“You are not playing Lovecraft right!”

After starting Arkham Horror the Card Game I have yet again heard the all too familiar comment about not playing true to the Lovecraft’s vision. So on this post I’m going to discuss my opinions about how Lovecraftian games and the stories linked to Cthulhy Mythos are linked.

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Season of the Witch, Part 4

session4bThough it seems we have more than enough of timing issues with this campaign we are managed to have an awesome fourth session yesterday. And even though we have been using Eldritch Sigils for a few years for the campaign it seems we can still find minor details that need correcting.

It seems like ages ago when I was GMing ANKH to my friends after school and just had to tweak the rules of the game to suit my taste. It might have been twenty years ago but I’m still doing it. And for the life of me I cannot see the reason why?

Why cannot I be satisfied with the rules as written?

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Love in Innsmouth

Archipelago 3 by Matthjis Holter has become my “go to” game for oneshots. I might have only written one game for it (as it is) but when I get an idea for a story that might work as a game it is usually the first one to pop up in my mind.

Today I was thinking about a Solstice scenario and while listening to H.P.Lovecraft’s Historical Society’s excellent albums I began to wonder how could I capture the feeling of Shadow of Innsmouth in a way that all players could enjoy it. Aaaaaaand I was quite quickly thinking it in an Archipelago way.

I might not be able to write it all but here is the quicky summary (a draft at best) for “Love in Innsmouth” (or something).

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Lovecraft, Buddha, and Me: On the Relevance of H. P. Lovecraft’s Vision

buddha2-l

(The source of the image. Those statues are all sold out.)

Lovecraftian horror is a staple of horror roleplaying, but it has its detractors as well. They don’t see anything frightening about Cthulhu and some also try to argue intellectually that no one else should either. I raise some questions about it, offer some answers — including one that says that questions are the answer — and venture into a territory I’ve not seen dealt with before: what happens to a Buddhist who meets a Lovecraftian monstrosity? Continue reading

Horror in Dungeons

With all the OCR-stuff going on dungeons are getting better rep than in ages. Dungeon World is a certain classic and a game I would be willing to play at any time. Almost a year ago I talked about making dungeons on the fly and this subject raised its ugly head last Tuesday when the party descended into an ancient underground city in Egypt. Granted I was pretty tired then but I still think I had something good going on.

We are going to continue our descend into this forgotten tomb tomorrow and while I was searching the web for ideas and made notes about how to get it right I came into a conclusion that what I am actually doing is building a dungeon while I thought I was making a scenario for Call of Cthulhuish game.

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