@Taskerland

Today, in „How to tell if your favorite hobby product is a Cash Cow.“

Also: „Variant covers: Looking at you, DCC and D&D.“

@Morgunin Gamers are absolute rubes.

Also, the game was first published in 1981 and this ship in 2026. They're five years early!

@Taskerland I've always felt CoC should have expressionism poster style art. The "here is bloke with a book, a hat and gun standing in front of Cthulhu" rather misses the crazy.

Eric Heckel or something. That style would really fly for me in CoC

@Taskerland 50ish Anniversary!

@Printdevil Yes, but that would require a) taste, and b) anyone working at Chaosium to have heard of German Expressionism.

@Taskerland @Printdevil Presumably David Larkins has.

@cumush It'll be doubly funny when they decide to do an eighth edition between now and 2031.

@RogerBW Definitely... but the person who did the art direction on his book clearly hadn't. @Printdevil

@Taskerland Imagine a whole Caligari/Mabuse poster style gazetteer of Arkham. Sumptuous. With crazy linocut faces and maps done with dripping oleaginous black inks.

@Printdevil I just think not over-saturated AI-adjacent slop would be nice.

@Taskerland @Printdevil That is apparently What The Punters Want (because they've been brought up on modern D&D). Of course, giving the punters exactly what they're used to is a recipe for a crash.

@RogerBW D&D art is of a style... but it's a better style than Call of Cthulhu. That selection of single-page Faerun adventures they did had a fab cover. @Printdevil

@Printdevil @Taskerland I feel like some 90s TTRPGS used at least a bit of art along these lines, particularly in some books published by White Wolf. Maybe im just thinking of John Cobb’s art in particular

@Taskerland Probably Chaosium's 50th.

@pcas First edition Vampire books look better than contemporary CoC. Like most RPG books of that period, it's a lot of simple monochrome linework but it looks stark and suits the subject matter. @Printdevil

@BigJackBrass Oh yeah!Chaosium was established in 1975 but still... not great as the book comes out in 2026.

The poster from the Golem with some wag replacing the words (a bit)

I'd love a bonkers version of CoC like this.

@Taskerland @RogerBW

It also can be printed on very good paper stock a lot cheaper than the shiney-toilet paper approach so common in gaming books now.

Which is very friable.

@Taskerland @pcas

@Printdevil I've said it before and I'll say it again, gamers have the money with which to buy art books but not the taste to buy wisely. They're the pop culture equivalent of Trump and his solid-gold toilets. @pcas