THROWBACK THURSDAY: And So It Began (Again)

The first meeting of the Tuesday Knights (our gaming group) took place on August 19, 2008, when I ran the debut session of a new Castles & Crusades campaign for Nick, Pete, and Clare.

This was the first role-playing game I'd actually run for over a decade. I'd bottled out of running games several times since I'd come out of hospital in 2005 and was still very anxious about whether my health (both physically and mentally) would be up to the challenge.

In retrospect, one of the biggest mistakes I made in those early days was getting distracted by the "new shiny", switching systems to Labyrinth Lord and then grinding the game into the ground, so someone else had to run something instead.

If I could travel back to 2008, I'd tell my younger self to have faith and stick with Castles & Crusades. Who knows, if that had been the case, we could still be playing that campaign now? How incredible would that be?

In the 17 years since that fateful day in the dining room of our old house, our pool of potential players has blossomed, while Pete, Clare and I remain the consistent core. We were joined by Kevin, who has become another constant around the table, Steve, Simon, Meredith, Erica, Mark and, most recently, Mark's daughter, Rebecca.

While other demands on their time have seen Nick, Steve, Simon, Meredith, and Erica step away from the group, we still manage to corral a solid four or five people for our monthly sessions.

Despite the collapse of that original campaign, I did manage to run a three year fantasy campaign using Heroes and Other Worlds (a modern reworking of the classic GURPS-adjacent Fantasy Trip system), which ended with the destruction of the world.

Pete ran a number of Top Secret espionage games, Meredith presented us with a wholly homemade World of Warcraft adventure, Simon saw us right up to the gates of Castle Ravenloft in his 5e D&D Curse of Strahd campaign (which went 'online' during the COVID pandemic), Clare's run some memorable indie one-shots, and the other year Mark scared the bejeebers out of us with his self-penned Call of Cthulhu rural horror adventure.

In between these I've tried to run some other games, but they've invariably crashed-and-burned because of my insecurities, self-doubt, and limited attention span.

I'm hoping that, after my two recent debacles (with Shadowdark and Villains & Vigilantes) I've finally learned enough that when I'm next allowed to sit behind the gamesmaster's screen I'll be able to keep the train on the tracks.

However, our most enduring game has been Pete's "weird science" pulp adventure campaign that started as a 1950's "Atomic Horror" campaign using GURPS, then time-slipped to the 1930s for an epic Hollow Earth Expedition run, before, at the end of last year, switching systems again to Outgunned Adventures for more Indiana Jones-style shenanigans.

And through all this, my rock and number one cheerleader has been my wonderful non-geeky wife, Rachel, who may not get the delights of roleplaying games, but understands how important they are to me.

Every month she cooks our group pizza, serves up drinks, and joins in the pre-game banter as we all catch-up on whatever is going on in our lives.

Last year's gaming plans were largely scuppered by my back problems (osteoarthritis), but hopefully that's behind me now (see what I did there?) and 2026 will be a return to regular gaming for the foreseeable future.

How I Met Your Dungeon Master

One of the (many) reasons I loved the sitcom How I Met Your Mother was its core reliance on one of my favourite narrative tools: the unreliable narrator.

The entire show, in a nutshell, was a selection of anecdotes that the character Ted was telling his two children in 2030 building up to the moment that he met their mother (the clue's in the title).

This gave the show the ability to take 'pauses' mid-episode, rewind time, tell stories multiple times from different viewpoints (through the filter of how they were relayed to Ted) and generally play around with the Truth of "what really happened".

It also allowed for stories-within-stories as characters, already in Ted's story of the week, then recounted their own (sometimes equally unreliable) accounts of something else that happened to them.

One of the other reasons
I loved the show

These 'stories-within-stories' then gave those characters the chance to break the fourth wall and talk directly to their audience (who are technically the primary characters of the show rather than us, the viewers, if you follow me).

But could you simulate this in a roleplaying game?

Does it muck around too much with the unspoken social contract that everything the Games Master tells his players is fact (in some shape or form)?

