“It’s a Cold and Wet Sunday” – Calendar and Weather in Investigative Horror

Closed on Sundays

Recently, in both 1920s Call of Cthulhu games I’m running, the players laid forth plans to get out on the town and get some shit done – knock on doors, talk to folks, figure out what was happening. But as they went about their business, they soon found that all the shops were closed and people were unavailable. It was Sunday, and most places are closed on Sunday.

This forced the players to retune their expectations and come at the problem in different ways. In one game, where they wanted to interview a shop owner, they asked if there was an apartment upstairs that might be the residence of the owner. There was indeed a residence, and a successful Luck roll later, they found the shop owner home on a Sunday morning, surprised in her morning robes, but willing to bring them in for tea and a brief visit.

In the other case, the group wanted to find a professor of archaeology at Miskatonic University and ask them some questions. Since there’s no school on Sunday, chances are the whole department is closed and no one available. “We’ll try anyway – see if anyone is working the weekend.”

Another Luck roll and this was a Critical Success – as it happened, they found the department head redoing his bookshelves on a Sunday, and were able to capture his imagination with their recent artifact finds. They engaged with the NPC and got the clues that sent the story off on a whole new direction…

In both cases, what might have originally been seen as a blocker – it’s Sunday so no clues for you! – was actually an opportunity for both the players and me to reframe the scene and solve the problem in a new way. It was less about preventing clues or encounters and more about verisimilitude and presenting the world in a way that feels real.

I love the word “verisimilitude.” First off, six syllables is a lot, and 50% more than my last name, so it’s just a big, neat word. Also, it packs a lot of punch for investigative horror games where the disparity and dichotomy between our “normal” reality and the cosmic horrors we encounter are what gives these stories a lot of punch.

The word means “the appearance of being true or real” and while that seems pretty straightforward, it’s definitely a tool that can easily be misused or mishandled in these sorts of games. It’s an amazing tool that definitely needs careful use.

I’m not even going to talk about people who use it to justify prejudice (racism, sexism, etc) in their games, saying “XXX people had no rights in that time period, so we’re going to lean into that part of the game.” Blech, no, shut up and go away.

I’m talking more about people who get lost in the details of the period and roleplay the least important part of the games – like buying bus tickets or presenting a dinner menu. These are neat, yes, and certainly taking a brief moment to set the scene and ground the story in historical appropriate details helps build the atmosphere.

But often writers and GMs get lost in these details and use them as excuses to avoid real stakes or interesting traction in the story. Just in my above example, I could have just said, no the place is closed on Sunday and moved on. But the players pushed back and asked for a way to work around in a manner that felt real. So they themselves leaned into the details and countered the real situation with appropriate details of their own.

This is good, and we want to encourage and reward this behavior. Good players, here is a clue.

But also good GM – I didn’t let the verisimilitude get in the way of the story and instead used the details to create something different than what was expected.

Cold and Tired

The next thing I’m trying to do with this verisimilitude is with the weather, which everyone is discussing but no one is doing anything about. Seriously, I describe the weather all the time, especially when it becomes inclement – rainy or even snowy and cold. One of my groups is currently in London during the month of February, and before that were in NYC in January, so I was constantly describing the cold weather in an effort to bring the scenes alive.

And that’s great, but… then what? So it’s raining and cold and overcast and damp, and we need to carry umbrellas and wear coats and hats… And then? How do these details make acting during these scenes more interesting and real? What tools can we as GMs bring to bear that make the weather more impactful?

I don’t actually know at this moment, but what I am wrestling with is being realistic with PC exhaustion, or “you haven’t slept in 36 hours because you’ve been running and gunning from the police, so you’re too tired to do anything.” Again, this came up in both of my games, and I wrestled with how to bring realism to the game and still keep it fun.

No one wants to be left out when the group gets together to discuss clues and the mystery and what to do next. I don’t. Those scenes are one of the best parts of the game, and it’s no fun to be told by the GM “you failed your CON roll so you’re asleep in the other room.”

I know that it’s not fun, because I did that in both games and watched the players itch to get back in the scenes. As a follow up then, I had the PCs check their CON, and that potential success could end in a reward of MP or HP, resulting from a good night’s sleep. And then I just picked up the whole scene and brought everyone together for breakfast together. It worked great.

Paying Attention

Verisimilitude is not just a great word – it’s a tool to use to ground players in the realness of our game, and is particularly useful in period games. But it can be overused or misused to put up roadblocks or churn for players who just want to engage with the story.

Paying attention to the day of the week often feels like too much bookkeeping for my tastes, but it allowed me to bring some realism and shift the tones of scenes without much effort. It worked very well and I will definitely use it again.

However, if my investigators spend too much time out in the cold rain and happen to get colds or the flu, I’m not sure needing to spend the weekend in bed will be as fun for them as it is for my storytelling. I need to find a better way to use weather to impact the game.

What are your tips for using verisimilitude to build details and realness in your game?

9 Player DCC with Player Roles

9 Player DCC with Player Roles: Caller, Mapper, Quartermaster, Time-tracker

I recently ran a 5-hour session of Operation Unfathomable with 9 players, and one of the key things that helped everyone at the table – especially me – stay engaged and organized was that I had four players help me run the game. Before the game I identified four sets of information and decisions that I wanted to offboard from me, and then I asked folks ahead of time who could help me. It was easy to setup and once everyone was engaged it worked like a charm.

I’ll describe each of these roles, and will finish by talking through what it means to have responsible players that you can trust.

Caller

Back in the early days of OD&D/AD&D, having a party of 6+ players was the norm. The legends speak of 8, 10, 12 or more players around the table for the early games, and I’ve certainly played in larger games back in the early ‘80s. There just weren’t enough DMs (still a problem today, though not as severe) and getting invited to sit at a game – any game – was a thrill, no matter the party size.

