The Yellow King Roleplaying Game may be my most anticipated game of all time.
I grew up on Dungeons & Dragons, and I have collected roleplaying game books for years. Many of them I haven’t even played, I just absolutely love reading about different world, game mechanics and adventure ideas. As a writer, roleplaying games have been a huge influence on me (just read my Parted Veil series), and writing for a roleplaying game is a bucket list item for me. In short–I love roleplaying games.
I also love horror, and Robert Chambers’ The King in Yellow (get it free here) is one of my all-time favorite works. I love it so much that the first horror novel I ever wrote involved the King in Yellow, and he remains a central character in my ongoing series.
So when I saw that veteran game designer Robin Laws was creating a roleplaying game based on the King in Yellow, and he was Kickstarting it, I threw my wallet at the computer screen. I mean, just look at this:
Can you even? Because I can’t. And apparently a lot of others are freaking out as well, because the Kickstarter campaign has destroyed it’s initial goal of $30K, and is almost at $140K as I write this, which means some amazing stretch goals have been unlocked. One of them is that Robin will be adding some Yellow King RPG content to the Open License for the GUMSHOE rules system, meaning that people will be able to create content that is compatible with the game. So perhaps my bucket list will get a check mark in the no-to-distant future.
So, go check out this amazing project over on Kickstarter. And go check out the work it was inspired from. Oh, and if you dig the King in Yellow, you might also like this book I wrote:
