Sandy Petersen (2015)

Where do you start when you design new factions for play? Is it a top down approach or bottom up approach?

Which movies capture Lovecraft the best?

I have always thought that The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness by John Carpenter were the best Mythos themed movies, albeit that of course neither is technically set in the Mythos.

Would you ever consider returning to make more PC games? If so, what would you do for a spiritual successor to Quake?

Spirit from https://www.quaddicted.com/ here, the bestestest Quake website in the world.

Next year is Quake's 20th birthday, will you let me interview about it? Would really love to throw some in-depth questions at you. :)

Would your opinion change if the team was made of 50 girls?

Sandy, BIG FAN here of Call of Cthulhu. My friends and I played it from the very first edition. We always thought it was such a great gaming system, with all actions based on percentages, instead of the oft-used D20 system.

1. How did you feel when CoC went to a D20 system for a while there?

2. Why do you think there's never been a good translation into film from any of the Mythos stories? Do we think Guillermo del Toro can save us if he ever get's his At the Mountains of Madness project off the ground?

Early first-person shooters from Doom on often had a horrific, Lovecraftian atmosphere; even the monsters in the more action-comedic Duke Nukem had a discernible Lovecraftian quality. But at some point, this stopped being associated with the FPS genre. Which modern video games are most successful at recapturing that tone?

Unless you're Sid Meier apparently.

Fuck you Carl Sanford! You're always mugging me and stealing my items!...or that's what me and my friends always say whenever we play Arkham Horror. What made you choose yourself as the biggest dick in the game?

Thank you for your amazing work. I'm a huge fan of AoE and Civ series.
My question is: has there ever been a talk in the developer team of Age of Empires about releasing AoE 4 even some time in a distant future?

Has there ever been a time when the essence of a faction idea just didn't turn out like you hope? Or is there always something that you can do to make any idea work?

Do you plan on adding more expansions to Cthulhu Wars? How big is your imaged version of the game (with all expansions)?

Sandy, Bruces question which has burned him all week since your resume was dug up is this...
How have you coasted under the radar on so many projects, for so many decades?
He was aware of barely a fraction of the work you were involved in.

Hey Sandy!

What motivates the giant stone guardians of the Plateau of Statues in the Wastes of Glorantha? Descriptions suggest they're capricious. And can you tell us gloranthophiles about their origin?

Arkham Horror made me love cooperative games, so thank you for that. Are there any cooperative Cthulhu games in Petersen Games' future?

Hi Sandy! Loved your levels in Doom and enjoyed reading through Masters of Doom. What was your favourite memory of working at id?

Hi Sandy! Long time fan!

Two quick questions, although I reserve the right to ask more later.

1). Do you have any plans to update your famous Field Guides to Cthulhu Monsters?

2). Can we see a Cthulhu Wars playtest video involving all eight factions, Azathoth, all the independent Great Old Ones, the High Priests, the Dreamlands creatures - all the bells and whistles at once, basically.

Thanks!

Hi Sandy! What was your contribution to Civ.? I only recently knew you had a connection to a game I been playing for years.

what is your favorite food with tentacles?

"Dagon" (2001) was pretty darn great, even though it's actually a version of "Shadow Over Innsmouth" (the town is even called Imboca).

As someone who played doom a ton, what is your favorite part about game designing? And how hard is it to design a game?

Wow you don't own 50% of the company named after you?

Just point me to the Kickstarter!!! Take my money!!!

If there were three things you could do differently in the first Cthulhu Wars Kickstarter what would they be?

Back in the late 80s (maybe early 90s), you ran a Call of Cthulhu session for myself and some friends at ICON at Stony Brook. Just wanted to let you know that all these years later, it remains the most excellent gaming memory I have over many years of gaming. I still have my autographed Call of Cthulhu player's guide to this day. Thank you!

My question: What's your favorite movie to come out in the last 10 years?

There is no question that the HPLHS films are in a different league. But they don't have the commercial pressures of most movies.

Have you seen Cast a Deadly Spell? It was able to go a bit under the radar as a late-'90s HBO movie.

