April has a mythology for being a rainy month, but “wet” hardly begins to describe the experiences that have presented themselves this month. Welcome to the Roll4Sanity blog and of course, to the image of our golden diver in an undersea temple.

So, the calendar image this month is one of the better ones to come out of a literal year-long exploration of AI image engines, as I searched for suitable images for The Temple story. If you recall, I had a very successful video with Call of Cthulhu Explained, and I wanted to follow it up with The Temple Explained, as it’s one of my favourite Lovecraft stories which is hilarious from a science point of view but also surprisingly poignant. I shall bring that video out at some point, and maybe this image will find a home there too. What I love about this one is the concept: a boat captain walking as he enters the titular temple. A lightless abyss, an experimental diving suit, the reds and blues of the deep, and that temple front and centre — it just worked. Maybe I’ll revisit it with the improvements AI engines are making in character consistency, but for now I’m very happy with it.

Productions & Editing

I was able to put out a Campfire Tales character creation video, which I was quite pleased with. I knew Campfire Tales was coming out and wanted to get something up quickly. It isn’t the most elaborate of videos, but it does the job. I’m actually tempted to do a full review of the book as, well, because it’s a really charming read. It sounds odd when you’re dealing with horror and children putting themselves in danger, but the way Chaosium have approached it is genuinely empowering. If you get the chance, take a look at my video and I’ll tell you more about that.

Now, I have to have a little rant about that ‘rain’ – and those of you who make videos will feel this one. A driver update has completely screwed me over. Nvidia updated the drivers for my graphics card, and now my NEVC codec crashes Vegas every time I try to render. The HEVC codec can work, but isn’t fully recognised by DaVinci Resolve. So currently my workflow is: render in HEVC, run the clip through Microsoft Clipchamp of all things, and then drop it into Resolve to finish. I’m on Vegas 22 and can’t upgrade to v23 because I’m part of an AI trial programme that gives me the stock footage I use for the Phobia Shorts. And to add insult to injury, Magix — the former owners of Vegas — have sold the programme to Boris FX, who have advised me to stay on v22 as they won’t be carrying forward the stock footage programme I’m part of. It’s exactly this kind of nonsense that makes you question whether it’s worth putting the effort into quality production. I’m not here to make masterpieces; I just want tools that work reliably!

On a more positive note, editing on The Overhead Encounter is continuing nicely. I work predominantly with Syrinscape for sound effects, but for this one I’ve had to outsource a few very specific 1980s sounds – particular cop sirens and terrain effects to royalty-free youtube channels. It’s shaping up well, and it would be lovely to have it wrapped up before the next blog.

Conventions

Let me bring the conventions section forward and get another mini-rant out of the way at the same time. You would think that streaming a live game from a purpose-built conference centre would be straightforward. However, the Chaosium Con venue does not provide conference organisers with a dedicated internet connection. This means I would have to use their computer for internet access but I wouldn’t be able to plug in any of my own kit. The conference camera is tucked away in the ceiling, perfectly fine for a standard lecture, but not for what we want to do.

I understand security concerns; you can’t just let people plug arbitrary devices into your network. But when your entire business model is hosting conferences, not being able to offer organisers a dedicated connection is, frankly, wild. We’ve been back to the moon, and yet a venue can’t provide a dedicated internet line for the people running the event. We’re going to look at sourcing our own connection for Chaosium Con next month, or we may simply have to record the games live and hope the guest wifi holds up. It’s a headache that really shouldn’t be a thing in 2026.

Adventures Played

We got back on the Orient Express and had our version of a certain pivotal scene — no spoilers here, but we needed to discover the identity of someone who was hiding. If you know this part of the adventure, you can imagine our frustration at not exactly excelling at tracking down the person we were looking for.

It wouldn’t be a spoiler to say there are cultists in this campaign, and they were devastatingly effective against our investigators. Two characters were marked as dying after receiving major wounds – my doctor was unconscious again having to fight to come round to save the other character’s life. Elsewhere, the backup character of one of our players met an unfortunate end bouncing off a tunnel while on top of the train, and there were some very peculiar attachments to the locomotive that needed dealing with too.

After all of that combat, there was a bonus conflict to contend with and, with most of the party on one or two hit points, it could easily have gone very wrong. One lucky dice roll saved a character from being vaporised; one unlucky one left another with a major wound. Fortunately, the party had enough left in the tank to take down the foe, and we are now heading to what I believe is the final destination on Horror on the Orient Express. Will my doctor make it through? We’re about to find out.

Over in the Forever GM section, Masks of Nyarlathotep continues to progress. Questions are being raised about the true motivations behind the action, some very effective combat has been had, some very unfortunate events have occurred, and the team now move on to the final part of the Peru chapter — whatever that may bring.

Chaosium Con – Looking Ahead

Circling back to conventions: my next blog will be written after Chaosium Con, at which point I’ll report either triumphantly that we sorted an internet connection, or… less triumphantly. I’m keeping things relatively light this year — I have the tech for three live games to manage, and that’s quite enough to have on my plate.

I hope to play a game of Pendragon, quite the departure from Call of Cthulhu. For those who don’t know it, Pendragon is set in the realm of King Arthur, and from what I’ve seen it isn’t entirely my sort of thing — but I’ve signed up for a session along with Newman from the Miskatonic Playhouse so I’ll report back on how that goes.

Beyond that, I’ll be at the seminars to see what Chaosium have coming across all their lines. Call of Cthulhu is naturally of most interest to me, there are a couple of Pulp adventures on the horizon which sound fun but it’s the things they haven’t announced that will be most fun! We’ll see what Chaosium Con brings!

That brings us to the end of the April blog. Let’s turn the page to the May calendar image and this one brings a smile to my face. A very beautiful dark haired woman in a red dress in what looks like an Italian café, sharing a drink with a blonde lady and a gentleman in a white shirt and braces. I shall tell you all about that story next month. Thanks for reading, and we’ll Roll4Sanity again soon.