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Being a love letter to the cover of Fatal Experiments, and a brief cross-section of my gaming history.
Even when you limit the sample to the larger sizes--trade paperbacks, hardcovers, RPG supplements, and magazines, for example--I have seen thousands of book covers. Magazines (especially the genre stuff I read, not so much the tattoo magazines or Threads) and RPG sourcebooks seem to turn out the ones that actually catch my eye--the single attention-grabbing image in a realistic style, rather than a stylized design with a third of the cover given over to the title and author's name. I mean, I *like* The Shining, but I would not consider for even a second putting up a poster of the cover art. I can think of three covers for that book off the top of my head, and I would never put any of them up in my apartment. Even leaving aside the "no geek chic in common living areas" thing.
A/y. Some of the covers strike me as very well done, some less so, and a couple of them...
A couple of them just kind of bypass my considerations of "good" or "not good" and head right in to hammer on some back-button of my brain. "Good" is not an issue. "Gets into my brain and is never quite forgotten" becomes the issue.
And so I come to the cover of Fatal Experiments, which is actually the subject and instigation of this ramble. It's a dark blue mottled background, with a pair of hands in the foreground. One hand is gloved in something thick and close-fitting, a yellowish tanned-flesh colour. It's pulling the same kind of glove over the second hand, and you can see runnelled and warty green skin on the forearm below the glove. One of the fingers--clearly inhuman, clearly clawed--is tearing through the glove, and on its bared claw there is such a gleam...
I first picked up Call of Cthulhu when I was (*does math*) fourteen. 5th Edition. Softcover, with this monstrous glaring red slice of an eye utterly dwarfing the pitiful mortals cowering at the threshold that led to beyond space and time. Very cool stuff. IIRC, the little black-and-white line-drawing picture of Wilbur Whateley creeped me out immensely, Uncanny Valley stuff.
A/y. When I ended up back in Canada, I went looking for more CoC books. Looking ended up being pretty much all I did--given that the concept of *running* a game had not actually touched my young and innocent brain, I was basically looking at them as guidebooks to a fictional location, and it was hard to justify buying an RPG sourcebook instead of an actual fictional book which cost half to a third as much and was honestly likely to be better in the rereadability department--but I looked *really* hard. I laid hands upon a catalog or something, and reread the French gaming magazine I'd picked up that mentioned CoC[1], and dug up some Mythos fiction while I was at it.
I did find people who were willing to play RPGs a year or so later, but aside from (some quite brief) forays into Shadowrun and Amber, it was Vampire: the Masquerade. And Werewolf: the Apocalypse. And Vampire. And Vampire. And a little Mage. And Vampire.[2] All second edition, if I recall correctly. I sometimes wonder that I turned out as well as I did, though I still cringe when I remember some of what I came up with.
By this time it was getting to be in the mid/late 90s, and it was getting rather harder to lay hands upon gaming sourcebooks from Chaosium. And while you could still find a copy of Blood Brothers 2 in Ottawa up until a few years ago, Fatal Experiments was a bit harder to lay hands upon. And it drifted to the back of my mind as something I would have liked but was probably never going to lay hands upon, kind of like a pony except it would have fit on the bookshelf and ponies don't tear up flayed human skin.
Fastforward more years than I care to think about, during which the concept of gaming as "something you do with people" instead of "something you might kind of think about doing with people, while you are reading the book and playing what-if in your brain" took root.
And I was given a gift, and told "buy something you want for Christmas". And I was browsing Mythos stuff, and following links. And I found a copy of Fatal Experiments for sale in decent condition.
It came in the mail today.
It's beautiful.
---
[1] It also had a full-page ad for Maléfices: le jeu de rôle qui scent le soufre, which featured several thumbnails of covers for that gameline. One of those stuck in my head as well, but I shall not ramble on about it now.
[2] There was also Wraith: the Oblivion. Dearest Wraith, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I shall count them in bloody solitude, as you never received the love I thought you deserved, and there were people out there who misunderstood you to the point of spouting off about how you were all about sitting around and doing nothing after being dead. Peasants.
