The Halloween Investigations

Yesterday, my FLGS played host to what might be the largest Call of Cthulhu RPG convention ever held in Western New York.  Three Game Masters (myself, Brandon and Dave) ran a total of five sessions of Call of Cthulhu over the course of nine hours, from noon to nine pm.

Dave ran a pair of Classic Era (1920s) scenarios, one from noon to 4 and the second from 5 to 9.  Brandon, running Call of Cthulhu for the first time ever, ran The Derelict, Chaosium's Free RPG Day offering from this year, a modern day scenario.  I began the day with "The Dark Forest," a game set in second century Roman-occupied Germania, and ended it with something a bit special: an "Elimination Challenge" game, with a scenario designed to kill characters, with some pretty special prizes for the last to die.

As far as prizes went, Chaosium sent us several copies of the "Quick-Start Guide" for 7th edition, and a couple copies of "Alone Against the Flames," a solo play adventure resembling a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.  Golden Goblin Press, a licensee for Call of Cthulhu, offered a $50 gift certificate for the Elimination Challenge as well as providing an adventure to run.  And finally, I purchased a bunch of Reaper Bones' "Eldritch Demons" and painted them up as patina'd bronze statues to provide trophies.

"The Dark Forest" has the players taking the roles of a Roman long-range reconnaissance team, sent into the German forest to follow up on rumors of bandits preying on caravans and threatening open rebellion against Roman rule.  I had five players at the table, including my sister, her boyfriend, and Sandor, a Cthulhu veteran who made the drive from Albany to Rochester to participate, a good four-hour drive.

The scenario got a bit madcap once the players realized the "bandits" were in fact zombies, raised and commanded by a small group of cultists.  Rather than run from the zombie horde and take refuge in a nearby abandoned hill fort upon discovery that a gladius is a poor choice of zombie-killing weapon, they invented a series of schemes involving fire and barricades before finally taking the hint and retreating from the horde.

After circumventing the zombie horde and confronting the cultists, during which one investigator died to a massive, supernaturally-induced heart attack (there was a Magic: The Gathering event going on at the store at the same time, and the Magic players all stopped what they were doing to listen to my narration of this death.  It was pretty cool), the rest of the investigators took one look at the summoned monster presiding over the ceremonies and decided that two German kids didn't need rescuing that badly, opting instead to retreat, make their report to the prefect, and let someone else deal with the cult.

I decided to deal out the statue-trophies as a Player's Choice award, allowing the players to vote on who they think earned the trophy through good role-playing.  The players decided that Sandor had earned the trophy, and I awarded a Keeper's Choice prize, a copy of the 7th Edition Quick-Start rules, to the person who got the second highest number of votes - who happened to be my sister.  Honestly no playing of favorites there, she got the second most votes so I gave it to her.

After a brief break, we came back and I set up for the Elimination Challenge.  Six players sat down at this table, with Jen, Greg, Patrick and Sandor returning from my afternoon session, and joined by John and Chris.  John had not played Call of Cthulhu in close to fifteen years, and his two sessions today were Patrick's first experience with Call of Cthulhu period.

The premise of this scenario, "The Owlglass," is that the investigators are on a cargo ship traveling between New York City and Southampton.  A fellow passenger, archaeologist Hutton, has brought a large crate on board, and becomes agitated when it's damaged in the hold.  The crate contains "the Owlglass," a large, teardrop-shaped mineral deposit resembling an enormous fire opal, with a curious black spot that looks like the pupil of an eye.  Unfortunately, the damage to the crate allows the Owlglass to "see" the night sky through the open cargo doors, and a meteor streaking across the sky gives its former owner the point of reference needed to track it down.

There was a distinct air of "comedy of errors" in this session, most notably after Patrick's character had a run-in with a slug-like blob of animate, mutated human flesh; the slug-thing shot him in the calf with a dart, and fearing mutation, he proceeded to hack off his own leg below the knee with a butcher's knife.  It was only through a miraculous series of good rolls that he survived at all; as is, he spent the remainder of the session at a single hit-point.  Worst of all, when he managed to laboriously crawl to the infirmary (having hacked off his leg in the ship's galley) in search of painkillers, he discovered that the morphine was in a cabinet on the wall...about five feet off the ground.

The rest of the party went to incredible lengths to try and find a way into the aft cargo hold (where the Owlglass and the inflatable dinghies they would need to escape were located) without having to deal with the Owlglass' mutant servitors, who had gathered around in chanting and praying.

Ultimately, Jen, Chris and Sandor's characters met a variety of ends (including Chris, having hoisted the Owlglass up on a crane, riding the artifact into the briny depths like Slim Pickens riding the bomb after failing to secure himself while cutting the cable), and Greg, John and Patrick were feeling the mutation take hold.  Patrick and John both succumbed to their mutations, transforming into servitors of the Owlglass (it having not been destroyed, only relocated).  Seeing this, and recognizing that he would face the same fate, Greg's character opted to kill himself rather than become one of them.

Since Greg was the last one to die (and I counted "mutated into a servitor of the Owlglass" as "dead" for the purposes of the Elimination Challenge), he walked away with the grand prize, a $50 gift certificate to the Golden Goblin Press webstore.  Based on the speed at which they mutated, I determined that John was our second place winner, and Patrick came in third.  John took home a Cthulhu statue/trophy, and Patrick a copy of "Alone Against the Flames," a solo-play scenario from Chaosium.

Everyone had a phenomenal time, and we helped move some product on the store shelves; Brandon easily spent $200 on Cthulhu merchandise, buying a complete set of 7th edition materials as well as one of the Golden Goblin books, and Sandor purchased a 7th edition Keeper's Guide; I'm sure some of the other players bought Cthulhu material as well, plus other sales; one of the players in my afternoon game purchased a significant quantity of Savage Worlds material.  I think this might become a regular Halloween thing.

Queen City Conquest 2016

This past weekend I was in attendance at Queen City Conquest in Buffalo, New York; this is the show's fifth year, I believe, and my second year in attendance.  This year, like last year, I was there for Saturday only; and again, I ran two Call of Cthulhu sessions more or less back to back, with a dinner break in between.  I'm not going to do detailed write-ups of how the sessions went, because by the end of the second one I'd been awake for going on 20 hours and they're already getting a bit fuzzy to me; instead, I'll do a write up of my overall con experience.

Our story begins with me stopping in at Wegman's, my local grocery chain, to buy snacks to distribute.  When I'm running a game, I see myself as host and my players as guests, regardless of venue, and I think it's a nice gesture to provide snacks.  My plan was to hit up the bulk candy aisle and fill up a bag with gummi candy octopuses; what could be more appropriate for Cthulhu, yes?

I get to the bulk candy aisle, and there's two sorority girls (they were wearing Greek letters; honestly, I'm at the point where everybody under the age of 25 looks like they're 12 to me) emptying the gummi octopus bin into a bag.

Girls, there is nothing you need those gummi octopuses for more than I need them, okay?

So casting about, I grab two packages of Halloween Oreo cookies.  This will do.

The drive in is uneventful; I drive past the Buffalo Convention Center where the convention is being held, heading for the nearest parking lot.  I pull in, and am told by the attendant, "Sorry, the last spot just filled, you'll have to find someplace else to park."

Pull into the next lot; the attendant says it's $5, cash only, to park.  I don't have cash on me.  He says, "Whatever, just park there anyways.  They aren't paying me enough to care." So I ended up with free parking for the event.

Queen City Conquest is not a huge convention, but it feels big to me.  I think about 400 people go through the door over the course of the weekend.  This year, QCC was sharing the Buffalo Convention Center with some sort of crossfit/gym-junkie convention, which was pretty funny to me.

Both my sessions this time around were run under the banner of Rogue Cthulhu, an organization based out of Ohio that organizes convention games of Call of Cthulhu; my friends Rich and Heather, who have been playing in my games at Running GAGG pretty consistently for years, are working to expand Rogue Cthulhu into the Western New York region, beginning with this year's Queen City Conquest, and I was more than happy to work with them on this.

For my first game, from 1pm to 5pm, I ran The Derelict again, Chaosium's Free RPG Day 2016 offering.  Having discussed the adventure not too long ago with Sean, one of my regular players who also GMs occasionally, we hit on something that had felt off to me previously; the monster in the scenario carries a gigantic bow and arrows of unknown manufacture, which doesn't feel very Mythos-y to me.  Additionally, the pregenerated characters provided with the PDF of the scenario have some elements to them that don't quite work with the scenario as written - they've all got military connections and guns, for starters, but the thing that's been a thorn in my side is a note in one character's background - that they were told the derelict freighter would be there, and that they should retrieve the contents of the captain's safe.

