Thoughts of a Depressive Diplomatist: William Adcock

Showing posts with label William Adcock. Show all posts

Monday, 18 October 2021

Miskatonic Repository Con 2021

The weekend of 15-17 Oct 2021 saw the Second Miskatonic Repository Con. I took part in last year's event and enjoyed it very much. MiskRepCon is a virtual con celebrating the Miskatonic Repository, the online collection of user-made content for Call of Cthulhu supported by Chaosium, the CoC publishers. Details of the Miskatonic Repository and several hundred products (mainly scenarios) can be found on DriveThruRPG here.

Last year I only took part in one game - a play-test of Bill Adcock's 'Without Warning'. That's now available (and currently on sale cheaper than a cup of coffee). I'd recommend it.

This year I thought I'd commit a bit more and booked to take place in three games, all of which were to be hosted by their authors.

'The Colour of Money' by Sean F Smith - a modern, English setting.
'The Kolakalee Thunderbird' again by Bill Adcock
'Moonglow' by John Almack - a near-future adventure on the moon

There were also a number of panels geared towards those who want to write and publish their own material (only one of which I caught live).

Respect in Writing. Panelists: Lynne Hardy, Helen Gould, Oscar Rios, and Sam Riordin. "Topics include sensitivity, respect in writing, research, and steps that creators can take when presenting communities outside of their own with respect and consideration."
Agents of Chaos: The Chaosium Ambassadors Panel. Panelists: Allan Carey, Nick Brooke, and Bridgett Jeffries. "Topics include Print on Demand, branding, creative and most effective marketing methods, compliance, community resources, pricing, etc."
Dramatic Structure in Scenario Writing. Panelists: Sean Branney (HPLHS), Michael Fryda (RPG Imaginings), Lynne Hardy (Chaosium), Mike Mason (Chaosium) "Topics: Elements of a plot, building tension, developing strong characters."

So, what did I make of the experience?

Well, unfortunately, events conspired against me. I only got to play in one game out of three. The first was cancelled as Sean Smith was ill, and unforseen circumstances at my end meant that I missed the last. This was particularly galling as I'd caused the cancellation one regular game to make one and had taken a day off work for the other. But, as everyone knows, Real Life gets in the way.

"The Kolakalee Thunderbird"

This was another chance to playtest new material from Bill Adcock, so isn't yet available with Bill's other works (don't worry, when it is published, I shall be plugging it!).

You are the cast and crew of "Haunt Hunters: Coast2Coast", a middlingly-successful paranormal investigation TV show. You're actually a spin-off from a more successful show, so you get the less-impressive hauntings, bigfoot encounters, UFO sightings etc., and get told to make good TV out of them. Mostly you're used to running around yelling "what was that?" and pretending there's something just out of sight.

This is a kind of initial set-up that we've seen before (for example, it's not a lot diffent from Brian M Sammons' "Forgot-Me-Not" scenario which I've played). But there's a reason for this: it's because the investigative [sic] film-crew are for modern CoC what the hard-boiled gumshoe teamed up with a dilettante partner is for the 1920s or the war-veteran FBI agent for the 1950s - a damn good shortcut to various skills and motivations. Interestingly, Bill let drop the fact that he's thinking of writing three linked scenarios for The Haunt Hunters, which would be fun as there's a huge scope for character development (or devolution!) in CoC.

Back to the plot...

It started as a nice trip out

Like most of Haunt Hunters' hottest tips, this one came from YouTube. A shaky, poorly defined video clip appeared to show a large bird which had apparently be seen by tourists at the Kolakalee Springs Family Fun Park (an attraction in the Everglades that had seen better days). Encounters followed, including the unfortunate Pork Belly Pot Pig (the petting zoo's star attraction), an island which was touted to us by a tour-guide as "the spookiest place in these parts", a surprising abscence of gators, and a house in the Everglades that was much, much spookier than the island.

Who lives in a house like this?

Great fun was had! Hopefully the scenario will be published soon, and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing its partners.

Saturday, 20 March 2021

Kickstarter Watch - Terror of Octobernomicon

Terror of the Octobernomicon by Golden Goblin Press

The other day I reviewed William Adcock's Call of Cthulhu scenario 'Without Warning'. Hard on that comes news of a new piece by him. Regardless of this link though, I think I'd probably flag this Kickstarter from Golden Goblin Press.

On offer is a book containing six Call of Cthulhu scenarions from young and up-coming authors - two Americans, three Brits and a Pole (the KS page includes video interviews with each of them, which is a nice touch). It's intended to be a showcase for new talent. The settings are varied - one in Roman Arabia, one in the Old West, and four in the 1920s Golden Age (one each in Lovecraft County, a cruise on the Nile, Cornwall and Vienna). Each sounds interesting.

All in all, I think I'd probably be interested in backing this. But then we come to the old problem of shipping. Without a UK or EU distributor, shipping across the Atlantic doubles the cost for a hard copy. That itself isn't Golden Goblin's fault (lord knows we all suffered since Trump's ultimatum to the International Postage Union!) but the decsion does cut them off from a large market. The lack of a European distributor is even more surprising given that in one of the interviews the point is made that the UK, Poland and Germany have thriving Call of Cthulhu communitites.

