Welcome, I’m Charlie Etheridge-Nunn, a writer and waffler about various things like comics and games in all forms.
Explosion High & Mad Robot Comics
First of all, I write comics at Mad Robot. If you see us at conventions you can pick up my first work in Cadavers: World Gone to Hell, including the tragic horror “Fractured” and the monster noir, “Blob Detective”
My main work at the moment is Explosion High! It’s a comic about a fun and deadly superhero school. In it, a team of lacklustre sidekicks and directionless deities find a home and friends in a place which is literally trying to kill them at every opportunity. It’s full of noise, explosions, dinosaurs and friendship.
Pictures: Explosions and friendship. I assure you there are dinosaurs inside.
You can pick up physical copies at conventions, at Dave’s Comics and the Dice Saloon in Brighton, or Comics, Games & Coffee in Chichester.
Hundreds of students enter, a lot fewer will leave.
There’s a Kickstarter for issue two coming soon, which you can sign up to get notified about by going here.
Climbzilla! The gym class kaiju!
Casual Trek
I started a podcast about Star Trek with Miles Reid-Lobatto, one of my older, favourite writer friends. Inspired by shows like Every Story Ever, Battle of the Atom and BatChat with Matt & Will, we watch a few episodes of Star Trek at a time and rank them against each other on an increasingly large list of best to worst.
Go do a Starfleet!
Star Trek’s kind of a tertiary fandom to us both. It’s been a constant fandom in our lives, just not as much as X-Men for me or Doctor Who for Miles, so we consider that makes us the perfect moral authority on such a subject.
For people more casual than even us, we recap the episodes and try not to overrun too much (although we are keeping record of who’s overrunning more). This is an accessible entrance to Star Trek, even if we get into a great many tangents like the Young Ones, Blake’s 7, the writer Chris Claremont and our combined experiences in Brighton.
You can find Casual Trek on any podcatcher, on Spotify and here.
One of the alternate titles for one of the recent episodes
Who Dares Rolls
I write about indie RPGs for Who Dares Rolls, and put up videos occasionally on their YouTube channel, along with the eccentric, effervescent Mike B.
The super serious logo, made by Mike B from when I was only writing about solo RPGs.
Recently I’ve been putting out some solo roleplaying game Actual Play podcast episodes in my occasional series, “Playing With Ourselves”. These are kind of re-enactments or short story readings, going through games like the letters written in “Quill”, a journal from someone in the nigh-eternal queue to see Edd the Duck’s coffin in “The Queue” and the self-explanatory “You Are Quarantined with Adam Driver and he is Insisting on Reading You His New Script”
Faked Tales
This blog is where I put any short stories, articles or general blog posts about my writing and the popular culture in general.
I’ve been reading my way through all of the roleplaying games I’ve backed on Kickstarter. Some will get full reviews online either on Who Dares Rolls or on this blog. I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about what I’ve read so far.
I’m going vaguely chronologically, but if I need to read a game because I’ll be running it or because it’s a new arrival then it’ll jump ahead in the queue.
Houses of the Blooded: Wilderness
An ork probably scratched the cover.
Read before? No
Played? Yes, but not using this book
I like John Wick’s Houses of the Blooded, but I understand when people aren’t as keen. The rolling system’s inspired by Fate and in turn will also inspire what 7th Sea Second Edition has. You collect a pool of dice and aim to hit a ‘10’, wagering a number of dice by taking them out of your pool for additional effects. If you pass then you gain narrative privilege, not success. You can pick whether you succeed or fail and gain bonuses for complicating things.
Wilderness is a collection of expansion ideas by Jess Heinig, themed around the wilder aspects of the world. There’s a new hidden house to add to the ones from the core book, sullen and isolationist, but able to be integrated if you’re playing on the edge of civilisation. There’s also an interesting alternate campaign frame where you play adventurers sent forth by the Blooded to fight Orks and gather up treasure for them.
It’s interesting and I’ve run a few one-shots of HotB over the years. I like the idea of running a game on the edge of the wild and will probably incorporate some of this at some point.
Fate Core
Everything’s better with apes.
Read before? Yes, multiple times
Played? Yes
Fate Core is a toolbox, and an elegant one. Like Houses of the Blooded, it’s a bit marmite, with some people really not clicking with it and some loving it. I find the best presentation of the system in games like iHunt and Fate of Cthulhu where it’s integrated into a setting rather than presented in a general tome like this. The book’s well written and certainly worked for me better than Cortex, which I’ve still not managed to finish, but the grounding in a setting is what makes it pop.
The game is an earlier example of genre emulation than Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics, with narrative elements turned into rules, primarily Aspects. They give a +2 bump to a roll, or a -2 if used negatively. They also affect fictional positioning even outside of those numbers. The economy’s lovely, too. You gain Fate Points by using your character traits in a negative way, then spend them to do in-character things in a positive way. It’s simple, and encourages roleplay. There are a couple of clunky elements like the pyramid of skills and advancement. Other Fate games change this up a bit, and it’s not too bad a blemish.
I’ll definitely use this again, although I’ll probably use Fate Accelerated or Fate Condensed over Core.
Monsterhearts: Second Skins
I’m 90% sure this isn’t Miles from X-Plain the X-Men, but I couldn’t be entirely sure.
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
This is an expansion to the amazing Monsterhearts RPG, consisting of several playbooks or ‘skins’ for use in games. They’re a little weirder and tricksy in some places compared to the core skins and Jackson Tegu nicely converted them to Monsterhearts 2 when the new edition came out.
The Sasquatch – A shy, awkward person who wants to disappear
The Wyrm – Someone who sees everyone as social currency
The Cuckoo – A supernatural stalker and copycat, pretending to be other people
The Unicorn – They desperately want to help and do good, but can they?
The Heir – You have a ton of siblings each with weird abilities, who will fall to strange fates while you grow more powerful
The Neighbour – Another mortal, a ‘person next door’ type who’s going to get in trouble
The Selkie – Wistful and called to the sea, but without the pelt they need to return
I’ve played and run in games with some of these, and while I tend to mainly offer up core playbooks, they’re interesting ones to throw in occasionally.
Primetime Adventures Third Edition
Not Matt Wilson the colourist or Matt Wilson the podcaster/comics writer.
