Dare you listen to the whispers?

A newish trailer for the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's film version of The Whisperer in Darkness is out, and it looks amazing (PS. Migo)!:

These guys really set the bar for film adaptions of Lovecraft's work, with this the follow up their highly acclaimed version of The Call of the Cthulhu.

Things are still pretty mad here in the lead up to Christmas, but by a fortunate coincident both my copy of Cthulhu Dark Ages and the limited edition, hardback version of Masks of Nyarlathotep have arrived pretty much at the same time. This will keep me in happy reading once I find time to do it on top of everything else.

Less cool it fact that it seems the Chaosium website may not be entirely secure, with a number of purchasers being hit with fraudulent credit card transactions. I put an order through on the weekend and although I haven't had any problems, I canceled my card this morning anyway to be on the safe side. As is life.

A thought...

A little while ago - during the whole Chilean miner saga - I had an idea for a Cthulhu scenario set underground in a mine collapse. The characters would be miners who were trapped you see, so it would be a race between getting rescued and surviving whatever they had dug up.

That idea is going to be shelved in my mind for a while - maybe forever. I'm not given generally to public displays of grief and am pretty detached from any news I read or see, but this is a pretty dark day for our mild little corner of the world.

My gaming life

After a busy few weeks, it is nice to pause for a moment and reflect on some of the gaming I have managed to sneak in.

Since the first season of 'Empire State Secrets' finished, Dan has started running a Dragon Blooded Exalted game, which has been mighty good fun. Playing Exalted has been a new experience for me and one, to my surprise, I have really enjoyed. He has even set up a very slick blog for the game, which puts my Trail wiki to shame.

If I'm honest, the concept of Exalted has always left me a little cold in the past, but Dan has done a great job of introducing me to the setting and the features of the game that do make it so much fun (I have forgotten how satisfying it can be to roll handfuls of D10s). I that feel there is a nice symmetry at play here, in that I have 'talked around' Dan to Cthulhu, while he has got me on side with Exalted.

Dan also spent a lot of time and energy in running in depth preludes for the characters, which has worked really well. It has given us all a lot more 'depth' to our characters and this shows in the quality of the roleplaying. I haven't really used preludes as a technique before that much, but I'm looking at re-accessing that for the future seeing how well it has worked in this instance.

Unfortunately just as we were getting into a good rhythm, one of our players had to go off and do something awesome like go to Antarctica. He'll be back in a few months, so the collective decided to hold fire until his return. Which is the perfect opportunity for me to throw some Cold City into the mix...

My other regular game is Dale's 'Kingsport's Tales' for Call of Cthulhu. This game continues to be a lot of fun and I have been involved in it for well over eight months now. Dale runs the game very well and rolls very easily with all our off the wall ideas. Playing the Innsmouth scenarios were a particular highlight, though all the different adventures have been strong. 

It has been particularly refreshing to work with some of the often maligned Dreamlands material, something for which I now have a new appreciation.

The only slight downside for me is that I still don't feel like I have a handle of my character's 'point of difference' in the game. Since we're usually playing with a big group (5-7 people), I feel his characteristics and mannerisms are perhaps too subtle and he blends a little into the background. His skills (like researching, history, persuading) also overlap with others in the group, so this has led to him being less involved at times than perhaps I would have liked him to be. This is something that is more of a 'roleplaying issue' for me than a 'game issue' for Dale, so I will keep working it through and see what I can do. 

However, this doesn't detract from the fact that I enjoy the game immensely and look forward to it. Perhaps the best part has been getting to meet a good bunch of guys to game with!

I really want to get my Kapcon scenario finalised in the next couple of weeks as well to have a playtest before Christmas, so say tuned to hear more about that!

Not so quiet published

I am a little slow off the mark in mentioning this one, but Pelgrane Press have recently released 'Not so quiet', the Trail of Cthulhu adventure some of the Kingsport guys and I play tested a while back.

Reading through it I was pleased to see they adopted some of the suggestions we made and have provide additional guidance is some of the areas we identified. 

All in all it is a really tight little scenario, though I still think that if I ever run it again I will make some extra changes to suit my own style of play more.

If nothing else, however, it is one of the more compelling treatments of the First World War I have read of in a gaming product.

FFG: Mansions of Madness

Fantasy Flight Game's latest Cthulhu themed offer looks to be a  stunner, with a follow up to Arkham Horror called Mansions of Madness. 


