From the moment that the actors on the screen were given voices until the close of the 1940s, Hollywood had its Golden Age - and like other Golden Ages, this one was populated with larger-than-life mythic figures. These Legends of the Silver Screen were not traditional gods, yet they drew worship and reverence from millions.

The Golden Age of Hollywood is generally regarded as being the era from the advent of the talkies around 1930 until the end of the 1940s. Already an industry where mere mortals were raised up to the adulation of thousands, the actors that graced the screens of cinemas seemed to have been raised above the difficulties facing the audience through the Great Depression, or given the forms of heroes fighting the good fight in World War II.

Despite thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, more movies having been made since that time, the names of actors of that era are still easily recognised - Greta Garbo, Bela Lugosi, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, Groucho Marx, Mae West, Judy Garland and many more.

In 2007, it will be Arcanacon's 25th birthday - our silver jubilee. And following on in the 'silver' theme, we're running this year's con with a theme of "Legends of the Silver Screen". The focus of the theme is primarily on the actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, but is also meant to encompass the mythology of cinema in that era.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, very few games are directly oriented on the cinema (other than direct merchandise from films), but very few games have drawn absolutely nothing from the movies. It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show and Hong Kong Action Theatre are two of the obviously strongly cinema-oriented games, but the possibilities inherent in a game set around the cinema in the Golden Age, could be exploited by any number of modern day games, from Cthulhu to Conspiracy X to Mage

So join us for Arcanacon XXV,
and help us adulate the
Legends of the Silver Screen