Call of Cthulhu: Cult of the Bloody Tongue Sandwich

We resumed our Call of Cthulhu game after several months. We're stumbling our way through Masks of Nyarlathotep. If you're not familiar, it's one of the most highly regarded campaigns for Call of Cthulhu (and, in fact, pops up on a number of lists for all-time best campaign, regardless of system). It's a huge, globe-trotting adventure, and we began this week's session by trying to decide where we'd like to have our TPK.

We opened with some guys in traction.  I missed an adventure, so I guess they got into trouble without me. Our GM pulled Dr. Bob away from the table. From later conversation, I learned that an enemy from before I joined the campaign had paid him a visit, and proposed a nonaggression pact offer we couldn't refuse. We would stay out of New York, and he wouldn't kill us.

So, the first thing we did was go directly into New York. There was an auction for some Mythos Tomes. Bob called Mogens (sp?), our warlock adversary to tell him that we'd be in Westchester for the auction, we wouldn't intrude on his business, and we'd be right out. And when we arrived, we learned that there had been a burglary attempt at the estate, and the auction had been moved to Manhattan. Wah wah wah. Before you could say "Can I use your phone?" our band was on their way.

We outbid the cultists calling in their bids on the phone and went home with their spoils. That night, half of the team fell asleep studying forbidden tomes. The rest of us drunk ourselves into a stupor and passed out, as per usual.

We each had a dream of drowning, ending with a yellow eye opening. Those of us who made our listen roll woke up and heard the home invaders. Those who didn't, didn't.

Oh, good lord. As I get older, I tend to like competent PCs, of whom the question is asked, "Should I do this?", rather than "Can I do this?" However, our collection of fuckups do lead interesting lives.

I woke up to the cultists breaking into the house. Like the action hero of your choice, I charged them. It was about then that I remembered my stats.

This is a semi-avatar game. We're playing 1920s versions of ourselves, with skills allocated based on our education and experience, and the player filling in the rest. My character has skills in chemistry, because that's what my degree is in, but I've never used it in the real world. I spent the rest pumping Library Use, Shotgun, Spot Hidden and Dodge, because it's fucking Call of Cthulhu and those are the only skills you need.

However...

HOWEVER...

They're not so useful if you don't have a shotgun.

I'm not a huge fan of BRP, the system that powers CoC. Eric does a great job with it, but I don't think it's all that suited for emulating Lovecraft's stories.

What it is great at is emulating a fight featuring a bunch of flabby thirty and forty-somethings. One of our members popped his stitches trying to escape. Another slept through five minutes of combat. Those of us who were fighting couldn't hit a damn thing. An overstuffed chair in the middle of the room was more dangerous than the rest of us.

I eventually grappled a cultist. I didn't realize how low my strength was until Eric requested it so the cultist could roll against it. That cultist repeatedly, and catastrophically failed his rolls to escape (after the game, Eric mentioned that he needed an 85 or lower to escape. Fortunately, the cultists are as bad at their jobs as we are.)

The sad part is, I was performing better than most of the rest of the team. We had someone pass out after a succession of failed rolls trying to cross the room. (He eventually woke up in time to turn off the gas stove before it killed us all.) A graduate student was almost killed by a lucky impale by one of the cultists.

We finally fought them off/got them to give up in disgust. Our next step was to book passage to England. Bob took out a second mortgage to pay for it. While on the ship, one of our party members souped up the engines, another wrote The Hardy boys meets Cthulhu, and I got beaten up attempting to improve my lockpicking skills.

We followed up a couple of leads in England. We failed catastrophically when pumping a contact information. We kept asking about the Carlyle expedition, when he was actually acquainted with our other avenue, Jackson Elias. I think the best thing that can happen to this group would be that everyone dies, so that we can all reroll characters who don't suck all the time.

Preview: Seven No-Trump

I picked up this book in order to review it. I figured it couldn't be too bad. Zelazny wrote the introduction, and he always took care with Amber.

