Miskatonic University Podcast

This episode, Keepers Murph & Bridgett unpack Vampire: The Masquerade,.We’re joined by backer Mike Diamond! Listen as we attempt to crash through mechanics, lore, history, clans, disciplines, and more in under 90 minutes. Campus Crier The Campus Crier is where we talk about recent Mythos-related events and happenings in the world. This episode was recorded Thursday, July 27th, 2023. This has been a BIG quarter for Chaosium. The Pendragon Starter Set is out, they’ve released the first volumes of the Cults of RuneQuest books, multiple ENnie nominations including Rivers of London, the Bookshops of Arkham actual play, Community Content, and more! And now, they’ve just announced a new board game adaption of Call of Cthulhu’s Horror on the Orient Express! Horror on the Orient Express: The Board Game brings the award-winning Call of Cthulhu horror and mystery TTRPG into the world of board gaming. Special rules, ongoing character development, and awesome play pieces all providing a challenging and exciting gaming experience. Horror on the Orient Express: The Board Game is a cooperative game in which you and other investigators have to survive on the doomed train. To win, you must discover and hunt out the cultists to stop them performing a hideous ritual, as well as make sure that the train reaches its destination. With all manner of dangers facing you, the challenge is to survive, stop the horrors of the Dreamlands, and prevent calamity. The Kickstarter for the game launches next year, with a planned release date in 2025.  Speaking of ENnie nominees, let’s shout out just a handful of congratulations to our friends and previous guests who are being recognized! Apologies if we missed anyone, it wasn’t intentional!  In other news, the community is BUZZING! The Old Gods of Appalachia kickstarter books are shipping and folk are going bonkers! At the time of recording, they’re arriving in inboxes and mailboxes nation. I’ll actually be picking up my rewards in person at GenCon next week.  Patreon Plug & Update We have a Patreon! To back us you can click the button on the sidebar of our website, mu-podcast.com or head over to Patreon directly at www.patreon.com/mup! The Discord Plug We have our MUP Discord and we are all there! We invite all of our listeners to come and enjoy the community of horror gaming and cute pet pics. Link in the show notes: MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D  And thank you to our editor Nate for editing this episode. Thanks Nate!  Bridgett’s Pet Pick Shout Out Shouting out and also welcoming home, Jackson Elias, from listener Targard! Bear, his other dog, is already my baby, and Jackson Elias is already settling in so nicely! Main Topic — Vampire: The Masquerade Unpack 

This episode, Keepers Murph & Bridgett riff on single location horror scenario ideas! Patreon Plug & Update We have a Patreon! To back us you can click the button on the sidebar of our website, mu-podcast.com or head over to Patreon directly at www.patreon.com/mup! Murph has a movie Night coming up on August 17th at 7:30pm Central time. The Discord Plug We have our MUP Discord and we are all there! We invite all of our listeners to come and enjoy the community of horror gaming and cute pet pics. Link in the show notes: MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D  And thank you to our editor Max for editing this episode. Thanks Max!  Bridgett’s Pet Pick Shout Out “Okay, listen. It’s worth going to our show notes to see Jasper, doggo of friend and fan of the show, FredKiesche. I recognize that it’s not winter, but you gotta see the look on this dog’s face as it launches itself through the snow. It’s the pick me up you need today, promise!” Main Topic — Single location horror scenarios Persons in house/apartment/room Persons in vehicle Locked-Room Mysteries Class struggle in the vein of Upstairs, Downstairs but downstairs hears the prep, staging, production, fallout, and eventual aftermath of the event upstairs. The event could be the KiY or a ritual, mass murder, etc. Might be a staff only game of Regency, set entirely within the kitchens. (Sort of inspired by Miss Julie.) Players would have to defend against their mutated “Betters” who are storming downstairs to eat, pray, and be merry. Guests are invited to a house party in a friend of a friend’s apartment. Their friend never shows up, and a few guests seemingly go missing. There could be some fatally locked room, akin to Bluebeard, but their friend is actually within the trunk/coffee table at the center of the living room (a la Hitchcock’s Rope).  A group of friends witness something horrible and are seen by the perpetrator, take a spin on Rear Window and have it based across the street from the original crime, with a single bad guy hell bent on murder, but a Charm skill that is astronomical.  Take a page from Coherence and have a group of friends get together while Miller’s Comet streaks by overhead. There is an exact replica of their house next door, populated with an exact replica of themselves as well. Unbeknownst to the players, one of the guests arrives late and stumbles into the wrong house, their house. Things go even further sideways when a third house is revealed to have been there in the opposite direction the entire time.. By the end no one should be able to determine which house is real nor who is the original version of themselves. A one-shot maybe solo game, where the player(s) are part of a boiler room, akin to Glengarry Glen Ross even with a sadistic Alec Baldwin-esque boss. But the player(s) have to cold call a list of senior citizens and get them to send you money, in order to stay alive. Every dollar you gain is another second to live. After the first few calls, they find out that they can exchange a life for a life, giving the player(s) a moral quandary of whether they can help cause an old person’s death in order for them to live. A pastiche of various scenarios done for a single or pair of players that is similar to Four Rooms. Each room would be a small self-contained scene that puts the player(s), the hotel staff, in dangerous and morally fraught situations. Could just mine other scenarios for single good scenes. But they are entirely separate from one another, once the hotel room door opens, it starts, and doesn’t stop until they leave the room. So it would have to be punchy and fast. Paranormal investigators arrive to investigate the goings on in room 1408 of a downtown hotel. From the moment that they enter the room they are presented with an alternate reality. Everytime they attempt to leave the room, the scene within changes and they are just entering it again. Could actually merge with above… Much like the film Exam, the players are all set in a closed room to take a test to see who will become the next CEO of a global corp. They are given three rules: not talk to the invigilator or the armed guard not spoil their paper  and stay in the room The paper they are given is blank. They are given some tasks that allow them to work together at first, but then it is a free-for-all of violence as it turns into Thunderdome for the office-set. Solo game, or maybe a GM +1, on a small spaceship where the player is alone floating in space amidst the shipwreck. They have one sealed chamber and a Jenga tower’s worth of Oxygen. Every action requires a brick to be moved in addition to skill checks with dice. Think of the beginning of The Stars My Destination by Bester mixed with Bissette’s The Wretched. Roll a 1d6 to see how many actions you have to do to stay alive today, each action requires a pull on the tower. They start with 10 tokens, each time they roll a nat 6 for the day, they remove a token, when they are out of tokens, they are rescued. A nat 6 also means that they don’t have to pull from the tower. (Could be modified to a single person on a sailboat a lá All is Lost, etc. where the tower = energy) I realize now that I am just bastardizing The Wretched, so maybe just play that instead? The Wretched by Chris Bissette Dockside Dogs by Paul Fricker Full Fathom Five by Paul Fricker

