The Stars Are Right At Last

[ecosophia]

Tentacle fans rejoice!  I am delighted to announce that the Kickstarter for Weird of Hali: Roleplaying the Other Side of the Cthulhu Mythos is now live; you can find it here.  

Here's the official blurb: 

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Weird of Hali RPG — based on the novels by John Michael Greer — is an alternative to everything you think you know about the world of H. P. Lovecraft.

 

In this reality, the Great Old Ones are not the evil monsters of Lovecraft's original stories. This is propaganda:  lies cultivated by an evil secret society named the Radiance. In this RPG you will play a human or Mythos creature, part of the small percentage who still fight for the Great Old Ones, and the nature they represent. But the task is not an easy one: the Radiance is out to get you at every turn. Following a series of obscure clues you must navigate a world full of mysterious power and danger. 

 

Weird of Hali uses a lightly modified version of the Mythras rule system, an easy-to-use d100 RPG system. Except for paper, pencil and dice, the book contains everything you will need to play. Weird of Hali can be easily combined with Mythras and other Mythras based games. The game is also beautifully illustrated with mind-bending images by artist Sarah Maxwell.

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Those of my readers who've enjoyed my epic fantasy with tentacles, The Weird of Hali, and its associated novels know what to expect: the old gods of Nature and their human and not-so-human followers fighting for the survival of the Earth against a powerful and relentless enemy that wants to turn all those clichés about "Man's conquest of Nature" into a bloodsoaked reality.

The book is ready to publish -- the only thing that isn't quite finished yet is the cover art, which is why I've used one of the interior drawings above. (No, the image on the right isn't the cover art either, though it gets the spirit of the thing right!)  Once this project is fully funded, PDF copies will go out instantly to everyone who's backed it and print copies will be going out as soon as the postal service can get it to you. For those who are feeling really enthusiastic, there's a deluxe leatherbound edition for contributors of £50 or more. 

One more thing. This project began here on my Dreamwidth journal in late 2018 when fans of The Weird of Hali asked whether a roleplaying game set in the same world might be an option, and a great deal of its evolution took place here as readers offered their advice, encouragement, and help to make this thing happen. I'm deeply grateful to everyone who took part in that process, and once we get this funded, I'll have much more to be grateful for -- so thank you in advance. This represents the fruition of a longstanding dream of mine and I'm delighted to see it rising from the sea at last. 

Update #1: we passed the 10% funding level in the first 24 hours, so things are definitely on track. A warm thanks to everyone who's chipped in so far!

Update #2: well past a third of the way there, in less than a third of the time window for the Kickstarter. It's looking very promising at the moment. Thank you, everyone!

Comments

[avalterra]

Backed and promoted on Linkedin!

Anthony Valterra

[ecosophia]

Thank you!

[adara9]

Backed! Btw, I noticed that the US shipping is listed as 10 pounds in the text, but only 3 pounds in the backer drop down (at least for the deluxe version). Wasn't sure how else to point this out to the Creator, so I'm hoping you'll pass it on for them to correct. (No need to post this comment, though I'm fine either way.)

[ecosophia]

Thank you -- and I'll make sure that gets straightened out. You might also want to post a question to the FAQ page which will go straight to the creator.

[frittermywig]

Backed! Your 2019 post "Adrift in an Airship," where you announced the project, was a key moment changing me from a whatever-happened-to-the-ADR person into an Ecosophia fan. Truthfully, I probably won't play the game, but for some reason I enjoy rulesets as a genre.

[ecosophia]

Thank you! I also enjoy reading rulebooks, fwiw, and I put a whole series of fictional vignettes in this one to keep it entertaining.

[fringewood]

Whoo Hoo! Backed with glee. Much success to you and your Kickstarter!

[ecosophia]

Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Backed, and sprung for the leather-bound edition. I'm looking forward to introducing my gaming group (who meets for our first session in a year and a half next Saturday) to the world of evil scientists and friendly fish-folk.

--David BTL

[ecosophia]

Thank you! If the experience of the playtesters is anything to go by, it should be a grand time for all.

Support-snafu

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,
Kickstarter and Searchengine-mail somehow don't talk to each other properly, so I sent support-money through your MM-button, but I forgot the shipping, which I'll add promptly. If that is not within your admin-fu then just feel supported anyway!
Thanks as always for your work!
Emily07

Re: Support-snafu

[ecosophia]

Um, let me check -- you donated to my tip jar? I'll have to see if I can forward that somehow to the publisher. Thank you anyway!