There is no reference to a safe in the scenario, much less mysterious contents.

So I decided to do some rewriting, to revise the monster, tie the scenario in more strongly to the semi-connected "Cthulhu Mythos" of the RPG, and create an interesting something in the captain's safe.  After playing around with various slug- and worm-like ideas in my sketchbook, I came up with a revised monster that I felt confident in - a fat, wattled worm-creature that dragged itself along on two stubby, webbed arms with a one-eyed, slug-like face and a tongue it could project like a chameleon's, only tipped in a sharp barb; this would replace the bow and arrow as the creature's primary weapon.

I tied this creature in to Lovecraft's short story "The Temple," and more specifically to "Gloon," a worm-like entity with a strange connection to certain Greek-style statues; Gloon is, as far as I know, wholly a creation of the RPG.  I placed a Gloon-connected piece of statuary in the captain's safe, noted in the captain's log (which the investigators in this case never got a chance to read) the statue's origin, and sent the creature to retrieve the statue and kill the unbelievers handling it.

The scenario moved at a leisurely pace, ratcheting up the creep factor; the players decided to head

my set up for the 1pm game

straight to the radio room upon boarding the derelict freighter, rather than explore as they went, so the creature slept through a good portion of the scenario before rousing itself to menace them; the players worked themselves up over finding the mangled remains of crewmembers and damage to the ship's controls and radio room, desperately trying to figure out what had happened.  They did retrieve the statue, having visions of Atlantis as they handled it, which woke the monster up from it's post-binge eating nap in the hold.

Ultimately, the creature killed four of the six investigators; one got impaled through the chest on the tongue-tentacle, the second survived an impalement through the thigh only to be killed when another investigator dropped a molotov cocktail on them; the third got impaled through the head, and the fourth, now obsessed with the strange statue, was dragged under water and drowned when he refused to release his hold on it.

We had one new player and three who had played in one of my games at last year's QCC; two scheduled players weren't able to make it but Rich and Heather were able to jump in.  I really liked the changes I made, and while the characters never learned the origin of the statue or the monster, at least one of the players looked at me and went, "This is from Lovecraft's 'The Temple,' isn't it?" so the connection was not lost.

I had dinner with my sister and her boyfriend at the Pearl Street Grill, a short walk from the convention center, and I'm pretty sure I had the same thing I had last year - a bacon cheeseburger topped with onion rings, cooked medium, side of fries.  Below the Pearl Street Grill is a wonderful little place called Brawler's Deli - I was treated to lunch there by my coworkers the day I left my job at HSBC bank, the day before I moved to Rochester.  Giant, meat-filled sandwiches.  Unfortunately they're closed on weekends, otherwise I would have insisted on a pastrami on rye from Brawler's.  But I digress.

On the way back from dinner, I stopped at my car and grabbed the Oreos, which I forgot to bring in when I brought all my game stuff; as such, I placed one package of Oreos on my table, and one the next table over, where Heather was running a very dark, somber WWII-era Call of Cthulhu scenario.  This was quite a contrast from my 7pm adventure, "The Haunting of De Morcey House," which began life as an attempt to update the classic scenario "The Haunting" to the modern day.  I used a team of fraudulent TV ghost-hunters as investigators, brought in elements from M.R. James' short stories "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" and "The Casting of the Runes," and replaced the lich in the basement with a Crawling One, a wizard's personality and intellect transferred to the worms that ate his corpse.  Finally, I brought in a few touches from an episode of the TV show "Supernatural," specifically one dealing with the "Ghost-Facers," a group of inept ghost hunters trying to get a TV deal.

Two of my players from the earlier session returned for this one, and I think the other four players were either completely new to Call of Cthulhu or hadn't played it in years.  It ended up being a fairly light-hearted scenario, even as they were attacked by swarms of rats and pelted with exploding china cabinets.  Sanity was nickel-and-dimed away by so many "small" events, and then the final reveal when the Crawling One boiled up out of the ground, plus the discovery of a crystalline idol of the Great Old One Yibb-Tstll, really cracked some brains.  The Crawling One blasted two investigators out of existence with castings of the Shrivelling spell, and a third player, having lost almost half his sanity in one failed roll after being granted a vision of Yibb-Tstll in the flesh, woke up three days later, two towns over with no memory of who he was or how he got there.

As an added bonus, one of the new players had recently taken a cryptography and code-breaking class - and so when they discovered the coded message hidden in the stained glass window, he was able to solve the code without needing me to give any help.  An unexpected use for a class he took as an elective, to be sure.

Both scenarios basically took of their entire time slots, which took me by surprise; I had anticipated them both running about three hours, but The Derelict ran for three hours and thirty-seven minutes, while The Haunting of De Morcey House ran three hours and fifty minutes.

I didn't end up buying anything at any of the vendor tables at QCC this year - nothing really jumped out at me, and I didn't want to buy something just for the sake of buying something.  I was surprised to see no miniatures for sale anywhere - one vendor had a couple boxes of ships for the "X-Wing" fleet battles game, but that was it.  I did get a T-shirt with the con logo on it, but I'm not sure I'll get to wear it - I think Gina has already declared it "soft" and thus claimed it.

The drive home wasn't too bad, but I definitely wasn't caffeinated enough - next year I either need to not do an evening game or make arrangements to spend the night in Buffalo, but I'm not sure I was really good to drive home - my eyelids were dangerously heavy.  But overall it was a good show and I'm looking forward to next year's show.

Monthly Madness: The Devil is in the Details, Part 1

Saturday night I ran a one-shot at Just Games, a scenario penned by Oscar Rios for Chaosium's now-defunct monograph line.  We actually didn't quite finish the scenario, so we'll be reconvening sometime soon to finish the adventure.  Two players were not only new to my table, but new to Call of Cthulhu entirely, and I'm pleased to report they had a great time.

Dramatis Personae:

• Professor Hossam Ramsey, Egyptologist (played by Sean)
• Sherman Rosenbaum, Accountant (played by Katie)
• Lois Newberry, Secretary (played by Jessica)
• Malcolm Rhodes, Rare Book Dealer (played by Travis)

Accompanying them, as NPCs:

• Paul Doucet, Antiquarian
• Mahira Najii, student intern to Professor Ramsey

Employees of Wallace's Antiques & Collectibles (with the Professor and Mahira being newly-hired consultants), they've been sent on a week-long "working vacation" to Birch Springs, a little summer getaway town in the Catskills.  Here, they're staying at the Davidson estate, a Victorian-style summer home that's been sitting empty for five years until Fred Wallace bought the place cheap, fully furnished, hoping to turn a profit on the contents - the Davidson's were known as collectors of exotic goods from around the world, especially the Near East.  Wallace would be supervising their efforts to catalog and appraise the contents of the house, and their meals would be provided by a hired cook.  If it wasn't February, it'd be a wonderful week.  

Upon arriving, they discovered that Wallace had brought a "niece" with him, the sort that's young, fashionable, and only comes to visit when Mrs. Wallace is away.  After lunch, they get to work; Dr. Ramsey soon discovers evidence of a secret door in the library, while Malcolm notices a concrete obelisk 300 yards from the house, half-hidden in the trees at the edge of the property.  Examination of the obelisk reveals it to be of recent construction, covered in a mixture of Arabic writing and Egyptian hieroglyphics.  Dr. Ramsey and Mahira confirm that the carvings on this obelisk make up about one-fifth of a binding or protective spell; they suspect four more such pillars must exist around the property to comprise the rest of the spell.  They don't manage to open the secret door, and the rest of the day passes uneventfully.  

During the night, Malcolm is awoken by the sound of tiny bells and the smell of honey and sandalwood.  Opening his eyes, he sees a beautiful Arabic woman, dressed in veils and not much else, standing near the foot of his bed.  She beckons to him, and then disappears when he declines.  The smell of honey and sandalwood lingers for about ten minutes after she vanishes.  

The next day begins with "Kitten," Wallace's girlfriend, skipping breakfast to sleep in.  A few hour later, Irma, the cook's daughter, goes missing, and Wallace finds a note from "Kitten" explaining she'd left for New York, having had Irma drive her to Birch Springs.  Irma, it turns out, does not have a license and even if she did, the mountain roads and drifting snow would make for a dangerous drive.  

Lois eventually finds the key to the secret door, in a lock box under a loose floorboard in the master bedroom.  Alongside it are a .32 revolver, a box of bullets, a stack of nude photos, a roll of $20 bills and a battered notebook.  

