The Unbound Book Index

Version 1.00: Issues 0-2

by Shannon Appelcline

Overview

History: 2002-2005

Marcus Bone got the zine-publishing bug courtesy of Dark Conspiracy (1991). In the late '90s, the license to publish the RPG was held by Ken Whitman and a few of his companies (first Archangel Entertainment, then Dynasty Publications). To publicize the upcoming second edition of the game (1998), Whitman was holding regular chats on the nascent internet. At a June 1998 chat, Bone suggested the creation of an electronic fanzine to support the game. The result was Demonground (1998-2002), which debuted a few months after Dark Conspiracy 2e, with editor-in-chief Bone supported by Michael Marchi and Geoff Skellams .

Demonground ran for 15 issues, all of which remain available at the Demonground site. However, it didn't retain its exclusivity with Dark Conspiracy. In part because the editors were afraid that WotC's new Dark•Matter Campaign Setting (1999) would engender a competitive magazine if they didn't counter it, they began to support other dark horror RPGs starting with Demonground #7 (November 1999). That included Call of Cthulhu, which was initially featured in a modern-day adventure called "Dancing to the Wrong Tune" in Demonground #9 (Summer 2000) by none other than Marcus Bone.

The last issue of Demonground (September 2002) included an ad for Bones' newest electronic fanzine, The Unbound Book, which was "dedicated to Call of Cthulhu Adventures in the Roaring Twenties". The new 'zine was the result of an adventure that one of Bones' friends had run "one dark autumn night". Bones found it "frightning and compelling" and thought other people might enjoy it as well. As a result, he published a trial issue of his zine, The Unbound Book #0 (August 2002) to see if there was interest. It included that inspirational adventure, "Rise of Xnaaki" by Michael Wood.

Unfortunately, The Unbound Book (2002-2005) only made it three issues (including the preview). There was a hiatus of a year before the official first issue, and then longer before the second. Bone noted that the second issue was likely to be the last, but that it was nonetheless a "showcase" for "what should have been", which was adventures set in the 1920s: the bread and butter of The Unbound Book over its three issues.

Bone brought The Unbound Book to an end because of the advent of not only Chaosium's monographs but also other "very high quality" magazines, by which Bone certainly meant the German Worlds of Cthulhu (2004-2009), but perhaps also Book of Dark Wisdom (2003-2007), though the latter had already abandoned gaming material by 2004. Bone felt that these new resources made The Unbound Book "redundant", especially when his 'zine had been so irregular in the first place.

Following the shutdown of The Unbound Book, Bone maintained the Unbound Book website, with an updated label: "Unbound Publishing". He had a number of partially complete articles and other projects that he hoped to publish there. One of the projects that he advertised just as he was ending The Unbound Book, Monophobia: Cthulhu Adventures for Lone Investigators was one of the first to appear. A few other Call of Cthulhu projects, as well as projects for a variety of other games can be found on the site. Unfortunately, the site no longer contains The Unbook Book itself, nor the Cthulhu d20 conversions or interviews that had supported the magazine. However, The Unbound Book does have a successor there: Unbound Magazine #0 (May 2025), which includes articles on a few different dark horror games, offering a bookend to the latter days of Demonground.

Obtaining the Magazines

The Unbound Book was freely available in the day, and later was archived on YSDC, but with the closure of Yog-Sothoth in early 2026, it's a bit harder to find at the moment. You can still retrieve issue 0 and issue 1 from archive.org, but issue 2 isn't available there. Likely, all three issues will become available again as the dust clears after the YSDC closure.

About the Game Systems

The Unbound Book is a Call of Cthulhu magazine focused on 1920s play. Though "Call of Cthulhu 5.5e" is flagged as the game system for its articles, that's a fairly arbitrary designation as Call of Cthulhu editions 1e-6e are fairly similar.

This index is © Copyright 2026 by Shannon Appelcline. It is released under a cc-by-4.0 license, allowing reuse with attribution. Background Image by inksyndromeartwork on Freepik and is available under separate license there.

Main Index

🏚️️ Adventures: Misc

1. Fragments of Fear were intended as one-shot adventures.

🏡️️ Adventures: Geographic

🕰️️️ Adventures: Historic

📣 Interviews, Memoirs & Notes

1. Posted to the website and still available through archive.org: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5.
2. Posted to the website and still available through archive.org: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4

🪟️ Meta

🎨 Media: Illustrations

Covers