Would just one of your players be your "Ted" (i.e. the character who has achieved his GOAL and is now telling the tale of HOW he achieved it)? Or could everyone in your game be a "Ted"?

I realise there are probably modern/indie story games that use a model, at least vaguely, resembling this story structure, but could it work in a more classical, old school-style game environment?

I'm guessing not for something like Call of Cthulhu or Dungeons & Dragons as success is never guaranteed, but there must be some systems - and genres - this would work with (most superhero games? Cinematic Unisystem?).

As ever I welcome your opinions and feedback.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

 

"... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

- HP Lovecraft 

Filmed as an authentic, 1920's black and white, silent movie, The Call of Cthulhu is an amazing 47-minute piece of work, perfectly encapsulating the psychological horror of H.P. Lovecraft's iconic story.

Styling it as a movie that Lovecraft himself might have seen in the 1920s is a stroke of genius by the filmmakers of the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, as it allows for considerable leeway when it comes to the necessary effects required to bring the Great Cthulhu - and his island home of R'lyeh - to life.

The story itself is a puzzle box, an onion of layers upon layers, beginning with a man (Matt Foyer) in an asylum recounting to his doctor (John Bolen), how he was charged with sorting out the affairs of his great-uncle, Professor Angell (Ralph Lucas), upon the old man's death.

Going through the professor's papers, the man comes across a particular box of papers and files, and as he reads these we are taken back to a series of seemingly disconnected events, from the lucid dreams of artist Henry Wilcox (Chad Fifer), via a raid by New Orleans police on a savage swamp cult, and the discovery of a drifting ship with only a single survivor onboard.

We learn about the cult's worship of alien beings, Elder Gods, who are sleeping under the sea, waiting for the "stars to align", so they can awaken again, but little else to tie things together.

Later the man - having put his concerns about his uncle's affairs to one side - stumbles across further details of the mysterious ship, which sends him on a global hunt for the elusive final pieces of the puzzle.

Eventually, he arrives in Oslo and is handed the personal account of the ship's lone survivor.

This details the discovery of a strange island, where the crew disturb the resting place of the monstrous alien god Cthulhu. 

Structured as stories-within-stories-within-stories, as characters recount events in which further characters recount other events, helps accentuate the disorientating, dream-like nature of the whole affair.

Which may well just be the ramblings of a mad man.

However, clues are slowly pieced together from different events to formulate a possibly complete picture of what links all these disparate tales... and what it means for the future of humanity.

I've been reading Lovecraft since I was about 12, so am probably biased, but I love this film and treasure my old DVD of it, for all its authentic, creaky, mannered staging.

By sticking close to the original text, the combination of Sean Branney's script and Andrew Leman's direction, within the self-imposed constraints of vintage filmmaking, make Call of Cthulhu one of the best, pure, Lovecraftian adaptations.

It isn't about gore and jump scares, the horror comes from the larger scale suggestion of what the narrative implies.

SAW WEEK: Saw V (2008)

The intricate - and convoluted - timeline of the Saw franchise continues to be simultaneously continued and further complicated with 2008's Saw V.

Picking up from the end of Saw IV (which is also the end of Saw III!), FBI agent Strahm (Scott Paterson) finds himself unceremoniously dumped from the Jigsaw investigation, even as he starts to realise that the cop being hailed as a hero, Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) was actually Jigsaw's protégé all along.

Flashbacks help explain how Hoffman made such a dramatic switch from law officer to sidekick to a supervillain, even as we watch another of Jigsaw's games unfold (set in motion around the time of his death), featuring five people being forced through a succession of tests.

Barring the initial torture device shown in the film (and we later learn why), Saw V sees the various gruesome traps reverting to the true ethos of John Kramer, these are devices that - with an application of intelligence and a level head - a person is meant to escape from, even though they will possibly be injured in the process.

It's all about the learning process.

That said, there's definitely a steady increase in the gruesomeness of the traps (the whole 'hand-and-spinning blade' shtick, for instance), and a nasty sadism creeping into some of the lingering camera shots.