What say you of the infamous Old Man Henderson? The crazy player who won Call of Cthulu?

If you had to devote yourself to the worship of one Elder God or Old One, what would you worship and why?

Hi, huge fan of your work in Doom. Bought Doom when it came out. Here are some Doom related questions:

1. What was your process like for designing levels in Doom? (eg. where did you start, what were your goals, etc.)
2. What is your favorite memory from working at id software while designing Doom?

Who ran some of your best campaigns to play in? What are some good tactics to use to help the players scare themselves?

Omg is Sandy a loot hog?

Evil Dead?

Hi Sandy,

Huge fan here of your work for RuneQuest and CoC, and really looking forward to Cthulhu Wars! Thanks for stopping by - come visit us at /r/runequest and /r/glorantha.

Some questions for you (sorry for geeking out here):

• What's the future of RuneQuest now that it's going back home to Glorantha?
• What makes Cthulhu Wars awesome?
• How different will the Gods War game be from its base game?
• Will you be involved in any future supplements for RQ?
• Would you rather fight 100 Durulz-sized horses or 1 horse-sized Durulz?
• And most importantly: will there ever be a Duck Pak?

Thanks so much for your wonderful work - it's inspired me as a GM and player.

Thanks for all your past work. Is there any Cthulhu literature you are currently reading and recommend?

Who are some of the authors contributing to the Cthulhu Mythos you feel are deeply underappreciated?

We're missing the Lumley creations that don't suck, like the Chthonians, though. Any chance of them?

Hi Sandy! Would like to start out by saying that I bought Cthulhu Wars during the summer after seeing a physical copy in front of me, and I love it! Now I just want all the expansions!

Two questions:

1. As Cthulhu Wars (along with most other board games) are produced in China, how much information do you have about the situation of the factory workers that produce your products? Labor Law violations, child labor, etc, is this something one can avoid? How much focus is on this (if any) in the general board game community? (I found some information that Hasbro/Mattel don't have the best records on this, but don't want to assume that this then automatically also includes people like Fantasy Flight or you guys.)

2. The way I understood it, the price for shipping to Europe included VAT. Is this only for EU countries, or do you guys handle the VAT also for European countries not part of the EU?

Hello Sandy, thanks for doing an AMA! I'm part of a small Indie Game Dev group. We're in the process of making our first game. We even decided to try to give kickstarter and greenlight a try.

My questions to you are:

1) when did you know you wanted to be in the gaming industry

2) how did you make your way into the field

3) Is there any wisdom you could bestow upon my group?

Thank you in advance!

Sandy, I can honestly say that Cthulhu Wars is my favorite tabletop game in a while. Honestly didn't know you worked on Doom and Quake. On to questions:
1: Can you go poke Guillermo Del Toro in the head and tell him he needs to focus on the In the Mountains of Madness movie? [And you kinda need to be a creative consultant for that... just sayin..]
2: Is there any possibility we can get another FPS Cthulhu game like Dark Corners of the Earth? Loved the game, but it was on an extremely dated engine, and I believe using one of the newer CryEngine or UT4 sets would truly be a treat to play.
3: What is your current favorite Lovecraftian-based movie?

How do you create interesting /engaging representations of Lovecraft's creations without sacrificing the terror that's so tied to their incomprehensibility?

What makes an an asymmetrical and/or two-player game successful?

What is your opinion of David Kushner's Masters of Doom? Do you believe it was accurate for the most part?

EDIT: typo

Can you tell us about what happened? As a DVM supporter I absolutely love everything so far!!

> We have actually visited and inspected the Chinese factories on multiple occasions, so if they have children or political prisoners on the production line, they must have secret rooms on the scale of a Bond supervillain.

Thank you for that image. Do you know if this is standard in the board game industry? I would like to believe that my board gaming hobby does not in general include too much child labor, but this may be wishful thinking.

Hey Sandy! long time BGG-er, low level Redditor.
What is your favorite non-explicitly Lovecraft Lovecraftian film?
movies like The Thing, The Mist, The Cabin In The Woods, Event Horizon, etc, all explore some of the same themes - madness, horror, alien creatures, and the insignificance and weakness of humanity, without being mystical or explicitly derived from lovecraft's works. Do you have a favorite?

