In this episode, we play a game of sorts. No, this isn’t an actual play recording — Scott hasn’t been allowed to do that since the injunction. This is something a bit weirder. Matt has catalogued all the spells listed in every Call of Cthulhu supplement that Chaosium have published and entered them all in a spreadsheet. It is the only spreadsheet around that inflicts 1D10 SAN loss. Normally you need Powerpoint to do that kind of damage.
“Moving on to the next slide, you should begin to feel your soul being sucked out through your eyeballs.”
Given access to such a resource, of course we had to abuse it horribly. This abuse takes the form of a game we started out calling R’lyeh roulette, but also ended up as Lengian lucky dip, Tcho-Tcho tombola or the Pnakotic pools.
Swimming in the Pnakotic pool is not recommended.
To play this game, we rolled a bunch of dice (a D8 and two D10s, if you must know) to randomly select one of the 752 spells in Matt’s spreadsheet of horrors. We then tried to work out how we would based a scenario around this spell, brainstorming ideas as we went. Sadly we never got the entry for Attract Fish. We may have to save that for a follow-up episode.
Of course, not every spell we selected was suitable, but Paul has kindly edited out most of the terrible choices. If only all life worked that way. What was left was rather fun, and the next game is to see which of us can use all these ideas ahead of the others!
Edit: As the estimable Mr Steve Dempsey points out in the comments, the Saaamaaa Ritual is from William Hope Hodgson‘s _Carnacki the Ghost Finder_ stories. Considering the number of times Scott has referred to these as his favourite supernatural tales, the oversight is doubly embarrassing.
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Quatermass Experiment!
Rob! Great to see you here!
The Saaamaaa Ritual is from Carnacki. He uses it a few times in the stories. Wheatley does refer to the Sussamma Ritual in The Devil Rides Out which is clearly influenced by Hodgson.
I now feel mortified for not recognising it. I’ve read The Carnacki stories multiple times, so I have no excuse.
Forgot this one somehow or just missed commenting on it while busy, great topic & show guys.
What about Day of the Triffids for the first one? I did like the original Thing from Another World idea too. Another way to twist with the command plants might have been used in some scenario but it’d be an easy way to do a horde monster themed game with scarecrows lined with possessed ivy, straw & whatnot then send them after the player characters. Of course it could also be used as a simple murder mystery where you have those large elephant ears plants just suffocating people nearby & the villain luring the people nearby to their doom. Another option is to just trap people in the woods by having the trees move around enough to lose their bearings or find roads now impassable.
As for the Glass of Leng, there’s the Faculty Party that is used in ‘Plan 9 from Halloween’ pdf which is close to what you said in the podcast. Cultists at Miskatonic University trying to get in try to get rid of some staff with it & the player characters in the middle. A simple scenario with it would be to follow the antique shop where it is sold by some unwitting new clerk, then the players have to track it down before people die & the glass is passed to someone else (could give the glass a faint hypnotic quality to it for people to get it then haunted in dreams until it’s activated to seal their fate).
Is it possible to download a copy of Matt’s spreadsheet of spells?