Cults of Cthulhu (with Mike Mason) Ep 66

Summary

The GROGNARD Files – Episode 66: Cults of Cthulhu (with Mike Mason)

Episode Overview

In this episode of the GROGNARD Files, host Dirk the Dice is joined by special guest Mike Mason, creative director of Call of Cthulhu at Chaosium, at the annual Grogmeet event. The conversation looks back at the history and enduring appeal of Call of Cthulhu, focusing on the recently published Cults of Cthulhu supplement, and explores how the game has evolved, why cults are so intrinsic to the mythos, and how to use them effectively in play. Resident rules lawyer Blithey later joins Dirk for an in-depth discussion of the Cults of Cthulhu book, and they riff on the broader culture of cults in fiction and RPGs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Lasting Success of Call of Cthulhu

(Main segment begins around 09:00)

• Dirk asks Mike Mason: Why did Call of Cthulhu, out of all the Chaosium games, become such a phenomenon?
• Mike identifies two main factors:
  • First-mover advantage: “It was the first horror role-playing game… often the first market is the one that cements itself in the imagination.” (09:56)
  • Cosmic horror: Lovecraft’s unique brand resonated more than classic horror:
    “Cosmic horror… allows for much more freedom and latitude in terms of the things you can explore. It also chimes much more deeply or resonantly with a modern audience … We do have fears of the unknown… and that chimes with the modern consciousness.” (11:06)
  • The game’s lack of canon means anyone can take the mythos and “mess things around,” making personal and creative takes possible.
• The game owes as much to Lovecraft’s circle and successors (especially August Derleth) as to Lovecraft himself.
• Player approaches range from pulp adventure to grim historical fiction—“your flavor of Call of Cthulhu might be very different to mine, but it’s just as valid…” (16:56)

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2. Designing History into Horror

(Segment from 06:44)

• Academic interest in RPGs is on the rise; universities approach tabletop gaming from creative writing, historical and even computer game design perspectives.
• Research is central to Mason’s approach: “Often the majority of [my] research... is looking at old maps or trying to find an old street map.” (07:02)
• Historical authenticity is valued—using period-accurate details to create a richer, more immersive game world.

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3. Origins of Mechanics and the Influence of Fandom

(17:40; 33:41 onwards)

• The sanity mechanic in Call of Cthulhu was inspired by a Tunnels & Trolls Lovecraft variant found in Sorcerer’s Apprentice magazine.
• Mike notes the importance of fan publications (like Dagon and the Whisperer) for keeping the game alive during Chaosium’s lean years, likening them to punk: “It isn’t just the reserve of people you’ll never meet… that’s why it’s a very different form of pastime.” (35:44)

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4. 40 Years and the Cult of Nostalgia

(19:20–22:03)

• Dirk and Mike unbox the 40th Anniversary Call of Cthulhu boxed set.
• Mike explains Chaosium’s approach to heritage and reprint projects: they’re as much about celebration as about product.
• The game’s ongoing task: balancing nostalgia with new material, and not just producing “greatest hits” reissues.

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5. Cults of Cthulhu: The New Supplement

(24:01 – 29:00; Library Use segment from 45:20)

• Mike details the genesis of Cults of Cthulhu:
  • Motivation: “The one thing we’ve never done… is actually write a book on cultists.” (23:49)
  • Focuses on human antagonists: “It’s about the human monsters… the antagonists in scenarios, 90% of the time.” (24:03)
  • Cult dynamics reflect real-world behavior: “All against one… my interpretation is better than your interpretation… that’s the nature of cults.” (25:49)
• The book offers both example cults and a toolbox for GMs to create their own, emphasizing motivations, recruitment methods, and inner/outer circle dynamics.
  • “Chris Lackey did a lot of work on defining the kind of questions you need… when you are kind of designing your big bad cult.” (26:00)
  • Emphasis on day-to-day detail: “Where do they get the money from? Do they have a front?… What do cultists believe?” (26:00)
• The supplement aims to “give you a lot of strong foundations so you can feel confident… in any situation you know what the cult's going to do.” (27:46)

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6. Miniatures, Fandom & Gaming Evolution

(29:31 onwards)

• Mike reminisces about Cthulhu miniatures, noting their limited actual use in play—except in big set pieces. (32:26)
• Player-created tournaments and community efforts have been crucial to the game's continuity, especially in the UK.
  • Fanzines such as Dagon and The Whisperer not only filled product gaps, but also fostered creativity: “It was really important to have the official side of the game and the unofficial community side… it got you thinking a bit more widely.” (36:38)

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7. Cults Culture: Role in Gameplay and Narrative

(Library segment ~45:11 onwards)

• Dirk and Blithey discuss how cults provide the essential human nemesis in Call of Cthulhu, acting as intermediaries between the investigators and the mythos.
• The importance of unreliable narration and layers in Lovecraftian fiction—game has moved far beyond direct adaptation, with most players learning the mythos via RPG, not stories.
  • “I think… there is a massive gulf between the source material and what Call of Cthulhu has become.” (54:12)
• The Cults of Cthulhu supplement is praised as perhaps the next essential purchase after the main rulebook, due to its scenario hooks and practical tools.
• The framework encourages keepers to develop cults with realistic funding, recruitment, and aims—very different from “evil cult must be stopped” simplicity.

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8. Freedom, Canon, and the Enduring Appeal

(61:09; 79:26)

• Unlike Glorantha or other dense “secondary worlds,” the Cthulhu mythos’ lack of canon fosters creativity and removes pressure to “do it right.”
• “If there’s any other game like that, where you can take anything you like—political figures, innovations—and run it through Cthulhu and out pops a bit of a scenario… I don’t think there is.” (78:03)
• The secret to the game’s longevity is this adaptability: “You can just take something, put it through Cthulhu, and out the other end pops an idea.”
• The “stick a shoggoth in it” joke is evidence of its plasticity—only possible because any topic can be reimagined through the mythos.

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9. Scenario and Table Usage

(Library: 64:05; “Read No Further!” 68:47)

• Dirk and Blithey review the structure of the Cults supplement:
  • Timeline showing Cthulhu cults through history, each a scenario seed.
  • Five detailed cult write-ups including a modern “Church of Perfect Science” and the Esoteric Order of Dagon.
  • Advice for randomizing and fleshing out original cults with goal/structure/motivation tables: “It’ll just fire your imagination.”
  • Scenarios form a “mini-campaign,” giving players a chance to inhabit different roles across time.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

"There’s no canon. Lovecraft had no canon. And anyone who’s tried to impose a canon ultimately fails."
—Mike Mason (15:29)

"The one thing we’ve never done… is actually write a book on cultists… it only took us 40 years to write a book on cultists!"
—Mike Mason (23:49)

"Cults… the humans as intermediaries… that’s the key part, aren’t they?" —Blithey (53:13)

"Is there any other game like that, where you can take anything… and run it through Cthulhu, and out the other end pops an idea?"
—Dirk the Dice (78:03)

"The joke only exists because you can do that with Call of Cthulhu. You can’t do that with other games. That’s why that joke doesn’t exist for other games."
—Blithey (79:52)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Section | Timestamp | Notes | |---|---|---| | Welcome & Grogmeet recap | 00:00–04:04 | Mike Mason joins live from Grogmeet | | Cthulhu’s horror & cosmic mythos | 09:53–14:12 | Why cosmic horror endures, vs. gothic | | No canon/Lovcraft’s circle | 15:00–17:56 | August Derleth, the game's openness | | Cults in the supplement | 24:01–29:00 | Genesis, content, human antagonists | | Miniatures & community zines | 29:31–36:38 | Dagon, The Whisperer, tournament memories | | Blithey joins - Library Use | 45:11 | Deep dive into Cults of Cthulhu book | | Fictional Cults Game | 46:01–52:33 | “Causes” quiz, the fun of pop culture cults | | Cults as game core | 53:13–59:17 | Why cults matter in Lovecraft games | | Creating your own cult | 65:25–67:11 | Using tables & hooks from the book | | Modern tech & the mythos | 76:01–78:07 | AI, Oppenheimer, Cthulhu in the internet age | | Outro & Chatter | 81:38–86:11 | Future plans, Substack, and obsessive GM topics |

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Further Resources Mentioned

• Cults of Cthulhu supplement (Chaosium)
• Mason & Fricker’s Eldritch Stories
• Grogpod Substack articles
• Different Worlds magazine #45 (1987)
• “Good Friends of Jackson Elias” podcast (for Shadow Over Innsmouth deep dive)

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a true deep dive into what makes Call of Cthulhu unique: the freedom provided by the mythos’ lack of canon, the focus on human antagonists, the persistent cross-pollination between fandom and publisher, and the enduring power of cults to ground cosmic horror in messy, human drama.

Whether you’re a long-time Keeper or new to the game, the discussions around Cults of Cthulhu provide both inspiration and practical advice for bringing cults and cosmic conspiracies to life at your table.

Transcript

[Dirk the Dice]

Have you seen me Dice Bag.

[Blithey]

The.

[Mike Mason]

Grognard Files.

[Dirk the Dice]

Hello, my name is Dirt the Dice and this is the Grognard Files podcast where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day and today I'm coming live from my den here in the heart of the northwest of England. I'm completely surrounded by my stuff. The den is in complete disarray following Grog Meet, the annual meetup we have in November in the great city of Manchester. It's a one day event that takes place over three days and this time it seemed like the best ever. The games masters and players chimed together perfectly and we took over the city with our blend of rolling dice and hardcore socialising. On Sunday morning, Mike Mason, the guest of honour, joined us in Fanboy 3 for an interview. He's a returning guest to the Grogpod. Previously he's faced the Games Master screen to talk about his personal history with Call of Cthulhu. He's the Creative director of the game for Chaoseum. So this time we rolled back the years and looked at the artifacts from the history of Call of Cthulhu. It includes the Cthulhu Campaign starring Cthulhu Shadows of Yog Sothoth, which we talk about but forget to name. We kept pointing at it instead. So bear that in mind. We go back to the game's origins and along the way we discover the secret life of the Cults of Cthulhu. Last time we studied the cults of Gorantha, so this time we're looking at the great Elder God himself. Blithey, our resident rules lawyer, joins me in the great library of RPGs to look at the Cults of Cthulhu book from 2021 written by Chris Lackey and Mike Mason, and we look at a couple of articles from different worlds issue 45. Later we have some closing time chat about our plans for next year and a recent substack that I've posted. I realize that we're covering all ground by returning to Call of Cthulhu and testing the patience of those who are eager for us to cover other vintage greats such as Flashing Blades, Lords of Creation and many others. We'll get to them eventually. The Grogpod content reflects what we're playing has certainly been a back to basics for us. Back to basic role playing, BRP, RuneQuest, call of Cthulhu, Ringworld, and lots and lots and lots of Stormbringer. I hope you'll forgive our indulgence. I'll be back at the end with some notices and Virtual gifts for new patrons. But for now, ramblers, let's get rambling. Hello, my name is Dirt the Dice and this is the Grognard Files podcast where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day and today. And coming live from Grogmeat here in Manchester, Fanboy 3. And on my right I've got Mike Mason. Hello there, Mike.

