319: Roll Your Own Mythos, with Andy Goodman
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
Release Date: 08/11/2025
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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324: The White People, with Jared Logan
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re enjoying a night out under the hill. While the rest of you are clubbing, we’re trying a different kind of dancing. There’s even a singalong, plus some arts and crafts. Sure, some people might say this is all witchcraft, but we promise you it’s no more sinister than a children’s game. The white people have tried to offer their opinion, but our Aklo is a bit rusty. Maybe the nymphs can help translate, assuming we ever figure out what they actually are. Meanwhile, we’ll just enjoy another goblet of what may be the best wine we’ll ever taste. Main Topic: The...
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We’re back and we’re hunting for the biggest cigarette paper known to man. Well, ideally known to the gods too. If we’re going to fit an entire pantheon inside, this thing needs to be truly cyclopean, and maybe even non-Euclidean. An extra dimension or two wouldn’t hurt either. And we haven’t even started working out how to light up the damn thing!
Main Topic: Roll Your Own Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos didn’t really start out as a cohesive entity. It has become increasingly codified by generations of fans, starting with August Derleth, but this can be an impediment to creativity. This episode is a loose discussion about how you might bring in ideas from elsewhere, removing some of the canon from the general themes of cosmic horror, and roll your own Mythos.
We discuss the difference between Lovecraftian horror and cosmic horror, which authors might have interesting takes on the cosmic, how gods can interact at a human scale, and how we can put all of this together into something that feels new.
Our Guest Host
We are delighted to welcome Andy Goodman to the Good Friends! Andy is the mastermind behind Grizzly Peaks Radio, an actual play podcast focusing on Call of Cthulhu. It’s impressive enough when a podcast manages to play Masks of Nyarlathotep to completion, but Andy has balanced running that alongside The Two-Headed Serpent, Berlin – the Wicked City, and a pulped-up version of Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, not to mention numerous one-shots and an ad-hoc campaign made up of scenarios from the early days of White Dwarf. Our own Scott Dorward is a regular player in many of these games, as well as the two crossover campaigns with The Apocalypse Players, dubbed The Apocalypse Grizzlies.
Links
Things we mention in this episode include:
- Keeping Cthulhu Fresh
- Cosmic Horror
- Cthulhu
- The Tinfoil Dossier by Caitlin R Kiernan
- “Houses Under the Sea” by Caitlin R Kiernan
- The Final Revelation
- Cargo cults
- A Shoggoth on the Roof
- The Laundry Files
- “The Whisperer in Darkness” by HP Lovecraft
- “Nyarlathotep” by HP Lovecraft
- Nyarlathotep
- Clark Ashton Smith
- Abhoth
- Bast
- Nodens
- “Devo Nodenti” by Keris McDonald
- The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers
- Nigel Kneale and Quatermass
- Quatermass
- Zothique
- Robert E Howard
- Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion cycle
- Corum Jhaelen Irsei
- Elric of Melniboné
- The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
- Lyonesse trilogy
- Dungeon Crawl Classics Dying Earth
- Arthur Machen
- “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen
- “The Dunwich Horror” by HP Lovecraft
- “The White People” by Arthur Machen
- Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson
- Résumé With Monsters by William Browning Spencer
- Yog-Sothoth
- The Fisherman by John Langan
- “Isla de la Muerte” on Grizzly Peaks Radio
- “The Murder Shack” in The Blasphemous Tome issue 5.5
- Robert Aickman
- M John Harrison
- “The Ice Monkey” by M John Harrison
- Sapphire & Steel
- Unknown Armies
- Metafiction and Horror
- Chaos magic
- Malleus Monstrorum
- The Pseudonomicon by Phil Hine
- Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows
News
Scott on Unconventional GMs and Symphony Entertainment
As mentioned in previous episodes, Scott has appeared on a couple of streams recently. He ran Dead of Night for our good friends over at Unconventional GMs and played in a freeform improv over at Symphony Entertainment to celebrate their anniversary. Both of these streams were recorded and can now be found on YouTube, or by scrolling down a bit.