Reading the notebook, they learn that Reggie Davidson, the last resident of the house, tried to summon something, using a spell found in Arabic scrolls, to avenge himself on the lawyers and creditors that hounded him.  Something went wrong, however, and whatever he summoned attacked him, ultimately being responsible for his death in 1923.  Whatever it is is still in the house...as they come to this realization, the power goes out.

Investigating the generator, they discover the handyman half-decapitated and the gasoline cans emptied down a drain.  Racing upstairs to check with Wallace, they barely have time to tell him what they saw before a purplish cloud wells up behind him, manifesting a series of barbed tentacles.  Wallace is dead before he hits the ground, and the investigators take off running for the secret room.  Terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought at the sight of this thing, Malcolm took off running outside, into the deepening snow.  

[GM's Note: I goofed here.  Wallace was supposed to die before the power went out.]

Locking themselves into the secret room, they surveyed the interior; shelves of jars and vials contained various liquids and powders, bookcases overflowing with occult texts, some sort of chemistry set, a case of scrolls and a workbench.  Dr. Ramsey and Mahira began investigating the scrolls, finding them to be a remarkably intact Arabic copy of the Al Azif, a book better known by its Greek translation - the Necronomicon! Sherman and Lois began poring over a notebook on the workbench, finding it to be Reggie's translation of certain scrolls within the Al Azif.  Cross-referencing them, Dr. Ramsey quickly confirms Reggie's translations to be seriously flawed, and that instead of the harmless "mist spirit" he'd tried to summon as a test of his skills, he called up instead a very dangerous entity known as a Jinniyah.

Malcolm, returning to his senses, reentered the house, realizing the snow was falling too fast and piling up too deep to safely make it back to town.  Joining the other investigators, he began examining some of the occult texts with Paul, discovering some more information on the Jinniyah - including how it could be bound within an enchanted glass bottle.  Using this information, Dr. Ramsey was able to find the spells to create such a bottle, and summon a Jinniyah into it, within the Al Azif.  

As they began discussing the possibility of casting these spells, a purple smoke began to seep into the room, forming itself into a beautiful Arabic woman.  She bowed slightly, and said in Arabic, "I have been listening to you for the past several hours as you've researched.  We can do this the simple way, or the difficult way."

Dr. Ramsey urged Lois, Mahira and Sherman to begin gathering the ingredients to make the ink, and began trying to question the Jinniyah to buy them time.  She simply shook her head and repeated her question.

And then Malcolm, .32 revolver in hand, fired three shots at her in quick succession.  

This is where we had to leave off for the night, as the store was closing and we had to clear out.  We're working on figuring out another time to reconvene and finish off the scenario.  

A Time to Harvest Session 9: Bug Hunt

Last week's Call of Cthulhu session ran long, but things were going entirely too well - for me as Keeper at least - to be willing to end the session at our usual cut-off time.  Things began to really ramp up here, and I think within the next few sessions we'll see the animal waste really start to hit the electric oscillator as far as the player-characters are concerned.  This was also, sadly, Greg's last session with us - his work contract had ended and he's leaving Rochester, so won't be able to be here on Tuesday nights any more.  Don't worry, we gave him one Hell of a send-off!

 Dramatis Personae:

• Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
• Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee 
• Nick Jackson (played by Greg), private investigator 
• Roni (played by Katie), Finnish-born history major and member of the swim team 
• Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography major

Despite the untimely death of Abelard, the Federated Oil and Chemical-backed expedition to Cobb's Corners in search of the Outer Ones, or "metch kangmi" as they may be known, has gone forward as planned, now as much, perhaps, of a mission of revenge as anything else.  For Darren and Perry, it was a return to the MacLearan farmhouse where their adventures began, for Nick and Nathanlie, it was all new.  FOC had renovated and reinforced the farmhouse, installing a radio antenna and powerful electric lights around the outside.  Morrison, their security chief, supervised the installation of a variety of traps and snares around the perimeter of the property.

Randall and Roni, having not been brought into FOC, had pursued their own investigation that led them back to Cobb's Corners; reuniting with their old comrades (and joining the FOC expedition), they shared what information they'd encountered - that Blaine and Daphne Devine, the formerly-missing woman whose brain had been installed in Professor Harrold's body, had been in contact with a woman named Emelda Cratchett to acquire her husband's grandfather's diaries.

Once established (and confirming the local presence of metch kangmi when one apparently loses a leg to a bear trap), the team divides up, with Darren, Perry, Roni, the psychologist Drake and security chief Morrison patrolling the sugar maple forest behind the cabin; this was at Perry's suggestion, recalling the unsettling dreams he'd had the last time he was in Cobb's Corners.

Nick and Nathanlie, meanwhile, went into town to size up the local law enforcement and to investigate Darren and Perry's claims of creepy children.  Randall manned an impromptu watchtower atop the roof of the farmhouse.

Darren, Perry and Roni soon realized that something was wrong with the forest, noticing small, mouthless humanoid figures, pinkish gray in color, watching them from the trees - the same as a creature Roni had seen near the outhouse weeks earlier.  Morrison shot one of the creatures out of the tree, sending the others scattering - and the one he shot sublimated into an ozone-scented smoke within the next few minutes.

Coming across a dilapidated cabin in a clearing, they noticed a piggish smell coming from the shack and a faint grunting, squealing sound.  Stealing as close as he dared, rifle at the ready, Perry tried to peer through the shack's single window.  As he did, a porcine head lifted up into view, peering back through tiny, jaundiced eyes.  Clawed hands grasping the window frame, the swine-thing heaved itself through the window towards Perry, but died quickly to a single shot from the Lee Enfield, dissipating into smoke as it did.  Squealing from the forest told them more of these creatures were on their way, and they quickly barricaded themselves inside the cabin.

I have gotten so much mileage out of this image.

Two more of the swine-things died quickly as they approached the window, but an enormous boar, half again as large as its fellows and sporting a pair of wickedly-curved tusks, circled around the other side of the cabin and began to batter against the door.  Ramming its huge, bony head through the rotten wood of the door, the creature began to break through - only to be knocked senseless by a bullet between the eyes from Perry.  The creature stumbled and fell backwards, its breathing wet and wheezy.  Darren decided to toss out a grenade to finish the creature off, judging the distance to throw the explosive to where it would damage the creature without damaging the cabin or themselves.  His aim was a little off, coupled with the rottenness of the wood, resulting in Darren getting a back full of splinters.

In the root cellar under the cabin, they found a catatonic little girl - and realized that the original swine-thing they'd encountered had been trying to get at her when they'd disturbed it.

[GM Aside: Personally, I really dislike mixing material from Lovecraft's "Dreamlands" stories into my Call of Cthulhu games.  I feel like the tones don't mesh at all and I'm just generally not a fan.  So when the campaign called for Zoogs, Men of Leng, and a Moon-Beast, I replaced them with "Dover Demons" and William Hope Hodgson's "Swine-Things" to suit my own preferences.]

Nick and Nathanlie, meanwhile, after assessing Sheriff Spenser as an authoritarian blowhard and Deputy Cutter as hiding something, go looking for Jason Haggerty, the teenage boy seen drawing "creepy trees" weeks earlier.  Talking their way past the school-marm, they managed to isolate the boy.  Nathanlie laid on the charm, leaning in seductively and using the boy's raging teenage hormones as a lever to pry loose information.

It worked, and they soon learned that most of the children in town were part of a group calling themselves "the Young," that Deputy Cutter was their leader (even though he was almost "too old") and that they would be summoning "Mother" to Earth in accordance with her wishes.

As Nick digested this information, Nathanlie opened her mouth and began to emit a strange, subsonic droning, putting the private eye in a hypnotic state and rewriting his memory to erase all evidence of what the boy had told them.

After having the girl checked out by Matherson and Drake back at base, Darren, Perry and Roni took her home to her parents, and then paid Emelda Cratchett a visit; she was at first irritated to hear reference to Blaine and Devine, blaming them for her husband's mysterious demise just days after he spoke with them.  They managed to talk their way into her good graces, however, and even managed to gain access to her husband's grandfather's journals.  From these they learned of legends of a cave network under Broken Hill, in which the Outer Ones lived.

Taking some time alone back at the base, Nathanlie mixed up a cocktail of heavy opiates and lemonade, distributing it to anyone in the base who would take a cup.  Darren, Perry and Roni returned to base and immediately sensed something off in Nick's explanation of what Jason Haggerty had said, their questioning making him begin to question his own memory.