This episode, Keepers Murph and Dave interview one of their RPG heroes, Luca Rejec, the author of Ultraviolet Grasslands, Witchburner, Let Us In, and so many more. Patreon Plug & Update We have a Patreon! To back us you can click the button on the sidebar of our website, mu-podcast.com or head over to Patreon directly at www.patreon.com/mup! The Discord Plug We have our MUP Discord and we are all there! We invite all of our listeners to come and enjoy the community of horror gaming and cute pet pics. Link in the show notes: MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D  And thank you to our editor Moe for editing this episode. Thanks Moe!  Main Topic — Luka Rejec https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/

This episode, Keepers Murph & Dave hangout without Bridgett as part of our final summer vacation shows. Patreon Plug & Update We have a Patreon! To back us you can click the button on the sidebar of our website, mu-podcast.com or head over to Patreon directly at www.patreon.com/mup! Speaking of backers, we have one new backer to thank! Casey J Rudkin The Discord Plug We have our MUP Discord and we are all there! We invite all of our listeners to come and enjoy the community of horror gaming and cute pet pics. Link in the show notes: MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D  And thank you to our editor Sean for editing this episode. Thanks Sean!  Bridgett’s Pet Pick Shout Out Hey guys! It’s Bridgett, even though I sound like Dave! He’s my voice because I either don’t have one, or am too tired to use it. I’m shouting out Thalia, kittuh of friend and fan of the show John Tyler! John is awesome! Ask him about co-running a Regency Cthulhu game with me at Origins! Also, “Yar, Yar, Yar, Nar.” He was also in the most hilarious Pirate Borg game of my life. Thanks John for being awesome, and thank you for sharing this gorgeous caramel chocolate brownie with us!  Let’s move onto the main topic.  Main Topic — 

This episode, Keepers Murph, Dave, and Bridgett continue with their top 10 RPGS. Well, not Bridgett. Because she didn’t follow instructions. Enjoy! Patreon Plug & Update We have a Patreon! To back us you can click the button on the sidebar of our website, mu-podcast.com or head over to Patreon directly at www.patreon.com/mup! The Discord Plug We have our MUP Discord and we are all there! We invite all of our listeners to come and enjoy the community of horror gaming and cute pet pics. Link in the show notes: MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D  And thank you to our editor Nate for editing this episode. Thanks Nate!  Main Topic The hosts continue to unpack their favorite RPGS!

This episode, Keepers Murph and Bridgett riff on some of our local Urban Legends and Folklore in Games! Campus Crier The Campus Crier is where we talk about recent Mythos-related events and happenings in the world. This episode was recorded on May 4th, 2023! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/432915/Bayt-al-Azif-5-A-magazine-for-Cthulhu-Mythos-roleplaying-games https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/questingbeast/knave-rpg-second-edition https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ganzagaming/the-mystery-flesh-pit-national-park-rpg Patreon Plug & Update We have a Patreon! To back us you can click the button on the sidebar of our website, mu-podcast.com or head over to Patreon directly at www.patreon.com/mup! Speaking of backers, we have a belated thank you to Bucho Rodenberger Steven Nelson GeeMo Claire Mendelsohn The Discord Plug We have our MUP Discord and we are all there! We invite all of our listeners to come and enjoy the community of horror gaming and cute pet pics. Link in the show notes: MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D  And thank you to our editor Moe for editing this episode. Thanks Moe!  Bridgett’s Pet Pick Shout Out This week, I’d like to shout out Casper the rat from listener and fan of the show, Cultist Damon. This cutie could haunt me anytime. I wuv the wittle feeties. Main Topic —  Local Urban Legends and Folklore in Games