Read before? No
Played? No
Primetime Adventures Second Edition was the indie RPG I owned the longest without actually playing. I backed the third edition as I like the idea of it. The game’s basically about playing a television show. It has a good sense of media literacy and expressing the beats, focus and even to a point the fandom of a TV show. There’s a simple card-based system to resolve things and ‘fan mail’ which can help boost things. Each character has sets and props to help them, and will the the focus of at least one episode.
The thing with this game is that it’s still an interesting resource for storytelling, but I don’t think I’ll use it when a lot of other games do genre emulation for specific stories better than this manages for all stories. There are also games like Hearts Blazing which handles the ‘telling a season of an RPG’ really well.
Night Witches
Will this get me on a list for talking about a game about Russians?
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
Oh my god this game. I’ve reviewed it before on Who Dares Rolls and while I’m not a big World War II nerd, I loved Night Witches.
You play the airwomen of the 588th, a group of Russian pilots who were in out of date planes and told to harass enemy forces. This is done in a cycle of Day and Night phases. The Day phase sees you look after your planes, explore the airfield, interact with each other and deal with systemic sexism as well as the NKVD. At Night you run missions, deadly missions. Hopefully you’ll hit your targets and get back home intact.
The book comes with a campaign running the course of World War II, with a handful of missions per duty station and ways of abruptly moving on, even encouraging changing GMs as you change station. While I didn’t do that, I did get halfway through a campaign with my group and it was wonderful, if emotionally battering. Hopefully we’ll play it again, covering the back half of the war.
Paranoia Red Clearance Edition
The actual cover for the Paranoia box is white on white, so this looks a bit better in an image.
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
I like Paranoia, and I think that aside from one or two things, this is one of my favourite editions.
Paranoia is a game set in an underground utopia where death has been conquered and a Computer looks after all your needs. All is order, all is peace. Only that’s a lie. The Computer had too many programmers all with their own agendas, it became aware of things like Communist propaganda and believed enemies were everywhere, lurking in shadows. The clones it made in batches of six all became defective with strange powers. But none of you really know how bad the rot is, instead you’re a Troublehooter, tasked with killing mutants and traitors, while also secretly being both.
This edition has a nice, simple dice system with a fun Computer Dice which randomly has The Computer interfere, often lethally, in a way it thinks is helpful.
The setting has been tweaked a bit, allowing for things vaguely like modern technology, even if they’re as busted as everything else in Alpha Complex. There’s a great character creation process which arms everyone against each other.
The one problem I’ve got with the system is the cards. There are action cards which have funny effects and numbers for when you go in initiative order. You go around placing cards facedown and announcing your number, then seeing if anyone calls you on it and if they catch you in a lie then you miss your turn. Then you count through, finally acting on initiative if you’re still going. I don’t care for this much of a faff in my fights, so I’ve resorted to using Balsera Initiative and some prop guns from Cash & Guns instead.
There’s a new edition which has come out on Kickstarter, but I don’t know who the authors are and it sounded like this edition without the cards, possibly resorting to some of the older elements of the setting, so I’m fine with this one.
Fall of Magic & Songs from the Axe and Fiddle
The start of the scroll.
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
This is one of the most beautifully presented RPGs I own.
Magic is dying, and the Magus is dying with it. You follow him on his travel across the land, to where magic first came from. This game is represented with a beautiful scroll which you only see a section of at a time as you travel east, towards the origin point of all magic. You will spend moments or months at different stages of the journey, telling fragments of stories and often moving on abruptly to the next leg of the journey.
Your character is given a name, a descriptor and a coin to represent where they are on the map. The Magus is also given a coin and will lead the way. Each location they stop at, you take turns placing yourself on questions or statements stretching out from the settlement. You can have a scene there, answer a question and occasionally roll a dice to see what happens out of a set of encounters. You can either do that on your turn, or move the Magus on, which gathers everyone up and moves over to the next space. Loves met are left behind, chases with local guards stop abruptly as you catch up with your cart going to the next place. There’s even a deck of cards used to provide random islands when you finally cross the water.
This is a beautiful game which I’ve played three times, even if I’ve never made it to the end in a single session. My first game was incredible, lingering on moments and making it to the sea with a perfect stopping point as the young, naive squire looked out to a sea much larger than anything he’d seen in his life. The second playthrough was two sessions, even venturing into the underworld hidden on the back of the scroll. It was fun, although one of the group got stage fright in session two, as he feared the spotlight and establishing scenes by himself, even though he’d been doing it for a couple of sessions. The third time was a rare experience of an RPG my partner joined in with, but two of the players were wanting something tonally more wacky, in ways which didn’t even build off each other. It didn’t really feel like it clicked right there, which was a shame. That said, a lot of that was on me for not setting the table right and explaining the tone we were going for. It won’t stop me getting it to the table again.
The Songs from the Axe & Fiddle is a really interesting extra booklet providing tiny scenarios and alternate stories using the same map. You might be sailors using the deck of islands as the main location or people living in a village, trying to go about their lives while a swineherd chases an extremely troublesome pig around. I’ve yet to try these and want to, although I might save them until I either have little time, or have actually completed a full playthrough of the main game.
Good Society: A Jane Austen Roleplaying Game
The table mid-game of Good Society.
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
I love Jane Austen’s stories, although it wasn’t always that way. I was having difficulty with Pride & Prejudice at sixth form and it took my dad showing me the BBC miniseries, then having a chat about Austen to help get it to click.
I liked Storybrewers from their Alas for the Awful Sea miserablist Hebredian sailors RPG, and I knew I had to check this out.
A false belief from a lot of people with little experience of indie RPGs is that they’re all pretty much freeform and lack the control of trad RPGs. Sure, they tend to be missing massive equipment tables and some sub-systems, but the ritual of the game tends to be more specific and more intricate. In this case, you don’t roll dice, you spend Resolve points to push the narrative in your chaaracters’ favour, to make supporting characters make mischief or to help push what people think or feel (as an offering, and only if they consent).
You get a character with a role, a background, a desire and a relationship with another character. As an example, in the current game I’ve got, I’m playing Selina Oakley, a Meddler from Humble Origins, whose desire is to take charge of the family and her relationship is that she’s the sister of Abigail. She was also given a relationship card from Luce Wynn saying that they’re rivals (although that’s going to change…)
Play goes through rounds of different phases. The Novel Phase is regular play, often between group events, visitations of vignettes. Reputation Phase checks what you did against triggers based on your background, earning you new traits based on society’s view of you. The Gossip Phase has you make and spread rumours not from your characters but from society. If you spread them then they become real in society’s eyes, if not then they fizzle out. Finally there’s the Epistolary Phase, where players write letters from their main character or any supporting characters they control.
