The forms of things unknown

How come I'd never heard until now of Cardinal Cox? No, not the hottie from Friends -- Cardinal Cox is a poet who specializes in the eldritch, the macabre, and the wondrous, with poetry cycles devoted to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and the like. He has been poet-in-residence at a Victorian cemetery, at a 15th century Gothic church, and at the Dracula Society.

I was introduced to his work by a friend who picked up some of his chapbooks at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton recently and was kind enough to see that they would find a home with me. Look out for the Codex Nemedia, with poems about Conan, Bran Mak Morn, and Solomon Kane; and the Codex Yog-Sothoth, which includes lines that could have been penned for Queen Nyx in the Vulcanverse series:

"Whose body is the bend of stars

That bows across the night sky."

His poetry is accompanied by amusing and recondite notes to delight the hearts of every true SF/fantasy nerd. I particularly liked the reference to the Bramford apartment building and the translation of the Phaistos Disc. If the Cardinal doesn't run Call of Cthulhu games then he really ought to. One reviewer said of his work: "Earth is a part of the story but, as in much Lovecraftian literature, Earth and our species are by no means as important as we humans tend to think."

He has a collection called Grave Goods that is available on Amazon and is described thus:

"Yes, there are vampires. Plus ancient gods, Frankenstein's creation at the back of a drive-in, Dr Jekyll's sister's guest house, suburban devil worshippers, ship-wrecked sailors, alchemists, murderers, and an alien plant."

"The God in the Bowl" (a scenario of the Hyborian Age or the Selentine Empire)

“The God in the Bowl” is one of Robert E Howard’s classic early Conan adventures – a locked room murder mystery, no less, and with a baroquely fantastical flavour that makes it perfect for Weird Tales. Or so you’d think, but the notoriously erratic Farnsworth Wright rejected it, along with the equally wonderful “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”, when REH sent him the first three Conan stories.

As Howard wrote to H P Lovecraft in April 1932: “I’ve been working on a new character, providing him with a new epoch — the Hyborian Age, which men have forgotten, but which remains in classical names, and distorted myths. Wright rejected most of the series, but I did sell him one, ‘The Phoenix on the Sword’, which deals with the adventures of King Conan the Cimmerian, in the kingdom of Aquilonia.”

HPL got to see the rejected stories and wrote back: “[Donald] Wandrei and I have read these tales with keen interest and appreciation. Best wishes for their ultimate publication! […] The climax of ‘The God in the Bowl’ is splendidly vivid.”

Sadly the world at large was to be denied any sight of “The God in the Bowl” for another twenty years, when it finally appeared in the September 1952 issue of Space Science Fiction (what?!). You can read it here – and so you should, if you haven’t done so before and you want to avoid the spoilers that lie ahead.

OK, so here’s the summary. Kallian Publico has a building, a sort of museum called “the Temple”, in which he shows off his private collection of artworks and antiquities to selected guests. Lately he took in a large metal bowl or jar from the realm of Stygia, in the far south, which he agreed to hold until its intended recipient, a priest called Kalanthes, could send for it. Kallian then reflected on the treasure the jar might contain, and decided to stage a break-in at the Temple and blame the theft on intruders.

Kallian goes to the Temple after dark and breaks the seals on the jar. Around midnight his watchman, patrolling the building, tries the door and finds the main lock has been opened. The door has two locks: the main one, openable only from outside, and a deadbolt that can be unlocked from either side. The watchman enters and find Kallian dead, apparently strangled with a thick cable. He also encounters an intruder (Conan) who may be the murderer. The jar is open and empty. The watchman summons the police, who also bring in Promero, Kallian’s clerk who lives in a house next-door to the Temple.

Conan says he entered the Temple from the roof only minutes before he ran into the watchman, who he expected would continue patrolling outside. Promero says that Kallian came to see him in the early evening but left soon afterwards. Enaro, Kallian’s charioteer, arrives and says that he was told to pick up Kallian at the Temple just after midnight. Under duress, Promero admits that Kallian stayed at his house till half an hour before midnight, when he left to go and open the jar.

The police realize that, as the deadbolt was on and only Kallian and the watchman had keys, if the murderer isn’t Conan then he must still be in the building. Kallian’s keys are still on his corpse, along with all his jewelled rings, so theft wasn’t the motive – or else the murderer was interrupted. There’s no way up to the trapdoor where Conan got in without piling things underneath to climb up, so the murderer cannot have escaped that way.

A policeman says he saw the thick rope used to strangle Kallian wound high up on a pillar in a hall of statues, but when they go to look there’s nothing there. Conan sees something move in an adjacent chamber. Promero, having looked at the symbols on the lid of the jar, becomes hysterical, claiming that it is one of “the children of Set” who was sent in the jar by the priest Thoth-Amon to kill Kalanthes. One of the policemen, scoffing at this, pushes Promero into the room to look.

At this point another policeman brings in a young nobleman he found loitering outside. This is Aztrias, whom Conan reveals hired him to steal a Zamorian goblet. As Aztrias tries to deny it, Promero staggers out of the other room, screams that “the god has a cursed long neck”, and collapses. Cue general panic apart from Conan, who gets in there and slays the so-called Child of Set, which turns out to be a huge serpent with a beautiful human head.

But we want to turn this into a scenario, so it can’t all be about Conan. Instead, if you’re running a one shot, I suggest six pre-generated player-characters:

• Two PCs are thieves hired by Aztrias
• Two are watchmen hired to guard the Temple – they are the ones who discover Kallian’s body
• One is Kallian’s charioteer
• The sixth PC is the chief of the Inquisitorial Council of the city of Numalia (Demetrio in the story) who arrives with a patrol of six NPC policemen. 

The stats for these six are given under Pre-gen player characters below. The thieves and the charioteer are 6th rank; the watchmen and the inquisitor are 5th rank; and the NPC police are 1st rank. If you need to fit in more player-characters they can be police of 5th rank, but in that case there are no NPC police.

Timeline

This is the order of events if they proceed exactly as in the REH story – though naturally the player-characters’ actions will change details, especially after midnight.

