Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Just rolling along





The War Room - a shadow of itself

There's been entirely too much of honest toil and too little wargaming here at Chez Kinch for the last while. On the other hand, we are finally beginning to see some movement. After many weeks, I finally managed to convince a chap that he wants to sell me wood and that no amount of telling me what I really want is going to change my mind.  I know what I want and I'm inclined to get it.

So wood purchased this week, room cleared and there's the matter of clearing the rubble from underneath the joists so that my much hoped for trapdoor actually leads to some useful space.




Do I have a sufficiency of Call of Cthulhu books?

Well said, I didn't think so either.

In the absence of a suitable venue for wargaming and prompted by the recent unpacking of my Call of Cthulhu books, I ran a game of Call of Cthulhu for Mrs Kinch and some friends last night. I was very successful and I think might become a regular thing.

Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft, a distinctly odd fish, who wrote horror stories in the 1920s. The players take the role of ordinary folk who discover the strange doings and terrible alien monsters and decide to defend Mankind against the darkness by taking matters into their own hands. What is so interesting about it is that there's no guarantee that the players will succeed and the struggle is almost guaranteed to leave most of them maimed, dead or insane. There's something Sisyphean about it.

It was and remains the Rolls Royce of roleplaying games.






A Martello Tower seen on the way back - there were no French vessels in sight, 
so it seemed to be working

In other news, General Du Gourmand and I took went a trot recently, an eighteen miler from Dublin to Kingstown. It was fun and a welcome corrective after the excesses of the holiday season. We stopped off at our usual haunt for a spot of book buying - I picked up a pair of Chestertons while General Du Gourmand got the first volume of Lady Longfords biography of the Duke of Wellington.



16 comments:

  1. The room actually looks quite promising. Although to be fair sometimes one needs to be careful of promises.

    The first I'd ever heard of Call of Cthulhu was when RAFM released their figures for it and someone had to explain why and how the 3 versions of each figure were related. That was about the end too now I think of it.

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    1. On the plus side - I finally found a builders suppliers that will do the job.

      The Bob Murch figures were fun, but I couldn't really see myself ever using them in a game.

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  2. I loved CoC and bought a heap of the RAFM figures. Still got them somewhere. Not as many books as you though.

    Greg

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  3. I think a few more books would be in order. Hope you get the room seorted soon, must be hell after having one for so long

    Ian

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    1. It's really annoying because I love having the chaps over for a game and being able to leave the game set up is a boon. But onwards and upwards.

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  4. 'Call of Cthulhu' enjoyed a minor popularity in this part of the world about 20 years back, and I do believe there was a chapter, branch, affiliation of the New Church of the Great Old ones in this burg at ... about the... same ... ... time....

    Oooo. H'mmm. Nothing much doing for quite some time now. Years. Could it be that the subterranean upheavals over the last couple of years have been a warning to resume due obeisances or else swarms of scabrous and fungous excrescences will issue from the bowels of the earth to consume us all in a single horrifying onslaught of three-lobed eyes, tentacular physiognomies (No, that just Davy Jones, ain't it), and other squamous phenomena?

    But the outlook for Saturday is fine.
    Cheers,
    Ion

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  5. Looks like it's going to be a terrific gaming room, Conrad. Of course, it already was when featuring in your previous posts, but you know what I mean. And that's a deeply impressive collection of Call of Cthulhu books you have there, including that rarest of rarities, a copy of "Delta Green Cuontdown". I'm deeply envious!

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    1. Sidney, I live in hope! There's something I thought might interest you - drop me an email or leave a comment with yours which I won't publish.

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  6. The room has a fair bit of floor - it must be nearly finished!

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  7. One can never have too many CoC books. Or, apparently, wood

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  8. "H.P. Lovecraft, a distinctly odd fish"

    I see what you did there...

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  9. Well done Conrad - succumbed to Great Cthulhu again mate!! Great news you may play CoC on a regular basis again - what did you run for them?

    Frank
    http://adventuresinlead.blogspot.com.au/

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  10. and three cheers for Kingstown! I hope that the parcel made it safely to you, via the steam packet

    very best, as ever

    FLW

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