The Unspeakable Oath #18.pdf

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I
ssue
18, D
ecember
2010
Contents
Columns
T
he
D
reaD
P
age of
a
zaThoTh
T
he
e
ye of
L
IghT
& D
arkness
2
6
W R ITE RS:
Richard Becker, Monte Cook, Adam Gauntlett, Nick Grant, Dan
Harms, Pat Harrigan, James Haughton, George Holochwost, Shane Ivey,
Matthew Pook, Brian Sammons, C.A. Suleiman and John Scott Tynes.
COV E R AR T IST:
I L LUSTR ATORS:
PAGE DESIGN E R :
Todd Shearer.
Toren Atkinson and Dennis Detwiller.
Jessica Hopkins.
Dennis Detwiller.
Tales of T e r ror
m
r
. P
oPaTov
s
LIghT
r
eTurn
h
ouse of
h
unger
T
he
a
rT
s
how
4
32
34
74
A R T D I R ECTOR :
E D ITORS:
Adam Crossingham, Dan Harms, Shane Ivey and Greg Stolze,
with copy editing by James Knevitt.
Founding editor:
John Scott Tynes.
Editor-in-
chief:
Shane Ivey.
E D ITOR IAL BOAR D :
Brian Appleton, Monte Cook, Adam Crossingham,
Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy, Dan Harms, Kenneth Hite, Shane Ivey,
Greg Stolze, John Scott Tynes and Ray Winninger.
Arcan e Arti facts
T
he
c
hInaman
’
s
s
creen
T
he
f
orgoTTen
9
19
PLAYTESTE RS:
Myste r ious
Man uscr i pts
T
he
b
ranchLy
n
umbers
e
DIT
20
Simon Brake with Matthew Benner, Elliot Biddle and Laura
Brake; Steve Dempsey with Beth Lewis, Dave Pickson, Simon Rogers and
Graham Walmsley; Krzysztof Fabjan ́ski with Maciej Paluszkiewicz, Magdalena
Paluszkiewicz and Grzegorz Zawadka; Nathan Palmer; Robert Lint with Ryan
Harris, Alex Miner, Shelly Smith and Grace Willard; Harald Schindler with
Archie Leach, Markus Pelzl, H. Schindler and Tom Stern; Kenneth Scroggins with
Brandon Fong, Thomas and Miles; Tony Toon with Kate Boarman, James House,
Jason Martin and Josh Oliver; and The Veterans of a Thousand Midnights.
COPY R IGHT:
Featu r e Ar ticles
T
aLes of
n
ePhren
-k
a
T
he
c
haPeL of
c
onTemPLaTIon
D
og
w
ILL
h
unT
b
Lack
s
unDay
10
22
37
63
All contents are © 2010 by their respective creators. The Yellow
Sign design is © Kevin Ross.
Call of Cthulhu
is a trademark of Chaosium Inc. for
their roleplaying game of horror and wonder and is used by their kind permission.
Published by arrangement with The Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual
property known as Delta Green is © and ™ The Delta Green Partnership, who
has licensed its use here.
The Unspeakable Oath
is a trademark of Pagan Publishing
for its magazine of horror roleplaying.
The Unspeakable Oath
is published four times
per year by Arc Dream Publishing under license from Pagan Publishing.
SUBM ISSIONS & SUBSCR I P T IONS:
Love Cthulhu? Prove it! Our
submission guidelines are at our website.
The Unspeakable Oath
is available in
four-issue subscriptions and in individual issues, also at our website.
Arc Dream Publishing
12215 Highway 11, Chelsea, AL 35043, USA
shane.ivey@gmail.com
www.theunspeakableoath.com
Message i n a Bottle
T
he
w
orD
80
Dedicated to Keith “Doc” Herber, bassist and world-class
Call of Cthulhu
writer, 1949–2009.
The Dread Page of Azathoth
I first encountered
The Unspeakable Oath
in 1991. Issue 3
sat on a game store shelf in Birmingham, Alabama. It was
an eye-catcher. Gorgeous black line art by Blair Reynolds,
three cultists with bloody robes and knives staring
thoughtfully out; goldenrod cardstock cover wrap, staple-
bound, very do-it-yourself.