Early Evening (approximately 6:00-8:00 PM) 

• Watchmen (PCs): Begin their shift at the museum entrance 
• Promero (chief clerk): Goes home (next door to the museum) after cataloguing work in the main hall 
• Aztrias Petanius (nobleman): Secretly meets with the thieves, whom he is sending to steal a Zamorian goblet from the museum. 
• Kallian Publico (museum owner): Locks up the museum, travels partway home, then decides to steal the contents of the bowl so returns to Promero’s house, telling his charioteer to fetch him at midnight. 
• Charioteer (PC): Delivers Kallian to Promero's house, then at leisure till midnight
• Thieves (PCs): Casing the museum from afar, planning the break-in 
• The Child of Set (in the bowl): Dormant within the sealed Stygian artifact in the storage room

Mid-Evening (8:00-10:00 PM) 

• Watchmen (PCs): Patrolling the perimeter 
• Promero: Entertains Kallian at his home next to the museum 
• Kallian: Talks to Promero, revealing his plan to plunder the contents of the bowl and swearing Promero to secrecy 
• Aztrias: Returns home to prepare for retrieving his purchase later 
• Thieves (PCs): Wait in shadows nearby, watching for the right moment to enter

Late Evening (10:00 PM-Midnight) 

• Watchmen (PCs): Conduct periodic patrols 
• Inquisitor (PC): Decides to spend the evening accompanying a police patrol
• Kallian: Returns to the museum intending to break open the bowl and steal its contents; his plan is to blame it on thieves; he breaks the seals on the bowl, releases the Child of Set, and is killed by it around 11:30 PM 
• The Child of Set: Released from the bowl by Kallian, whom it kills 
• Thieves (PCs): Enter the museum through a trapdoor from the roof around 11:45 PM 
• Aztrias: Approaches the museum near midnight to collect his spoils from the thieves

After Midnight 

• Watchmen (PCs): Discover the body; sound the alarm bell 
• Thieves (PCs): Spotted by the watchmen after sounding the alarm bell 
• Inquisitor (PC): Arrives with six guardsmen having heard the bell 
• Aztrias: Lurks outside, sees the commotion, and decides to wait 
• The Child of Set: Moving unseen through the museum's shadowy halls 
• Promero: Summoned back to the museum to identify items and assist investigation 
• Charioteer (PC): Returns to the museum to pick up Kallian as instructed.

Witness statements

For each character, I've included their initial statements, any revisions to their stories, and what they actually know or observed. 

1. Changing Stories:

• Promero gives three different versions, each revealing more truth as pressure is applied 
• Aztrias will change his story if his reputation is threatened 
• Several NPCs maintain "official" positions while harbouring private doubts 

2. Motivations for Lying: 

• Promero fears implication in Kallian’s attempted fraud 
• Aztrias protects his reputation and avoids scandal 

3. Truth Extraction Methods: 

• Promero requires intimidation 
• Aztrias is nearly impossible to get the full truth from, and his status makes harsh interrogation impossible

Promero (Chief Clerk)

Initial Account 

• Promero claims he left the Temple at normal time (this is true) 
• Says Kallian was in his office working on accounts 
• Insists nothing unusual happened during the day 
• Suggests Kallian had no enemies 
• States that nothing seems to be missing from the Temple

Second Account (under duress) 

• Promero now admits he saw Kallian after the Temple was locked for the day 
• Reveals Kallian was planning to sell something valuable “off the books” 
• Still omits knowledge of Kallian's plans to steal from the jar

Final Account (After Posthumo's "third degree") 

• Promero confesses to knowing about Kallian’s plan to open the jar:

“It arrived in a caravan from the south, at dawn. The men of the caravan knew nothing of it, except that it had been placed with them by the men of a caravan from Stygia, and was meant for Kalanthes of Hanumar, priest of Ibis. The master of the caravan had been paid by these other men to deliver it directly to Kalanthes, but he's a rascal by nature, and wished to proceed directly to Aquilonia, on the road to which Hanumar does not lie. So he asked if he might leave it in the Temple until Kalanthes could send for it.

“Kallian agreed, and told him he himself would send a runner to inform Kalanthes. But after the men had gone, and I spoke of the runner, Kallian forbade me to send him. He sat brooding over what the men had left – a sort of sarcophagus, such as is found in ancient Stygian tombs, but this one was round, like a covered metal bowl or jar. Its composition was something like copper, but much harder, and it was carved with hieroglyphics, like those found on the more ancient menhirs in southern Stygia. The lid was made fast to the body by carven copper-like bands.

“The men of the caravan did not know what it contained. They only said that the men who gave it to them told them that it was a priceless relic, found among the tombs far beneath the pyramids and sent to Kalanthes ‘because of the love the sender bore the priest of Ibis’. Kallian Publico believed that it contained the diadem of the giant-kings, of the people who dwelt in that dark land before the ancestors of the Stygians came there. He showed me a design carved on the lid, which he swore was the shape of the diadem which legend tells us the monster-kings wore.”

Aztrias Petanius (nobleman)

Initial Account

• Denies any involvement with Kallian 
• Claims he was passing by when he saw commotion 
• Offers to help authorities as a civic duty 
• If questioned about the thieves he suggests they must have killed Kallian as he assumes there’s no chance of getting the goblet now and doesn’t want them alive to testify against him

If threatened with exposure 

• Admits to agreeing to buy the Zamorian goblet 
• Claims he didn't know it was being sold illegally 
• Offers bribes to keep his name out of the investigation

Truth (nearly impossible to extract) 

• Hired the thieves to steal the Zamorian goblet for him 
• Planned to frame the thieves for any complications 
• Was waiting outside to collect the goblet when the police arrived 
• Has extensive gambling debts

Clues

Some highlights that could make for interesting gameplay moments are: 

• Environmental Changes: Temperature drops (noticed only by sensitive characters) and strange echoes could create atmosphere while also serving as hints at the presence of something uncanny. 
• Forensic Details: The unusual bruising pattern and (on closer inspection) the grooved impressions on Kallian's body show that he was strangled with a very thick cable. 
• Scholarly Connections: The Stygian hieroglyphs can be read by Promero (see below). 
• Trail of Evidence: The disturbances – a torn drape, an overturned vase – create a physical trail that show that Kallian was attacked in the chamber where the bowl is and staggered to the hallway where he died.

Physical Evidence and Clues

REH provided no map of Kallian's Temple. This is as good as any:

The body

The corpse is lying in a wide corridor, lighted by huge candles in niches along the walls. These walls are hung with black velvet tapestries, and between the tapestries hang shields and crossed weapons of fantastic make. Here and there stand figures of curious gods—images carved of stone or rare wood, or cast of bronze, iron or silver—mirrored in the gleaming black mahogany floor.

