True Detective - "The King In Yellow" in games

Like millions of other viewers, I'm completely hooked by HBO's new show "True Detective". The storyline, acting and atmosphere is superb, full of foreboding and weirdness. Throughout the series there are references made to the "King in Yellow" and "Carcosa". This blew me away, to see this in a major production, and it's been really interesting to read interpretations of this by an audience who are largely unfamiliar with the source material.

I'm enjoying the various theories theories and threads even more because back in 2012 I spent most of the year running "Call of Cthulhu" RPG sessions dealing specifically with the King in Yellow, in relation to the Hastur mythos.

I started by running a published campaign called "Tatters of the King", which tells the tale of cultists in the UK.Some of them follow Hastur, others follow Shub-Niggurath, and the story explores how these devotions have taken a toll on their lives, relationships and sanity. The first section starts with a performance in London in the 1920's of "The King In Yellow" on stage. The players in the game attend the play, and the show itself leads to a riot in the audience. The King is an avatar of the god "Hastur", and it has a sanity-busting impact, especially on characters with an artistic leaning. From this point on the players are drawn into the story of the cultists.

I remember narrating the play to the group, describing Carcosa and characters such as Cassilda and the "The Stranger"...the man with a white bone mask which is revealed not to be a mask. It was very odd in content and I know it left the group utterly baffled. Further on in the game the characters end up in Carcosa itself, with elements of the play becoming very real. I remember most of this,and I can't help but try and look for symbols and story hooks from it in "True Detective" (still trying!!).

"Tatters" is a very complex, challenging and layered game, broken into three sections. By the end of the second section my playing group had become inconsistent and the momentum of the story was pretty much lost. I decided to replace the final section with an adaptation of another published scenario, "Tell Me Have You Seen The Yellow Sign?". This is a short adventure set in New Orleans in the buildup to Mardis Gras, with Hastur cultists, voodoo, swamps, Cthulhu cultists and of course, the King in Yellow himself. This ran for two sessions with a small group of three players, and is still one of my favorite "Call of Cthulhu" experiences. I found that the location lent itself really well to the uneasy feeling and sense of chaos that Hastur stories bring, and I see it working well in "True Detective".

We still have yet to see how the "King" story plays out on TV, and how it really relates...the might not even be a supernatural aspect to it at all in the show. I do know that this show is making me want to bring a "Call of Cthulhu" campaign back to Louisiana and the "King in Yellow", and I'd love to see the success of the show inspire more people to try the "Call of Cthulhu" RPG.

2013 - What Games Did I Run?

Yet another great year of games is about to end, this one went by quicker than the last! My last post talked about the games that I was a player in, this time I'm looking back at the games I ran.

Call of Cthulhu - This was classic 1920's Cthulhu set in New York City. It featured elements of the scenario "Lurker in the Crypt", and I finished the story of the Bishop family,a legacy started way back in the scenario called "The Condemned". I also put in some weird travels through time and space to Mars, which finished off the sanity of one character in particular. A wild way to wrap up the story.

Delta Green - A five part campaign which had some of my very best sessions. The group was fantastic and really embraced the paranoia, chaos and overall downward spiral of the setting. I used one published scenario, "Convergence", to kick things off. The rest was my own material. Most of it was single room mysteries, the focus was firmly on plot twists. At the end of it most of the group casualties were inflicted by the players on each other.

My Life With Master - Still one of my favorite games, I ran this twice. The first was a one-shot, the second time I did a two-parter. I actually prefer the one-shot format for this game. Although it does rush things, the game flows and the threads all come together. This game has themes that everyone understands at a very deep level. The buzz for me is seeing what the players come up with in the darkest of situations. They never fail to surprise me.

Paranoia - Yes, the old classic. I ran this recently and it was great fun.The group composition is really important in this game and we had a good one. Some of them also played "Master", and these games certainly have things in common. It also stirred up nostalgia on the day, with people coming over to see what we were playing. I'm surprised this doesn't get run more often, it's definitely a much loved game.

Trail of Cthulhu - This was a short campaign in the "Bookhounds of London" setting. I enjoyed the system in many ways, though felt it was too easy for the players, especially compared to "Delta Green". It was also fun to have some new players at the table. Overall this one had some good moments though we burned through all of the story threads very quickly indeed. I don't think I had as good a storyline in this one compared to "Delta".