Even when you limit the sample to the larger sizes--trade paperbacks, hardcovers, RPG supplements, and magazines, for example--I have seen thousands of book covers. Magazines (especially the genre stuff I read, not so much the tattoo magazines or Threads) and RPG sourcebooks seem to turn out the ones that actually catch my eye--the single attention-grabbing image in a realistic style, rather than a stylized design with a third of the cover given over to the title and author's name. I mean, I *like* The Shining, but I would not consider for even a second putting up a poster of the cover art. I can think of three covers for that book off the top of my head, and I would never put any of them up in my apartment. Even leaving aside the "no geek chic in common living areas" thing.
A/y. Some of the covers strike me as very well done, some less so, and a couple of them...
A couple of them just kind of bypass my considerations of "good" or "not good" and head right in to hammer on some back-button of my brain. "Good" is not an issue. "Gets into my brain and is never quite forgotten" becomes the issue.
And so I come to the cover of Fatal Experiments, which is actually the subject and instigation of this ramble. It's a dark blue mottled background, with a pair of hands in the foreground. One hand is gloved in something thick and close-fitting, a yellowish tanned-flesh colour. It's pulling the same kind of glove over the second hand, and you can see runnelled and warty green skin on the forearm below the glove. One of the fingers--clearly inhuman, clearly clawed--is tearing through the glove, and on its bared claw there is such a gleam...
I first picked up Call of Cthulhu when I was (*does math*) fourteen. 5th Edition. Softcover, with this monstrous glaring red slice of an eye utterly dwarfing the pitiful mortals cowering at the threshold that led to beyond space and time. Very cool stuff. IIRC, the little black-and-white line-drawing picture of Wilbur Whateley creeped me out immensely, Uncanny Valley stuff.
A/y. When I ended up back in Canada, I went looking for more CoC books. Looking ended up being pretty much all I did--given that the concept of *running* a game had not actually touched my young and innocent brain, I was basically looking at them as guidebooks to a fictional location, and it was hard to justify buying an RPG sourcebook instead of an actual fictional book which cost half to a third as much and was honestly likely to be better in the rereadability department--but I looked *really* hard. I laid hands upon a catalog or something, and reread the French gaming magazine I'd picked up that mentioned CoC[1], and dug up some Mythos fiction while I was at it.
I did find people who were willing to play RPGs a year or so later, but aside from (some quite brief) forays into Shadowrun and Amber, it was Vampire: the Masquerade. And Werewolf: the Apocalypse. And Vampire. And Vampire. And a little Mage. And Vampire.[2] All second edition, if I recall correctly. I sometimes wonder that I turned out as well as I did, though I still cringe when I remember some of what I came up with.
By this time it was getting to be in the mid/late 90s, and it was getting rather harder to lay hands upon gaming sourcebooks from Chaosium. And while you could still find a copy of Blood Brothers 2 in Ottawa up until a few years ago, Fatal Experiments was a bit harder to lay hands upon. And it drifted to the back of my mind as something I would have liked but was probably never going to lay hands upon, kind of like a pony except it would have fit on the bookshelf and ponies don't tear up flayed human skin.
Fastforward more years than I care to think about, during which the concept of gaming as "something you do with people" instead of "something you might kind of think about doing with people, while you are reading the book and playing what-if in your brain" took root.
And I was given a gift, and told "buy something you want for Christmas". And I was browsing Mythos stuff, and following links. And I found a copy of Fatal Experiments for sale in decent condition.
It came in the mail today.
It's beautiful.
---
[1] It also had a full-page ad for Maléfices: le jeu de rôle qui scent le soufre, which featured several thumbnails of covers for that gameline. One of those stuck in my head as well, but I shall not ramble on about it now.
[2] There was also Wraith: the Oblivion. Dearest Wraith, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I shall count them in bloody solitude, as you never received the love I thought you deserved, and there were people out there who misunderstood you to the point of spouting off about how you were all about sitting around and doing nothing after being dead. Peasants.