At this point, something big began to set off traps behind the farmhouse.  As they watched through the kitchen windows, a tree seemed to begin to uproot itself from the ground - or rather, to extract itself from the pit trap it had blundered into.  Towering twenty feet tall, the "tree" was a thick, cylindrical trunk of dense black jelly, pocked with drooling, sphincter-like mouths and patches of coarse, dark hair, balanced atop three digitigrade legs ending in cloven hooves.  Crowning this horror was a mass of squirming, greasy tendrils, four larger "trunks" emerging from the mass of smaller "branches." With a hooting bellow, the thing launched itself against the reinforced wall of the farmhouse.

Behind the group, Nathanlie planted herself firmly in the doorway out of the kitchen, the skin on the back of her neck splitting open as she began to molt out of "her" disguise - revealing the Outer One that had replaced her weeks earlier to observe and report on the Investigators.

The tree-like thing outside was too great for Roni's mind to handle, and in the darkness of the new moon she latched on to electric lighting as a safety blanket.  The sight of an Outer One emerging from Nathanlie like a five-foot cicada was more than Nick could comprehend.  Tommy gun in hand, all he could think was that if Nathanlie had been replaced, the rest of them must have been as well.

Perry managed to put a rifle bullet in the thing wearing Nathanlie's skin, but did not manage to kill the creature.  Squeezing the trigger, Nick swept the entire room with the submachine gun, emptying the thirty-round magazine.  Other than placing three bullets into the creature in Nathanlie's skin (finally killing it), the shots went high from the recoil of the gun, sparing the rest of the expedition.

As Nick stood there, breathing hard, barrel of the gun smoking, the tree-like thing outside burst through the wall, seizing him with two tentacles and pulling him into its bulk before retreating into the darkness of the night.

A Time To Harvest Session 8: Champagne Wishes

Running a little behind schedule in posting this session's write-up, as I've been in giddy wargamer mode since Wednesday, building terrain and tweaking my warband in preparation for a future game of Frostgrave.  It's also been far too humid (it hit 93% humidity the other day...walking outside was like swimming in hot chowder) to do much painting - I know my spray primers won't stick to my ruined buildings in this weather, and I'm a little afraid to apply paint to miniatures for fear of it not drying properly. So I guess I should stop procrastinating and finish this write-up!

Dramatis Personae:

•  Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
•  Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee 
•  Nick Jackson (played by Greg), private investigator

After listening to the recording of a "metch kangmi," one of these alien Outer Ones, being interrogated, the Investigators came away less than impressed with the scientists at Federated Oil & Chemical, convinced that they have no idea what they're doing in regards addressing the apparent invasion of Earth by the Outer Ones.  Regardless, and keeping in mind the blank check penned for them by Abelard, they continue their firearms training.

The night before they're scheduled to return to Cobb's Corners, the Investigators are summoned by Selena Preston to the conference room on the fifth floor.  Not sure what to expect, Nick showed up armed.  Looking very serious for a moment, Abelard cracked a smile and drew forth an iced bottle of very high quality champagne.  "To our successes," he toasted.  Selena turns on a radio, and everyone begins to let their hair down.

Then, the power goes out.  By the time flashlights are rounded up, someone has slit Michael Abelard's throat, ear to ear in perfect silence.  Those closest to him at the table - David Drake, Nathanlie Peaslee, Peter Murdoch and Morrison, the security chief, were questioned closely, and frisked for weapons - both Morrison and Peaslee had knives in their boots, but these were all clean.  Darren and Nick attempted to search the conference room for invisible assassins by spraying champagne around the area, while Perry and Larry Nekler, the expedition's mechanic, made their way down the stairs to try and fix the power in the basement.

They were interrupted as they passed the fourth floor - from within, they could hear screams, gunshots, and a gutteral, booming croaking sound.  Sneaking past, they were met by opposition a level down - two green-scaled humanoid frogs, standing each six feet tall, still sloughing off the crusty yellow membrane that had sealed them in suspended animation - the "mummies" being rehydrated in the lab.  Perry stumbled retreating up the stairs, but managed to grab a fireaxe off the wall and swing at the lead of the two creatures.  The creature retaliated with a swipe of a huge, webbed claw that almost disemboweled the junior reporter.

Growing uneasy, Nick and Morrison head down stairs to help Perry and Nekler, stumbling into their fight with the two frogs, wherein their firearms made a distinct difference, though Nick's .45 jammed on its second shot.  One frog dead and the other in retreat, Nick helped Perry back upstairs to get medical attention while Morrison and Nekler continued to the basement.  A glance back showed Nick six more frogs emerging from the fourth floor, their claws and jaws bloody, and descending the stairs.

With Perry soon taped up, Nick rallied the group, rearmed, and led the group downstairs to see if Morrison and Nekler were still alive.  Muddy footprints and broken doors revealed that the frogs had left the building and made their way into the Detroit River.  The on-site staff -- security guards, maids, cooks, and lab scientists -- had been torn apart and partially devoured by the amphibious humanoids. And the building's wiring had been torn to shreds at the fuse box.  Nekler and Darren managed to jury-rig a temporary work around to get the building's lights back on.

With Abelard dead and no sign of his assassin (and the looming possibility that one of those present was a double agent for the metch kangmi), the Investigators debated the wisdom of continuing on with their mission to Cobb's Corners, ultimately agreeing that it would be best to launch an attack now, when the metch kangmi expect them to be disorganized and confused.

A Time to Harvest Session 7: New Beginnings

We had a smaller group this week, and a little bit of trouble with set-up - a folding chair broke under me when I sat down in it and we ended up a bit squeezed in next to an X-Wing game, but overall it was a good session.  Let's have a run down.

Dramatis Personae:

• Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
• Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee 
• Nick Jackson (played by Greg), private investigator

A week or so passed since the events in Orne Library and the deal made with the agents of the "Outer Ones." The Investigators were awakened one day by the sound of police sirens heading to campus.  Following the sound of the sirens brought them to Orne Library, where the bodies of those same agents - the tops of their heads neatly removed and their brains missing - were stacked up like cordwood in front of the library.  While observing the scene, Darren noticed a black Cadillac parked nearby, a bearded man visible in the driver's seat.

Since Daphne Devine/"Roger Harrold" was not among them, they swiftly paid a visit to "his" office; not finding "him" there, Nick trashed the office and then they headed to Harrold's residence.  Finding "him" at home, they escorted the ersatz professor to a nearby cafe for interrogation.  They quickly ascertained that "Harrold" had nothing directly to do with the destruction of the agents, but suggested that the "Outer Ones" don't take kindly to failure and don't feel particularly bound to honor bargains made with what they perceive as an inferior species.

Lunging, Harrold concluded the interrogation by drawing a metal ovoid, not much larger than a hen's egg, from a pocket and electrocuting Perry with it, badly burning the journalist and leaving him paralyzed and unconscious for a few minutes.  As Harrold turned to run, Nick pulled out his pistol and shot the professor in the head.  After explaining the situation to the satisfaction of the police, the investigators left the cafe - and saw the black Cadillac.  Deciding to introduce themselves, they struck up a conversation with first the driver, a large Scotsman, and then the passenger - a beautiful blonde woman who introduced herself as Selena.

Michael Abelard

Selena explained that her employer had a job offer for them, a job relating to "our mutual friends in the mountains." Her employer, she explained, was Michael Abelard, the owner of Federated Oil and Chemical - the financiers behind their college field trip to Cobb's Corners, Vermont.

Driving to the harbor, they boarded an amphibious plane and flew to Detroit, where they were met by Abelard, who laid all the cards on the table - his son had been killed by the Outer Ones while mountain climbing in Tibet, in an accident that had also cost Abelard the use of his legs.  Since then, he'd devoted his life and fortune to hunting these creatures and learning everything he could about them in order to destroy them.

He asked the investigators to lead a team of scientists and soldiers into Cobb's Corners in search of a suspected hidden base belonging to the creatures.  His team had the scientific background, but no practical experience with the region or the creatures, which is where the investigators would come in.  Their concerns about being used as "bait" Abelard allayed with a blank check and an assurance that their grades for the semester would be taken care of at Miskatonic.

They were given a week's rest and recuperation at the Detroit facility, allowing Perry to recover from his electrical burns and the investigators to train with firearms.  They were introduced to some of the other individuals who would be going on this expedition - Dr. David Drake, a psychologist, historian and occultist; Dr. Sarah Matherson, a forensic pathologist; Captain Sam Morrison, chief of security; and Larry Nekler, engineer and radio technician.

