Showing posts with label Call of Cthulhu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Call of Cthulhu. Show all posts

Friday, July 17, 2015

Sandy Petersen Mini Interview

I had a chance to ask a couple of questions of Sandy Petersen, of Petersen Games's Cthulhu Wars and Call of Cthulhu fame. I'll be seeing him at Gen Con in a couple of weeks, so I will try to talk with him some more there. Mostly I asked him a few questions about Call of Cthulhu, past and present.


Dorkland: What is it about the Cthulhu Mythos, the works of Lovecraft and associated authors that make them so enduring?

Sandy Petersen: He evokes cosmic terror - a different type of fear, and a new style of writing. No one before him even tried.

DL: What is it about the Call of Cthulhu game that makes people so passionate about it?

Sandy: I think much of the appeal is that it is contrarian by nature. In other RPGs, you seek out combat. In CoC, you avoid it. In other RPGs, you adventure.  In CoC, you solve mysteriies. In other RPGs, you acquire powerful weapons and items. In CoC, you find musty old books that are dangerous even to read. In other RPGs, your character gets stronger over time. In CoC, your character gets less stable and in many ways weaker. I have no problem with the other RPGs - but there are plenty of them around. If you want something different, then CoC is it - it does almost everything "wrong" from a normal RPG and I think that's what its fans love.

DL: When you first designed Call of Cthulhu, did you think that there would still be so much interest in it after all of this time?

Sandy: When I designed Call of Cthulhu almost no one  even knew who Lovecraft was. I thought it would an obscure cult game that would sell maybe a thousand copies and vanish.

DL: What would you like to see for the future of Call of Cthulhu 7th edition?

Sandy: I want to see an awesome campaign with scenarios set in the Cthulhu Wars world, after the Great Old Ones have returned!

DL: What non-Chaosium games are interesting you currently?

Sandy: Well most obviously my own games, from Petersen Games - Gods War, Cthulhu Wars, Orcs Must Die! the boardgame, Dicenstein, and Theomachy. But probably you meant what games that I didn't work on, in which case I just played Terra Mystica and had a great time.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Delta Green RPG Beta Playtest Files


Since I've been asked a couple of times for information about this (and since it seems a playtest announcement kind of day), Arc Dream Publishing announced a couple of weeks ago that they were doing open beta playtesting for the upcoming, standalone Delta Green Roleplaying Game. I have looked (briefly) over the playtest files, and I like what I see. The game (at this point) is still backwards compatible with the previous Delta Green material, as well as with other Call of Cthulhu material.

The file does mention that the final product will have open gaming content, so that looks promising as well.

Interested parties should check out the Dropbox folder that Arc Dream Publishing has set up, play some games, and check in with them about your feedback.

As a long, long time Delta Green fan, I am looking forward to this game now a lot more than I was a year or so ago, when it was first announced.

Sunday, February 02, 2014

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas: Call of Cthulhu Style

Last week +Helen Yanolatos and I spent an almost week in Las Vegas, enjoying our birthdays (and her first time in the city). It was a fun time and the bar was set high when we started the week off with a game of Call of Cthulhu with some locals and others.


This was the view from our hotel, it turns out that, not to be outdone by London, Vegas is going to get a Ferris wheel...a party Ferris wheel. But you guys don't want to hear about that stuff, do you? No, you want to hear the gory details of our game of Call of Cthulhu! Let me preface this by saying that I spent the better part of a day in airports, in three different time zones around the country. I started in Tampa. Then I flew to Charlotte, North Carolina. Then I flew to Phoenix, Arizona. And then finally I ended up in Las Vegas. My day started at 5am EST and I arrived in Vegas at 3pm PST. That was a crazy day, and I topped it off with running a game of Call of Cthulhu.

But before gaming came dinner, and I had this:



That's a tiramisu milkshake, by the way.

Yes, now I'm just taunting you. If you like burgers, and find yourself in Vegas...be sure to check out Holsteins Shakes and Buns. You won't be disappointed. Helen recommended it, after her sister had been there on a previous trip. It was some great food. I've always found that Las Vegas is a really good place to find some really good food.

And then, of course, came gaming. This group slowly gathered at the hotel:


Pictured, from left to right: Larry Dixon, +Helen Yanolatos+Trentin Bergeron and +Caroline Pierce. If it turns out that Larry's on the Plus, I'll be sure to tag him in this.

After snacking and character generation, we got down to the brass tacks of gaming. For a while now, Caroline and I have talked over Twitter about a game of Atomic Age Cthulhu. It almost happened when she was down in Tampa last fall for Fetish Con, but it fell apart a week or so before hand (totally my fault on that). But I swore that I would run a game, and when this trip with Helen came through...I put the plans into motion. Luckily I have a girlfriend who thinks that meeting strangers for a game of Call of Cthulhu makes an for an excellent vacation plan.

In case you're not familiar, Atomic Age Cthulhu is part supplement and part adventure collection, dealing with the 1950s. There is some good information on the decade, for those who might not know a lot about the time, and the adventures are top notch.


I should probably review it sometime, formally, but I will say that the adventures in the book are pretty good. I ran the scenario based in pre-Union Hawaii (which I have run partially before via G+ Hangout). It is a really solid scenario, and it is easy to hook characters into it. I let them make up their own characters, and gave them a pretty free range on what they could do. Larry played a Navy mechanic who was also a car buff, Caroline played a lounge singer hoping that the movie being filmed would let her break into the big time, Trent played a Navy Captain (his rank fluctuated a few times during play), and Helen played a travel writer. Rather than try to shoe-horn them into the scenario, since a couple of them had very loose reasons for getting involved in a Cthulhu investigation, I told them that they were all there at the hotel where the movie's star (Hoyt "The Hips" Oakes) was staying and then had a planned riot draw them into the story.