You play through multiple cycles and it feels like a good way of measuring time. We had an introductory phase of learning who the characters are, then complicating their lives and watching it all get tense. When it’s the final phase, we’ll know to wrap things up nicely, like any good Jane Austen romantic comedy.
FIasco Boxed Edition
I don’t have the box to hand, here are some of the expansions. Please disregard the rabbit.
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
Fiasco was the first indie RPG I really got into. This new edition tightens everything up and puts it in a fancy boxed set.
Fiasco is a game of bad people making worse plans and watching them succeed or fail in ludicrous ways. It’s a Coen Brothers movie game. Each scenario has a deck of cards with relationships, locations, items and needs which you divide out between you. As a group you pick a relationship and one of the other cards to put between each of you to make a group who are all drama magnets, pre-loaded with terribleness. The backs of the cards have names on them so even the unused cards might be useful.
Players go through two rounds of scenes, choosing to define how the scene starts if they don’t care how it ends, or letting someone else do it if they want to pick whether it’ll end well or badly. You then have a ‘tilt’ where some extra petrol is added to the fire and two more rounds of scenes to get everything falling apart. The good and bad endings build up a score used to determine how well or badly things go for you, and it’s always going to tell a gloriously messy story.
I really like this system, although I don’t quite believe the two hour runtime it now boasts. That might just be that my players and I waffle a bit, but it’s generally been around three hours and change. This is an evergreen one-shot game in my eyes.
VIllagesong
Some of the cards from Villagesong.
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
Much like Fiasco, I love having one-shot games which are ready out of the box. I have a ‘go bag’ with Lasers & Feelings, Lady Blackbird and several Grant Howitt one-shots. This series of ‘Littlebox RPGs’ are a perfect addition to that collection.
VIllagesong is a game about a collection of villages in an archipelago and how they deal with problems together, or how they push their problems on each other. Players pick a village leader and a village, then collectively pick relationships which also represent the physical landscape connecting the villages.
You draw cards from a deck which is customised based on the scenario you’re playing, reading them out and either handling the matter yourself or pushing it to someone else. They can reject what you’ve done, straining or breaking your relationship (the physical connection in the land also suffers when this happens) or answering the problem and dealing with the results.
Each card is added to your ‘Villagesong’, stacking up poetic little phrases to make the song of your community at the end of the game. If you like games like For the Queen or Quiet Year, this is definitely one for you.
Our Mundane Supernatural Life
Some cards from Our Mundane Supernatural Life
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
Another Littlebox RPG, this one was trickier to get to the table as it’s a two player game. You and another player make a mundane person, a supernatural person, then put them in close proximity to each other with relationships like parent/child, spouses or flatmates.
You write out a schedule for a regular day, splitting some cards between each player and the pair of you together. They’re lined up in chronological order and you run through scene by scene.
You roll a four-sided die and add one to the result in order to determine the length of the scene, from two to five minutes. It’s a really interesting technique as some dramatic scenes may end up being cut short and some completely mundane scenes like washing dishes might take five. This means some scenes linger longer than needed, letting silence, repetition or conversations about the weather reign. The additional complication is that you might see a symbol on the back of an event card showing that something goes awry, but you won’t know until you reach it. There are extra modules, allowing for nicer moments, scenes of personal realisation, extremely bad things and even multi-day play.
I’ve only played it the once, but it was a nice experience and is definitely something I’ll do again.
Rune
Time to carve a rune and explore some worlds.
Read before? Yes
Played? Yes
This is a solo RPG based on Soulslike video games. You are Engraved, travelling from realm to realm, looking to fight enemies, gather lore and gain a Rune from the local Runelord before moving on. For a solo RPG, it’s got a lot of tactical fighting involved, all on a small four-by-four square grid. You roll dice and place them on your actions kind of like Euphoria or Dead of Winter. Enemies have patterns of behaviour where they move and attack based on a die roll as well, which makes them deadly but partially predictable.
The core book is 100 pages and has only one Realm to use, but there are several online and there’s an Atlas by the author which adds even more for you to try. I’ve only played one session of Rune, but I’m eager to get it to the table again.
Korg
The background of Korg.
Read before? No
Played? No
This one’s a very much an ‘easy win’ RPG-wise. An RPG which is on two small business card-sized pieces of plastic. The PDF version is a whopping three pages.
Aesthetically like Mork Borg, this is a bright yellow and red RPG about travelling through a dungeon or other setting and buying upgrades, as long as you survive your current round. It’s fairly basic and I’m curious to see how it feels in play.
Fantasy World
Great searchability with a name like this, lads.
Read before? No
Played? No
I mentioned earlier I don’t do Dungeon World anymore, but there’s a new challenger for the role of Powered by the Apocalypse fantasy RPG. I mean, there are more, there’s Fellowship which also looks good. Still, this game which is tricky to search for online given its generic name looks like an interesting system.
Instead of replicating D&D style play, Fantasy World wants to be a bit broader as far as fantasy stories. Your group have a role which helps provide a framework in which you’ll be making characters and interacting with the world. I think this is my first large Italian RPG, so it’s interesting seeing how differently things are laid out.
The rituals of play feel a little more formalised and presented in a more bullet pointy fashion, but the moves are all a bit more intricate and interesting. You get roles like The Captain who has a crew and a headquarters (which could be like Sherwood Forest or could be like a pirate ship). The Knight has an order and a code which grants them great abilities in return for restrictions they make to their lives. The Maker creates strange technology. The Occultist has magical abilities but may face corruption through them. The Priest works miracles based on their faith. The Scoundrel is well-connected and resourceful. The Troubadour knows about the world and can make connections. The Veteran is a battle-hardened warrior with a special weapon. The Wayfarer has primal powers over nature and animals. The Wildcaller is an elemental magician.
The structure looks interesting and intricate without being too obstructive. I’m really interested in trying it out this year and seeing how it fares compared to other fantasy games.
Conclusion
I finished January ahead, which I didn’t expect, but I had a couple of cheap wins with the Littlebox RPGs and Fiasco, compared to some big books like Fantasy World. It’s a mixed bag and the older RPGs have mostly been pretty good. That’s going to change soon.
