317: Small Town Horror, with Eleanor Hingley
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
Release Date: 07/11/2025
Just One More Thing - sample episode
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
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329: Cthulhu and Board Games, with Paula Deming
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re wiping ichor off our meeples. Cthulhu and board games can be a messy combination, but also a popular one. Cynics may tell you that this is because Cthulhu is in the public domain, so anyone can slap his tentacles on a game for a bit of brand recognition. We prefer to think the truth is more insidious than that, however. Every die roll, every card played, every token moved towards its inevitable doom is done in Cthulhu’s most terrible name, the terrible luck of the players and the curses they utter when they lose sustaining him deep beneath the waves. Plus, they’re...
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328d: The Great God Pan 4
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We are wrapping up our festive ghost story reading of “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen. This reading has been organised by good friend of the Good Friends, Mike Perceval-Maxwell (host of ), taking place on . Mike is joined by guest readers , , , , and , and . You can find the first three parts in your podcast feed, or right here on this very server. So invoke the name of Nodens, practice your knots, and dive into Queer Street with us. , arranged by Jon Fylling, is licenced under the . If you would like to read along at home,...
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328c: The Great God Pan 3
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We are continuing our festive ghost story reading of “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen. This reading has been organised by good friend of the Good Friends, Mike Perceval-Maxwell (host of ), taking place on . Mike is joined by guest readers , , , and , and . If you’re reading this shortly after release, you have time to join us for the conclusion at 22:30 GMT on Thursday the 18th of December. So shake the cobwebs loose with a bracing night-time walk, brush up on your Latin, and do try not to dwell on those unsettling illustrations. , arranged by...
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328b: The Great God Pan 2
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We are continuing our festive ghost story reading of “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen. This reading has been organised by good friend of the Good Friends, Mike Perceval-Maxwell (host of ), taking place on . Mike is joined by guest readers , Brian Murphy, , , , and . If you’re reading this shortly after release, you have time to join us for part 3 at 22:30 GMT on Wednesday the 15th of December. We shall be continuing at the same time on Thursday the 18th. So put down those Chinese boxes, open up a good bottle of chianti, and listen to our tale of...
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328a: The Great God Pan 1
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
It is time once again for us to all gather around the virtual hearth for another festive ghost story reading. This year, we present “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen, a weird tale of mad science, supernatural horror, and very human revenge. This reading has been organised by good friend of the Good Friends, Mike Perceval-Maxwell (host of ), taking place on . Mike is joined by guest readers , , , , , and . If you’re reading this shortly after release, you just have time to join us for part 2 at 22:30 GMT on Tuesday the 16th of December. We shall...
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328: The Birds, with Ross Bryant
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re watching the skies. You never know when some gannet might decide to kamikaze its way into your skull, or a mob of hawks take exception to your woodwork and peck it to splinters. We’ve decided to turn to two experts for advice, but their approaches don’t really mesh. Daphne du Maurier would have us hunker down and wait for the inevitable, while Alfred Hitchcock favours stalking your love interest, barely even addressing the avian threat. We’re beginning to think these so-called experts are for the birds. Main Topic: The Birds The Birds is one of Alfred...
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327: Narration in Call of Cthulhu, with Ross Bryant
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re talking to ourselves. Not everyone has an interior monologue, but apparently exterior ones are ever rarer. Describing your life in real time like the voiceover from some hard-boiled detective movie may raise some eyebrows, but it is damn good practice for narration in Call of Cthulhu. It’s also a good way of drowning out your interior voice. No one wants to listen to that. If they did, podcasts wouldn’t be anywhere near as popular. Main Topic: Narration in Call of Cthulhu Narration lies at the heart of tabletop roleplaying. The worlds we play in are all...
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326: We Are the Horror, with Ericka Skirpan
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re scaring ourselves. Main Topic: We Are the Horror Most tabletop horror games revolve around the struggle between the player characters and one or more external antagonists. The concept of a “Big Bad Evil Guy” is at the heart of most of our gaming experiences. But what happens when we take all that away? How might games work when the horror comes from the interactions between the PCs? And what are some of the possible pitfalls of this approach? Our Guest Host We are delighted to welcome Ericka Skirpan back as our guest host for this episode! Ericka is a LARP...
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325: Using LARP Techniques at the Table, with Ericka Skirpan
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re acting out. Main Topic: Using LARP Techniques at the Table Live action and tabletop roleplaying share common roots and many similarities, but they are also quite separate hobbies. Each has evolved in its own ways, developing a unique variety of forms and tools. So what can the world of tabletop roleplaying, particularly Call of Cthulhu, learn from LARP? What are some of the different types of LARP? Which LARP techniques lend themselves best to tabletop play, and how can they be adapted? Our Guest Host We are delighted to welcome Ericka Skirpan as our guest host...