The ones that got away:
Unknown Armies - I do love this system and I had a big group. Too big. We just about finished character creation and I just wasn't "feeling it". We had no concept for the campaign and I could tell that none of us really understood it. I just knew at that point that this one was going to die quickly, so I pulled the plug.

Fiasco - I missed this because of stuff at home on the day...the game went ahead though and was a real blast.

Reflecting On Running Horror RPGs

With very few exceptions,such as FASA's Star Trek RPG, every game I have run has been of the horror genre. Even Star Trek took a horrific turn when I ran it. I have always loved horror stories and movies.

My biggest runs have been "Call of Cthulhu" and "Ravenloft". I've ran "My Life With Master", "Unknown Armies","Kult" and "Wraith". Next year sees "Monster of the Week" added to the list. I was thinking over all of these games in a discussion with a friend a few days back, and it was the first time I'd really reflected on how I'd ran them.

On the surface I enjoy weirdness rather than lots of gore, probably why I favor Lovecraftian scenarios over zombie ones. I especially like games that focus on odd, disturbed NPCs. I also tend to play with time and dimensions in my sessions too, one of the reasons why I love Tindalosian Hounds so much.

Thinking back to "Ravenloft" and how well some of those sessions went, I realized that they weren't focused on those areas at all. Granted,it was a different setting and I was a lot less experienced then. It struck me however, that there was something that worked in those games that still works now.

One of the "Ravenloft" sessions was set in a small village in Kartakass, home to wolfweres. They are "inverse" werewolves, wolves that assume the form of humans. The locals are friendly, musical and jovial. The players were at their most paranoid in this session, and it was because they were out of their comfort zone...this was AD&D, a game in which they'd got used to fighting their way through things. Now,they were in a social situation, forced to mix with friendly locals, not knowing who or what the threat was. The paladin, representative of all things lawful and good, simply couldn't start swinging the sword.

That's really the thread I've seen as a GM.Make the players uncertain about reality, their characters capabilities and the world around them. Put the characters in situations where their usual modus operandi simply doesn't work or isn't an option any more. In "Ravenloft", it was fighting characters in a friendly,social situation. In "Call of Cthulhu", it's when the academia are forced to blow up buildings, or cops when realize their bullets don't work.

Cthulhu - From "Call of" to "Trail of"

I'm two sessions into my "Bookhounds of London" campaign using the "Trail of Cthulhu" system. Prior to that I'd been running games for almost two years using "Call of Cthulhu",so I've been reflecting on the differences between the two games and ideas for the future.

First of all, I never stayed close to the actual game system when I ran "Call of Cthulhu" or "Delta Green". There were very few rolls of the dice, typically only for combat moves or sanity checks. If the college professor in the group had a solid background in history (40% or more) I wouldn't ask for a roll. "Trail of Cthulhu",as a system, is a perfect fit in that regard. No skill rolls are required if you have a particular knowledge, the rolls are for general abilities like fleeing or scuffling.

Secondly,I am more forgiving than most Cthulhu GMs in terms of survival rates. You don't see "Total Party Kills" in my games, and while a good portion of the group won't survive the whole campaign, they will typically make it to the last session. "Trail of Cthulhu" again is a better fit, the group don't feel the burn of injuries and sanity loss until much deeper into the game.

Speaking of sanity, the slow burn rate also means that I've yet to see the in-game effects of mental instability in "Trail" unlike "Call", so I can't really compare the two at this stage. I do think that this makes "Trail" a good choice for an epic campaign like "Masks of Nyarlathotep", where party casualties are commonplace and can make it harder to keep ongoing threads.

"Masks" is on my list of things to run next year, adapted to "Trail of Cthulhu". I'm also thinking of running adaptations of some of the "Call of Cthulhu" scenarios that I've ran over the years. Some have already been done and can be found on the Pelgrane Press website. I haven't seen one for "The Condemned" or "The Sanatorium", both strong contenders for reruns, but I do have adaptations of "Tell Me,Have You Seen The Yellow Sign?", "The Cracked and Crooked Manse","Malice Everlasting" and "Edge of Darkness". All of those games have stayed in my mind and in different ways influenced the games I ran afterwards. I may weave them into "Masks" or have them stitched together as their own mini-campaign. It very much depends on who plays..I don't want the same players to have played these before, so "Malice" and "Yellow Sign" would be the best ones to do.

Has anyone else tried both systems or conversions from one to the other? Let me know!

