When not playing, listen!

I have not posted much lately, but it comes down to me not being able to involve myself much in gaming. Long hours at work and I still haven't been able to get a regular game going since before Christmas! From a gaming point of view, holidays suck!

What I have done while not playing anything is listening to other people playing. A while ago I bought a fine copy of Chaosium's marvellous campaign Horror on the Orient Express (HotOE). I wanted to play it, and almost got the chance last year before that attempt to find a new group fizzled. So, I decided to buy it, and to listen to the Bradford Players playing it.

Listening to other people play sounds strange, but it can actually be quite fun. It can also teach you a thing or two about table manners, how to handle troublesome players or just neat GM tricks.

HotOE is, since it's for CoC, a horror adventure. So, how would you expect it to play then? Grim and dark? Well, I have listened to a few different people running Call of Cthulhu, and I can say that American gun nuts are the most boring ones to listen to. Sound tactics and "effective" play. They might have fun, but it sure isn't fun to listen to. The thing is, the game must be engaging in some way, and one of the best way to make that happen is for it to be fun!

I'd really recommend anyone to listen to the recorded sessions of HotOE by the Bradford gang. Some of these sessions I laughed so hard it hurt when listening! The contrast between the grisly and quite horrific event the characters suffer and the jolly interaction between the players are excellent for contrast and effect. Also, listen to Paul when running the game. He is a Keeper (GM in CoC speak) of some skill indeed.

A friend of mine in the local game club ran his AD&D campaign a few days back, and summarized the event as "the players did what they should, entertained their DM". It made me think of Paul and his friends in Bradford. We do this for fun, right?

The dread curse of cthulhu

Very recently I got my copy of Horror on the Orient Express in the mail, after finding a complete copy on . This is the first time I've spent a three digit sum on a game. Am I crazy? I call this the Dread Curse of Cthulhu.

CoC was for a long time my favourite rpg. Now, I had never played it outside of a convention context, and had never played in any of the well regarded campaigns from Chaosium. The only thing I'd played were the "let's do something special since it is a convention"-scenarios. It's surely more fun to do something different than the regular kind of play, but I had never tried that "regular play". I still have very little experience.

Now when I have some money and are entrenched in not only the playing, but also collecting part of the hobby, I have been focusing on buying some of those great and well regarded campaigns. The bizarre thing is, that I have bought them with the express purpose of not reading them! I would love to have played in a regular, long term, Call of Cthulhu campaign. Instead I buy some of the best, and expensive stuff there is because I have the money, but not the group to play! That is the Dread Curse.

I'm very thankful to have gotten the opportunity to play in the Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign last year. Without that I would feel very odd today, looking at yet another procurement. One of my goals for this year is to maybe finally play some CoC, but I have realized it's time to bite the bullet. I will take my place behind the screen, as the Keeper of Arcane Lore.

Maybe that will beat the Curse. Maybe.