Many Investigators, Many Voices – Part Two 

Ahead of its release on June 26, the previews continue for The Thompson Files, the upcoming bestiary for Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game from Edge Studio. Read part two of lead developer Sam Gregor-Stewart’s interview with the book’s writers below, or catch up on part one if you missed last week’s article. 

Last week we delved into just what it takes to write a book like The Thompson Files with so many point-of-view characters by asking the people who know best: the authors! Each chapter in the book is told from the viewpoint of a different famous investigator from Arkham Horror, and to ensure they all had a distinctive “voice,” each was penned by a different writer.  

Today we continue our interviews with these writers regarding what went into creating a book like The Thompson Files.  

Edge Studio: Continuing our questions about your work on The Thompson Files, what kind of research did you do when working on your section?  

Michael Gernes (writing for Norman Withers): Norman Withers is a type of Mythos character I really love—a scholar who comes into contact with supernatural horror and has to adjust his worldview to terrifying truths. I did research about real-world astronomy during that era. Because for a scientist living through it, it was a period of rapid advances. I really enjoy that Mythos characters are often very self-aware of scientific history before their time.  

It also gave me an excuse to watch an adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness for some inspiration, which is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories.  

Brandon Perdue (writing for Trish Scarborough): I found what declassified intelligence reports from the time that I could and tried to mimic the style. 

Keith Ryan Kappel (writing for Silas Marsh): As a guy who has spent some time at sea with the US Navy, I felt like I had a good window into Silas Marsh, and what it might have been like for him out at sea. Still, we were underway in very different eras, so there was just a lot of research and study to do before writing. I had to learn about the appropriate kind of vessel, the trade routes, the port calls, the Silas character as he already exists in Arkham Horror, the period naval traditions, and a hundred other things to get details right. 

Edge Studio: What was the greatest challenge you faced while working on this project? 

Calvin Wong Tze Loon 黃子倫 (writing for Kōhaku Narukami): Southeast Asia is a very haunted region with dozens of myths and taboos persisting even into the 21st century. (If you’re alone at night and you smell frangipani—run.) Black magic and spirits are a fabric of our culture, and I wanted to showcase them without reducing them to just stat blocks—I hoped I could get players interested in learning more about the rich and storied history of SEAsian lore. 

Karington Hess (writing for “Ashcan” Pete):  Winnowing down the list of cryptids! North America alone has over fifty cryptids! I knew we wanted to also save space for the minions of the Ancient One Magh’an Ark’at, so I went back and forth on which I felt players and GMs would have the most fun encountering in their adventures. I eventually settled on the Sasquatch, Jersey Devil, and Mothman.  

Sadly, Chupacabra, the Hodaag, and the Snallygaster ended up on the cutting room floor. But who knows, maybe we will see one or more of these famous cryptids in future books! 

Christopher Hunt (writing for Akachi Onyele): The biggest challenge for me was striking the balance between presenting something based on real world religion on the one hand while also integrating that into the fictional world of the Cthulhu Mythos. I wanted to show what I’ve learned about some awesome cultures while also making something useful for this great game I love, all the while staying respectful. I hope to have struck a good balance that encourages others to learn about the rich stories behind these fictionalized portrayals! 

Keith Ryan Kappel (writing for Silas Marsh): The part I ended up spending the most time on was getting the flash fiction piece to function on multiple levels. It had to stand alone as a full movement and work as a period fiction horror piece, while also introducing various creatures. It also had to introduce Silas Marsh, and it had to do all of that without sacrificing the story momentum. That’s a lot to pack into such a short piece and get all the parts working. 

Sam Gregor-Stewart (writing for Mandy Thompson): Mandy was a particular challenge because she has left comments and notes all over each of the other investigator’s chapters. To make sure she had her own distinctive voice, I wrote her after everyone else was finished with their work. So not only was my work getting down to the wire, I still had to make sure her widely scattered observations were continuous throughout.  

As I worked on her notes, my view of Mandy was a rational scientist and researcher, bringing a healthy dose of skepticism into everyone else’s observations. But these are also people she knows personally. Some of them are her friends, and some she views with suspicion or even distain. With this latter group, she tries to remain impartial…but she doesn’t always succeed. So I had to make sure that her prejudices remained consistent throughout. She couldn’t mock Dexter Drake for some of his wilder claims about magic, for example, and then turn around and credulously accept the existence of the Dreamlands or time-traveling aliens who possess people. But she also isn’t a complete skeptic, either. After all, she’s encountered plenty of supernatural things in her own investigations. In the end, Mandy is someone who is struggling to come to grips with the horrors at the edge of reality while keeping her sanity intact. 

And in the end, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Thanks for answering our questions, everyone! Remember, be sure to pick up The Thompson Files when it hits stores on June 26!