Miskatonic University Podcast MUP Episode 188 – Audio over Kingsport
Campus Crier
The Campus Crier is where we keep all the mythos related news and info for the podcast, this episode was recorded on August 16, 2021.
I want to personally congratulate each of the Alumni of the Storytelling Collective’s Write Your First Adventure Workshop last month. The market has been flooded with over 50+ titles on the MR, Chaosium’s Community Creator Content hub. Ya’ll, I’m so proud of each and every one of you. These scenarios look amazing, the cover arts are BOSS, the Miskatonic Repository Creator’s Circle is buzzing, you’re being featured in Chaosium newsletters, and you’re making your first sales. I’m just– I’m just so proud of you guys. Congrats! Head over to the Miskatonic Repository and make someone’s day by checking out their newest creations!
Annnd speaking of the Miskatonic Repository, Miskatonic Repository Con GM Signups just opened up! This virtual con will be hosted October 15th – October 17th. We have 3 awesome panels and over 16 events already submitted! So, come play some 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu with us! A link to the TTE will be in the show notes… and you can email MisktatonicRepositoryCon@gmail.com to get in touch!
Innsmouth The Missing Child: A Gamebook is a choose your own adventure styled solo game book where you are an investigator brought in to find the whereabouts of a missing child amongst the odd and terrible inhabitants of Innsmouth. It has funded with $23k of a $1300 goal and still has 23 days left at the time of recording. The art looks sparse, but that’s what I would expect from a product of this type. You can get a PDF for as little as $9 and a physical starting at $17. Overall it looks pretty neat, and I’m trying to not back it.
Free League has another Kickstarter out for two new products in their Forbidden Lands line, this time a bestiary of sorts called Forbidden Lands: Book of Beasts and a campaign called The Blood March. As we have come to expect from Free League, the art on display is absolutely gorgeous. And this seems to be a no brainer for any fan of the weird fantasy setting. You can get a pdf of both books for $35 or either individual book in print for $35. If you want both in print it will cost you $69. The project has already funded with $285k of a $12k goal, and will have another three days left at the time of this release.
Good friend of the show and proprietor of The Old Ways Podcast, Mike Diamond, has officially announced a third campaign for their excellent live play series, but this time with a twist! They are currently accepting GM pitches for a new campaign run by a new Storyteller. So if you have a campaign in mind and have it well thought out put in your submission at the link in the show notes. You can also find Mike on our own Discord, where he is a mod, or over at The Old Ones Discord, or you can just email him at theoldwayspodcast@gmail.com
And finally, it is with great sadness that we have to say a final goodbye to RPG Legend Steve Perrin, who passed away earlier this month. Goodbye Steve, safe travels.
https://www.chaosium.com/blogvale-and-farewell-steve-perrin-1946-2021/
The Discord Plug
We have our MUP Discord and we are all there! We invite all of our listeners to come and enjoy the community of horror gaming and cute pet pics.
A big birthday shout out to Zelda, the pup of patreon backer, Al Smith, who if you’re lucky enough to get a seat at this table, she’ll probably make an appearance. Also, good luck to the kitties, Spaghetti and Meatball, who are currently in foster care with one of our awesome listeners.
MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D
And thank you beaucoup to Murph for editing this episode.
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Brolin Graham
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Recent Gaming
Bridgett – Pale Rider Playtest 2
MepaCon Man’s Best Friend by Jazmin Ospa
Main Topic
We create a monster from scratch!
Campus Crier
The Campus Crier is Miskatonic U’s student paper. This is where we keep all the Mythos-related news and feedback to the podcast.
- Golden Goblin Press has posted a few updates. For the recently completed Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection, Oscar just wrapped up the rewrite for Christmas in Kingsport (…so topical, right?). It’s currently clocking in at more than 28,000 words, but that’ll be streamlined in edits. He also posted a picture of the open manuscript for Britannia and Beyond, which is part of the Invictus line. He’s reading it now. And all maps and interior art are in house for An Inner Darkness.