In order to maintain the chaos of decision-making during non-combat turns (the 10 minute long ones, more on that below), one player is designated the Caller. I’m still digging through the AD&D books to find a citation, but the Caller is the player responsible for holding the party’s collective decision making process for the DM. This is the first time I’ve ever run a game with a Caller, and while I only needed it a few times, when I did it was beautiful.

The Caller’s job is to hold the answer to the question “what are you doing now?” for the entire party, gaining consensus (or not) and anointed by the DM as the single point for an answer. My friend Dan is a Sr Director at a large tech company and so he was an easy pick for this role.

I only used him a few times – a key example is when the party emerged from the entry side tunnel (we’re underground) and I asked “do you go left or right?” The group took a good five minutes to discuss, and then slowly waded into a confused back and forth that these large group decisions often go. So then I pointed to Dan and said, “Well?”

He stopped the discussion, made a decision, and checked back in with the group (“everybody okay if we go right?”), got a collective shrug of acceptance, then told me, “we go right.” And that was it.

There is an important psychological moment with agency and decision consensus that the group went through, but it took Dan’s energy and focus to hold the group in that moment, and I didn’t have to do anything. Furthermore, it wasn’t me as the DM holding the decision, it was the party who did it, which also builds a greater sense of buy-in and agency. We didn’t need it often – most of the turns I gave people the opportunity to do their own thing – but when we did, it worked extremely well. I’m all in with the Caller.

Mapper

There was a mix-up at the start when I asked the second Dan to bring a battle mat and he only brought smaller folio-sized combat maps. I had envisioned mapping the tunnels in a large-scale – not necessarily to scale, with one square equaling 20 feet – but putting the large map out in front so everyone could see it. But it all worked out in the end.

Rob heartily volunteered for the role of Mapper, and his job was to draw a map that showed the dungeon with any notes of encounters. This was particularly important because we are only playing once a year, so there needs to be continuity for the group to pick up in 2025. Rob did great.

We agreed on a few key ideas as we started:

20 foot squares
There are no cardinal directions (as we’re underground) but for the sake of simplicity, the top of the map is north
If Rob needed clarification, he could hold up the map and ask “like this?” and that while I would not correct every single detail, I would make sure he has the overall structure correct.

And that’s how it worked. Like the Caller, we didn’t need it until we needed it. He checked in a few times, but for most of the game he was sitting at the end of the table, creating a map of the dungeon and quite enjoying himself. A few times he helped steer the group back on course, a few times he asked if he had it right, and now there’s a map of what they’ve explored so far. Absolutely easier than what I had in my head when I started.

Quartermaster

Again, I was thinking about getting decisions and tracking off my plate and onto a player’s, I asked Dan2 (not the Caller) to manage the group’s inventory. I did this for three reasons:

The campaign starts with the PCs getting a bunch of magic items that I didn’t want to manage myself.
I wanted someone to track food and ammunition (more on this below).
And there would be treasure and other items the group came across to track.

Moving the consensus building from me to a player was again so helpful. When the party arrived at the start of the dungeon, I gave Dan2 an index card with a list of 10+ magic items, and then he went around the table and figured out who got what. While he did this I continued to prep and think about where the first encounter would be.

Also, I don’t really like tracking individual rations and ammunition, and like to use the One Year Engine’s resource-tracking die mechanic (they didn’t need torches because the dungeon is lit by phosphorescent fungi). Basically, your resource (eg rations) start at a d20 value. Then, whenever you eat (let’s say daily) you roll that resource die, and if you get a 1 or 2, it drops down to the next die in the chain (usually d12 down from d20 but we’re playing DCC and I haven’t decided where the d14 and d16 fit it, lol). Then you repeat until you reach d4, when if you roll a 1/2 you are out of that resource.

We did it for ammunition for the one crossbow in the group (no bows strangely) so it wasn’t used a lot, but Dan2 just rolled a couple times and didn’t get a 1 or 2, so ammunition stayed at the d20. Much easier than tracking individual shots, and really great to have this all managed by someone not me.

Time-tracker

This final piece was the one I wasn’t sure about, and I waffled up until that morning, then just decided to go for it. I’ve not run a large scale dungeon crawl in a while, and 9 players or not, I don’t have a go-to framework for managing the action economy while exploring. After some research and discussions with a friend, I just went simple and built the following rules:

It takes 10 minutes to explore a 20’ square and gain the core information.
Any other exploring or resting will take another 10 minutes.
60 minutes to an hour, etc.

The key for tracking time is used for:

Tracking daily rations usage
Tracking spell and other underworld and Chaos effects
Understanding overall time spent for in-game context

It was fascinating to discover at the end of five-hours in actual time that we had spent five hours in-game. The ebb and flow of 10 minute exploration rounds versus the few intense encounters centered on the large combat (which only took 30 minutes in game but a whole hour in real time) still ended up with a very similar time-frame.

Glenn gladly took up this role, and he pressed me a couple times to be clear in how much time had passed. The first few times I had to think about it, but we got into a groove and by the end, I was comfortable judging whether or not to tick off another 10 minutes. He created his own tracker on a piece of graph paper, and again, was happy ticking time away with almost no inputs or management from me. So good.

On Players

The key thread through all of these roles is that I had players who easily jumped into their responsibilities with almost no prodding or management by me. These are all good friends of mine, and I’ve known most of them for decades, so there’s a level of trust and communication that already exists. I’m thankful for their help, and I recognize that a less mature table (maybe comprised of strangers at con) may not be as easy and effective as mine was.

One would hope that sitting down with a larger group at a convention, or even at an annual gaming weekend of friends like mine, would naturally bring the engagement needed to pull this off. I could write a whole blog post on managing people’s expectations and what communication skills are needed to pull this off, but that will be for another day.

For now I’ll leave saying that these roles not only helped the party function and gave the players more agency – they made the game more fun for me as the DM. It’s a lot of work managing a dungeon crawl, never mind one with 9 players only run once a year. Getting help in this way significantly improved my enjoyment of the game, took many decisions burdens off my mind, and let me focus on the story and encounter flow.

