Miskatonic University Podcast

This episode, Keepers Dave & Bridgett conduct a deep dive on Graham Walmsley’s Cthulhu Dark! Campus Crier The Campus Crier is where we talk about recent Mythos-related events and happenings in the world. This episode was recorded on April 20, 2023, and here’s Keeper Bridgett with a report on Chaosium Con 2023!  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 Rachel Cutler, Graham Walmsley I’m hosting the next movie night, and guess what, Dave? It’s gonna be on April 29th! The weird thing, it will have already happened by the time this show drops! Lol. It was an AMAZING time. Laugh were had. Unless it was a sad movie, then likely… laughs were still had.  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 (or maybe Dave) for editing this episode. Thanks Max (or maybe Dave)!  Bridgett’s Pet Pick Shout Out This episode I’d like to shout out Leo, from listener and hype squad of the show, Evan Perlman! Leo is pictured at daycare with a dashing smile and model levels of posing. This Portuguese water dog is absolutely STUNNING! Thanks for sharing Leo with us, Evan, and thanks for breaking the bottle over the back of the “fresh MUP” ship each time it sails. Main Topic That Graham interview was so fantastic. I hope we can get him back sometime before 2033. At least 2032. To build on that conversation, which I was sorry to miss, I wanted to get us talking about Cthulhu Dark and other rules light investigative games. We both have experience with CD, so let’s start with a couple questions about the gameplay. First– let’s discuss the rules– because they’re decadent!  What are your favorite parts of running or playing in a CD game? What is a favorite story from a CD game that couldn’t happen in a game with more mechanics? What do you think is different when playing a CD scenario? What do you think is different when running a CD scenario? What do you think is different when designing a CD scenario? Do you miss anything from CD or other rules light investigative games? How would you design a rules light game differently?

This episode, Keepers Murph, Dave, and Bridgett welcome cartographer extraordinaire, the writer and publisher of Pirate Borg, Luke Stratton! 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 Sean for editing this episode. Thanks Sean!  Bridgett’s Pet Pick Shout Out I’m shouting out the doggo Charlie from listener Dan Tice, who is absolutely SLAYING her Pirate Borg costume. Puppy pirates for the win. Now give her some booty! Main Topic —  Welcome to Luke Stratton! https://www.meetup.com/shipofthedead https://linktr.ee/limithron https://www.patreon.com/limithron

This episode, Keeper Murph runs Keepers Dave and Bridgett through an impromptu game of mystery and delight as they return to the Gardens of Ynn! 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!

This episode, Keepers Dave and Bridgett welcome back friend to the show Oscar Rios to discuss Golden Goblin Press, Invictus, the definition of a hero, and The Legacy of Arrius Lurco. Campus Crier The Campus Crier is where we talk about recent Mythos-related events and happenings in the world. This episode was recorded on February 23, 2023.  Step further into the dark with the latest supplement for Call of Cthulhu! Nameless Horrors contains 6 scenarios featuring brand new elements of the Mythos that will keep even the most seasoned Investigator on their toes! Available worldwide March 8th.  Good news – Laird Barron is home from the hospital! He of course has a long road to recovery but being home is a good indication that he’s heading in the right direction. For those who missed it, there is a Go Fund Me available to support his medical expenses that has raised $136,000 or so at the time of recording. Thank you to all listeners who supported Laird, and we wish him continued recovery. Speaking of needing help, Lovecraft Arts & Sciences is holding its Lovecraft Arts & Sciences 2023 Winter Fundraiser. Similar to the situation a couple years ago, they find themselves coming up short on the funding needed to keep the business running. Turns out NecronomiCon, for starters, was much more expensive than usual – with prices increasing across the board and attendance overall down from its normal capacity. Necro, the store, and all the supporting infrastructure is already run mostly on volunteer labor, and so the shortfall from last year now puts longevity at risk. The fundraiser is nearing $12k at time of recording, and we all know how important Necronomicon is to the community at large. Please take a moment to donate – even $5 adds to the bucket.  Free League prepares to launch their kickstarter for The Walking Dead Universe RPG. Free League released two new game licenses for community creators – a Free Tabletop License (FTL) for the Year Zero Engine and a third-party license for the upcoming Dragonbane fantasy RPG. Finally, with the OGL controversy momentarily in our mirrors, the newest craziness occupying geek-minds is the rapidly growing proliferation of AI-generated materials, including art and now fiction writing, and probably around the corner… ttrpg scenarios and settings. The community has been struggling with AI-generated art for a while and now people are using ChatGPT and similar tech to create fiction wholecloth. Neil Clarke, editor of SF fiction magazine Clarkesworld (among others), recently paused his submission intake due to being overwhelmed by AI-generated stories. He wrote a very detailed blogpost, including stats and stories on how this technology has blossomed to overtake his meager intake resources. Worth a read if you want to see how this is specifically affecting the broader community.  On the same note, Chaosium announced recently that it has banned AI art in its community creator communities, and one might think other creator communities would soon take similar measures. 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 This week, I’d like to shout Cashew in their Puppy Palace by listener and fan of the show GardenGM. Main Topic —  Welcome Oscar Rios to the show!!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/golden-goblin-press/the-legacy-of-arrius-lurco-updated-for-7th-edition