Kallian’s face is blackened, his eyes almost starting from his head, and his tongue lolls from his gaping mouth. His throat has been crushed to a pulp of purplish flesh. The head sags awry on splintered vertebrae. It appears he was strangled with a cable thicker than a man's arm, and with enough force to break his spine. On his thick fingers gems glitter – whoever killed him did not want his rings, nor his keys. The keys for the deadbolt (openable from either side of the main door) and the master lock (openable only from the outside) are on him, along with keys to other doors from the Temple and his home.

Near the body, an archway leads through into a chamber. Beside it a bust has been knocked off its stand. The polished floor is scratched and the hangings in the archway are pulled awry as if a clutching hand had grasped them for support. Characters may deduce that Kallian Publico was attacked in that room, broke away from his assailant, and ran out into the corridor where the murderer must have followed and finished him.

The storage room

The room where it seems Kallian met his murderer is more dimly lit than the corridor. Doors on each side give into other chambers, and the walls are lined with fantastic images, gods of strange lands and far peoples. 

In the centre of the room is the jar, a container of black stone nearly four feet in height and bulging to three feet in diameter at its broadest. The heavy carven lid lies on the floor, and beside it a hammer and a chisel.

“The copper bands that sealed the lid were cut with this chisel, and clumsily. There are marks where mis-strokes of the hammer dented the metal. We may assume that Kallian opened the bowl. Someone was hiding nearby—possibly in the hangings in the doorway. When Kallian had the bowl open, the murderer sprang on him—or he might have killed Kallian and opened the bowl himself.”

The bowl

It is sort of amphora-shaped sarcophagus, such as is found in ancient Stygian tombs. Its composition is something like copper, but much harder, and it is carved with hieroglyphs, like those found on the ancient menhirs in southern Stygia. The lid has been removed and it is empty.

Promero says: “It is a grisly thing. Too ancient to be holy. Whoever saw metal like it in a sane world? It seems less destructible than Aquilonian steel, yet see how it is corroded and eaten away in spots. Look at the bits of black mold clinging in the grooves of the hieroglyphs; they smell as earth smells from far below the surface. And look—here on the lid. I warned Kallian, but he would not believe me. It is a scaled serpent coiled with its tail in its mouth. It is the sign of Set, the Old Serpent, the god of the Stygians. This bowl is too old for a human world—it is a relic of the time when Set walked the earth in the form of a man. The race which sprang from his loins laid the bones of their kings away in such cases as these, perhaps.”

On the bottom of the bowl, if the characters think to look, a symbol is carved – not an ancient hieroglyph, but the recently incised mark of Thoth-Amon, the Stygian sorcerer, which Promero recognizes. He can also tell them that Thoth-Amon is known to be a worshipper of Set, and thus deadly foe of Kalanthes, the priest of Ibis.

The hall of statues

This chamber is close to the storage room on the other side of the main corridor. It is a tall room with a balustraded gallery, supported by marble pillars, running around the upper storey (like all the ground floor rooms, this is double-height). Steps at the end of the hall lead up to the gallery, where busts are displayed in niches along the walls.

“I've found the cable the murderer used,” one of the guardsmen announced. “A black cable, thicker than a man's arm, and curiously splotched.”

“Then where is it, fool?” exclaimed the Inquisitor.

“In the chamber adjoining this one. It’s wrapped about a pillar, where no doubt the murderer thought it would be safe from detection. I couldn't reach it.”

He led the way into a room filled with marble statuary, and pointed to a tall column, one of several which served a purpose more of ornament to set off the statues, than of utility. And then he halted and stared.

“It's gone!”

“It never was there!” snorted the Prefect.

“By Mitra, it was!” swore the guardsman. “Coiled about the pillar just above those carven leaves. It's so shadowy up there near the ceiling I couldn't tell much about it—but it was there.”

The hall of screens

This hall leads off the hall of statues, connecting both at ground level and off the upper tiers of the two rooms. Displayed here are ornate screens, both furnishings and iconostases. The centrepiece is a tall gilded screen in an ivory frame with a subtly worked tremblage effect to create matte panels in the shape of stylized palm fronds contrasting with the polished gold surface of the rest of the screen.

Careful examination reveals that several of the screens between the hall of statues and the large centrepiece screen have been jostled out of position, leaving scrapes on the polished floor. This seems to have happened quite recently.

The hall of vases

This is where the Zamorian diamond goblet is hidden that the thieves were sent to steal. It is in a concealed compartment in the floor under a copper idol of a Shemitish god. Retrieving it would take 2-3 minutes, so if the thieves can contrive to be alone in here for that long they could still complete their mission.

The hall of arms

On the upper floor, this houses a collection of shields, weapons and armour of antiquity. Most are ceremonial and would not last long in a fight. There are two extremely primeval-looking falchions labelled as used by warrior-priests of Ibis that count as magical shortswords (well, it was good enough for Beowulf) if the characters notice them and think to use them against the Child of Set.

Sending for backup

The Inquisitor could send for more policemen, but no patrols are within hearing of the alarm bell so he or she would need to send one or more of his/her own men to fetch them. The Inquisitor can summon dozens of 1st rank NPC police if necessary, but they will take thirty minutes to arrive – or twenty minutes if the charioteer drives one of the patrol back to fetch them.

Running the adventure

If the whole thing isn’t to be over in an hour, you need to play up first the investigative phase and then the search through the museum for the killer. The characters know that whoever or whatever killed Killian is still locked in there with them, so there’s opportunity for a tensely managed hunt as they have to use their limited manpower while deciding who to trust.

Of course, they could just go outside, lock the place up, and wait for reinforcements, but in that case the Child of Set will have found a way out (breaking a window if necessary) and be long gone by the time they venture back inside.

The Child of Set

This ancient Stygian horror appears as a massive serpent with a human head of unearthly beauty. Its scales shimmer with an oily iridescence in the torchlight. The creature moves with uncanny silence despite its size, able to flow through shadows and scale vertical surfaces with disturbing ease.

The Child of Set prefers to attack from ambush, using its stealth abilities to position itself above victims before dropping down to attack. It typically targets isolated individuals first, using its constriction to silence them quickly before others can respond.

If confronted by multiple opponents, it will attempt to use its hypnotic gaze on the most dangerous-looking foe before retreating into shadows to separate the group. It shows cunning intelligence in its tactics, extinguishing light sources when possible and creating confusion.