Dr. Matherson was especially interested to hear about Perry's experience with one of the Outer Ones, and shared her research with him.  She even took the investigators down into the lab for a brief tour, where they glimpsed an autopsy of a desiccated, humanoid form - albeit one with stumpy, pillar-like legs, long arms, no neck and a wide, lipless mouth.  Dr. Matherson explained that a number of these natural mummies had been found at an abandoned base in Peru, and that they were believed to be a new form of the creatures, possibly an attempt to mimic human form instead of having to rely on brain transplants.

Finally, she played them an audio recording, of an interrogation conducted the one time they captured one of these creatures.  The recording was horrifying, the entity begging for food - unable to digest earthly matter - while Matherson demanded it answer her questions, delivering painful electric shocks to the creature when it hesitated. The creature - identified as a "metch kangmi" in Nepalese on the recording, a name Nathanlie recognized as referring to the "abominable snowman" of the Himalayas - was forced to admit to coming from a ninth planet, Yuggoth, at the far end of the solar system, but was able to say little more before Matherson inadvertently killed the creature with electricity.

General Life and Hobby Updates

Gina, my better half, had a total of three job interviews last week, and should be hearing back soon regarding employment - the nice thing is, if she gets this job, we'll be working in the same building, simplifying our morning commute substantially and cutting down on the amount of gas I'm burning and the number of miles I'm putting on my odometer.

Additionally, this morning she took her RHIT (Registered Health Information Technology) exam, which is what she's been going to school for for two years - she got a degree in Health Information Technology as a prerequisite for sitting for this exam.  And graduated in the top 5% of her class, I should note.  She was terrified going into the exam and halfway through convinced herself she'd already failed it, and rage-finished the exam, absolutely convinced she'd have to shell out another $250 and wait a penalty period of 45 days before taking it again.  The test is graded right there and then, and the results presented - AND SHE PASSED! She's now certified to work any number of medical coding and billing careers.

While she was in her test, I sat in the car outside with a couple RPG books and got some reading done.  I've been reading my PDFs of the game Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea lately, and have my eye on ordering physical copies through my Friendly Local Gaming Store, Just Games in the near future.  Today, however, the Imp of the Perverse drove me to revisit the 2011 Lamentations of the Flame Princess edition of Carcosa.

Carcosa is a very dark fantasy supplement, detailing a world 153 light-years from Earth, infested with Cthulhu-monsters, mutant dinosaurs and giant insects.  13 Crayola-colored races of Men (including three colors outside the normal human visible spectrum) fight over scavenged alien technology and to defend their crapsack settlements from the depredations of monsters and cruel sorcerers alike.  The magic-system is ritual based, instead of D&D's usual "fire-and-forget" method of spellcasting, and the rituals almost all require varying degrees of human sacrifice - magic is supposed to be inhuman, alien, uncomfortable in Carcosa, and gamers are still throwing fits about this book in certain corners of the Internet.

I had been thinking that I need to have a back-up game prepared for situations where less than four players show up for my biweekly Cthulhu campaign - I normally have six players, so four is the quorum - below that, we don't run the campaign.  And it occurred to me that a session of Carcosa - with the more usual LotFP spellcasting system in place, since we do play in public - might be a nice change of pace and would be something good to have handy.  So in the two hours Gina was in her exam, I had the Carcosa book open in my lap and the Notes app open in my phone, typing out notes for a quick one-shot with a little bit of overland travel and a small dungeon-crawl (with the above-ground sections of the Moat House from the Village of Hommlet repurposed into an alien stronghold).

Getting home, I retyped it into Word as a document I can actually run a session from.  Tomorrow I'll make a stack of pre-generated characters.

Keep in mind this is all "back up" work on the off-chance I only have three players show up.  Oh well, I'll run it as a stand-alone one-shot at some point later on.

Monthly Madness: "The Derelict"

There is a ton of demand for Call of Cthulhu at my FLGS.  So much so that, since my biweekly game is a campaign, I decided to add a monthly one-shot to my schedule, set for the first Saturday of every month.  Last night was the first of these events, and I decided I wanted to run the adventure put out by Chaosium for Free RPG Day, "The Derelict." I had been fortunate enough to score one at my store before they ran out, plus I got the PDF version for being a member of the Cult of Chaos - which had appended six pregenerated characters that were, frankly, better integrated with each other and with the adventure than the ones I'd come up with, so thanks to Ron McClung for providing those to Chaosium.

Despite a few people being forced to change their plans at the last minute (life happens, I get it), I still had four players at the table for this session, which worked out very well for me - I'd been afraid that I'd get two people showing up and be forced to try and adapt the adventure on the fly.  Two of the players last night, if I recall correctly, had never played Call of Cthulhu before, and one hadn't played in 20 years, so I got the honor of being the introduction and re-introduction to the game for three-quarters of the table last night; the fourth player had played once before, in the Parsonsville Horror one-shot I ran in February.

Our Dramatis Personae for this adventure:

• Charles "Mac" McQuinlan (played by Chris), a Navy sailor-turned-author fallen on hard times, driven to sell his beloved yacht the Delilah.  Information passed to him by his mother, an agent of a shadowy Naval Intelligence group, has him on the lookout for a missing cargo ship and specifically, the safe in the captain's quarters.  
• Daniel van Hollisander (played by Matt), an ex-cop-turned-lawyer who handles many of Mac's business interests.  Along to facilitate the sale of the Delilah.  
• Matthew "Dodge" Grantham (played by Brandon), an athlete, diver, party animal and friend of Mac's, along on this voyage to meet a contact in Liverpool to learn some secrets from his past.  
• Dennis McCrane (played by Nick), a former bodyguard and general "fixer" for Mac, he is escorting Liz Hill home to her parents in the UK.

NPCs:

• Ashley May Bethell, an actress and ex-girlfriend of Mac's, he's trying to rekindle the romance without success.
• Elizabeth "Liz" Hill, a dancer and model living on borrowed funds, being escorted home to her family by Dennis.
• Captain Carson Brentwood, captain of the Delilah.
• First Mate Ray Folke, first mate on the Delilah.  

Around mid-afternoon, several days into their voyage from Boston, Massachusetts to Liverpool, UK to sell the yacht Delilah, Mac spotted something red and white on the horizon - the red-painted refrigerated cargo ship the Groenland Tropisch, beached on an iceberg.  Informing Captain Brentwood, they changed course to investigate, in keeping with Maritime Law.  

Asking the ladies to stay aboard the Delilah, the men went aboard to investigate, finding the ship silent, without power, and covered in a thin layer of ice.  "Dodge" swiftly found a severed hand frozen to the deck, which appeared to have been chewed off the arm it had once been attached to.  

Mac wanted to focus on finding the captain's quarters and the safe therein, while Van Hollisander and Dodge also wanted to try to restore power to the ship.  They soon found that the wiring had been torn apart and the paneling beaten to pieces.  They also found a six foot long "harpoon" of some sort of glass or crystal, radiating an unearthly cold, embedded in a steel bulkhead.  "Dodge" pulled it loose and, after suffering some minor frostbite from handling it, zip-tied a towel around the haft to give himself a safer grip, carrying it with him.  

The captain's quarters contained no safe, but they did find the captain's log (the adventure lists the log as being in both the captain's quarters and the captain's office; I chose to have it here), and managed to translate a bit of the Norwegian text with the help of their iPhones, learning that the radio operator had gone insane, destroyed the radio room with an axe, and been confined to his cabin.  Investigating revealed the radio operator dead by his own hand, a silver-handled straightrazor having been used to slash his throat.  The radio room and wheelhouse had both been destroyed, though "Dodge" and Van Hollisander soon noticed that while there was blood in the radio room, there was none in the wheelhouse.  

Hearing a scream of horror and a loud splash coming from the Delilah, they raced back to discover the captain and first mate in pieces, scattered across the cabin in a morass of blood.  Ashley May was pinned to one of the beds by another crystalline harpoon, driven completely through her, the mattress and into the floor below, her limbs having been badly mangled by what appeared to be large teeth.  And only Liz's severed legs were found, floating in the bloody hot tub.  

Pulling on his SCUBA gear, "Dodge" went over the side to investigate the loud splashing, and after being missed by two crystalline harpoons that seemed to come from nowhere, he took his own and made a swimming charge in the direction he thought they came from.  He felt two enormous, unseen webbed hands close over his upper body and was then torn in half.  

