We’re back and we’re blurry. Sure, your camera phone might have all the pixels, but we remain resolutely low-res. You don’t get to maintain your status as a cryptid by being in focus. Mothman would never speak to us again. And before you complain, do you really want a clear picture of the Michigan Dogman’s notorious genitals? Actually, on second thoughts, don’t answer that one.

Main Topic: Cryptids and Call of Cthulhu

Call of Cthulhu is full of strange creatures that live in the dark corners of the world, only occasionally encountered by unlucky humans. But how does this relate to the cultural phenomenon of cryptozoology? Which cryptids do we find particularly fascinating? And how might they inspire our games?

Our Guest Host

We are delighted to welcome Paula Deming back to The Good Friends of Jackson Elias! Paula is an actress and YouTuber making entertainment-focused videos about board games on her channel Things Get Dicey, and talking about board games on the comedy panel show This Game is Broken. She plays tabletop RPGs with the Glass Cannon Network and Ain’t Slayed Nobody, and you can find her as a regular cast member on Push the Roll With Ross Bryant. Importantly for this episode, Paula was also the co-host of a podcast about cryptids, called Death By Monsters. More recently, Paula has run “Servants of the Lake” for Tickingtimebob Gaming.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Death By Monsters
• Cryptozoology
• Blurry Photos podcast
• Adventures in Cryptozoology by Richard Freeman
• Thylacine
• Anaconda (1997)
• Anaconda (2025)
• Megamouth shark
• Colossal squid
• Giant oarfish
• Abyssal gigantism
• Bigfoot
• Loch Ness Monster
• The X-Files

• Analogue horror
• Slender Man
• British Cryptids webseries
• Alien big cats
• Fortean Times
• Fortean Times UnConvention
• Dangerous wild animals act of 1976
• Wild wallabies in the UK
• Wild parrots in Pasadena
• Wild cockatoos in Hong Kong
• Wild Indian ringnecks in the UK
• “The Right Stuff” on Push the Roll With Ross Bryant
• Michigan Dogman
• Beast of Seven Chutes

• “The Legend” by Steve Cook
• Coast to Coast AM
• Art Bell
• Bobby Fischer
• “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” by HP Lovecraft
• Bunyip
• Gla’aki
• The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water
• Emu War
• Cassowary
• Pendragon
• Yeti
• Megalodon

• Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten
• The Meg
• Pliny the Elder
• Tongue stones
• Sixgill shark
• Mothman
• The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel
• The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
• Mothman statue with well-defined buttocks
• Molly Malone statue in Ireland
• Silver Bridge collapse
• Banshee
• Sandhill crane
• Hounds of Tindalos

• Mokèlé-mbèmbé
• The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Black rhinoceros
• Megafauna
• Mongolian death worm
• Mongolian Death Worm (2010)
• Tremors (1990)
• Roy Chapman Andrews
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• The Jersey Devil
• Daniel Leeds
• Poor Richard’s Almanack
• Hammer-headed bat
• Spring-Heeled Jack

• “The Jersey Devil” from The X-Files
• Dobhar-chú
• Black Shuck
• Sea otter
• Rogue taxidermy
• Feejee mermaid
• Jackalope
• Jenny Haniver
• Sea monk
• Deep Ones
• Ghouls
• Mi-Go
• Roanoke Island
• Terror Australis

News

Matt at ConTingency

Matt will be heading to the ConTingency convention in Hunstanton very soon. Please say hi if you spot him lurking there, and you may even be able to find space in one of the many games he is offering.

Monsterhearts on Ain’t Slayed Nobody

Scott recently ran a campaign of Monsterhearts for Ain’t Slayed Nobody, with Mary Lou, Kat, Chuck, and cup as players. It is a backer-only release for now, and you can find the first episode on the ASN Patreon now.

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We’re back and we’re wiping ichor off our meeples. Cthulhu and board games can be a messy combination, but also a popular one. Cynics may tell you that this is because Cthulhu is in the public domain, so anyone can slap his tentacles on a game for a bit of brand recognition. We prefer to think the truth is more insidious than that, however. Every die roll, every card played, every token moved towards its inevitable doom is done in Cthulhu’s most terrible name, the terrible luck of the players and the curses they utter when they lose sustaining him deep beneath the waves. Plus, they’re a fun way to pass the time until the stars come right.