I’ve been playing Arkham Horror a lot in the past couple of years. I generally have a solo campaign on the go, and I’ve been playing it fortnightly at the Dice Saloon, going through each of the campaigns.
At the moment we’re playing Return to the Path to Carcosa. I’ve played through the regular Path to Carcosa solo a little while ago and really enjoyed it. The ‘Return to’ format remixes some elements and isn’t always more difficult, sometimes it’ll provide new options or different encounter decks. Arkham Horror already does a good job with replayability, this makes it even more varied.
I kept promising a reading list for the people playing in my group, so I posted this and thought I’d share it here, too:
The Yellow King by Robert W. Chambers
This is where it all comes from. Before Lovecraft, Robert Chambers took a rare journey into horror and made some fascinating stories about feral art. Almost hypnotic in their telling, these stories all talk of people pulled into the gravity of a strange play. This is a regular reread for me, and I can see why writers like HPL were inspired by it.
The Yellow King Graphic novel by I N J Culbard
This one was a tricky item to find, but it has some lovely visuals and delivers on a kind of slow build of horror, tying the stories from Chambers’ work together deftly as it goes.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A tale of isolation and madness, far too often forgotten. It really gets under the skin and under the wallpaper. It’s rarely on lists of influences, but definitely feels like it belongs alongside Chambers’ work
True Detective Season One by HBO
Yes, this prestige cop drama references the King in Yellow and Carcosa a bunch. It didn’t go full supernatural iwth it, but if there’s a supernatural entity that doesn’t need to how itself fully to be a weird presence, its this. I’ve been meaning to go back to it after getting heavily into the Carcosan side of things.
Call of Cthulhu: Tatters of the King by Tim Wiseman
A classic campaign for Call of Cthulhu and while I’ve not had a chance to run it, the game feels like a good influence on Path to Carcosa. The opening for both start at a play which goes awry. I’ve had my copy for years and I might run it with CoC 7th if I ever get it, or more likely Squamous or Cthulhu Dark.
The Yellow King RPG by Robin D. Laws
The Gumshoe system’s really good for investigative games, and the light version of it works perfectly for four games all around the themes of the Yellow King and how the Yellow Sign affects our world. Paris is the game in its purest form, with American and English art students in Paris encountering feral art. The Wars combines both World Wars into one bizarre pulp mashup as fictional forces bleed into the world. Aftermath shows the overthrow of the Castaigne Empire from America and how we might rebuild. This is Normal Now brings us the most terrifying world… our own one. Well, it adds a few twists, but I won’t go into those.
Call of Cthulhu: Curse of the Yellow Sign by John Wick (not that one)
Three stories using Call of Cthulhu, Trial of Cthulhu and its own self-contained system. Wick promised a Call of Cthulhu scenario which would be terrifying but wouldn’t have tomes, cults or monsters. He delivers here. The first scenario has you as doomed Nazis running an African mine in WWII and someone’s found something deep in the Earth. The second has a director running through a haunted script reading with his friends and his ex-wife in a snowed-in hotel. The third has amnesiacs on a spaceship where the AI might just have read the King in Yellow. I’ve run the first one of these and it was good, although it’s a hard sell given who you play, and the final scenario feels like it’s got some of Wick’s manipulative GMing tactics in there. I’ll probably revisit these with Cthulhu Dark at some point.
If you’ve encountered the King in Yellow in your travels, mention in the comments, as it’s always interesting encountering this world.
It’s the start of another year and there are so many roleplaying games out there already, not to mention so many due to be released in the year to come. There will always be surprises and blind spots, but I thought I would have a look and share a few that have caught my attention.
I have a caveat for this set. These are all RPGs which are so new they’re not even on Kickstarter, Backerkit, GameFound, Itchfunding or anywhere else yet. What makes a ‘new’ RPG is so tricky, so I’ve gone for the most new. There are a lot of games which have funded and aren’t out yet (i.e. Salvage Union, The Unquiet Dark) and ones which have released digitally but not physically (i.e. Mothership 1E, Brindlewood Bay). I’ve decided to skip them this time.
Lovercraftesque 2E
Black Armada Games
The first edition of Lovecraftesque sees players pass a single character around the table, delving into an investigation they really shouldn’t have. One player acts as the narrator for the scene and everyone else as ‘watchers’, adding flavour and elements from a mystery card no one else knows the contents of. The story flows through investigative phases and assumptions about what the truth of the mystery might be. Eventually, the game speeds up its pacing as the investigator races towards what is almost always their doom.
The second edition is going to increase the card-based play and Black Armada have experimented with the format a couple of times with games on their Patreon, so I can’t wait to see what they do with this new edition.
The makers of Spire & Heart are going into a new world of grim fantasy, where realms open up when things get grim enough. You play people similarly infected, similarly Hollow. You can enter the Hollows and hunt down the Hollow Lord inside, removing the blight from the world and keeping yourself going slightly longer. There are unique Weapons which are aware, hate you, but can grant you abilities to help in your quest.
It’s been interesting seeing an increase in indie RPGs embracing tactical fights, such as Nova and Rune from Gile RPGs. I’m curious to see what this means for Hollows. If you want a game name-checking Monster Hunter and Dark Souls in its list of inspirations, this is the place for you.
I’ve always been vocal about my love of the games put out by Gauntlet Publishing, and this year it sounds like they’ve got a number of projects being worked on.
Arkham Herald by Oli Jeffery is a game using the fantastic Carved from Brindlewood mystery system to tell stories of investigative journalists in the 70’s encountering cosmic horrors.
Moonlight Vale by Megan Caldwell and Xander Bimski is a kind of Stardew Valley using CfB mechanics. I was one of those people who got heavily into Animal Crossing during the first lockdown, and I’m curious about how this game which could be tonally quite different to the other CfBs will be.
Public Access by Jason Cordova is a kind of retro television creepypasta RPG. The players are ‘Latchkeys’ who are looking into things like weird haunted houses. It looks like it’s got a lot of things about weird things like number stations, the Satanic Panic and haunted video tapes.
The Silt Verses RPG by Gabriel Robinson is based on a spooky podcast and using the CfB framework, it has players as Peacekeepers to have to deal with weird phenomena and stray gods. I’ve literally just started listening to the podcast because of this announcement and it is fascinating.