As with the previous entry in the series, parts of Saw V's story run in tandem with earlier films, filling in gaps and explaining elements we might not have picked up on previously (or made incorrect assumptions about).

While this is definitely more coherent than Saw IV, it's harder to feel the modicum of empathy for Hoffman that we might have felt for Kramer who - up until the whole 'creating killer traps' stage of his life - seems to have been an okay fellow. 

Increasingly, the interlocking plot elements and story strands give the franchise the feel of an ongoing television show, rather than a series of movies.

Not only does the timespan of the contemporary events across all the films so far feel very compact, but it also feels as though crucial 'clues' are being left out, simply so they can be addressed (or retrospectively backfilled) in a later film.

This transition to a serialised television formula also got me thinking about how I would use a villain akin to Jigsaw as an antagonist in a roleplaying game.

Initially, I would ensure that the player-characters were never the targets of the villain's traps, rather they would be the investigators coming upon the aftermath.

I guess I'd possibly consider having them burst into a room and finding a person trapped in one of the "Jigsaw" devices and try to save them from it, but, personally, I wouldn't put my players in a situation where a character of theirs could die (so graphically) in a trap, just because they couldn't figure it out.

To my mind, player-characters are supposed to be "heroes", rather than victims. Unfortunately, playing it straight by the Book of Saw, there aren't really any true heroes per se in these stories (not that survive more than a couple of films, anyway), which is why the story set-up needs to be tweaked with a bit.

Unless, of course, you're playing some version of Call of Cthulhu - or a similar hardcore horror game - where the player-characters are often considered expendable anyway.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Whence Lovecraft?

Mythos Tomes: My earliest forays into the works of HP Lovecraft

I've been reading HP Lovecraft since I was a teenager. I recall writing about him in my English Literature A Level exam, which given I was supposed to be critiquing Dickens' Great Expectations probably explains my poor grade.

My memory of how I actually came upon the works of Lovecraft is rather hazy, but I'm sure I was already aware - and a fan - of his oeuvre before I invested in my first edition box set of Chaosium's seminal Call Of Cthulhu game.

This was published in 1981, with the second edition coming out in 1983, which suggests I picked up the game sometime between those dates.

I suspect my introduction to Lovecraft could well have been TSR's Deities & Demigods (the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement, published in 1980, that - only for its first edition - included the Cthulhu Mythos as well as Michael Moorcock's Elric mythology, as well as various pantheons or gods and heroes from ancient religions around our world).

This almost certainly led me to invest in the paperbacks you see above, several of which are stamped as coming from the P&P Book Exchange in Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells (which is where I also came across my first collection of Wolfman/Perez era New Teen Titans comics that got me hooked on the medium and turned me into a 'proper' comic book collector).

Those paperbacks have seen better days. particularly The Haunter In The Dark And Other Tales Of Terror (a 1963 edition from Panther Books, priced at three shillings and six pence!) which is falling apart because it was read so much.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Void (2016)

Late at night, on a deserted road outside of town, Sheriff Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) comes across a wounded man stumbling out of the woods.

The lawman rushes the injured man to the nearest hospital, a fire-damaged building on the point of closure, operated by a skeleton staff, including the sheriff's estranged wife, Allison (Kathleen Munroe).

Within moments of their arrival - and a nurse going insane - the dilapidated hospital is besieged by knife-wielding, sheet-wearing, cultists.

From there The Void is a non-stop, violent, gore-splattered, thrill-ride through Lovecraft country by way of Assault On Precinct 13, The Thing and Hellraiser.

This is a film - whose plot unfolds over a single night - that just doesn't let up. The action kicks off from the opening scene, backstories are sketched in with deft brevity, and the viewers find themselves sucked into the absorbing, claustrophobic, horror.

Malleable architecture, hallucinations, and shapeshifting, tentacled, monsters are just part of the sanity-assaulting fun that the writing-directing team of Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie bombard the audience with.

And it's probably worth drawing attention to a couple of extended scenes that feature bright, rapidly flashing lights that could affect people susceptible to such light shows.

