Well it’s Mid-March already and four games down – five if you count a non Call of Cthulhu game! So far the games have been two play tests, a One Shot for the Miskatonic Playhouse Fringe and of course my regular spot on the Regency game ‘Cult and Culpability’ where we’ve just finished the second season.

The Playtests

I can’t say much about the play tests as they are in development but they were certainly a lot of fun to play! One had a great alternative for combat and that was a fire at an orphanage. Plenty of excitement and drive with lot of dice rolls for dodging, damage and smoke inhalation. Playing the Doctor I was able to treat patients but also shout to locations where people needed rescuing. I’ve used emergencies in a couple of games where I have been Keeper and think they add extra drama to the game. One emergency was a village fire similar to the play test but more combative as the characters had to throw buckets of water which extinguished a dice rolls worth of fire. Another time, the character’s helicopter slid off the helipad of the ship into the water where there were sharks and a big bow thruster threatening to chop bad swimmers into chum!

The Fringe Game

I love playing Pulp Cthulhu games and on the Miskatonic Playhouse Fringe Keeper Hedge updated a classic setting to Pulp. I can’t say the title just yet as it hasn’t been announced yet but it involves a tremendous ensnarement of the characters! With Pulp Cthulhu you play a heroic character and usually have a bucket load of skill points to spend – rumour has it the right combination of Pulp Architype and occupation can see over 600 skill points available to spend! BUT… When the dice want to screw you over, you can end up with a hero that falls very far from heroic! I rolled 40 for my Education (EDU) and 50 for Intelligence (INT) so only 260 points from attributes. Even the extra 100 skill points from my Pulp Architype didn’t help much! So rather than have a steely eyed mafia hit woman, I went with a slightly skilled Waitress who could punch like a freight train and could drink you under the table – oh and had a rough idea about the principles of Physics. The character was great fun to play as you may as well bring spirit to the game if your character doesn’t have much skill! The Waitress explained her father ran away from home when she was little. Mother said he went to the stars in a rocket ship so my character was going to invent her own space ship to to go get him back…

Regency Rolls on

The Reverend is still alive and kicking trying to make sense of what is going on! Whilst other characters get to react to what is around them, Rev. George Prideaux is in it for the long game looking to see what all the pieces of the puzzle are before, all being well, he can set his own plan in motion.

Vaesen at large….!

So I have been role-playing for a long time and have found the games and systems I like to play. I’m not really interested in newer game franchises such as KULT or Alien and not being the best at maths I like d100 based games. But when Keeper Hedge invited me to wander with the Vaesen I did present my challenge of what makes Vaesen special enough for me to learn a new system? Hedge suggested I play and find out!

Vaesen is the game where mythical creatures – the Vaesen tend to cause problems for human society in a fairy tale period which felt for me as if it was set in 1890s to 1910s Sweden. Not everyone can see Vaesen and if you can you are probably an investigator for ‘The Society’. Do investigators battle Vaesen? Well, in his introductory adventure my character Franz the Soldier levelled his rifle to challenge a Vaesen coming into his village to steal people a promptly got turned into a rabbit. That kind of set the tone for me – we were fairy tale investigators! We had to talk to people to discover clues, go to the library for research and hold séances to speak to the dead. GGame mechanics to play were simple enough, you have an attribute and that’s how many D6s you roll when you use that attribute and then if you have a skill using that attribute, you add extra D6s to roll your skill. Any result of 6 that comes up means you have a success. If three people pull a rope the games master might want 4 successes so one person may roll all of the 6s or as we found out 16 D6s were rolled and none of them came out a 6! Vaesen has the ability to try a skill again but you take a ‘condition’ so mentally you may get angry that this should work or physically you may get battered to make it work.

VVaesen is a different and fun change of pace in a game. I think it worked for me probably because Hedge running the game which is beneficial for two main reasons, well three I think! Hedge knows, what I refer to as, Scandinavian lore exceptionally well and was able to build this into the Vaesen games so the world was very real and discovering it all was very enjoyable. Next reason is Hedge has a great capacity to improvise when folks go off the rails! As a solution to a situation caused by the Vaesen, the characters came up with a Spring Festival to bring all the villagers together. The stand offish Lord of the land walked into town in a procession and led a feast by the bonfire which gave thanks to the spirits of the land. I’m not sure many game masters for Vaesen would have seen that one coming but Hedge took it all in his stride and stayed calm about it even though we did an excessive amount of planning and discussion.

Hedge has written a number of Call of Cthulhu scenarios too which available on DriveThruRPG