I’ve loved what Machine Age did with monster hunting with #iHunt. Olivia Hill asked online about interest in making a specifically trans-friendly magic school, because fuck that school by that TERF. The plan has expanded and changed a lot, tagging in influences like Nick Spencer’s fantastic Morning Glories, the Re-Animator films and from what I’ve seen so far, possibly even some The Magicians. It has characters studying magic, actually improving and messing around with their grades as part of the game. There have only been small previews so far, but I’m already excited to see what comes of it.
A lot of their games have initial versions in their Codex zine and on their Patreon which can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/gauntlet/
I admit this is a bigger company than the others on this list and not really an indie, but the generational Arthurian RPG has always felt like a white whale for me. I flit from game to game, but this feels like one which could take a lifetime. You play Arthurian knights year after year during the dwindling age of Uther and then their offspring, generation after generation through the rise and eventual fall of Arthur. You must be good at maintaining your household and courting in order to guarantee a next generation to inherit your glory when you eventually fall.
The sixth edition was being worked on by Greg Stafford when he passed away in 2018 and this edition’s been worked on by Chaosium with a hopeful release this year. This includes a starter set which will have a slightly shorter campaign than I described. I love the idea of this game, and am looking forward to seeing it.
You’re damned whalers hunting a hellwhale. You gamble with souls, use tokens for your resolve and the framework comes from Belonging Outside Beloinging games, which is going to be interesting in a game with a directed story where you’re setting out on a quest.
The author of Torq and This Discord Had Ghosts in it has a game about ‘mutant freaks in the weird future’. I know literally nothing else, but I like their work, so it’s best to keep an eye on what these mutant freaks are up to.
The name says it all. Battle Royale, Squid Games, all of those sorts of stories. Little else is know, although the author, Tim Dinee, released a gorgeous illustrated recap. If you want to compete with other players in brutal game show warfare on an island, I’m guessing this’ll be the place to go to.
Girl by Moonlight
By Evil Hat Productions
A Forged in the Dark game about magical girls. I admit I know very little about this and the genre, but FitD is a great framework and it looks like there are a bunch of interesting takes on the magical girl type of story.
I was torn about including expansions, but you know what? They’re so rare for indie RPGs that I’m including them. Evil Hat’s going to be releasing a couple:
AGON: Realms of Khaos – I love Matt Fraction and Christian Ward’s gonzo science fiction ODY-C and this sounds like it’ll add some of that cosmic energy to the bombastic hero-fest that is baseline AGON.
Blades in the Dark: Dagger Isles – Blades in the Dark is one of the best roleplaying games, this is an official supplement for that, so it’ll be one of the best supplements, I need say nothing more.
Monster of the Week: Codex of Worlds – I like the look of Monster of the Week and this looks to shake up the campaign structure, which will be interesting to check out.
Oh, and also upcoming Zine Month Entries
I’ve only heard some rumblings about what’s coming out during Zine Month and it’s just round the corner, so I might have to do like previous years and try to cover what’s out here. Luckily Zine Month has its own lovely site which acts as an index of them, so that may not be necessary.
I feel like I’ve barely touched the surface of what’s coming out this year in the RPG world. What indie RPGs are you looking forward to?
I love a weird quest, so it’s time to work out a new one.
In 2021 I played every board game in my collection. It helped me discover some games I’d not played before, dust off some forgotten classics and find a bunch of games I’ve moved on from (I’ve sold ~40 out of 240 board games thanks to that quest)
In 2022 my quest for the year fell down a bit. I decided to read every graphic novel in my collection (barring comic strips and manga). I should have realised this would take ages as I had enough to mean I quickly hit a point where I’d have to read more than one a day and after enough times where I was away from my collection, things got tricky. Also in my hubris I thought I’d write about most of them, which also created a logjam where I’d not remembered to publish some of the posts (still haven’t) or hadn’t thought of anything to say about them.
I needed a new quest, specifically one which would be more doable than Graphic Novel Quest (although I’ll still keep plodding on with that).
So here’s the plan. I’ve backed a lot of roleplaying games on Kickstarter. As of writing, I’ve backed 202 RPGs which have been fulfilled. I’ve read 117 of them, apparently, although I don’t remember most of them. I’ve also run or played 54, although not all of those are games I’ve read.
In total there’s 29,707 pages to read. I reckon that’s doable.
There are three games I’ve removed from the pile due to the authors, and there are some RPGs which might come in and add to the list. I’m not including the stretch goals for RPGs, although I have a list of those too, just in case this goes well.
After the War, which I’ve started several times when I’ve tried to read all my Kickstarted RPGs in alphabetical order.
So the task is to read each of these RPG books either in PDF or physical form ( I won’t always have a choice of format, but a few I have both).
I will hopefully run some of them that I’ve not tried before, but I’m not going to try and run them all, as I’ve not got that many sessions I’ll be running RPGs for and some might not be the kind of RPG I’ll want to run anyway.
The easy part will be some RPGs like 7th Sea, Blades in the Dark or the Trophy books which I reread fairly often. The hard part will be some games like Exalted Third edition which I haven’t bothered reading as I changed the kind of roleplayer I was between backing the book and receiving it, so I never went back.
I’ve been putting a spreadsheet together, which is where I’m getting all these numbers for. So I can already tell some of the easy rides and difficult challenges I’ll have.
The shortest RPGs I’ve backed are:
What, Ho, World! – 1 fold-out page
Goth Court – 4 pages
Ghost Court – 5 pages
synthesis. – 8 pages
Fall of Magic: Songs from the Axe & Fiddle – 9 pages
The tiny Songs from the Axe & Fiddle
We can already see a trend here, as the first three are card-based games where the rules are only a small part of it. Synthesis is a small anthology and Fall of Magic’s expansion was a booklet, both of which were part of Zinequest.
The longest RPGs I’ve backed are:
The Yellow King – four books in one set, totalling 776 pages
Exalted Third Edition – 686 pages
Beam Saber – 438 pages
DIE: The Roleplaying Game – 416 pages
Starforged – 405 pages
Beam Saber, which I resisted reading for the many years it was in beta and then didn’t get round to when it was done.
There’s less of a pattern here, and only one which I’ve read. The Yellow King was a set I read back in 2020, finally ripping that plaster off as I really wanted to get running a Paris campaign. Hopefully I don’t take as long rereading it, now I know it’s an amazing game. I’ve read half of DIE and have it earmarked as a game I’m wanting to run next year, so it’ll probably be an early one I read in 2023.
Speaking of which, I’m probably not going to go to a strict order, although I’ll be aiming vaguely through chronological order if I need to work out what to read next.