Holy shit, this is awful. I don't even know if the review is going to be anything more than a list of things that are wrong with this book. It's atrocious.

Why didn't someone warn me?!

Review: Doctor Who Season 8 Episode 3: Robot of Sherwood

The science of Classic Doctor Who had always been a bit...dodgy. A lot of the concepts fall apart with the most casual scrutiny, but that's okay, the guys in the rubber suits were winking at the audience, so I was fine with a MST3K hand-waving explanation.

While the reboot is darker and more tightly scripted, (more"mature") the science and the continuity really aren't all that much better. (Or at least, they haven't increased at the same pace as the audience's ability to poke holes in them.) Too often, Moffat has tried to feed us cynicism and pretend it's maturity.

Either you're silly and you know it, and you get something of a pass, or you're deadly serious, but you're held to a higher standard. Deep Breath featured a humanoid lizard from the age of the dinosaurs priggishly lecturing Clara how Marcus Aurelius was a “superlative bass guitarist", which is just as goofy as anything in this episode, but I defy you to find any joy in that scene. It's just as ridiculous as anything in Classic Who, but it's played straight.

Consequently, I enjoy the occasional episode when the program acknowledges its own absurdity. I think I liked Robot of Sherwood more than any previous episode of the revived series. It has the feel of the old show, but with modern day production values. A little bit Masque of the Mandragora, a little bit City of Death, faintly ridiculous, to be sure, but charming because of it.

We open with the Doctor writing on the blackboard, and asking Clara where she wants to go. Clara is spinning around in a chair. It looks like the blackboard is going to be a thing and not just set dressing. I like that.

Clara smiles, and requests Robin Hood, and her smile is so infectious. I like Clara.

They bicker, he relents and sets the TARDIS for 1190, but he tells her that she's only going to be disappointed, because Robin Hood didn't exist.

As they emerge from the TARDIS, the Doctor loudly declares that there is no such thing as Robin Hood, which is like an invocation to make him appear, which he does, and he places an arrow in the TARDIS.

The Doctor bickers with Robin, and Clara comes out of the TARDIS in her Ren Faire costume. I like the screenshot below, because it captures their reactions. The Doctor is rolling his eyes in annoyance, and Clara is almost giddy.

I suppose this is a good time to acknowledge that this is certainly a polarizing episode. I loved it, and a lot of people hated it. Even I am not going to defend the Doctor dueling Robin Hood on a log, using a spoon.

Meanwhile, on a farm, the Sheriff of Nottingham, who looks like the love child of Anthony Ainley and Count Rugen, is strong arming peasants on a farm. He's evil in the fun way that Doctor Who villains often are.

We cut to Robin's camp, where he is introducing his Merry Men, while the Doctor tries to figure out what's going on. He rejects the idea of holograms, but suggests they might be a theme park from the future, or inside a miniscope.

The Doctor points out that only people who are sad laugh as much as Robin does, and I thought that was a really poignant observation.

A little more banter, and then we cut to the archery contest. Robin and the Sheriff are finalists, the Sheriff shoots a bullseye, but Robin splits his arrow and wins the prize, but as he is accepting it, the Doctor splits Robin's arrow with one of his own. I like the rainbow fletching.

(I didn't notice until I took that screenshot, but the Doctor is wearing a wedding ring)

The Doctor rejects the prize of the golden arrow, and requests enlightenment from the Sheriff instead, but Robin splits the Doctor's arrow while they're having this conversation. The Doctor splits Robin's arrow, and this goes back and forth until the Doctor blows up the target with his sonic screwdriver. The Sheriff earns his villain bona fides by shouting "Seize them!" to his henchmen. Someone cuts the arm off a guard, and the Doctor realizes that they're robots. He decides that the best route to enlightenment is to get captured, and that's what he does.