[Mike Mason]

Hello there, Dirk.

[Dirk the Dice]

And on my left I have the ridiculous homemade shrine to the actor Caroline. Would you like to give it a tap?

[Mike Mason]

Oh, I would, please. Is there a special way to tap it?

[Dirk the Dice]

You tap it how you like. Let's have a look. Here we go. Oh, it's Carla from the Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter.

[Blithey]

There we go.

[Dirk the Dice]

Because we're gonna go back in time like Kronos, we're gonna move through town, roll back the years. Mark, are you up for this?

[Mike Mason]

Well, I certainly am, yeah. Good, good.

[Dirk the Dice]

You've been on the road quite a bit this year though, haven't you?

[Mike Mason]

Well, I have. Well, in the latter half of the year, yes, yes, I've been to America. I went to Gamehall Con about a month ago and then I've been come to Manchester. Yeah, I mean that's, that's a lot of traveling.

[Dirk the Dice]

Have you been up to Edinburgh as a.

[Mike Mason]

And I was in Edinburgh at the beginning of the week For a, for 24 hours, yeah. Doing a talk.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. And that's your, your first step into academia, is it, or.

[Mike Mason]

No, no, I, I, I, I did a, I did a talk at Edge Hill University in Liverpool a couple of years back.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

And then I've done some online projects with universities. There's one in America I've done a couple of projects with in terms of a group of students who are putting together a role playing supplement, acting as a semi class mentor kind of thing, that kind of stuff. So I've done a little bit here and there, that kind of thing. And I did a day of working with postgraduate creative writers at Derby University back in the summer where we talked about game design in terms of fiction writing.

[Dirk the Dice]

Right, okay.

[Mike Mason]

And then I ran them again.

[Dirk the Dice]

Oh, fantastic.

[Mike Mason]

And they all died.

[Dirk the Dice]

That's the spirit. That's the spirit. It does seem to be that there's quite a few universities now that have got departments that are looking at games, which seems mainly computer gaming. Or is that a misconception?

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, it's a misconception. I mean, exactly. That conversation in Edinburgh with the Edinburgh University and that the bit of the university I was working with was the history and Games Lab. And their particular take is history. They're history teachers, lecturers. And so they're coming at role playing from an historical perspective in terms of using history as a context within role playing games. Obviously Kodakaloo fits up pretty well because, you know, you're playing in the twenties or Regency England or Weimar Berlin and so there's. It's a very easy kind of connection that you can kind of see. But equally, you know, Derby, I was working with the creative writing students. Nothing to do with history, just coming up with cool ideas and turning them into fiction or kind of game design. And it tends to fall both ways. And then you got computer games in the middle. Somebody like Pender Tomlinson, who's a lecturer in computer design, while his students are there to design computer games, he gets them designing board games and he gets them running role playing games because it's as he sees, foundational to understanding how games work. Yes. And, and, and the kind of rules of. Particularly in the role playing game, the rules of how a scenario progresses.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

So forth. So, yeah, I mean it covers a lot of kind of bases really, as we know with gaming.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. I've not considered that before. So in Call of Cthulhu is history as a setting, isn't it? So it's how you engage with history. So how much of your time is spent looking at historical documents or, you know, where's your go to places when you're working on supplements, it comes down.

[Mike Mason]

To what it is you're looking for. I mean, often the majority, if you kind of add up all the time of research, it's looking at old maps or trying to find an old map.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

And often it's actually you try and find street maps. So for instance, the example I would give is in the, in the new Masks of Melathotep, there's a whole segment that was missing from the original where you've got this workshop in Derby, Derbyshire, that's mentioned in the book, in the original, but isn't actually described. And clearly most adventurers, when they get hear about the workshop in Derby that's building a spaceship. Oh, let's ignore that. They'll go there. So I thought we had to kind of map it out. So I was trying to find 1926 street plans of Derby to just work out where a workshop might be. I could make it up. And then somebody who lives in Derby is running, going, why did they put it there?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Mason]

So you try. Yeah. Because everything else in the book is fairly historically accurate. You kind of don't want to let slide down. So spend a lot of time trying to find that. And they're not easy to find. You know, those, those kind of deep. That kind of level of detail.

[Dirk the Dice]

I'm getting flashbacks now to UK Games Expo last year on the KLCM stand where you sold me a copy of Master Nathalit.

[Mike Mason]

Indeed.

[Dirk the Dice]

Because you said it covers Pears. So is that.

[Mike Mason]

I said it's got the mention of Pear soap.

[Dirk the Dice]

And that was the. That sealed the deal for somebody.

[Mike Mason]

And it was more than just a bar of soap. There was the. It was a London exhibition where they had paired soap, sponsored this big exhibit of, we might call it soap around the Ages. And. And that there was a little bay. There's like a big circular thing and you went around it and in each kind of bay there was a kind of a glass. And behind the glass was a lady from history. So like Anne Boleyn with her soap. And then there was, you know, Queen Anne or whoever it is, you know, all these different characters. And you go around, they're all actresses, kind of like with soap. With soap. That's, you know, that's the kind of level of high detail we go for.

[Dirk the Dice]

Incredible. And the theme of this is rolling back the years and looking back at Call of Cthulhu through your experience and how it came about. And I've got a few artifacts, some of them you'll have to imagine. Theater of the mind. Okay, well, I wanted to start with this. Mine. This is a Call of Cthulhu actual book and H.P. lovecraft. I suppose my question is why is the game so successful based on these books? Because, you know, at the time KFCM was bringing out Stormbringer, El Quest, which you could play a lot of in his convention. So why is it that Call of Cthulhu is the one that took hold and what is it to do the source material that has made it such a phenomena?

[Mike Mason]

I think it's two things. One is it was the first horror role playing game, right? There hadn't been any. That hadn't been any horror role playing before then, as far as I'm concerned. In terms of D and D, there was Ravenloft, had not yet happened and so forth. So there was nothing really, you know, in terms of published kind of mainstream role playing stuff, you know, Traveller, Runequest, D and D and then some others. But Call of Cthulhu was the first one. So often the first market is the one that kind of cements itself in the. In the. In the kind of the imagination of what it is about a horror game. But I think that's not enough on itself to kind of maintain its position. So I think it's the, it is the, the bit that comes out of Lovecraft which is the core, which is the idea of cosmic horror.

[Blithey]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Because it could have very easily been a game on Hammer Horror. It could have been any other kind of type of horror. But all of those are fairly limiting.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

That they don't go so far. And also they become commonplace because like Hammer Horror, there's only so many gothic castles with Dracula going in before. Before. I mean it's too gonna turn into a comedy anyway in the role playing game.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

There isn't much horror to actually find and when you do, that's going to get used up really quickly because there's only so many of the same story you can keep playing. Cosmic horror because it's a wider concept, allows for much more freedom and kind of latitude in terms of the things you can explore. It also chimes much more deeply or resonantly with a modern audience, with a 20th century, 21st century audience who, who actually. The horror of vampires and werewolves and that is meaningless. We're not scared of these things. They're not. We're not isolated villagers living in the Middle Ages who don't know any better. And everyone who's a stranger is a potential evil or wrong person or as a werewolf or whatever. Yeah. We don't live in that world anymore. We live in a very connected world where those aren't fears. We do have fears of the unknown, which is obviously the root of cosmic horror. And we have fears of, you know, isolation and our place not only in the world with our place universe and being insignificant and all the rest of it. And that chimes with the modern kind of consciousness in that way. So I think you add all that together, that makes it much more kind of powerful mix for. For something you can kind of enjoy. And like I always say, horror is not for everyone. Just like Air fix models aren't for everyone. Yeah, but if it is, then that's a horror you can actually attach to because you can understand it. Yeah, I can't understand being afraid of a werewolf. I can't genuinely understand it. It's a bloke who turns into a wolf. I've never seen one. They don't exist. Yeah, but aliens might. Aliens might come down and just drop some sort of, you know, biological warfare on. As in a drop of something and we're all dead. Yeah, I mean that's. That is feasible.

[Dirk the Dice]

Aliens might Already be here.

[Mike Mason]

Well, I didn't want to. Didn't want to worry people.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, but it's as its origins or the origins in that concept, though, doesn't it? That wasn't it Sunday. Original picture was like a. Like an American Gothic horror type thing.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. I think the original kind of pictures are kind of, as you say, American Gothic, a kind of modern day, just again, pulling together kind of various horror strands, but kind of based in that kind of using Lovecraft's kind of more of. More of his kind of stories that were like the, you know, the Terrible Old man or. I'm trying to think of another one now. Like, it's really shorter form stories which are more like, you know, like a episode of Night Gallery or whatever it might be. But he wanted to have the monsters. I mean, Sandy loves monsters, and that was really his big draw with the mythos is, you know, it's got big monsters that are cool and they're not werewolves because they're something different and unusual. And so that was a take. But it was Greg, I think, particularly, who said, no, we want to see. They want to set it in the 1920s where it's kind of got that kind of. It's got a certain charm about it. And there's. And there's also a. There's a distance to it as well.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

And I think that was a good choice because I don't. I don't know whether. Cause we've seen. Well, we've seen factually Call of Cthulhu scenarios released in, you know, from the 1980s through the, you know, to the early 2000s that were set in the modern day quickly become yesterday. Really quickly. And in fact, the majority of stuff in those books is written about the technology of the day. And it's completely useless now because it's like how, you know, the original Cthulhu now book had, like, at least two pages on how a modem works.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes.

[Mike Mason]

I mean, no, but somebody. The editor should have said, it doesn't matter. All you got to do is make the role mate. Does it work? Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to understand how it works.

[Dirk the Dice]

And more often than not, it didn't work.

[Mike Mason]

It didn't work. Exactly. Yeah. It's like, we don't. There's no. There's no detailed schematics around the internal combustion engine for cars, for drive autos.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes, absolutely.

[Mike Mason]

You know, so it's. But because it was new and writers love writing about that new thing, a lot of these modern books are filled up with that kind of guffing. That is meaningless actually in the game. There's not about gameplay.

