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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323: The Joy of Gore, with Jared Logan
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re bloody. Honestly, that’s the least of it. Most of this gore is blood, but we’re sure there are strips of skin, shards of bone, and maybe the occasional kidney mixed in with all this mess. The plastic ponchos were supposed to help, but at this stage they’re more like stencils than protective clothing. No one ever warned us that podcasting could be this wet and sticky. Maybe we should just focus on getting some of these teeth out of our hair for now. Main Topic: The Joy of Gore While not all horror involves gore, it is an essential part of the genre. Whether...
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322: 28 Days Later, with Maverick Hanze
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re raging. While this virus plays a part, we’re more angry about the sequels to 28 Days Later. The first follow-up, in particular, is enough to make you chew someone’s face off. Happily, the original film still has as much bite as ever. Now if only we could convince it to let go of our leg. Main Topic: 28 Days Later Following last episode’s look at , we’re delving into a classic of the genre. Sure, the folks behind 28 Days Later have said that it’s not a zombie film, but we’re ignoring that. This has all the hallmarks of a zombie...
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321: Zombies, with Maverick Haenze
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re hungry for brains. Sure, that whole that whole thing about zombies eating brains was made up by Dan O’Bannon in 1985, but that doesn’t make them any less tasty. And just because we’re chowing down on some grey matter doesn’t mean that we’re keen on any of that other new-fangled nonsense. Zombies shouldn’t run around or hold conversations, and they definitely shouldn’t be love interests. Shambling and moaning was good enough for those who came before us, and it’s good enough for us. Main Topic: Zombies Given how prevalent zombies are in horror media and...
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320: The Broadsword, with Andy Goodman
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re checking the vents. They’re long overdue a service, but that doesn’t mean they should be talking about eating people’s kidneys. Maybe we could dismiss it as a load of hot air, but they don’t even provide that most days. We would ask the building supervisor to sort them out, but he’s either been eaten by the vents or tumbled through the alien portal in the basement. That portal is a safety hazard, and if it did swallow him that’s his own fault for not slapping some Polyfilla in there sooner. The cosmic nightmares of living at the Broadsword Hotel are bad...
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319: Roll Your Own Mythos, with Andy Goodman
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
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....
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318: Metafiction and Horror, with Eleanor Hingley
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
We’re back and we’re discussing metafiction and horror. More importantly, we’re getting the title of the episode in the first paragraph for SEO purposes. Main Topic: Metafiction and Horror Metafiction turns up in every genre from literary fiction to SF, breaking fourth walls, playing with storytelling conventions, and embedding fictional narratives within fictional narratives. Our focus here, however, is on the connection between metafiction and horror, whether this is self-aware slasher films or horror novelists who write about horror novelists. We look at various definitions of...
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317: Small Town Horror, with Eleanor Hingley
The Good Friends of Jackson Elias
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...
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We’re back and we’re hungry for brains. Sure, that whole that whole thing about zombies eating brains was made up by Dan O’Bannon in 1985, but that doesn’t make them any less tasty. And just because we’re chowing down on some grey matter doesn’t mean that we’re keen on any of that other new-fangled nonsense. Zombies shouldn’t run around or hold conversations, and they definitely shouldn’t be love interests. Shambling and moaning was good enough for those who came before us, and it’s good enough for us.
Main Topic: Zombies
Given how prevalent zombies are in horror media and how strongly the undead feature in Lovecraft’s earlier fiction, it’s surprising that it’s taken us 321 episodes to get around to discussing them. But, like the walking dead, we shamble slowly.
Our discussion takes in the origins of zombies in Voudon, the various ways they’ve been redefined in horror media, and some ways we might use them in games. And then we feast on the flesh of the living.
Once again, with such a big topic, we’ve almost certainly failed to mention some of your zombie favourites. Please do join in the discussion on Discord or Bluesky to help fill in the gaps. We may catch up with some of them in time before the next episode of Just One More Thing, the monthly companion podcast we put out for our Patreon backers.
Our Guest Host
We are delighted to welcome Maverick Haenze to The Good Friends of Jackson Elias! Mav is a prolific actual play performer and scenario author. You can find them as the Head of Mythos Horror on The Old Ways podcast, as a regular cast member on Ain’t Slayed Nobody’s Bleeker Trails, and in many guest spots on other podcasts, including How We Roll. Under the name Rina Haenze, they wrote the Mythos slasher romp Saturday the 14th, the historical LGBTQ+ scenario Friends of Dorothy, and many others on the Miskatonic Repository. They also edited the fairy tale-inspired collection Cthulhu Once Upon a Time, which is now available on DriveThruRPG.
