Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for the 4th of November, and the episode title is “17th-century monsters”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #217]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple]
TheNatOne is in the Spotlight thanks to votes from Geek Native’s generous patrons, and I’m already talking to the publisher.
Can you believe we’re in November already? It’s pretty much the end of the year.
The candidates for December’s RPG Publisher Spotlight are;
Patrons can vote in the private poll.
Tomorrow is Guy Fawkes Night here in the UK, also known as Bonfire Night, and it means fireworks.
The story picks up in 1605, when Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. The Catholic plotters had intended to assassinate Protestant king James I and his parliament. Celebrating that the king had survived, people lit bonfires around London.
That King James was also King James the VI of Scotland. Welcome to the messy history of the United Kingdom, where we often forget it was a Scottish monarch who, kinda, united the thrones. As I say; very messy, so let’s move on — although we will return to 17th-century European history in just a bit.
I first want to talk about the boogeyman. It’s a shame I can’t show you the artwork in this podcast; maybe I’ll try and put a video together because The Toy Zone has researched and illustrated almost every dominant boogeyman myth worldwide.
I’m impressed.
There’s the Lamia from Lybia, not a man, but the dominant scare the kids into submission story, Krampus from Austria, who seems to be getting really popular, the Div from Azebarjam, Cuco from Uruguay and so on.
The same article cites research that says while myth-building and having allegorical figures can help kids work through issues and learn stuff, straight-out scaring them into behaving does not help them learn.
It sounds like running tabletop games which engage kids brains is a good move. It leads to how running games that engage adult brains can be a chore.
Tell me if I’m wrong but I suggest that if you, as the DM, mention that there’s a strange mark, perhaps just a smudge, on the dungeon door that, your players will investigate it for hours. If you mention that there are a lot of red cars on the street right now, that, too, will trigger a time-consuming set of questions.
On the other hand, try and run a mystery adventure, and either the players ignore it or solve it straight away.
Josh Fox of Black Armada Games is a much better GM than I ever was, and you still have a few days to back Lovecraftesq on BackerKit. That’s the second edition of Black Armada’s popular mystery game.
As there’s a crowdfunder live, Josh kindly agreed to write The glue that binds mysteries for us. That’s a thought piece on the blog about how to design mystery games.
It’s no mystery. It’s worth a read.
A set of games that have a good spin on danger and mystery are Cold City and Hot War. Both are by Malcolm Craig, who now lecturers history, and both being picked up by Handiwork Games for new editions.
In Cold City, a game of political ambition, characters are defined not just by who they are and what they are like but by the views of the other characters and the trust that they have in them. In Hot War, a maelstrom of nuclear and more sinister weapons, the characters are the Special Situations Group, a motley band of men and women tasked with jobs too dirty or dangerous for anyone else.
Interestingly, and we don’t have all the details on this yet, both games are also going to be part of a study into how tabletop RPGs influence our understanding of history.
Cold City and Hot War are not the 17th-century European mentions I teased. That comes from Musketeers vs Cthulhu.
Nightfall Games are turning The Musketeers vs. Cthulhu in the Court of King Louis, a short story by Claudia Christian & Chris McAuley, into an RPG.
I remember Claudia Christian as Ivanova from Babylon 5 but she’s been in a host more things, and Blood of Zeus comes to mind a somewhat recent one.
Geek Native, yours truly, tried to break the Musketeers vs Cthulhu news at UK Games Expo this year. The social media is up but I didn’t do a blog post.
It’s kinda a botch but also kinda a win. I noticed the design of musketeers on a Nightfall poster and couldn’t work out what previously announced Nightfall RPG it was associated with, so I asked, and they told me.
One of the interesting things about Musketeers vs Cthulhu is that it uses the full and proper Call of Cthulhu rules.
I went rushing off to Chaosium, who were also at the UK Games Expo, and cooled my jets when I got there. The staff at the Chaosium both didn’t have the whole story and didn’t think it sounded likely.
So I bit back the details from Geek Native’s coverage. It turns out Nightfall was right, Chaosium was right to be cautious, and perhaps I was right to derisk it for the publishers, but that could have been a great scoop.
Now, the Kickstarter is a roaring success and is still live.
Since we’re talking Kickstarters, which does happen during Audio EXP, although rarely, let’s also talk Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The RPG by Palladium, with contributions from the Turtle’s co-creators, is live, and I’ve backed it.
I’ve backed it because it was the RPG that I ran through half my senior years at school.
I nearly didn’t back it because the original game had some problematic descriptions of homosexuality as a mental illness or hindrance. It looks like it’s got with the times, and all that dated rubbish is out but, well, that’s an assumption as the final text is still under wraps.
Bronwen, and perhaps with her Creative Director hat on, found a set of rather cook Jordan Peele posters this month which, like the boogeymen, I wish I can show you. Instead, follow the links from the show notes or Google for Geek Native.
Lastly, in bundles, the Bundle of Holding has the excellent Nibiru sci-fi indie game of academia and exploration and the mass slaughter of level zero characters in DCC Funnels.
On that note, keep safe, don’t get slaughtered, and see you next week.
Take part in the Geek Native community by leaving a comment below.
