We’re back and we’re going round in circles. Driving around Milton Keynes has prepared us for such eventualities, although these are temporal loops rather than roundabouts. Then again, what is a time loop but a four-dimensional roundabout? Let’s just hope we can work out how to find an exit before we go around yet again. This is murder on our tyres. And our watches.

Main Topic: Time Travel in Call of Cthulhu part 2

As we mentioned last episode, we ran out of time to discuss time. This means we’ve gone back to the discussion, delving into psychic time travel as well as different varieties of time loops. We also spend a bit of time (it’s really hard not to make jokes here) talking about the way time travel has been presented in Mythos fiction and the Call of Cthulhu RPG.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Quantum Leap
• Sliders
• “The Shadow Out of Time” by HP Lovecraft
• Trancers (1984)
• The Terminator (1984)
• “The Hounds of Tindalos” by Frank Belknap Long
• Pulp Cthulhu
• Robert E Howard
• A Cold Fire Within
• The Butterfly Effect (2004)

• Replay by Ken Grimwood
• Groundhog Day (1993)
• “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
• Triangle (2009)
• Salvage (2006)
• Happy Death Day (2017)
• Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
• Russian Doll
• “Gatsby and the Great Race”
• Doctor Who: “The Claws of Axos”

• Supernatural: “Mystery Spot”
• Travelers
• Agents of SHIELD
• Stargate SG-1: “Window of Opportunity”
• Prince of Darkness (1987)
• The Lake House (2006)
• Somewhere in Time (1980)
• Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson
• Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
• “The Little Black Bag” By CM Kornbluth
• Fear’s Sharp Little Needles

• Into the Darkness
• Cthulhu Britannica: London
• “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” by HP Lovecraft and E Hoffman Price
• “The Silver Key” by HP Lovecraft
• Yog-Sothoth
• “The Plutonian Drug” by Clark Ashton Smith
• Crime Traveller
• “The Dead Past” by Isaac Asimov
• Four Past Midnight by Stephen King
• The Langoliers
• “Ubbo-Sathla” by Clark Ashton Smith
• Transmetropolitan

News

The Blasphemous Tome issue 11

The next issue of The Blasphemous Tome will soon be ready to creep its way across the globe. This is the fully licenced Call of Cthulhu fanzine we produce for Patreon backers of the podcast. Issue 11 features a gorgeous full-colour cover from John Sumrow and a brand-new Call of Cthulhu scenario from our own Scott Dorward, titled “Blackshade”. Anyone backing us at the $5 level or higher will receive a print copy of the Tome, signed by our arthritic hands.

A Weekend With Good Friends

Player signups for A Weekend With Good Friends will soon open!

This is the online RPG convention organised by our lovely listeners and hosted on our Discord server. While the main source of information is said Discord server, we also have a web page with important details and links. We will update this as things progress.

Don’t worry if you missed the cut-off for GM signups. There will be pickup games running throughout the weekend.

The important dates are:

• Friday 2nd – Thursday 15th June — GM signups
• Friday 23rd – Thursday 29th June — Player signups
• Friday 30th June — Lottery results announced
• Friday 7th – Sunday 9th July — AWWGF

The Murder Shack and Blackshade on Ain’t Slayed Nobody

A few years ago, Scott ran “The Murder Shack”, his scenario from issue 5b of The Blasphemous Tome, for our good friends over at Ain’t Slayed Nobody. Cuppycup has recently edited the audio and produced it as a podcast, with music, sound effects and voice acting for a key NPC role. You can hear the end product on ASN now.

As if that weren’t enough, a recording of “Blackshade”, Scott’s scenario from issue 11, will be available on Ain’t Slayed Nobody next month. Watch your feed for more details.

Sean F Smith Interview

Following our recent episodes about Victorian Spiritualism, Scott interviewed Sean F Smith for a follow-up special. Sean is a stage magician and mentalist, with a lifelong interest in the techniques of fraudulent mediumship. The discussion goes into the psychology of trickery, along some history of how Spiritualism and stage magic evolved together in Victorian Britain.

Scott on Bud & Griff’s RPG Creepshow

Bud and Griff recently invited Scott onto their (relatively) new gaming podcast. As well as discussing horror gaming and podcasting, the duo asked Scott about his weirdest uncanny experience. This gave Scott the perfect opportunity to talk about that time he got roped into performing an exorcism.

The episode will be released on their public feed this coming weekend.

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We’re back with our first special episode for a while. After our recent look into Victorian Spiritualism, Sean F Smith contacted us, offering to discuss the topic from the perspective of stage magic.

Sean is a magician and mentalist by profession, with a special interest in séances and mediums. We discussed the history of Victorian magic and how it relates to fraudulent mediums. There are also a few diversions into the psychology of trickery, techniques to encourage creativity, and the secret of how to hammer a nail into your face.

You can find Sean’s work on DriveThruRPG, and you can check out his websites below.