This is right after Trent's character was throat punched by a female cultist that he tried to ask questions.


This is Larry during the character creation part of the evening.



The characters survived the night, through the judicious application of Marines to the end of the adventure. Which demonstrates that sometimes it is best to let the guys with the big guns deal with irradiated Deep Ones. Everyone had a lot of fun, and it was a great way for Helen and I to start our (too short) time in the city.


This is my new Greyed Out dice bag, among the growing gaming debris.. It made it through TSA and airport travel like a Boss, plus everyone commented on how lovely it was, as well. And then after we finished at 3ish am....we collapsed for the night.

Tuesday, August 06, 2013

The Flying Man: Call of Cthulhu With Super-Heroes

Special effects artist Marcus Alqueres has done effects work on the movies 300 and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Now he has done a short film that features a horror-take on the idea of super-heroes called The Flying Man.


This seems like it would make for an interesting Call of Cthulhu scenario to me where instead of dealing with Mythos horrors, the characters would have to deal with enigmatic and inhuman superbeings seeking to rid the world (or their city) of crime. The characters could be criminals, normal citizens, or just people who live on the fringes of society. Wouldn't this make a cool idea?

Thursday, April 19, 2012

New From Pagan Publishing - Delta Green: Strange Authorities

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

COSMIC HORROR MEETS TECHNO-THRILLER ESPIONAGE IN ‘DELTA GREEN: STRANGE AUTHORITIES’

Arc Dream Publishing Presents a Collection of the Award-Winning Cthulhu Mythos Horror Fiction of John Scott Tynes

April 18,  2012 — John Scott Tynes merges Lovecraftian cosmic horror with techno-thriller espionage in “Delta Green: Strange Authorities,” now available from Arc Dream Publishing.  Cvr

“Delta Green: Strange Authorities” is a 388-page collection of award-winning Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction. It includes the short stories “The Corn King,” “Final Report,” “My Father’s Son,” and “The Dark Above,” and the Origins Award-winning novel “The Rules of Engagement.”

“Delta Green: Strange Authorities” is available in trade paperback from Amazon.com, Ingram Book Company, and Arc Dream Publishing, and in ebook for Kindle, Nook, iBooks and other devices.

Shane Ivey, editor and president of Arc Dream Publishing, says: “John Scott Tynes’ stories of ‘Delta Green’ are obsidian splinters of fear and beauty. John brings a sense of humanity, of its love and confusion and despair, to the mind-bending terror of the Cthulhu Mythos. These stories have been too hard to find for far too long and I am thrilled to make them available to new readers.”

The sequel to “Strange Authorities,” Dennis Detwiller’s “Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly,” is also available in trade paperback and ebook from Arc Dream Publishing.

ABOUT JOHN SCOTT TYNES: John Scott Tynes is a game designer and writer in Seattle. He currently designs Xbox 360 videogames for Microsoft Studios. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Pagan Publishing and Armitage House and his best-known projects include “Unknown Armies,” “Puppetland,” “Delta Green,” “The Unspeakable Oath,” and “Call of Cthulhu D20.” His film “The Yellow Sign” is available on DVD from Lurker Films.

ABOUT ARC DREAM PUBLISHING: Arc Dream Publishing produces novels and tabletop roleplaying games that have won awards and wide acclaim. Its product lines include “Delta Green,” “The Unspeakable Oath,” “Monsters and Other Childish Things,” “Wild Talents,” and “Godlike.” In 2011 Arc Dream Publishing released the novel “Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly,” which continues the tale that began with the stories in “Delta Green: Strange Authorities.”

ABOUT DELTA GREEN: “Delta Green” is a modern setting for H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Delta Green itself is a conspiracy of federal agents, soldiers, intelligence officers, and “friendlies” who secretly and without sanction use the resources of the U.S. government to thwart supernatural horrors that no legitimate agency could face. Delta Green agents slip through the system, manipulating the federal bureaucracy while pushing the darkness back for another day — but often at a shattering personal cost.

###

WEB: deltagreen.com
TWITTER: twitter.com/#!/shaneivey
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/deltagreenrpg
DELTA GREEN MAILING LIST: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/dglist/

Monday, February 28, 2011

Let's Talk About The Black Seal #3

Back when I was studying Journalism in high school and college I did a lot of what was called Opinion writing, and of that writing much of it was taken up with writing reviews. While I still have no shortage of opinions, I don't do much reviewing anymore.

Well, that's something I want to change.

In the spirit of disclosure, I received my copy of the PDF of Black Seal #3 as a complimentary PDF from the publisher. You can get your own copy of the PDF from RPGNow.com here (yes, I have an affiliate code on that so I'll make something if you buy it with my code. It keeps me in games).

Let's start with the easy stuff. In this 100 page PDF you get about 98~ pages of Call of Chthulhu support material. The art and graphics are ok, about what you would expect from RPG publishing  of this level, and the layout is clean if a little cramped.

There is a good deal of British-centric material in this issue (which makes sense since the publishers are British) and I think it would be of good use to someone using Cubicle 7's Laundry RPG. Obviously the tone of this material is more serious than the base tone of the Laundry RPG, but since both use the underlying Call of Cthulhu mechanics, fitting one into the other wouldn't take a lot of effort on the part of a Keeper/Game Master.