• The Red Baron shooting Down UFOS – There’s No Way this Doesn’t Make a Brilliant Game Seed

    An article on the Mirror website back from February reveals a brilliant game seed for Call of Cthulhu – the Red Baron was apparently out and about shooting down UFOs over the trenches. Dubious veracity aside, this is interesting stuff: He supposedly spotted an UFO that looked like an upside…

  • REVIEW: The King in Yellow as adapted by INJ Culbard

    Robert Chambers’ The The King in Yellow contains two of my absolute favorite short stories of all time, certainly two of my favorite pieces of weird fiction of all time, and the book in it’s entirety is a beautiful piece of fin-de-siecle weirdness that has few real contemporaries. I have…

  • Avoiding Total Party Kill (TPK)

    What is Total Party Kill? Total Party Kill is something you may have to contend to when you play Call of Cthulhu. One ill considered confrontation with one monster is sometimes enough to annihilate an entire adventuring party, especially one unprepared for a fire vampire. Total Party Kill is, of…

  • The Perils of Long Campaigns

    So I’ve been playing Eternal Lies, the long term so-called mega campaign from Pelgrane Press. We’ve actually been recording it, I’m not sure when or if it will be released, we’ve been plagued with recording and alcohol related play quality issues throughout. However, the main challenge that we’ve faced has…

  • Sandy Petersen, Greg Stafford, and Chaosium

    Well, Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen return to Chaosium, pretty big news. If you’re like me, you may not have realized that the new edition of Call of Cthulhu 7th edition was in such dire shape, but apparently it is. Hopefully, this comes with a minimum of people losing their…

  • Call of Cthulhu Quick-Start rules Video Tutorials

    Paul Fricker, of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias and co-author of the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition podcast has created a series of video tutorials on Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. Character Creation: Game System: Sanity Rules: These are pretty broad strokes, but if by some strange chance you…

  • No Clues Without Consequence, GUMSHOE, and Eternal Lies

    I’ve been reading Will Hindmarch‘s excellent analysis of the GUMSHOE system, No Clues Without Consequence. GUMSHOE is an interesting thing, because even though my players and I tend to favor d20 based games like B/X DND or Call of Cthulhu, we seem to return again and again to GUMSHOE. Point…

  • Playing Vampire the Masquerade for the First Time

    My gaming group has just started a game of Vampire: The Masquerade. Although I was disinterested for many years in the setting (too cool, I guess), I’ve since realized that I love games set in the late 90’s, especially games where we can start by playing Nerfherder’s Buffy the Vampire…

  • Appendix N for 2015

    Familiar with Appendix N? The AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide featured a short essay from Gary Gygax, filed under Appendix N, which was essentially a recommended reading list and a collection of all the influences that Gygax had brought to bear on his foundational role playing game document. In an act…

  • REVIEW: Horror on the Orient Express

    DISCLAIMER: I haven’t yet been able to play Horror on the Orient Express. I backed the Chaosium kickstarter for Horror on the Orient Express what feels like a million years ago. It turns out that it funded in 2012, which explains why I feel like I’ve been waiting for it…