It looks awesome and has the high production value associated with their games. What I am particularly excited about is the range of plastic miniatures that come with it, which look perfect for tabletop Cthulhu. Aren't they awesome?


It is also interesting to see FFG further blurring the lines between 'board games' and 'RPGS, as Mansions of Madness seems to stray into that territory, at least from my cursory inspection. I certainly enjoy Arkham Horror, but have heard some very mixed reviews about their take on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. This, however, will certainly be on the top of my Christmas list. 

Fright Night 2010

On Saturday night I was treated to a wonderful evening of horror themed role playing at the fourth annual Fright Night, held at the suitably atmospheric Turnbull House here in Wellington. It consisted on two session of fine gaming that ran the gambit from spooky to strange to horrific.

It was also a good chance to catch up with the various Wellington role playing locals and game with some new people. I had a great time and the whole night seemed to go very smoothly (at least from my end).

Below are more detailed reviews of the games I played in. There not too spoilerific, but probably best to avert your eyes if you're keen to play them in the future.

After a brief welcome and pre-amble, it was off to the first round game, which for me was 'Splinter of Corruption' run by Doug. I signed up for this one because I was keen to see how Dark Heresy plays as I've always thought that the Warhammer 40,000 universe would be a great backdrop for a role playing game. Doug didn't disappoint and ran an atmospheric and richly textured game, in which our novice inquisitor team sought information on the dark fate of Commissar Nihilius and his squad. It had a nice '80's sci-fi movie feel to it and I could feel the spirit of Aliens coursing through it.

I played a Novice Cleric called Castus who did his best to support his brothers and encourage them to follow the one truth path of the Emperor (he also proved more than a little handy with a hammer). I think our team was a little out of its depth in terms of leadership and adopted a very direct approach to the investigation, but this only added to the game's dramatic finale. We were a little pushed for time, though I understand that Doug intends to run this at Kapcon, so with a few minor tweaks this game will really do the business.

As we finished the first round game a little behind schedule, there was only time for a very brief break before I was into round two. In this round played 'Rivers of Gold', a Trail of Cthulhu based scenario run by Mike. I was really interested to be a player in a Trail game again as it has been a while since I had been in that position thanks to my GMing duties. The game was set in the Otago gold fields during the gold rush, with my fellow players and I taking on the role of a group of gold prospectors, who uncovered more than they expected in a previously uncharted part of the country.

I played Alex Masters, a young half-Maori, half-Scot who, against his better judgement, loyally followed his mate Bill into an increasingly bizarre world. I gather there may have been some mix-up with the character allocation as Alex was a quite a different man to the answers I provided to Mike's pre-game questionnaire. Nevertheless he was a lot of fun to play and for a while there I hoped he might make it through 'unchanged'.

Mike ran a very tight and polished game, which achieved its aim of producing more chills than frights, while teasing out the final mystery to the very end. Indeed it is a sign of the scenario's strength that despite being quite a linear and constrained scenario, those features didn't distract from the overall experience. For me it channelled the better aspects of Lovecraft's more science fiction orientated works, and some elements wouldn't have seemed out of place in The Colour out of Space. The other players too all really worked their characters well and proceed some genuinely creepy moments. We perhaps could have used a little more time to round things off at the end as it felt a little rushed, but that is only a very minor blemish.

So overall Fright Night more than delivered. A big thanks to Dale and co. for organising the event, and both Doug and Mike for running excellent scenarios. This has certainly set the bar for Kapcon and the mind is whirring already on what I can organise for Fright Night 2011. Hopefully I'll see some more of you there as it really was a great night.

Towards the Mountains of Madness

I am rubbing my hands together in glee at the moment and Dale is busily preparing to start running 'Beyond the Mountains of Madness' for our Call of Cthulhu group.

Based on the Lovecraft novella At the Mountains of Madness, this is widely regarded as one of the best RPG campaigns ever published for any system. A long and hard journey to a forbidden Antarctic world await the characters, who face not only the environmental challenges, but also the mythos horrors that reside in that frozen wasteland. In other words, a hell of a lot of fun!

I am looking forward to taking my New England author Michael St Croix and matching him against this challenge. It should prove some great opportunities for role playing and character development, as well as some nice dramatic parts as well. I've also got some nice ideas for a back up character - an obsessed astronomer - if things get really bad.

I am also going to encourage Dale to take advantage of the amazing props available for this campaign at the Propnomicon site, which I have mentioned previously, as they are simply amazing (such as this photo I have included shows).

Who would have thought I would be so keen to experiences those lurking terrors hidden beyond the ice!