Main Topic: Cthulhu and Board Games

Cthulhu’s tentacles have wriggled their way into every aspect of popular culture, and board games are no exception. Lovecraftian horror has been part of board games for as long as Call of Cthulhu has been around, and it’s only grown in popularity. But what are some of the main Cthulhu-tainted board games people should look out for? And what are our own experiences of playing them?

Our Guest Host

We are delighted to welcome Paula Deming to The Good Friends of Jackson Elias! Paula is an actress and YouTuber making entertainment-focused videos about board games on her channel Things Get Dicey, and talking about board games on the comedy panel show This Game is Broken. She plays tabletop RPGs with the Glass Cannon Network and Ain’t Slayed Nobody, and you can find her as a regular cast member on Push the Roll With Ross Bryant.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Cthulhu in popular culture
• The Calyx
• Love Letter
• Lovecraft Letter
• Cthulhu board game list on BoardGameGeek
• Illuminati
• Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
• Theosophy
• At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft
• HP Lovecraft archive list of Lovecraftian board games
• Dark Cults
• Magic: the Gathering
• Arkham Horror (1987)
• Arkham Horror (2005)

• Candy Land
• Fantasy Flight Games
• Eldritch Horror
• Curse of the Dark Pharaoh expansion for Arkham Horror
• The King in Yellow expansion for Arkham Horror
• Talisman
• Innsmouth Horror expansion for Arkham Horror
• Dunwich Horror expansion for Arkham Horror
• Miniatures for Arkham Horror
• Judge Dredd board game
• Masks of Nyarlathotep expansion for Eldritch Horror
• Beyond the Mountains of Madness expansion for Eldritch Horror
• Gen Con
• UK Games Expo

• Shadow of K’s-Birlcess
• Replays
• Call of Cthulhu in Japan
• Japanese TV adaptation of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”
• Creatures & Cultists
• Cults Across America
• Cthulhu 500
• The Hills Rise Wild
• Pagan Publishing
• Call of Cthulhu CCG
• Mythos CCG
• Vampire: the Eternal Struggle
• Kult CCG
• Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game

• Into the Darkness
• Tabletop Simulator
• Cthulhu: Death May Die
• Hastur
• Cthulhu Wars
• HorrorClix
• Risk
• “The Whisperer in Darkness” by HP Lovecraft
• “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” by HP Lovecraft
• The Merchant of Venice
• 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Mansions of Madness

• Elder Sign
• The Stars Are Right
• Paula’s video on the Horror on the Orient Express board game
• Horror on the Orient Express
• Munchkin Cthulhu
• Cthulhu Gloom
• Cthulhu Fluxx
• Crypt of Cthulhu
• Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu
• Pandemic
• Unfathomable
• Battlestar Galactica board game
• Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow

• Do You Worship Cthulhu?
• Don’t Mess With Cthulhu
• Coup
• The Resistance
• Blood on the Clocktower
• The Doom That Came to Atlantic City
• ConTingency
• Fluxx
• BANG!
• Cthulhu retheme of BANG!
• Munchkin
• Cthulhu Dice
• Y’all of Cthulhu

News

The Great God Pan

You may have noticed four bonus episodes in your podcast feed this month. These were the festive ghost story readings of Arthur Machen’s classic weird tale “The Great God Pan”, directed by our good friend Mike Perceval-Maxwell of Mr Spike’s Bedtime Stories. These readings took place on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server, where you can find story readings throughout the year offered by our wonderful listeners.

We would like to thank Mike for all his hard work in making this happen, and to thank all the readers who brought it to life: Andy Goodman, Anthony Lee-Dudley, Brian Murphy, Graham Walmsley, Jen Fridy, Sarah Dovey, and Sue Savage.

You can also find our previous Christmas ghost stories below.