[Dirk the Dice]

I think it's testament to the gamer brain to codify Lovecraft's world though, isn't it? Sure. That's what the rules do, isn't it? I mean there's no sense that there is any logic or any mythos around it really. It's. It's just. It's not a structured thing, is it?

[Mike Mason]

In. No, there's no, there's no canon. Lovecraft had no canon. And anyone who's tried to impose a cannon ultimately fails because. Because there is none. And, and again, that means the world of the game has remained very open source in a sense in terms of you. You can do anything you like. So if you're in your game, if Cthulhu in your game is. Is an ant like creature 5cm big, there's no one to argue that it couldn't be. Yeah, there is no canon. So it allows a lot of creativity and freedom to kind of mess things around and then which you see in fiction, I mean that's the other kind of feedback loop is obviously it's not just Lovecraft. The game is inspired by it. The game is actually more inspired by August Dilleth. You know, it's far more. You know, if you read August de Less's kind of pastiches of Lovecraft, it's far more what the game is about. It's far more like investigators kind of running around and battling things. And the game is far. You know, if the game owes a debt to any author, really, it's August the left, to be frank. But equally, you know, there's many authors at the time and subsequently that have inspired the game. Ramsey Campbell, still writing, Brian Lumley, Robert Block, et cetera, et cetera, and even really contemporary writers. So if you want to, because there's no. There's no rules, there's no canon. If you want to take your deep ones down the road of Ruth Arno Emeris and being this kind of, much more kind of downtrodden, seen as. Seen as a protagonist rather than antagonists, you can. If that's the kind of style of game you want to do. No one's no. The fun police aren't coming around, are they? So you can do it. And that's the beauty of the game and why it works in so many different permutations. Because your flavor of Call of Cthulhu might be very different to mine, but it's just as valid and you can go and enjoy your high pulp version of Cthulhu while I play some grim and dirty, historically accurate version. Yeah, they're both the same game, but it can do both things. And that's why I think it's. It. It continues to be very successful in that way because brings a lot to the table and allows you to bring a lot to it. It's not. It doesn't tell you what you can't do. It's always, well, yeah, you could do that.

[Blithey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And also I think it shows that around that time in the 70s, certain authors would be go to for the games. Was it. So a lot of gaming emerged from science fiction conventions. So you get mo rubbing shoulders with these guys at that time. And I think Lovecraft was in the ether at that time, wasn't it? Because it was predated, wasn't it, by the Lovecraft variant, which was a Tunnels and Trolls version of.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, I mean that. That was instrumental because that. I can't remember where it was. Sorcerer's Apprentice and the Rahman Brothers, wasn't it? He put the article together and I mean the DNA is evident in it. It's got emotional stability. If you encounter a scene where emotional stability would be questioned, you make a saving throw versus emotional stability. And there's a whole series of effects that run from. I'm not quite sure how you play this, but there's one that the early ones are like, your character is aghast, which I quite. That's my favorite. I'm aghast. I'm not quite sure how I roleplay that, but okay. And then to the end, one of these, your character dies of fright, you know, and so it's got a sanity system in there. And Sandy was. Hadn't designed a sense system at that point and. And saw that and went, oh, that's pretty good. I'll try that. And. And clearly, you know. And he did, you know. Yeah, yeah. To his. To his credit, he has always credited, you know, he didn't say, oh, I came up with all myself. No, he did. He always said that he saw that article and it kind of inspired him. So it's, you know, it's, you know, feeds back into itself that way.

[Dirk the Dice]

Call Cthulhu came out in 1981 and a couple of years ago he did a Kickstarter for the 40th anniversary. Yeah, so that's the thing with KSM. He's got quite a lot of heritage products, hasn't it? So how do you plan these things to come out? I've got mine here. And like all Kickstarters it hasn't been opened. So I'm going to open it now, watch the value decrease as I do it. So yeah. So how does a project like that start and who.

[Mike Mason]

Well, basically it's normally Rick.

[Blithey]

Right.

[Mike Mason]

Who's the keeper of old things? We'll go, you know, we could do a, we could do a, a reprint of that old starter set or box set. And mainly the reason being is because you just think it'd be cool. Yeah. And then we go into a kind of a debate about one, you know, whoever the line, it could be Storm bring, It could be RuneQuest. Jason call, it's me and we have a debate about is that a good idea? So, because, you know, there was, there was talk a few years back about bringing the, you know, doing it a few years ago and I said I'm, I'm not sure it's a good time because we've only just put out a new edition of Call of Cthulhu and now you putting out the second edition, it's kind of a bit of a negative message like, oh, here's a new one. But here's the second edition. We know you want that one really. And, and it, and it didn't feel right timing wise. It didn't feel that there had been enough time to kind of, you know, for people to kind of decide whether they like seventh edition, let alone carry on playing it. And so I kind of kick put that on that one. But then, you know, it's like 10 years since it came out. So eight years ago Rick sort of said, oh, you know, do you think it's a good time now? I said, yeah, it's 40th anniversary. That makes to me a really good valid reason because we can look forward as we look back as well. And so that, you know, that was what happened and it was part of the kind of celebration for the 40th birthday of the game. And it was also, there's a kind of another layer to it because there's a lot of old material, old scenarios and that some people have kind of hammered on my door. So when are you going to update for that? When can you update that? That, you know, Shadows of Yog, so Tarth and all the rest of it. And the answer is, well, one day we will get to it. But we've got, I've got a load of thoughts. Do you really want Call of Early to just be greatest hits? Because we could stop. Yeah, we could just stop and never print anything new because it's a 40 year old game and we could just repeat 40 years from day one. Well, just, you know, just think of.

[Dirk the Dice]

All the opportunities to stick some pears soap and exactly. Did you. Did you have the box set back in there? What was your.

[Mike Mason]

The first box I had. Was the GW local. No, no, no, the box set. The box Out Boxer, but it was the English.

[Dirk the Dice]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Reprint kind of the Games Workshop reprint 1. So the green, green box kind of thing.

[Dirk the Dice]

You want to open mine now?

[Mike Mason]

I. I think you should. I'll hold it. You.

[Blithey]

You, you.

[Mike Mason]

You do the special bit.

[Dirk the Dice]

Oh, I have no nails.

[Mike Mason]

I haven't got any. No, you need a. You need a special game opener box. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Can we give feedback?

[Mike Mason]

I've got. I've got. I've got a hole. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Stop making your own jokes up. Here we go.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Blithey]

Okay.

[Dirk the Dice]

Unboxing. This is a way forward. It might catch on. What's in this box?

[Mike Mason]

I'll hold it.

[Blithey]

Here we go.

[Dirk the Dice]

So this was always the most exciting page, wasn't it? What's in this box? Because what's the first thing you're looking for when you buy your first role playing game?

[Mike Mason]

You want to know what's in there.

[Dirk the Dice]

You want to see where the board is. Hang on. There's no board listed. Okay. Oh, some character sheets. And this is the original rule book. I'm going to skip over that because I want to look at this. The Source or for Twins. That was my favorite bit.

[Mike Mason]

Was it? Yeah. Why? Why was it your favorite bit? What was it in there that you liked?

[Blithey]

What?

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, I think it's this bit here on cultists. Yeah. Because I find I found creating adventures would be difficult with the monsters because they just seem so tough, but the idea that they'd be cultists.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. It only took us 40 years to write a book on cultists.

[Dirk the Dice]

I know. Yeah. I wanted to mention that because that's been my favorite book of recent years. So we've had Cults of Gorantha last time.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And Cults of Cthulhu.

[Mike Mason]

Cults of Cthulhu.

[Dirk the Dice]

Tell us about that project.

[Mike Mason]

Well, I mean, it was again, coming up for 40th anniversary and it's kind of like. Well, the one thing we've never done apart from that, that's the only book that Cthulhu actually appears in technically. And. And it was getting on for 40 years. It's kind of like, could we have another one maybe? Yeah. And. And so I kind of came with the idea, let's do a Cult of Cthulhu where it's just Cthulhu. We could have done cults of the mythos. We could talk about all the other gods. Oh, that's not that. No, let's just do Cthulhu, the game. His name's on the box. He can at least have one book. And so, and the idea from the word go was, although there's some monsters in it and all that kind of stuff, it's about the human monsters because they actually are the, they are the antagonists in scenarios, you know, 90% of the time. And we don't really ever get into their motivations or how you can use them as a keeper, how you can kind of create them to kind of design your own kind of scenarios and campaigns. And so the whole point was to kind of do that. But, but through the idea of the Cthulhu cult, in a sense. Because if you read the original Kalakola Cthulhu story, the idea of the Cthulhu cult is this expansive, massive worldwide conspiracy that never appears in this book about Cthulhu, by the way. And how do you make that, how do you make a world spanning conspiracy work in a game? And so the idea being it is world spanning, but it's actually like every other cult in the real world, all against one of my, my, my interpretation is better than your interpretation. You've got it wrong. I'm the one who's right. I'm the one who's going to get through his blessing, even though we're on the same side and we'll work together a bit. At the end of the day, I will stab you in the back there because I'm going to be the one. And that's, you know, that's the nature of cults and that kind of thing in the game, anyway.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, no, it's a beautifully written book and as you said, there is some tips and techniques on creating your own cult, certainly.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. So there's a. Chris Lackey did a lot of work on defining the kind of questions you need to kind of think about when you are kind of designing, you know, your big bad, your big bad cult that's going to be your kind of antagonist in, in a, in a, in a maybe a long, longer running kind of campaign type setup. And it's. But it's in it. But it's. What's great about is actually the down to, down to earth, day to day stuff because actually that's what makes it work. Where do they get the money from? Yeah, what, you know, do they have a front? How do they recruit people? What do they tell people to recruit them? What do the actual cultists believe? Yeah, and, and there's so many different permutations of that. You know, are they after power, are they after wealth, you know, whatever, you know, and, and, and understanding that actually what the inner circle believes and says to the. The initiates or the. The lay members could be completely lost.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes. Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

They just want. They're just a workforce, aren't they?

[Dirk the Dice]

Y.

[Mike Mason]

It's kind of understanding where that all fits together. And, and the book kind of, kind of makes you go through like a workbook kind of almost to kind of workshop this through. And you can design a pretty, pretty solid cult really pretty quickly. And there's a load of examples obviously in the book to kind of. If you can't be bothered, you can just take one of these and change the name. But, but the idea is to kind of really give you a lot of strong foundation so you can feel confident. Do you know what. You know, in any situation, you know, what the cult's going to do or what that member or that. What that particular level of person occult, what their likely reaction is, which is kind of when you're running a game, what you want to know. You want to know what your NPCs are up to, what your monsters are up to, without having to work it out at the gaming table. You can just. Because you've already done it. You've done. Done all your prep work beforehand.