Savage Worlds RPG

I recently became a player in an ongoing zombie campaign using the "Savage Worlds" RPG system. I'd heard a lot about this system in various reviews and from gaming colleagues, so I was eager to experience it as a player with a view to possibly using it in the future as a gamesmaster.

The first thing I noticed was how easy and intuitive the system is. The game is played with a variety of dice. The die indicates a level of skill and is rolled against a target difficulty of 4. For example, I might have a skill represented by a D6, or a higher level of skill in something else for which I'd roll a D8. A success would be a roll of 4 or above. Also, as a player character, I roll a D6 alongside any roll I make and get to choose whichever is higher. If I roll the maximum number possible,I get to roll again and add the number to my previous roll. Initiative is handled with a regular deck of playing cards.

This all works really well and makes for a fast-moving game. As a GM that tends to struggle with combat systems this is very appealing to me as an option for future games. I usually have large gaming groups and my sessions lean to action-adventure, so it's definitely time for me to try something that fits better with that style.

From a character perspective, you have "Edges" (feats or special characteristics) balanced out by "Hindrances" (ongoing penalties or tendencies towards danger). Again, very simple and it translates nicely into actual gameplay. The game encourages heroic,risky,headfirst playing, which is my preferred way as a player.

Savage Worlds has had a number of interesting settings published, all which take a genre and add a spin to it. "50 Fathoms" takes the pirate genre and transports the players to another world, one which is drowned and has a "Jules Verne" feel to it. "Slipstream" is pulp 1930s style science fiction, much in the vein of "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers". My personal favorite is "Rippers", a Victorian Steampunk Gothic Horror game that blends "Van Helsing" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentleman".

Finally I must mention "Realms of Cthulhu", the Savage Worlds setting for a game I've been running for years. What strikes me is how great this system would fit one of the more pulp,epic campaigns like "Masks of Nyarlathotep". The characters would have a much greater chance of surviving till the later stages of the campaign and the action sequences could be fantastic. I can easily imagine this adaptation being my game for 2014.

I highly recommend trying this if you want a generic system that lends itself to fast and furious games.

Delta Green - "Bang"..the Campaign Finale

Yesterday was the final chapter in my Call of Cthulhu "Delta Green" campaign. It was a five part story played with a truly great group (including +Tony Reyes and +Michael Bay ).

It was a short gaming session, lasting perhaps two hours, but it achieved what I wanted from it. The goal was to have a simple adventure that would give a solid ending to the campaign while also tying together the conspiracy threads from the previous sessions.

The basic story for this chapter involved one of the characters receiving a letter from the near future,from himself.The message told him that there'd been a nuclear incident arranged by Majestic 12, blamed on Delta Green operatives who were now being hunted down by Presidential decree. The message had instructions to record a conversation at a hotel between two of the leaders of Majestic 12, and to "take them out" before the nuclear incident could happen.

The group spent considerable time weighing up their options and trying to agree on a plan. A further revelation, was that Agent Selene had forged the letter from the future, something which she didn't share with the group. The group split between those doing surveillance in the hotel and some outside in vehicles. Some of the operatives had explosives in place.

There were several big reveals and twists along the way to total destruction of the hotel room. One was that MJ-12 was divided,with two leaders wanting to make money from selling alien technology, their plan being to blame a rival leader for the nuclear explosion and frame him as the Delta Green leader. Another was that the explosion was caused by the linking of two portals, tied together in the hotel room. One portal led to the nuclear plant, the other led back in time to the church in Fredricksberg.The explosions triggered by the team in the second chapter of the campaign to kill the Tindalosion Hound had literally blasted through into the present, firing from one portal into another and triggering the nuclear disaster. Some of the players had stepped into the church itself and faced instant death, the others managed to escape.

The final scene had two of the escapees,including Agent Selene, meeting the new leader of Majestic-12 and the President.They reveal themselves to be Yith observers who have been pulling strings the entire time to analyze human decision making. Selene is now possessed by a Yith and her first task is to forge a letter in the hand of a team mate, which will be sent back in time to see how it plays out...

I really enjoyed running this and introducing much of my own material.It was the first time I'd run a tightly focused short campaign with a distinct beginning and end, which I think was more satisfying for everyone involved.It's definitely the format I'll be using for future games.Time to prepare for "Vampire:The Requiem" and "Trail of Cthulhu".

