In the Mail: The Arte Mephitic.

The Arte Mephitic started out for me as being an indulgence – a tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, told in verse form and then bound in a book, complete with woodcuts – but it could actually be helpful in a gaming context.  Hand the book over and let the players try to puzzle out directly what’s the wheat, and what’s the chaff.  Not that that would be entirely fair, given that your players are probably not as versed in occultism and research as their characters are, but it’s still cool to have props.

Say what you like about our modern era, but it makes more and more things less and less expensive. Used to be, casually commissioning book runs like this weren’t actually casually commissioned. And by ‘used to be’ I mean ‘prior to about twenty years ago. Or maybe even ten.’ And now we have folks putting it all together like it was a complicated, but not insanely so, well-known dance routine.  The future has its points.