We’re back and we’re getting on a bit. Turning 250 is a sobering milestone. Worse, we seem to be getting a bit peculiar in our dotage. Or maybe it’s just the world around us that’s getting stranger. Either way, this gives us an excuse to ramble on about weird things. So we have.

Main Topic: Making Call of Cthulhu Weird

Given that this is our 250th episode, we thought we’d tackle a big topic. While Call of Cthulhu is primarily known as a horror RPG, the Mythos is so much more than simple scares. Its mixture of science fiction, fantasy and horror reflects its origins in weird fiction. But what does that actually mean? And, more importantly, how can we make our games weirder?

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Weird fiction
• Weird Tales
• The Weird, edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer
• The New Weird, edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer
• “The Outsider” by HP Lovecraft
• The Sunset Warrior by Eric Van Lustbader
• Twin Peaks
• Clark Ashton Smith
• Robert E Howard
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by HP Lovecraft
• Yellow Submarine (1968)
• Over the Edge
• “The Seven Geases” by Clark Ashton Smith
• Lord Dunsany
• A Dreamer’s Tales by Lord Dunsany
• The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany
• Deliria

• “The Shadow Out of Time” by HP Lovecraft
• “The Whisperer in Darkness” by HP Lovecraft
• “Dockside Dogs”
• “Gatsby and the Great Race”
• Lost Highway (1997)
• “A Saturnine Chalice” from Dead Light and Other Dark Turns
• Unknown Armies
• “The Hospice” by Robert Aickman
• Jonathan Carroll
• Magical realism
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Flotsam and Jetsam on How We Roll
• Brian Courtemanche
• The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch

• Wild Palms
• The Prisoner
• The Twilight Zone
• Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• William S Burroughs
• QAnon
• David Icke
• Conspiracy theories
• The X-Files
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin
• Dagon (2001)
• Stuart Gordon
• Delta Green: Countdown
• Carcosa
• Metropolis Sourcebook
• Kult
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

News

Season’s Greetings!

December is a time for celebration around the world, and we are well into the Christmas season here in the UK. But that’s not the only thing we’re celebrating. As we’ve mentioned, this is our 250th episode! Well, 250th standard episode. By the time you include all the specials and backer-only releases, it’s more like 300. Blimey!

Scott in Trebuchet Magazine

Scott has written another article for Trebuchet Magazine. This is a short piece about his experiences with aphantasia and how it has shaped his imagination. It appears in issue 12, subtitled “Realities”. As ever, the article (and the whole magazine, of course!) is beautifully laid-out and accompanied by evocative art.

If you fancy picking up a copy, our good friends at Trebuchet have provided a 20% discount for our listeners. Just enter the code “dorwardagainstmine” when checking out.

Getting Creative With Cthulhu

Paul appeared on a panel with Mike Mason and Heinrich Moore at the recent Miskatonic Repository Convention. The topic was “Getting Creative With Cthulhu” and you can find a recording of it below.

The Blasphemous Tome issue 10

This is your last chance to get a signed copy of issue 10 of The Blasphemous Tome. While the PDF of this issue will continue to be available for download from Patreon, this is your only opportunity to get a physical copy signed by all three of the Good Friends.

Anyone backing us at the $5 level before the end of December 2022 will receive a signed, printed copy, delivered into your hands through eldritch means. Or the post. See either our Patreon page or the post about The Blasphemous Tome on this very website for further details.

The Blasphemous Tome is a Call of Cthulhu fanzine licensed by Chaosium, and issue 10 includes a full-length scenario from our very own Matt Sanderson.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

We’re back and we’re heading deep beneath the earth. We’ve heard that there’s nothing but good things down there in the endless dark. Admittedly, we’ve mainly heard that from the sinister voices that whisper to us from said darkness, but we’re sure they’re fine. After all, what harm could befall us down there? It’s nit like we might stumble into the web of a monstrous spider or stray into a pool of vile fecundity, right? At least if we bump into Tsathoggua, we can just give him a little tickle under the chin and hope he’s too lazy to eat us. He is such a cutie pie!