I heartily recommend these roles for larger groups, and feel like the whole thing is possible with these shared responsibilities. I hope you get a chance to try them some day.

DCC and Operation Unfathomable Session Report – Summer 2024

DCC and Operation Unfathomable

SPOILERS ABOUND!

Every summer I get together with a group of long time friends for a gaming weekend. We mostly play board games, but for a few years I was able to run a DCC game with the same PCs.

I started with the Hubris! campaign setting and ran the funnel and L1 scenarios there, and then had a great time playing Fever Swamp. However I really struggled trying to tie the sessions together and then Covid came and ended it anyway.

This year I ran the DCC version of Operation Unfathomable (OU) with a full table of 9 players and it. Was. Awesome.

We had a mix of L1 and L2 PCs plus one player ran a coterie of 0L. But more importantly I had the players help me run the game in a very AD&D way.

One player served as Caller, another as Mapper, then one each for Time Tracker and Quartermaster. It was so much fun to have all the assistance at the table and just be able to have everything tracked without my effort. (I will do another blog post on this shortly.)

Crazy thing is that it took us five hours in real time to play five hours in game time. We didn’t get very far into the dungeon but now we are well into it. And we can pick up right where we left off…

Session Record – Episode 1 – Summer 2024

We had 4 L2, 4 L1, and 4 L0 PCs, so 12 PCs for 9 players in all.

Prologue – We read the player introduction and then I brought the party to the 1000’ ladder to begin their descent. We then went around the table and each player introduced their PC (or PCs for one player) and then they got to either ask a question or roll on the rumor chart. Most rolled on the chart, but a couple asked questions, specifically around visions and the chaos. I tried to give as many clues as possible, including showing the cleric Ned a vision of Shaggath-Ka lying injured in his cave (and I showed him the picture).

We also had a great moment when the Chaos Cleric tried to contact his deity for help, but rolled a 1, and ended up interacting with Ned’s Law deity instead. Laughs ensued.

Room 1 – The players then arrived at the first cave from the climb and set about getting organized. I asked the Quartermaster to hand out the magic items, and then asked the Caller to organize the marching order. I wasn’t super concerned about the exact order, just more looking for who was in the front, middle, and rear.

The Mapper immediately realized that the player map is wrong and great gnashing of player teeth followed. With inventory managed, mapping ready, but without searching the first room, they set off into the dungeon. We weren’t sure this was actually going to happen.

Room 2 – They fell right into proper paranoid dungeon crawlers and spent a lot of time moving through the pill bug husks, but of course the mind bats attacked! They were actually hard to hit, but the mind bats rolled poorly and did no damage. Eventually the party was able to kill them with no damage to themselves. It was good to get some dice rolled and have everyone figure out how to work together a bit.

Hell’s Back Road & Room 3a – The party moves into the large tunnel and spent some time interacting with the giant skeleton. They eventually cast a spell and drove off the flying prawns and were a little disappointed to find nothing of value on the giant, but they spent the time and collected the 200 gp worth of miscellaneous coin and headed “east.”

About 120’ Later – Despite GMing for almost 45 years, I don’t have a lot of experience with “proper” dungeon crawling, with time tracking, random encounters, etc (at least not as an adult), so to alleviate the pressure I rolled up just a few encounters to help me focus ahead of time. I’m all for letting the dice do the talking but I need something to sink my teeth into until I’m comfortable with the dungeon itself.

The first encounter I rolled up, which ended up being the centerpiece encounter for the whole session, was a combination of Merchant Riding Glutton-Newt and Bewildered Martian Ape. I had given all the warnings to the players that – a) not every encounter is combat-focused, and b) there is no balance and some encounters are very dangerous. Great example for both of these.

They hid out and waited until the newt-riding merchant and his guardian had passed, then came out to raise a hand in peace. The merchant stopped and they spent a long moment beginning negotiations for possible potion purchase. They had literally just collected 200 gp in loose coin and were glad to make a trade.

However, suddenly this terrible and furious sound came barreling down the hallway and everyone turned to find this giant four-armed white ape barreling down toward the group. We cleared the middle of the table, set up minis, and rolled initiative.

There were a lot of great moments that I won’t be able to describe in detail, but I’ll cover a few key actions:

In the first round, the Merchant’s Guardian fumbled and ended up hurting the newt!
Both wizards cast Spider Climb and got up onto the walls – and since one of the 0L had identified as “wizard’s apprentice” their player asked if they could try to mimic the other wizards and try the same spell. I said yes but with a d16 – they still rolled 14 total and everyone cheered as the apprentice got their first whiff of magic.
Everyone lined up to take swings at the Ape, and it was taking and giving some damage, but then Rob said, “I thought you said it had four arms – why is it only attacking once?” Of course everyone booed at Rob but I thanked him and discovered that yes, the Ape had 4d20 action dice, not just 1d20 as I’d been rolling. I didn’t retcon all the of the attacks, but suddenly the panicked Ape became much more dangerous. (Good learning moment for me and honestly if I had been swinging that much damage up front many PCs would have died. I’m fine with how it went.)
Ned the cleric used his healing powers successfully on the glutton-newt, and that was key in later negotiations. Nice move, Ned.
The group finally got organized enough to kill the Ape. Everyone worried about what it was running from. (Nothing but they didn’t know that.)

Once combat was over, negotiations began once again, and this time, between the guardian fumbling and Ned’s healing powers, the players had a lot of leverage. After some back and forth, the PCs were able to get 5 potions basically for the price of 3. It seemed fair.

Fungal Bloom + Beetle Ghosts – They spent a long time navigating these relatively harmless encounters and were weirded out by ghost beetles watching a be(etle)-heading.

Lava Demi-Gods – The party had just passed the fungal blooms when they heard the lava beings Hrrk & Krrgh coming toward them. They pulled into a full retreat back to a side passage and were able to escape any damage with some deft hiding. They saw the encounter for what it was and acted appropriately, I thought.