Delta Green Pt 4 - The Clinic

The latest Delta Green session had the players visit a small fictional town in Nevada, in an adventure that brought them closer to "Majestic 12", the main rival faction in this setting.Rather than run parallel adventures like last time, this one had half of the group join the main mission halfway through, but initially playing NPCs.

The basic story had former Agent "Andrea", a leader of Delta Green who had gone into hiding, re-emerging in a clinic in Nevada. She had been sent there by Agent Alphonse and contacted a player character, "Selene", who she had established a connection with in the previous game. Three players, including and led by Selene, faked clinic admission documents to get inside as patients. The other four players were waiting in the wings for further instruction.

I had created basic character outlines for five NPC patients who were already in the clinic, and these were randomly assigned to the four players. One of them was a Majestic 12 insider, another was a resurrected former player character from another time, a nod to the Nathaniel Bishop storyline. This worked great and all the players really embraced the roles.

Behind all this was the story of what was really going on. The town itself was a facade, home to an observatory run by the Mi-Go and a place for MJ-12 to try psychological experiments and conversion programs on Delta Green agents. I used a plot device from the "Music of the Spheres" scenario, so at certain moments the observatory would contact an Outer God, resulting in random psychological reactions from anyone in the town. Some of the reactions where violent, which triggered the usual destructive path established in this campaign.

With the clinic destroyed and all but one of the NPCs dead, the group quickly set about using explosives to destroy the town and observatory. While no-one went to inside to discover the story secrets, one character experienced a temporary mind swap with the sole inhabitant of the observatory..a Mi-Go. This obviously had big implications for his sanity.

So four chapters in and yet another small town destroyed. I might jump ahead and make the next chapter the final one, as I feel it's time to tie up all the threads and ramp up the scale. This has definitely been fun so far with plenty of insanity,paranoia and plot twists.

Delta Green Pt 3 - Cleanups and Conspiracies

The third part of my Call of Cthulhu "Delta Green" campaign took place yesterday and was a departure from previous games, featuring some elements I'd never tried before.

The group consisted of eight players, so my thoughts in advance were to break the group into two or three smaller ones. I specialize in this anyway and enjoy running a game in parallel threads, taking full advantage of the group being divided. It also means that each player gets a piece of the pie in terms of game time, rather than being sidelined by the group as whole.

Instead I did something I've never done before. I split the session into two separate missions, completely unrelated to each other but tied to previous sessions. The beauty of this was that I could make plot revelations in one mission that had importance to the characters in the other mission. The players of course would all realize this, but the characters can't acknowledge what they don't know!

Also, the missions themselves where very basic "one room" stories. One was about destroying evidence that had been salvaged from the previous game, the evidence was being mailed to a college professor, later revealed to be one of the leaders of Delta Green. The other was a cleanup mission at the woodland cabin of former Agent Alphonse, a character who'd died in the "Aklo" game.

I sent a group of NPCs to the cabin game and this is where the conspiracy ramped up. They claimed to be members of Delta Green, that the organization had been compromised at the highest level...and that "S" Cell was really part of Majestic 12, the arch rivals of Delta Green. "S" Cell of course, consists of the player characters in the other mission! Characters turned on each other,lied to each other, even shot each other. Lots of twists and turns played out in mass confusion. Nobody knew who they were really working for anymore...though the big revelation at the end was that the players are legitimately members of Delta Green. The cell sent to the woods was from Majestic 12...though there are still big questions about who really runs Delta Green and to what level it has been compromised.

All in all this was exactly what I hoped it would be. An intense, confusing session that left everyone feeling really uneasy at the end, setting the next three sessions up perfectly. I'll be bringing more horror back into the next one and I'm delighted with how this format works. Some of the players were even discussing creating a new Delta Green..."Delta Greener"! Lots of fun and good preparation for other future games that I have planned, such as "Vampire:The Masquerade" and "Monster Of The Week".

Delta Green - "Aklo"

Yesterday was the second session of my six-part campaign in the "Delta Green" setting for "Call of Cthulhu". I read a great scenario posted on another forum which formed the basis of this game.I took some core elements and played around with it for a few weeks, finally settling on a new story the night before the game.

I wanted to introduce two things into the game that I hadn't tried before. One was to keep the entire scenario contained in a single room, a "closed room" crime scene. The other was to have the core of the mystery tie directly into the overall campaign storyline, deepening the conspiracy and setting things up for future sessions.

The story this time was a murder scene at a small town community center. One victim had been killed by another, three of the victims appeared to have died from anaphylactic shock. There was also smoke at the scene, the source of which couldn't be determined. The characters secured the scene and the action moved inside the community center.