[Blithey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Also in this box, I know this is something close to your heart, isn't it?

[Mike Mason]

Oh, the asylum. Yeah. That's like the first Cthulhu book I ever saw.

[Blithey]

The first one, yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

So it's.

[Mike Mason]

It was a cover that. The COVID for some reason immediately reminded me of Marillion. 12 inches. I don't know why. And I like those, although I must like this.

[Blithey]

So.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, there you go.

[Blithey]

There you go.

[Dirk the Dice]

Also in here, the Cthulhu companion. And I love the COVID on this one, the trailer to Thug Boy. So the fact that these have appeared in here, does this mean that they're unlikely to get a.

[Mike Mason]

The beauty of it is that we can cherry pick because they exist out there. There's no one like, oh, I need to get this, and I can't get it. We can cherry pick bits of them. We might not do the. We may never do Fragments of Fear, the entire book revamped, but we might say we like the Valley of the Four Wind scenario, and that would fit really well in this other book we're doing. We might put that in and do an update on it. Yeah. And so it gives A bit of freedom to do that. Yeah, but I mean. Yeah. I mean, things like Shadows of Yog Soth one day will get revised. But the trouble is, when I say revised, completely rewritten is what I actually mean. Yeah. Because how can you have a Cthulhu campaign where Cthulhu rises and never mention the Cthulhu cult?

[Blithey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Mason]

That doesn't compute to me. And it's not the fault of the campaign, because the campaign wasn't designed to be a campaign. It's a bunch of scenarios that was thrown together at the last minute to make a campaign. And that's why, you know, when we look back and go. The first. You know, the campaign that set the mold for Call of Cathedral is Masks and Lathotep, which wasn't the first campaign that came out. That was the first campaign that came out. But that didn't set the mold.

[Blithey]

No.

[Dirk the Dice]

And there's also a size comparison chart. Look at that. To see the Cthulhu beast in Snape. I think I mentioned this when you were last on. You complained to Dagan that in the Games Workshop version.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

That the monsters were rubbish.

[Blithey]

I did, yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. The drawings of the monsters.

[Mike Mason]

I didn't like the answers.

[Dirk the Dice]

And you still feel like that? Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Mason]

I think I've ever seen. You know, I think it's really hard because you can't draw monsters, can you? Can't draw eldritch horrors. You can't draw them because it will never convey the horror. So you have to just accept that this is a version. This is a. An artist interpretation, you know, and some of them are better than others, obviously.

[Dirk the Dice]

You know, and in 1983, Grenadier produced miniatures, didn't they, of the monsters, like Shogoths. And so.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Did you have any of them?

[Mike Mason]

I had a load of them.

[Dirk the Dice]

Did you?

[Mike Mason]

I had. Some of them were painted.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Some of them never got painted, but, yeah, no, I. I loved it. And then GW brought out a load of. When they. When they started doing their third edition Call of Cthulhu, they had a whole range of Gothic monsters, or camera, what they're called, but they, you know, they had the Right. From the full range of vampires, some mummies, to kind of various investigators kind of types, stuff like that. So I had a load of those. But my main memory of miniatures, other than working for gw, which is a whole different story, but is when we started doing the. The Cosium kind of Cthulhu Masters Tournament in the uk, and I said, well, what. What do we give the winner? Because I thought that, and they all looked at me, well, what do we get the winner? Well, what I used to do was get one of them big Cthulhu models and spray it gold and put it on the stand like a trophy. Oh, that'll do. So hence why on my shelf for the COVID years are a bunch of Cthulhu trophies I made in terms of, like, big Cthulhu painted gold on trophies with winner. You know, Winner Cthulhu Masters 20, 21, 22, or whatever. Whatever the years Covid happened. I don't know if they're ever going to move.

[Dirk the Dice]

I mean, you know, unclaimed.

[Mike Mason]

So did you.

[Dirk the Dice]

Did you play with their miniatures then?

[Mike Mason]

Not very often. It's one of them things in your head, you know? I mean, I like miniatures. What? That's one of the key reasons why I got into role playing to start with. Yeah. I love miniatures. And so, you know, you're playing Call of Cthulhu. You like the game. They bring out miniature. Grenzy have got miniatures out. I'm going to buy them because they're Cthulhu miniatures and they look great. And you get them in, and it doesn't occur to you whether you're going to use them in the game because they just. They're just cool miniatures. Yeah. And then when you start playing the game and you realize, I don't need these miniatures, it all cleared in the mind. The only time I actually really have sent to, you know, seriously use miniatures is your own master. And after. And one scene only.

[Blithey]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Where the game session that we were about to play was when they'd gone below the pyramid and are about to kind of enter the big cult compound, the big ritual that's happening under the pyramids. So I spent half an afternoon getting every miniature I own out on a table and recreating the scene on the table, covering it with a big blanket very carefully not to knock them all over. So when the players came in, I could go, here's your characters. And they're at this little doorway here, and you go through and then reveal. And literally, it's like this. Just kept going, this massive chamber. Just because I knew it'd be like a good effect. And they go that big, all of them.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

And that's the only time I've really used them in game, to be honest.

[Dirk the Dice]

And that's why it's looking like this size comparison thing, is to give you an idea the scale of it. Because that is sometimes a challenge with Cthulhu, isn't it? To put the scale in we mentioned Dagan, and I've got a copy of Dagan here. People are not familiar with it.

[Mike Mason]

Is that number four?

[Dirk the Dice]

Number seven? Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

I never had that one. Number one at number one. And then I think it was like issue eight or nine is the first time I actually started getting subscribed and.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. So how important do you think the fandom and fun activity around the role playing game is? Kind of encouraged it. Because when we talk about other chaos in products like Glorantha, they really kept it. Kept it going. How important do you think it is to Cthulhu?

[Mike Mason]

Oh, really vital. And I think, again, you know, like with Galanta, that kept the game alive when the game was dead. And although Callicle has never been dead, it has gone through very fallow periods.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Or periods where the chaos. And was struggling financially to kind of get anything out. And maybe they were. They were getting stuff out, but it was like maybe one or two books a year, if you're lucky. And so there wasn't a lot to fill in that gap. And so that's when fancy like Day Gone and then Unspeakable Oath, and then I did the Whisperer. Helped to kind of fill a bit of a gap for a while. And certainly it kept, you know, when. When I was getting Day Gone, although it wasn't like in a truly fallow period of Call a Cthulhu. What. What it did do is show an inspiration that actually you can write stuff, you can share stuff, you can. This isn't just for Americans to write.

[Blithey]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. And it was something that, you know, anyone could do. And so it's kind of a little bit like punky thoughts and, you know, rover do over a phone box and make a record kind of thing. It's kind of like, you know, anyone could actually do this. It isn't just the reserve of people you'll never meet. And so, you know, like, the reason for many people who get into role playing games is a. It is an inspiration to creativity. Whether it's the creativity in the game you play, the creation of props, the handouts, the artwork, making a podcast, whatever it may be that a lot of people get inspired to do something. So it isn't. It's. It. That's why it's a very different form of pastime to reading or watching tv, which can inspire creativity in some people, but not generally. Role playing does.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Inspire that.

[Dirk the Dice]

And so the Whisperer, how long was that running for?

[Mike Mason]

Just talking five issues, one a year for about. I think it was over five or six Years kind of in total and, and the only reason I did that is because Dagon was no longer out. Unspeakable. Unspeakable. Oath had died and again wasn't out. And there was no, as we would now call it, community happening stuff for the game. And it was, I was just waiting for someone to do something because I enjoyed reading them and yeah. And nobody did anything until he got that point where I was just like, no one's gonna do it. I'll do it then. I'll do it. Then it wasn't like, oh, now's my chance. It was like, I wish somebody else was doing this. It's a lot of work. And that's what kind of, to just kind of fill a gap really. Because I always felt it was really important to have the official side of the game and the unofficial community side of the game felt that that worked really well.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

You know, because the unofficial community side could have a moan and tell you what, you know, tell, tell you it was wrong or give you a, give you a house rule fix or hey, have you thought about doing this this way that got you kind of thinking a bit more widely, you know, you weren't just waiting on the next release. You had something, you had something to read in between the releases basically.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. And do you still have the archive of that?

[Mike Mason]

I mean, I've got, I've got. When it was on, I mean it was made on computer, but this is computer back in floppy disks.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

So I, I that somewhere in my house there might be a, a floppy disk with all five issues on it, but I can't find it. So all I've got is literally 1 cup gold, 1 copy of hard copy of each of the issues.

[Dirk the Dice]

Right.

[Mike Mason]

I've got one copy. So when people go, oh, if you saw any issue ones you can sell me, I know I have it. And then I get the question, well, when are you going to put them on to drive through? Yeah, well, I can't because I don't own the copyright on most of the stuff in them because.

[Dirk the Dice]

Right.

[Mike Mason]

It's a fanzine and there are, you know, there are name people like Adam Crossingham who's you know, 60 stone press these days and a bunch of other kind of, you know, authors that, you know, our authors and written stuff that I'm pretty sure they would, you know, they don't want me putting that stuff out for free.

[Blithey]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

So I can't, I can't. And you know, and it's a lot of work to go and hunt a Lot of these people down now. Yeah, some of them. I know, but some of them are disappeared into the other.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's what makes it special, though, I guess, isn't it? Because it's locked in time.

[Mike Mason]

It's locked in time.

[Dirk the Dice]

And was that concurrent with the cult of keepers that you're doing that?

[Mike Mason]

It was sort of, yeah. Must be. I think I started it before the culture, but it kind of about halfway through. Oh, no, no, no, no. Telling a lie. No, I started the cult before. Just before. And then this. Because my initial. My brilliant idea originally was, oh, I'll start this, you know, bunch of scenario writers were uncommitted, and now I'll have these scenarios and then I'll have a fanzine that we can print them all in. That never happened, but that was the idea that that never happened. So, yeah, they were kind of in parallel, more or less. More or less, yeah, the fantasy was happening, but. But it was a separate thing kind of during the. During the call to keep us.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. And you show me. You used a score sheet, didn't you? Because we had a bit of a competitive game on Friday night, a tournament game. It seems very subjective. Talk about the fun police. It's making judgment on other people's role.

[Mike Mason]

Well, I agree.

[Dirk the Dice]

How does that work?

[Mike Mason]

Was more a reaction against the rpga, who were very kind of formulaic in terms of like, did the. Did they kill this monster tick? Did they get this amount of XP tick? And it was very kind of like stuff you would do in the game, in a sense, but it didn't really allow for any role playing.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes.