Those cultists amazed me. You could tell they weren’t just
anonymous mooks, easy pickings for heroic investigators;
they had depth. They had names and ideas and plans.
Underneath them, the logotype: “ . . . for the
Call of
Cthulhu
roleplaying game.”
That cinched it.
I hadn’t even opened the cover.
women see the worst that the universe has to offer, incarnated
in mind-blasting alien flesh, and try to face it down.
That’s heroism.
I’ve been playing it for nearly 30 years and it still gives
me chills.
I could tell right off, the guys behind
The Unspeakable Oath
were my kind of gamers. They designed scenarios and
adventure ingredients with rich details and well-researched
backgrounds. They looked for villains with real character,
whose motivations, even when insane and irredeemably
evil, made a certain kind of pragmatic sense. They rejected
the easy answers of the Cthulhu Mythos authors who
provided benevolent, or at least accessible, alternate gods
as foils to the awfulness of the Great Old Ones. And yet
they had a wicked sense of humor.
They clearly adored the same mix of careful investigation
and crazy, unpredictable action that so many of us loved
in
Call of Cthulhu—and
in emphasizing meaningful
characterization they explored the game’s true depths.
I had been a
Call of Cthulhu
fanatic since the game first
appeared. A D&D buddy ran that first game and I was the
sole player; I solved the case and then my character was
betrayed and murdered.
I was 13 years old and I was hooked. Fantasy gaming never
quite measured up again.
In high school my friends and I played a long campaign,
taking the same core group of investigators, minus a
casualty here and there, entirely through
Terror From the Stars
and
Shadows of Yog-Sothoth.
Hardened veterans, we charged
into
Masks of Nyarlathotep
and made it through two scenarios.
Then came our private apocalypse: midnight on a cold little
island, alien gods seeping down from the sky. Those long-
running investigators died to a man. Only one newcomer
escaped—and he had murdered one of the veterans.
It takes a certain kind of gamer to go through that kind of
punishment and come out begging for more. Most shake
their heads and ask when they can get back to the good,
clean heroism of a game with affordable resurrection. But
my friends and I loved it. The risk itself was a thrill.
And as for heroism—well. As Ken Hite has elsewhere
observed,
Call of Cthulhu
is the most heroic roleplaying game
ever played. It’s heroic precisely because of the things that
make it so horrifying. It’s a game where ordinary men and
2
By the time
The Unspeakable Oath
walked or stumbled
to its long hiatus in 2000, I had been working with its
publisher, Pagan Publishing, for a few years. I proofread
and playtested some of their books and contributed a piece
or two; I ran their Delta Green website.
It wasn’t long before I partnered up with Dennis Detwiller,
Pagan’s art director, to form Arc Dream Publishing.
Dennis and the Pagan crew had applied their unique
sensibilities to World War II and superheroes for the
roleplaying game
Godlike,
eventually published by
Hobgoblynn Press. After Dennis and I secured
Godlike’s
publishing rights and stock from Hobgoblynn it became
Arc Dream’s flagship property. Years trickled by; we made
more games; we were nominated for awards despite barely
making a ripple in the industry at large.
Everything Arc Dream did was informed at some level
by
The Unspeakable Oath. Godlike
and
Wild Talents
are
about the nature and risks of heroism, not just the glory of
superpowers.
Monsters and Other Childish Things
features
ordinary kids with ferocious, often downright Lovecraftian
monsters as their friends and protectors; monsters that give
them power but put their friends and loved ones in danger.
It’s funny and horrific by turns. We never would have
made those kinds of games if
The Unspeakable Oath
hadn’t
convinced us that kind of gaming were possible.
A few years ago Arc Dream got together with Pagan
to resurrect another
Call of Cthulhu
property that had
seemingly slipped off to the Dreamlands, one that had its
roots in
The Unspeakable Oath:
Delta Green. Arc Dream
put
Delta Green: Eyes Only
together and Pagan published it,
and then we did the more ambitious
Delta Green: Targets of
Opportunity,
which came out this year.