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We’re back and we’re keeping to ourselves. You really can’t be too careful. The outside world is full of dangerous ideas and strange people. Some of them don’t even play Call of Cthulhu. Sure, they might find our ways odd too, especially if they hear the singing in our early episodes. Still, the real small town horror is always other people.
Main Topic: Small Town Horror
This is a local episode for local people. We explore small town settings and why they work so well for horror. Isolated, insular communities are a mainstay of horror, usually populated by sinister locals who shun the outside world and treat strangers with suspicion, but there is much more to the subgenre than that. As well as digging into the major tropes of small town horror, we discuss ways to reinvent and subvert them, along with examples from media and our own gaming lives.
Our Guest Host
We are delighted to welcome Eleanor Hingley to the Good Friends! Eleanor is a lifelong horror fan, obsessed with Gothic and horror art since childhood. She has written for a bunch of tabletop roleplaying games, including Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game, Hollows, Aegean, Broken Weave, The Laundry, Heart, and many other game lines. She also writes interactive fiction for Choice of Games, and has had IF published in sub-Q magazine. Eleanor has released her own independent TTRPG zines, which you can find on her itch.io page: Ex Libris, Talking Thunder and Seed of an Idea. You can follow Eleanor on Bluesky.
Links
Things we mention in this episode include:
- An American Werewolf in London (1981)
- Hot Fuzz (2007)
- Folk horror
- In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker
- Candyman (1992)
- Archive 81
- Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
- The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
- Milton Keynes
- The Laundry RPG
- “Kaddish” from The X-Files
- The Tribe by Bari Wood
- Paperbacks From Hell line from Valancourt Books
- State of Deseret
- Latter Day Saints
- Amish
- Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
- Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
- Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
- The Auctioneer by Joan Samson
- Needful Things by Stephen King
- Needful Things (1993)
- The Tommyknockers by Stephen King
- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
- It by Stephen King
- The Shining by Stephen King
- Desperation by Stephen King
- Bag of Bones by Stephen King
- Alan Wake
- Midnight Mass
- “The Summer People” by Shirley Jackson
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- Byzantium (2012)
- The Jonah by James Herbert
- “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” by HP Lovecraft
- Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys
- “The Smolting” on Ain’t Slayed Nobody
- Rumspringa
- Midsommar (2019)
- Get Out (2017)
- Ready or Not (2019)
- The Wicker Man (1973)
- Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
- The Other by Thomas Tryon
- From
- The Mist (2008)
- The Mist
- Ten Candles
- Chronicles of Darkness
- Bright Falls YouTube series
- In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
- Rhymer’s Stone
- Gilmore Girls
- Silent Hill
- Centralia, PA
- Vaesen
- “Blackwater Creek” from the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Screen Pack
- Old tunnels under Edinburgh
- The Shoebox Enterprises in Norwich
- The Night Strangler (1973)
- Kolchak: The Night Stalker
- The Night Stalker (1972)
- Heaven and Earth
- Solemn Vale
- “Some Fell on Stony Ground” from Nameless Horrors
- The Realm of Shadows
- “Secret of Castronegro” from the Cthulhu Companion
- Grizzly Peaks Radio
- The Second Transmission: The Secret Frequency Files 2
- “A Warning to the Curious” by MR James
- Harrowhill Point
- Something is Wrong Here
- Twin Peaks
- Peyton Place
- “The Dunwich Horror” by HP Lovecraft
News
Glass Cannon Live at Gen Con
If you’re going to be at Gen Con this year, do check out the two live Call of Cthulhu games run by our good friends at the Glass Cannon Network. Both of this year’s scenarios were written for them by our own Scott Dorward, and will feature Good Friends guest host Ross Bryant.
Blasphemous Tome update
Unfortunately, issue 14 of The Blasphemous Tome has been delayed by ill health. We’re playing catch-up at the moment, however, and we hope to get it to backers before the end of August. Thank you for bearing with us!
Scott on Symphony Entertainment
Scott will be joining Bridget Jeffries and his regular gaming group, AKA The Blusterers, for a live game to celebrate the birthday of Symphony Entertainment. Our good friend Nate will be running us through a two-hour improvised game on the Symphony Twitch channel, starting at 6 PM UK time on the 19th of July. We hope to see you there!
Scott on Unconventional GMs
As if that weren’t enough, you can also see Scott on an episode of Unconventional GMs, running Dead of Night for hosts Gaz Bowerbank and Guy Milner, Tasha from the IdeaRoll YouTube channel, and Andrew Kenrick, author of Dead of Night. This largely improvised game was inspired by the discussion of metafiction in the next episode of the Good Friends. This episode of Unconventional GMs is due to go out on the 19th of July.