[Mike Mason]

And so we were much more kind of like, did they. Did the character. Did the player get into the spirit of the game? Did the character. Did they. Did they. Were they have fun playing the character? Did they put the character on? Did they contribute to solving the plot? Those kind of questions that weren't kind of. There were more, you know, there were less kind of hard numbers than just a feeling. And. But what we tried to do, we tried to go do peer review, and we would say to people playing in the tournament, because we'd have at least. Normally four different scenarios being run by at least four to six different keepers on the same convention. And we'd say that anyone can play in the games, but if you want to be considered for the tournament, you've got to play in at least two of the games.

[Dirk the Dice]

Right. Okay.

[Mike Mason]

So that would mean we'd have two different keepers coming, talking about the same person potentially, and. And often they would differ. And then we'd have a come, then we'd get everyone else in. Then we get, like, what you played with them last year? What were they like in your game then? And there'd be like a short list and we'd add a discussion, go. Well, I think, you know, everyone's sort of saying that that person really contributed the game consistently this year and last year and all the rest of it, that we'll give them the prize. And it was never like a big deal. They got like a biscuit tender.

[Dirk the Dice]

And you're continuing to create. So outside of your activity with Call Cthulhu, you've got a new project, writing fiction. Do you want to tell us about that and how that works?

[Mike Mason]

Well, it's a little Eldritch, but yeah. So, yeah, so me and Paul Fricker, neither of us got time or really the inclination at the moment to sort of sit down and write novels and do that kind of thing, but we have got a bit of time to kind of just write a little bit of fiction. So Paul kind of suggested it to kind of say, why don't we just write some micro fiction? And I was. I'd already been writing a little bit. Paul had already been writing a little bit. And it was really just a kind of diversion, kind of using slightly different part of the brain to just, you know, to do something other than RPG editing and writing. And so that kind of came together in this kind of the idea of the Mason and Fricker's Eldritch Stories podcast and where we would just, you know, we'd write micro fiction, we'd each write a weirdy horror story. We'd read each other's out and put them out as a short podcast. And that was. And that was the idea. And then Paul then made it more complicated by saying, well, we'll do that every other week. And then. And I thought, that's great. So we can. I can write, you know, 10 stories, you know, over the next few months that ain't got to do anything for a year because all of them, I can go to Paul's, read his stories. They doing that. I got, you know, that's my work done. Then he suggests, well, no, every other week we're gonna do it. We're gonna do a podcast where we're chatting. Oh, that's more work now. But yeah, okay, so. So we. So we'll end up into that format where in a month you get. Every other week you get a piece of fiction from Paul or me read by the other. And then in the. In between weeks we do a kind of like 45 minute talk chat about whatever is on our mind. It's literally kind of, you know, films, tv, role playing games, what's wrong in the world, what's great about Arnie Schwarzenegger or whatever it is, whatever's on our mind. What we watched last night on TV and we'll have a chat about that and, and put it out and so yeah, so people can find [e-mail] and you can find it on the. The usual podcast feeds and even YouTube, which I was amazed by.

[Dirk the Dice]

And I believe that you've recorded one in the Lassigone.

[Mike Mason]

Well, in that last night we were I think inspired by another podcast apparently that we'd heard that they, they'd recorded there and it was somewhat hollowed ground for podcasting and, and we took the opportunity to. To do a quick live, live recording of in the Lassigawi in Manchester at grog meet 2023.

[Dirk the Dice]

My rules lawyer is preparing a cease and desist.

[Mike Mason]

It was all Paul's idea. Wasn't me.

[Dirk the Dice]

I recommend people to tune into that because the, the stories are short, aren't they?

[Mike Mason]

It's five, five to ten minutes at most.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah. And the good little tales of the unexpected type things aren't there.

[Mike Mason]

Well, as I used to call it, and I don't mean this about our stories, but I used to call it Tales of the Blatantly Obvious. But as far as hopefully, you know, some of them are obvious. But yeah, but no, you see. Yeah, it is exactly that kind of format. Just a little bit of weirdness for your morning, afternoon or whatever it is when you. Whenever you listen.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you very much for being our special guest. That got me.

[Mike Mason]

Before you finish.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

I've got a surprise. I've got your present.

[Dirk the Dice]

Here we go.

[Mike Mason]

Now don't get too excited.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's too late.

[Mike Mason]

I bought you. I'll put you some match. It's nearly Christmas and I was thinking, what, what can I take dirt? And. And I thought, well, he's like the RPG matchmaker, isn't he? Brings us all together. Thank you very much.

[Dirk the Dice]

I just get the dust off it. Great, thank you very much. I will put it with my shrine. Thank you everybody. Please give Mike a hand in the usual way.

[Mike Mason]

Thank you very much.

[Dirk the Dice]

Library use welcome to the Zoom of role playing rambling. I'm joined by resident rules lawyer Blythe. Hello, Blythe.

[Blithey]

Hello, Dirk.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's been difficult to get together, isn't it? This time between Christmas markets And Sophie, Alex Bexter. Getting between us, it's, you know, it's. Prevents us doing it. But we're in the great library of RPGs, and with library use, we like to pluck from the shelves something of interest. And this time we're looking at the recently published Cults of Cthulhu. And we've got from the archive, Chaos Sims, House magazine, different worlds number 45, which was published in March and April 1987. I've got prefab sprite game for you, though. Before we start.

[Blithey]

Before we start. Okay. You're trying to score a point after last half. You defeat last time.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, it feels like I have to up my game a bit because you did the first one last time and it was a bit better than the ones I do. So I feel like now I'm compelled.

[Blithey]

To try and improve it. Up your game. I think you have to.

[Dirk the Dice]

Bit of sport in it.

[Blithey]

I think the Ramp and Colts did. Did do me a bit of a favor, to be honest, because it was very easy to come up with some nonsense.

[Dirk the Dice]

Let's see how I do then, because I've got some fictional cults, the cults from fiction as they appear. You know, having some fun with cults. Now, obviously, cults can be fun, but they can also be traumatic and terrible. So we're concentrating on the fictional cults here.

[Blithey]

So not. Not real cults. No. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

So, okay, so what I've got is I've got four of them. One of them. They're all made up. There's one that I've made up.

[Blithey]

Yeah. New standard format.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. Okay, so the first one. Are you ready?

[Blithey]

I'm ready. Go on.

[Dirk the Dice]

The Cause. The Cause, yeah.

[Blithey]

They were an Irish pop band in the 90s, weren't they real? That's real.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's cult with a charismatic leader who aims to separate humans from their animal instincts using a series of questions known as processing.

[Blithey]

So separate them from their animal instinct.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes. A series of questions known as processing. The cause. That's the first one. Okay.

[Blithey]

Okay.

[Dirk the Dice]

Got a note of that one.

[Blithey]

Yeah, I made a note of that. Diligently written that down.

[Dirk the Dice]

Next one is the Thuggie. The Thuggie, then the Thuggie worship Kali, the goddess of war and destruction.

[Blithey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And they decorate their deity with dismembered body parts. And here's a trigger warning. They use children as slave labor.

[Blithey]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Okay.

[Blithey]

All right. I won't pass comment until you've given me them all.

[Dirk the Dice]

Okay, that's. That's probably very wise. Very wise. Okay, the third one. The Tempestus. And these have got connections to a southern death cult formed in the early 80s. And they're known for their female members recruiting other members by offering protection.

[Blithey]

Tempestus, Southern death cult.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, a southern, Southern death cult.

[Blithey]

Southern, yes. Southern Southerner. What, like Cockneys?

[Dirk the Dice]

If I offered any more. If I offered any more advice, it.

[Blithey]

Might reveal that would never give him too much away. Yeah, so I'm thinking like that they're like a cult. They're all eating, you know, pie and mash and jelly deals. Jelly deals.

[Dirk the Dice]

There we go. Next one. The nuke cult.

[Blithey]

The nuke culture nuke cult. Okay, yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

So these are a group of people. Stands for the designer drug Nuke. They operate out of Detroit and they enhance the proliferation of the drug by terrorist acts against pharma companies and rehabilitation clinics. Okay, so those are your.

[Blithey]

Those are your four, Right. Well, I think the Thuggie Cook is. Is a genuine one. I mean, none of them are genuine, are they?

[Dirk the Dice]

No, no, they're all fictional.

[Blithey]

You're fictional, aren't they? Well, it's. They're fictional, but one's fictional. From your head. From other people's heads. That's. That's right. Okay, well, I think the thuggy cult is definitely an authentic fictional cult because I think that's Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well done. Well done. You spotted it.

[Blithey]

Yeah, that one's kind of easy. The rest of them, I'm a bit.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's of course, Indiana Jones in temple doing family favorite, along with dismembered body parts and the use of children's slave labor. You know, they know it's complete.

[Blithey]

Freeze the crowd. Freeze the children at the end. Yeah, yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

So you've eliminated that. Well done.

[Blithey]

If you've not seen it. Now the others. Yeah. And again, I'm gonna make. I'm gonna fool myself here, but like you did last time, I'm gonna start saying that I think I've heard of this, but it could be just imagine. You could have just presented it the convincing fashion. I think the nuke cult, that. That rings a vague bell somewhere. Nuke being a kind of drug that somewhere in my head. But that. That seems like something I've encountered before in a film or story. And I think that's an authentic made up one. So.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, well done, well done. That's a good spot. That is from RoboCop.

[Blithey]

RoboCop, too. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that leaves Tempestas and the cause. Southern death cult.

[Dirk the Dice]

I'm gonna say.

[Blithey]

Anyone. I just can't imagine why you would say so. Why? You would say Southern death difficult if you know someone else has made that, why would you think I'm gonna say the one that you made up is the cause? I'm gonna. You made the cars up.

[Mike Mason]

I know.

[Dirk the Dice]

The Cause is the master. 2012 Paul Thomas Anderson film with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a charismatic leader. Very good film.

[Blithey]

Highly recommended one you made up.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. The Cult. The drummer from the Cult is called John Tempesta, and the band were originally the Death Cult band down south. And there's a clue here. There's a clue. Known for female members recruiting other members by offering protection. Oh, he sells sanctuary. She sells sanctuary.

[Blithey]

Oh, you smart ass. There you go. He got me back for last time.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, yeah, I have, I have.

[Blithey]

It's a Southern death cult. It just made me think you take it too seriously. Great delight in it.

[Dirk the Dice]

I wanted to talk about coats because as I mentioned in the interview with Mike Mason, when I saw the source book of the 1920s, the mention of Kolsch, and it brought Call a Cthulhu alive to me because it all seemed very esoteric and oblique until I thought, oh, well, human beings can be horrible in this.

