Interview: John Tynes Date: June 11th 2002 by: Michael Burnaugh (Realmprotector)

Amongst the many projects done with Pagan Publishing, John co-wrote the recently released Call of Cthulhu d20 from Wizards of the Coast.

GamingReport:
When did you first start gaming and what got you into it?

John Tynes:
I got into gaming in the early 1980s when I was 12 or so. I believe the first issue of Dragon magazine I bought was #72 or so. Chris, a friend of mine down the street, introduced me to D&D; and we began playing it all the time. We really didn't have a group--it was almost exclusively just the two of us, DM and player. The player would usually control a whole party of characters. We'd go hacking our way through great old modules like THE SINISTER SECRET OF SALT MARSH. In time we picked up TOP SECRET and came to like that better. Though we did do a great ridiculous thing where I ran EXPEDITION TO THE BARRIER PEAKS--an old AD&D; module about a crashed alien ship--as a TOP SECRET adventure. Chris played a lone agent named John Stryker who was sent into the alien wreck to check it out. Afterwards, we designed a whole secret base for Stryker that used the alien technology he'd recovered from that adventure. It was, as they say, badass. From there I bought CHILL, the original Pacesetter Games edition, and loved it. It was the first horror game I tried, and we had a lot of fun with it.

GamingReport:
Do you still game now and what games do you play?

John Tynes:
Not really. In the last couple years I've gamed two or three times. The last game I played the hell out of was THE HILLS RISE WILD!, which Jesper and I play-tested obsessively for months on end and had a grand old time with. The truth is I'm mostly out of gaming these days. I'm not doing any more work at Pagan Publishing other than occasionally laying out a book. Scott Glancy has been the leader of Pagan for several years now and has been doing a great job--he's really passionate about it, and I just wasn't anymore. I'm burned out on CALL OF CTHULHU in particular, but gaming in general doesn't do much for me these days. I am still doing UNKNOWN ARMIES for Atlas Games, and I really enjoy that. I started Pagan when I was 19. I've spent my entire adult life producing good stuff for CALL OF CTHULHU, and I just can't do it anymore. It's time to move on. As for the rest of gaming, even for the years I was doing Pagan I didn't pay a lot of attention to the rest of the hobby. I saw the new releases in the stores and kept up on the gossip and news, but I almost never read any new RPGs, let alone played them. I didn't even read Chaosium's CoC books after 1993 or so. I spent so much time working on Pagan's books that I just didn't have any enthusiasm left over for the rest of the hobby. There were exceptions. I loved the stuff Jonathan Tweet and Robin Laws did, and James Wallis's NEW STYLE line has been a real breath of fresh air. One problem I had with the rest of the hobby was that I wanted to own what I created. The example set by Alan Moore in the comic book field had a profound influence on me, and from the start of my work in the business I maintained a policy of creator ownership at Pagan. That also made it hard for me to work for anyone else, since the standard way of business is to just buy the work outright. So the characters I created for other companies were lost to me, and it didn't take long for that to leave a real bitter taste that turned me off of working for other people. I've been both lucky enough and determined enough to make this work on some occasions. I own PUPPETLAND and THREE DAYS TO KILL, and Greg and I own UNKNOWN ARMIES. If I want to turn any of those projects into a novel or movie or whatever, I can do so.

GamingReport:
Do you prefer to game master or play a character?

John Tynes:
You know, I enjoyed doing both but I think I probably GM'ed more than I played. My last experiences as a GM were some of my best, running a CoC scenario that I turned into a short screenplay called THE HORNED MAN, which is up on my website. (www.johntynes.com)

GamingReport:
What got you started in the RPG industry?

John Tynes:
When I was 19 years old, I realized I had only a few months left before I would no longer be a teenager. I wanted to do something definitive, take some sort of step that would set my adult life in motion. I settled on the idea of producing a fanzine for CALL OF CTHULHU--not the most obvious choice, perhaps, but at least it was something other than just going to class and getting drunk on the weekends at college. I got the first issue out and it sold well, and I kept doing that for the next decade.

GamingReport:
I understand you just got back from Europe. How was your trip and did you get any Cthulhu inspiration there?

John Tynes:
The trip was great. My girlfriend Karen and I spent a month in England, France, Switzerland, and Spain. It was just marvelous. And the truth is that I encountered a number of very inspirational things--to as yet uncertain purpose--and I haven't told anyone about them because they're mine. I know too many writers to be loose about really excellent source material! I also have a natural reticence to talk about things I haven't created yet, because I feel like doing so sort of discharges the energy that's building up inside to actually get the project done. But I do recommend travel, especially foreign travel, to any creative person. You just get so charged up with ideas that it's worth ten times the money you spend.

