I didn't mention it at the time, because I didn't do a whole lot of anything related to blogging this week, but this past Tuesday, August 21, was H.P. Lovecraft's 117th birthday (or it would be, were he still alive).
"[Games] are, in their superior forms, simply by-products of excess intellectuality, which I haven't the honour to possess. In their inferior forms they are of course simply avenues of escape for persons with too poorly proportioned and correlated a perspective to distinguish betwixt the frivolous and the relevant ... " - H.P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, February 3, 1932
The Escapist has a good article about Lovecraft's influence on modern gaming, from the text-based and now quaint The Lurking Horror to the recently-released Call of Cthulhu:  Dark Corners of the Earth.
Lovecraft has sparked the imaginations of countless horror enthusiasts since his death. The time you spent dreading the shadows on the wall after reading "The Call of Cthulhu" shouldn't embarrass you. You were affected, changed, by the words of a writer who knew that the shadows were more than they seemed. That night, touched by his words, you saw that there were things you didn't know and were shaken.  In a way, your love of gaming today may be because of a writer from
Providence. After all, the fun part of gaming is the mastery of the unknown, the conquering of the darkness; the stock and trade of Howard Philips Lovecraft.