327: Narration in Call of Cthulhu, with Ross Bryant

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 shared spaces we create in our heads. In traditional RPGs, such as Call of Cthulhu, most of this worldbuilding and description is in the hands of the GM. So how can we, as Keepers, bring the world to life at the gaming table? What are some techniques we’ve picked up over the years? And what approaches have we learned to avoid?

Our Guest Host

We are delighted to welcome Ross Bryant back as our guest host for this episode. You may know Ross from The Improvised Shakespeare Company, Dropout TV, The Glass Cannon Network, or the many improvised Call of Cthulhu games he and Scott have played together on Ain’t Slayed Nobody.

Most recently, he has launched his own podcast, called Push the Roll With Ross Bryant, where he runs fully improvised games of Call of Cthulhu, based on listener suggestions, for various friends from the worlds of comedy, improv, and tabletop gaming. You can listen to it it wherever you find your podcasts

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Blade Runner RPG
• “Intersections” from World War Cthulhu: Cold War
• Grizzly Peaks Radio
• Pulp Cthulhu
• “Dead Boarder” from Gateways to Darkness
• Ain’t Slayed Nobody
• Unknown Armies
• “What Makes That Windmill Bleed So?” on Push the Roll With Ross Bryant
• “The Colour Out of Space” by HP Lovecraft
• Blades in the Dark
• “The Star Brothers” on How We Roll
• “The Burning Stars” from Terrors From Beyond
• The Sixth Sense (1999)
• “Time For Chaos” on Glass Cannon
• Into the Darkness
• The Two-Headed Serpent
• The Beiderbecke Trilogy
• The Venture Bros.
• The Osterman Weekend by Robert Ludlum
• Running Blind by Desmond Bagley
• The Time Machine by HG Wells
• “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
• Diogenes of Sinope
• “Signal to Noise” by Colin Richards
• Candle Cove
• Symphony Entertainment
• The Stanley Parable
• Slay the Princess
• Regency Cthulhu

News

Christmas Ghost Story Reading

Our good friend Mike Perceval-Maxwell of Mr Spike’s Bedtime Stories is once again organising our annual Christmas ghost story reading. This year, we will be presenting “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen, with an exciting cast of guest readers.

The readings will take place on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server over four nights, between the 15th and 18th of December inclusive. Each reading will start at 22:30 GMT and last for 30-40 minutes.

As per previous years, we plan to record these readings and release them on the Good Friends’ podcast feed. You can find our previous Christmas ghost stories below.

• “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens
• “The Canterville Ghost” by Oscar Wilde
• “The Viy” by Nikolai Gogol
• “Told After Supper” by Jerome K Jerome
• “The Searcher of the End House” and “The Horse of the Invisible” by William Hope Hodgson

Matt and Scott at Illusion Con

Matt and Scott will be on various panels at this year’s Illusion Horror Con over the weekend of the 5th-7th of December. We are still finalising details, but you should be able to find them at the convention website.

Blasphemous Tome Issue 14

Issue 14 of The Blasphemous Tome will be going out in early January of 2026. This bumper issue includes two new scenarios by Matt and Scott, presenting loose conceptual sequels to “A Social Responsibility” and “Blackwater Creek”.

Anyone backing us at the $5 level or higher at the end of December will receive a print copy of the Tome, signed by our own gnarled hands. Backers at the $3 level will receive a voucher for a heavily discounted print-on-demand copy, and every backer will receive the PDF.