[Blithey]

Yeah, well, yeah, that's. And. And I suppose that's a. It's a big part of Call of Cthulhu, isn't it? Cults and the humans. Humans as a kind of intermediaries between normal humans and normal world and the world of these strange creatures and gods and what have you. That's the key part of it, aren't they, really?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. And I made an admission on Twitter or X or whatever it's called.

[Blithey]

Whatever it's called. Oh, it's funny with X, isn't it, that on the news they talk about X and always say, formally Twitter. Will they ever stop saying formally Twitter? You might as well call it Elon if you're listening. You might as well just go back to calling it Twitter because everyone still calls it Twitter. They don't call it X, they call it X, formerly known as Twitter.

[Dirk the Dice]

So on X, formerly known as Twitter, I said that I've not read a lot of HP Lovecraft, the primary text, and I was a student of literature. I. I discuss myself because I rely entirely on secondary text. But primarily the game has taught me a lot about Call of Cthulhu and the Cthulhu mythos and listening to podcasts about it. And as I read Shadow of Innsmouth, really for the first time. Is that the same with you? I think you're the same, aren't you?

[Blithey]

I'm the same as a student of literature as yourself, that I think the reason I've not read any is because I'm a student of literature. Controversial. I've read. I've read a few. The one I remember is called Cthulhu. I've read the Call of Cthulhu the story, and it was. Okay, like you. I think it's strange with Call of Cthulhu the game, isn't it? Because there's a massive. I think there's a massive gulf between the original source material and what Call of Cthulhu has become. I mean, when you read. And admittedly, I've not read. I've not read all of it or all his work. So I'm coming at it from a very narrow perspective, admittedly. But when I read Call of Cthulhu, it seemed. It seems to be a huge gulf between what's in that story and what's in the game. You know, the game has evolved into something much bigger than his writing, I think.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Blithey]

And like you, I've. I've got all my understanding of Cthulhu from the game, really, not from the writing. And I don't think without. Without Call of Cthulhu the game, I would never read HP Luke. I don't think I would ever read it. I only read Cthulhu out of interest of. Oh, go on. I'll read one of the stories and see what they're like. You know, because I'm playing the game, I might as well see what the stories are like. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

I think it was difficult to get hold of the books when we were getting into the game. They weren't readily available. They were. And gradually reprinted in those strange Grafton copies with the weird covers. The reading shadow over Innsmouth. Now I got a kind of newfound respect for Lovecraft's writing, I think, out of his short stories. It's probably one that's one of his best. And there were things about it that I quite admired. I quite like the layers of narration in it and how there's, like a distance between it so that it never came quite clear whether this worked. What level was it, an unreliable account of what was happening. And so I did. I did. I did enjoy that. And I've been enjoying the good friends of Jackson Elias who've done a deep dive into it. But I think looking at this cults book, Cults of Cthulhu, I think it's really helpful for me because it actually looks at some of that source text and regurgitates it, brings it back, reframes it as gaming stuff, isn't it? And that. That is. That's really powerful, I think.

[Blithey]

I agree. I really like it. And I would say. I would go as far as to say that if someone had bought seventh edition Cthulhu and all they had was the rules and they said, what. What should I buy next? I would say buy Colts Cthulhu, because I think it does a really good job of framing what the game. What a key. Not. Not entirely what the game's about, because as we said before, the great thing about Call of Cthulhu is you can bend it and twist it into anything you want, really, to greater or lesser extent. But I think what it does, it reminds you of the kind of roots of the game, the core of the game by these cults and explain. And also ghosts goes a good distance in explaining where these cults come from and how they operate. Because one of our standing jokes books, when we played Cthulhu back in the day, and even. Even until recently was always, what these people doing? What are these people doing with a big tentacle monster? What are you playing at? What's the advantage? But of course, the book goes into the fact that not everyone in the cult will really be aware of what they're doing. Yeah, I think it's. It's great because. Gives you. Doesn't it four. Four or five cults in there, and then it gives you some tables to create your own. But it. But it does talk about the structure, where they get the money from, and all those kind of things that are very, very interesting and a great. And kind of generate ideas for scenarios as well. So it's not. It's not as simple as evil cult trying to destroy the world. Go and stop them. There's more to it, you know, because they're an organization, and within an organization there are rivalries and all sorts of things like that going on. Yeah, I was.

[Dirk the Dice]

I was. The thing that got me straight away reading it at the beginning was this idea that. It reminded me the core principle of Call of Cthulhu is this idea that there is the Call of Cthulhu and that there is this great extraterrestrial entity under the sea which is dreaming or sending signals out into the cosmos, and some humans are receiving them and interpreting them, and it has a strange effect on them. And there was a bit of a eureka moment because with all the supplements and everything you've read, you thought, of.

[Blithey]

Course.

[Dirk the Dice]

That'S what it's all about, isn't it? That is what the game's about.

[Blithey]

It's called Call of Cthulhu. And yet it strangely ignored the Call of Cthulhu. It needs someone to point out to idiots like us. That's what the game's really about. All right. Yeah, but, yeah, that's. That's true, isn't it? Yeah. In the book, it talks about the idols, doesn't it? People who find the idols that kind of transmit thoughts to them and that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, it does. That's why, I suppose that's. That's kind of what I mean about it. It gets back to, like, first principles, doesn't it? And it's quite refreshing to read it and think like, oh, yeah, this. This is what this game's about.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Blithey]

Kind of a back. Back to basics treatment of it. But that's not. Not in a bad way, in a. In a good way, you know, in terms of just refreshing your brain a bit, thinking. All right. Yeah, yeah. That's what. That's what the game's about.

[Dirk the Dice]

We've done this. We've done the. We're having this discussion like a companion to what we're discussing last time around. Glorantha, another Chaosium creation. But that's a secondary world, isn't it? So that's a world that has been developed from scratch. And Call of Cthulhu is a primary world. It's power world. And again, it's been distorted by these influences. When I was reading this, I was struck by the idea that actually that. That issue of, you know, that we've talked about last time, of breaking the world by not having an awareness of the canon or having sufficient knowledge of the law, which kind of. We talked about last time, didn't we? We've gone through. It's never an issue, is it? And it's because it goes out of its way, this book, to say a lot of this is a mystery and that we don't understand it.

[Blithey]

Yeah, yeah. It gives you. It gives you kind of spaces for kind of, well, space, but it gives you kind of elbow room to maneuver and. And do your own thing because there are blank spaces in it and bits people don't know about. And that's. That's integral to call a Cthulhu, isn't it? And because it's an integral part of it, that's what makes it easy to come up with ideas and not worry about, like you say, breaking the rules or going against the mythos or anything like that. Because, again, when you read some of the mythos, it's contradictory anyway, isn't it? I Mean, when you read those monster supplement, what's the Monstorious whatever did it? And the one about the gods and everything, when you read them, it is a kind of. And this sounds. I don't mean it the way it sounds. It's kind of a hodgepodge of different deities and different creatures all doing their own weird thing. Whilst there is a kind of backstory, there is like a history and. And mythos, but it doesn't let you say there's gray areas and blurred edges to it so that you can do your own thing, really. I think that's the key to it. It's not. And it's not trying to pin. Pin it down. Whereas the thing with Glanthra, I suppose, is it's. There's a definitive quality to it, isn't there?

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, I think. Is it because. Is it because. Because it's a secondary world that we would need it explained to us in a bit more detail. So there's like a thirst for more knowledge. So we talked last time. That too is contradictory, isn't it? It's got contradictory myths, but for some reason you feel the desire to track them and understand how they contradict. Whereas in Cthulhu you're less concerned about that because, you know, I think it uses the phrase in this, don't sweat the big stuff, you know, just concentrate on how it's affecting the people that you're interacting with. You don't have to worry about the machinations of the great entities that is happening. You just need to concern yourself with what's happening in that moment, what's happening.

[Blithey]

In the weird building down the road kind of thing. Yeah, worry about that.

[Dirk the Dice]

The other bit, the opening section actually tracks, doesn't it? And I think some of this is part of the fiction and probably part of the published material where it does a timeline to show cults have manifested right from the, you know, 2000 BC to the present day, and all the points in between and any one of those descriptions. So if you take the yonkers revival in 1892, you could just read that section and it has inspiration, doesn't it? Has things that you think, Ah, right. Okay. So this is a. This is a seed of an adventure.

[Blithey]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's full of those kind of ideas as well. I mean, the. The cults as well have their own scenario hooks and things like that that you can kind of jump on and come up with ideas from. Yeah, but yeah, the timeline is. Is quite good. It's good fun, isn't it? The well, to hell. 1485. Yeah, things like that. Yeah, plenty of, plenty of ideas. But like you say, they're not ideas that feel sort of restrictive in any way.

[Dirk the Dice]

And there's five write ups of cults. And talking of shadow over innsmouth, there's a 1920s esoteric order of Dagon in there for good measure for that Innsmouth look. And I like this one, the Church of Perfect Science. A modern one.

[Blithey]

Yeah, the modern one's quite good, isn't it? It's quite, quite funny as well, because it may or may not be based on real weird religions that certain Hollywood stars.

[Dirk the Dice]

Particular litigious cults.

[Blithey]

Yes.

[Dirk the Dice]

That will just pass over and just make that reference.

[Blithey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, yeah. And as you say, there is quite an extensive bit of creating your own Cthulhu cult. Understand, this is. This is the real meat of it, isn't it? I think this bit, if you read this bit, this is a bit that really generates the ideas for you to develop further. Because there's a few tables in there that you can roll against to understand the goals and what the structure is and start to populate it and what that might look like. And as soon as you start rolling on those tables, you start generating ideas, don't you, of how this, this might fit in?

[Blithey]

Yeah, well, it reminded me a bit of the. There's a supplement for Tails from the Loop and it's the chapter called A Mystery Machine where you roll. Create a mystery. You roll on tables to create a mystery. And it always surprises me that you can sit there and roll something up and suddenly think, oh, yeah, that connects with that and it'll just fire your imagination. And this is a similar kind of thing, isn't it? If somebody says, okay, go away and invent a Cthulhu cult, you might sit there with a piece of paper and go, okay, I'll come up with some ideas. And they might be a bit pedestrian, but when you start rolling on tables and you get sort of weirdly contradictory ideas and weird ideas coming out of rolling on the table, it does generate something more interesting. I mean, that sounds like. That sounds like a failure imagination on my part, but it's like anything, isn't it? Often when you try and just invent something, you'd end up just defaulting things you already know. Whereas when you roll on a random table, it'll throw things at you that you've not really considered because it's. It's random. Well, that's what's great about it, I think. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And it focuses, doesn't it? On the sources of power and the goals of the cult and how they set out achieving it. And I've been reading this book about spies and how the intelligence agency develops and there's a lot of parallels between espionage and cults because when you espy and it seems to me that culture the same, it's like an endless recruitment campaign. Spies are constantly trying to find like minded individuals who they can get to cross over and give them information and they become the handler and that becomes a kind of resin detra. And it feels to me that a cult has a similar approach, doesn't it? That constantly they're trying to gather more people into the cause one way or another.