Detritus – After the party passed the third pile of Dungeon Detritus, and I asked for the third time if they wanted to examine it, they decided, “Well, the DM keeps asking us about it so we might as well look into it.” They spent the time and found some fire beetle bombs. They reluctantly thanked me.

Bottomless Pit – Turns out, after some nice die rolling, Reggie the Rag (L2 Thief) can read Ancient Beetle, so he was able to figure out what all the signs surrounding this deep black pit were about. They threw in some coin and carried on. They all agreed, better safe than sorry.

Room 3b – They found the scarred remains of black oozes, tested them, determined they were dangerous, and so just moved around them.

60’ Later – At this point, we’d been playing for about 5 hours, both in real-time and in-game, and a couple people had to take care of stuff, so I needed to find a good place to finish up. I looked through the encounters – I didn’t have time for another combat – and so thought Cave Lightning would be fun and distinct enough to end on until 2025.

So I set the scene, the smell of ozone, and here comes the lighting – everyone make a Reflex check… then I look down to see it’s a DC 2. Ugh, so look, “just don’t roll a 1.” Everyone rolls, I check around the table and see just thumbs up. No 1s…

Except Dan AKA Ned the L1 Cleric AKA Dan the Caller, sitting right across from me, is staring down at the 1 in front of him. “You told me not to roll a 1 so I rolled a 1.” I laugh. “Well, okay – roll again for saving throw…” He rolls… a 1. Okay then. I rolled 17 damage which is way more than he has as L1 Cleric.

So the Cave Lighting (Erol the Wizard says, “Why the hell is cave lighting a thing?”) comes and goes, everyone sounds off, except there, where Ned was just a minute ago, is just a pair of smoking boots.

wHY sO uGLY?

Note – this post does NOT count for my monthly blog-post commitment. However, I am spending more time here, and I wanted to share a brief note in case you wanted to ask “Dave, why is your website so goddam ugly?”

In brief, this site is broken in a few ways, and I need to fix some things under the hood before I spend any time on a redesign. I don’t like to spend my time figuring out technical problems (that’s how I spend my work days), and so the idea of sitting down and using up many writing sessions to fix my Google analytics makes my heart sad.

(I also have some of the same challenges over on the MUP-side, so it’s just one more unpleasant technical task in a long list of those sorts of things.)

But it needs to happen some time, hopefully in the next couple months. If I can get some of the technical issues taken care of, then I’ll try to get some graphics on here and redo the wordpress so it isn’t so… nothing.

So that’s what’s going on. Thanks for your patience.

George Norris – Crime Reporter – London 1925

The following character can be used as an NPC (or replacement PC) in the England chapter of Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign for Call of Cthulhu.

Spoilers for that campaign abound!

Geoff Norris is a crime reporter for the London Times who has been covering the “Egyptian murders” for the last two years, and the PCs will be pointed toward him if they inquire about further details that perhaps Inspector Barrington doesn’t have.

Norris is a gruff, no-nonsense reporter with a strong nose for bullshit – he knows when people are lying and is willing to call people out on it. He’s suspicious of authority and believes that “the people ought to know,” but is also cagey enough to keep himself out of trouble.

Norris is a tall and lanky 25 year old who chain smokes and perpetually looks like he slept in his suit (which he often has). Unlike many NPCs in authority, Norris will actually believe the PCs’ story about cults and murders for an ancient god, providing they’re willing to let him in on the scoop. That said, he’s not Mahoney at the Scoop – Norris will need pull out all the “occult mumbo-jumbo” to ground the story in abuse of power and will be an advocate to bring Gavigan to justice, even if it means a bigger scandal.

For the price of a couple of pints, Norris is glad to share all he knows, especially if it becomes clear to him that the PCs know more than they’re letting on. He is glad to join in on the investigation, or just follow one step behind and help break “the scoop of the century.”

Background

Born in 1900 and raised in the industrial city of Manchester, he grew up in the working class parts of town and knows how to keep his head down and out of trouble. Too smart for his own good, he quickly learned the hard knocks of life but could not keep his mouth shut when he saw hypocrisy and abuses of power. He figured out at a young age that the best way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them early, and quickly slid to the middle of the pecking order, ignored by teachers and hoodlums alike.

Norris found his calling when, in 1916 at the age of 16, he broke a story about criminal smuggling and black-market sales of baby food and chocolate during the Great War. Seeing the unjust nature of the smuggling, and the police department’s apparent willingness to look the other way, he used interviews with struggling young mothers with babes at home to draw a bleak picture of corruption and malfeasance during a time of national crisis.

He then sold the story, and two follow up pieces, to the Manchester Guardian and began his life as a crime reporter. However, having made enemies of both the police and criminal underground, and with the war in Europe at full pace, he soon skipped town and spent the next two years in the trenches of Belgium, where he came to understand the true cost of unchecked power.

Returning to England in 1918, he watched the world continue to burn as the so-called Spanish Flu continued to ravage England and his peers. Not wanting to return to Manchester, he settled in London as a young reporter with an eye toward uncovering corruption and exploitation. He pitched himself to the London Times, where he was able to uncover a hospital that was experimenting on its patients and hiding failures among the influenza victims. With a slightly salacious tale backed with solid interviews and that broke the news first, Norris had made it.

Now, at just 25 years old, Norris is works the crime beat hoping to uncover the corruption and abuses of power he knows are taking place. The Egyptian Murders are very suspicious to him and he has interviewed both Gavigan and Shafik, though kept their stories out of the papers without anything directly tying them to the crimes. As yet he has not yet seen any abuse of power or motivation to tie the murders together, and senses that Barrington is doing everything he can, especially after the disappearance of Munden.

He knows something’s rotten about these murders, but doesn’t have the facts to put a story together. However, if the murder of Munden can be proven, that will override any clout Gavigan has and that will be the “scoop of the century.”

How He Can Help

Norris is eager to engage with any story of conspiracy or hints that there is more to the murders than is apparent, especially since Barrington has nothing new to share. That said, Norris does not have much more information than Barrington, and is most useful to add context as well as be encouraging to the PCs’ involvement (as opposed to Barrington’s hesitancy).