This episode Keepers Murph and Dave are left unsupervised. Not even Keeper Bridgett knows what happened. Patreon Plug & Update This episode was recorded on February 9, 2023.  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! Dave’s movie night is on February 26th, so mark your calendars! This is a correction from the last episode where I said the 25th. So it’s the 26th at noon PT and 3pm ET – afternoon movie! At the time of recording our survey is still open for a few more days, but if I was a guessing man, which I most definitely am, I would guess that the 2018 remake of Suspiria is going to be our movie of choice. Finally we need to acknowledge a number of new backers. We have been remiss in calling out you amazing people, so we’re going through a number of folks who joined last October when we stopped doing it for some unknown reason.  Steve Skellet  Jay Rendon Justin Kahn TLemon65 Kamuela Enos John Tyler Steve Wallace Liam O’Connell GardenGM 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!  Main Topic — 

This episode, Keepers Murph, Dave, and Bridgett chat with industry superstar, leader, coach, author, screenwriter, professional GM (and more), B. Dave. Walters. Bridgett got super distracted with both his and Murph’s voice– hence the episode title. We’re not sorry. Campus Crier The Campus Crier is where we talk about recent Mythos-related events and happenings in the world. This episode was recorded on January 26, 2023. Pound-sign facts. Something that will come as a surprise to no one who funds TTRPG Kickstarters, Funagain Logistics is closing. Another casualty of the Covid-inflicted shipping crisis – they just couldn’t keep up with the chaos and demand on their operations. They will fulfill their current agreements and continue shipping through April 30th, but after that no more complaining about Funagain and their shipping of Free League kickstarters. Update on Laird Barron and his condition, a GoFundME campaign has been started for the author Laird Barron who has been hospitalized in serious condition. Mike Davis from the Lovecraft eZine has organized this and so far they have managed to raise over $133k. Laird is still in the hospital but in stable condition, though he still has a long way to go, and that is going to cost a lot of money. American healthcare is bullshit. Aint Slayed won the Top Actual Play Podcast from ENWORLD!  Congratulations!!! Amazing team, fantastic games, and well deserved award for sure. Welcome to the Hall of Fame yo! The OGL Fiasco rolls on. In the two weeks since we last recorded, the situation has evolved, and yet, everything that was put in motion with the leaked OGL 1.1 has continued in play. Wizards, through D&D Beyond, issued not one but two statements. The first when they tried to just “whoops we’re sorry!” and then slightly alter the terms of the new OGL. And then after that just made things worse, they apologized again and then created a new 1.2 OGL which they have actually released as a draft this time for the community to help determine the terms. Or something like that.  Meanwhile, as mentioned before, out of all the chaos many game companies have collected their D&D toys and left 5e behind. For good. Paizo, creator of the largest OGL 1.0 licensed-games Pathfinder and Starfinder, has announced they are creating the irrevocable Open RPG Creative License (ORC). They are tracking a still-growing list of companies that have joined them, at least 1500 publishers as of recording, including Chaosium, EN Publishing, Fantasy Grounds, Foundry and Roll20, Frog God Games, Goodman Games, Green Ronin, Kobold Press, Pelgrane Press, and many many more. You can find a link to an updated list on the Paizo community boards.  It looks like Wizards is now in full reputation rescue mode now, but it looks like the damage has been done. WOTC has also announced they are going to release the core rules of D&D as Creative Commons content later on another sure sign that they are desperate to fix their image. There is a movement to boycott the upcoming D&D movie that has gained some traction. People hope to send a message to Wizards that they don’t appreciate being viewed as dollar signs, and so they want to flip that around and hurt Wizards and Hasbro where it counts. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves arrives in theaters on March 31, 2023 and you may want to avoid seeing it in the first week or so when it’s in theaters to help send a message. It seems like most of the big moves have played out, at least for now, and if Wizards wanted to stop people from making money on 5e then they have most definitely succeeded. But we haven’t seen the actual ramifications yet, as content creators are still moving things around, the ORC isn’t actually a thing yet, and OGL 1.2 is trying to squeeze its way back into the collective consciousness. So we stay wary and alert, passing our Spot Hidden rolls with EXTREME success. 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! Dave’s movie night is on! February 25th! Give me a couple days to organize it, but we should have surveys out by the beginning of February. Mark your calendars! 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 mucho mucho to our new editor Moe for editing this episode. Thanks Moe! And thanks Nate for editing 263. Great first edit. Bridgett’s Pet Pick Shout Out “Sending happy belated birthday love to Emmy, from backer Adam! This dog in the basket is too much. I can’t even. Happy birthday sweet girl! Tell your Dad that Auntie Bridgey says it’s okay for you to her extra belated birthday treats!” Main Topic —  B. Dave Walters! His academy: https://www.undisputedacademy.com/ Lead designer: https://motherlandsrpg.com/ Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/writing-about-dragons-and-shit/id1566161120 And most people know him as Victor on LA by Night (Geek and Sundry)

