Category: horror

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa Part Four

Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation
Written & Designed by Heinrich D. Moore
You can purchase it here

Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa
Written & Designed by Heinrich D. Moore
You can purchase it here

Read our introduction to Vivian Endicott here.

Vivian will be wearing the Mask of the Guilty. I based this on the fact that she’s literally haunted by her mother, Claire, who died in alone, in poverty of an overdose.

Vivian followed the map she’d found stuffed into the stacks of Ballingrud’s Occult Books. It happened while she was thumbing through a facsimile reprint of Codex Maleficus, the slip of paper fell out. 

Continue reading “Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa Part Four”

Movie Review – Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive (2001)
Written and directed by David Lynch

I’ve mentioned on the blog before how I discovered David Lynch as an eight-year-old who was somehow allowed to watch Twin Peaks. For a long time, I knew him as “the guy who made Twin Peaks.” Even in college, as I began to explore his greater body of work, I was like most people; I just didn’t understand the abstractness of it all. What shifted my understanding was reading Lynch on Lynch, a book of interviews with the director focusing on his work in chronological order up to Mulholland Drive. Through this text, I came to understand the source of Lynch’s creativity – from deep inside his subconscious and expressed through images without any implied context – and how intuitive his work is. This happened around the same time I was taking Literary Theory & Criticism, which was probably the most influential academic experience I’ve ever had.

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Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa Part Three

Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation
Written & Designed by Heinrich D. Moore
You can purchase it here

Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa
Written & Designed by Heinrich D. Moore
You can purchase it here

Read our previous adventure into Carcosa starting here

Today we introduce a new character to enter Carcosa. Once again, I used Heinrich’s Guide to Character Creation which made an even more fascinating person than my last run. I cannot get over what a great tool this is for making complex, layered characters with backstories just as interesting as any adventure they get into. Without further ado…

Continue reading “Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa Part Three”

TV Review – Kingdom: Exodus

Kingdom: Exodus (Mubi)
Written by Lars von Trier and Niels Vørsel
Directed by Lars von Trier

I just can’t hate Lars von Trier. I think he’s a massive asshole, and he often has a horrible sense of humor. However, I find his work enjoyable…mostly. He’s frequently on the cusp of a breakthrough but then misses the point. While David Lynch’s Twin Peaks inspired the Kingdom series, I do not think this comes close to that masterpiece. Part of this is Lynch’s willingness to grow and change as an artist. Von Trier, instead, has entered his grumpy old man phase, and Exodus puts much of that on display. It’s eye-rolling & annoying. He has such a cynical viewpoint in the way he ends this story. Lynch wrapped up Twin Peaks: The Return with a dark ending, but it’s clear he doesn’t see things as hopeless.

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Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa Part Two

Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation
Written & Designed by Heinrich D. Moore
You can purchase it here

Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa
Written & Designed by Heinrich D. Moore
You can purchase it here

In our first part, I focused on the Guide to Character Creation and its incredibly robust tools that lead to unique player characters every single time you go through the book. Now, we get the adventure with the Guide to Carcosa. For the unfamiliar, Carcosa was originated by Ambrose Bierce in the short story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (1886) where a character described the city in hindsight after its destruction. Nine years later Robert Chambers would borrow the name for stories featured in his eerie fiction collection The King in Yellow. From there, authors who wrote in the cosmic horror vein of Lovecraft would fold Carcosa and The King in Yellow into the Cthulhu Mythos associating the king with the deity Hastur.

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Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa Part One

Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation
Written & Designed by Heinrich D. Moore
You can purchase it here

Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa
Written & Designed by Heinrich D. Moore
You can purchase it here

Regarding tabletop RPG fantasy, we think of Dungeons & Dragons. For players in the know, Traveller covers all the bases for science fiction. The third big genre, horror, is typically associated with Call of Cthulhu. CoC is based, of course, on the cosmic horror writing of H.P. Lovecraft. and was first published in 1981. Since then, it has undergone several iterations and is currently in its 7th edition. The game uses the Basic Roleplaying system. Characters have skills that are ranked via percentages. When you attempt to do something risky, you identify the appropriate skill and roll a d100, trying to roll the same as or under that score to succeed. There are slight variations and more complicated combat rules, but for the most part, you can play BRP games with just the skills and have a fun time.

Continue reading “Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa Part One”

PopCult Podcast – Motorama, The Dark Backward, and Late-Stage Capitalist American Grotesque

While watching this week’s movies, we think we might have stumbled upon a genre of film hidden right in front of our eyes the whole time. Motorama and The Dark Backward becoming a jumping off point for bigger conversation.

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