Hi, Sandy! Long time CoC Keeper here.

Who is your favorite non-Lovecraftian/non-mythos writer?

Hey Sandy, I met you at Essen this year (I was the skinny disabled guy, accompanied by a short female and towering German beard covered man) and I just wanted to say thank you for a fantastic chat, it was great to meet the person behind one of my gaming groups favourite games, and to get to see some of the expansion goodies :) We ended up helping you try to convince a guy to buy a copy of the game with his girlfriend? Do you remember if he came back and picked up a copy? :D

I just wanted to ask about the Nameless Cults pledge level? What was the reason for not including any EU levels of that pledge? Was it a logistical choice, or made on total EU sales of the base game or something? I know that the EU levels were added later, I was just wondering about the reason behind skipping this level :)

Currently to get everything I'm pledging at the $700 EU Mysteries Level with the intention of selling off the copy of the base game to recoup my losses. I'm just wondering why an EU Cults wasn't included?

Also, do you know if I back at the Euro Pnakotic level and add on some expansions, will they be shipped separately from the US or from the EU with the base game?

I'm so happy to see that the Onslaught Two KS is a huge success, and I hope that you have many more :)

What divorce-avoiding techniques do you recommend about breaking the news to my wife if I end up backing the "all expansions" tier of the current Kickstarter? :-)

Hello Sandy,

I only recently got my base copy of CW, but have fallen in love with the game and backed to get all the expansions on the kickstarter.

My question is, do you think you'll ever make any new factions for the game after the Tcho-tchos? Or has the game reached it's limit for that sort of thing?

What started your love of Lovecraft? Also, (besides Cthulhu Wars) what has been your favorite project to work on?

Do you have trouble sleeping at night knowing that you put Barrels 'o Fun into Doom 2?

But seriously, you made some of my favourite maps in the Doom series (Tower of Babel, Downtown) and I just want to say thanks for that. :)

With regards to the Cthulhu Wars Onslaught 2 kickstarter, pledge levels ($600 and up) that say '... all applicable stretch goals' -- does that really, honest and for true mean all of them? There's been an avalanche of stretch goals lately, and I want to be sure I don't miss a single one. Thanks.

Which author/setting, besides Lovecraft, should have his own rpg game?

I asked you that question when I met you at the Games Developer Conference something like 15 years ago: Will there ever be a Gloranthan version of the Age Of Empire series ?

I understand now that this will never happen, but has there ever been plans to make such a game ? When Age of mythologies was announced, that was clearly what I was wishing for !

Hey Sandy. Long time fan here. My question is this: when Chaosium finally finish the long running clusterfuck that is the 7E Kickstarter will they do another one (BtMoM, Masks)? Also did you pledge for the Delta Green Kickstarter?

I absolutely understand the concept of a premium game, and Cthulhu Wars definitely applies. Every piece of the game is dripping with quality and loving design, and playing it creates great experiences.

That said...I like it so much I wish more people could experience it. Would you ever consider it possible to release a more accessible version for those that can't afford the price tag? Say replacing the minis with cardboard portraits?

I say this not as a criticism of the game but in favor of it. More people would be able to experience it and maybe buy the full version if they had the chance to see the mechanics.

What's it like having the kind of name you'd expect to hear on a comedy about news agencies?

What Lovecraft parody makes you laugh the most? (Mine is a T-shirt, created by a local con in the early '00s, with a Cthulhu-themed spoof of the iPod called "cephaloPod".)

I would have thought that, starting out with your first self-published game, you would want to make something that was maximally accessible, sold tons of units, and got your name out into stores. Why did you choose to make the first game from your new studio so expensive and premium instead? Weren't you worried that the game would instead give your studio a reputation for making inaccessibly expensive and elaborate products?

Do you foresee the various additional (non core box) Cthulhu Wars factions being fairly readily available commercially? Is your intent that I will be able to go to a Peterson Games or other website and order these?

Hi, Sandy. Fan for thirty-plus years here.