ATTACK 26                           Tail lash (d10, 6) and constriction and gaze (see below)
DEFENSE 17                         Armour Factor 4 (and see below)
MAGICAL DEFENSE 18
EVASION 8
STEALTH 27
PERCEPTION 17
Health Points 45                      Movement 12m (ground), 9m (climbing)
Rank Equivalent: 8th

Vision 

• Panoptical: Perfect vision in bright light, gloom or complete darkness. 
• Heat Sensitivity: Can detect living creatures by their body heat within 10m even through thin barriers 
• Mystical Awareness: Can sense magical auras and enchanted items within 5m

Special Abilities

Constriction: If the Child of Set hits with its primary attack, it automatically constricts its victim on subsequent rounds, inflicting 1d6+4 damage each round (no armour) without requiring an attack roll. If the victim can roll Reflexes or less on d20 when first hit, they keep their sword arm free and can fight back. It can constrict one victim at a time while continuing to lash with its tail at other opponents. The trapped victim must make a successful Strength check (Difficulty 14, +1/round trapped) to break free.

Silent Hunter: The Child of Set gains automatic surprise if a character failed to spot it before it attacks.

Wall Climber: Can scale any surface, including smooth stone and ceilings, without requiring a climbing check.

Unnatural Dread: The Child of Set gets a 2d10 fright attack on characters when first encountering them, which if successful causes the characters to be frozen in terror (unable to act) for 1-3 rounds.

Divine Resilience: The Child of Set takes only half damage from non-magical weapons. Magical weapons or those blessed by Ibis deal normal damage.

Beguiling Gaze: As an additional action, it can attempt to hypnotize one target within 5m using its supernal beauty. Roll 4d6 for the strength of hypnosis, deduct the target’s rank, and the Child of Set must roll that or less on d20. A hypnotised target is unable to attack the Child of Set for 1d4 rounds, though they can still defend.

Vulnerabilities 

• Very bright light (such as powerful magical illumination) reduces its Stealth score by 5 
• Ancient Stygian prayers to Ibis (rival of Set) can temporarily drive it off if properly recited

'The face had a cold classic beauty. Neither weakness nor mercy nor cruelty nor kindness, nor any other human emotion was in those features. They might have been the marble mask of a god, carved by a master hand, except for the unmistakable life in them—life cold and strange. The face was inhumanly beautiful. The full lips opened and spoke a single word in a rich vibrant tone that was like the golden chimes that ring in the jungle-lost temples of Khitai.'

Pre-gen player-characters

Players can pick their own names. Note that not all of the characters are able to read.

First Thief (6th rank assassin)

Strength 8  Reflexes 13  Intelligence 13  Psychic Talent 15  Looks 11

ATTACK 17                      Shortsword (d8+1,3) and six throwing spikes (d2+1,2)
DEFENSE 11                    Armour Factor 1
MAGICAL DEFENSE 9
EVASION 7
STEALTH 23
PERCEPTION 13
Health Points 14

You’ve worked for Lord Aztrias before. He’s no worse than most nobles – arrogant, preening, capricious, but he pays well for the items you steal for him. You have never worked with tonight’s partner before, but Aztrias thinks that the copper idol of Bel that sits over the compartment holding the Zamorian diamond goblet may be difficult for you to move on your own. (You are able to read and write.)

Second Thief (6th rank assassin)

Strength 13  Reflexes 13  Intelligence 13  Psychic Talent 8  Looks 17

ATTACK 19                        Shortsword (d8+1,3) and sling (d6,3)
DEFENSE 11                      Armour Factor 1
MAGICAL DEFENSE 7
EVASION 7
STEALTH 23
PERCEPTION 13
Health Points 12

You only recently arrived in Numalia and you don’t know your employer, Lord Aztrias, very well. Come to that, you never met your colleague on tonight’s exploit until today, though they seem quite thick with Aztrias. Your job is to get a Zamorian diamond goblet, concealed in a niche under a copper idol of Bel, the Shemitish god of thieves. Well, that’s appropriate enough. (You are able to read and write.)

First Watchman (5th rank “knight”)

Strength 14  Reflexes 6  Intelligence 9  Psychic Talent 15  Looks 14

ATTACK 18                        Shortsword (d8,3) and crossbow (d10,4)
DEFENSE 10                      Armour Factor 2
MAGICAL DEFENSE 8
EVASION 4
STEALTH 14
PERCEPTION 8
Health Points 17

Lotrs of people hate Kallian Publico, and he can be a right bastard. You’ve seen that with your own eyes. He’ll ruin a man’s business, turn his family into the street, have a careless slave whipped, and then sit down to a lavish banquet. On the other hand, he must have a soft spot for you as he’s always treated you more than fairly. And where would you get a better job than patrolling the outside of his “Temple of curiosities” from dusk till dawn? No one’s going to steal from there, anyway -- even if they could get in there are police patrols every hour or so. (You are illiterate.)

Second Watchman (5th rank “knight”)

Strength 9  Reflexes 14  Intelligence 15  Psychic Talent 12  Looks 7

ATTACK 17                        Shortsword (d8,3) and crossbow (d10,4)
DEFENSE 12                      Armour Factor 2
MAGICAL DEFENSE 7
EVASION 6
STEALTH 14
PERCEPTION 8
Health Points 16

You haven’t had this job long. Guarding a building full of useless art and relics, what a drag. Oh well, you’ve had worse. A pity your colleague hasn’t got more interesting conversation. A lifer for sure, unlike you – you’ll just earn a bit in this job and move on. You didn’t even think it was going to be eventful till you tried the main door tonight and found the main lock open. So you used your key to the deadbolt and went inside to investigate. Maybe tonight will be less boring than most. (You can read and write.)

Charioteer (6th rank barbarian)

Strength 16  Reflexes 14  Intelligence 10  Psychic Talent 9  Looks 9

ATTACK 21                        Mace (d6+1,5)
DEFENSE 13                      Armour Factor 0
MAGICAL DEFENSE 8
EVASION 7
STEALTH 14
PERCEPTION 8
Health Points 20

Kallian Publico is your master. Many’s the time you’ve wished him dead, the fat pig – but as a slave you’re lucky to have the prestigious post of a charioteer. If anything happens to Kallian you might be sold to the mines. Even if you’re just placed in another household, you’d need to work your way up from scratch. Unless… if you could impress a high official or noble, it’s possible you could find a plum role in their retinue of servants. Probably a better bet than running away – the Nemedian authorities treat runaways to a brutal death. (You cannot read or write.)