[Blithey]

Constant recruitment. And also the of your other obvious parallel is the secrecy of it as well. Because obviously you can't be open about a Cthulhu cult, can you? You've got to be secretive. So you're right. It's that thing of how do you recruit someone into a secret society is what makes it interesting. Because you can't go around saying, would you like to join my cult that worships a tentacled creature under the sea? You've got to lure them in in a more subtle way, haven't you? Before they realize the full horror of what they're doing.

[Dirk the Dice]

Half the book is given over to scenarios that I'm not allowed to read because I think you picked it up and you were inspired to run something for us.

[Blithey]

I'm going to run something for you and Eddie. I'm going to run one. There's three at the back, isn't there? There's Lockie's. Lockie's Gift. There's one set in about 1892 and they do form a mini campaign, don't they? So they're all they are. You can run them separately, but they are interconnected. You'd play them with different characters. That's quite a nice idea. You know, you play different characters in different times. There's Lockie's Gift, which I think is the 1890s. Then the angel's thirst, which is 1920s and a God's Dream, which is a modern one. But they're all. They're all interconnected. And the idea is you would play different characters in different time. Time obviously different times. But yeah, I've looked at them, they're quite good. So you're not allowed to read those. Read no further, as they used to say in those scenario. Note, if you are playing this. Read no further. Read no further.

[Dirk the Dice]

Prime Directive strikes again.

[Blithey]

We would never have entertained that, would we? Back in the day. We'd never have entertained was both owning the same book with the same scenarios in and saying, don't read. Don't read them. Even though we wouldn't have read them. I would never have read them. But somehow the prime directive, it was forbidden, wasn't it? This.

[Dirk the Dice]

This does feel like a referee's book, though, doesn't it? It does feel like if you have that arrangement on your group, that you are the keeper you want to be keeping this away from your players, really. Because.

[Blithey]

Yeah, that's an interesting point that, isn't it? Because it gives certain things away, doesn't it, that you wouldn't want the players to. To know about. That's true. That. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

I really like the writing of this. And when I. When I look back, I picked off this magazine, another Cthulhu special from Different Worlds, and they did a few of these over the run. It's good to compare, like we did last time, how they were writing about these things in the 80s compared with this supplement and how this has developed. Because I think what we noticed last time was, you know, go back to the 70s and 80s, what we noticed about the Golantha writing that Greg Stafford did in publications back in the day, there's not much difference between that and how it's written about now. It's just got more information with it. So going back to different worlds, it feels very different. The way that they were writing about cult organizations back then. I think there's an article in here about occult organizations.

[Blithey]

Yeah. Like Cthulhu. No, you'd want that, would you?

[Dirk the Dice]

But they're real world organizations, aren't they? So they. The Freemasons and Theosophical Society and the Rosecution Society, like a lot of these articles from back then, they're more like a Wikipedia entry. So we. Now. We don't need this anymore, do we? This kind of stuff.

[Blithey]

Yeah, that. That's true, that, isn't it? Yeah, it is kind of like giving you information that you wouldn't necessarily have access to back then. So you wouldn't necessarily know who these organized or what these organizations were unless you decided to go to the local library and get a book on from organizations like that, which we wouldn't necessarily. Don't. So it's giving you that kind of information. And I suppose it's. It's a bit more fixated with the real world, isn't it? Culture. Cthulhu is. Is connected to the real world, obviously, because it's called a Cthulhu it's set in the modern or real world. But in that article, there's a bit more of a fixation with how this fits into the real, real world, as in, these are real organizations that you can use, which doesn't really do now because they say you can just Google things, can't you?

[Dirk the Dice]

These organizations, benign organizations. And it made me think, well, maybe some of the cults that you could produce of your own have a relatively benign appearance. Not all of the people involved may know of the motivations or what's going on. You play characters could actually consult with a cult that has nefarious things going in the background.

[Blithey]

But I would say that, you know, reading cults, Cthulhu, I think a cult that does appear benign and some of its members are duped is far more interesting as a concept than just a bunch of evil people who are worshiping some weird God doing something terrible. I think it's a far more interesting proposition, isn't it, that there are people involved in it who think they may be doing good things, but really what they're doing is fueling something very, very bad at its heart that they're not really privy to is a much more interesting idea, isn't it?

[Dirk the Dice]

And using that spy analogy, if player characters come to some of these groups in exchange for knowledge, the idea is that there is a mutual exchange of knowledge, so the player characters in some way in cahoots, unwittingly, with an occult organization.

[Blithey]

Well, there have. Yeah. And. Well, I can't. We can't really talk about this, can we? But we. We've. We've played a scenario a few years ago that's very similar to that, though you realize you're not what all things are, not quite what they appear to be, which is great. Which is great when that happens, I think. I think, again, that's a. A great thing for players because I've played more Cthulhu than I've run, so I always have more of a player's perspective on it. I think even though I've run it, I've played far more. Probably 80% of my time has been playing Cthulhu and about 20% of the time been running it. I think as a player, it's always far more exciting and interesting when you are uncertain or fooled a bit by these kind of organizations. I quite like that as a player. You know, it's like a magic trick being pulled on you where you, as a player, you're not just going, oh, well, they look like a bad lot. They're probably the cultists. The idea that some organization that seems, as you said, benign ultimately is revealed to be not very benign at all. Quite malign as a player, that's always kind of great. I love those moments where you realize, oh, we've made a complete mistake here. Completely the wrong end of the stick. There's always a guy, he's always a lot of fun. And again, that's something that in cult Cthulhu comes across. The idea of the recruit people, they might have a. Seem like a legitimate business. That kind of thing is good fun.

[Dirk the Dice]

In this different world as well, away from the cults and the occult organizations. There's a good article about cthulhu in the 80s, and there were a lot of these produced, weren't they? The idea of Cthulhu now.

[Blithey]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And this and this one seems kind of obsessed with the idea that with increased firepower, these monsters are not going to be any good. Up against an M16 with 10 shots around causing one D10 plus six damage.

[Blithey]

You see that? You say that, but that there's a big assumption there that you get a chance to shoot. Don't just go insane on the spot. I mean, you could. You could a rocket launcher against Cthulhu, couldn't you? You. But you've got to sort of aim at him and risk losing a D100 sanity. So suddenly you're pointing your rocket launcher at all the other players, aren't you?

[Dirk the Dice]

Where the article gets a bit more sophisticated is that it starts looking at potential new scientific developments and discoveries that could ultimately expose some vulnerabilities, mythos entities. But then it starts to ask the question how scientific developments could get distorted. What if Oppenheimer. The concept was whispered in his ear by Azathoth. Destructive power.

[Blithey]

Exactly. Yeah. The destructive weapons are actually being created by the Cthulhu myths. Not. Not to destroy it, but created by it. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And then I. Then I started thinking, well, everybody's talking about he can't go anywhere without bloody AI being mentioned at work. Everybody. Well, enjoy. You enjoy a cup of coffee now, but you know that cup of coffee can be replaced by AI in the future. That, you know.

[Blithey]

AI will be drinking your coffee. Yeah, you will. You won't be allowed to drink coffee anymore. AI will drink it for you. Is that right? So.

[Dirk the Dice]

So at the risk of sending like one of those boars, I did think of what if you put chat GTP through Necronomicon, the Necromance through it, that large language model, you could look at all of those ethereal mythos and books, couldn't you? You could put them all through it and it come back with something meaningful.

[Blithey]

Would it? The truth? Yeah, yeah. Drive you insane. Don't do it. Don't do it, Dirk. Don't do it.

[Dirk the Dice]

Would it drive the artificial intelligence insane?

[Blithey]

What's the Sam role for an artificial intelligence? Yeah, yeah, there you go. But that isn't this. Isn't this, though? Isn't this the beauty of Cthulhu? What. What you're doing now is why the game has endured for so long, isn't it? Because you're taking something new. Well, AI is not new, but you're taking something topical and just overlaying it with. With Cthulhu. Cthulhuising it, aren't you? And suddenly you've got an idea. And that's why the game is. Is so popular and has lasted. And that's why people like us go back to it all the time, isn't it? Because you can just take something, put it through the. Run it through Cthulhu, and out the other end pops a bit of a scenario. Oh, yeah, that's a. What an idea. I can use that. And I don't know if there's any. Is there any other game like that? Is there any other role playing game like that where you can take something, anything you like, topical politics, political figures, historical figures, innovations. You've done it, haven't you? You mentioned Oppenheimer, you've mentioned AI, you mentioned anybody. And run it through the Cthulhu mix? And at the other end, there's an idea. Is any other game where that. That is the case? I don't think there is. No.

[Dirk the Dice]

And isn't that one of the things that gets leveled at it, this idea that, you know, take any situation and stick a sugar in it and you've got something. But I think it's. It's more than that, isn't it? It comes back again, that eureka. Moment of realizing, of course, at the core of the game is that these messages are coming from an extraterrestrial source. And it's distorting how we think about the world.

[Blithey]

Starting reality and how we think about the world. And it's got its own mysterious plan. And that mysterious plan can really be whatever you want it to be. And I know. I know what you mean to stick a shog off in it. It is a bit of an in standing joke, isn't it? That. Oh, Cthulhu, this. Cthulhu on a submarine. Cthulhu in a helicopter. Cthulhu in the North Pole. Cthulhu. I don't know, Disneyland, anything. I know what you mean. That's true. But I suppose that joke comes from a sort of truth, doesn't it? That that joke only exists because you can do that with the Call of Cthulhu. You can't do it with other games, can you? That's why that joke doesn't exist for other games.

[Dirk the Dice]

And if nothing else, I've put this book in front of you and you're going away and promising to run a campaign.

[Blithey]

Whoa. I got a campaign.

[Dirk the Dice]

I said that was what you said. It connected.

[Blithey]

They are connected. So you. We could do all three. You could do all three, yeah. Play three different characters. Different. Could. Could do that, yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

You heard it here first. It's been recorded, so that stands as committed to.

[Blithey]

Even if you and Eddie don't want me to. That's what you're getting now. Sorry, Eddie. That's what you're getting. He's made me run a campaign.