They examined the bodies and found evidence telling them that this had been a language class,to learn an obscure language known as "Aklo".The course had been privately funded and offered free to military veterans. The class was really a trap, and the recitals of Aklo were a ritual to summon a creature from another dimension, a Hound of Tindalos, capable of warping time and space. The class members didn't realize that they were performing a ritual..though one new member was suspicious and attempted to halt the proceedings.

The plot twist was that the new class member was Agent Alphonse, a senior Delta Green official who had directed the previous game.The other class members were part of Delta Green in the 70's. The trap had been set by Reinhardt Galt, a Nazi looking for revenge against the group. This discovery unfolded in gameplay really well and made the players realize they were pawns in a bigger game.

Of course, the Hound of Tindalos was still present, hiding in the unexplained smoke. I unleashed the hound, stalking the characters from different angles of the room. All of them survived though all but two of the group failed sanity rolls...very lucky to survive. They blew up the community center and killed the hound.

Overall this was a shorter session but satisfying and very intense. If you haven't used Tindalos Hounds in a game I suggest you do...they're a very intimidating villain and give a lot of useful options for surprise!

Call of Cthulhu - "The Sanatorium"

One of the first "Call of Cthulhu" scenarios I ran was "The Sanatorium"  from the compilation book "Mansions of Madness". In it's own way, it was the most important scenario I've run in terms of how it enhanced my GM style and built my confidence.

The scenario is about a private sanatorium on a small island off the coast of Massachusetts.The resident doctor is experimenting with hypnosis, still highly controversial in the 1920's setting.He invites a player character out so he can share his findings.Of course, it's not so straightforward.

One of the patients has been communicating with a creature from space while in deep hypnosis. The creature comes to the island and needs energy (in the form of human sacrifices) to free itself and return home. It can also possess the minds of humans. When the game starts, a male nurse has been possessed and has already started the sacrifices. The first victims are the hospital staff, and it's real fun when the players realize that the people welcoming them into the hospital are the patients!

One of the great things about this scenario is that all the characters encountered by the players at this point are patients, and hopelessly insane. The game becomes a challenge in that the players don't know who to trust, what information is real or imagined, all while being stalked by the crazed nurse. The real villain of the piece is so truly alien that they really won't figure it all out.

For me as a GM, this presented numerous challenges. The first was playing ten support characters.I had to keep track of them all and play them convincingly. All of the characters had important histories so it was a real test to make them come across as distinct people and interact with the players. The second challenge was the sheer size of the group...I had nine players! I'd never had a group that size before. The third challenge was the that group broke into three smaller parties, each exploring different parts of the ideal. So in all, a lot of moving parts where involved. That being said, the setting is a sandbox with borders....the players can't get off the island.

The important lesson that I learned was that I found it easier to run the game with multiple groups, timelines and threads. That was a surprise for me and it's certainly not the preference of every GM. I enjoyed that approach so much that I now encourage my Cthulhu groups to split up in most sessions, something that worked to great effect in the "Delta Green" game especially. It's a great scenario, especially if you enjoy confusing your players!

Delta Green Pt 1 - "Convergence"

Yesterday was the first session of "Delta Green" that I've ran.It's a "Call of Cthulhu" spin-off set in the 1990's and has the characters as agents in a pan-Government conspiracy. The game was created to tackle three common issues that players and GMs regularly run into when running "Cthulhu".

The first is having a reason for involving the characters in the scenario initially.The second is for having an reason for those same characters to continue investigating dangerous paranormal cases. The third is how to make it easy to introduce new player characters into an ongoing campaign given the high character turnover often associated with "Cthulhu" games.Making the players part of an organization gives answers to all three.

I chose one of the original published scenarios,"Convergence", as it gave a solid and potentially lethal taste of the new setting.It had an old Mythos baddie,Greys, Men In Black, alien viruses,UFOs,cattle mutilation and body alteration.The players in the group were all experienced in "CoC" and role-playing in general so I didn't see the need to ease them into things.

The player characters were a CIA Agent, FBI Agent, former FBI Psychologist,CDC Scientist,DEA Scientist and an Author specializing in the paranormal.Without going into plot details (I don't want to spoil it,being a published scenario), the group split up in their investigation,with most of the group heading to a small town in Tennessee to track the mystery behind a murder case. Two other characters went to a compound and did scientific research that would have huge impact on the outcome of the game.Again, without giving too much away,this resulted in helicopters being sent into the town overnight,to spray the town with several chemical agents to determine if a virus was present.