Inquisitor (5th rank mystic)

Strength 11  Reflexes 9  Intelligence 17  Psychic Talent 10  Looks 10

ATTACK 15                          Sword (d8,4)
DEFENSE 9                          Armour Factor 4 (+1 ringmail)
MAGICAL ATTACK 19
MAGICAL DEFENSE 9
EVASION 4
STEALTH 12 (adjusted for ringmail)
PERCEPTION 9
Health Points 11

You didn’t get to be Chief of the Inquisitorial Council of Numalia, and consequently wield unlimited authority over the city police force, by jumping to conclusions. Every story looks different from another angle, so you like to take your time and sift the clues. Similarly you do not reveal your psychic powers unless absolutely necessary. Let people believe that devils whisper secrets to you, or that you have some piercing insight into others’ souls. Your intelligence is a power in its on right, so that you only use your psychic gifts as a last resort. (You are literate, of course, and so can read all the labels on exhibits in the Temple.)

6 NPC guardsmen (1st rank "knights")

ATTACK 13                          Sword (d8,4) 
DEFENSE 7                          Armour Factor 2
MAGICAL DEFENSE 3
EVASION 4
STEALTH 13
PERCEPTION 5
Health Points 11                    Each has: lantern, manacles, dagger (d4,3);
                                               one guardsman also has a bow (d6,4)

Final notes

Just so you know, I was tempted to title this post "Irritable Bowl Syndrome", but the search engines wouldn't have been able to do anything with that. Having extracted Conan from the adventure, a few words about him might be appropriate. I favour Barry Windsor-Smith's depiction of him from 1970s Marvel comics -- muscled, but not ridiculously so; the guy's a fighter, not a bodybuilder. I did take a look at some more recent Dark Horse comics, but although Conan had regained normal proportions he'd come over all emo. "Two-Gun" would have had some things to say about that.

I've used Dragon Warriors for this conversion because it's the game's 40th anniversary, but there are plenty of other options. GURPS Conan would be my go-to choice, not least for the fine Ditko-inspired artwork by Butch Burcham and because it contains ready-made stats for the Child of Set (called a Naga in the book). There's also Conan: The Roleplaying Game, which has contributions by many of the team responsible for 2nd edition DW, Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, and the forthcoming Conan: The Hyborian Age.

If you stick with DW, you might want to move the adventure from the Hyborian Age to Legend. A logical location would be one of the cities of the New Selentine Empire. It fits, and you won't have to change the names too much. Set and Ibis won't feature, but the bowl has been sent from Cardinal Scriberi Nascosto in Selentium to Great Schema Kalanthes in Tamor, rivalries across the schism of the Church being much more heartfelt than between wholly different religions. Scriberi, a noted collector, obtained the bowl via trading agents in Amsa'im. The creature in the bowl is consecrated to the Kaikuhuran serpent god Aphoph, though that's irrelevant to Scriberi; he's simply been assured that opening the bowl will release a curse of some kind.

How to make things stranger

This article originally appeared on my Patreon page for 5 January 2022 -- there with a little extra content -- and I'm reprising it here in hopes of enticing a few more of you to come and back me. 

“The chimera was beginning to bore people. Rather than imagining it they turned it into something else. As a beast it was too incoherent; the lion, the goat and the snake do not readily make up a single animal.”

Borges there, writing in The Book of Imaginary Beings, and he’s dead right. I never quite embraced the Greek myths as a kid because of all those monsters with the forelimbs of animal X and the hindquarters of animal Y. Even as a kid I thought they should have tried harder. The Norse myths came steeped in really dark and dreamlike elements, which I loved and that’s probably why Legend turned out the way it did.

This came up in a recent episode of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, my second favourite fantasy gaming podcast. The chaps were talking about Robert E Howard’s short story “The Tower of the Elephant”, and I got to thinking about how almost every illustration of Yag-Kosha just plonks an elephant’s head onto a man’s body. You can almost hear the scratch of the pen as the artist carefully copied a picture from a zoology book.

But here’s how Yag-Kosha is described in the story:

“Conan stared at the wide flaring ears, the curling proboscis, on either side of which stood white tusks tipped with round golden balls. [...] This then, was the reason for the name, the Tower of the Elephant, for the head of the thing was much like that of the beasts described by the Shemitish wanderer.”

Yag-Kosha is an extraterrestrial. While REH was no doubt inspired by the mythology of Ganesha, I think he had something stranger and more original in mind. A body with two arms and two legs, and head that has protuberant teeth or horns and a long, prehensile snout – of course to Conan it looks like an elephant-headed man, but that’s no excuse for artists to be so literal.

One of the worst offenders is the illustration by J M Wilcox from the March 1933 edition of Weird Tales:

No better is Ernie Chan’s depiction from The Savage Sword of Conan. Somewhere there’s a photo of an elephant’s head that looks exactly like this:

Likewise this uninspired mix-n-match. The artist evidently just couldn't be bothered:

On the other hand, Cary Nord put some real thought into his version (the header for this post). And here’s a properly alien one I found online (artist unknown):

The takeaway is that we all find our inspiration in the familiar, but when transmuting that lead into fantasy gold it pays off to hide your sources. And, along with that, always to look for a new angle on familiar material. For instance, vampires that seem to have been whisked off the set of a Hammer horror movie will probably not give your players a genuine shudder, but investing a little work in dirtying them up, or adding an outré spin on the concept, can yield a very memorable encounter.

Incidentally Scott is right on the money about both Conan’s physique and the need for realism to ground fantasy fiction -- but those are subjects for another post.

New worlds in the making

It’s often said that Tolkien is the originator of modern fantasy, and I suppose that’s true if you only consider the dominant strain of fantasy with its vaguely European and vaguely medieval flavour. I can’t knock that, it’s where Legend springs from too, but I have just as much affection for the older variety of fantasy from which sword & sorcery evolved. Barsoom, through the Hyborian Age and Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique, Poseidonis and Xiccarph, then Planet Stories and Vance through to Moorcock’s Young Kingdoms.

The keynotes of that genus of fantasy are exoticism, the ancient world, priesthoods and demons, typically (not always) lower or less widespread use of magic yet at the same time an admixture of science, or at least scientifically-coloured fantasy. Most importantly, the universe in such science fantasy tends to be realistic, governed by laws of nature (even if they include magic) that are indifferent to humankind. It’s the opposite pole to Jewelspider, where dream logic and prophecies and a real divine presence are woven into the setting.

As a teenager I loved the fantasy worlds of Robert E Howard, Edward P Bradbury (Moorcock again), Jack Vance and Tanith Lee – so naturally when Empire of the Petal Throne appeared in the mid-‘70s I took to it like a tletlakha to water. I owe a creative debt to Professor Barker and his world of Tekumel only partially repaid with the four issues I edited of The Eye of All-Seeing Wonder.