Discovering the controls and radio on the Delilah destroyed, Mac, McCrane and Van Hollisander decided they had to make a final stand against whatever was picking off humans in the North Atlantic.  Using bedsheets for wicks, they drew fuel from the yacht's tanks, smearing it across the floors and staircases, and rolling out the propane tanks to serve as makeshift bombs (Brandon actually works for a company that provides equipment for restaurant use, so he was able to offer some insight on what the galley on the Delilah would have), they huddled together atop the sun deck, ready to release the dinghy and ignite the fuel with a flaregun should whatever was out there show its face.  

Hearing a splash and feeling the ship lurch hard - as if something large and heavy was pulling itself up out of the water onto the deck - and hearing the sound of something heavy dragging itself across the deck, Mac and McCrane released the dinghy into the water and jumped in, and Van Hollisander shot the fuel-trail with a flare gun before diving over the side, landing safely in the dinghy.  

As they sped away from the burning ship, Mac lamented his lost opportunity to regain financial solvency.  Van Hollisander, glancing back, saw something large and on fire hurl itself off the deck into the sea.  

***

had the use of the store's back room, and its eight-foot table,
for a change yesterday.  Here's my set-up.  

All in all, it was a great session - I would rank this as one of the top five sessions of Call of Cthulhu I have ever run, and I have to give a lot of credit to Sandy Petersen and Mike Mason for their top-notch adventure for that.  Other than the issue of the captain's log being in two places and it not being real clear how the Investigators are supposed to get from the Delilah to the Groenland Tropisch, (we ended up having the gangway of the Tropisch being almost level with the top of the sun deck of the Delilah) I think this is a near-flawless adventure.  

Noteworthy is that, except for Dodge, the Investigators never actually encountered the monster, just its traces - drag-marks where it had pulled itself through the ice on the cargo ship, smeared blood (they missed a bloody, three-fingered, webbed handprint on the wall in the Delilah's cabin), scattered human remains and the crystalline harpoons.  From these, the players built up a mental image of what they were facing that was perhaps far scarier than the actual monster would have been.  The invisibility of the creature definitely amped up the fear factor - and interestingly, from my perspective, seemed to do so better than the invisibility of the Star Vampire.  

I think what I'm proudest of was the way the ship lurched when the creature pulled itself on deck; no physical dimensions are given for the creature, but I gauged from the illustration that it was probably close to ten feet tall, and I pegged it's weight at three quarters of a ton.  So having the boat shift as it pulled itself on board...I think that, more than anything else, was what triggered the players to say "screw it, let's set the boat on fire.  No, I don't need to see what we're up against."

It was kind of a short session - we got a little bit of a late start, and then around the time Dodge got torn apart I got the head's up from Matt, the store owner, that the store would be closing in 15 minutes.  Not having time to run a full-fledged last stand, and deeming it cheap to have the creature swim under their dinghy and sink it, I decided the best ending would be a THE THING-style pyrrhic victory; they have escaped with their lives, but are stranded in the freezing North Atlantic - and the thing may still be out there.

The best part of this session was hearing Brandon voice an interest in running Cthulhu - he's been a Shadowrun GM for years, and is one of the big wargaming voices at the store, but Call of Cthulhu has really captured him.  I gave him my physical copy of the 7e Quick Start Rules, and he'll be buying the actual rulebooks when they arrive in store, hopefully in time for "Gen-Can't," an event being put on in-store for people who can't make it to GenCon.  So far 14 people have RSVP'd that they would like to play Cthulhu at Gen-Can't, so I'm going to need all the help I can get.  

Planning Ahead; a D&D Campaign for the Future

I've been running Call of Cthulhu exclusively for months now, and love it.  I really feel good about the campaign I'm running and the additional single-shot games I'm running both at the store and at conventions.  But I also know that sooner or later I'm going to want a palate-cleanser from the unspeakable cosmic horror I'm hip-deep in.  And to tell the truth, because right now I'm not writing scenarios but running published ones, I'm not exercising my creativity *that* much on the gaming front right now.  So I've begun thinking about a D&D campaign for once "A Time to Harvest" wraps, probably mid-autumn.

Here's what I know I want:

• More "traditional" D&D than my last campaign; fewer rayguns, more Western European fantasy tropes and Arthuriana.  I'm likely to replace some of the D&D humanoids with critters like Sciapods, Blemmyes and the like from medieval manuscripts.  How is it Blemmyes never made it into any of the Monster Manuals?
• Sandbox adventuring.  "A Time to Harvest" is very plot-centric, and I'd like a break from leading the players from clue to clue and let them decide where they want to go and what they're going to break when they get there.  
• Rules-lighter mechanics.  Swords & Wizardry, B/X retroclones, and 5e are all possibilities here.  3.x/Pathfinder are not.  
• A sense that the world does not exist for the PCs, that there are constantly things going on in the setting that they aren't interacting with.  

Here's what I'm pretty sure I want:

• Early Modern tech levels; gunpowder and early firearms exist, though will not always be easy to get, with a matchlock musket being as "high tech" in this campaign as the X-Ray Pulse Rifle was in Devil's Canyon.  This has me somewhat leaning towards using the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rules.  Longbows, crossbows, and armored warriors will be much more common.  
• Strongly humanocentric setting.
• A solid mix of exploration/dungeoneering adventures and castle intrigue/stuff going on in town adventures.  A number of castles within the sandbox controlled by various wizards and warriors who feel very different from one another, so visiting Castle B isn't a cookie-cutter of having visited Castle A.  Likewise, different towns have different problems.  
• No reusing monsters; if there are orcs besieging Castle Blackstone, those are the only orcs in the sandbox.  There may be Chaotic-aligned, 1HD humanoids elsewhere in the sandbox, but they'll be, as mentioned above, Sciapods or something like that.  Mixed in with the Ogres, Harpies and Dragons will be the occasional weirder critter drawn from the Random Esoteric Creature Generator.
• A tracker akin to Chris Kutalik's Chaos Index tracking the ebb and flow and Magic and Mundanity in the sandbox.  

And here are some of the resources I intend to be using:

• 1E Oriental Adventures yearly/monthly/daily events charts to determine the regional events that the PCs can choose to ignore or involve themselves in.  
• Medieval Demographics Made Easy, by S. John Ross.
• Hexographer.
• OD&D Castle Occupancy Chart, combined with Jeff Rients' Random Castle Shenanigans chart.
• Justin Alexander's take on building a Hexcrawl.

Cult of Chaos Write Up, Free RPG Day Edition: "The Space Between"

Greetings, readers, yesterday was Free RPG Day at many a Friendly Local Gaming Store - it certainly was at mine, Just Games Rochester.  Store owner Matt wrangled almost a dozen GMs into running games at the store to mark the event, with a table thick with prizes for people who ran games, played games, or just spent $10 or more on merchandise in the store.  Unsurprisingly, I was there to run Call of Cthulhu (though I did get to play in a very enjoyable "tournament" of Dungeon Crawl Classics as well), choosing "The Space Between," by Scott Dorward, as the adventure I'd be running.  This adventure can be found in the collection "Nameless Horrors" for those who want to follow along.

Dramatis Personae:

• Blake Tevis, sleazy producer, PR spin-controller for the Church of Sunyata
• Daria Nowland, frustrated producer, member of the Church of Sunyata
• Julia Cortese, assistant to the director, member of the Church of Sunyata
• Spencer Shull, "fixer" for the Church of Sunyata

The Church of Sunyata is essentially Scientology with the serial numbers filed off, with members striving to become "empty" of their "woes" to achieve enlightenment.  The public face of the Church is John Trav- I mean, Craig Steele, a retired movie star, who is bankrolling the production of a film called "The Space Between," which is being produced wholly with Church talent and crew and is rumored to be a recruitment tool for the Church.  

The lead actress, Verity Harrow, has gone missing, and production has ground to a halt.  The Investigators decided to go to Harrow's apartment to look for her - and are met by a Church security guard, Tyrone Goode, who is very apologetic, having been offered $1000 by Harrow to drive her from the Church's Celebrity Retreat to the apartment to "get a few things." Spencer begins to get very uncomfortable with this, as he did not know Harrow was at the Retreat and believed it was his job to know.  

Meeting Harrow inside, they soon discover that something's terribly wrong with her - her skin feels rubbery and yielding, like an underinflated balloon, and there's a line of sutures down her back.  A call to Brian Musgrave, the head of the Church, gets them the order to bring her back to the Celebrity Retreat.  

