Archives for July 2017

The Art of Lovecraft Letter

“E pericoloso sporgersi”

Last year, my colleague Jade Yoo from Board M (who publishes Love Letter in South Korea) brought back a copy of Lovecraft Letter from Japan and showed it to me. A new variation on the game, still by Seiji Kanai, with more cards, a strong theme well displayed in the card effects and a new Sane/Insane mechanic adding push your luck elements to the game and making choices a little more risky for players.

Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) has the International rights to Love Letter and, after an initial contact, and due to common passions and interests, I ended up accepting to illustrate and graphic design Lovecraft Letter for its English edition, that I would qualify as “Deluxe”.

I have to say that creating artwork for Lovecraft Letter was a very interesting challenge.

First of all, it is quite the opportunity and honor to be able to work on Seiji Kani’s Love Letter, a micro game which due to its accessibility, originality and re-playability has reached a very large audience of gamers, be they family, expert or casual and has already had various licenses attached to it.

As a huge fan of the original fantastic fiction literary genre (my pillow book is The House on the Borderland from William Hope Hodgson– a novel that Lovecraft himself called a masterpiece!), it was sort of a “at long last” sigh of relief to me to be able to be the sole artist on a game that would involve the creatures and the odd world borne of H.P.L’s imagination. I had worked 10 years ago as an artist for Fantasy Flight Games on their “Call of Cthulhu” CCG but unfortunately not enough to let my imagination loose.

When you undertake a task of such magnitude, you have to slow the process down, find the right tone, hit the mark before you can grab your pencils and brushes; something that isn’t easy to do when you consider that you have to merge two very important pieces in Lovecraft and Love Letter. For some time now, akin to when Lord of the Rings released on the big screen, the fantastic genre (and especially horror) and everything that revolves around Cthulhu has become more and more mainstream across the board (in cinema, games, literature…) which invites further caution to make sure you stay true to the source material.

I have always approached my work in a very direct fashion. For this, I thought to myself that Love Letter is now a reference in gaming, a classic. Cthulhu and his cast of friends are a classic in the “monsters, horrors and fantastic creatures” genre. As for myself, my training is classic as well. By that I mean that the traditional technique that I use (pencils, brushes on paper, by hand) gives my artwork a very unique non-dated feel that tries to give life to the illustration itself over time.

So, without trying to reinvent the wheel, we elected to stick as close as possible to the source material. Alongside Nicolas Bongiu (who lead the project for AEG), we have researched descriptions and texts in the Cthulhu mythos to showcase in the most accessible manner his very particular universe, and therefore present it to the Love Letter audience of gamers and mythos aficionados alike. Of course, we didn’t shy away from giving our own take on the source material when we felt it was needed, which is often the case when you’re tying a theme to a game.

So, without trying to reinvent the wheel, we elected to stick as close as possible to the source material. Alongside Nicolas Bongiu (who lead the project for AEG), we have researched descriptions and texts in the Cthulhu mythos to showcase in the most accessible manner his very particular universe, and therefore present it to the Love Letter audience of gamers and mythos aficionados alike. Of course, we didn’t shy away from giving our own take on the source material when we felt it was needed, which is often the case when you’re tying a theme to a game.

Those artistic ideas taking form, AEG decided to bring the game to the size of previously released Love Letter Premium: large box with magnetic closure, tarot-sized cards, custom envelope-looking sleeves and double-sided poker chips for the victory points. This contributed in my opinion to a classy and supercharged edition, of which I’m personally elated.

Those artistic ideas taking form, AEG decided to bring the game to the size of previously released Love Letter Premium: large box with magnetic closure, tarot-sized cards, custom envelope-looking sleeves and double-sided poker chips for the victory points. This contributed in my opinion to a classy and supercharged edition, of which I’m personally elated.

Lovecraft Letter is my first collaboration with AEG and the result and process by which the game was made fully satisfied me (something tells me that you can expect more collaborations in the future!). it is not every day that you can delve into themes and formats that you love, with – as if it wasn’t enough – a good deal of control over the end result.

I hope that you enjoyed this sneak peek inside the process of making Lovecraft Letter … one that comes with a word of caution from Lovecraft himself:

“There are horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range.” – H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep

Vincent Dutrait

http://www.vincentdutrait.com
https://www.facebook.com/Vincent.Dutrait
Lovecraft Letter a mind-shattering journey into the world of HP Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos warped into the shape of a Love Letter experience will be on sale 19 July 2017!

The core of the Cthulhu Mythos is of course the stories about incomprehensible beings, and the concept of sanity. I felt that if I were to make a game for this world, it was absolutely necessary for me to include both the meeting with these creatures that went beyond human understanding, and the people being affected by them.

Lovecraft Letter AEG5123, on sale July 19th!

After considering the Mythos through that lens, it became apparent that there was a wonderful cast of actors waiting to be used.

On one hand we have the Great Old Ones, and all the items and servitors that surround them; Cthulhu itself, Nyarlathotep, the Mi-go, the Hounds of Tindalos, the dreaded Book of the Dead (Necronomicon), the Golden Mead that allows one to see the unseen etc.

On the other hand we have the heroes of the Role Playing Game, the Investigators and the allies they encounter: Professor Armitage from Miskatonic University, the Cats from Ulthar in the Dreamlands, Randolph Carter and his family heirloom etc…

First, I had to figure out which characters should be incorporated into the game. Of course, there was the option of simply replacing the eight cards in Love Letter with eight characters from the Cthulhu Mythos, but I felt I couldn’t limit myself to just eight of them. And, with a Cthulhu theme, I felt the game couldn’t do without having the players make some kind of “sanity check” – the most famous words from the roleplaying game, uttered from table to table since the release of the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying game.

So, I divided up the characters into those who are on the human side, like the investigators or Professor Armitage, and those who are against the human side, like Cthulhu, the Deep Ones, and other items related to them.

The first set kept the same effects as the base game, and I just chose characters that would fit. The Elder Sign that would keep dangerous beings at bay was perfect for the Handmaiden effect for instance, and a card where you guessed another player’s card and could make them lose, felt to me very much like what an investigator could do.

The second set, I made into special cards that spread insanity. To use them meant to get in contact with forbidden knowledge, and get closer to madness. And I decided that they would have large advantages, and disadvantages above the regular cards (a high risk high reward type of effects) since I figured that a lot of players would walk this road to destruction.

The regular effect of the insanity cards would keep the same effect as their normal counterparts. However, if a player had at least one of them among their discard, it would mean that they had encountered these horrors, and therefore would slowly risk becoming insane, and would need to make a sanity check every turn to not get knocked out of the game.

On the other hand, the insanity cards would also have a power that fit the demerit – players who are close to madness would also be able to wield incredible power. The Hound of Tindalos can attack, Mi-go collect brains, and so on. These cards could not only make other people lose, but also let you win immediately! How could anyone resist this sweet temptation?

And this is how Lovecraft Letter  was born. The Love Letter  system, where anyone could be knocked out of the game at any moment, fits very well to the world of the Cthulhu Mythos, where danger is always looming.

My hope is that everyone will enjoy this new version of the game, where you can as easily capture the truth, as fuel your run to victory thanks to your command of the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Oh, I can hear the doorbell ringing. That’s a little bit odd? Who may be coming to visit me at such a late hour? I guess I need to go check for myself …

Seiji Kanai