I found an interesting literary/Lovecraft RPG. It’s based on writing fictional letters to the other players, as if from a set of Lovecraftian characters in a common scenario. De Profundis (Second Edition)…

“The Diana Jones 2002 Award Nominated game of psychological horror returns in an all new, and expanded, 2nd Edition. […] De Profundis is a correspondence-based story-telling game that can be played from the point of view of participants from a variety of eras. […] Not requiring the usual face-to-face aspect of most traditional RPGs, the game caters for people who find it hard to maintain a regular gaming group due to time commitments, or for those who don’t have any fellow gamers in their neighbourhood. Utilising a mix of letter writing, email and text-based gaming – depending on your chosen era of play – it’s a perfect game for the modern time-strapped gamer.”

I’m guessing it might need one player nominated as “the summariser”. After each round of letter-writing, he would summarise the plot developments so far, and at the same time imaginatively smooth out any glaring plot inconsistencies that one or more of the players might have introduced.

At perhaps 800 to 1,000 words per letter it would also leave a group text, of a kind, which the group could later hire a novelist to work up into a novelisation. Or which they could synopsise and then offer as a free Creative Commons licensed plot for graphic novel artists, audio staging, etc.

Jason Zinoman, in The Economist‘s Intelligent Life magazine, on the growing trend for putting H.P. Lovecraft on the stage.

There’s a new Kickstarter for a short movie adaptation of “Erich Zann”.