This episode Keepers Bridgett, Dave and Murph riff on what it must be like to grow up as a deepone hybrid! Campus Crier The Campus Crier is where we talk about recent Mythos-related events and happenings in the world. This episode was recorded on January 12, 2023. Happy new year everyone!  The main topic of conversation for pretty much everyone in the whole TTRPG industry is the leaking of Wizards of the Coasts OGL 1.1 last week and coverage by Gizmodo in a story called The Dungeons & Dragons’ OGL 1.1 Tightens Grip On Competition. While Wizards has yet to release an official response to the leak and subsequent uproar and backlash, many prominent game publishers have already announced complete changes in their business models and game systems (including partnering with newer systems such as Mork Borg). The hashtag OpenDND was Trending earlier today on Twitter, and is an open letter to WOTC to back off. Most prominently, Kobold Press and MCDM, both top publishers of supplemental 5e materials, have announced their own game systems that will be truly open and available for use by others. Other publishers have begun scaling back production and support for 5e materials,or shutter them entirely. Naturally, everyone has plenty to say about it all. Even Denis Detwiller and Arc Dream Publishing was forced to make a statement, which, to our listeners at least, should be funny as hell. There’s a lot to unpack with the Wizard’s announcement, official or not. And they have not yet responded to the leak in any public fashion as of the time of recording, in fact they have delayed any such announcement several times. I know some of our audience may not know how this potentially affects them, but if you enjoy games or any other media products that rely on the OGL, then this affects you. There has been some claims that they are “dismantling the RPG Industry” which should raise alarmist concerns for those, like many of our listeners, that don’t deal with WOTC or DnD. But there are a few key things to take from Wizard’s proposed changes to the OGL: They are seeking to revoke OGL 1.0a, which as unpopular as it may be, is entirely legal as far as I can tell. They are taking a cut from the signers of the new OGL based on a tiered system that has the highest tier giving 25% of income to WOTC. Signees of the new OGL will give the irrevocable, non-transferable rights to their creations in perpetuity to WOTC to use however they wish. Any crowdfunding will also have to pay revenue to WOTC, as above,, and have additional strings attached Virtual Tabletops will no longer be able to support OGL products, as everything OGL will likely have to go through OneDnD’s own VTT instead. We are still in the early parts of how this rolls out, and by the time this is live we will have certainly learned more. But however this lands, it is sure to cast a long shadow over how creators engage with Wizards and 5e going forward. And Paizo comes in with some last second additions to the news, announcing the Open RPG Creative license (ORC for short) that will be “built system agnostic for independent game publishers under the legal guidance of Azora Law, an intellectual property law firm that represents Paizo and several other game publishers.” The idea is to provide a system-agnostic license that anyone can use with their own ruleset to publicly release. You can find out more about this and all of our news in the show notes, or on our Discord where this is a constant topic of discussion. Modiphius recently announced a new addition to their community content program! In addition to the standard 2d20 World Builder program, Modiphius is now offering creators the chance to create content for their beloved Achtung! Cthulhu IP. The content guidelines are different to the standard ones. You can find the 2d20 Licensed World Builders Content Guidelines and creator resources in the link below. https://www.modiphius.net/pages/2d20worldbuilders In a bit of bad news for the weird fiction community, a GoFundME campaign has been started for the author Laird Barron who has been hospitalized in serious condition. Mike Davis from the Lovecraft eZine has organized this and so far they have managed to raise over 100k. Our thoughts and dollars https://www.gofundme.com/f/laird-barron-hospital-costs-medication-costs 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! Dave needs to schedule his own movie night! Right Dave? Yes! I want to watch something as an inspiration for the Masks game, so we’ll find something on Prime probably. A quick look at my watchlist says – Indiana Jones, Hellraiser, and The Lost City of Z are all available now. I’ll talk with my scheduler and get something on the books for February! 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. MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D  And thank you mucho mucho to Nate for editing this episode! Bridgett’s Pet Pick Shout Out This episode I’d like to announce a rare sighting. HelloSpaceBoys’s nearly 20 year old cat, Mazikeen, was seen being adorable. Try not to make a big fuss– she’s super shy. Thanks for sharing your cat with us. Let’s move onto the main topic.  Main Topic Deep one hybrids. What’s life like for children of two worlds?

This episode, Keeper Murph runs Keepers Dave and Bridgett through an impromptu game of mystery and delight! Happy New Year, MUP family! 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. MU Discord server invite link: https://discord.gg/vNjEv9D  And thank you beaucoup to Murph for editing this episode.  Main Topic —  The Gardens of Ynn. This episode was recorded on December 29th, 2022.