The Laundry Files 2nd Edition is coming

It looks like Cubicle 7 is coming out with a second edition of their (now out-of-print) The Laundry Files RPG. (Flashback: here’s my post on the first edition from March 2010, including a brief note about the time I met author Charles Stross.)

Unlike the first edition, the new edition will not use the “d100” Basic Role-playing system (familiar from The Call of Cthulhu RPG). Instead, it will use something called “C7D6” – obviously a “d6” system of some sort. (Cubicle 7’s “clone” system for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons currently goes by the codename “C7D20.”)

Over the years I’ve read the first six novels of Stross’s “The Laundry Files” series (as well as the stories, “The Concrete Jungle,” “Equoid,” and Overtime”). I last read one about five years ago (The Annihilation Score). Apparently, there are now thirteen novels in the series! Since I enjoyed (to varying degrees) the ones that I’ve read so far, so I hope eventually to read the others. 

The novels’ setting is a good one for a Mythos-themed RPG, I think, as the characters are agents working for the secret British government organization “Q-Division” (“The Laundry”), and hence charged with protecting the UK (and the world) from occult and Mythos threats. However, the novels contain a fair amount of dry humour, which I suspect may be difficult to translate into the game (probably best just to let any humour emerge organically in play).

I ran a fair amount of Call of Cthulhu back during “the teens,” including two short campaigns and a few one-shots (see here and here). My focus and interest have drifted away from Lovecraftian stuff in recent years, but perhaps they’ll drift back again in the future. In any case, I’ll definitely check out the new edition of The Laundry Files once it’s available.