With the monstrous (ha) success of Cthulhu Wars, is there any thought to leveraging that into a second attempt at the Cthulhu World Combat videogame?

And: what was your reasoning behind using the lesser-known elder sign icon from Lovecraft's letters rather than Derleth's much more recognizable pentagram-with flaming-eye?

What podcasts do you listen to? Do they include Robert M. Price's The Lovecraft Geek?

Hey Sandy, any news on Dicenstein that you can share with us?

I met Chris while he was living in Colorado last year and he was one of my favorite customers at my hookah lounge. I was really excited when he got fully funded on Kickstarter and I can't wait to see the finished game.

What is the most Lovecraftian video game before Doom? (Not counting the ones you worked on!)

Hey Sandy

Thanks for doing this AMA

Love the game, looking forward to getting my stuff i'm pledged for in the second kickstarter!

My question is regarding the Cthulhu Wars Game. One of my friends brought up an interesting point about combat in the game. During a combat result we determined who the winner was but the losing side had scored pain results and thus still had to apply those to the wining team. His argument was that why would the winning side retreat in that situation due to pain results since they did win the combat?

How do you feel about 'Shadows of Yog-Sothoth' in retrospect? Would you have done it differently today?

What games do you play?

Hey Sandy.

Gods, I've spent so many phenomenal hours of my pre-teens and on playing Call of Cthulhu. Thank you for those experiences!

Do you still play Call of Cthulhu? And if so, which house rules do you apply (if any)?

Oh cool! And thank you for actually replying and not assuming I was trying to troll.

What's it like having your name attributed to a legend like Doom?

As someone who has not been keeping as up with the CWO2 comments and discussion, what is going on with the storage solution? I know it was originally supposed to be done before O2, then got pushed back but someone said you had multiple interested partners... Then there was a survey that made it sound like that had all fallen through? I'm spending 600 on this game and there just feel like no reasonable way to transport this to game nights- yet I know this is one of those games most people probably won't buy, and I want to give them a chance to play it. I just don't want to juggle some 20 boxes back and forth to the car.

Do you think people will actually have a room in their house dedicated to a vr setup? Like a treadmill with a thousand wires taking up the bulk of their game room, you've gotta spend like 15 minutes latching on a pressure sensing body suit. Full surround sound.

I still can't see VR as the future of gaming.

What are your thoughts on this?

Is this gaming setup going to be common? And if so... how will it be available to anyone that isn't wealthy?

Will Petersen Games continue to use the ks model or eventually move away from that to direct sales or something different?

Is there any level designer software you would recommend?

When will be able to eat the bad guys for a food source?

Growing up when asked if I could meet any celebrity who would it be I always gave your name, mainly because I loved AOE2 so much and enjoyed your wisdom on balancing. When I saw CW and you at the helm I was confident that it would be balanced despite the asymmetry and was so happy when it was.

I recently head that there was another balance patch that was in the works for AOC (1.0d) but the team got pulled and it never happened. Do you know if there is any truth to the rumor?

Would you say CW is more appealing for casual players who just want to play with awesome minis, or for dedicated and competitive boardgame fans who want to spend entire evenings pitting their skills against each other?

First off, love your work and glad I was able to back your first Cthulhu Wars campaign. I also just started a new CoC campaign, so thanks for that system as well. Now some questions:

1) I've heard rumblings of a skirmish game you're developing. Is it mythos based (to get more use out of the awesome Cthulhu Wars minis) or are there any other details to share?

2) Any plans to revisit Cthulhu World Combat, design another video game, or maybe a digital version of Cthulhu Wars?

3) Any further stretch goals for Onslaught 2 you have planned but won't share unless we hit an insanely high funding amount?

Thanks.

Do you like super nintendo RPGs? Which ones are your favorite and why?

I funded at the Pnakotic Manuscripts because I missed the orignal KS and have always been kicking myself, but i want to add on one expansion (that is all I have the money for), which one do you think I should add that would be the most fun for a group of new players?

Hi, Sandy.

On a scale of 2d6+6, how fun, or how scary, is it to be an official part of Chaosium again?
And are you going to write more CoC/RQ-stuff?