- Noah Lloyd of the Reckoning of the Dead website has released a scenario for the Miskatonic Repository on DriveThru RPG. It’s called A Lark in a Cage, it’s for the Gaslight era set in London in 1895. “A family discovers that their child has been replaced by . . . something else. When the investigators take the case, they find themselves on a tour across the soot-choked streets of East London, revealing new threats to the city, wicked enemies, and even wickeder allies as they race against the clock to save the child.” I got to playtest it, and it’s a solid atmospheric and haunting scenario that’ll make you think.
- The 5th issue of Blasphemous Tomes from our pals at The Good Friends of Jackson Elias is hitting the press. This is the print-only fanzine that we create for Patreon backers of The Good Friends podcast. It contains articles about RPGs, horror films and weird fiction, not to mention plenty of sanity-blasting artwork and original content for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. Everyone backing them via Patreon by the end of December 2019 will receive at least one copy of the Tome.
- Some news from Chaosium this week! Chaosium will be developing a brand new RPG based on the Rivers of London series of urban fantasy novels by Ben Aaronovitch. The game is set to bring in the unique feel of the novels and its special department of the MET along with gods of the rivers, strange mythical beings and ghosts all set in a modern day London. Lynne Hardy will be the project lead for the development which is set to use a modified version of the BRP system to account for the series’ use of Newtonian Magic and odd beasties.
- Fresh from the Unexpected News Desk, Chaosium confirms they are creating a Basic Roleplaying ruleset to be released as an OGL SRD. There are a few catches, however, mainly that games created with the SRD can’t use the Cthulhu Mythos or be used to re-create Pendragon or, presumably, any of their other properties. We have a link to the original thread on the BRP forums where Jeff Richard confirms the information in the show notes.
MU Discord server invite link
And thank you beaucoup to SEAN for editing this episode.
Patreon Plug
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Graham’s Card Catalog
Graham spotted an obscure piece of California history in the form of a 1950s article on a short lived monorail that served an Epsom Salts mine between 1924 & 1926. The article is preserved on the way back machine of Archive.org.
Just because it makes sense for today’s show topic, let’s highlight a blog post from Bret Kramer from 2015 that includes a downloadable list of all the Lovecraft Country scenarios to that point. He also talks about his favorite scenarios for each of the main settings.
Main Topic
Kingsport — The City in the Mists
Kingsport is a fictional coastal town that’s featured in three of Lovecraft’s stories. The Terrible Old Man, The Festival and The Strange High House in the Mist. It’s mentioned in other stories. And other writers have used it as a setting. In Call of Cthulhu, Kevin Ross extrapolated a whole fleshed out setting and history for the town that is his own imagining. It’s important to keep in mind the distinction between Kevin Ross’s Kingsport, and a much more vague setting that’s open to interpretation and Ross’s details are not set in stone.
It’s very well established from Lovecraft’s letters that he was inspired by Marblehead, Massachusetts, though he wrote the first Kingsport story before he even visited Marblehead. When he did visit the city he described a kind of ecstatic orgasm when he saw the town in 1922. “that instant — about 4:05 to 4:10 pm., Dec. 17, 1922 — [was] the most powerful single emotional climax during my nearly forty years of existence.”
“Efficiunt Daemones, ut quae non sunt, sic tamen quasi sint, conspicienda hominibus exhibeant “
Lactantius
“They make it, the devils, that the things which are not, so far, however as they perceive them to perform.”
“Devils work so that things which are not appear to people as if they were real.”
Ross’s Kingsport starts as a colonial farming and fishing village, and involves generations of Kingsport Cult shenanigans, culminating in 1722 with a Green Flame invocation from the Congregational Church and an armed mob running them out of town.
- What do you like most about the setting?
- What entices you to play or run games there?
- What are the big themes or characteristics you see in Kingsport that are different than Arkham or other CoC settings?
- What are things you would like to see in Kingsport that would improve or expand on the setting to make it your own?
- What Kingsport scenarios do you like?
Jon’s scenario — Malice Everlasting, by Oscar Rios (New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley — Miskatonic River Press — slated to be reprinted by Stygian Fox)
Chad’s: Shades of Tomorrow Lost from More Adventures in Arkham Country by Scott David Aniolowski.
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