I'm really interested in this project. Sadly there are no news or something official in written form.
With a projected release date two years from now, there wouldn't be. We'll just have to be patient — I'd guess that when we do get around to it, it'll be run as its own Kickstarter.
Personally though, I'd be disinclined to presume that Fria Ligan would be extremely keen on this project — at least, were I in their shoes,
I certainly wouldn't be.
It made perfect sense as a stretch goal "in the heat of the moment", to drive the Baranger art book Kickstarter along; especially given the experience from how the RPG stretch goal in the 2015 Tales From the Loop art book Kickstarter basically took on a life of its own and, to all appearances at least, drove Fria Ligan's business development along quite nicely for a while. I'd say they're still reaping the benefits from the ripple effects.
But from a cooler, strictly business perspective ... does a new Cthulhu RPG
really make sense?
Lovecraft's works are in the public domain. The upside of this is that there is a highly popular, all but ready-made world and bestiary of creatures and entities that won't cost a penny to use, in license fees. All license money can be invested into Baranger's artwork.
The
downside is that there certainly is no dearth of Lovecraftian role-playing games on the market already! There are crunchy ones, there are lightweight ones ... there are variations on mechanics and gameplay and period settings ... there's even a LARP game. And of course, one of the world's best selling RPG's of all time is one of them.
Meaning, there is also a potential minefield of previously established IP to navigate.
But above all — meaning there is a real risk that the market already is well and truly saturated.
If you're to launch
yet another Cthulhu Mythos RPG, you would need to offer a product with something really new and unique; something that enables it to carve its own niche. I doubt that merely appealing to the existing YZE fan base and using Baranger's fantastic artwork to illustrate it will alone suffice to make it a commercially viable product — it will need something substantially more than that to stick out, I think.
Fria Ligan's market position is of course likely to go a long way towards providing the kind of exposure it would need; the game is already all but guaranteed to feature prominently in the Ennies, for instance.
And all that
might be enough for the game to pay for itself, and perhaps even make a decent profit ... but there's still a bit more risk involved than I myself, at least, would be entirely comfortable with.
To minimise that risk, the game would still need
something to make it really pop against the background of competing products. And I'm not sure one more clever twist on gameplay mechanics is going to cut it ... it would need to be something
truly innovative. I mean, as in
Invisible Sun degree of innovative.
Could Baranger's artwork be made into something more than merely nice illustrations — after all, Baranger
is the
real USP here? Could it be integrated into, not only the physical products, but into the gameplay itself — in a way that it really is constantly
in your face on the players?
Could the physical product itself be made into a truly inescapable presence at the game table, festooned with Baranger's visions — a rule book the size of the art book, or bigger; a GM screen on a R'lyeh scale, with hidden secrets and functionalities?
Could ... [insert ideas] ...?
So ... yeah. It's a simple idea to launch, but far from an easy project to actually enter into — and Fria Ligan has their hands full for some time to come already, so ... let's just be patient, and see what happens.