Due to a description of some mysterious events relayed by a Twitter friend this morning. I feel compelled to tell you of a great game and great CoC Keeper.
Sherman, set the Wayback machine for the mid eighties.
Gathered around a dining room table, lights turned low, Wagner player low on the stereo. 3 adolescent boys huddled over one of the earliest editions of Call of Cthulhu. One keeper and 2 players. Now, being the adolescents we were back then, we had wild flights of fantasy. The two players, One Mr. Steve Martin (NO not that Steve Martin) and yours truly, Temmogen Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse and all around good guy. Of course I went by a different name back then. A name that wasn't so grandiose. The keeper was an older guy by about 6 or 7 years. That's a testament to his patience that he would actually play with us lunatics. Pat was probably my oldest friend. I knew him since I first started high school. Pat died a few years back from complications due to diabetes, and I do miss him. But I digress...
Anyway... We two boneheads had decided we wanted to play ourselves in the game. Yes yes, this shows a stunning lack of maturity and imagination, but we were young and we had a plan. If we played ourselves, we could take all of "so called" knowledge from current day and defeat any threat thrown at us. Remember I did say we were young. Among the entertainments Steve and myself pursued irl, was shooting out streetlights with his bb gun. Just. Don't. Ask. Idiocy runs in in the age group. Anyway, Pat knew of this and had a little surprise for us.
There we were, sitting is Steve's Camaro down at the Castle Pines exit of the highway. Loading the bb gun in preparation of some prime glass shattering. We pulled up stealthily under our intended victim, when all of a sudden the streetlight sprouted arms and a pair of baleful red eye stalks. Panic ensued. At the table and in the game. We started looking frantically for anything to kill off the newly dubbed "Lamploths". Steve blew one drive skill check, and that was all our devious keeper needed. We ended up driving into a ginormous propane tank and getting blown back through time. We awoke to the face of a very befuddled looking professor from one Miskatonic University. He was about to start dissection procedure on the two strangely dressed humanoids that had been discovered at the site of an oil well explosion in New Jersey.
We had to revise our plan. In case anyone is wondering, it is considerably harder to steal dynamite in the present day world. Back in the 20's and 30's, they weren't so strict with it. During the course of that game, Steve and I managed to blow up 5 cars and at least 2 multi story domiciles. Much to the chagrin of our NPC handlers. We never did get those Byakhee.
Yes we died in a construction site explosion while attempting to steal more dynamite (The Arkham police had started locking it up because of our antics) but for 3 months, we had a blast. Very few games have been that much fun since. I miss Pat. But he did give me the gift of many pleasant gaming memories. Remind to tell you about Alastair Carstai's adventures in Algeria one day...
Happy Gaming!
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