For Immediate Release
August 7, 2018
Contact: Jill Spivey
202-607-6792
darkerhuestudios@gmail.com
Groundbreaking Gaming Book HARLEM UNBOUND Wins 3 Gold ENnie Awards
for Best Writing, Best Setting and Best Cover Art
ALEXANDRIA, VA -- Harlem Unbound is the creation of African-American game designer Chris Spivey and was published to critical acclaim by Spivey's independent company Darker Hue Studios. During this August’s Gen Con, the largest consumer hobby, fantasy, science fiction, and adventure game convention in North America, Spivey’s groundbreaking work was honored with several awards. At Gen Con’s EN World RPG Awards (the “ENnies”), an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming, Harlem Unbound was recognized with 3 Gold ENnies for Best Writing, Best Setting and Best Cover Art, the most Gold ENnies awarded this year for a single title. It was also honored earlier in the convention by the Indie Game Developer Network with the award for Groundbreaking Supplement.
“Harlem Unbound started as a dream for me many years ago, a dream that included highlighting the stories of African Americans, embracing the horror-genre-defining world of the Mythos, and simultaneously contradicting the racist ideas of HP Lovecraft. I'm proud to say I think we accomplished that,” said Harlem Unbound creator and Darker Hue Studios’ founder and CEO Chris Spivey.
Spivey, a veteran of the United States Army, started his own small business aimed to embrace diversity in gaming four years ago. He sees gaming as a way to break down barriers and walls, particularly during the current political climate.
“Gaming at its center is about imagining different worlds with a group of people,” Spivey says. “That group of people can come from any race, gender, sexuality or class and for those hours together work as a team, building comradery and a chance to see people not as ‘the other' but as fellow human beings.”
Harlem Unbound was launched as a successful Kickstarter, raising nearly 8 times its initial goal. This roleplay gaming (RPG) sourcebook provides a deep dive into the rich history of Harlem and the people of the Harlem Renaissance while altering the world through a Lovecraftian lens. H.P. Lovecraft, a writer from the 1920s, is considered the grandfather of horror and science fiction, with creations like Cthulhu, a monstrous entity that appears in various forms. While Lovecraft was a genius in creating weird worlds, his views on society were horrendous, and he is known for disparaging those outside his race, ethnicity and class.
Taking Lovecraft’s racism head-on is something that has never been done before in a tabletop RPG and historical fiction book. As an African American game developer, Harlem Unbound was created to inform the gaming community about life during the Harlem Renaissance, to provide more representation of people of color in the stories played by gamers, and to confront the racism inherent Lovecraft’s work.
Earlier this year, Harlem Unbound was accepted into the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection, Smithsonian Institution Anacostia Community Museum Library and The Newark Museum's collection. Chaosium, Inc., publishers of Call of Cthulhu, announced at Gen Con that they will partner with Darker Hue Studios to publish a second, updated edition of the critically acclaimed Harlem Unbound.
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About Darker Hue Studios
Darker Hue Studios is an independent company aimed at increasing the level of diversity in gaming and geekdom through building community, developing new material, and promoting inclusion within the existing gaming industry.
About Chris Spivey
Chris Spivey writes and develops role-playing games, bringing his decades-old love of gaming, horror, and history, and a mission to create a more inclusive gaming world. His groundbreaking and critically acclaimed game Harlem Unbound was honored recently with 3 Gold ENnie Awards and the Indie Groundbreaker Award for Groundbreaking Supplement. Some of his other contributions can be found in Cthulhu Confidential, 7th Sea: Land of Fire and Gold, Geist 2nd Edition, Trail of Cthulhu: Out of the Woods and Thousand Years of Night. Future work includes a modern-day superhero Pulp Cthulhu campaign and he is also developing a new RPG science fiction line for Chaosium.