#Blaugust2019 – New Organised Play Campaign from Chaosium

Call of Cthulhu has been in my life for many years. Whether as fiction; the Cthulhu Mythos being classified a genre unto itself thanks to the work of HP Lovecraft and those that followed or in roleplaying form, the RPG Call of Cthulhu produced by Chaosium is currently in its 7th Edition and is currently having something of a renaissance thanks to its introduction of a one-shot on popular podcast show, Critical Role

I have been running Call of Cthulhu Campaigns in my play by post sites for many years and today I got some exciting news, a new “Organised Play” Campaign is coming later this year. These are designed for GM’s that play publicly to introduce players to the game, often at conventions, and are available to insiders, part of the “Cult of Chaos” – GM’s that apply for this honoured position. I have been playing their last campaign of this nature on Gamer’s Plane – A Time to Harvest and the introduction of another campaign is great news, especially if the quality of the stories are as excellent.

Entitled Flotsam and Jetsam, this campaign is a four-part serial, and introduces the journal, Strange But True! and presumably, the investigators will be employees of the newspaper.

STRANGE BUT TRUE! is a weekly newspaper publishing “true” accounts of the bizarre, the weird, and the frankly unbelievable. Elijah Cleaver, the chief editor and publisher, may have a taste for the outlandish, but he knows that the world is filled with darker secrets than most of his readers could care to imagine. When he can, he uses the resources of his newspaper and its loose network of investigators to uncover the truth and present it to an incredulous readership. Whether or not such investigations result in a publishable story, Cleaver hopes to, at least, make the world a safer place.

Cover Reveal – RPG Tie In Novel – Myth of the Maker by Bruce R Cordell

Something exciting today – a cover reveal for the upcoming Myth of the the Maker by Bruce R Cordell!

Click on the image for an advance excerpt of the novel.

About Myth of the Maker

The mind-expanding novel that seeded The Strange RPG, for all fans of inventive science fiction and fantasy.

Carter Morrison didn’t want to kill his friends, or himself, but he had a good reason. It was either them, or the end of all life on the planet: their sacrifice saved the world.

Not that anyone knew it, until Katherine Manners stumbled over a melting man in a computer room clutching a message of doom from another world.

Myth of the Maker is a tie-in novel to Monte Cook and Bruce R Cordell’s The Strange RPG. 

Released: 

UK April 6 (ISBN 9780857666499)

US April 4 (ISBN 9780857666505)  

EBK April 4 (ISBN 9780857666512)

About Bruce R Cordell

Bruce R Cordell is an award-winning writer working as a Senior Designer at Monte Cook Games, where he is an author for The Strange and Numenera roleplaying games. Before that, he wrote for Dungeons & Dragons over four editions and nine novels set in the bestselling Forgotten Realms setting.

About The Strange 

Monte Cook and Bruce R. Cordell, in their first major collaboration, bring you The Strange. It’s an RPG set on Earth, in the modern day. But a few people—a very few people—have discovered how to travel to other places. They call them recursions, and they’re like limited pocket dimensions with their own laws of reality, connected to Earth via a dark energy network beneath the normal matter of the universe. A dangerous, chaotic network they call the Strange.

Recursions spawn from the myths, legends, and fiction of humanity, so the setting of virtually any story, film, or novel could form a recursion, as could any mythical realm or place of legend. They aren’t entire parallel universes—they’re limited in scope, rarely larger than a continent and sometimes not much bigger than a city block. Often the denizens aren’t even self-aware, but are little more than automatons going through the motions of their fictional world.

But sometimes, in the larger or more mature recursions, they have the spark: Self awareness. Sentience. The ability to form their own motivations and agendas.

And some of those beings understand that they aren’t alone in the Strange. Some of them know about Earth, and the limitless universe beyond it. And some of them are very, very dangerous.

In our own world, there are individuals who secretly travel to these recursions—perhaps for adventure, perhaps for profit. But there are others with more nefarious motives,
and conspiratorial organizations operating in the shadows, looking to exploit the Strange and its recursions for their own ends. And some of them are also very, very dangerous.

Your character is quickened; you’re one of the ones who can travel into Earth’s shoals to discover and explore the seemingly limitless recursions around our world. Oz. Barsoom. Asgard. The Dreamlands. The Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes. The setting of your favorite novel or movie. Worlds even more exotic or bizarre, driven by laws of magic, psionics, or weird science. When you visit these worlds, you adapt to them, taking on some of the physical aspects and knowledge of the natives. You become, in part at least, a different version of yourself.

What will you find when you venture into Earth’s shoals? And what will find you, as you travel into The Strange.

Back to Play by Post

For almost 30 years, I have been running roleplaying games remotely by mail, email and forum post. Despite this, I have never been the player, always the GM. The last time I picked up a set of dice to roll my own player character was about 1986 so it was with some excitement that I joined a community of gamers on Gamer’s Plane, a dedicated play by post site.

After some introductions on the forum, I rolled up my brand new character for a game of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. I’ve not played D&D since 2nd edition and a lot has changed. It’s a lot simpler for a start, which as a newb I’m very thankful for.

So I introduce you to Father Belethor, Human Priest of Lathander….

In his mid-forties and quite rotund, Belathor found faith late in life. Formerly a heavy drinker and gambler, he was converted by his village’s local priest of Lathander and given a new start. His fervent devotion to both his temple and healing the sick outweighs his lack of knowledge and constant misquoting texts.

His mace was handed down from his father, a former mercenary turned bodyguard for the local temple. He lost his life defending the church from bandits. His belief in Lathander’s tennents of birth and renewal are what keep him going.

Belathor’s love of money sometimes raises it’s ugly head but never at the expense of the church.

Trait – Often quotes and misquotes from sacred texts. Nothing can shake his optimistic attitude

Ideals – Aspiration – Seeks to prove himself worthy

Bonds – Will protect his village temple at all costs

Flaws – Judges others and himself

The adventure he’s lined up to join is called Death House, an adventure set in the Ravenloft world and I can’t wait!

Gamer’s Plane looks like an excellent site to play by post and my own Knifesedge Games may run something through there.