The GROGNARD files returns with the Return of Call of Cthulhu with the return of Lynne Hardy. This time she faces the Keeper’s Screen to reveal her Arcane secrets. She talks about her contribution to the Dying Earth Role-Playing Game, Cogs, Cakes and Swordsticks, the game she designed, and more news about upcoming Chaosium releases that we can look forward to in the coming months.
In the introduction, I refer to it as Episode 47, it’s not, but what are numbers. I have never understood our bizarre numbering system. This show note counts as Errata. We delve into Different Worlds Issue 19 which was a Call of Cthulhu special and features errata, essays by Sandy Petersen and Lyn Willis and more.
The Post Bag returns with comments from listeners. If you are interested in hearing more from The God Learners podcast, you’ll find it where you get your podcasts.
We share a hoary old story about a trip to Morecambe, where nothing really happened, but it was character forming.
This episode features an advert for Tale of the Manticore.
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What are numbers, you ask. I will ask you what a skill is.
It’s never made sense, going back as far those bloody classical Greeks. There was Socrates (the well-known sock puppet operated by Plato) saying stuff like ‘is not Ruling a skill like Breeding Horses or Commanding a Ship?’ ‘You’re right, Socrates!’ all the lesser characters would cry. “What manner of skill is it? What is its aim? For all skills must have an aim, must they not? Is not the aim of Breeding Horses having healthy horses? And is not the aim of Ruling….” On and on like that for whole bloody pages until they’ve decided that to make a perfect society the first thing they have to do is ban poets, playwrights and other rogues and vagabonds.
And never bloody once did they ask “What do we mean by the word ‘skill’, lads?”
And neither do most RPGs. Is shooting a gun one skill? Is acting? Is Writing? Is xenobiology or do you have to learn each world’s ecology and life forms seperately?
Honestly, I dunno. Sometimes I just want to throw the whole idea over and go with something as wiffly as you get in Heroquest (which we must call Questworlds from the end of the month or have Hasboro on our cases) or OVER THE EDGE. But gamers like the idea of skills, I suspect because before there were skills there were only character classes. Ah, well progress of a sort.
And by the way, fellas, The Dread League of People With Silly Sounding Names has been notified that you are making mock and will likely declare you Anathema and organise a Terrible Vengeance on you.
Yours
The Man Whose Surname Means Rude Things In French & Italian.
Hi Dirk
Neither you or Lynne Hardy knew what had happened to the rights to use the Dying Earth IP for an RPG. I believe it’s with Goodman Games who have a Dying Earth sourcebook and adventures for their Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG live as a Kickstarter at the moment. I almost backed it until it became clear the shipping costs to the UK doubled the cost of the pledge. It was a shame as I’d looked forward to this Kickstarter for over a year, but I consoled myself by ordering a secondhand copy of the Pelgrane Press Dying Earth Roleplaying Game (currently in my local Post Office Collection Office). Very pleased to learn that Lynne was involved with that, and it may well be that shipping costs may have inadvertently steered on on to a better course.