• “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
• “The Canterville Ghost” by Oscar Wilde
• “The Viy” by Nikolai Gogol
• “Told After Supper” by Jerome K Jerome
• “The Searcher of the End House” and “The Horse of the Invisible” by William Hope Hodgson

Matt on the Innsmouth Book Club

Matt recently joined our good friends Rob Poyton and Tim Mendees over on the Innsmouth Book Club podcast, discussing Call of Cthulhu and his own contributions to the game. He also did a reading from Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Maze of the Enchanter” for their sister podcast Strange Shadows.

Blasphemous Tome Issue 14

Issue 14 of The Blasphemous Tome will be going out in early January of 2026. This bumper issue includes two new scenarios by Matt and Scott, presenting loose conceptual sequels to “A Social Responsibility” and “Blackwater Creek”.

Anyone backing us at the $5 level or higher at the end of December will receive a print copy of the Tome, signed by our own gnarled hands. Backers at the $3 level will receive a voucher for a heavily discounted print-on-demand copy, and every backer will receive the PDF.

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We’re back and we’re watching the skies. You never know when some gannet might decide to kamikaze its way into your skull, or a mob of hawks take exception to your woodwork and peck it to splinters. We’ve decided to turn to two experts for advice, but their approaches don’t really mesh. Daphne du Maurier would have us hunker down and wait for the inevitable, while Alfred Hitchcock favours stalking your love interest, barely even addressing the avian threat. We’re beginning to think these so-called experts are for the birds.

Main Topic: The Birds

The Birds is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best-loved films, and one of his few forays into outright horror. It was also one of three features that he directed based on stories by Daphne du Maurier. But just how much does the film resemble du Maurier’s story? And which version provides better inspiration for Call of Cthulhu?

Our Guest Host

We are delighted to welcome Ross Bryant back as our guest host for this episode. You may know Ross from The Improvised Shakespeare Company, Dropout TV, The Glass Cannon Network, or the many Call of Cthulhu games he and Scott have played together on Ain’t Slayed Nobody.

Most recently, Ross has launched his own podcast, called Push the Roll With Ross Bryant, where he runs fully improvised games of Call of Cthulhu, based on listener suggestions, for various friends from the worlds of comedy, improv, and tabletop gaming. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Daphne du Maurier
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• Rebecca (1940)
• Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
• Jamaica Inn (1939)
• The Infernal World Of Branwell Bronte by Daphne du Maurier
• “Don’t Look Now” by Daphne du Maurier
• Don’t Look Now (1973)
• Wreckers
• Evan Hunter
• 87th Precinct
• Audition by Ryu Murakami
• Audition (1999)

• Psycho (1960)
• Psycho by Robert Bloch
• Big Little Lies
• The Birds by Frank Baker
• The Terror by Arthur Machen
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
• Indian ringneck
• Passenger pigeons
• The Blitz
• World War Cthulhu: London
• The Phoney War
• The Happening (2008)
• John Wyndham
• The Death of Grass by John Christopher

• The Rats by James Herbert
• Slugs by Shaun Hutson
• Crabs series by Guy N Smith
• Doomwatch
• Long Weekend (1978)
• Phase IV (1974)
• Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)
• Sharknado (2013)
• When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
• High Anxiety (1977)
• “A Streetcar Named Marge” from The Simpsons
• Herschell Gordon Lewis
• Savage by Richard Laymon
• Mulholland Drive (2001)

News

Christmas Ghost Story Reading

Our good friend Mike Perceval-Maxwell of Mr Spike’s Bedtime Stories is once again organising our annual Christmas ghost story reading. This year, we are presenting “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen, with an exciting cast of guest readers.

The readings will take place on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server over four nights, between the 15th and 18th of December inclusive. Each reading will start at 22:30 GMT and last for 30-40 minutes.

As per previous years, we are recording these readings and releasing them on the Good Friends’ podcast feed. The first part will be going out just after this episode.

You can find our previous Christmas ghost stories below.

• “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
• “The Canterville Ghost” by Oscar Wilde
• “The Viy” by Nikolai Gogol
• “Told After Supper” by Jerome K Jerome
• “The Searcher of the End House” and “The Horse of the Invisible” by William Hope Hodgson

Blasphemous Tome Issue 14

Issue 14 of The Blasphemous Tome will be going out in early January of 2026. This bumper issue includes two new scenarios by Matt and Scott, presenting loose conceptual sequels to “A Social Responsibility” and “Blackwater Creek”.