We then cut to the captured peasants laboring and smelting gold. The robots execute those who can't labor with their purple death rays, the targeting icon of which appears as a purple cross. I like that a lot. The robots really remind me of Classic Who villains like the Terileptils. They've got a distinctive look, they show up for a one-off and give Doctor a bit of trouble and we never see them again.

The Doctor and Robin bicker, and bicker and bicker.  I thought the archery scene was the exact right length, but this went on for just a bit too long, though it did have its moments ("I feel another laugh coming on!") I mentioned once that a lot of Tennant's early scripts seem to have been written for Eccleston, and this seems to have been written for Matt Smith. I think it's too early to say if it's at
odds with Capaldi's characterization of the Doctor, as we've only had two episodes to establish and one of them was almost entirely post-regeneration mania, so that's a really small sample size of what the Twelfth Doctor is really like. Clara is level headed, and when she tries to ride herd on the boys, a guard identifies her as the ringleader and takes her away.

Clara is dining with the Sheriff, and she pumps him for information while playing on his vanity.Ordinarily, I'm very critical of these kinds of scenes, where the heroes know every trick, and the villains never seem to have seen a TV show or a movie, but I think it works here, because a 12th Century strongman is going to be a lot less savvy about these kind of tropes. However, he's awesome, because he managed to use "gallimaufry", so I guess the robots at least gave him an 1190 AD Word-A-Day calender.

Robin and the Doctor escape and learn that the castle is really an alien ship disguised as a castle. I even liked the design of the ship. It looked a lot like something out of Classic Who.

The Doctor learns their plans, to use the gold to repair their damaged engines in order to return to the Promised Lands, and turns on Robin, insisting that he's part of the alien's plot. He calls up the ship's databanks, showing him that the aliens have files on all sorts of myths and legends, including Robin Hood, including one particular Robin Hood who looked very familiar. I liked this concept, kind of like a Doctor Who Missionaria Protectiva

They're bickering, when the Sheriff and his robots blast down their own door, which struck me as somewhat unnecessary. Robin flees with Clara, but the Doctor is captured and imprisoned next to the young woman captured in an earlier scene.

Robin interrogates Clara, the Doctor talks the peasant lady. He's freed himself by the time a robot comes to take her away for labor, and he reflects the robot's blasts with a gold platters, and wow, shiny metal plates are already playing a large role in this season.

The other prisoners defend themselves likewise, and even though they deflect every shot back at the robots, the robots don't stop shooting at them. The Sheriff arrives, and so does Robin and his Merry Men. They tussle and Ron fights the Sheriff. I understand there is a scene within the fight that was cut, because of the recent beheadings of US hostages. Robin cuts off the Sheriff's head, but he puts it back on, explaining that he's part robot now.  The episode makes less sense without this scene, but they certainly made the right choice in removing it. The fight continues. Robin employs the move the Doctor used against him on the log to knock the Sheriff into a vat of molten gold.

"I love you." "I know."

The ship is lifting off, but the engines don't have enough power, so the ship is going to blow up, and take the countryside with it. Robin is injured and the Doctor used a homing beacon to cheat at the archery contest, so it looks like the robots are going to get away until the Doctor, Clara and Robin combine their powers to, uh, shoot the golden arrow into the ship. Along with the spoon, this is one aspect of the episode that's just plain silly. But it works, and the ship blows up harmlessly in orbit.

During the denouement, Robin asks he's only remembered as a legend in the future, and the Doctor tells him that he is. He starts telling the Doctor a story, of a man born into wealth and privilege, who found the plight of the oppressed too much to bear....who stole a TARDIS. I liked that. It was telegraphed, though not as much as the scene where the guard comes to seize the ringleader, which could be seen from space. I like the sentiment, which fits in with the theme of the rest of the season. Neither the Doctor nor Robin believe themselves real heroes, but if they fake it till they make it, they can inspire others by their example.