Daria Nowland decides instead that it's more important for Harrow to finish making the film, and drives her (with Julia Cortese) to the set.  Julia starts texting Spencer that they're heading for the set, and Daria's efforts to take the phone from Julia results in them rear-ending another vehicle while going 45 on Rodeo Drive.  

Verity Harrow bursts like an overfed tick, spurting tendrils of inky blackness - not so much black, but the absolute absence of light - from her mouth and eye-sockets as well as her ruptured sutures.  Daria and Julia take off running as the tendrils begin to invade neighboring cars, the people inside them just vanishing, seeming to sink into the blackness.  

Spencer and Blake, with Tyrone in tow, give chase, eventually picking up Julia as Daria flees on a stolen moped.  They manage to call Daria, talk her down, and arrange a meeting at Daria's health food store.  Daria arrives first, retrieving a gun from under the counter and sitting in a booth, the pistol cradled in her lap.  

Blake seats himself opposite Daria, while Spencer and Tyrone come in the back, guns drawn, under orders from Brian Musgrove to bring Daria in to Sunyata Central at any cost.  Daria sees their reflection in the store window and panics, shooting Blake in the stomach from two feet away.  Blake sinks into shock, and Daria, experiencing a bout of madness at having shot someone, spins around, firing wildly.  She clips Spencer's ear with a bullet before being shot in the head by Tyrone.  As sirens wail, Tyrone and Spencer drag Blake to the waiting car, where Julia drives them to Sunyata Central.  

Under the guise of "medical attention," Blake is forcibly Emptied, his skin peeled off his still-living body, stitched up and filled with the Hungry Void.  When Spencer realizes that Brian Musgrove does not have his best interests at heart, he tries to fight his way out of the Church, getting gunned down by security guards.  

Craig Steele comes to Julia, and tells her she was very brave through this entire ordeal, and offers her a personal, "elevated" Emptying session, which she accepts.  It takes a half-hour for her to die as Steele skins her alive, stitching her skin back together into a semblance of life, filled with the Hungry Void.  

Unimpeded, director Jared Woodward finishes editing together "The Space Between," with footage of Verity Harrow's sacrificial Emptying being spliced in as subliminal images.  An advance screening is held for members of the press and local government, the imagery serving as a conduit for the Hungry Void, Emptying all who see the film, which soon goes into global distribution.  

the happy players in the aftermath of the session.

In retrospect, I don't think "The Space Between" was the right choice of adventure for me to run for Free RPG Day.  The players were all new to me, and while most of them had some Call of Cthulhu experience, they were used to playing it as a game of "we summon the King in Yellow, tell him he looks fat, and waste him with our tommy guns." One player actually lamented that this was a modern day scenario instead of 1920s, because in the 1920s his character could have a tommy gun.  

None of them, I think, were willing to take the premise seriously or think of their characters as devotees to the Church - at the very least, the idea of respecting the head of the Church never seemed to have crossed their mind.  C'est la vie.  Everyone had fun, at least, and that's what matters.  

The hardest part for me was having a player who was a backseat GM - he kept trying to tell me how Sanity Checks work and I finally had to say to him, "Look, I've been running Call of Cthulhu for almost a decade now, and I am running this session.  I need you to trust me to know what I'm doing, please." He settled down after that.  

So I think next year at Free RPG Day I'll run a pulpier Cthulhu scenario; still, I'm counting this session as a rousing success and an exercise in improvisational thinking - plus, we wrapped up in time that I was able to get to the charity picnic my girlfriend was working in time to get a hot dog and a s'more.  

A Time To Harvest Session 3: "The Eye of the Storm"

Session 3 of "A Time to Harvest" took place this week, and it's a bit bittersweet; on the one hand, we completed the first chapter of the campaign and had some exciting things happen to the Investigators; on the other, my girlfriend Gina has decided to leave the campaign, citing the pacing and her own lack of patience.  Her space has been filled by a friend from college who happened to be at the game store the night of the first session and asked about getting into some Cthulhu gaming, earning her first place on a waitlist - something I've never had for a game before.

I've also come to a state of acceptance - GMing is simultaneously exhausting and energizing for me; by the end of a session I'll feel like I'm made of lead, but at the same time my mind will be buzzing, unable to settle down, and having sessions in the evening during the week tends to mean sleepless nights for me afterwards.  I try to keep sessions relatively short and tightly focused because of this, to give myself time to wind down before bed afterwards, but I'm beginning to think I just need to accept that I'm not sleeping and allow myself a can of Dr. Pepper and a Kit-Kat Bar during play.  Most of my players eat, drink and make merry at the gaming table, often putting themselves into a state of sugar rush right as I'm starting to really wear down for the night.  Rather than become weary, headachey and irritable when they're buzzing with excitement (and caffeine), and if I'm not going to get to sleep afterwards anyways, I might as well match their consumption.

 Once again, our Dramatis Personae:

•  Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
•  Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
•  Roni (played by Katie), Finnish-born history major and member of the swim team 
•  Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography major 
•  Oliver Goss (played by Dave), anthropology major

When we last left the Investigators, they had just discovered that Robert Blaine, the expedition leader, was not in the outhouse as expected; their befuddlement was interrupted by Jason Trent, an awkward, shy history student, emerging from the maples behind the cabin, cradling something wrapped in a jacket.  Interrogation revealed it to be a mandrake root, something Trent was familiar with from his studies of witchcraft.  Before they could question him further, Blaine stuck his head out the door of the farmhouse and yelled for them to go back to bed.

In the morning, with the sky still threatening to storm, Perry, Roni, Randall and Oliver decided to forego interviewing locals in favor of going directly to Broken Hill, a locale that serves as a common thread running through many of the stories they'd heard.  Darren, with the digging team, was stuck doing field work until the storm struck, a torrential downpour that sent them scurrying for the truck and a series of tarps to hide under.  With no end to the storm in sight, Darren eventually said, "I have to go," and took off running into the storm, hoping to find his way to Broken Hill.

illustration by Kurt Komoda

Instead, the Investigators eventually managed to get themselves back to town and to Jim's Diner, where they dried off and drank coffee waiting for the storm to pass.  When, in late afternoon, it did finally break, they slowly made their way up to Broken Hill.  Crossing the river, Oliver and Darren noticed an odd, pinkish shape bobbing in the muddy, turbulent water, though it was gone before they could draw anyone else's attention to it.

Once up at Broken Hill, they soon found an Indian burial ground exposed by the heavy rains (though Oliver was adamant the remains were Colonial) and a series of strange, clawed tracks.  Perry followed these tracks into a nearby copse of gnarled oaks, noticing a strange green-blue glow up in the tree.  He climbed the tree to see what was causing the light, and a moment later came crashing to the ground unconscious, covered in a sticky white powder.  Hearing something moving in the trees, the other three pick him up and race back to the car, heading back to town as fast as the treacherous, muddy roads will allow.  They deliver Perry to the doctor in town, and decide to find the rest of the students.

The find the farmhouse empty, and discover the storm has washed out the old garden and revealed a human skeleton buried there; they speculate that it may be Sarah Maclearan, whose own grave was found empty years earlier.  Covering the remains with a tarp, they went on to look for the dig-team, finding the truck abandoned and surrounded by more of the strange tracks, some of which they made plaster casts of.

Meanwhile, Perry revives and, cleaning up, sets out in search of his fellow Investigators, learning first that the doctor believes a vampire may be behind a number of strange things he's seen around town.

The Investigators soon reunite, and decide to take the mystery of the disappearing students to the Sheriff.  They encounter Deputy Cutter, who listens to their story, looks at the track-castings they found, and asks them to wait at the police station while he rouses the Sheriff and "gets him ready to listen to you."

When he arrives, Sheriff Spenser begins to listen to their story before declaring them a bunch of drunks and trying to arrest them - on the advice of Deputy Cutter, who claims not to have seen any such track-castings as they're talking about, calling the Investigators liars as well as drunks.  The Investigators manage to talk their way out of spending a night in jail, by letting the Sheriff know his sister's remains have been found.  After going out and confirming that the bones are Sarah's, Sheriff Spenser asks the Investigators to stay at the farmhouse for the remainder of the night while he makes some phone calls.

Perry explains to his fellow Investigators what he saw in the tree before falling; a pinkish, spidery

Kurt Komoda again, because he draws the
best Mythos critters

creature, its "head" a mass of pulsating, glowing fleshy cones.  The creature pointed something that resembled a gun at him, spraying him with the sticky white powder.  That was the last he remembered until he woke up in the doctor's office.

