[Re-Recruiting!][OOC]Pickman's Model Revisited[CoC]

[bruin]

Ok, I changed Arkham's location in the IC to fit the Chaosium version's graft, which puts Arkham at 20 miles northeast of Boston and 5 miles north of Salem, rather than the 30-40 mile estimate I was giving. I got the general location right but was overshooting the mark by a bit.

How helpful would props be for you guys. Maps and such? I mainly use mapquest to get a sense of where everything is, but I could do little legwork and see if there are any good map jpg's that I could link to. Once you start investigating it would be good to know a little about Boston's layout (where downtown is, where some of the communities are--if you're satisfied with verbal descriptions, great, less work for me, but I don't mind trying to find some maps if you want.

EDIT: So now might be a good time to ask about the pacing of the game. We've got things rolling really quickly and have some good momentum. But if I'm going too fast for people, let me know. If everyone is comfortable posting on a daily basis, it would be good to keep that up. Let me know if that's a pace you want to keep up. But the basic requirement like I said at the beginning is posting once every two or three days, updating about twice a week. Based on the adventure I set up, I'd estimate that posting every day would have us done by early-mid september, posting every couple days would have us done in early-mid October.

 

[bruin]

Off Topic: Shattered Archon, are you still with us? I was wondering if you're still looking for a game. There's another person I know who's also looking for some playing time. So, I've been think of running a small PbP game for some of the people who hadn't gotten into a game yet. I don't want to start a recruiting thread, as I want it to be a small game.

It would be CoC, but a conversion from a series of single-player gamebooks from the fighting fantasy series that was popular in the early eighties. The book I have in mind was House of Hades (in Britain House of Hell), which stands out in my mind as one of my favorite horror experiences. It could be easily converted, I think, and would be loads of fun to do. The characters would have to be college students, or business partners, driving together on a dark road one evening...

Let me know if you're interested.

 

[Dakkareth]

I was briefly tempted to risk my frail sanity trying to read the thoughts of some of the involved beings. Thought better of it, though

 

[bruin]

I was briefly tempted to risk my frail sanity trying to read the thoughts of some of the involved beings. Thought better of it, though

Heh, I had something in place if you were gonna try that. Let's just say you made the wise choice.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

I have a feeling I (strictly OOC here) know who/what the black-robed guy is. I'd take a guess, but then I'd find out I was wrong.

 

[bruin]

As long as you play the characters by the book in the IC, not giving them special advantage for your OOC knowledge, I have no problem with you speculating or discussing anything OOC here. I won't verify anything, though.

I guess I was giving out a bit too many clues? Gotta learn not to play my cards so early.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

I was going to guess that he was a priest of Mordiggian, since I think in the original Smith story "The Charnel God" they were described as wearing black. But I'm sure I'm wrong, lol.

 

[apocalypstick]

Smith? Never heard of him... and here I was, thinking I was way-cool because I've actually read Pickman's Model.

OTOH, I pissed off a CoC DM once by blurting out, within thirty minutes of the beginning of the first session... "oh, great, Hounds of Tindalos."

him: "you said you'd never played CoC before!"

me: "haven't. i've got the Lovecraft anthology, dude."

 

[bruin]

Hey Andrew, do you have any suggestions for an anthology of the other Mythos writers? I've read all of Lovecraft's stuff (albeit when I was a teenager, so I haven't brushed up recently) but I was at the bookstore the other day, looking for a good place to get a start on the other writers. All the anthologies look pretty much the same so I didn't buy any; not sure if the quality is decent or not.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Honestly, I don't like a lot of Mythos stuff outside of HPL. That said: there was a paperback collection of Robert E. Howard's Mythos stories put out a few years back. Clark Ashton Smith is usually a bit more surreal than Lovecraft, and wrote stuff that would mostly be considered sci-fi, but his Averoigne series of stories deals with the Mythos somewhat. Robert Bloch was OK, the majority of his Mythos stuff was written in his early years, before he really hit his stride as an author. Anything by August Derleth is touch-and-go...he contributed the most besides only HPL himself to CoC, but I don't care for his stories too much, just a matter of personal taste. Ramsey Campbell is about the only modern author whose Mythos stuff I like. There's a great anthology of his Mythos stories out, Cold Print. Pretty much any of the anthologies put out by Chaosium (the 'Cycle' books) are worth at least a gander. The quality is uneven, since they're often by several different authors, but overall they're good.

I also tracked down, read, and enjoyed greatly the older stuff that influenced HPL, I particularly like Arthur Machen. I'd recommend any Machen anthology you can find. He's not Mythos strictly speaking, but he had his own Mythos (you can definitely see his influence) involving the "little people" of Britain and Wales. He's a very big influence on a Victorian-era Cthulhu D20 game I may run here at some point in the future.