Cthentacle: Spankham Asylum Preview!

Only the clean stuff, obviously… here’s some inks of the characters, clicking should show you the bigger version:

Cthentacle Preview: Spankham Asylum

Spankham Asylum for the Deranged sits close to the banks of the Friskatonic river, a sprawling, cancerous growth upon the side of Spankham City. The townspeople glower when they talk about that place, disapproving of their ‘modern methods’ and the ‘immoral and unnatural’ goings on beneath the eaves of that benighted institution. As one of the few places in the civilised world that still takes ‘Female Hysteria’ seriously they see a great deal of business and their researches into more… esoteric cures for that condition have lead to some strange places indeed…

Shifting Cthentacle

I need some money in fairly quick order to help fund expansion and pay to get some more product out quickly as well as to store up some funds for some more appearances and to up-tempo my convention schedule.

The best way for me to do that seems to be to offload some of my stock of professionally printed Cthentacle and its first supplement, The Dunbitch Horror.

For a limited time I’m willing to offload both together for a total of £12.50 (including shipping). If you want multiple copies it’ll be £10 for each set, plus £2.50 on top for shipping, no matter how many copies.

Please pass this info along and let people know.

Ordering can only be done direct, to me for this offer. If you’re interested contact me at GRIM at POSTMORT dot DEMON dot CO dot UK or on Twitter via @Grimachu

Tsunami Relief

I am happy to report that our charitable efforts raised $830 for the Earthquake/Tsunami relief fund for Japan. Big thanks to everyone who donated work or supported the effort, we made a huge amount of money considering the relatively short time it was available and the limited avenues it was available in.

Big love to everyone.

You can continue to donate directly HERE

Cthentacle: At the Mountings of Madness review

From Shane O’Connor, you can buy Cthentacle etc HERE

Cthentacle, I’ve learned from experience, is one of those games where everybody looks at you funny when you suggest a game of it. After all, most people would think it odd that you’d want to play (and want them to play) a card game based around tentacle-rape. This is only compounded if you mention that you’ve also got the expansion sets for the game. But you know what? If you’re going to pull out something this nasty and perverted, you might as well go all the way (innuendos intended). It’s with that thought that we turn to the second Cthentacle expansion: At the Mountings of Madness.

Like the previous expansion (The Dunbitch Horror), At the Mountings of Madness introduces two new characters and twenty new cards, along with the generic card-backs. There’s even a scenario behind this expansion to the game, though it’s little more than “an explorer and her sailor companion set out for the Antarctic to see what they can find.” Of course, what they find are some ancient and horny Mythos monsters.

The cards have a fairly even distribution of number cards (which range from 1 to 5) along with some new ! and SP cards. However, I’m still frowning over the uneven distribution of cards. It was perhaps inevitable, given that there are seven card types (note that I’m not counting character cards) and twenty cards in the set. Still, the staggered number of card types means that playing some number cards will be more difficult since you must play them sequentially and there’s less of some numbers than others.

One interesting tidbit to the game is a variation on normal Cthentacle play called Investigation. In this version, there are six “locations” (which the game says you should just lay out some sort of markers to represent) and your goal is to have your character advance through them to the final destination, which is the lost city of O RLYEH. The method of advancement requires you to give up a card, but otherwise this plays much like normal Cthentacle, with numbered cards played on your character until your “spooged,” though this doesn’t disqualify you but rather sends you back to the starting location.

I was a bit disappointed to see that this expansion pack didn’t take into account the cards from the previous expansion that required some explanation. Some of the cards in The Dunbitch Horror required explanation for ambiguous powers like “works on humanoid-looking cards.” That expansion listed explicitly what cards in it and the base game phrases like that referred to – a further listing should have been provided for this set so that things stayed clear.

Of course, for all these minor flaws, this expansion pack stays eminently true to the dark eros of Cthentacle. Artist Darkzel continues to draw full-color artwork for all of the cards, showing the lovely ladies (and oftentimes other things) in situations ranging from bending over provocatively to being bound and violated by tentacled horrors. It’s great stuff, in other words, and almost distracts from the awful card names; if you’re a Lovecraft fan, you’ll roll your eyes at titles like “Pnacocktic Manuscripts” and other bad jokes. It all just goes to show that Cthentacle has still got it, so whip our your deck and get to the Mountings of Madness!

Cthentacle: At the Mountings of Madness UNLEASHED!

THIS IS AN EXPANSION FOR CALL OF CTHENTACLE

New characters and new cards for Cthentacle, expanding the game into the exploration of the frozen antarctic and the strange, horny, terrors that dwell there.

