Toward Ecosophy

,,,is finally in print and available for sale.  To borrow the one phrase that applies, what a long strange trip it's been, 

Back in the autumn of 2018, several readers of my tentacle novels asked if I'd considered doing a roleplaying game set in the world of The Weird of Hali. Conversations, followed, and it turned out someone was listening: the publisher of Aeon Games, who contacted me and offered a contract. So away we went. I got quite a bit of help from my readers, from brainstorming ideas to playtesting the results, and finally, in late 2019, the manuscript went to the publisher. 

Then the world went crazy. We had a pandemic, and governments around the world reacted to it in weirdly atypical and mostly counterproductive ways, and supply chains buckled and broke, and -- well, you can fill in the blanks as well as I can. Of course that's more or less what's supposed to happen when eldritch sorceries awaken the Great Old Ones and Great Cthulhu rises from drowned R'lyeh, but I didn't think a roleplaying game would do that...

The last step was a Kickstarter, which was launched a little more than a month ago. From the beginning I fielded emails from readers who would have been eager to chip in, but they were broke because their spouse had been vaccinated and hadn't been healthy enough to work since then, or they were about to lose their jobs because of vaccine mandates, or they'd walked away from a lousy job because it sucked and were getting by on less money, or -- well, here again, you can fill in the blanks as well as I can. So the Kickstarter fell short of its goal. 

I'm glad to say that the people at Aeon Games looked at that, and bellowed, "Damn the tentacles, full speed ahead!" So the PDF version of the game is available right now and the print version is being printed as we speak, for mailing in a couple of weeks. You can order a copy here. The publisher's offering a 20% discount; use the discount code WOH20. 

If the world has gone crazy, you might as well embrace the weirdness. Enjoy! 

***Update:*** I've just heard from the publisher. They had a glitch in the system that got in the way of immediate download of the PDF version, and that's been fixed. They've also added a PDF-only option at a reduced price, which you can find here. 

I'd like to ask for some assistance from those of my readers who are into roleplaying games (RPGs) -- specifically the grand old-fashioned variety that involves a group of players sitting around a table as their imaginary alter egos move cautiously down a tunnel, listening intently for the rattle of six-sided dice that warns of a wandering monster...

A while back there was a certain amount of talk on this journal about the possibility of using the world of my fantasy novel series The Weird of Hali as the setting for a RPG. I'm pleased to be able to say that at this point it's not just talk. I got a polite no thank you from Chaosium, the company that owns the Call of Cthulhu game -- no surprises there, but I thought it was reasonable to talk to them first. Apparently the stars are right, though; maybe a week later, I was contacted by a smaller RPG firm that's interested, and so Weird of Hali: Roleplaying the Other Side of the Cthulhu Mythos is now under development. 

The company in question has a house system -- they're one of several firms that's licensed the Mythras fantasy RPG system, which cognoscenti will know was originally going to be the 6th edition of Runequest. Under the terms of the license, I can't change the rules or mechanics of the basic Mythras Imperative system, but I can add additional rules to my heart's content. I don't mind the restriction, as the rules as given are straightforward and intuitive to use -- you can download a set from this page if you're interested -- but the question of what to add is on my mind, and I figured I'd ask my readers for help here. 

If you've used Mythras, Runequest 6th edition, or any of the burgeoning family of d100 roleplaying games -- or for that matter, if you've done other kinds of roleplaying games and have things you especially love and hate about rulebooks for RPGs -- what would you like to see in a Weird of Hali RPG? The game will be set in the modern world, and characters will start out utterly clueless about the Great Old Ones, the elder races, the real history of the world, and especially about a secret and powerful organization nobody is willing to talk about -- an organization that seeks to impose its bloodstained utopian fantasies on the world once and for all, and will stop at nothing to get its way.

As your characters flee for their lives across the witch-haunted Massachusetts landscape, or venture into a vast and sinister house that one of them has just inherited from a mysterious great-uncle, or head into the swamps of tidewater North Carolina looking for a graveyard where legend has it that a stair leads down to unknown things, or jump down from a helicopter near a research station in Greenland where strange things have been happening...what do you want the rules to do for you? What skills should your characters be able to have, what problems in the  rulebooks need to be patched, what really cool things did a GM you know add to that really memorable Runequest game two years ago? Tentacular minds want to know...