Links
Things we mention in this episode include:
- Revenants
- Slavery in Haiti
- Voudou
- Vampires
- Jé-rouges
- Ghouls
- Epic of Gilgamesh
- Zombie astral
- The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis
- The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
- Tetrodotoxin
- Datura
- Fugu
- “The Magic Island” by WB Seabrook
- American occupation of Haiti
- “The House in the Magnolias” by August Derleth & Mark Schorer
- “Pigeons From Hell” by Robert E Howard
- “The Outsider” by HP Lovecraft
- “Cold Air” by HP Lovecraft
- “Herbert West – Reanimator” by HP Lovecraft
- White Zombie (1932)
- Revolt of the Zombies (1936)
- I Walked With a Zombie (1943)
- Cat People (1942)
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- “The Zombie” from Kolchak: The Night Stalker
- The X-Files
- Plague of the Zombies (1966)
- Night of the Living Dead (1966)
- Carnival of Souls (1962)
- Night of the Living Dead (1990)
- Dawn of the Dead (1978)
- Day of the Dead (1985)
- Land of the Dead (2005)
- Diary of the Dead (2008)
- Survival of the Dead (2009)
- Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)
- The Beyond (1981)
- Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972)
- Black Christmas (1974)
- A Christmas Story (1983)
- Porky‘s (1981)
- The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)
- Shaun of the Dead (2004)
- 28 Days Later (2002)
- Re-Animator (1985)
- I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
- Santa Clarita Diet
- Warm Bodies (2013)
- In the Flesh
- World War Z (2013)
- World War Z by Max Brooks
- Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel
- Forgotten Voices series from the Imperial War Museum
- “The Meat Trade” on Ain’t Slayed Nobody
- Dawn of the Dead (2004)
- Resident Evil film series
- Resident Evil video game franchise
- The House of the Dead
- The Walking Dead TV programme
- The Last of Us TV programme
- The Last of Us video game
- “The Voice in the Night” by William Hope Hodgson
- Matango (1963)
- The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight
- The Girl With All the Gifts by MR Carey
- The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)
- Haunted (1995)
- The Boy on the Bridge by MR Carey
- Fear the Walking Dead
- The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
- The Walking Dead: Dead City
- The Walking Dead comic
- Return of the Living Dead (1985)
- Return of the Living Dead 3
- Uncanny valley
- 28 Years Later (2025)
- Alien RPG
- MK-RPG
- Dead of Night
- The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
- Cast a Deadly Spell (1991)
- “Walter’s Final Wish” from Fear’s Sharp Little Needles
- Primetime Adventures
- iZombie
- All Flesh Must Be Eaten
- The Walking Dead Universe RPG
- Cotard’s delusion
News
New Life on The Glass Cannon Network
Our good friends at Glass Cannon ran a couple of live Call of Cthulhu games at Gen Con 2025, both written by our own Scott Dorward. One of them, “New Life”, was recorded and is now on YouTube. This is a grotesque tale of a heist gone wrong, run by Troy Lavallee for an all-star cast. The in-character adverts are a particular highlight.
Push the Roll, With Ross Bryant
There is a new podcast coming soon from Ain’t Slayed Nobody, called Push the Roll. This is a series of completely improvised Call of Cthulhu sessions, with Ross Bryant as Keeper, and featuring a number of special guests from the worlds of comedy, improv, and gaming, and especially from Dropout TV.
Confirmed guests include Abu Salim, Ashly Burch, Becca Scott, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Paula Deming, Chris Grace, Colton Dunn, Ify Nwadiwe, Matt Young, Matthew Lillard, Mark Meer, Mary Lou, Noura Ibrahim, Rashawn Scott, Rekha Shankar, Rob Kerkovich, Vic Michaelis, and Zach Reino. You will also hear a number of Good Friends hosts, including Jared Logan, Josephine McAdam, Maverick Haenze, Seth Skorkowsky, as well as our own Scott Dorward.
The first episodes are due out on the 10th of September. Check out the podcast website for more details.
The Blasphemous Tome issue 14
Unfortunately, ill health and other life pressures are still getting in the way of completing issue 14 of The Blasphemous Tome. Rather than keeping on pushing it back, we’re going to release a bumper issue of the Tome this December with two full Call of Cthulhu scenarios. One is a new modern scenario from Matt, and the other is a loose sequel to Blackwater Creek by Scott.
We will be honouring our pledge to send out print copies to everyone who was backing us at the $5 level or higher end of June, so don’t worry if you’ve dropped yours since then.