• Sean’s magic website
• Sean’s RPG website

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Victorian Spiritualism
• Mentalism
• Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer
• Harry Houdini
• The Prestige by Christopher Priest
• The Prestige (2006)
• Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin
• Nevil Maskelyne
• Penny Dreadful: City of Angels
• James Randi
• Derren Brown
• The Davenport Brothers
• Davenport’s magic shop

• Spirit cabinet
• The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
• Domain-specific learning
• Practical Mental Effects by Theodore Annemann
• Spirit slates
• Dedi
• Penn & Teller
• Ectoplasm
• Proportionality bias
• Sideshow/geek magic
• Blockhead trick
• Jim Rose Circus Sideshow
• Phossy jaw

• Cold reading
• Hot reading
• Barnum statements
• The Fox Sisters
• Surrealism
• Automatic writing
• Pareidolia
• Edward de Bono
• Lateral thinking
• PO: Beyond Yes and No by Edward de Bono
• Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono
• Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham
• Nightmare Alley (2021)

• Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Cottingley Fairies
• Shell game
• Find the lady
• Birds aren’t real
• Chung Ling Soo
• Bullet catch
• The Expert at the Card Table
• The Indian Rope Trick
• The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server

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We’re back, or should that be forward? Time does have a tendency to jump around, and you’re never quite when you thought you were. Days pass in years and years pass in days. And the older you get, the stranger this relationship with time becomes. Sure, you might struggle to remember what you just had for lunch, but you have a pretty good idea of what you might have been doing ten years ago. In our case, we were starting a podcast.

Main Topic: Time Travel in Call of Cthulhu part 1

The Good Friends of Jackson Elias are ten years old! Well, not the Good Friends ourselves, obviously. One look at our grizzled countenances should disabuse you of that. If you tried to total up our lived years, you’d quickly run out of fingers. And toes. And any other protuberances you may have. But the podcast itself will have been around for ten years as of the 8th of June 2023. That’s 262 regular episodes, 42 specials, and 12 backer-only episodes. No wonder we’re tired.

We figured we’d mark this milestone by discussing the role of time travel in Call of Cthulhu. In one form or another, time travel has been a part of stories for about as long as people have been telling them. Genre fiction and media have codified a lot of tropes, however, some derived from actual science and some the product of pure imagination. We discuss some of our favourite media presentations of time travel in its various forms, looking for inspiration for our games of Call of Cthulhu.

Once again, we found this was a larger topic than we’d anticipated and have had to spill over into a second episode. Join us next time when we discuss time loops, as well as the presentation of time travel in Call of Cthulhu and Mythos fiction.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• The Blasphemous Tome
• The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server
• The Smart Party
• The Grognard Files
• How We Roll
• Ain’t Slayed Nobody
• Into the Darkness
• The Miskatonic University Podcast
• Modern Mythos
• Special relativity
• “A View From a Hill” by MR James
• Time travel on Wikipedia
• Rip Van Winkle
• Army of Darkness (1992)

• Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
• Strange Attractors by William Sleator
• Planet of the Apes (1968)
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
• The Expanse by James SA Corey
• Doctor Who
• Sapphire & Steel
• Star Trek
• Deep Space Nine: “Trials and Tribble-ations”
• Doctor Who: “Pyramids of Mars”
• Doctor Who: “The Chase”
• Doctor Who: “The Three Doctors”
• “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury

• “Behold the Man” by Michael Moorcock
• “Let’s Go to Golgotha!” by Garry Kilworth
• Back to the Future (1985)
• Back to the Future Part II (1989)
• Back to the Future Part III (1990)
• Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
• Dark
• 1899
• Dark website
• Timecrimes (2007)
• Predestination (2014)
• “—All You Zombies—” by Robert A Heinlein
• Grandfather paradox
• Many Worlds

• 11/22/63 by Stephen King
• 11.22.63 miniseries
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• Star Trek: Enterprise
• This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• Looper (2012)
• Primer (2004)
• Superconductors
• Travelers
• “The Shadow Out of Time” by HP Lovecraft
• The Terminator (1984)
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

News

The Blasphemous Tome issue 11

The next issue of The Blasphemous Tome will soon be ready to creep its way across the globe. This is the fully licenced Call of Cthulhu fanzine we produce for Patreon backers of the podcast. Issue 11 features a gorgeous full-colour cover from John Sumrow and a brand-new Call of Cthulhu scenario from our own Scott Dorward titled “Blackshade”. Anyone backing us at the $5 level or higher will receive a print copy of the Tome, signed by our arthritic hands.

A Weekend With Good Friends

GM signups are now open for A Weekend With Good Friends! This is the online RPG convention organised by our lovely listeners and hosted on our Discord server. While the main source of information is said Discord server, we also have a web page with important details and links. We will update this as things progress.

If you would like to offer a game and have it listed in the programme, please check out the AWWGF GM signup page between the 2nd and 15th of June. Don’t worry if you miss the cut-off, however — there will be pickup games running throughout the weekend.

The important dates are:

• Friday 2nd – Thursday 15th June — GM signups
• Friday 23rd – Thursday 29th June — Player signups
• Friday 30th June — Lottery results announced
• Friday 7th – Sunday 9th July — AWWGF

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Stitcher | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More