GamingReport:
How was your experience with writing the d20 Call of Cthulhu?

John Tynes:
I really, really didn't want to do it. In January of 2001, I told the guys at Pagan that I expected to be out of the company and out of gaming (except for UNKNOWN ARMIES) by the end of 2002--then two years away. WotC came to me just a month or two later, so I was very much against taking on a new gaming project at that point. It felt like a test of my resolve in some ways. But WotC agreed to let me bring on Dennis Detwiller, Scott Glancy, John Crowe, and Ken Hite. That made it worth doing because it became an opportunit for all of us. As it turned out, it was great fun. The guys all did terrific work, and I'm very, very proud of my Cthulhu Mythos chapter. I really wanted to demolish the continuity-geek aspects of Mythos fandom, the ways in which fans have tried to systematize the beings of the Mythos and so forth like it was a Star Trek Concordance. Of course, there's no way I could actually demolish that behavior, but I could at least provide a toolkit that might empower a new generation of Cthulhu gamers to see the Mythos as a creative playground, not a rigorous, hidebound obsession.

GamingReport:
Do you have any plans to write d20 material for Chaosium's d20 Pulp Cthulhu line?

John Tynes:
I have no plans to write any more CoC material at all. I should make it clear that my weariness with CoC is not a weariness with Lovecraft or other Cthulhu-inspired creative projects. It's specifically the demands of the roleplaying form, and the ways in which Lovecraft's ideas get expressed in that form, that I'm burned out on. I'm really having fun working on the Delta Green computer game, for example, and I'm sure I'll write more Lovecraft-inspired stories and screenplays in years to come.

GamingReport:
I really enjoyed reading Delta Green: Dark Theaters. Do you have any future novels in the works and can you give us a preview?

John Tynes:
I have several book projects in my head that I'll get to eventually, I hope, but none of them are Cthulhu-related. There is more DG fiction coming, however. Dennis has a DG novel set in WWII that Pagan is releasing sooner or later--I typeset the book a while back and I believe the cover art is arriving shortly. And it's quite possible that I'll edit an anthology of new DG stories at some point. I wouldn't mind writing another DG novel, but I'm not in a hurry.

GamingReport:
Delta Green is a fantastic setting for Call of Cthulhu. For those not familiar with the setting would you give us a description?

John Tynes:
The cringe-worthy summation is that it's Tom Clancy meets Stephen King. That's how I describe it to outsiders. A better description is that it's John LeCarre meets H.P. Lovecraft. In brief, Delta Green is an illegal conspiracy operating inside the U.S. government. It exists to fight supernatural evil in all its guises.

GamingReport:
How did Delta Green come about and how did you go about developing it?

John Tynes:
One of the obvious problems with CALL OF CTHULHU was maintaining any kind of narrative credibility with the PC group. Lovecraft's stories usually featured a single main character, and coming up with a reason for a group of disparate individuals to come together and fight evil was rarely easy or satisfying. And given CoC's traditional high rate of mortality, recruiting new members of the group made even less sense--usually solved by introducing relatives of a dead character and so forth. I once ran a game where the PCs just recruited the desk clerk of the hotel they were staying in to fill the slot of a dead party member. Both DELTA GREEN and THE GOLDEN DAWN were conceived as ways to solve this problem by providing a credible narrative structure for CoC. I came up with the idea for DG in 1992, and it first appeared as an article in issue 7 of THE UNSPEAKABLE OATH. After that I decided to launch it as a sourcebook project. But it wouldn't have happened without Scott Glancy and Dennis Detwiller, who took the idea and ran with it farther than I would ever have imagined. We had a great time doing the book, which finally came out in 1997.

GamingReport:
Along with the d20 rules what other changes or expansions will there be with the new printing of Delta Green?

John Tynes:
The plan is simply to include D20 stats and that's it. There may be some more typos to fix or something, but I think we chased most of those out with the second and third printings. There are some other possibilities, such as maybe releasing the scenarios in a separate book or something. But there are no decisions on that at present that I'm aware of. Scott will eventually make that call.

GamingReport:
Is there a release date set for the new printing of Delta Green?

John Tynes:
Pagan hopes to have it out sometime this year, but nothing is definite. Pagan exists in a perpetual cash crunch--it's not a very profitable enterprise, and the sales are traditionally not very good. Producing books for CoC is a labor of love, not a reasonable business endeavor, so things come out as time and money allow. There are no employees at Pagan--just some people who do some stuff when they can. It's like a great old band that gets together now and then to cut an album.

GamingReport:
In the DG sourcebook and Countdown, we are teased of the existence of the 'Cult of Transcendence' - another major organization in the DG universe is they and other cults to be expanded on maybe a cults accessory?

