FINDING THE KING

A History Creation of Impossible Landscapes

What became Impossible Landscapes began at a strange little publishing house called Pagan Publishing in the early 1990s. For those that don't know, Pagan Publishing was founded by John Tynes in 1990 and based in Columbia Missouri. There, a tiny group of crazed individuals dedicated themselves to roleplaying horror like...well, cultists. Purveyors of the Call of Cthulhu magazine the Unspeakable Oath, Pagan produced arguably some of the best horror RPG source material out there (it was where Delta Green was invented, after all). 

In 1992, I found myself living in the Pagan house along with John Tynes, Jeff Barber (of Blue Planet fame) and a sometime roommate, Blair Reynolds (master artist). It was a heady, surreal lifestyle filled with games, drinking, and the things that young men generally do. 

Plus art. A ton of art.

It was at this time that John began seriously writing fiction set in the world first pioneered by Robert Chambers in 1898 with his novel The King In Yellow. And it was in this novel, and in John's stories that the first seeds of the King in Yellow campaign that would become Impossible Landscapes took shape. John had also written the marvellous Road to Hali article in the first Unspeakable Oath, which concerned the mechanics of the strange insanity brought by the King in Yellow.

In John I found a like mind, a co-creator, and a co-conspirator. We both held a special place in our hearts for the King in Yellow mythos, and we both sought to bring it to its ultimate realization in horror gaming. As early as 1992 or 1993, we had discussed a King in Yellow campaign (which John initially pursued but gave up on as his outside professional work increased).

We managed to place a whole chunk of this work in Delta Green: Countdown. A re-written The Road to Hali section by John, and The Night Floors by me. These remain some of the favourites of the fans of Countdown, but we both felt we hadn't reached the ultimate possibilities evident in the work.

But the campaign was not meant to see the light of day...yet. By 1999, we had all gone our separate ways, more or less.

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For 15 years I made video games. I moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Then San Francisco. Then Seattle. And finally...back to Vancouver again. I made games for Radical Entertainment, Activision, Hothead Games, PlayFirst, Nickelodeon, Harebrained Schemes and Warner Bros. but I never stopped making RPGs as well. Even during this time, I (along with Shane Ivey) made GODLIKE, Wild Talents and other games, as well as continuing to publish Delta Green material and even a Call of Cthulhu campaign called The Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man.

Somewhere in the middle there, I began experimenting with "ransom" projects as proposed by Greg Stolze. If a project could make a price target in pre-purchases or donations, I would release it for free. Insylum utilized this concept. I had an idea for a self-contained roleplaying game of King in Yellow horror set in an asylum after light's out. In it, I pioneered ideas which would later find a home in Impossible Landscapes. The Night World. Dr. Friend. Mr. Ed. The Cotton Candy room. The paper tiger. All of these entities were born first in the pages of this tiny game.

Even better, when it came time to ransom it, an anonymous party known only as Le Roi En Jaune paid the full fee...

Still, it was only a dalliance, and I had years of video game work to survive before I could realize something more.

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By the time my video game career was coming to a much needed close, Kickstarter had risen, but we were all very uncertain about its applicability to us. Shane and I could very easily envision a Kickstarter pitch for Delta Green being met only by crickets. Still, we had little to lose so we tried it...and we were blown away by the results. There, Impossible Landscapes was pitched as a 128 page stretch goal for the core game, and once that Kickstarter target was hit, I began assembling notes, inspiration, and mind-mapping investigation layouts for what would become the campaign. I now had a full time job working on nothing but Delta Green, and for that, I was supremely grateful, but I was also scared. The King in Yellow campaign was now promised. I was on the hook for it. Could I do it?

I honestly had no idea.

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It's important to know that Shane and I entered into the creation of the new Delta Green books with a very clear mandate and process, one that would infuriate some, horrify others, and make our work relentless. It's pretty simple, but it directs all of our actions.

The deadline on a work is dictated by its quality. When it’s great, it is done, and not until then.

We would rush nothing to hit arbitrary targets or dates. The book and game would be as close to perfect as we could make it, or we would figure something else out. We would never release something below our quality level — and we were always shooting higher than before. This also meant endless iterations, tests, changes, and revisions. If it sounds difficult, you're right, it was, but it was also necessary to make anything even approaching the complexity of Impossible Landscapes.

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The goal I set for myself was brutal. I had known Larry DiTillio, author of my favourite RPG game book of all time, Masks of Nyarlathotep. Larry was awesome and clever, and everything he did in Masks broke ground, effortlessly demonstrating his genius. My aim was: make Impossible Landscapes for Delta Green what Masks was for Call of Cthulhu. Aiming any lower seemed pointless.

The process of creation went like this: I would write great gouts of text. I would playtest those chunks (for Roleplaying Public Radio as well as my high school gaming group) and then revise, revise, revise. Giant sections of the campaign were rolled out on the fly in games, driven by various bits of inspiration, or from previous notes. In these playtests I would look for the moments that stood out, and double-down on them in the next iteration.

Soon the book (which should have been 60,000-80,000) was 180,000 words.

Whoops.

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But even when I got the core scenarios down, that wasn't the end of writing. Then I went back to the start, and wrote each page over again, searching for themes, connections, and clues — and how I could tie them to other parts of the book. The demons arose here, as did the history of the King in Yellow (which had congealed in bits and chunks on the fly in at the table games). Soon, the book was like a map so interconnected with tacks and strings that it obscured the map itself. Finally, I tried to write out the impossible: the unconscious things I do when I run games...I tried to clearly quantify and teach them how to be the Handler in Surreal Horror.

But I still wasn't done.

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Then came art and design. The art took months of painting, and I tried to carry over the madness and baroque sensibilities of Chamber's king in each piece. At some points here, it really felt like I would never finish, but early readers and playtesters were effusive in their praise (I felt too much so). Every few weeks or so I would re-read the book and often, this would end up with me and the book disassembled and scattered all over, scribbled with notes.

This is where the marginalia came from.

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Jen McCleary, our ever-patient, eternally talented graphic designer, Shane and I worked for months on the layout and design elements. On the hidden messages. And on the exchange of notes between anonymous parties arguing throughout the book. Jen would turn over amazingly awesome ideas and layouts, and Shane and I would descend on them like locusts, gobbling up pages and making crazy notes and suggestions (sorry Jen). But to her credit, she was amazing and always brought something new and surprising to the mix.

But again, it still wasn't done...

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When we had the book laid out, we went through it again. By that point, we had a lot more player notes, some new ideas, and the new marginalia and scribbles in the layout to fold back into the text. There are so many notes, clues and tricks still hidden within the book, I often wonder if players will ever find them all...

In the end, it's up to you to judge whether or not my goal was met. I feel I made the work as well as I could make it, and everyone on the team was firing on all cylinders. When I look back at it now, if feels like a dream. The best kind of dream, because at the end of it I have a huge campaign book to look at filled with strange art and ideas that seem almost alien to me. I mean, I know I made those things, but I couldn't really tell you how or why now, really.

It was only when John Tynes finished reading it and pronounced it on-theme with what we had conceived of all those years ago that I could let out a sigh of relief.

It's like a fever dream, now. But having read it (again!) for the first time since publication, it's clear to me now that I had found the King, or at least the King had found me.

And that we had danced...for a time.