He did not meet Elias and has not read any of his works. Barrington did say at one point that an American writer had come around asking questions, but then he left and was never mentioned again. As such, Norris has not heard of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharoah, but he will definitely be interested in learning more about it – if sources can corroborate its existence.

Norris has much of the same information that Barrington has around the core facts of the case:

There have been 19 murders over the last three years each with same MO.
17 of the murders have been Egyptian, and one of the non-Egyptian was of an Ethiopian national (see below).
All of the murders have been committed with the same weapon, but forensic evidence points toward the assaulter being of different heights – again, more evidence that there is a conspiracy of some kind.

He has a few clues that Barrington does not, which he hasn’t reported because he can’t get any sort of confirmation. These are more rumors than facts, but he is glad to share:

One of the non-Egyptian nationals was an Ethiopian man named Badhu Girma (Yalesha’s boyfriend). He has spoken to the family and has not put together the connection with the Blue Pyramid Club. He can give the names and address of Badhu’s family in the East End (who can then point the PCs toward Yalesha).
Barrington’s predecessor, Munden, was an honest cop who probably got too close to the truth, but Norris has no additional facts to share. Sadly, Munden was a bachelor whose death was quickly cleaned up by Scotland Yard. Norris spoke to Munden about a week before he disappeared, and Munden had indicated that he might have something shortly for Norris. Then – snap – he was gone.

Norris sees himself as a champion for the oppressed and innocent, and can quickly be recruited as an ally for the party. He is also a fantastic replacement PC.

Skills

Norris is a skilled journalist and Great War vet, quick on his feet and quicker with a word. He shies away from violence, however, having seen his share in the trenches of Belgium.

Art/Craft (Journalism) 65
Dodge 40
Fast Talk 45
Fighting (Brawl) 45
Fighting (Rifle) 40
Persuade 45
Psychology 65

Dance Card Full

Whew – be careful what you wish for! After last year’s multiple traumas for many facets of my life, I vowed to lean into more gaming, both running and playing. Well, as of June 2024 my dance card is full, and I thought I’d take a brief moment to write about the four games I’m playing and what I’m hoping to get from each of them.

See, my time is my rarest resource, and it would be very easy for me to wander off into a crappy or even mediocre game. So I really need to be diligent about why I’m playing a game – what do I hope to get out of it?

I don’t like to sound so sticky about this – they are games, and isn’t it enough to just have fun? Mmmm… Maybe. But again I hold my time very tightly and if I’m going to get the most out of my gaming time, I would like to move past just having fun and be thoughtful about the people and games that I’m gaming with.

So yeah – I’m playing and running four games now. Crazy! But for the moment they have seem to moved into equilibrium, and I seem to be sustaining all of them. So here’s to having a full dance card of amazing games!

Game 1 – Masks of Nyarlathotep

I talk about this a lot on my podcast. I am running one of the greatest ttrpg campaigns of all time for MUP Professor backers. We have a full table of six, which is really one too many than ideal, but the greater table does allow for the game to go on even with absences. More importantly, the table is STRONG. Everyone in the table is fully engaged in telling the best possible story and leans into both the investigation and the world building with great fervor.

I would like to keep a journal and share it here, but that seems like a heavy load at this point to go back and write all of that up. 18 years ago I wrote a journal tracking my first playthrough of Masks (which you can find here if you are a member of YSDC), and I definitely would like to at least capture some thoughts for each of the chapters. Hm. (We have also been recording our sessions with an eye toward sharing with MUP Patreon backers – I will let you know if that happens.)

My goal for running Masks is twofold: one was to run the entire game, with all seven chapters, as I’ve never run Australia or China before, and Peru was new in the updated book. And, as I mentioned on MUP Ep 299, the sooner I started it, the sooner it would be done. But am also running it for MUP top tier backers, and all of my players are wonderful supporters and community members. It’s also a massive challenge to GMing skills to manage a game at this level – I learn something new every session.

Masks is amazing but so, so large. It’s June now, and so we’ve been playing for almost 1.5 years. There’s no way we’ll be done in 2024 – so now looking at EOY 2025 to complete. Wow.

Game 2 – Arkham Antiquities and Appraisals

This week I ran our third session of Call of Cthulhu with my new in-person group, comprised of strangers I met entirely at cons and discord. It was way easier to create a group from scratch than I thought – pretty much I said I wanted to make it happen and suddenly we were gaming together.

It’s a good group of friendly and engaged players, though we are still working out how best to navigate everyone’s personalities. Everyone engaged with the safety tools quickly, and that made table safety for a group of strangers feel easy and welcoming.

We just completed playing The Haunting – I’ve run this a few times in the last 30 years and it’s always fun to start a group new to CoC with it. (I think it was the second scenario I ran for CoC, after trying my hand unsuccessfully to run a Dreamlands game in college.) I’ll be tying some of the findings around the Chapel of Contemplation into the overall campaign, and there is enough mystery and questions to easily seed future scenarios.

I really dig the new Arkham book – I’ve read it cover to cover and it really paints a full picture of a living, breathing town. I learned a lot from running Bookhounds in San Francisco – a city I love and am familiar with. It’s so easy to breathe life into a place you know well, so there’s a challenge with bringing a fictional town to life.

So that’s one of the reasons I want to run a long-term campaign in Arkham – I want to lean into the town and create a version of my own. I want to run a number of scenarios set there, some of which I’ve run before, others I haven’t. And I want to create NPCs, factions, and events with my table that give life to this very Lovecraftian town.

Most importantly – I started this game to start playing with people in person. I have a set of friends and we play boardgames together every month or so. But I need consistent in-person gaming to fill my soul. I’ve been really struggling this year with feeling connected to people, and this game is doing a great job so far of meeting that need. Here’s to more of that.

