GMorts Chaotica: Chaosium Inc.

The latest Call of Cthulhu and Runequest RPG news from Chaosium...

#48 the straight scoop from the well of chaos...

The Two-Headed Serpent, An Epic Action-Packed and Globe-Spanning Campaign for Pulp Cthulhu—Available now in hardback, direct from Chaosium.com!

(If you previously bought the PDF, you'll receive a discount coupon by email).

Availability Notice: We have stocks in our US and UK warehouses ready to ship. The Two-Headed Serpent will be arriving in Australia on or around June 24th. Australian orders received prior to its availability will be flagged as pre-orders.

The Grand Grimoire will go on sale in the first week of July. Buy the PDF now and receive the full price of the PDF off as a discount when you buy the hardback at Chaosium.com.

RuneQuest Worldwide for Free RPG Day!

Following our call for Game Masters to run our RuneQuest Quickstart adventure on Free RPG Day next Saturday (June 17), we're excited that over 60 people have volunteered. This means next weekend we'll have mythic adventures taking place in game stores all across the world, including the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, Germany, Sweden, Spain, France, Portugal and Puerto Rico.

Todd Gardiner, our Director of Organized Play said: I am excited that RuneQuest has been added to our ongoing organized play network. As a long time RuneQuest player myself, it is great to see this modern re-tuning of a classic game returning to tabletops as part of Free RPG Day.

RuneQuest brought players into the world of Glorantha more than thirty years ago, but fans old and new will find excitement in the Quickstart.

"With Chaosium bumping up support to new levels, there should be plenty of copies for stores to pass out on the day of the event", says Todd. "Please seek a store and get on the sign-up list for a game on the day of the event. It'll be a blast!"

10 copies will be sent to each of the participating Friendly Local Game Stores for Free RPG Day, June 17.

Chaosium at Origins Game Fair

June 14-18, Columbus OH

Chaosium will be at Origins Game Fair next week (June 14-18), in Columbus Ohio. Come and say hi to Rick and Todd at the booth (#123), and buy the latest Chaosium products—including The Two Headed Serpent and Grand Grimoire.

We'll also be demoing our forthcoming boardgames, Khan of Khans and Miskatonic U!

Todd has arranged a great selection of Chaosium RPG sessions on offer at Origins too, including Call of Cthulhu events in the Cthulhu-thon, with our friends Petersen Games and Cubicle 7.

STOP PRESS!

Origins attendees, we have glorious news! There's still a few player slots left our Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest games! Online registration has closed, but you can still browse programming at home and sign up onsite.

For Call of Cthulhu:

1922 - Slot "Red" (aka Weekend in the Woods): A group of Boys Scouts from Arkham, Massachusetts have gone on a scout trip to the Green Mountains in New Hampshire to hone their skills. The woods hold more danger than mere bears --- and the Scouts are disappearing, one by one.
What's in the Cellar?: In this 1930s mystery, investigators have been asked to clear the name of their friend Arthur Blackwood, who has been charged with his wife's murder after her disappearance. Will they find her body, or something else?
Necropolis: 1930s Investigators exploring a tomb in the Valley of the Kings are trapped by the sudden shift of a stone slab. Soon discovering they're not alone, time is of the essence to escape alive.
Cult of Chaos Contest Winner - Slot "Black" (aka Midnight Masquerade): In 1932, agents in the Bureau of Investigation's Department 29 assist in an unusual prohibition bust, where the money leads back to a cult leader. Can they survive a masquerade where danger hides in plain sight?
Cult of Chaos Contest Winner - Slot "Argent" (aka The Kids are Alright): Montana. 1975. When a bus comes back from a field trip, three young women are missing. Their parents follow the trip leader back into the wild at the base of the Rockies, where an archaeological site and the very woods around them may hold untold horror.
Camp Sunny: In the age of Instagram and Facebook, you and a group of friends set off on a spur of the moment vacation to the Great Lakes, leaving college, steady connectivity, and all your cares behind you. But if a group of college students scream in the woods, does anyone hear them?

For RuneQuest:

Broken Honor (aka Stealing the Eye): Sent by your clan to steal a valuable jewel, your band hopes to be in and out before you are detected by the temple guards of Yara Aranis. You'll slip out like shadows before dawn once you've succeeded in stealing the jewel. If things go bad? You'll fight your way out!
The Old Ruin (aka The Broken Tower) from the RuneQuest Quickstart: When the chieftain sends a small band out to find the tribe's stolen cattle, they find more than cattle theft afoot. In the badlands at the edges of their territory, their cattle are held in ancient ruins where something otherworldly seems to dwell. There's a mystery to solve and a herd to save, before it's too late. NB if you play in this session you'll get a copy of the RQ Quickstart to call your very own!

Licensee Focus:

Chaosium launches new licensing policies

Chaosium has launched a new set of fan-use and licensing policies, offering individuals, small publishers and commercial partners the opportunity to share their creations or to partner with us.

We support and value the contributions of the wider Chaosium Tribe. If you're interested in contributing, please have a look at our new policy descriptions to see which would work best for you:

FAN MATERIAL POLICY

We love to engage people with our mythic stories, and we want you to be able to share yours too! Our Fan Material Policy is designed to do just that while respecting ownership of our copyrights, trademarks, and other intellectual properties.

SMALL PUBLISHER LIMITED LICENSE

Our Limited License offers small publishers and individuals the opportunity to produce limited run game material for use with any of our game lines. This could include fanzines, convention scenarios, and one-off books. These can be commercial products, but gross sales revenue should not exceed USD$2000 per annum (per year).

(Here we acknowledge the fine work of our friends Monte Cook Games, pioneers of the limited license concept.)

COMMERCIAL LICENSE

Chaosium works with a wide range of commercial licensing partners who produce products to supplement and support our own. This includes board games, card games, certain RPG supplements, dice, computer games, and foreign language editions. These all operate under our Commercial License.

Such licenses are for officially approved product and require ongoing management, regular reporting, and close work with our line editors. Accordingly, we are selective about who we partner with, and initial approaches require a detailed business plan. These commercial licenses also have specified release and revenue targets.

HEROQUEST GATEWAY LIMITED LICENSE (HEROQUEST RULES ENGINE)

The HeroQuest Gateway License is a non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free, worldwide license to enable game designers to use Moon Design Publications’ HeroQuest rules engine for their game settings, whether it be science fiction, high fantasy, horror, westerns, martial arts, or anything else (apart from Glorantha).

FAN-USE AND LICENSING Q&A

Check out the answers to some commonly-asked questions we receive about fan-use and licensing.

What is Ab Chaos?
(...from Ab Chaos #7, May 31 1992)

Ab - Latin "from"
Chaos - (1) Any condition or place of total disorder (modern vernacular); (2) the disordered state of unformed matter which preceded creation (since Milton, Paradise Lost); (3) the dark, empty space which preceded creation (Greek Mythology); (4) the [formerly] Californian roleplaying game company.

Ab Chaos is an informal newsletter for Chaosium fans. Through our history we have tried to serve the players and gamemasters through craft and art as well as (and sometimes at the expense of) marketing and moneymaking. We appreciate your loyalty, and offer this communication to those who are curious about us, beyond the mere "product".

It is planned to be informal and irregular. We are, after all, not the Orderium.