I won’t try to write up my findings on everything, although I’ll probably blather on about them on social media (whatever that’ll look like in 2023), and I’ll definitely review some for Who Dares Rolls either in video or written form.
If this ends up being easy, or if I get intrigued with some of the stretch goals, I’ll try those. Just for comparison to the main task, I have 11,527 pages of stretch goal books to read, over 163 items, of which I’ve read 73 and played with 25.
A beautiful cover for an incursion in Trophy Gold
Finally, what about incoming RPG Kickstarters? At time of writing, I’ve got 22 which I’m waiting for. These go from still in date RPGs like Mothership’s Adspace, mildly and understandably late like Mothership 1E itself, and ‘never coming out’ like Project: Dark, Mountain Witch, Reach of Titan and Forest Hymn & Picnic.
We’ll see how this quest goes, and I’ll try to remember to post here whenever I talk about a game.
I watch a lot of television and I’ve been trying to actually finish more shows as far too often things end up abandoned. Here’s a list of the TV shows I watched at least a full series/season of this year and my opinions.
I’ve decided to list my top eleven shows, but before that, I’ll mention everything else.
28 Days Haunted
Groups of mediums, flim flam artists and so on are in an American reality show staying in haunted places and playing ‘yes and’ with each others’ theories. Or noping others’ imagined stories about ghosts. Not good, but still kind of entertaining.
A Series of Unfortunate Events Season Three
I finally finished this series, which had been outstanding in my list for a while. I loved the exaggeratedly, childishly awful world it made, Neil Patrick Harris felt like he was having a great time and it’s always a joy to hear Patrick Warburton’s voice as Lemony Snicket.
American Horror Stories Seasons One and Two
I like horror and anthologies, but with that comes a mixed bag of quality. Season one felt too mired in the overused elements of American Horror Story lore. Season two improved and there were some fun performances in both, even if there were also some real clunkers.
American Horror Story Season Ten
The first half was a kind of Innsmouth meets vampires and I love a good crumbling seaside town aesthetic. The second was less interesting with an alien invasion story. Some good moments but solidly on the lower half of the AHS stories.
And Then There Were None
A gorgeously produced version of the Agatha Christie book, with some classic British TV and film alum on board. I was given it when I was on a murder mystery kick, and it definitely helped keep me in the mood.
Archive 81
An interesting mystery show based on a podcast which Emma had listened to. It was good, but unfortunately sets up a season two that won’t be happening.
Big Boys Series One
When starting my big Lightning rewrite I wanted to check out British sitcoms with characters of the kind of age of some of my cast. This was a more recent one, and good fun, hopefully there’ll be more of it.
Black Books Series One to Three
A return to an old classic. Still good.
Book of Boba Fett Season One
This show started strong, looking like it was about land reclamation and had a great sequence of Boba Fett acting like a grumpy coach of a sports team when he was training Tusken Raiders to ride speeder bikes. It felt like it gave in to some cowardice and became a few bonus Mandalorian episodes.
The Boys Season Three
I hated the comic of The Boys (despite loving Ennis and Robertson), and the TV show’s been far better than the original material. It was nice seeing Jensen Ackles in a non-Supernatural role for the first time in ages and he seemed to have fun as a terrible kind of Captain America type hero.
Pretty much the Mark Millar Captain America
Boys: Diabolical Season One
Another anthology show. Episodes fluctuated between being based on the show or the comic in moments. It was fine and didn’t outstay its welcome.
Bridgerton Season Two
I love a good Regency romance, and while Bridgerton isn’t high-minded or classic, it’s still a charming, fun show. There was a lot of heckling of Anthony for being rubbish and while there was too much made of the Queen’s “Diamond” this season and too many comparisons to that time the kids from Gossip Girl tried to find out who was actually Gossip Girl, it was still entertaining.
The Cuphead Show Season One
This was fine, I felt no motivation to watch season two.
Doctor Who: Power of the Doctor
You can find out my opinions in the Casual Trek bonus episode.
Fear the Walking Dead Season One
I’m late to the party here, but reading the Death Throes RPG and running Zombie World got me in the mood to finally watch it. The lack of need to do anything related to the comics felt kind of freeing.
FLCL
The RPG designer batts made a video about FLCL and I have an RPG based on it, but I’ve only just got round to seeing it. This was bonkers. I think it was fun?
Grand Designs
Look, I’m old, I get to like this. Actually, my wild university nights often involved RPG prep with a greyhound leaning on me and watching Time Team, so I think I was always this way. After listening to Trashfuture’s Britainology episode on Grand Designs, I had to watch some of the tales of hope and hubris. Especially the hubris.
House of the Dragon Season One
Out of Rings of Power and House of the Dragon only one got finished by me this year and it’s mainly because it was entertaining, sometimes frustrating trash. While having a lot more ground to play in means you have a lot of wiggle room, this show likes to skip forward to any dramatic moments we know from World of Ice & Fire. Emma bailed as she’d hoped it would be more High Fantasy Succession and I concur. We need to like someone in the show, but they’re all awful.
In-Betweeners Series One to Three
I only saw the first series of this and again, it became Lightning research. While elements have aged poorly, this was great fun and while my sixth form time was far nerdier than this, the tone of futile adolescent desperation is bang on.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Seasons One to Four
I’ve been rewatching this alongside the Always Sunny Podcast. It’s still very good, especially once Danny DeVito makes an appearance.
Kingdom Season Two and Ashin of the North
Lee and I watched this and finally got up to date. It felt like season two ended the story and then kept going in the promise of a season three which may not come. There was an A+ weasel character in Cho Beom-pal, and some incredibly tense moments. The film was good, but again there was the sense that it probably won’t go anywhere in the long run.
The Lake Season One
This show scratched my Gilmore Girls itch. A girl reconnects with her biological father as he tries to win back his family’s lake house from his stepsister. It’s light fluff, with some really fun episodes and a quirky supporting cast. The man the dad’s into also makes recreations of crime scenes using taxidermied animals, which is quick the character trait.
Moon Knight Season One
The modern MCU content is so wildly varied these days. A lot of Moon Knight was good, from Oscar Isaac’s performance, F Murray Abraham as a cranky Venom-style voice in his head and the more psychedelic moments. It could have gone weirder.