Game Three – Blessed and Blasphemous

Running two bi-weekly games is enough. Really, I just needed to stop craving games so much that I would stack new games to run back-to-back. It’s just not sustainable. But playing games is!

An MUP community member approached me about playing in the pre-WW2 CoC campaign The Blessed and the Blasphemous, which I had heard of but not backed or read anything specific on. He wanted to run a more serious, in-period focused game and wondered if I was interested in joining. The short answer was HELL YES.

So we recruited a couple players from my Masks game (other community members, which is so awesome), and carved out a small slice for a weekly 2-hour game. The idea is that a smaller ongoing game is better than nothing, and everyone jumped in creating a very brainy party that has found itself in Morocco circa 1938. We have played one session so far and it was great right off the ground.

It’s really important for me to play more games on the player side. As a forever-GM I spend so much time not only with all the organizational efforts, but also knowing all the secrets. It’s super helpful both as a GM and ttrpg writer to play in a game and know nothing about the book or mystery. I love that I know absolutely nothing about this campaign and can just focus on living in the moment, showing up with my best player capacities and leaning into every scene.

We’ve just committed to playing the first two scenarios (of six) for now, which I think is a great way to keep everyone engaged with a longer campaign. We don’t have to worry about committing to two years – though it would be amazing to still be playing this when I finish Masks in ’25. I feel very blessed to make this work out. See what I did there?

Game 4 – Dragonlance of Youth

Finally, I’m playing in the latest Dragonlance campaign for 5^th edition of D&D. As mentioned above, this spring I was feeling that I really needed to play in more games. Literally the next day my friend Ian texted me and asked me if I wanted to join our group of high school friends in playing through the new Dragonlance campaign. It’s a monthly-ish game on Sunday evenings, and is just infrequent enough for me to make it work as my fourth game. I was in.

Frankly, I’ve played enough 5e for my life, and there are so many more interesting and engaging games that I don’t feel I need to ever play it again. Going back to my original point – it’s not enough just to play a game. Why play a game that I don’t even like?

This is the same group that I ran Goodman Games’ Expedition to the Barrier Peaks for way back in Covid times. They are at the opposite end of my CoC games – they are old friends who take the roleplaying less seriously than my MUP community. But they love each other deeply, and use the D&D game as an opportunity to hang out and go on adventures together.

This less-serious take on ttrping is really important for me to remember. They play 5e because now they’ve been playing it off and on since it came out, so it’s easy for them to jump into and get a game going, trying out new classes and feats, and just using it as an excuse to hang out (the five of us live in four different states).

In the end, it’s really good for me to identify the reasons and expectations I have for playing and running a game. But it’s just as important for me to see where I’m having fun and lean into that.

But What About

Of course, part of my brain is clamoring about all the games I’m not running. I tried unsuccessfully to get a group of new gamers playing some Mothership, and have decided not to pursue that further. And of course there are always cons and playtests…

This year promises a whole new set of RL challenges that are just around the corner. Honestly. It’s not enough to just have our kid head off to college. It’s just change after change.

So I will keep this pace as long as I can. It’s sustainable now, and it’s easy enough for me to skip a game and not have the whole thing fall down. I had to cancel a Masks game last week and was not able to schedule a replacement. It is what it is.

I’ll give an update on these games later in the summer and see if I can get some sort of journal up and running. More soon.

A Blog Post about Posting on My Blog

Whew. Two years eh? It sure is easy to have a blog that you don’t use or post on but still costs you money – let me tell you.

Seriously – real life has been a true roller coaster for many years now, and my creative life has taken a full backseat. Now, to be fair, I am still a co-host for the award-winning Miskatonic University Podcast, and that does actually take up a good amount of time and effort, as well as creativity.

But I want to be a writer!

Yeah, that’s still a thing. And through the madness of Covid and the last two years since, my writing output has slowed to almost nothing. There’s no need for excuses – that’s just how things are. And now with some other changes in RL, I’m finding that the time is available if I want it. So, rather than fire up Fallout 4, I’m here blogging.

This site is long out of date, and Google Analytics is freaking out telling me that there’s no way for me to know if you’re actually reading this. I assure you, you are not. But I have a ton of ideas for blog posts, and have been talking with another amazing horror creator and friend Doc over at Prospero House, and there’s just no better time than the present to get this blog train moving again. So here we are.

My goal, stated publicly but not TOO publicly, is to get a post out once a month for the rest of the year. So this is May ticked. That means seven more posts for the rest of 2024. I really think I can do that.

And not just me writing about writing – like actual blog posts with content and shit. Usable and game-able stuff that you can bring to your table. That’s my commitment.

Currently I’m running Masks of Nyarlathotep for MUP Patreon backers and it’s going great. It will be easy for me to start with a couple of ideas I’ve got for that game, so I’m going to go work on that for you. More shortly then…

What the Heck is Going On?

Hello and Happy New Year! Meaning, this is my first post of 2022 and in ten months, so hey! Welcome back to me!

This blog is definitely stale but it is still my online home and I appreciate you stopping by to see what I’m up to. While I have not self-published anything in a while, I am still very busy, and I didn’t want to let more time go by without updating my various comings and goings…

Most importantly, I have been a co-host of The Miskatonic University Podcast for about two years now and that really takes up a bunch of my time. We have an amazing discord community (link from the home page), a Patreon (also link from the home page), and are humming along quite nicely toward our 250th episode. That’s been most of my time these days, so stop on by the discord to say hi.

A scenario I wrote way back in 2018-19 was finally published as part of the Apocthulhu line, specifically in the Terrible New Worlds book. The Cthulhu Reborn team was incredible to work with and I learned so much about writing scenarios that it changed my game forever. The Apocthulhu line will continue to grow but more importantly the Cthulhu Reborn folks are building out their own d100 system and publishing it as an SRD that can be used by anyone. I’m looking forward to seeing their entire line expand and become a regular system for more and more horror game settings.

