Moe Lane

As to the novel itself, I am persuaded by Ken Hite:

Which is perhaps the most frightening thing, to me at any rate, about this piece. A (patchwork?) first draft, written in well under two months in 1927 and abandoned wrongly and foolishly by the author, is the second-greatest horror novel of all time. (Lovecraftian italics very much intentional.) The mind reels at how good a novel, and perhaps how many more years of Lovecraft’s life, he and we were cheated of by HPL’s “renunciation” of this work. It sat in pieces in his files or wherever for the next decade, while *four separate publishers* asked him if he had a novel they could see. Talk about lost and saved in a library.

…The radio play does it justice.  It’s two hours long, but The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is worth it if you at all enjoy audio-only horror.  This one may be my single favorite HPLHS Dark Adventure Radio Theater, and I rate this series highly.  They really do get the atmosphere right in this particular production.

Feed here.  Some awards of interest… well, of interest to me.  I don’t have anything of mine up for consideration, yet. (more…)

Mentioned it earlier.

Insidious Psionic Llama Conspiracy – Google Docs

The Insidious Psionic Llama Conspiracy

(Uses my fan-generated In Nomine Psionic rules)

Llamas (regular)
Corporeal Forces: 2              Strength: 3 Agility: 5
Ethereal Forces: 0                 Intelligence: 0 Precision: 0
Celestial Forces: 1                Will: 2 Perception: 2

Skills: Fighting/1, Running/1
Advantages: Psionic (Telereceive only)
Psionic Discipline: Telepathy/3
Psionic Skills: Emotion Sense/2, Telereceive/3

Llamas are domesticated quadruped herbivores indigenous to South America: like their close cousins the camels, they make useful pack animals (albeit ones that spit), but llamas are notably better-tempered about their lot in life.  This particular species is generally used more for their carrying capacity than for anything else, as special variants were created for their wool.  Llamas also make fairly decent sheep-herders, for herbivores.  In other words, there’s not precisely a call for them in North America – a place already with all the horses, sheep and domesticated dogs that one could want.

So why are there llama-breeding farms cropping up here, anyway? (more…)

Whipraffes – Google Docs

Whipraffes

[The Day After Ragnarok]

The southern coil of the Serpent slammed down right in the middle of giraffe territories in Africa.  The miasmic poisons still rising off of the Serpent’s dead hide reliably mutates giraffes into vicious carnivores with snake-like necks; they use their heads as living clubs, stunning prey before the whipraffe eats it alive with razor-sharp teeth. Fortunately, Whipraffes are not poisonous; unfortunately, they hunt in packs (1d4+1).

(more…)

I’m not saying that it’s a bad caption.  It’s a great one. I’m just saying that I would have gone for something a little terser and grittier.  And in all caps.

…Wait, I have a tag for ‘Alpacalypse’ already?  Hold on… ah.  Different picture, ultimately. Whew!

pic.twitter.com/6FGYj9NKao

— HUMOROUS ANIMALS (@CUTEFUNNYANIMAL) August 18, 2017

That would be the Dark Adventure Theater Radio adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu, and I hadn’t gotten that one yet.  Which is nice: nine times out of ten, when I see one of these specials or giveaways it’s for something that I already own, so I can’t take advantage of it or anything.  Mind you, the physical CDs typically come with physical props that could be used in later gaming — HPLHS is absolutely aware of the various Call of Cthulhu RPGs — so I may pick up one later anyway.  But for right now I can still listen to it.

They’re doing it for Lovecraft’s birthday, so get it soon.

Bodies, Drowning Pool

To wit, I loaded a bunch of albums that I got at Pennsic onto iTunes.  No, that wasn’t the bad judgment call.  What was the bad judgment call was listening to one album in particular, which had a collection of some of the classic filthy songs of our culture, which then proceeded to remind me of all the classic filthy songs that I learned twenty years ago, and now I’ve got them stuck in my head.

How bad is it?  Look, I can’t even tell you which ones they are. My reputation would suffer by merely admitting that I’ve even heard of them. It’s that bad.

So now I need to figure out a suitable brain bleach.

It’s not really the game’s fault.

(more…)

Survival (Mundane) – Google Docs

Survival (Mundane) [Per/Average]

Defaults: Perception-5, Occultism-3, or Urban Survival-4

This skill counts as a ‘land’ skill in terms of determining defaults (at -6) from other Survival specialities.  It is generally learned by supernatural creatures, monsters, extra-dimensional visitors, or anyone else who needs to survive in mortal or mundane environments. It is typically used to ‘blend in’ temporarily, avoid and survive areas that are dangerous to supernatural creatures, and of course figure out how to move around freely (vampires in particular often use this skill to work around the ‘cannot enter unless invited’ problem).  Mortals can learn the skill, but mostly just to teach it.

(more…)

23% because fnord.  However, I don’t think that that includes the print on demand stuff, but I can wholeheartedly recommend GURPS Vorkosigan Saga, even if you don’t play RPGs.  It’s got a lot of information about Lois McMaster Bujold’s universe in it, all nicely organized and laid out.  …You do read Bujold, I hope? I’d hate to think that any of my readers might be missing out on one of the best science fiction / fantasy writers I can think off offhand.

I have fiddled with it a little, because I am up to my neck in Filth right now in Secret World Legends Tokyo.  So far, my major observations about the new Conan Exiles content is that some of the stuff that you can make now looks cool, makes sense for a survival game, but I don’t know how you get your Thralls to actually do it while you’re out adventuring.  Also, I apparently need to fix my stats because my character is too generic.  Fortunately, the level cap of 50 is now gone, although I don’t know what the new one is.

Conan Exiles is a fun game, for what it is (which includes being Early Access); so check it out if you’ve got a spare twenty to spare. It also runs better, after this latest performance patch. So there’s that.