Top 5 Scary TV Programmes

10 July, 2013

This week we talk about our favourite horror TV programmes. Some of these could be better classified as science fiction, drama or even comedy, but they all disturbed us in that special way that horror should.

Comedies are supposed to make you laugh until you cry.

These programmes span over fifty years of television, and while some may be a bit tame by today’s standards, they all still stand up as stories. Paul has verified this using his children as experimental test subjects. Electric shocks were applied only as necessary.

When did you say this was made?

If you don’t want to know what the programmes are until you hear us ramble on about them, look away now.

I think I see spoilers up ahead.

The programmes we each chose are as follow.

Scott:

Matt:

Paul:

You can find all the episodes of Beasts, The Kingdom, They Came from Somewhere Else, Jam and Urban Gothic on YouTube. Be warned that Jam is strong stuff, with lots of swearing, nudity and situations that will make your soul wither up and die.

Happy viewing, and don’t have nightmares!

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Pushed Rolls in Call of Cthulhu

27 June, 2013

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In this week’s episode, we talk about the new Push mechanic in Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition.

If you’re not familiar with this change, it allows a player to retry a failed roll, but only if their character performs some action that justifies it and the player accepts that there will be dire consequences if they fail this second roll.

We discuss examples of how the mechanic can be used, ways that a Keeper can build up tension using Pushed rolls and possible consequences relating to different skills. We also digress a lot, because we’re poorly disciplined.

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Top 5 Scary Films

21 June, 2013

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This week we put down the dice and talk about films instead. Specifically, we each choose the five films we found most frightening and then ramble on about them for a while. Even once Paul cut most of the digressions (including a section on Eden Lake, which probably should have been on my list), we still had an hour of this.

These aren’t necessarily our favourite horror movies (some of them aren’t horror movies at all, and at least one is unlikely to be anyone’s favourite), but they are the films that scared us most when we watched them.

Frying Tonight!

There are a few spoilers, but we avoided them for any film made in the last ten years. Matt did complain about us spoiling one film until we pointed out that it is older than he is.

Speaking of spoilers, the films we chose are listed below, along with IMDB links. If you would prefer not to know what they are before you listen to the episode, look away now.

I warned you not to look

Paul:

Scott:

Matt:

Happy listening, and try not to have nightmares. Especially not about Torgo’s knees.

The scariest thing about this movie

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Connections in Call of Cthulhu 7th edition

15 June, 2013

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In the second episode of the podcast, we run through creating Connections, one of the new mechanics in Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition.

Connections are ties that an investigator has to the good and normal things in life, including comforting beliefs, treasured items and loved ones. These can help the investigator through bad times, but they are also at risk of destruction and corruption at the hands (pseudopods?) of the Mythos.

Join us as we create an investigator background using these rules, explain some of the options and discuss how they can be tailored to your own preferred style of play.

The good news is that we had a better microphone for this episode, so you can actually hear us. The bad news is that I set the recording levels too high, and there is some slight distortion. The next episode is much clearer now that we’ve exhausted most of the mistakes we can make on that front.

There is a small amount of swearing in this episode. We’re British, and swearing is our national pastime. If this is the kind of thing that puts you off a podcast, please let us know in the comments and we can look into bleeping the worst parts should there be demand for it.

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Using Pre-Generated PCs

7 June, 2013

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Note: Please, for the love of all that is eldritch and unspeakable, do not use this episode as your introduction to The Good Friends of Jackson Elias! We have learned a lot more about podcasting since releasing this. Our more recent work no longer sounds like it was recorded in a dhole’s rectum. If you would like to sample our work, please try some episodes from number 70 onwards.

Main Topic

One of the things Paul, Matt and I decided we wanted to do with this site was host a podcast. While none of us have done more than be a guest on someone else’s podcast before, we all have opinions and a propensity to talk too much, so it seemed like a natural fit.

Well, here’s the first episode.

The show is called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias. If you want to know why you can ask Paul. I had to.

This is mainly a forum for the three of us to talk about Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft, horror games in general, horror films and anything else that interests us. We will have a specific theme for each episode — this week it’s player characters.

In particular, we discuss the merits of pre-generated characters for one-shot scenarios and convention games, making the characters the focus of the game and some tips for lazy GMs.

Did I mention that this is the first episode? As we’re all quite new to this, that means that there are stumbles, mistakes, inappropriate laughter, crosstalk, digressions and general incompetence, and that’s just from me. At least half the running time is made up of me saying, “Um.” Please be gentle.

With any luck, we will get better at this as we go on. Maybe.

The audio quality is also a bit rough this week. I have a fancy condenser microphone, which records things nice and clearly, but I managed to misplace the cable for it. We recorded this episode using the microphone on Paul’s iMac, and it’s a bit quiet.

As Paul mentions at the start of the episode, we have no fixed schedule for releasing episodes. It may work out as a couple of times a month, but we’ll mostly be guided by our free time and whether we have something interesting to say. We are trying to keep the episodes between 30-45 minutes.

Anyway, we all hope you enjoy the episode and find it of interest. Please drop us a comment here if you have any feedback, even if it’s “Stop saying ‘um’ so much, Scott!”