Sadly, it's not just the Kickstarter: if GGP had an European distributor, there's a lot in their back-catalogue that I'd be interested in.

Nevertheless, I put it forward for your consideration...

Tuesday, 16 March 2021

Without Warning

Some of you may remember that last October I took part in the virtual Miskatonic Repository Con 2020 celebrating the Miskatonic Repository, the online collection of user-made content for Call of Cthulhu supported by Chaosium, the CoC publishers. Details of the MR and several hundred products (mainly scenarios) can be found on the DriveThruRPG here.

Although I was able to listen to some of the panel discussions, due to some scheduling problems I only participated in one of the games that were on offer that weekend. This was a play-test of William Adcock's 'Without Warning' (to be honest, that chance of playing in one of Bill's games with him as Keeper was what brought me to the con in the first place).

Well, the published version of the scenario is now available through DriveThruRPG.com. I would recommend it - I had fun playing it and reading later drafts.

The setting is the Canadian Arctic in 1958, where something odd had happened to the crew of a remote radar station...

Fans of 'The Thing from Another World' will love it

Bill makes no secret that the inspiration for this was Howard Hawkes' 1951 classic 'The Thing from Another World'. For me, that is recommendation in itself.

OK, to steal a format from the incomparable Reviews from R'lyeh...

Name: Without Warning

Publisher: Chaosium Inc (Miskatonic Repository). Availble to download.

Author: William Adcock

Setting: 1950s Arctic outpost (military)

Product: Scenario

What You Get: 27 page, 18.74 MB illustrated PDF

Elevator Pitch: The Arctic is deadly, but sometimes it's worse than that...

Plot Hook: November, 1957. An isolated DEW-line radar station in the Canadian Arctic has radioed in a medical emergency. A relief flight carrying a medic is dispatched, but as a winter storm closes in, the crew of the Hula Honey discovers something far worse than seals and seabirds roaming the Arctic ice.

Plot Support: Plot set-up, one plan/map, one handout, stat-block for adversaries, six pre-generated Investigators.

Production Values: Clean and readable, well-laid out (by Danial Carroll), atmospheric illustrations (by Jonathan Myers), PDF background layer can be turned off for easy printing.

Pros

One-night, one-shot set-up
Potential convention scenario
Set firmly in the period
Could be set in other periods (back to a Franklin Expedition-like mystery, forward to a contempory setting, or even transfered to an outpost on another planet)
Could be included in a Cold-War conspiracy campaign
Pre-generated investigators tie in well with scenario
'Time running out' scenario set in a bottle location
Captures the feeling of 1959's 'creature features'
Evocotive and menacing adversary
Optional additional encounter raises the stakes significantly.

Cons

One-night, one-shot set-up
Set firmly in the period
'Time running out' scenario set in a bottle location
All pre-gens are male. Even within the restraints of the setting, a female character could be introduced as a civilan medic or scientist.
Very little oportunity for player agency or character development
Linear plot
Not much will come as a surprise to anyone familiar with 'The Thing from Another World'
Mythos-light
Could degenerate into a 'creature feature' if the Investigators don't follow the clues to the second location

Conclusion

I enjoyed taking part in the play-test and reading the final text (finding out what we'd missed in-game!) and would recommend it for an afternoon or evening's play.

It's bottle adventure suitable for one-shots or convention play, which is a draw-back, though of course there no reason why this might not just be the beginning for any surviving Investigators...

Sunday, 18 October 2020

Miskatonic Repository Con 2020

Miskatonic Repository Convention was a two-day virtual convention that took place on 17 and 18 October, celebrating the Miskatonic Repository, the online collection of user-made content for Call of Cthulhu supported by Chaosium, the CoC publishers. Details of the MR and several hundred products (mainly scenarios) can be found on the DriveThruRPG here.

As can be seen from the programme, there was a lot going on - much of it at UK-friendly times - but unfortunately I've recently been working on Saturdays, so was only able to take part in the Suday sessions. I was able to listen to the two panels, one on writing for the MR and the other on publishing on the MR (though, feel reassured that I have no aspirations to do so!).

But my main reason for 'attending' was to play! The game I plumped for was 'Without Warning', written by Bill Adcock. It was sold as follows:

Summary:
1950s - A routine flight to an isolated Air Force radar station proves less than routine.
Description:
1958 - The DEW Line of radar stations across Alaska and Northern Canada provide early warning in case of Soviet bombers coming over the Pole. One of these stations has reported an injured technician and requested a routine supply flight be moved up to bring the injured man home and deliver his replacement. That's where things begin to go awry.

I won't go into details, as it was by way of a play-test for a scenario Bill will be publishing in the future. Let just say that it was heavily influenced by a certain classic movie (but without the intellectual carrot!). A great evening's entertainment.

Bill's other scenarios can be found on DriveThruRPG here.