Episode 263: Time Travel in Call of Cthulhu part 2

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.

Things we mention in this episode include:

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
a weekend with good friends logo small

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.

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 and friend

Things we mention in this episode include:

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.

If you ever wondered why our early episodes sound the way they do…

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.

The shed where it all started

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.

The teetering pile of books that thought it was a microphone stand

Things we mention in this episode include:

Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock

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:

a weekend with good friends logo small

We’re back and we’re stroking our chin serpents. The Byatis beard care regimen is a strange one and requires a little more anthropophagy than we normally indulge in. Still, it’s hard to argue with the results. The only real downside is the way we can be pulled away without notice whenever someone strokes an effigy of us. Even that is a small price to pay for such lustrous facial, um, hair. Yeah, let’s call it hair.

Cyäegha and Byatis

This episode is our latest exploration of the deities of the Cthulhu Mythos. We have devoted previous episodes to DagonShub-NiggurathYog-SothothNyarlathotepHasturAzathothNodensUbbo-Sathla and MordiggianIthaquaCthulhuDaoloth and EihortGla’akiY’golonac, and Tsathoggua, Atlach-Nacha and Abhoth.

Rather than focusing on the creations of a specific writer, we’ve chosen this episode’s pairing for their connections to specific places. Cyäegha comes from the work of Belgian weird fiction author Eddy Bertin, remaining Bertin’s best-known creation. The parentage of Byatis is more complicated, however, originating as a passing mention from Robert Bloch before being fleshed out by a young Ramsey Campbell. Both are unusual deities, however, and we find plenty to say about them.

Things we mention in this episode include:

News

Submissions for The Blasphemous Tome issue 11

While the next issue of The Blasphemous Tome is still a few months away, we’re currently open for submissions. If you have a short article, poem or piece of flash fiction of up to 500 words, or some artwork (black and white or colour) that you think we’d like, we’d love to see it! You can send them to submissions@blasphemoustomes.com

Submissions for this issue will be open until the end of April 2023.

The Blasphemous Tome is the fully licenced Call of Cthulhu fanzine we produce for Patreon backers of the podcast.

Covers of Tomes of yore

Nameless Horrors and Rivers of London

Some or all of us have been involved with two recent publications from Chaosium. First, there is the reprint of Nameless Horrors. This was the scenario collection the three of us penned as part of the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition Kickstarter, way back in 2015. Unlike every 7th ed book that followed, it was printed in black and white and issued as a softback. The new edition is a hardback and in full colour, however, finally matching the rest of the game line.

Hardcopies of the Rivers of London RPG are also beginning to ship. This is the RPG based on the urban fantasy series by Ben Aaronovitch.

Blasphemous Tome 4a Rerelease

We’re continuing our rereleases of out-of-print issues of our fanzine, The Blasphemous Tome. Issue 4a was one of our print-only publications and has not been available as a PDF until now. All Patreon backers of the Good Friends can now download the PDF, along with many other back issues. Anyone backing us at the $3 level or above before the end of March 2023 will also receive a voucher for a heavily discounted print-on-demand copy.

The Blasphemous Tome issue 4 cover
Thank you again to Evan Dorkin for his fantastic cover art!

The Good Friends on Really Dicey

Paul, Matt and Scott recently appeared on the Really Dicey YouTube channel to discuss the rerelease of Nameless Horrors. We talked about what inspired the book and what to expect from this new edition.

Episode 255: Listener Suggestions

We’re back and we’re listening to the strange voices that whisper to us from beyond the veil. Well, maybe they’re whispering from Twitter and Discord, but we’re not sure that’s any less frightening. At least they’re offering helpful suggestions. Opening oneself up to the dark spirits of Twitter can be a chancy thing.

Listener Suggestions

Late last year, we used Discord and Twitter to ask our listeners what kinds of things they’d like to hear us discuss. The response was overwhelming and we now have a massive list of possible topics. Although these suggestions were exceptional, there are a good number we’d struggle to turn into complete episodes. Rather than ignore these, we’ve decided to go through the replies and see what we can address succinctly.

We barely scratched the surface of the suggestions this time. As a result, we plan to revisit this list again soon in a follow-up episode.

Please do let us know if you have any suggestions of your own. We are always hungry for ideas. And cheese. But mostly ideas.

Thank you to Alixo, R’lyeh Scary and PTroilus on our Discord server for the topics we discuss in this episode.

Things we mention in this episode include:

Polaris RPG cover
Alien RPG cover

News

Submissions for The Blasphemous Tome issue 11

While the next issue of The Blasphemous Tome is still a few months away, we’re currently open for submissions. If you have a short article, poem or piece of flash fiction of up to 500 words, or some artwork (black and white or colour) that you think we’d like, we’d love to see it! You can send them to submissions@blasphemoustomes.com

Submissions for this issue will be open until the end of April 2023.

The Blasphemous Tome is the fully licenced Call of Cthulhu fanzine we produce for Patreon backers of the podcast.

Covers of Tomes of yore

Matt on Into the Darkness

Matt has been running more games for our good friends at Into the Darkness. In particular, he’s run a few scenarios from The Blasphemous Tome recently, including “Of This Men Shall Know Nothing” from issue 6 and “Educement” from issue 10.