Finally, I am nearing completion on my contemporary horror setting and campaign book based here in Washington DC. I finished the final playtesting back in January and have everything I need to finish. I have about 30k words written but there are at least another 20k to go. It is my main creative focus now and I look to hand it off this summer.

Of course, real life keeps on getting in the way of all the fun stuff. We moved to a bigger house back in December, which has been fantastic in many ways, but also totally exhausting. I changed jobs in October and am just now getting into the groove. And of course between Covid and Ukraine it’s just a heavy time that brings a lot of general anxiety that I’m working hard to manage.

But I’m still here. I would love to write more on this blog, so hopefully once this modern DC book is done I’ll have time to write more. And also actually put some graphics and cool stuff up. This site is boooooooooooooooooooooring!

Thanks for stopping by. Drop me a line if you need anything!

How Good of a Mythos Story is The Stand? Is it GOAT?

In a moment of what I thought was levity last fall (November 2020, a time of heavy chaos, seriously – was that the craziest month of my entire life? Except for Sept 2001? Whew, what a world) I had the totally bonkers idea to read Stephen King’s The Stand, Complete and Uncut (clocking in at nearly 1100 pages) and report on whether it is the Greatest Mythos Story of All Time. I’m done with my reading and reporting now, so let’s see where I landed.

Since then, I recorded audio book reports that you can listen to on the Miskatonic University Podcast Patreon feed, even if you’re not a Patreon backer. (I love Patreon but their UI is tough as shit to navigate – here’s the link to my podcasts if you want to listen.) Over the course of 25 12-20 minute podcasts, I reviewed the book in ~50 page chunks, and I’m proud of the work I did, having never done anything like that before. As I’m just finishing up the last episodes now, I thought I’d write my final report here and use that to clarify my thoughts.

Next I put a framework around my hypothesis, outlining my theory:

Randall Flagg, the main antagonist of the story, had been identified as an avatar of Nyarlathotep, a key god in the Cthulhu Mythos
Inclusion of Flagg then makes the Stand a Mythos story, and it may have further Mythos themes and constructs
The Stand is (or rather was) my favorite King novel, and, having read it twice before, I knew that it was an epic tale of good versus evil – so it was great in length and scope

My hypothesis was that, as a epic Mythos story, it was the Greatest of All Time, and that it should be revered as such. So – what did I find? I’ll explore three components to this hypothesis as I build my evidence and conclusion.

[Spoilers for the Stand follow for sure]

First – the story is definitely great, in size and scope *and* quality. It’s really a massive story and as only the third or fourth book that King published, it’s amazing what he accomplished. Basically he destroys America and builds cities of Good and Evil out of the rubble. King said he wanted to write a story at the scale of the Lord of the Rings, and he does it. But it’s not only massive in its scale (both the book and the story) but it’s REALLY GOOD. Seriously, there’s a reason why it’s got two mini-series and is such a key piece of King’s bibliography — it’s an epic tale with massive stakes, a full ensemble cast, and a dark vision of a future that, at least when it comes to how we react to a deadly flu, resembles our world in more ways than one. So yeah, it’s GREAT.

But is it a Mythos story? Is saying that Flagg is an avatar of Nyarlathotep sufficient to make it a Mythos story? Well, let’s go with the assumption that – yes, if Flagg is a Great Old One, then the story should be examined in that light. But what does actually mean to be a Mythos story? I watched an argument unfold on Facebook (I know, crazy right?) when I suggested that it was a Mythos story — one person saying it’s a fight between Good and Evil (and really stated as such) so that’s NOT Mythos, and another saying, Uh, Yeah King is a HUGE Lovecraft fan and that his stories are about personal horror (which they definitely are) and that’s all you need to be a Mythos story. For me, orientation is somewhere in between.

A Cthulhu Mythos (or Lovecraft Mythos, or Lovecraftian, or Existential Horror, however you want to slice it) isn’t just about how the antagonist identifies themselves, but rather is about the questions at the center of the story. Mythos stories (if we’re tracing them back to Lovecraft as the source) are about Unknown Horrors and our interactions with them. “Cosmic Horror” (yet another phrase we can use) centers on two key principles to its stories:

The universe is vast and we as humans do not understand all that inhabits it (the Cosmic side)
The truth of the universe is so terrible (usually due to the other beings that are out there) that to understand it would drive us insane (the Horror side)
Both of these are rooted in a fear of the unknown – Mythos stories then are about unanswered questions, and leave lots of room for the imagination to run crazy… this is why we like these stories

So I believe that the Stand is a great story as well as a Mythos story, but is it the Greatest of All Time? Examining Flagg as the propagator of evil for the story, we rely on him to deliver both the cosmic and the horror. Unfortunately, it’s not his greatest showing.

He certainly gets off to a good start. For the first half of the book or so, Flagg mostly appears in people’s dreams as a terrible dark nightmare, wolves and weasels, and a force to reckon even as the world is being destroyed by Captain Tripps. When he’s in this shadow-dream form, Flagg is extremely efficient and competent as a Mythos force. He is intangible and distant, and communicates terror via the Same Dream to Everyone! It’s a great unifying force when the group of survivors realize they’re all having the same dreams of the same terrible Evil Force.

But when Flagg shows up to start running Las Vegas in his post-apocalyptic world, we get to see him run an operation, and even when he still does evil things, a lot (if not most) of the mystery is revealed, and that is enough to diminish his power as an evil force. Once we find out what kind of bad guy Flagg is, he loses most of his powers of horror.

Even Mother Abigail, in her final hours, pulls out some crazy miracle talk and white magic that proves she is not just an ordinary old woman. She ends on a very high note that, as an emissary for God, proves that she still holds mystery and magical powers that no one understands. Abigail herself finishes strong when Flagg does not.

King makes Flagg fallible, which is important for an antagonist, but in doing so he becomes too human and normal, and not mysterious enough. We get to see and understand his challenges, his temper, his dislike of “good people” and, perhaps most telling, his lack of leadership. The best/worst example of this is when his righthand-man Lloyd realizes that he (Lloyd) has been left out of the loop operationally, and that this whole thing would have worked better if only Flagg trusted him to actually run the Vegas operation!!