Main Topic: Mythos Deities – Tsathoggua, Atlach-Nacha and Abhoth

This episode is our latest exploration of the deities of the Cthulhu Mythos. We have devoted previous episodes to Dagon, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Hastur, Azathoth, Nodens, Ubbo-Sathla and Mordiggian, Ithaqua, Cthulhu, Daoloth and Eihort, Gla’aki and Y’golonac. Once again, we are returning to the creations of Clark Ashton Smith, digging deep into the origins and development of three of his deities: Tsathoggua, Atlach-Nacha and Abhoth.

All three of these gods made their first appearances in Smith’s tale, “The Seven Geases”, which we discussed way back in episode 90. We thought it was long past time we delved into the entities themselves.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Clark Ashton Smith
• “The Seven Geases” by Clark Ashton Smith
• Hyperborean Cycle
• Weird Tales
• “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” by Clark Ashton Smith
• “The Whisperer in Darkness” by HP Lovecraft
• At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft
• “The Shadow Out of Time” by HP Lovecraft
• “The Mound” by HP Lovecraft for Zealia Bishop
• The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson
• Malleus Monstrorum

• The Two-Headed Serpent
• Last Rites
• Trail of Tsathoggua
• Spawn of Azathoth
• Masks of Nyarlathotep
• A Cold Fire Within
• “The Green Death”
• How We Roll
• Shelob
• Anansi
• Iktomi
• Uttu
• Neith
• Arachne

• Incy Wincy Spider
• Yog-Sothoth
• The Believers (1987)
• The Blasphemous Tome issue 9
• “The Dreaming Ward” on The Cult of Chaos
• “The Reeling Midnight” from New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley
• When Cthulhu Met Atlach-Nacha by Alan Ryker
• The 1922 Committee
• Frankenstein by Mary Shellye
• Pygmalion
• Nameless Horrors
• HP Lovecraft’s Dunwich
• Asylum (1972)

News

Concrete Cow 22.5

Matt and Paul recently attended the Concrete Cow RPG convention in Milton Keynes. They spend a little time discussing the game of Vaesen that Matt ran there. And thank you to all the listeners who said hello on the day!

Interview with Juan Diego Escobar Alzate

A little while ago, Scott interviewed Juan Diego Escobar Alzate, the writer and director behind the Colombian folk horror film, Luz: The Flower of Evil. This took place on the Good Friends Discord server, and included topics such as the influence of Alejandro Jodorowsky, how an ayahuasca trip reshaped the script at the last minute, and which other Latin American horror filmmakers we should be looking out for.

You can find Scott’s full review of Luz on this very site, as part of his 2022 October Horror Movie Challenge.

My Little Sister Wants You to Suffer

Paul has recently released his Call of Cthulhu scenario “My Little Sister Wants You to Suffer” on the Miskatonic Repository. The cover and internal artwork are by our good friend John Sumrow. Anyone backing us on Patreon before the end of December 2022 will receive a voucher for 30% off their purchase.

Christmas ghost story on the Good Friends Discord

This Christmas will see another live ghost story reading on the Good Friends Discord server. Once again, this is being organised by our good friend Mike Perceval-Maxwell, the golden voice behind Mr Spike’s Bedtime Stories.

Following the success of “A Christmas Carol” in 2020 and “The Canterville Ghost” in 2021, Mike is directing a full-cast performance of Nikolai Gogol’s weird folkloric tale, “The Viy”. Expect witchcraft, the unquiet dead and, if you’re lucky, a special guest appearance from the king of the gnomes himself!

As well as Mike, the cast includes Dom Allen, John Casey, Sarah Dovey Rina Haenze, Sue Savage, and our own Scott Dorward. The performance will take place over four nights, at 22:30 GMT on the 15th, 16th, 20th and 23rd of December.