Of course, there were plenty of plot twists and the conspiratorial nature of "Delta Green" had characters sending mixed messages and sabotaging each other...paranoia levels were high. One character died at the hands of another, and some characters fled the country when they understood the extent of the threat they were dealing with.

All in all, it was a great session. It was a complex, dangerous scenario that flowed smoothly with great role-playing from the great.I wouldn't recommend this setting for GMs who don't have "Call of Cthulhu" experience, but it's a fantastic alternative setting to try...highly recommended!

Call of Cthulhu - "The Condemned"

This week I'm reminiscing about my favorite "Call of Cthulhu" scenario, "The Condemned". It's been published several times, I found it in the supplement "H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham".

"The Condemned" was the fourth published scenario that I chose to run.The first three were "Edge Of Darkness","The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse" and "The Sanatorium".It was the most complex in terms of plot and also the first that ran across two sessions.

What makes the story special is the villain,"Sermon Bishop". Bishop is a wizard from 17th Century New England, a truly foul character who makes a deal with "The Treader of Dust".The deal grants him immortality in exchange for his soul and the cost of a deformed neck.Bishop is captured and imprisoned by seven locals who entombed him in the support structure of a stone bridge.Fast forward two hundred years and a lightning strike to the bridge releases him.He stumbles upon two college students camping by the river and uses magic to perform a body swap with one of them.He kills the other student and buries him with his own seventy year old body,which is now "home" to the mind of the other student.

The players enter the story having been asked to track down the missing student as his colleague, now possessed by Bishop, has wandered into town claiming amnesia.The players interview the student and notice he has an odd accent (it's Bishops).There is another thread to the story of course.Now that Bishop is free,he scours the local libraries to trace the descendants of those who had imprisoned him centuries earlier.Once his list of the seven is compiled,he goes on a rampage killing each in different ways.

I finished the first session by hitting the players from three angles.First,they find the body of the student and also Bishops body.Interviewing "Bishop", they figure out the body swap.Second, the possessed student breaks out of hospital and starts the revenge killings.Third,they put the pieces together and get hold of his hitlist of victims.To add a bit of urgency, I handed over the list which I'd altered from the one in the published scenario...I replaced two of the victims names with two of the player characters! A great way to wrap up a session with the players knowing that the villain is coming after them.

The second session was much more aggressively played with the players decided to take the fight to Bishop. This resulted in an underground showdown in which "The Treader of Dust" himself is summoned.One of the players took the chance to do a deal himself with the Treader,thus cancelling Bishops deal! Bishop was swiftly dealt with,and we had the unusual situation going forward of a character being immortal.There is much more to the game that I've skimmed,but it's a special scenario that has all the elements you'd hope to see in a "Cthulhu" game...a deadly villain,complex mystery and a lethal old book.I highly recommend it.

A New Start - Playing in the USA, 2011-Present

I moved to the Atlanta, GA area back in March 2007.After becoming a father and settling down, curiosity and a need to have a hobby, led to "meetup.com" and the "Atlanta Gamers Guild" (back then it was the "Atlanta Dungeons & Dragons Group"). I've already discussed Call of Cthulhu in an earlier post, but there have been other games that I've played and ran in the last two years.

First was Pathfinder 3E. This was originally a homebrew take on D&D resulting from fanbase frustration with the fourth edition. It was my return to gaming after the 90s and the first thing I'd played Stateside. It was good to be back and the game clearly has a passionate following. I felt it had great ideas but was too tactical...I thought it was more about what characters had the ability to do rather than who they were. That sparked the return to Cthulhu. Pathfinder is a very good game indeed, just not for me.

One of my Cthulhu players, Michael Bay, was running "Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying" in the same club on a monthly basis. We have a good rapport so I thought it'd be fun to play in a game ran by one of my players...also interesting to try a setting and system I'd never tried before. It was a very rich experience, there's a distinct Germanic feel to the game. I played a Witch hunter, completely got the concept and ran with it.I ended up taking actions in the game though that brought the campaign to an early close..something we still laugh about now! I did learn that as a player I prefer to stay true to what I think my character would do rather than trying to win.