[Dirk the Dice]

Cheers.

[Blithey]

Goodbye.

[Mike Mason]

My name is Paul Fricker. My name is Mike Mason and together Mike and I have written and recorded a new show where you can hear chilling tales of horror. Join us, won't you, @eldritchstories.com and remember, keep it Eldritch.

[Dirk the Dice]

Forget me.

[Blithey]

Caught.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's that time in the podcast when we're walking backwards with our coat on. We won't feel the benefit on these cold nights, but nevertheless, we're standing there chatting across the table and it's a bit of closing time chatter and blithey. What's been on your mind recently?

[Blithey]

Well, it's that time of year now, isn't it, where Grog meat is out of the way and I have a few more gaming commitments before. Before the end of the year.

[Dirk the Dice]

But.

[Blithey]

But it doesn't feel as pressurized as. It's a weird pressure with Grog Meat around. Three games at Grog Meet, two at Grog Meet and then one at Marpcon on the Sunday. But they're all kind of the same weekend. And suddenly it's like a pressure valves released where I think, all right, I've. I'm still running pipes during X and I've still got things to run but. But nothing like as much. And so my mind kind of turns to next year. Kind of makes I have this thing now. Boom. Now I start thinking about next year and what I'm going to run and I can't. I always tell myself this time of year and I never do it. I always think I'm going to run that Blake 7 Savage Worlds game. I keep promising Myself, because I was talking at Grog me about, you know, to people about it. And Savage Worlds were perfect for doing Blake 7. And I always had the idea of doing a Blake 7 scenario after the final episode. So the guns were on Storm, they were on stone and they're all captured and the scenario is what happens next. And I tell myself, this time I'm gonna do that next year. I never do, I never do. So maybe I will.

[Dirk the Dice]

I probably won't be on Blake 7.

[Blithey]

Beyond Blake 7, set to stone, that's the looking title set to stump. So when they're all shot at the end, they are on stunt, so they're all alive, you play them. And Savage Worlds is the perfect game for Blake 7 because you've got the hindrances, haven't you? You know, Cowardly Villa, Ruthless Avon, all that kind of thing. So I always think of that. And also, I suppose it's the time of year now where I do start thinking about what do I want to run next year? And, yeah, half committing myself to what I'm going to run next year and thinking I'm going to run some dying earth for our Sunday group, thinking, all right, we'll do that. That's. That's that commit. We've got that commitment already. It's all in the diary, all these commitments.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, I'm going through this similar thing. I'm going through a similar thing, but looking at when it'll fit. Because I think we've both commented on the fact that we're still working at Pandemic lockdown time, aren't we, in terms of gaming, putting aside time that we think, oh, we can slip another game in here. But honestly, the world is demanding more and more of my time. If it's not Sophie Ellis Bexter, it's my mum. And so. So it's fitting it all in, isn't it? It's fitting it all in now that there's a social life beyond gaming.

[Blithey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very true. And it's an odd thing, isn't it, with. With lockdown and all? The COVID lockdown thing of. It feels like it's always been like that, but. But it hasn't really. Let you say pre. Pre Covid. We didn't do. We did quite a lot of gaming. I mean, we don't. We do more gaming than we've ever done, I suppose, let's be honest. But we. But you say over lockdown, we did more and more and more because it was just more and more time. No one was doing anything, no one was going out. And it feels like that's the norm. But as you say, you got to kind of correct yourself a bit and think, oh, it's not. It's not the norm at all, is it really? So I probably. Time to Write Mid Lake 7 Savage Worlds game. There you go. I won't do it. Yeah, good to clear that up now rather than, you know, halfway through next year. Oh, I hope.

[Dirk the Dice]

I hope you do revive it. That would be great. I've been. I've been doing a sub stack. Do you know. Have you heard of Substack?

[Blithey]

No. Yeah, I've heard of Substack. I don't know what it is. I've seen it on my Discord thing and I look at occasionally and I've seen the word sub stack, but I don't know what it means and I don't want to get involved in it because it might. Might just confuse me as, you know, I'm not. I'm not the most. I mean, X. Formerly known as Twitter. In my head, it's not even formally known as Twitter. It's still Twitter. That's how bad what I am when it comes to social media, Substack is.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's. Remember Blogger? Do you remember Blogger?

[Mike Mason]

I remember.

[Blithey]

I know what a blog is.

[Dirk the Dice]

Blog spots and all that.

[Blithey]

Yeah, yeah. It took me a while to get. But I remember that from way back. A blog, it's just.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's just a blog. It's just a blog, but it sends it out as emails and it's a platform.

[Blithey]

So it's an email.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's an email, yeah. It's an email blog. It's like a mailing list, but it's also a platform putting stuff on. Do you know, I. I first heard about them through Dominic Cummings as one and he puts his like mad gibberings.

[Blithey]

On there and you know, going back, talking about Cthulhu. Cthulhu and public figures. There you go.

[Dirk the Dice]

People receiving messages and interpreting them. But he, he puts his on there substack. And I've started using it because we've got. We've got the website where you can do like blog entries and I publish the podcast to it, but I've started doing like short pieces that are about gaming, but they're sort of adjacent to gaming and some other little bits of obsessions. It's not very good because already two more additional projects have emerged from it that has being time consuming. There's never a good idea.

[Blithey]

You say it's Sophie, Alex Baxter and your mom, but Is it. Or is it your substacks? There you go.

[Dirk the Dice]

What I've written about in the most recent one is about this idea of time pressure and you know that's a bit of an obsession of mine of how do you emulate those scenes in the movies and in drama where you know the bomb's gonna go off and you've got to diffuse it and, and it's hard to recreate that pressure, isn't it? Of like a heist or you know, there's only so much oxygen in the, the place. So I've been looking at some of the mechanical ways of, of doing that and I publish on that. It a few ideas that I've developed on that but did get me thinking of those little naughty problems that you get is when you're playing role playing games that you sort of want to spend time working out. Have you? What's your, what's your obsession? Blighty?

[Blithey]

I. I think that one that you've mentioned is, is a, is a good one, isn't it like say time pressure. Because whenever you play a game you've, you've got to give players the opportunity to talk about their plans but equally you want to give them a sense of pressure that you've not got forever to talk about this, that, that six second combat round. Yes, of course you can talk about what you're going to do because you're not going to give you six seconds to decide. But equally I don't want you spending 20 minutes because you know it's all happening very quick. So I want to put you under some pressure.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's that thing of the parallel of game time and real time. So the idea of like well you could restrict real time. Well that's not right is it? Because real time telescopes and goes in and out depending on the situation that they're in. So again game time seems to be the place to do it. But if you do it as obsessional resource management of right, you've used three seconds or four seconds somewhere. You've got to abstract it, haven't you? And that's what this substack talks about really. Just like using various methods of how do you represent that in a game so that it feels exciting but not too onerous.

[Blithey]

I think another touching on. When you mentioned about resource management, I was thinking resource management is always a thorny subject in games as well, isn't it? Because I always think it's important and yet I always hand wave it. I always hand wave it. I always get bored by the idea of Ammunition, number of bullets in your gun and all that kind of arrows. Even though in the back of my mind, I think those things are important because ultimately that's the difference, isn't it? That's the difference between a missile weapon and a sword. A missile weapon, you're going to run out of arrows eventually. So the guy's pinning you down with a bow, you make him shoot enough, he's run out of arrows. But I do that in a game. I never do it and I always think I should, but. But it bores me a bit. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

The games I do, the games that do that. You kind of push against it, don't you, thinking, or do I have to do this?

[Blithey]

Do I have to do. Yeah, yeah, you do get games that deal with it and you think, oh, for God's sake, do I have to do that? You know, I was doing some. It's like doing some in parts of Journey, actually. Recruited some more pirates for your ship, haven't you? You've given them all weapons. And I was putting together the NPCs the other day for our game on Saturday, and you've given them all ghost rifles. And they have 80 rounds, of course, and I thought, great, 80 rounds. You're never gonna have to worry about running out bullets in a fight. Hey, with 80 rounds. There they go again. You know, I'm bothered about resource management, but equally I'm not, because it bores me. I wish to. It's only that middle ground, isn't it, of it, where you think there is some resource management, but it's not onerous or shadowing the game or anything like that.

[Dirk the Dice]

Nice one. Well, thanks, Blythe, and well done, because we've got through two episodes talking about cults without having a fraudian slip and having to put an explicit label on the podcast.

[Blithey]

We've done well there, haven't we?

[Dirk the Dice]

The famous Mike Hunt incident rings, doesn't it? But anyway, till next time, goodbye.

[Blithey]

Goodbye.

[Dirk the Dice]

Thanks to Mike Mason for being a great guest at Grog Meat in the Evening in the pub. He was challenging us with a. You can only keep one Conan the Barbarian, Excalibur Sword and the Sorcerer. Which would it be? Which would yours be? Make sure that you follow Mason and Fricker's Eldritch stories. There's a link in the show Notes talking of stories. We'll be looking at fiction next year in the Grogpod Book Club. Members want to revisit the Appendix N authors and some of the Appendix G. It's on the first Sunday of the month, except when it isn't. See the grognard files.com for details. I mentioned the sub stack that I've done and there's about six different articles on there. One of them turned into a project known as the Grogvine, which means that five books are currently making their way around the world. Pages are being created by wonderful people and I'm looking forward to them coming back to me in the next few months so I can share what's been made. Grog Meat this podcast and all the projects that we support are only possible due to the kind and generous support of the patrons. Thank you to everyone past and present who have supported us. It covers the costs, allows us to invest in the content, and encourages us to carry on. It's been a while since I last did a shout out to New Patreons, so welcome to Brian Duggard, Robert Baker, Tom Wright, Neho and Rob Arcangelli for people who pledge at the sofa so good level I like to give a virtual gift from the topic under discussion and this time I've gone to the Colts book. I'm going to be rolling on some dice to give some presents, so here we go. First up is going to be max and Andrew McDonald, who were on my Corum Stormbringer game and enjoyed being mad and Saboteurs a little too much I think. Anyway, let's roll on this. Oh, they get protection from one of the Idols of Relie thanks to you both. David Cody, he gets a Cthulhu Shroom. Dan Morris gets a Processor from the Church of Perfect Science. Fred Folds gets the Black Drop. Dave Churchill, he gets a pain inducer. William Plumridge, due to his level of support, he gets a spell Oil of Silence. Finally, Martin runs Vest. He gets a chance to summon a Black Winged One.

[Blithey]

There we go.

[Dirk the Dice]

Thank you to you all and thanks for listening. I look forward to speaking to you next time. Until then, adios amigos.

[Blithey]

It.