The TARDIS dematerializes  to reveal the Doctor's peasant lady buddy, who was really Maid Marion. On one hand, that's fine, I guess, but I didn't have a lot of investment in her. On the other, they've got dynamite chemistry.

I loved this episode. It's fun, it has no pretensions about being "serious science fiction" or changing the way we see the Doctor. It's a silly romp. It achieved what it set out to do.

I really feel that we've reached Peak Zombie

How else do you explain this zombie Lego figure costume I saw earlier today?

Edit: The costume in the wild:

Roger Zelazny Book Review: Dragon magazine ad for the Amber Diceless RPG

I'm trying to move towards a slightly more rigorous M/W/F publishing schedule here at Where There Had Been Darkness, so let's open with the first Zelazny post in a while. 

I suppose that I'm kind of stretching the definition by calling this a Roger Zelazny book review, but here's an interesting piece of ephemera,the ad in Dragon magazine advertising the Amber Diceless Role-playing game.

I  talked about my history with the game at the post where I covered the ADRPG itself, but to recap, I was reading a magazine in a friend's basement before a game, waiting for the other players to arrive. I saw the ad, mailed the check as soon as I got home, and had the book in hand a week later, as well as response to my fanboyish question from Erick Wujcik,"Dear Josh, thanks for your interest. You mentioned that you liked Mandor and Dalt, so I've enclosed copies of the pictures we'll be using for them in the upcoming book. Also, you asked how Bleys is pronounced. It's blaze, like a fire."

The game is stylistically, very characteristic of its era. I don't necessarily mean this in a pejorative sense, but Amber had very powerful non player characters, and it skewed very solidly to the ROLE-Playing (as opposed to ROLL-playing) side of the scale, though it's not surprising that a diceless game has a bias in that direction.

If you can't make out the text on the image, I'm reproducing it below.

AMBER is the most character intensive game ever! 

It takes hours, plus a whole gaming session, just to create a new group of Amber player characters.

Amber Characters start out with the strength to lift a car, the endurance to fight a whole day without tiring, a mind trained to psychic combat, and the battle skills of a master. Better yet, they start out as fully rounded people. 

Character building starts with players competing in an Attribute Auction, using their character's points to vie for dominance in psyche, strength, endurance and warfare.
Then players use their points to get Powers. 

Pattern is the ticket to immortality, the birthright of any Amberite, and the ultimate key to controlling worlds 

You see, our Earth is but one of an infinite number of Shadows, cast by the light of the only true world, Amber. Player characters with Pattern have the blood of Amber's ruling family. This means being able to walk among infinite alternate reality, shaping or destroying, to toy with destiny. 

The flip side of Pattern, it's opposite, is the power of the Logrus, symbol of Amber's great foe, the Courts of Chaos. Between these two powers are the lesser abilities of Magic, Shape Shifting and Trump. 

When we say no dice we mean it. No dice, coin flips, cards, yarrow sticks, computer chips or any randomness! Here's how we can do that: 

1. Characters are made with points, bidding in an Attribute Auction where the players compete for Rank. NO DICE! 

2. Combat is resolved by comparing each combatant's Rank and specific actions. The best character wins! NO DICE! 

3. Players choose their own "LUCK," spending points to be lucky, or borrowing point against bad luck. NO DICE! 

4. Ever been frustrated with a bad dice roll? In Amber, if your character can do it, consider it done! NO DICE! 

5. No Random encounters! Instead, each character is part of a story, and encounters are planned by the GM! NO DICE!"

The language in the ad worked for high school Josh ("The most character intensive game ever!") but, well, he was kind of a sucker. Today, I'd be extremely leery of something advertised with so many capital letters and exclamation points. However, I still like the art that goes along with it, because those goons attacking the swords seem like they could have sprung directly from Undershadow, or Brand's Prison Shadow.

Also, while researching this post, I discovered that a picture of me is the second result when performing an image search for Phage Press, the company that published the game. That's just weird.