Anyone backing us at the $5 level or higher at the end of December will receive a print copy of the Tome, signed by our own gnarled hands. Backers at the $3 level will receive a voucher for a heavily discounted print-on-demand copy, and every backer will receive the PDF.

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We’re back and we’re talking to ourselves. Not everyone has an interior monologue, but apparently exterior ones are even rarer. Describing your life in real time like the voiceover from some hard-boiled detective movie may raise some eyebrows, but it is damn good practice for narration in Call of Cthulhu. It is also a good way of drowning out your own interior voice. No one wants to listen to that. If they did, podcasts would never have taken off.

Main Topic: Narration in Call of Cthulhu

Narration lies at the heart of tabletop roleplaying. The worlds we play in are all shared spaces we create in our heads. In traditional RPGs, such as Call of Cthulhu, most of this worldbuilding and description is in the hands of the GM. So how can we, as Keepers, bring the world to life at the gaming table? What are some techniques we’ve picked up over the years? And what approaches have we learned to avoid?

Our Guest Host

We are delighted to welcome Ross Bryant back as our guest host for this episode. You may know Ross from The Improvised Shakespeare Company, Dropout TV, The Glass Cannon Network, or the many Call of Cthulhu games he and Scott have played together on Ain’t Slayed Nobody.

Most recently, Ross has launched his own podcast, called Push the Roll With Ross Bryant, where he runs fully improvised games of Call of Cthulhu, based on listener suggestions, for various friends from the worlds of comedy, improv, and tabletop gaming. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Blade Runner RPG
• “Intersections” from World War Cthulhu: Cold War
• Grizzly Peaks Radio
• Pulp Cthulhu
• “Dead Boarder” from Gateways to Terror
• Ain’t Slayed Nobody
• Unknown Armies
• “What Makes That Windmill Bleed So?” on Push the Roll With Ross Bryant
• “The Colour Out of Space” by HP Lovecraft
• Blades in the Dark
• “The Star Brothers” on How We Roll
• “The Burning Stars” from Terrors From Beyond
• The Sixth Sense (1999)
• “Time For Chaos” on Glass Cannon
• Into the Darkness

• The Two-Headed Serpent
• The Beiderbecke Trilogy
• The Venture Bros.
• The Osterman Weekend by Robert Ludlum
• Running Blind by Desmond Bagley
• The Time Machine by HG Wells
• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Diogenes of Sinope
• “Signal to Noise” by Colin Richards
• Candle Cove
• Symphony Entertainment
• The Stanley Parable
• Slay the Princess
• Regency Cthulhu

News

Christmas Ghost Story Reading

Our good friend Mike Perceval-Maxwell of Mr Spike’s Bedtime Stories is once again organising our annual Christmas ghost story reading. This year, we will be presenting “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen, with an exciting cast of guest readers.

The readings will take place on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server over four nights, between the 15th and 18th of December inclusive. Each reading will start at 22:30 GMT and last for 30-40 minutes.

As per previous years, we plan to record these readings and release them on the Good Friends’ podcast feed. You can find our previous Christmas ghost stories below.

• “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
• “The Canterville Ghost” by Oscar Wilde
• “The Viy” by Nikolai Gogol
• “Told After Supper” by Jerome K Jerome
• “The Searcher of the End House” and “The Horse of the Invisible” by William Hope Hodgson

Matt and Scott at Illusion Con

Matt and Scott will be on various panels at this year’s Illusion Horror Con over the weekend of the 5th-7th of December. We are still finalising details, but you should be able to find them at the convention website.

Blasphemous Tome Issue 14

Issue 14 of The Blasphemous Tome will be going out in early January of 2026. This bumper issue includes two new scenarios by Matt and Scott, presenting loose conceptual sequels to “A Social Responsibility” and “Blackwater Creek”.

Anyone backing us at the $5 level or higher at the end of December will receive a print copy of the Tome, signed by our own gnarled hands. Backers at the $3 level will receive a voucher for a heavily discounted print-on-demand copy, and every backer will receive the PDF.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More