In the morning, the truck rolls up to the farmhouse, filled with students.  Blaine orders the Investigators to begin packing up, that they'll be returning to Miskatonic early, refusing to explain why.  Shortly thereafter, Professor Harrold, the anthropology professor who organized the trip, arrives, furious at having received a phone call at 2 am from Sheriff Spenser that his students were out of line and running around at all hours of the night.  Listening to the Investigators tell their story, he tells them to just return to Miskatonic, that he will deal with Blaine.

Before leaving Cobb's Corners, the Investigators stop at the newspaper office to have their remaining plaster cast of an alien footprint photographed, and at the doctor's office to learn more about the sticky white powder - to the best of the doctor's limited knowledge of chemistry, he's determined the powder to be a sort of fungal spore.  Armed with this disconcerting knowledge, the Investigators began the drive back to Miskatonic University.

On June 14th, we'll be reconvening to begin Episode 2 of the campaign (unfortunately short a player again, but I couldn't schedule an alternate date that didn't result in someone not being able to make it), and after that, on June 18th, I'm marking Free RPG Day by running "The Space Between," a scenario from the 7th edition book Nameless Horrors, at Just Games Rochester at 4 pm

A Time To Harvest Session 2: "The Darkest Part of the Woods"

We had the second session of the Call of Cthulhu organized play campaign "A Time To Harvest" this past week, and while it was a short session (I try not to run super long, due to one of my players having anxiety issues that makes it hard for them to spend long periods of time around strangers, plus I've been having wicked insomnia problems lately, meaning my energy levels aren't where I'd like them to be) I feel like a lot was accomplished.  The players divided up and spread across the small town of Cobb's Corners, Vermont to gather information and then came back together to share what they'd learned, piecing together dissociated knowledge in true Cthulhu Investigator fashion.

Once again, our Dramatis Personae:

•  Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
• Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier 
• Rip Steakface (played by Gina), folklore studies major (Gina is my girlfriend, and this is her first RPG campaign, and she's not taking it entirely seriously. She has stated her intention that every character she plays this campaign will have a name taken from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode in which they riff SPACE MUTINY) 
• Roni (played by Katie), Finnish-born history major and member of the swim team 
• Randall Vhloche (played by Sean), geography major 
• Oliver Goss (played by Dave), anthropology major

I'm not sure how we ended up with half the PCs having first names beginning with "R," but here we are.

When we last left our heroes, Perry had just been handed a photograph, seeming to show something flying in front of the moon, by local newspaperman Richard Wendell.  Wendell believed that it was to destroy this photograph that his darkroom was trashed by forces unknown.  Perry asked Wendell to run off a few copies of the photograph, arguing that it would be best to go public with this - whoever tried to suppress the photo can't if there are copies circulating throughout the town.

That night, another round of strange and confusing shared dreams struck the group, afflicting almost all the player characters.  In the morning, on his way to the outhouse, Roni spotted a strange creature, a small humanoid shape about two feet tall with an oversized head, pinkish-gray skin and no facial features save a pair of glowing green-orange eyes.  When he dropped his copy of the Sears Roebuck catalog at the sight of this thing, it glowered at him and took off running into the Sugar Maples behind the property.

Robert Blaine, the expedition leader, sub-divided the folklore students for this day's work, putting the player characters in one group and the NPCs in another (to ease the GM's burden, haha).  Darren was assigned to the "soil" group to assist the archaeologists and geologists, while Perry, a journalist, was left to his own devices.

The folklorists (and Perry, conducting independent research along similar lines), soon came to the realization that there were a few trends showing up in their interviews:

1. A place called "Broken Hill" was significant - some legends marked it as a Native American burial ground, others as a burial ground for massacred white settlers.  Supposedly guarded by a huge, spectral hound that can be turned away by the sign of the Cross.  
2. The valley in which Cobb's Corners sits is largely devoid of insects and wildlife - "only man and what man brings with him dwells here."
3. There is an unusual high death rate among children in Cobb's Corners.  The entire graduating class of 1919 (five students, but still) were dead before the end of that summer.  
4. Agnes Bellweather, living alone past the edge of town, is a witch.  Allegedly, when she caught her husband with another woman, she cursed his privates off and left him to kill himself.  

A visit to the town physician, Dr. Perry, confirmed that there's a high death rate among children.  Dr. Perry voiced his opinion that, as fantastic and unbelievable as it may seem, he's come to the conclusion that a vampire is at work - the children are often found drained of blood, splashed with pig's blood to disguise the loss.  He speculates that Sarah Maclearan, dead 20 years, is the vampire, as shortly after his arrival in town he got called on an unusual case: her grave had been vandalized, and he was asked to ensure that nothing untoward had been done to her body - only to discover that her casket contained a dead calf.  The whereabouts of Sarah Maclearan's body remains a mystery to this day.  

A visit to Agnes Bellweather revealed her to be an elderly woman, barely 4 feet tall, blessed with an abundance of common sense and humor.  She explained that she'd been the village midwife and apothecary until the sheriff forced her into retirement at Dr. Perry's arrival, though people still come to her for remedies for toothaches, infertility, and less medical maladies such as bad luck or feeling jinxed.  Rip made friends with her cat Beltane.  

Meanwhile, the digging team turned up a single arrowhead (Darren's player Mike, being a wise guy, asked me if it was a Clovis point.  Without missing a beat, I said, "No, Solutrean." He's not the only wise guy at the table) and otherwise labored fruitlessly in the sweltering heat and humidity.  Darren did his best to try and catch the eye of the attractive young botanist Clarissa, but without much luck.  

Dark, heavy storm clouds were beginning to roll in and the PCs reconvened at the Maclearan farmhouse, sharing what they'd learned with each other over spaghetti.  Noting that the dig site was nowhere near Broken Hill, they raised the possibility of digging near there to Blaine, who claimed that last summer, the team he'd been a part of had dug near there and turned up nothing of value, plus the terrain is treacherous and choked with thorn bushes. 

That night, Randall, laying awake in a puddle of sweat as the humidity built and built, heard the door to Blaine's room creak open.  He sat up.  "Where are you going, Blaine?" he asked suspiciously.  

Blaine jumps a little, and swings his flashlight around.  "I just have to pee," he mutters, heading for the door.  

When Blaine doesn't return to the farmhouse after about fifteen minutes, Randall wakes his fellow investigators.  "Blaine went out fifteen minutes ago.  I wanna see where he went."

Stepping outside, Oliver began calling Blaine's name, getting no response.  Knocking on the door of the outhouse likewise got no response.  Pulling open the door revealed it to be unoccupied - where had Blaine gone?

***

We ended the session on that cliffhanger, leaving the players to kind of simmer on that mystery until our next session, which will be May 31st.  

I do have some exciting news on the Call of Cthulhu front as well - because demand is so high right now at my local game store, I will be adding an extra game day to my schedule and running an open table event one Sunday a month for people who are interested in Call of Cthulhu but have perhaps never played before, and possibly working with the store owner to arrange an extra game master to begin running Cthulhu games as well.  

This is, to be blunt, amazing.  Call of Cthulhu is a long-standing, much beloved game, but not one that seems to get a lot of love in game stores; Just Games Rochester is the only store in the area with Call of Cthulhu events on its calendar at all, and right now those are all full, so we're creating more to keep up with demand.  

Matt, the store owner, pointed out to me as well that I'm starting to become the public face of Cthulhu in Rochester - I'm the guy busting my hump to run great games, I'm the guy going out and talking up the game, I'm the guy people are getting referred to when they have questions about Cthulhu gaming.  It's kind of surreal, but I'm willing to roll with it.  

I would like to get to the point where I'm helping to arrange more events not just through Rochester, but all of Western New York; there's a game store in Buffalo that I'd like to look at starting to run periodic games at as well to increase the visibility of Call of Cthulhu, with an eye towards bringing in other GMs (unfortunately, I can't run all the games) and getting big monthly Cthulhu events on the calendars of a couple stores.  There's a Savage Worlds group here that I'm looking at as a model of how best to achieve this.  

ADDITIONALLY, Matt asked me to help organize a release party to mark the arrival of the 7th edition Call of Cthulhu books in store, and I'm very excited for that.  Todd Gardiner, Chaosium's director of organized play, was kind enough to provide me with a demo adventure, not yet ready for publication, to run at the release party, and we're going to have that running simultaneously at multiple tables throughout the store to maximize visibility and expose as many people as possible to the infectious madness that is Call of Cthulhu.  I'm debating getting a black robe to wear in my role as master of ceremonies for this event, which will be June 5th starting at noon.  

So there is a ton of Cthulhu gaming going on in my life right now and in the weeks to come.