19th Level

Monday, June 3, 1889 The Gustav Ericsson arrived in the west Greenland port of Talluavik. On board her was the Rev. Seamus Murphy, sent by strange visions he'd been having, reuniting him with Ascott, Morton, and Pound. With the Ericsson staying for two days to resupply a research station in the tiny port, they found an inn (the only inn - the town had maybe 20 buildings plus extensive mines) and drank the night away. Tuesday, June 4, 1889 Drinking was a bad idea. The next morning the town was filled with reanimated corpses, many of which attacked the inn. The band fought their way out and saw the Ericsson was under attack, with the corpses being controlled by one of two British scientists performing research in the town -a Mister Travers. The four went to the research station - an infirmity which had been giving immunizations.There they found Doctor Ian Chesterfield, a rather crazy mad scientist who had found ancient Hyperborean writings carved on metal d...

Based on the adventure "The Scuttling" by Todd A. Woods and Kevin A. Ross from Chaosium's Sacraments of Evil Friday March 15, 1889 Ascott, Morton, and Pound are hired by railroad tycoon by Nigel Stander to acquire a 16th century bust of Lady Jane Grey from Misters Weiman and DeMarco in New York City, with Ascott to work as his agent. Agent suspected his brother wanted to get him out of the city for a few months but a trip to America seemed entertaining. Mister Morton saw a potential story and Pound accompanied him to make sure he stayed alive. Sunday, March 17, 1889 The characters travel to Liverpool and depart on the Christabel under Captain Dan Holley. There is some confusion when the Gustav Ericsson is in her berth but they make it aboard eventually. It is a long journey as the Christabel is an older ship without steam engines. The crew tries to scare their passengers with tails of monsters (i.e. squid). Monday, April 15, 1889 The Christabel  glides i...

While I've been examining zombie gaming possibilities, I've got a late 19th century Call of Cthulhu game going on. Some of the players in my group suggested we do a zombie Call of Cthulhu  adventure. While we've got the pulp dials cranked up pretty high, I do want to keep the game Lovecraftian. I'm a huge Jules Verne fan and can  see at some point doing a Victorian-era adventure and/or horror game in the vein of Pinnacle's Rippers or Cubicle 7's Victoriana . But for this game I do want to stay grounded in Lovecraftian horror. Which brings us to one of Lovecraft's least favorite creations, Doctor Herbert West, the "protagonist" of his serial "Herbert West - Reanimator". This serial examined West and his obsession with reversing death. To quote the first section of the serial: In his experiments with various animating solutions he had killed and treated immense numbers of rabbits, guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys, till he had b...

Part 1 is here .

This adventure writeup is a little different, taking the form of the note characters might take while pursuing a case. \

We just had our first Penny Dreadful Cthulhu game, giving us our first opportunity to try out the Pulp Cthulhu  rules changes. We decided to go with the default level of pulpiness - PCs have double their normal hit points, more skills, and possess talents that provide minor enhancements or supernatural abilities. As I'd suspected, the game is definitely still Call of Cthulhu - creepy animated dummies are still a bit endangering to one's sanity. I did notice an overall improvement in character competence and the fact that some characters had psychic abilities did make a difference as well. I noticed that for the most part these abilities sped up play - psychic powers proved a nice way to make sure characters had enough information to proceed. Also, luck being more flexible kept things moving nicely. There wasn't a whole lot of combat so I cant yet comment on what sort of a difference the changes make for that. I feel a bit guilty about a low-combat pulp game, but the...

My initial Penny Dreadful Cthulhu game was postponed by a week - I had to do some unexpected repair work on our front yard zombies, taking up time I'd planned on doing homework. Real world can be a bit rough sometimes... But hey - check out zombies at the end of this post. While the first game has been delayed a week I do have the first adventure ready - though I might do a bit of refining, map-making, etc. I do have to confess I find Victorian London to be a bit challenging. None of us are British so there's going to be no one going after me on details, but one thing I find intimidating is there is so much information available on Victorian London it is possible to fall victim to analysis paralysis. Part of the challenge is London is a real city that I don't know all that well - I've only been there once so I don't have an intuitive feel for it. When making a superhero city or a game set in a fictional city, I feel a bit more emboldened to make it my own. The...

One thing I'd like to do in my Penny Dreadful Cthulhu game (i.e. Pulp Cthulhu by Gaslight) is be a bit more cosmopolitan than my previous exploration of the era. That doesn't necessarily mean even leaving London (though I plan on having the characters do so). I keep thinking of a scene in From Hell when early on in the investigation Inspector Abberline investigates the possibility that the murder (only one at this point) was done by one of Buffalo Bill's "red Indians". As it turns out Bill is off in Paris at the time, with "Mexico Joe" doing a variant show. I just like the reminder of how the Old West (rapidly falling into history at this point) was viewed by the rest of the world. So what's going on in the world of 1889? Some of these events might be for adventure ideas, others just happen to be out there in the background - not everything is the fault of Nyaralthotep - or is it? Wikipedia tells me some things I might want in my game... The...

We're still finalizing plans and I'm giving my players a bit longer to weigh in, but in a recent email to my group I offered the possibility that a Pulp Cthulhu game could be slightly repurposed to take place a few decades earlier, in Victorian London of the late 1880s and the 1890s. What would that mean for a campaign? To begin, the name would change a bit, from Pulp Cthulhu to Penny Dreadful Cthulhu. This isn't in reference to the recently ended Showtime series (which I'll need to view after finishing Ripper Street ) but rather from the same source it got its name from - the cheap one penny serialized stories that tended towards sensational topics. One nice aspect about the period is it clears away the impending event of World War II. World War I is about 25 years away from a start date of 1889. The Victorian Age itself comes to an end in the early 20th century but the Edwardian Age would absolutely be workable as well, with many of the same resources applic...

Broadway, 1890s Having gotten together a small group for a Fantasy Grounds Call of Cthulhu  game we settled on a Gaslight-era game set in London of the 1890s. Being a history buff I did all sorts of research, read my Sherlock Holmes and H.G. Wells. The research proved useful and the first adventure, though hindered by busy schedules and Murphy's Law, went pretty well over three sessions. In the last session our heroes survived, albiet a bit less sane, and had angered an apparently pretty powerful cult. With that in mind they decided the best course of action was to cross the Atlantic Ocean and set up shop in New York City. Alrighty then. So glad I did my homework. Actually, in all honesty, I was thrilled. To let you in on a not-so-dirty little secret, I love it when what I planned goes up in smoke - at least if it does so as a result of players going off the beaten path (vs. an adventure just going lousy). To the way I figure it, I'm not a writer of fiction. I'm co...

I'd done some soliciting recently for a Call of Cthulhu game. A little less than two weeks ago we kicked off our first session. I believe it went pretty well, especially considering some brand new faces at the virtual gaming table. I'll confess to having mixed feelings about gaming on the internet. There is something really nice about having people around a physical table, the sound of rolling dice, the shared meals. That said I would have a difficult time pulling that off at this stage of my life. And there are some definite advantages to gaming online. The pool of players is greatly expanded - at our most recent game we had players from the American South and Southwest with my brother and I here in Massachusetts. It's allowed me to stay in touch with players who have moved away, whether they continue gaming with me or not. The past few months have been abysmal as far as keeping to a regular schedule on this blog. Life happens. My wife is working again which is absol...