• Explore with Inga Hostein and doughty sailor Bligh.
• Thrill to the things of the elder things.
• Gasp in horror at the Brain in a Jar and the power of SCIENCE!

Includes a new way to play, The Investigation!

You can buy At the Mountings of Madness HERE

You can get the base game Call of Cthentacle HERE
You can get the first expansion The Dunbitch Horror HERE
Or the Squamous Value Pack (All together) HERE

Cthentacle’s originating game Hentacle is also available in bargain-collection form HERE

There is a Hentacle art book HERE and a Cthentacle art preview book HERE

We also have limited hardcopy of Call of Cthentacle, Dunbitch, Hentacle and Sloppy Seconds available for purchase, please contact via our website for information on ordering these.

www.postmort.demon.co.uk

@grimachu on twitter.

Coming Soon: At the Mountings of Madness!

(Clickity to embiggen)

Make a Mo Card Game

As participation in ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed’ day (tomorrow, May 20th), in celebration of free speech in defiance of religious censorship I’ve done what I do and have dashed off a very slapdash and amateurish – and horribly blasphemous – card game.

You can download it HERE, ready for tomorrow.
Alternative download HERE.

[Postmortem Studios] November Round Up

NEWS

It’s been an extremely busy month here at Postmortem Studios, two conventions in one month will take it out of the best of us and Indiecon and Dragonmeet were no exceptions. Both events were bedevilled by problems beyond anyone’s control. Indiecon was located next to some of the hardest hit areas in the heaviest rain and worst flooding seen in many years in the UK but somehow survived – though we all got very wet and the third day of the con was held in Oz. Dragonmeet was similarly assaulted by weather issues as well as the vagueries of trainline maintenance and stoppages on the underground. Luckily I sold a boatload of stuff and didn’t have to carry so much all the way home. All things considered a great success and – yet again – money and time willing I do hope to make more conventions in the coming years.

Indiecon saw successful playtesting of the FATE powered Agents of SWING as well as some new adventures for Blood! and ’45 which should be appearing on RPGNOW in PDF form before too long.

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NEW PRODUCTS

Because I’ve been doing so much freelancing for other companies there hasn’t been a lot of activity with new products this month. However we do have a good selection of new Clipart Critters by the inestimable Brad McDevitt, including some new bundles so that you can pick up some very decent art on the cheap as props for your game table or for you to use in your own gaming publications. Don’t forget to check out the work of our other artists as well.

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STAY IN TOUCH

Over on our journal/website there’s an ongoing poll game, like a choose your own adventure game with multiple participants, this one based around a zombie apocalypse using the Blood! system and with you playing a British teenager caught up in the events as they unfold. Participate there and also keep an eye on news, events, sales information, reviews, publishing partnerships and so on.

You can also find me on…

Twitter
Facebook
Roleplaymedia
RPGBomb
Myspace

Or you can drop me some feedback in the comments on the website, or by good old fashioned e-mail to grim@postmort.demon.co.uk

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SECRET SALE

There will be a secret sale one day this month for 24 hours… keep your eyes peeled on the website and on Twitter for more information!

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DIRECT MAIL ORDER

I have leftover product from the convention sales and I do, really, need to clear the decks ready for the new year so these are being offered for mail order direct from me. Contact me via e-mail, listing the products that you’re interested in and we’ll arrange payment (preferably Paypal) and delivery. Available products include:

Hentacle £8.00 / $12.00
Hentacle: Sloppy Seconds £3.00 /$4.50
Hentacle: Three’s an Orgy £3.00 /$4.50
All three together – £12.00 / $18.00

These are the last hardcopies of Hentacle that are likely to be sold, at least in this form. Supplies of Three’s an Orgy are extremely limited. Please keep in mind that Hentacle and its supplements are STRICTLY for those over 18.

Cthentacle £15.00 / $23.00
Cthentacle: The Dunbitch Horror £5.00 / $7.50
Both together £18.00 / $27.00

Please keep in mind that Cthentacle and its supplements are STRICTLY for those over 18.

100 Dark Places, 100 Fantasy Adventure Seeds, 100 Planets, 100 Kingdoms, 100 Horror Adventure Seeds. ’45: Psychobilly Retropocalypse, Bloodsucker: The Angst – £12.00 / $18.00 each.
Buy three or more together and they’re £10.00 / $15.00 each.

Bloodsucker: The Juice, @ctiv8 – £8.00 /$12.00 each.
Buy Bloodsucker: The Angst and Bloodsucker: The Juice together for £18.00 /$25.00

Blood! – £15.00 / $23.00

I also have limited numbers of copies of Origins of the Specious, the comedy book I did for Mongoose Publishing and these are available for £15.00 / $23.00 as well.