Ms Marvel Season One
I loved Kamala Khan, her family, her world and the presentation style of ‘what if Spider-Verse but in the real world?’. Her change to glowy CGI powers and the whole season waiting to get her a costume and codename felt like an old school live action take on a superhero and was less welcome. Hopefully we’ll get more of her actually being a hero.
Nathan For You Seasons Two & Three
God, this show hurt at times. It’s really good fun and was entertaining to watch Lee’s increasing sense of horror with each episode.
Never Mind the Buzzcocks Series 29-30
I didn’t realise Greg Davies was hosting this, and it was good fun. Even Noel Fielding was alright and over the years I’ve generally found him incredibly irritating.
Obi-Wan Kenobi Season One
I was tired of Star Wars and ready to hate this. Let’s ignore the oddness of the Kid Leia of it all and just revel in an old master and young kid getting up to hijinks in the increasingly awful Empire-occupied galaxy. There were some great ‘mundanity of evil’ moments and Rebels putting it on the line, which prepared me for Andor which I’m not finished watching but have been loving.
Not actually from the series, I just wanted to post this gif.
Orville Season One
I wanted a Star Trek, but one with the feeling of hope, wonder and joy of how I remember Star Trek being. This was a good substitute until Strange New Worlds came out, even with the Seth MacFarlane of it all.
Paper Girls
To call this a Stranger Things type show feels reductionist, but the comparisons have to be made. This show felt more personal, more interesting and even though the cast aren’t always in the 80’s, the sense of the awfulness of the 80’s rather than the neon nostalgia of it was good. I’m so annoyed this isn’t getting another season.
I had this hair in 1991.
Picard Season Two
I finally got round to finishing Picard Season two. An improvement on season one, but still the weakest of the current Star Trek shows.
Reboot Season One
I love television and comic inside baseball, so a comedy about a reboot of a 2000’s era sitcom was perfect for me. It was really enjoyable, if a bit short.
Riverdale Season Six
Riverdale went full on insane and I loved it. It starts strong with a parallel spooky reality called Rivervale, super powers, witchcraft, an ancient fight against evil, the afterlife is a diner and memory is a long box of old comics.
Simpsons Season Sixteen
When I first got Disney Plus, I decided to watch beyond where I finished with The Simpsons (around season nine). I heard it got bad and wanted to see it die for myself. I’ve given up early in season seventeen as man, it drops off in quality quickly.
Star Trek Lower Decks Season Three
This show is still surprisingly good for a MacFarlane/Roiland-looking cartoon. I’m always wary with a D&D type episode, as much as I normally love a Ren Faire planet, but this season had one which wasn’t as bad as some TV show attempts to do an RPG.
Superstore Season Six
I enjoyed the first five seasons last year and the last season finally got released. It was one of the first things I saw which dealt with the pandemic, especially at a worker’s perspective (You had it from a wealthy suburbanite’s perspective before this, but that was about it).
The Thick of It Series One to Three and Specials
This year in politics made me yearn to watch something with less chaos, where the incompetence was more interesting and less destructive, so I rewatched The Thick of It.
What We Do in the Shadows Season Three
As good as the previous seasons, even if I didn’t initially care for the idea of the vampire nightclub. Both that, what they did with Colin Robinson and a terrible building show pastiche make for good moments.
Casual Trek is not a Doctor Who podcast. We made this clear from the very start. Much like how I’d be insufferable if this was an X-Men podcast, so would Miles be if this was a Doctor Who podcast.
And yet, here we are.
I’ve been a slightly more casual fan of Doctor Who as I am Star Trek. I came to it late, didn’t care much for it at first and learnt to enjoy the show as time went on.
A lot of the later Moffat years and the Chibnall ones have tested my enjoyment, although there’s always been at least one good episode per series. While I message back and forth with Miles most days, I’d not bothered with the special final Jodie Whittaker Doctor Who episode, but Miles wanted to talk about it and I wanted a reason to care.
Miles suggested we do a bonus episode and I provided the caveats that 1) I not have to watch it beforehand and 2) I not edit it, as I do the editing chores and had too much to do already. He was good with it, so here we are.
Does Miles convince me to watch Doctor Who? Probably, but can I be bothered to do it anytime soon instead of leaving it most of a year like with the previous series?
Also as Miles keeps going on about Blake’s 7, I’ve decided not to watch it, which means his choice of episode name went right over my head as a Blake’s 7 reference. There will have to be vengeance.
I love a bit of horror, but there was a point watching this trio of Tribble episodes where I snapped.
There are only three proper episodes about tribbles, not counting the Short Trek and a couple of cameos of what I can only assume are neutered tribbles in other shows. They’re a small part of the universe, but an iconic one, being a cute ball of hair that purrs. It’s also got some horrifying implications when you think about the Tribbles and the things which go on with their biology.
Sometimes we have problems with Casual Trek’s format; mainly that the more serialised episodes (I’m looking at you, Discovery) don’t fare as well in translation. I’m still eager to try to call them on their own merits. This time, we’ve got a really cool thing to happen through Casual Trek’s format. We have two episodes of different shows which are both telling different perspectives of the same story, and we have a direct sequel in another show.
In theory this gives us a level of focus we may not normally have, but we still manage to lose our minds with some parts of the stories and go on a lot of tangents. Miles somehow doesn’t go on a long Blake’s 7 tangent, even though I did give him a perfect opportunity.
The Original Series: The Trouble With Tribbles
Kirk having a time of it, covered in what turns out to be Tribble corpses.
The first episode is one where I’ve not seen it, but I may as well have given the amount of times clips have been shown no images shared.
You’ve got the tension of the Cold War between the Klingons and the Federation in an outpost on the border of both factions. Spies, espionage, fights and all of this is somehow a comedy episode. Even better, it’s a comedy episode that works!
Kirk and Spock act as the straight men to the situation even though they start out trying to be flippant about having to look after grain. The Enterprise crew have some fun on shore leave, get a worrying new pet and get in some fights with Klingons who are also on shore leave.
Deep Space Nine: Trials and Tribble-Ations
Sisko and Dax in their retro outfits.
The next episode takes us to the 90’s and a point where the Forrest Gump technology now can be used on television shows. We’re late enough in Deep Space Nine that there’s been a lot of serious stuff going down, so I’m guessing this was quite a respite.
It’s always nice getting the crew of a Star Trek in an unfamiliar place and the brightly-coloured Star Trek TOS era is a great setting for a break from the otherwise fairly industrial grime of DS9.
