Stapledon. A strange literary diet for a 12-year old but my devotion has not wavered.
TAB books would arrive in a box a few weeks after we had marked our order sheets and paid our money. They would be set out along the lip of the blackboard and we would get whichever one we had sent for. With Lovecraft, I entered a world where malevolent entities of unimaginable destructive power were held back by a thin line of antiquarians, professors, and half mad poets and where even the most benign locations held terrors. I recall once driving through southern Massachusetts and immediately recognizing it as the setting for the Dunwich Horror.
Like so many other writers, Lovecraft did not live to benefit from his well-earned fame. His fans kept his work alive and now, he is almost a household word. Lovecraft has made the heaviest mark in that most light hearted of pursuits gaming so it is worth mentioning the passing of his birthday, August 20th. I have posted a blurry picture of a night gaunt I believe produced by RAFM. My hope is by Mr. Lovecraft’s next birthday, to drag out all the wildly painted critters from RAFM and Grenadier and celebrate his birthday on time and in style. But as befits this rather watered down year with my own birthday soon to arrive we will have to draw this rather tepid tea till better times.