Other Podcasts Archives - Page 5 of 7

The Seven Geases

25 October, 2016

We’re back and we’re following up last episode’s discussion of Clark Ashton Smith with a look at one of his stories. The Seven Geases is part of Smith’s Hyperborean cycle, the series of his that most intersects with the Cthulhu Mythos. In fact, the The Seven Geases adds more entities to the Mythos than any other single Smith story, making it a fascinating read for Call of Cthulhu Keepers.

As usual, we dig into aspects of the story that would make good gaming material. The Seven Geases is a little different than the types of stories we normally discuss. While many of its elements have found their way into Lovecraftian horror fiction and games, the story itself is a weird mix of sword-and-sorcery and black comedy. This disparity of genres has never stopped people incorporating elements from Smith’s stories into Call of Cthulhu games, however, and usually to great effect.

Even with this in mind, however, Call of Cthulhu Keepers who read The Seven Geases for inspiration may find it a strange and jarring experience. While the story introduces major Mythos entities, such as Abhoth and Atlatch-Nacha, and reincorporates a number of others, the way in which they behave differs markedly from their use in Call of Cthulhu. Mythos deities are rarely as chatty as those encountered here.

“Just pull up a corpse and sit down. Now, let’s have a nice little chat about blood sacrifices. Scone?”

If this episode inspires you to run a game set in Hyperborea, good friend of the Good Friends Stephanie McAlea has put together a rather lovely map of the lost continent. Stephanie has been the cartographer of most of the work we have written for Chaosium, and does excellent work. You can buy her map via DriveThruRPG, or download it directly if you back her on Patreon.

As Bret Kramer, another good friend of the Good Friends, pointed out, we neglected to mention The Double Shadow podcast in our overview of Smith. This was a major oversight. If you have any interest in Smith and his work, you should definitely give it a listen. The hosts know their subject well and delve into each story and its context in loving detail.

And still speaking of good friends of the Good Friends, we mention in the episode how Frank Delventhal amazed and alarmed us with his feats of strength during our recent chat with Patreon backers. Frank has made videos of some of these feats and placed them where lesser mortals may see them. One particularly terrifying example may be found below.

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Actual play recording with the How We Roll crew

27 July, 2016

Earlier this month, Paul and I joined Joe and Eoghan from the How We Roll podcast for a Call of Cthulhu one-shot. Unfortunately, Matt was unable to join us. Mike Mason GMed for the session, using Servants of the Lake, a scenario from the forthcoming Chaosium collection, Doors to Darkness.

We recorded the game, and Joe chopped it up into three episodes, along with a short postscript where we chatted about Call of Cthulhu. If you’ve listened to How We Roll before, you’ll know that Joe is a master of applying sound effects and background music, and this episode is no exception.

All the episodes are now available on Soundcloud. Alternatively, here is the episode downloads page on the How We Roll website, where you can select Servants of the Lake from the drop-down menu.

The Smart Party talk about Unknown Armies

24 January, 2016

If your memory can stretch back to those dim days before Christmas, you may recall that we had a showdown at Dragonmeet with Baz and Gaz, the hosts of the What Would the Smart Party Do?…

The Grognard Files

30 December, 2015

The late 1970s and early ’80s were an exciting time to be a British gamer. Roleplaying games were growing in popularity, selling in numbers that make modern publishers weep. New publishers popped up almost every…

Special: Dragonmeet 2015 with The Smart Party

16 December, 2015

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You may have seen or heard us mention that we co-hosted a seminar at the recent Dragonmeet convention in London, along with our good friends Baz and Gaz from the What Would the Smart Party Do? podcast. The topic was “Is there too much Cthulhu in gaming?”, with Baz and Gaz arguing the case for the prosecution, Matt and Scott offering a spirited defence, and Paul as chair, occasionally remembering that he was supposed to be impartial.

Paul’s Jackson Elias T-shirt should not be taken as any indication of bias.

We recorded the proceedings, including heckles, digressions and the occasional rain of fish. The audio quality is better than we anticipated, although it is sometimes difficult to hear the questions from the audience.

Photos courtesy of Tiffany Sanderson.

The Smart Party, being more organised than us, have released their version of the recording already. It is much the same, but with slightly different post-production and Gaz doing the introduction instead of us. If you’ve already listened to that, you probably don’t need to download this episode. We will pout, however.