That Flagg’s downfall is based on his ability to govern New Las Vegas is both startling and hilarious, neither of which should be a key component in the Greatest Mythos Story of All Time. In humanizing Flagg, King removed his mystery, which diminishes all of the story’s power as a Cosmic Horror piece. By the end of the book, Flagg’s mistakes (and his successes) are no more than the ruler of a failed military state.

Another point of note for my reading of this — I was about halfway through the book when the attack on the US Capitol took place on January 6th, 2021. I watched this crazy bullshit failed insurrection from just miles away and wondered “What have we wrought?” Relating that attack to Flagg’s world of sin in New Las Vegas had me realize that Flagg really isn’t evil enough. Especially in the second half of the book when it’s about the new world and Flagg is setting up his empire, and we see some of his followers have doubts — watching the Cult of Trump seeking to execute members of US Congress in real time really affected my perspective to what can make a charismatic figure evil.

Yes, the Stand is definitely a story of Good versus Evil, and it’s massive in scope and theme. And it’s very, very good. The pacing and characters and setting and execution are all very much above par. King’s work is a masterpiece in epic storytelling, and in the end I was glad to have read it. I examined it through multiple lenses and came out the other side having a much greater respect for King as a storyteller and writer. If you’ve not read it, I highly recommend it.

However, it’s not the Greatest Mythos Story of All time, and I’m not even sure it’s a Great Mythos story. With so much mystery revealed starting about halfway through the book, it loses its cosmic horror tone and moves onto something more practical — a tale of Good versus Evil, and a race to get home in time for a baby to be born.

So that begs the question – what is the Greatest Mythos Story of All Time? Frankly, I do not know. Is it one of Lovecraft’s works? Or something by one of his peers like Clark Ashton Smith? A disciple like Ramsey Campbell? I’m partial to Campbell’s Severn Valley works and wonder if one of his could top it all?

I was hoping to find that the Stand was GOAT, because of its size and scope, but maybe following the idea that the key to quality Cosmic Horror is unanswered questions and mystery, a shorter story might deliver the goods. If you have a recommendation, let me know. I’m still on the hunt.

6 Inspirations for your Alien RPG

I recently picked up five Aliens graphic novels as I’m a bit hungry for inspiration for my game. I thought I’d post little quick reviews and recommendations here to guide purchase. The key here is that, as far as the rpg is concerned, these are all pulling from the same canon (six movies), and show a broad set of interpretations of those materials. Mild spoilers here but I’ve tried to stay away from major plot points. I’ve linked all books in the text itself:

Alien 3 by William Gibson

With all the recent uptick in Alien interest, the powers that be went back to the unused William Gibson screenplay for Alien 3 and turned it into a graphic novel and audio play. I remember reading the screenplay itself in the late 90s in the nascent days of the internet and being unimpressed, and I think the feeling is still there. Now, Alien 3 (the actual David Fincher directed movie) is a total train wreck, but the new cut at least pulls it together into something that makes some sort of sense. But for all that Fincher’s 3 does wrong, at least it focuses on Ripley, who is the key protagonist for the series. This makes Gibson’s choice to Anyway, this is still a MUST READ for rpg influence if only because it paints a picture of the UPP and how they might interact with UA forces, as well as WY science vessels. I’ve heard good things about the radio drama of this as well, but for me the graphic novel was easily consumable in an evening, and I was very glad to have that now as a touchstone. Grade A: Highly Recommend

Dead Orbit by James Stokoe

The Heavy Metal vibe in this collection is heavy here and it sucked me right in. The story itself is not that original, but it does put a new spin on the Space Trucker, so anyone planning to run a Trucker game this is a must-read. The art is totally bonkers with a heavy Moebius vibe but also a Dave Gibbons level of detail. I give the story a B+ but the art is A++++. This one is also a MUST READ if you are looking for some new angles on your Aliens game. Grade A: Highly Recommend

Resistance by Brian Wood & Robert Carey

This collection picks up Amanda Ripley’s story after the Isolation video game (which has officially been removed from canon apparently), and is the first part of a two-parter by Wood. I stopped reading comics because I really became attached to a certain style of drawing and I don’t like many overall, but Carey’s art is phenomenal. And Wood carves out a nice little corner of the Aliens universe with this story that involves WY and synths and more bonkers experiments. The story here is pretty clever and could form a whole backbone for any kind Aliens campaign. This one was probably the best of all my reads. So good on so many levels. Grade A+: Must Read

Rescue by Brian Wood & Kieran McKeown

This story is the surprise part two to Resistance, and picks up Ripley’s story for one more go. I am not enamored by McKeown’s art but it’s not bad, just very normal. The story is also not quite as original as Resistance, but since it’s the same characters, there is a strong feeling of continuity. It shows again how WY influence is broad and corrupt, and expands the universe well enough. It’s okay and is not a must read, except that, now that you know you want to read it, don’t you? If you’re going to . Grade B: Solid Copy

Dust to Dust by Gabriel Hardman & Rain Beredo

I am super touchy about using children as protagonists because apparently they’re so hard to do that no one can really do them justice (except Miyazaki, bless him). This story is okay and sheds some dark light on WY’s corruption; it gives some cool flavor to the universe and could even be a cool convention one-shot. But I don’t really like the art, and I don’t like how the 12 year old main character is incapable of actually taking care of himself for most of the story. I would not recommend picking this up unless you’re trying to get everything. Grade C: Only for completists

Sentient by Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta

This collection came recommended after I bought all the others by the monster that is the Amazon AI, which is funny because it’s a story about AIs and their capabilities. No spoilers here, in order to preserve the surprises, but while there are no aliens, there are definitely powerful AIs that are central to the plot. This black and white comic is well written and even more beautifully illustrated. The story is dark and scary with only humans and AIs, which is the perfect inspiration for your Alien rpg. Grade A: Must Read!