Supporting Dreams

[(Anonymous)]

...and also it feels good to support dreams coming true :)
I also order it because some of the pictures give me the creeps and that would probably be fine themes for meditating...
Fun fact: the most recent support sums up to 8 in Usd and Eur.
Best wishes, Emily07

Re: Supporting Dreams

[(Anonymous)]

...yes the tip jar. If not possible = thats also ok.

[(Anonymous)]

Ia ia Cthulhu fhtagn! 👏

I wish you all a lot of fun with this.

Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat

[jpc_w]

Ia, fellow cultists!

Many Thanks

[jeffinwa]

Ordered the Delux edition just to say thanks and to support your efforts to bring illumination into our lives. Interesting (and exciting) times we find ourselves in indeed.
Jai Cthulhu

Backed!

[casmith]

I hope the Kickstarter succeeds.

Last year, I ran a campaign using GURPS in which I strip mined the "Weird of Hali" series for ideas. It was a hit with my group. The idea from the books that worked out the best was breaking the campaign into discrete segments which occurred years apart from each other (like the books), so the players got to experience their characters age. In the last segment, they were in their late 50s to early 60s when the time came to determine the form in which Cthulhu would manifest itself. The players also liked the earth as a hypersphere idea, moving ulthward and anthward in the later segments of the game.

Looking forward to borrowing more ideas from this book for another campaign.

Re: Backed!

[ecosophia]

Thank you! I could definitely see a GURPS adaptation working very well -- I played TFT back in the day, and the more developed version GURPS uses ought to plug-and-play quite readily. You'll have to tinker with the stats, of course, but a lot of the material can be used straight up so long as you've got a d100 handy.

Re: Backed!

[casmith]

You've played The Fantasy Trip? Mucho respect!

Re: Backed!

[ecosophia]

I played Melee and Wizard when they were still Metagaming Microgames, printed as little pamphlets in plastic bags with cardboard counters for the characters. Remember that I was into RPGs in the 1970s -- I played D&D when it was still staplebound pamphlets and the Monster Manual wasn't in print yet!

[hearthspirit]

And how were the stars for this one, given they weren't the ones you originally chose?

[ecosophia]

Because there was some question of when exactly we could launch this, we simply settled on a waxing Moon and the day and hour of Venus in London, where the publisher is located. That's a good basic election and ought to give the project a nice boost.

[hearthspirit]

I think that's a good bet. I know about three weeks from now we see some return to astrological conditions we had in June.

Back in June, I saw a teenage boy walking down the street carrying a ghettoblaster playing 'Fat Bottom Girls' by Queen. And I thought, things might be about to get really weird - where does a kid these days get a ghettoblaster? Now with Nicki Minaj and all, I think I may have used the wrong emphasis.

support

[ritaer]

My grandson has been waiting. He has been doing RPG since about 11. He is 20 now.

Rita

Re: support

[ecosophia]

He should have the rules for Weird of Hali before the solstice.

[(Anonymous)]

I've ordered the PDF to go in my rapidly growing RPGs folder. :) Did the 'mad scientist experiments' random roll table make it into the final version?

[ecosophia]

It did indeed. There's an entire section on running mad scientists either as NPCs or as player characters.

Yeah!

[(Anonymous)]

Good to hear. Need some twitterati to get this out there.

Re: Yeah!

[ecosophia]

Do you know any? I'm sorry to say that I don't. That being the case, any publicity you can provide will be very welcome!

[(Anonymous)]

Actually you do. James from Hermitix might be able to give it a boost. Might be worth a try.

[ecosophia]

It might indeed. Thanks for this -- since I'm not on Twitter I didn't happen to know that.

[(Anonymous)]

I am not "on" Twitter but I do keep up with some twitter

[(Anonymous)]

Also possibly Miguel from Aeon Byte

[(Anonymous)]

What's being done to promote the Kickstarter? I watch Youtube RPG channels and assumed getting Kickstarter projects played or reviewed on some of them was the main way to do it. Some examples are Stream of Blood, Glass Cannon Network, Good Time Society, and Questing Beast. But if you search 'weird of hali rpg' on Youtube, there's nothing.