Chaosium’s Warehouse Sale

Chaosium (publishers of Call of Cthulu, RuneQuest, 7th Sea etc) are having a warehouse clearance sale, with items being 15% to 66% off.

Here’s a list of stuff I personally recommend.

Alone Against the Flames, A solo Call of Cthulhu adventure. Learn how to play CoC 7th edition for the price of a coffee. SOLD!

HP Lovecraft’s Dunwich  A Call of Cthulhu Sandbox, with a couple of supporting adventures. I had this in the 90s and foolishly let it go, but by gum, its mine again at a bargain price

RuneQuest Classic. A cleaned-up version of RuneQuest 2, without losing the original’s essential charm, with about 22 extra pages from magazines from the period, in a robust hardback. This is my Whitebox.

Borderlands and Beyond. Want a starting campaign for RQ? This is it. This is a collected edition, Borderlands + 2 other supplements integrated with new art from fan favourites. I had the pleasure of buying from Rick Meints, the publisher, at a convention in the 2000s.

13th Age Glorantha. Want to get into Glorantha, but overwhelmed by RQ and have a group that is more into D&D? This is your way of getting your Glorantha fix. Also worth getting if you are an old hand since it positively purrs in play 🙂

Khan of Khans. The easy to play card game intro to Glorantha. I played this with our H when he was around eight, he came away wanting to know more about Glorantha. Result!

 

Old School Call of Cthulhu

The comes a time in any Old School Renaissance blogger’s career when one fondly looks at Call of Cthulhu. Especially relevant to me as a UK OSR blogger since back in the 80s it was one of the Big Four – D&D, Traveller, RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu. Those were the games that got regular coverage in White Dwarf, and I remember reading fantastic scenarios like the Watchers of Wablerswick.

I first picked up CoC courtesy of Games Workshop, who did a very nice hardcover which like their version of Stormbringer collated both the contents of the 2nd Edition Box Set and the Keeper’s Companion. This meant that it was absolutely chock block full of content. The rules themselves only took up 100 pages, the rest was all scenarios (about five including my favourite The Secret of Castanegro) and supplementary material (such as the section about tying the Lovecraftian Mythos to Mesoamerican deities).

I jumped right in playing it and that perhaps was my downfall. Inspired by author Sandy Petersen Keeper’s advice I created a series of scenarios which could at best be described as Old One in A Cave. This style of play has the characters turn up in a remote town/village/abandoned house, find out something is a bit wrong very quickly from the creepy atmosphere, then ask questions of the locals (Fast talk roll), consult the local Libary (Libary Use roll) before heading off to confront the monster with or without the required banishing spell. My players at the time being 15 and used to solving problems with violence would either die or run away 🙂 It was a fun and atmospheric play style which unfortunately didn’t go the distance. In all fairness we discovered RuneQuest next, which suited this style of play down to the ground.

RIP Lynn Willis

I’ve just heard that one of the founding fathers of D100 gaming has passed away, Lynn Willis who had a hand in a staggering chunk of Chaosium releases and was one of the driving forces behind the mighty Call of Cthulhu, went to the great gaming table in the beyond yesterday. Although I never knew the man except for his work on the Chaosium releases that shaped my adolescence/young adult years, the dedication and love he put into those books shines through and had a quiet but powerful influence on me.

I don’t think it was an accident I reached for my copy of Call of Cthulhu last night 🙂

Read the Chaosium announcement for more information

Magic World character + RuneQuest 6 detailed review + Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition podcast

Over at that hotbed of BRP grognards, The Tavern , there’s a couple of recent threads that may tickle the fancy of D100 lover.

Ben Monroe editor in chief of the upcoming Basic Roleplaying Magic World, has posted an example character.

OpenQuest editor/rules consultant Graham Spearing has been enthused by RQ6 and is posting his chapter by chapter thoughts on the book.

Also yog-sothoth.com has posted the recording of the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition seminar given by Mike Mason and Paul Fricker