A lot of studios, game developers and book publishers these days are eyeing the success of things like Game of Thrones, The Wheel of Time, and Dune. With networks in the streaming wars all chasing the last big thing, a fully-realized original fantasy/SF world is a lottery ticket with a big jackpot on offer. Suddenly worldbuilding is in.

A little while back I was lamenting the difficulty David Velasco and Riq Sol were having raising funds for their game Expeditionary Company. Probably the answer is to forget about launching it as a boardgame/gamebook, just take it to a developer who wants a great concept for a new MMO. Judging by the rapid rise of Vulcanverse online, if they could find a way to include NFTs in the design they'd have to chase the investors off their front lawn. Or they could see if Jeff Bezos has another half billion and doesn't want to throw it away this time. (It would need a far sexier name than "Expeditionary Company", though.)

There aren't that many fantasy world-builders with expertise in both games and storytelling, so I thought I'd try my hand at creating a "hard fantasy" setting. This was Before the Storm, a novel I was writing while doing jury service in the mid-'90s. I’ll quote from the T-shirt version:

An isolated star system out beyond the galactic rim. For a quarter of the year the night sky is utterly dark with only a few smudges of light marking distant galaxies. Then gradually the galactic rim makes its appearance at night: a vast wheel of stars, not of one galaxy but of two in spectacular collision.

The people of this world are descendants of a crashed colony ship but have no record of their heritage. As far as they know they are alone in the universe. The fauna of their world are not the familiar animals of earth. Instead of horses they ride “destriers”, two-legged animals that because of their cold blood must be warmed beside ovens before they can be used in cold weather. Technology is barely beyond the level of the late middle ages - though there are some features that have not paralleled the development pattern of Earth's history, such as primitive gunpowder weapons and even a type of photography.

Some biotechnology survives from the colony ship that brought the original settlers, often in the form of various algae. There is a hydrogen-producing strain that permit balloons for use in reconnaissance and a cobweb-silk producing strain that is used for weaving immensely strong fabrics. Various other scattered fragments of technology are sometimes found, but to the superstitious inhabitants of this world they are thought of as magic.

There are also civilized nonhumans and semi-humans sharing this world with humanity. At the point when the first novel begins they have only been infrequently contacted and are thought of as mythical.

Medra is a tropical island nation that, by virtue of the industrious and warlike nature of its people, has consolidated an overseas empire much larger than the original archipelago. Medran society is more developed than those of the countries it has conquered, but the rigid caste system that has vitalized it in the past has now reached the point of breakdown. A new society is in the process of emerging.

I never finished the thing. One reason is that I got a job at Eidos that left no time for novel-writing. But that’s really just an excuse. The truth is that it was the kind of fantasy I wanted to write but not really what anyone was reading back then. Publishers wanted the Western style of fantasy I mentioned above set in a  version of the Middle Ages with more modern sensibilities -- effectively, "medieval America". 

By contrast my fantasy world was not the slightest bit medieval nor culturally or ethnically European. It bucked the '90s trend, being more of a modern evolution of those weird and wonderful Planet Stories of yore, but now that the selection pressure is for exotically different fantasy worlds (there is no point in creating a world that isn't uniquely and brandably distinct) it might finally be time to dust it off -- with the necessary changes to make it compatible with current trends in massively multiplayer online play, which is where the demand is coming from. So I am currently repackaging it like this:

A Rapa Nui of the cosmos

The idea of an isolated world is a powerful one, throwing all our human endeavours against the daunting backdrop of uncaring immensity. Here’s a way to do that:

This world orbits the star Edis , a solitary system out in intergalactic space. For several months of the year the night sky is empty of stars. Then only the other planets of the system and the moons of our world are to be seen.

As the season of stars approaches, the rim of a galaxy rises above the horizon – higher month by month until mid-summer, when most of the night sky is taken up by the spectacular sight of two galaxies in collision, intertwining vortices of light formed by great reefs of stars being torn into new configurations.

How do people come to be here? For most, it is a mystery no one even considers. This is where humanity has always been, surely? There are cities, farms, villages. Kings and councils of syndics, priests of the gods who explain portents – and deep forests in which dwell alien creatures that never arose on any world of men.

The truth: a one-in-a-trillion quantum fluctuation in the warp drive of a generation starship, so that instead of its intended destination in the Milky Way the ship was flung across gulfs measureless to the imagination. That it arrived anywhere in real space is a miracle. A return journey would have been impossible to plot or undertake even if the ship had not taken damage.

The crew made their decision. With no future possibility of contact with the rest of human space, no hope of ever returning to space, it would be kindest to raise the new generations with no knowledge of humanity’s past. This world Edis IV, known to the settlers as Anshar , would be the new Eden.

That was hundreds of years in the past. To most people, Anshar is the only world there is.

My initial plan for how to develop it was using The Expanse's serialized book model, though more like a TV writers’ room – ie five or six writers each taking main responsibility for a couple of “episodes” (around 20,000 words each) building over 6-10 months into a 12-episode “season arc” thrashed out from the start by the lead writer(s). Those novellas would be the proof of concept stage, and viable as products in their own right, but if funding could be found they should be repurposed into scripts and released as audio dramas. The plan, then, was to prototype in prose and see if that could lead on to videogames, TV shows, or whatever.

The snag is that really you need artists involved from the start. Words can only take you so far but people want a shared experience -- visuals showing the architecture and clothing and also sounds, the noise of wildlife, the rhythms of music in this fantasy culture.

Whether I’ll get to do more with Edis than I did with that Medra novel thirty years ago remains to be seen. The sword of Damocles over every writer’s head is that all creative work is entirely speculative. The seed capital is the writer’s own time and effort, but when it comes to selling it nobody respects sweat equity the way they respect cash. So taking six or nine months out to devise a complete fantasy world and write a novel set in it is like buying a lottery ticket in the knowledge that, if it looks like winning, some producers or publishers will do their best to claim the lion’s share of the payout.

In any case, after my day jobs (freelance design on a videogame and writing the final Vulcanverse book) my first priority is Jewelspider. I was chivvied about that by some gaming buddies I met up with recently. Oliver Johnson was running a new Legend adventure and resorted to using original Dragon Warriors rules because 'Dave still hasn’t written the Jewelspider magic system!' So I have to do that – and then Abraxas, which will be serialized first to Patreon backers and is a science fantasy setting (prehistoric rather than far-future) that will use a new edition of my Tirikelu rules. And after that, maybe, I’ll take another look at this thing.

* * *

This post originally appeared in longer form on my Patreon page, and included a link to the first 20,000 words of the Medra novel. I mention that not to try to get you to sign up to Patreon (though you would be very welcome) but just for full disclosure.

