Mysteries of Montreal

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art . Distinctly modern in design, and yet dated to Neolithic China (2400BCE). Obviously an artefact out of time. And of ritual importance, well isn't that just archaeologist speak for 'We're not sure, but it was clearly important to someone",

For my recent trip to Tokyo, I knew I wanted to pick up some Japanese Call of Cthulhu Sourcebooks, however, once I had made a trip to the games store, I saw that it was not quite as simple as picking a book off the shelf, and saying, 'Look, now I have a book in Japanese!'  I knew I wanted the book to have some functionality, which left me with the problem of not knowing what the options were, short of using Google Lens to translate each book on the shelf one by one. A quick google search on my phone back at the hotel (yes I should have done my research before I left, but, you know, life) left me very little the wiser, The books by enterbrain , the publisher of Japanese Call of Cthulhu, seems to fall into 2 main categories, reprints of Chaosium books, but in Japanese, and books made for the Japanese market.  That was about as much info as I could get, as it's clear their main site is not available in English, or at least doesn't come up on my English google searches. Eve...

  If you didn't know that Call of Cthulhu was big in Japan, you must be living under a rock. Or you don't care. If it's the former, welcome out into the sunlight, if it's the latter, what are you doing here? I have recently returned from Tokyo, which was a trip of a lifetime, but don't worry, this isn't a travel blog, but a gaming blog. One thing I did want to get my hands on while I was there was a Japanese Call of Cthulhu supplement.  Before going, I did a little research, and found that there was a store close to where we were staying that sold RPGs, the Yellow Submarine . What I did not research, was what books I should be on the lookout for, so I was going in a little blind.  What I saw was a good sized gaming store, with a lot of choice.  A large selection of games of all types, nothing in English of course, and a nice selection of Oink games. If I had more cash, I would have bought a large range of these, instead, I picked one. Purchases made Pretty dice ...

I don't make New Years resolutions, I'm too stuck in my ways, but one thing I would like to do in 2024 is to renovate and renew my blogging in general, and specifically here. When I set this blog up back in 2012, it was a place to put up RPG related things, in a similar way to what I was doing over on my painting blog . Back then, I built up a small following of other painters, and was able to follow many others easily. I never really tried to grow the following of this blog, and was always hesitant to share it. It's easy to share posts on painted minis in multiple forums, but this blog was more about writing, and I didn't share it in the same way. So what's next? Well, first off, I will be posting more frequently here. More than just my annual 'Games wot I has played' posts that have given me my 1 post per year minimum. I have a couple of posts in the works on the Call of Cthulhu books I picked up recently in Japan, there will be an effort to move back to t...

A Happy New Year to you all.  As is my wont, I tracked my gaming process throughout the year, and here we have the annual summary of events.  This last year saw a return to the GM seat, after the completion of a long running Witchlight Campaign where I played Beaghan, the Fairy Bard. This means I had a total of 23 sessions as GM, and 65 as a player. Slightly fewer sessions overall from last year, but still a great amount of gaming was done. One highlight was getting back round a table for face to face gaming on a regular schedule, at one point having 8 people round the table, as there are three of our group who do not like to play online. This has calmed down to a more manageable 6-7 regulars, which is still a good sized group, that allows us to continue even through some members being unavailable. It seems the time taken to build up the group has payed off. In terms of new games tried, there were a whopping 11 new games/systems that hit the table for me this year. Three of th...