Mysteries of Montreal

We completed the Horror on the Orient Express Campaign earlier this year, indeed I have already posted a link to the handouts I used for the Zagreb chapter here . But the end of the year is a good time to clear house and get things done that have been put on the back burner, so I'm returning to this subject to share some other handouts I made for that session. What I did not get round to posting at that time were the audio files I used for that chapter, to voice the stranger in the mists that guides the party round dream Zagreb. To remedy that, I have made available the audio files I used for that session in a Dropbox folder. There are two types of file, those that were taken straight from the chapter as written, and some that I made individually for the Investigators of my group. Zagreb Audio Files can be found here.   Please feel free to use them, but I would also like to know if you do, so drop me a comment to let me know. The inspiration for these files was taken (read...

From 1937, an advert for the Mount Royal Hotel. I don't need to write anything else, this is just the cover of a book of adventures right there!

One of my regrets with being in Providence last August for NecronomiCon , was not making it to see the inside of the Providence Athenaeum . We managed to see the outside of it, but I didn't make it in. On our way back up to Canada from a holiday in Cape Cod this year, however, we did manage to stop off for lunch in Providence, and I finally got to see the inside of the library. It was worth the wait. Of course the library is famous for it's connections to Lovecraft and Poe and Whitman , but I was happy to learn that it had also been frequented by Charlotte Perkins Gilman . There is also, of course, the Lovecraft bust. The list of patrons was of interest, combining local Lovecraftians like Neils Hobbs, as well as international names like Guillermo del Toro. Made me smile. The above images show off the well photographed main interior of the Library, and are pretty much as I expected it to be, however, there is a lot more to the building. Downstair...

I don't post about every Kickstarter I back, but I think this one needs a little signal boost. " John Silence is a complete rpg plus a shared-universe story/poetry anthology about psychic people of color saving the Earth from invisible monsters." The name comes from a set of stories by Algernon Blackwod, so those are something I'll have to look up and get my hands on. Go check it out, there's plenty time left to back, and it hasn't yet made it's goal.

George Rinhart - Tourists on the top of the Great Pyramid, c. 1925. Masks on my mind.

A great little video and tutorial on how to use the Scar of the Bloody Tongue that came in the last Props of Nyarlathotep Kickstarter.

She walks in Shadows is an all female collection of short stories, poetry and artwork, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, and published by Innsmouth Free Press. I got a pre-order copy for my birthday back when it was released in October and finally got round to reading it over the xmas break, and have just finished reading it (2015, I take a long time to write and finish these posts sometimes). As with all collections of short stories, there are some that resonate with you and draw you in, making you wish they were longer, and others that just don't catch your imagination. With this collection, I am glad to say there were more of the former than the latter. Without going into an in depth analysis of each story, I'll just pick out a couple of the stories I really liked. Violet is the Colour of your Energy by Nadia Bulkin , was a particularly creepy one. Essentially a modern retelling of the The Colour out of Space . What was unnerving about this was t...

Now, this is what I call a Call of Cthulhu gaming room ! I am extremely jealous. Looks more like a film set. I can imagine getting creeped out rather easily playing in this place. It's also a great way to put all your props on display too, as well as a great excuse to buy more. Unfortunately, we do not have anywhere near the space to put aside for something like this. Maybe in the next life, but it would be one reason to move to the suburbs. Great use of flickering tea-lights, as we all know we want  neither wax nor open flame beside all our lovely books and props, as I learned at a recent game, where a poster I had put on the wall beside the gaming table fell onto a tealight candle holder on the table. Fortunately, no props were harmed, and i managed to save the poster.

Note from my future self (Montreal, 26th August 2024). As I have come back to this blog as a means to rejuvenate my writing, and get back into the rhythm of blogging, I've been going through my old draft posts for inspiration on topics. One such post is this one. This post was written back on the 23rd of April, 2018, and was all but complete. In fact, I'm not sure why it wasn't posted back then. The date and time were even set I have since then started to run Masks this year, and as such, many of the props mentioned below have actually seen use.  I post this with no further edits except for spelling and typos, just this note from the 'future' to place things in context. I have also set the publication date to the year in question .oOo. As previously mentioned , I received the results of the Props of Nyarlathotep: New York and Kenya Kickstarter . This is less an unboxing, and more a post showing off the shiny. I had the light-box out for another reason, so threw th...

I had a rather large box arrive in the post last week, much to the chagrin of my better half. Inside was contained some beautifully horrendous artefacts of power. In that it was the resutls of the Props Of Nyarlathotep New York and Kenya Kickstarter . I'll write up an "unboxing" post up in the near future, once I've taken some pictures of the props that do them justice. They are worth getting the light box out for! These have been squirrelled away beside the Eye of Light and Darkness  for future use in a Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. That campaign might be a little ways away, as we have just left Sophia in our current Horror on the Orient Express game, where the Simulacrum, also made by Delphes has been a beautiful centrepiece throughout.

Not the author himself of course, that would be weird, but the works of HPL as a Mastermind subject.  How many answers did you get right?

A couple of weeks ago now, we played our first game as a family. Seemed to go really well. The Big 'un got really into it, the Lil 'un, took a little more convincing to interact with the game, but I think she'll come round to this way of playing with a little practice. In terms of a review of the system, and book, I am very happy. The game system is simple enough to be easy to understand and play. The rules are clearly written out, and easy to follow. The book has plenty of colour illustrations to make it fun, to give inspiration. Also, the character sheets have a nice large space for you to draw and colour your pony, which was a real draw for all the players round the table, and is a good way to help with the immersion. Glitter is a must. For the adventure supplied at the back of the book, it gets players right into the lore, and gives plenty of points of reference to the show's mythos. It also has a cliffhanger ending that slots right into the next written adv...

Want to earn HPLHS dollars? Go do this survey , it's fun, and you might win a prize.

Time to introduce the new generation of table-top gamers. I've been looking for a means to get the girls playing RPGs for a while, and have toyed with various entry points. Finally, I spoke to the boss , and she agreed that My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria would probably be a hit, so I finally bought a copy last weekend. I had been holding off on going all in on this game, not because I wasn't sure they'd like it, but because I'm not well versed in the MLP lore. I mean, you want me to run a years long campaign in Middle Earth, Lovecraft Country, pretty much any historical era, Pulp, Superheroes, or many other genres? Sure, you got it! But run a game in Equestria? Ummm... Since there weren't many adventures around for the game, which I would need, I'd not bothered to pick it up, but now there are three seperate adventure books and a bestiary that have been released, so those will help take the pressure off me, as I won't need to write anything for a...

From 1925, this catalogue is the perfect player handout for their shopping trip for an excursion out of town.

Captain C. Holliwell. Montreal. Okay, so this image is from the gaslight era, but I am totally going to use this as my next investigator protrait, no matter which era. This guy has seen something. I've tried to find out who this genleman was, but other than finding other portrais of him, I'm at a loss as to who he was.

Here are some handouts I put together for the Zagreb chapter of the Horror on the Orient Experss campaign. Feel free to use them for your games. pdf available on request. Put behind a cut to allow players to ignore spoilers.

From the Night Gallery. An ode to the mythos of HPL. Not in any way horiffic, especially to us steeped in the lore, but a fun 10 minutes. Night Gallery - s02e08d - Professor Peabody's Last Lecture from Sceadugengan - Shadow Walkers on Vimeo .