The revamped version of Dark Passions goes to the printer end of this week for a January release. It's a way cooler book than it's ever been.

I've been receiving the final version of the colorized art and the book takes on a whole different character now that it's all in color. The fiction spreads have changed to match the new Core Book and Vade Mecum. And the big beauty is that I got rid of those reference sheets in the back (which were intended to be in an accordion fold reference thing, but that's a whole other story) and instead I added whole appendix on creating cultist characters and running cultist games. I've written advice on playing cult characters, added the Congregation Medium Asset and the Empty Drawback, as well as four new profession templates which include Congregation Medium, Cult Provocateur, Cult Svengali, and Cult Witch. I've also added a Storyguide section with themes to keep in mind and three hooks for cultist characters.

In my opinion, it's this appendix that makes the book finally complete. Plus, it added four new pieces of really cool art to the book.

So I am working on a new version of Dark Passions that supposed to be out in January. Good news. I love this book and don't feel that the black and white edition entirely did it justice. It's still the book that people have both advised against reading before you go to bed and that early readers called me to tell me they were queasy. Perfect.

The new edition is going to be full color. We're colorizing most of the art and re-contracting a few pieces. I've gotten rid of the reference pages in the back of the book. Story behind those: originally we were supposed to be binding in an accordion fold reference screen, but Mongoose wanted us to just bundle something into a print book. They're gone, because they really weren't all that useful (apologies to those of you who've purchased the B&W edition. If you buy the PDF, it will be updated for free). I've instead added new pages for playing cultists and running cultist games, including new character templates. It's pretty cool and what I think needed to be added to round out the book.

Overall, even though it's a small book, I think it's not one to be missed. Adding the minor cults to a game adds that paranoid and sinister feel that just screams Lovecraft. Frankly, I use several of the minor cults all the time in our Eldritch Society games. I have a soft spot for the Congregation of the Earth Mother, but that's a story for another time.

So Dark Passions is at the printer for real. It's been there for a while, but we've had to figure out whether the whole thing was going to be in color or not. We've opted for black & white after looking at the profit numbers, because we are a start-up that needs capital to keep all of our lovely artists happy.

This book in terms of manufacturing has had its own challenges. Originally, the vision I had for Dark Passions (which was originally named and advertised as the Cult Companion) was a small book with an accordion-fold reference booklet that was supposed to be like a game screen. I personally am not a fan of game screens, so I wanted to have something that was like a folding pocket reference. The reason for the small book was that the Core Book was such a mammoth undertaking that we wanted a supplement that we could complete easily before moving on to the chunky Vade Mecum (which was originally named and advertised as the Companion).

After completing the Core Book and going back to see what I could put in a reference, I realized that there really wasn't all that much in Framewerk that I could put into a reference without basically reprinting the conflict chapter of the book. The basic rules of Framewerk are simple and there's very little else you're going to have to reference all that much and anything you will have to reference is all in once place. The accordion-fold looked less and less likely. So the idea was to shrink-wrap in a booklet that was all the necessary sheets (character, mecha, supporting cast) and some other handy reference so that you'd have something to easily copy. Then that idea got shot down because Mongoose's printing facility isn't really ready to do that yet. So then the booklet was going to be bound into the book. That made the book half black & white and half color.

Which brings us here. It just makes sense to have the whole thing black and white and it doesn't make the reference any less useful. Plus, we're going to give the reference sheets as a free .pdf to anyone who buys Dark Passions, both in color and black & white.