And here's a reading list to go with:

• Abraxas: The Lost Continent
• The Complete Chronicles of Conan
• Elric of Melniboné: The Elric Saga Part 1
• Elric: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
• Night's Master
• The Siege of Faltara
• The Songs of Distant Earth
• Tales of the Dying Earth
• Zothique 

I've been x-carded!

You know I mentioned a little while back that I was planning to run The Wars mini-campaign from The Yellow King RPG. Well, you didn't miss anything because it never happened. Why? I got my first x-card.

What dat, you ask? Here's what the Yellow King RPG has to say:

"Each player receives an index card with an X on it. When someone introduces subject matter that a player finds truly, personally fun-ruining, the player holds up the card. The player can either suggest that the troubling element be dialed back, or dropped entirely. You and the other players, as the fine and considerate people you are, accede to the request without pushback, adjusting the narration as desired."

In preparing for the first session I'd been assigning nicknames to the player-characters, who were all members of an infantry platoon in a sort of not-quite WW2 with bits of steampunky WW1. One of the players complained that one of the other characters' nickname was in poor taste. Don't worry, it wasn't some awful racist David Starkey offence; I'm not that insensitive to modern etiquette. It was pretty much in the same line as the name of the corporal pictured left, actually. But I don't do "no pushback" so I pointed out that squaddies in a brutal mid-20th century world war would not share the sensibilities of civilians in 21st century London. Taste would be very low on their agenda when inflicting a nickname on a new recruit.

In fact it helped me make up my mind to pull the plug on the game. It's always better to do that before wasting the players' time on a session or two, as happened with another famously crowdfunded RPG that I'd better not mention. It wasn't because of that x-carding -- I could easily enough have changed the character's nickname to something untroubling to that player -- but because it had been dawning on me throughout the character-creation process that the Wars campaign I wanted to run wasn't the one most of the players wanted to be in. Mine would have ideally been The Red Cavalry meets Kafka, and I'd have settled for Charley's War; the players were hoping for Kelly's Heroes (perhaps with a dash of 'Allo 'Allo) and would have settled for Fury. And it was quite enough work just to prepare the game; I didn't also want to have to stop and justify my creative choices every session against what one or other of the players might regard as good taste. Once you do that you start to self-censor, and then nobody is happy. Better to walk away.

We are back to the question of how sentimental and moral the universe of the campaign was meant to be. For me, there would be no heroes or villains. NPCs would say and do the sort of things I'd put into a novel, where nothing should be out of bounds. Attitudes would be harsh, soldiers brutalized, taste offended. Players who are accustomed to adventure stories in genre settings would not find that water lovely. (Case in point: listen at 24m 24s here to the Appendix N fellows describing how to efficiently ruin a fine Robert E Howard story for the sake of making it palatable to the dopiest readers.) Even if I removed the original cause of offence there'd be something else to complain about in short order, because the real problem was the disconnect between my whole gaming ethic and the players'. One player said to me, "This group prefers games where we survive and win." So of course they were never going to go for a campaign set in an endless war whose origins defied logic and where their characters' orders were (a brilliant touch by Robin D Laws, this) to report to their own side for execution.

Gumshoe-style RPGs like The Yellow King frequently liken campaigns to long-running TV shows. The shows I like best tend to be the ones that get cancelled, often before the end of their first season: Vinyl, Action, Journeyman, Aquarius, Cupid. Same with the kinds of games I'd like to run if I could. A couple of players might say they were great; most would find something else to do until the campaign wound up. To avoid doing lots of set-up work that ends up in the bin, I have to rein in my own preferences, keep an eye of the Neilsen ratings, and just do it "for the network". It means never pushing the boat out to try anything very startling, disturbing or original, but that's what RPG referees have in common with TV producers. C'est le jeu.

The takeaway is to think about the kind of game the players want. If we must see roleplaying campaigns as TV shows, the referee/GM is the showrunner and the players are the cast, sure, but they're also the audience. Ask yourself if this is going to be a show they'll stick with over seven seasons, or one they'll want to switch off after half an episode. Don't wait until they start to fling x-cards at you. An x-card means "I don't trust you to run this game" and the signs should be there long before you reach that point. You'll save yourself a lot of work if you're alert to reading the room, not blinded (as I was) by my enthusiasm for the campaign inside my head.

But here's one of those opportunities that playing over the internet has opened up. I don't have to find a campaign that appeals to the whole gaming group. Before, when we all arranged to meet up every other Thursday, whatever we played had to appeal to all of us. That was the equivalent of the network TV drama. But over Zoom, Skype, Discord, whatever, my campaign can be a cable show. There's a good reason you don't get stuff like Breaking Bad or Succession on ad-supported networks -- smaller audiences equals more quirkiness and more daring. So maybe I should be pitching the campaign concept and players can decide if they're up for it -- and for those who aren't there's always the other channel.

Judging by this review of The Yellow King by Mike Cule and Roger Bell-West, I have that x-card to thank for dodging a bullet. Roger mentions "the frankly intimidating amount of work it would take to run it well" and Mike alludes to the near-impossibility of improvising anything that could inflict shock or injury, which are the two metrics of damage to characters. I had already put in a full week just prepping the first session of The Wars, only to realize that what I really needed was another game system, a different war setting, and to invite only those players who were intrigued by the pitch. If you're worried about missing all the unsettling Ligottian stuff I had planned, though, I'll hopefully still find a home for it somewhere. Maybe in a scenario on this blog for Armistice Day -- if that wouldn't seem in poor taste.

Realism, not romance

People keep telling me I should watch The Expanse, but my tastes in science fiction lean more towards the literary end of the genre (Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, an occasional shot of Greg Benford or David Brin) rather than '50s pulps. I could go my whole life and never see another surly arm-wrestling belt miner snarling into a glass of synthohol or another outing for the trope of cowboy-as-maverick-space-pilot.

To each their own, of course, but I found these comments by H P Lovecraft chime with what I'm looking for:

"A good interplanetary story must have realistic human characters; not the stock scientists, villainous assistants, invincible heroes, and lovely scientist’s-daughter heroines of the usual trash of this sort. Indeed, there is no reason why there should be any 'villain', 'hero', or 'heroine' at all. These artificial character-types belong wholly to artificial plot-forms, and have no place in serious fiction of any kind. [...] We must select only such characters (not necessarily stalwart or dashing or youthful or beautiful or picturesque characters) as would naturally be involved in the events to be depicted, and they must behave exactly as real persons would behave if confronted with the given marvels. The tone of the whole thing must be realism, not romance. [...] It must be remembered that non-human beings would be wholly apart from human motives and perspectives."