There's a strong flavour of vintage '80s horror here (but delivered with ichor-dripping 21st Century practical effects) that should satisfy any fan of HP Lovecraft's cosmic horror who tends to find the best cinematic realisations of his themes come in films not directly based on his stories (such as the aforementioned The Thing, In The Mouth Of Madness, Event Horizon etc).

It would be a gross exaggeration to say The Void is wholly original, but the diverse recipe of influences tap into so  many of my favourite movies, sub-genres, and ideas of what makes good horror, that I embraced it all the more warmly.

In fact there was a part of me that couldn't help wondering if this script was lifted from a game of Call Of Cthulhu, with pointless gunplay, fire-axe-swinging, and pulp novel machismo in the face of monstrosities not meant for the eyes of man.

PULP PICTURE OF THE MONTH: Werewolf of London (1935)

For the first 'talkie' about the werewolf legend, Werewolf of London is surprisingly modern ... in places.

This is pure Pulp fodder that should be devoured by Call of Cthulhu and Back of Beyond gamers, with a large side order of cheese and corn.

The adventure starts in Tibet with a botanical expedition for a rare plant in a mysterious valley, then quickly moves to London where the picture's anti-hero, the grumpy Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull), struggles to cultivate the Tibetan plant in his laboratory ... using a gadget that generates artificial moonlight!

Not only that but - and remember that this is 1935 - he has a CCTV monitor to see who is approaching the lab. How Doc Savage is that?

Things go wrong (naturally) and, thanks to a bite he sustained on his travels, Glendon transforms into a wolf-man and starts eating ladies of the night.

Warner Oland turns up as the sinister werewolf expert Dr Yogami, who tells the bumbling police that the killer they are seeking is suffering from "werewolfery" or "lycanthrophobia", but he has his own secret and an eye on the Tibetan plant (the only known cure for "werewolfery").

There are no truly sympathetic characters in this wonderful little film; ultimately only the wolf-man comes out as redeemable because, while a killer, he is driven by forces beyond his control and is constantly wracked with guilt and remorse. In some ways it is more Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde that the werewolf films we are more used to these days.

The 1930's script and acting veers from the sublime to the arch, the subtle to the ham-fisted, but Werewolf of London is only 72 minutes long and I've seen far, far worse acting, dialogue and effects in films made many years later.

The Conjuring (2013)

As promised, I have begun my trawl through the murky world of The Conjuring Universe, kicking off with the titular movie that started it all back in 2013.

Showcasing what it is claimed to be the most shocking case investigated by professional 'demonologists' Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson), The Conjuring focuses primarily on a working class family, the Perrons, who invest all their money in a dream house in the country only to find they are sharing it with a malevolent demonic entity.

It's all very formulaic stuff (supernatural shit happens to family, family suffers, family calls in experts, supernatural shit escalates, experts drive it out at the last moment) that we've seen a million times before, from The Haunting to Poltergeist and beyond.

The set-up is little different to the many variations on the tired Amityville story and any number of other 'haunted house' tales that don't make bogus claims of being based on "real events".

That said, The Conjuring is very well made (and gets very LOUD during it climactic demonic confrontation), has charismatic leads in Wilson and Bates Motel's Farmiga, and is already laying the groundwork for a wider "universe" by the very nature of its main characters having a plentiful casebook of adventures to explore.

Being set in the '70s gives The Conjuring a nice period feel as well, and the roleplayers among us appreciate the Warrens methodical approach to their job, coming as it does straight out of the Call Of Cthulhu playbook.

But what really makes this an interesting movie is the sequence where the demonic force the Warrens are facing in the Perron's house uses a connection to Lorraine to 'activate' a totally unrelated entity back in the Warren's home - in their room of artefacts - the infamous Annabelle doll (whose story helps establish the Warren's bona fides at the start of The Conjuring).

In truth, this sub-plot has almost no bearing whatsoever on the main narrative, but provides a unique distraction the like of which I don't recall seeing in previous genre pieces of this ilk.

While the real Warrens were charlatans and con artists (or worst), the fictional Ed and Lorraine, because they exist in a cinematic universe where demons, ghosts, black magic etc are real, are true defenders of humanity worthy of joining the ranks of comic books' John Constantine and TV's Winchester brothers (from Supernatural).