John Tynes:
Greg Stolze wrote the sourcebook for the Cult back around 1994 or '95, well before DG was even released. Later on we actually decided to produce the Cult book as a stand-alone sourcebook, not as part of the DG universe, though it would be "suitable for use with" as they say. Scott Glancy has been working on the manuscript off and on for a couple years now, but what its ultimate fate will be is still undetermined.

GamingReport:
What else can we look forward to in the future for Delta Green and will you be publishing any adventures with d20 rules?

John Tynes:
There will be another DG sourcebook at some point, incorporating the three chapbooks Dennis wrote with some new material. That may include D20 stats as well, but I don't know yet--it probably depends on how things are going with CoC D20 and the DG D20 reprint. There's Dennis's WWII novel, which is a great read and a worthy project. I don't doubt there will be more stuff in the future, but Pagan has its hands full as it is so nothing is in active development at the moment that I can think of.

GamingReport:
Will the upcoming adventure book "The Resurrected Out of the Vault" include d20 rules?

John Tynes:
Nope. Though I should note that book has gone to press and should ship in July.

GamingReport:
What's up next for the Unspeakable Oath?

John Tynes:
Well, Scott has been soliciting submissions for it and stuff has been coming in. I expect Pagan will release a new issue sooner or later, but I don't expect to be involved with it.

GamingReport:
How goes the development of the Delta Green PC game?

John Tynes:
Very well. We've only been at it for five months, but there's already a playable prototype of a mini-mission with cultists and an awesome monster. It looks fantastic--the screenshots that are out there don't do it justice. At present we're seeking a publisher, a process that should be complete in the next couple of months. I'm serving as designer and writer on the game. Dennis and Scott and I just started working on the storyline this month and it's going well. We're each taking responsibility for one plot thread, so it's like we each GM our own campaigns that weave together.

GamingReport:
Can you give us a preview and is there a release date yet?

John Tynes:
It's a real-time tactical horror/action game where you control a group of DG agents and friendlies. Our plan is for a late 2003 release, but this is subject to what the publisher wants to do.

GamingReport:
How do you see the future of d20 Call of Cthulhu?

John Tynes:
I have no idea. I think it's a good project and will hopefully expose a new generation of people to Lovecraft the way Chaosium has been doing. I really believe Chaosium has a lot to do with Lovecraft's popularity in the last decade, and I also believe that popularity is only going to increase as more young gamers grow up and enter various creative media--music, movies, and so forth. I meet Lovecraft fans everywhere I go, which is a great thing.

GamingReport:
Will you be attending Origins and Gen-Con and if so what events will you be participating in?

John Tynes:
I believe I'll be at GenCon working at the Pagan booth. I expect this will be my last GenCon, unless I'm there next year to show off the computer game. My first GenCon was 1988 and I've been every year since then. But I'm ready to say goodbye.

GamingReport:
What would you say to other's who are interested in starting their own publishing company?

John Tynes:
I'm of two minds on this. I believe the most sensible thing is to just publish on the web. Do it for fun, not as a business, and have a blast. But there is a real joy in holding a book you made in your hands. It's tough to resist that appeal. Probably the main thing I'd suggest is to take it on as a hobby, not a career. It's very, very tough to make a real living in this business unless you work at one of the larger companies. That becomes more of an issue as you get older, get married, that sort of thing. Do it as a hobby, or do it for two or three years, and then use what you've learned and do something else.

GamingReport:
What do you think about the recent shake-up at WotC?

John Tynes:
It's sad. Selling the company to Hasbro was a terrible idea for everyone except the shareholders--but that's where a company's legal responsibility ultimately lies, which unfortunately makes it the right thing to do according to our society's rules. I just read Monte Cook's column about WotC and D&D;, and I agree with him. Ideally, Peter Adkison would be able to buy D&D; and maybe even call the company TSR, just for fun. I'm sure he'd have a blast with it. But from what I gather, Hasbro has not been willing to sell.

GamingReport:
In closing tell us how you feel about the future of the gaming industry?

John Tynes:
Eventually, I think this form of interactive, group entertainment will emerge as a popular obsession--but not until it's played online, with fabulous technology and so forth. I hope to live long enough to see that future come to pass. It's not going to happen anytime soon. D&D3; has been a great thing for the hobby, and has probably given the whole thing a new lease on life. In particular, I think its success has brought a sense of real fun back that was missing for a while. But other than making vague statements like that, I have no idea.

GamingReport:
On behalf of GamingReport and gamers everywhere I thank you for your time.

John Tynes:
Thank you! Even though I'm on my way out, I don't regret a minute of the time I've spent in gaming. It's been a fantastic experience.