Somewhere in there, Dennis and I started talking about
The Unspeakable Oath.
After Delta Green, resurrecting the
Oath
didn’t seem quite so daunting.
We talked about it with Scott Glancy at Pagan, and with
John Scott Tynes who founded the
Oath;
they were pleased
with the work we’d done for Delta Green; and then the
deal was done.
At one point I remember it suddenly sinking in:
Holy shit.
We’re bringing back the
Oath!
I may be running the thing now, but I’ll always be a
giddy fan at heart.
of point at the right time and gain the clue. In play it has a
very different feel from
Call of Cthulhu,
heavily focused on
detective work and careful discovery.
There’s been
Realms of Cthulhu,
an alternate version of
Call of Cthulhu
for the pulp action game
Savage Worlds;
CthulhuTech
with a science fiction take on the Mythos;
The Laundry,
adapting Charles Stross’ excellent stories of
espionage, bureaucracy and the Mythos; at Arc Dream
we adapted the
Godlike
and
Wild Talents
rules to Mythos
horror with the free game
Nemesis.
And so in
The Unspeakable Oath
we’ll provide resources for
many Cthulhu Mythos roleplaying games. But the essence
of the
Oath
will always be the game that inspired it.
It’s true that games with more streamlined character
generation and more tightly focused mechanics can make
Call of Cthulhu’s
decades-old rules and endless list of skills
feel a little fusty and crusty. But the game has been around
this long because it works. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a
game that does what it’s trying to do.
In
Call of Cthulhu
there are no sure things. At best there’s
only a hint in a grimy old book that you might not even
notice on the shelf. The spasmodic pull of an unfamiliar
trigger. A stumbling flight from stinking shadows to the
false light of day. More likely it’s death that you never
saw coming, or a realization that leaves you utterly,
permanently unhinged.
There’s no control to be had, narrative or otherwise.
Success, when you manage it, is a thrill. Madness and
mayhem are often much more fun.
Join us and see if you agree.
December 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the first
issue of
The Unspeakable Oath.
John Scott Tynes was a
college student when he put that first issue together, writing
most of it himself. He kept it going for seven years, then
a break, then a last issue—and then a decade’s silence
until today. And after all this time, countless gamers still
remember the
Oath
with love. John should be proud as hell.
Roleplaying games have seen a lot of changes in the 20
years since
The Unspeakable Oath
first appeared, and in the
10 since it last appeared. Several new games have covered
the Cthulhu Mythos.
Ken Hite’s
Trail of Cthulhu,
a licensed variant on
Call of
Cthulhu,
moves the investigations at the heart of the game
away from randomized skill rolls. Instead it uses pools of
skill points under the player’s control; spend the right kind
s
hane
I
vey
,
eDITor
-
In
-
chIef
Postscript:
Longtime readers may notice there’s a section
missing in this issue: Scream and Scream Again, the letters
column. With so many years gone by between issues it
didn’t seem feasible to collect comments on the last one
to be published. We’ll most likely see Scream and Scream
Again in issue 19. See the masthead for our mailing and
email addresses.
3
Issue 18
A Tale of Terror:
Mr. Popatov
b
y
J
ohn
s
coTT
T
ynes
In the course of an adventure, the investigators interview
a witness to some recent event. This witness is of negligible
value to the adventure, offering only a few corroborating
details. But the interview with the witness is a different
matter.
The man’s name is Josef Rebane. He is eighty years old
and hard of hearing, but mentally and verbally sharp. Josef
is Estonian and came to this country forty years ago. He is
a puppeteer.
The interview is in his home, a run-down cottage. His
home is crowded with old furniture, relics of larger homes
now crammed into this little space. In the living room
is his red-velvet puppet theatre and hanging on the wall
behind it is his collection of marionettes.
One marionette, a goat named Mr. Popatov, is suspended
4

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