I then played another game ran by Michael, "Apocalypse World". This is a very new game and has a clear improv influence. It puts the narrative more in the hands of the players with the GM playing more of a reactive role. The GM doesn't bring a structured storyline to the table so you never know what's going to happen. It's a superb, rewarding game though very challenging. It requires more of the players than most games and shines when you have a creative group who aren't afraid of conflict with each other.

In terms of GM'ing other games, I've done one-shots of two other systems. I like doing this as it allows me to try different games without laying out a huge plan in advance and also gives a good opportunity for players to do the same. As they're "throwaways", players can takes chances with their characters in ways they wouldn't normally do and really get a feel for the game. I'll do more of these in the future. The first was "All Flesh Must Be Eaten". I did a scenario blatantly pulled from "The Walking Dead" TV show. It's a great game, the players liked it, but it just wasn't for me. Too heavy on combat and tactics. Also, everyone knows what the "bad guy" is before the game has even started. I prefer, as a GM, to have plot twists and surprises to spring on the players. I'm sure another GM would've done it more justice.

The other game I ran was "Unknown Armies". I chose a published scenario called "Jailbreak", written by Greg Stolze. This was phenomenal...I loved the scenario and prefer to system to CoC. I had a group of players I'd never met before and we really nailed the game. The influence of CoC is clearly there but the emphasis is more on personal horror than cosmic. I ran it again at Dragon*Con in 2012, again to great success. There's a strong possibility I'll run this in 2013 depending on interest and my schedule...which is the subject of next weeks post.

Returning to Gaming - the 1990's

In the early 1990's I was very much a part of the Goth and Metal scene in Liverpool,UK. Apart from the music and imagery, it was were I found and made friends that I had a lot in common with..a sense of belonging. Some of them were RPG fans and wanted to get back into the hobby. This marked my return to Tabletop RPG's, both as a GM and player.

My first step back was through my love of horror. TSR had just released a boxed set called "Ravenloft". This was a heavily supported campaign setting for AD&D 2nd Edition. It was the perfection combination really, a system that had broad appeal and familiarity coupled with a setting that I "got". I ran the published scenarios over a year long period with, in my opinion, mixed success, but the players seemed to love it. The high point was a werewolf adventure in which the players really did very little as they were so intimidated. That was the atmosphere I was looking for, and it would eventually lead me back to Cthulhu years later. I was also lucky to have a group who didn't know the rules very well...if I'd been called out on some decisions it would have been awkward as I didn't know the rules well myself!

The next game that I ran was "Kult". It was a very controversial Swedish horror game with a bad reputation.It was extremely dark and gnostic, but the system was very clunky. I loved it though, but when I tried to run a game it just didn't work. I didn't understand the game enough and simply didn't have the experience to do it justice. The players didn't get it either and felt I was railroading them, which I was...again because of inexperience and lack of confidence. I think in retrospect I thought that the game would just "happen" when I ran it. It only lasted one session.

Around this time White Wolf changed everything with their World of Darkness games. I bought "Vampire : The Masquerade", a game in which the players are vampires in a Gothic-punk modern setting. It was exciting and I was sure I'd have success running it. I never got the chance. The main problem was that my Goth pals weren't into tabletop games, the nearest they'd go was the Live-Action version. My pals who did play tabletop were turned off by the Goth angle, which they saw as pretentious. To this day I know that setting inside out without having played it.

I did get to play some other White Wolf games though, "Werewolf : The Apocalypse" and "Mage : The Ascension"."Werewolf" was fun though I had difficulty getting into character. I just didn't connect with the aggressive, animalistic aspect which is core to the game."Mage" on the other hand fit me like a glove..I understood it and really enjoyed it. It must be noted that the GM for "Mage" had a style that I hadn't encountered before, but it was perfect for that game. He had no storylines, just a firm grasp on the game mechanics. He focused the game on our characters and just reacted to what we did...we,the players, made the story ourselves to a large extent. That takes skill to do, and can be seen in some of today's new game systems. If I were to run a World of Darkness game I would call on my memories of his approach. He definitely helped shape my current style.

The last game I played was "Cyberpunk : 2020". The game was plain cool, loaded with attitude and good fun. It was the same GM we'd had for "Mage". Now it's horribly dated..this was in the days before people really used the internet. I did like the whole idea of enhancing yourself with cybernetics, at the cost of your humanity.

So around this time I stopped gaming. I think a large part of it was the time required. I had started working and simply couldn't be bothered with the time and preparation. It wouldn't be until 2011 that I'd do it again.