Postage is £2.00 to the UK and $5.00 international.

Have a lovely holiday season and be good enough to spread some of that festive cheer (and money!) in my direction,

Love

Grim
Postmortem Studios

The Trials & Tribulations of Printing Pornographic Card Games

First to give some reference to the pricing poll yesterday, the question was ‘how much would you pay for a professionally printed version of Cthentacle’. To which the answer seems to be that you’d pay around £10-12 or $14-18 in monopoly money.

For your money that would get you:

• 64 plastic-coated cards
• A 4-page rules booklet.
• A clear plastic presentation case.

The quote I got covered all that, plus shipping to me at a per unit price of around $14. Now, ideally I’d want to mark that up by about 50% to cover the time, effort, cover costs in case I didn’t sell them all etc, so that, ideally, should be around $21, or £14. Doesn’t look like that’ll do if I want to sell any, so I need to look at ways of cutting costs.

I could:

• Ditch the booklet, knocking down the per-unit cost by $2, leaving the rules on rules cards with a weblink to a downloadable booklet of extra rules.
• Ditch the plastic box and go with a plain white tuck box, but I can’t get art on it unless I order 500 units – fat chance. This would save around 20 cents per unit.
• Not bother with the plastic coating – M:TG never bothered, I could up the cardstock GSM to compensate a little, but I don’t know how much this would save.

Opinions sought!

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Getting any card game printed POD is a major league effort, if it’s a pornographic card game you’re going to find things even more difficult. Getting Hentacle and now Cthentacle printed has been a big, long, pain in the arse, fraught with issues.

The first time I got any printed I went to my local printer in Andover. This was, needless to say, traumatic. People know me on sight around Andover and surrounds, even if they don’t know me personally and the print shop was right near the centre of town and staffed entirely by women. Nevertheless I got the job done by them, though their card quality wasn’t that great, very bendy indeed and very pricey. The worst part was being informed that the cards had been guillotined by a lovely little old lady who was almost due for retirement, considering what the cards depict that was severely blush inducing, as was the moment when the rather lovely young lady in the shop started opening the boxes when I went to pick them up, offering to check that they were OK.

Heart stopping.

The local printer wasn’t any good for long term printing, the quality wasn’t that high and the costs were way too high so I was forced to look elsewhere.

Oh boy, is the printing world full of scam artists. There’s a lot of companies in India or China that are professional and handle a lot of card printing for ‘The Big Boys’ but if you’re not printing at least 1,000+ units you can forget it and they often have extremely exacting printing specifications and if you don’t/can’t meet them, you’re boned.

The smaller scale businesses are either run as close knit family firms ‘Print porn? Are you out of your sick little mind?’ who kindly send you Christian tracts by e-mail after you explain what you want printed or are run by people who are a ‘little bit dodgy’ in the same way that a rat is a little bit covered in fur*, naming no names that rhyme with ‘Ben Shit-Pan’. No fewer than three POD companies I approached and were willing to take on the job went bust practically overnight and it got to the point where I wondered if I had the kiss of death.

Fortunately a friend came to the rescue and it wasn’t a printing source I’d ever really considered before, due to the assumed cost and quality issues. I mean, who would think of using FedexKinkos to get their porno card game printed? The quality was as good as I could hope for – outside full on professional printing – and with the dollar as shafted as it was at the time it was cheap as chips. Unfortunately that shop recently ‘upgraded’ its printers and now can’t do accurate duplex or cutting any more. So I’m tossed back out on the street.

There’s a distinct feeling of deja vu all over again, going back to the local printer they’ve now been taken over and have a company policy of ‘not doing adult material’ with an implied comment of ‘you worthless scum, never darken my doorstep again’ and the other local printers haven’t even deigned to send me a reply. A chinese printer sent me something incomprehensible but which did say they only really took runs of 500 minimum, so that was out.

In between all that I’ve had offers from three different companies down the years to take Hentacle at least professional, one had it optioned for a year and did nothing, another offered money then dried up and disappeared and the last is still in negotiation but has to be very careful because of their licensed properties, leaving all that in limbo.

The company I’m currently talking to is expensive (see above) but has great – and communicative – customer service. Unlike others who – in mid negotiations before have suddenly stopped communicating. Others have not replied, given abuse or sounded eager and then not gotten back to me again. Here’s hoping I’ve finally found somewhere I can get a deal together and get a new game out there!

Next time I’ll save myself some bother and do a game about good, wholesome, honest violence!

*I’m re-reading Neverwhere, you’ll forgive the literary indulgence.