(Sorry this last post took so long; holiday preparations and a lost draft kept me otherwise occupied.)

Downloads and Handouts

Our final discussion of Miskatonic Country materials will focus on those items that are not scenarios per se but I think are of use – sometimes great use – to Keepers running scenarios set in the region.

• Dateline Lovecraft – We are referring here not the the scenarios from this series but rather the mind-blowingly-detailed 12 page long prop version of the Arkham Advertiser (from October of 1928) designed for use with those scenarios. The PDF version of the newspaper is available from DriveThru for just $9.99; the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society was selling print copies for $35.00 – the fact that a link remains for the items suggests they may some day be in stock again. The prop newspaper also comes with a 58 resource book to help you find particular articles and use included articles as hooks for your own scenarios as well as a campaign frame and a sample scenario (which I’ll have to update part 4 to include. Ooops!) Blow your players minds when you hand them this at the table… optimally when they have some time to read it and bask in the wonder of it.
• The Herber Arkham-o-pedia: A companion piece, literally, to the creation of Dateline Lovecraft. This is a 43 page index to every person, business, address, and telephone number which appeared in any of the original “Lovecraft Country” releases (including Arkham Unveiled and several scenarios featuring Arkham from that era). It is really an invaluable resource for Keepers running an Arkham game or in fully integrating your own inventions into Doc Herber’s magnum opus. Did I mention it was free?

• HPLHS prop sets: Speaking of props, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical society created prop sets for some of Miskatonic River Press’ scenarios collections including one of their two Miskatonic Country releases – More Adventures in Arkham County. For $5 you get 34 professional quality prop documents that should leave your players agog. (We should also note they have another set of documents with Miskatonic Country materials included that are not scenario-specific.) There is more Miskatonic Country related material on their site (such as a song-book of Innsmouth sea-chanties); Keeper’s with deep pockets can find a lot of tempting purchases.
• Chaosium’s “Miskatonic Collection” prop sets: There are six of these sets of standard documents from various institutions around Arkham, ranging from free to $3.95 – Arkham Sanitarium, City Hall (and others), Arkham Police Station, assorted medical forms, Miskatonic University, and telegrams. These were all created by Dean Engelhardt from Cthulhu Reborn (the fellow behind Dateline Lovecraft) so the quality of these is very high.
• On the Miskatonic Repository there are three Keeper’s aids from Adrian Kennelly – 100 Rumours to Hear in Miskatonic Country, 100 Notes and Letters to Find in Miskatonic Country, and a tourist brochure for Arkham (in the style of the one that came in the Kingsport book).
• Stygian Fox has produced a map pack for $6.99 with a variety of maps for Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, Foxfield, and Kingsport.
• Sentinel Press offers a few free downloads outside of our Arkham Gazette issues: a rather out-of-date list of “Lovecraft Country” scenarios, Rhoda Prentiss (a character from a Derleth story converted into an NPC or investigator for CoC 6 Ed.), and an article about Namacknowatt Island’s Sand Hill burying ground (a preview from our years-in-development Graveyards of Miskatonic Country guide). Also try our Essex County coroner’s report on that poor fellow Walter Gilman! Our Patreon account has additional items, including posts about Bolton, a discussion of the graveyard in Blackwater Creek, Sefton and its asylum, and more. Backing that costs $1 a month at base.

In addition to these items, I wanted to conclude with a few publications that are not explicitly for use in Miskatonic Country but are resources I rely upon as a Keeper more generally

• Lovecraft’s fiction – Need inspiration? Descriptive flair? Added details for your own inventions? Start with the well-spring of Mythos horror (all free online)
• The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia by Dan Harms (2008) – The perfect resource for every Keeper. Entries not only define their topics and explain how it is connected to other elements of the Mythos, but they trace the development of Mythos subjects and how authors have differed. Flip through a copy and feel the inspiration.
• Ex Libris Miskatonici – The late Joan Stanley’s classic faux-guide to the Restricted collection at Miskatonic. Great for adding some depth to several of the potent Mythos tomes held there, so you can build a worthy sense of dread about these tomes and their contents. Footnotes also offer a fun supplemental reading list. Back in print after almost two-decades.
• Approaching 20 years old, Yog-Sothoth.com is THE place for Lovecraftian explorations. Log-in and join today and tap into decades of Keeper experience, scholarship, excellence, and Parma Kippers.