There's more from HPL's essay “Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction” on the excellent Robert E Howard site On An Underwood, though I would take issue with Mr Derie's statement that Lovecraft mostly wrote fantasy. The Cthulhu Mythos stories are SF, it just happens that the deluded humans who worship the Great Old Ones imagine that their prayers are heard and that the rituals they perform are magic.

Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos

The Songs of Distant Earth

Stories of Your Life

Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others

header image: "Lovecraft in Space" by Belthazubel on DeviantArt

The sanity clause

There have been a few recent posts (eg here and here) about Victoriana and the Cthulhu Mythos because those have been the setting and theme of our current campaign. Actually, when the campaign began I thought it was Victorian, period. (Or Victorian Period, take your pick.) All that Lovecraftian stuff came later – presumably because the opening scenario was borrowed from Cthulhu By Gaslight – but it’s in the nature of such things to set a course for the rest of the campaign, so now I’m resigned to facing mi-go and shoggoths every fortnight.

I’ve nothing against Lovecraft, let me say. Quite the reverse. His stories may not be the sort of thing I’d typically read for pleasure, eldritch or otherwise, but I greatly respect him as a creative innovator. Here's the snag: taking a body of literature and reworking it for role-playing inevitably steers the whole thing towards the reefs of parody. Imagine an RPG based on Crime and Punishment, with the consequent thumping emphasis on Ruthlessness and Guilt points. Or a Hemingway RPG which reduced Papa’s entire body of work to just booze, machismo and bull-fighting. So usually when I’ve played Call of Cthulhu (which isn’t often, I admit) it’s felt like nothing more than a lark, a one-off session of light relief for the players in between real role-playing.

But there’s always a silver lining. In that reductive approach involved in distilling a role-playing game out of an author's canon, there are going to be some interesting questions, at least a few nuggets gleaming in the mud. Take Call of Cthulhu’s SAN (sanity) rules. Is it actually the case that coming face-to-polyps with a Lovecraftian monster automatically drives you insane? And if so, why?

In the literature, you see, Lovecraft always starts off with a neurotically unstable lead character. That’s his shtick. He doesn’t pit a Steve Costigan type against the nameless spawn of the cosmic abyss, so we don’t know if they’d end up a gibbering wreck like a typical HPL protagonist or whether they’d wade in undaunted with fists flying and guns blazing. Actually, there is a famous round-robin story, “The Challenge From Beyond”, where Lovecraft brought the plot to a shuddering cliffhanger and Howard continued it, lustily and hilariously jettisoning Lovecraft’s psychic meltdown in favour of some raw, red-blooded action. (When you read it, just remember these guys were having fun with their public images, m’kay?)

But could a hero made of the sterner stuff that flowed from Bob Howard’s imagination face Elder Things with impunity? Or did Lovecraft intend that his monsters radiated some sort of frightful psionic effect that would drive even Conan mad? I found a debate about this online.

“A Lovecraftian monster is one in the style of H.P. Lovecraft's writing, which has a lot of vague depictions of unfathomable, indescribable, alien monsters. You would lose your sanity because that's what usually happens when you see one, like how looking at Medusa would turn you to stone.”

“I disagree. Medusa turns you to stone because of some kind of magic. Lovecraftian monsters do not inherently ‘cause insanity’, the loss of sanity is something that happens in our human minds because we can't comprehend them.”

Ah, now there we might be onto something. Except… can no one comprehend them? And the degree of unfathomability always drives a person mad? I can accept that a medieval crusader would find these critters freakishly scary, but what about a trained biologist? If you're accustomed to peering down a microscope at unearthly little boogers like dust mites and hydrothermal worms, would you still take one look at a fungus from Yuggoth and start screaming that such things cannot beeeee? Might there not be some scientists who would be more curious than scared? A commenter called ShakaUVM addresses this point:

“Lovecraft thought that people couldn't deal with the actual reality of the universe. As it turns out, though, people like Carl Sagan managed to [contemplate the reality of the universe and] keep their sanity intact. Ultimately, it's because Lovecraft believed in certain Victorian tropes, like people passing out when something became overwhelming – his heroes faint all the time – and that knowledge could drive people insane.”

“The kind of horror that Lovecraft writes about would come from the realization that there is no God, that the universe is vast, chaotic, undirected, and unthinking.”

“When we have pictures of our place on our world in an insignificant solar system in an insignificant galaxy, we don't go insane from the insignificance of it all. We can comprehend that and still want to wake up and go about our business every day.”

That chimes perfectly well with my own view of the universe. I don’t personally think there’s a God or that the universe has “meaning”, and that doesn’t bother me at all. Facing the realization that we are an insignificant speck in the universe – well, of course we are. Ten billion Earthlike planets in this galaxy, a couple of hundred billion galaxies at least, and the distinct possibility that our universe is a tiny local phenomenon in a possibly infinite metauniverse. “Yes, Z, you are insignificant.”

Anyway, I can’t quote the whole discussion here. Shoot over and take a look at it. I’ll wait…

OK, so the assertion of Call of Cthulhu is that there are some things so completely unthinkable that every single human being, if forced to confront them, would go insane. But maybe what we have here is an observer bias. As a writer, Lovecraft was especially interested in neurotic characters, and may have intended us to conclude that the people most readily drawn to Cthulhu cults and manifestations were psychically the most sensitive and fragile among us. His chosen genre was horror, his intent was to unsettle, his style – let’s be charitable and call it Poe turned up to eleven. His fiction is bound to portray a terrifying, unspeakable, mind-blasting universe the way Hallmark movies always present a saccharinely sentimental one.

Writers flavour the world they create in their stories. They don’t necessarily intend for us to take that as a template for how the universe works, because literature is never intended to be an undistorted reflection of reality. So in drawing inspiration from literature for our role-playing system, maybe we need to be wary of using the whole cloth of an author’s work. Making a universe that’s going to last a whole campaign requires a bigger box of tricks than a set of stories built around a single theme and authorial voice.

And yet... it's a fine line, isn't it? A Lovecraftian role-playing game in which none of the neuroses is baked into the rules mechanics would be effectively indistinguishable from any other 1930s RPG. Which in turn invites the question: does literary style have a place in role-playing? Is it right for the system to impose that kind of prescriptive story framework on the players, or should the themes of a campaign emerge in play from the interaction between the characters and the world? Over to you.