Do come along to our Discord server and listen live if you can. If you are unable to do so, however, we plan to record the performances and release them as special episodes on the podcast feed later this month.

The Blasphemous Tome issue 10

The first consignment of issue 10 of The Blasphemous Tome will be shipping to our Patreon backers within days! There is still just enough time to secure a printed copy, however. Anyone backing us at the $5 level before the end of December 2022 will receive a signed, printed copy. See either our Patreon page or the post about The Blasphemous Tome on this very website.

While the PDF of this issue will be available download from Patreon until the heat death of the universe (give or take), this is your only opportunity to get a printed copy signed by all three of the Good Friends. The Blasphemous Tome is a Call of Cthulhu fanzine licensed by Chaosium and includes a full-length scenario from our own Matt Sanderson.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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

We’re back and we’re getting ready to snip. Our scissors are sharp, our tape is sticky and our minds are made up. This poor film doesn’t stand a chance. Sure, we could censor it carefully, preserving as much of the original narrative as possible, but would that really be safe? Far better to hack away in a frenzy of righteousness! And then, maybe, we can move on to cutting up the real source of corruption.

Main Topic: Censor

Following on from last episode’s discussion of moral panics over horror, we thought we’d look at a film that explores similar ideas. Censor is a 2021 British horror film, written and directed by Prano Bailey-Bond. It is set against the backdrop of the video nasties furore of the 1980s, following film censor Enid as she struggles to differentiate between imaginary horrors and real ones.

We use the film as a launching pad to discuss the more general topics of censorship, video nasties, and the not-so-good old days following the crackdown on horror films in the UK.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Is Horror Dangerous?
• Prano Bailey-Bond
• Nasty (2015)
• Video Nasties
• Michael Smiley
• Spaced
• A Field in England (2013)
• Nicholas Burns
• Nathan Barley
• Vincent Franklin
• The Thick of It
• Kim Newman
• The Evil Dead (1981)
• The Video Recordings Act 1984

• October Horror Movie Challenge
• Lucio Fulci
• Anthropophagous (1980)
• The Horror Geek YouTube channel
• British Board of Film Classification
• Deranged (1974)
• Ed Gein
• Fred West
• Twin Peaks
• Don’t Go in the Woods (1981)
• Don’t Go in the House (1979)
• Don’t Go Near the Park (1979)
• Don’t Look in the Basement (1973)
• Don’t Answer the Phone! (1980)
• Grindhouse (2007)

• Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (2010)
• Macrovision
• Cassandra Peterson, AKA Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
• Barbara Crampton
• Re-Animator and From Beyond
• Beyond the Gates (2016)
• Jakob’s Wife (2021)
• James Bulger
• Child’s Play 3 (1991)
• A Very Nervous Person’s Guide to Horror Movies by Mathias Clasen
• Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979)
• Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

News

The Blasphemous Tome issue 10

Issue 10 of The Blasphemous Tome will be shipping to our Patreon backers soon! There is still just enough time to secure your copy, however. See either our Patreon page or the page about The Blasphemous Tome on this very website.

As well as getting hold of this issue, backing us on Patreon grants immediate access to PDFs of previous issues. We are still in the process of converting a few earlier ones to PDF, but there are currently 7 available for download. Most of these contain full Call of Cthulhu scenarios, written by one of the Good Friends.

View Post

Paul at Dragonmeet 2022

Paul will be attending Dragonmeet 2022 on Saturday the 3rd of December, promoting the Rivers of London RPG with author Ben Aaronovitch. Stop by the Chaosium stand and say hi!

Matt and Scott at Illusion Horror Con

Matt and Scott will be (virtually) attending The Illusion Horror Con in December. Scott is running his scenario “Night Bus” for Call of Cthulhu. He is also appearing on two panels: Gamemastering Horror and Horror Inspiration From Other Media. Matt will be running his Kult scenario “Agglutination” and appearing on the Kult Setting panel.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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