I'd give The Conjuring a solid seven out of ten. It's not original by any stretch of the imagination, but it has some interesting moments, and by taking seriously the fantastical fabrications of the Warrens director James 'Aquaman' Wan and writers Chad Hayes and Carey W Hayes have tapped into a rich seam of stories and created an intriguing cinematic world that has the legs to expand beyond a single movie.

PROJECT 60: Okay, I Might Have A Problem 😱

 

Despite having already named Go Fer Yer Gun! as my favourite roleplaying game set in the Old West, and having an ever-expanding collection of Deadlands material from across the ages, I still managed to purchase two more distinctly different games in the last seven days: Tales of The Old West and Shooting Iron.

While I admire Go Fer Yer Gun! for its elegant simplicity, Shooting Iron is another d20-based system (class, level, hit points et al), with a heap of background material (although nothing on Native Americans; they were supposed to be covered in a supplement, which has yet to see print seven years after the core rules were published).

I could see this nicely written and laid out, 200-plus page, tome being a source of "houserules" and additions to a possible GFTG! campaign, with little need for much tinkering with the stats and mechanics. 

On the other end of the spectrum, Tales Of The Old West employs the Year Zero Engine, the award-winning d6 dice pool mechanics that power such Free League roleplaying games as ALIEN, Tales From The Loop, The Walking Dead etc

I'll admit the book is quite intimidating. Tales of The Old West may be too complicated for my little noggin, although one of our group mentioned to me in the past of her experience playing ALIEN, so that could help persuade me (always helps to have someone else at the table who knows the rules of the game you are playing).

Although a licenced product (it is produced by Effekt) the book has the high production and art standards consumers of Free League games have come to expect.

Of course, these "straight" West books are just the latest addition to my RPG library.

The other week I picked up a couple of "Weird West" games: Down Darker Trails (a Call of Cthulhu supplement) and We Deal In Lead (based heavily on Stephen King's Dark Tower saga).

So, now, I have six Western-themed roleplaying games: three with ghosts and monsters and three for playing pseudohistorical reality!

What does this all mean for my current superhero campaign that I'm running for the Tuesday Knights?

Maybe nothing, but maybe something. 

I guess it depends if the current game has legs (we've only managed three sessions in five months, for various reasons). 

Things Are Getting A Mite Weird Round These Parts!

This week's mail call had a very "weird west" flavour to it, with the arrival of Down Darker Trails (Chaosium's official Old West supplement for Call of Cthulhu) and We Deal In Lead (an indie game HEAVILY inspired by Stephen King's Dark Tower saga).

From an initial perusal I reckon both of these will remain in the "research and inspiration" pile, rather than actually hitting the table. 

At the moment I cannot see either replacing Go Fer Yer Gun! or Deadlands as my 'go-to' system, should I ever have a chance to gamesmaster a western campaign (weird or otherwise) for the Tuesday Knights.

Down Darker Trails, like all good Call of Cthulhu supplements and adventures is highly detailed (I love having stats for a selection of Old West 'celebrities', from Billy The Kid to Wyatt Earp), but probably too intricate for my current style of gamesmastering.

I'm sure Call of Cthulhu would have a better chance if I could keep my brain focussed on the single objective of a running a great Weird West horror campaign, but I'm too easily distracted and/or overwhelmed by thick, dense rules books.

Conversely, We Deal In Lead is ultra-streamlined, meaning that - despite the game's magnificent setting - I already feel as though the rules remove too much of the potential excitement of the combat elements of the game.

Also, I fear the prospect of a "freeform" magic system would go down like a lead balloon. My players have made it clear they like a list of spells to pick and choose from.

But, as I say, these are just first impressions, I haven't given either book a fair shake yet and so am not writing them off.

Although, getting way ahead of myself, I am rolling around the idea of a Dark Tower-inspired campaign using Go Fer Yer Gun! as the engine, with some fuel borrowed from We Deal In Lead.