I’ve watched this episode once or twice before, but never really paid attention to the plot. The antagonist of The Trouble With Tribbles is out of prison and cons his way to get close to a Time Orb, sending himself and the DS9 crew back to the first episode.
There are fun shenanigans all throughout, as the cast interact with past technology, problems and characters. Bashir has a classic time travel quandary which he approaches in a very Bashir way, and Odo actually smiles.
Watching this immediately after The Trouble With Tribbles was a joy. There wasn’t anything which I was confused about between them and neither is necessary to watch with the other, but they both add more to each other.
The Animated Series: More Tribbles, More Troubles
Kirk, tormented by tribbles again.
Finally, we move on from the initial K7 incident. The Enterprise has to take from automated grain ships back to Sherman’s Planet in order to finally allow the Federation to settle the place. I like the idea of the robotic ships filled with grain being moved about. You’d expect them to simply be crates in a cargo bay normally, but this creates a new visual and logistical challenges.
We also get the return of Cyrano Jones, who I probably mispronounce all the way through the episode. He has some bright pink tribbles, which was the result of someone with colourblindness being in charge of these decisions.
They can’t breed to the ludicrous level they could in the previous episodes, but there are more troubling implications about what goes on.
The story for this one’s a bit of a nothing, but it’s the first direct sequel to an episode that I’ve seen and after the previous two, it felt fairly nice to get more of this arc.
The episodes can be found on all podcatchers, on Spotify or using this link:
There are so many Star Trek shows now. It’s incredibly cool, as someone who got into it back when there were four, only three of which were in rotation on the few channels we had. When Miles and I were talking about Casual Trek and the premise of watching three episodes from different Star Treks at a time, we pondered the animations. It was enough having a two-parter to start us off, covering each of the pilot episodes from the live action shows. Strange New Worlds was only just starting to air so we were able to put that off. Picard was going to be difficult so we could put that off for even longer, which left the question of the animated episodes.
If we covered them, it would give us an increased pool of things to choose from and there were some fun ideas which would only work if we included cartoons. Luckily, there were three Star Trek animated series to choose from, so we were able to build a whole episode where we looked at the pilots of each show.
The Animated Series: Beyond the Farthest Star
I’d heard about the animated series, but I never knew where it aired on TV and managed to fairly easily resist buying the boxed set of DVDs. If I was too casual to get those red, yellow and blue clamshell Original Series DVDs, why would I bother with the weird white and orange animated series one?
The most I knew about it came from The Centre Seat, the Star Trek documentary which was on Prime. I’d heard about the re-used animations and some of the old Star Trek plots which never got used and were converted for this. Also that there were some issues with not being able to afford everyone, so Chekhov ended up being not included as an actor.
Beyond the Farthest Star does a better job than I thought of showing things which you couldn’t in live action, like a big weird alien ship. The enemy is one of those cosmic entities Star Trek has a lot of, although it is a big of a whiner. We also get a glimpse of the alien they replaced Chekhov with, although he doesn’t get any lines yet.
Lower Decks: Second Contact
I was so ready to hate this. I’ve made it very clear on the show that I don’t care for Seth MacFarlane’s whole cartoon oeuvre. I’ve enjoyed The Orville far more than I thought I would, although that’s often despite the Seth MacFarlane of it all. I know this isn’t by Seth MacFarlane, it’s by a Rick & Morty person, which is its own problem, but it bears a lot of the hallmarks of his work.
Lower Decks starts off better than I thought, although I’m pretty sure I left it a little while between the first and second episode. Where I’m at now, having seen multiple seasons, I really like Lower Decks.
I think the main difference is that Lower Decks has its daft fun and its references, but it still buys into the world. The hope, neediness and swashbuckling heroism of Starfleet. The fact that a rage zombie virus is just another day of the week, but you’re not going to be completely aloof and deadened to it. I think this is why I’ve got issues with Deadpool, too. He doesn’t sell investment in the world, unless it’s directly about him.
This episode got ranked fairly low, but being here means that there’s nowhere to go but up and it opens up a lot of fun episodes to mix and match with the live action ones.
Prodigy: Lost & Found (Parts 1 & 2)
The most recent Star Trek cartoon was billed as a kind of “Star Trek for kids” and also “We’ve got Janeway”. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I kind of didn’t bother reading up on it or seeing the fan reaction, which I assumed was going to be negative.
I watched the first episode on Paramount Plus when I was in a Trek mood and I’d been saving Strange New Worlds to watch with my partner. I wasn’t impressed and figured I’d wait literally until I had to watch it for Casual Trek. Seeing the first episode again for the episode I realised something I hadn’t checked before… it was a two-parter.
The episode’s still got that kind of modern CGI kids cartoon kind of vibe, which doesn’t look at first blush like a Star Trek thing. For some reason in my mind it’s more of a style compatible with Star Wars, but there’s Star Trek peppered throughout this. I gather that like Lower Decks, it only improves from here, so I’m really interested in seeing how it goes and may even watch some episodes outside of the viewing requirements for Casual Trek.
The episodes can be found on all podcatchers, on Spotify or using this link:
If you ever wanted to see the inside of a Clanger, this is pretty much what I reckon they look like.
I love horror, so it was great planning and working out how to do a specifically horror-themed episode. There are actually a ton of spooky Star Trek episodes, so I’ve several for future Halloweens, if we’re still doing this in a year or two (which hopefully we will).
The Next Generation: Genesis
This was the first episode I thought of, and one which instantly got the reaction from Miles that he switched this off as a kid. I knew I was onto a good one here. It’s from the furthest in a show’s running that we’ve looked at and it’s fascinating seeing the increase in budget mixed with the balls out insanity that they know they can get away with.
The alternative title for the episode.
Voyager: The Thaw
I must have seen this when I saw the first two seasons of Voyager, but my mind repressed it. This is not a good episode, but when I saw “Evil Clown Matrix Situation” I knew I had to try it. Also Voyager’s been woefully underrepresented, so we’ll be featuring a bit more of them in the near future. If you like a sinister crèche or rec centre, this episode’s got you covered.
The Original Series: Catspaw
Now this is some proper spoopy Halloween party kind of episode. There’s an eeeevil castle, dry ice, skeletons in a dungeon. There are some references to Great Old Ones, a whole Kitten Kong looking situation and Chekhov’s impressively bad wig.
The episodes can be found on all podcatchers, on Spotify or using these links:
Faked Tales 