The Unspeakable Oath
By Toren Atkinson, Shane Ivey, Ross Payton
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Podcast Description
A Digest of Arcane Lore for Cthulhu Mythos Roleplaying Games
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ExplicitUnspeakable! Episode 5 – Greg Stolze and Historical Horror Gaming | It’s less than two months since the last monthly episode! That’s progress. Unspeakable! episode 5, at a svelte two hours and twenty minutes of uninterrupted Mythos gaming geekery, is hosted by Ross Payton of Role Playing Public Radio and Zombies of the World, Shane Ivey of Arc Dream Publishing and The Unspeakable Oath, and Adam Scott Glancy of Pagan Publishing. Today’s special guest is Greg Stolze, writer of many things for many games, including several Unspeakable Oath articles, nearly half of the award winning sourcebook Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity, and the new modern-day Cthulhu Mythos novel Mask of the Other. Subscribe to the Unspeakable! podcast feed at http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/?feed=podcast Or subscribe at iTunes. 0:00:00 INTRO. 0:00:21 WELCOME. Shane gets a better microphone and Greg loses his name. 0:02:15 SPONSORS. They signed on for one issue and three episodes, but we still haven’t finished the next issue so they get extra episodes free. Score! Miskatonic River Press with The Legacy of Arrius Lurco. Atlas Games with Cliffourd the Big Red God and Cthulhu Gloom. Innsmouth Free Press with Historical Lovecraft and lots of other things. The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, with the next show this May in Portland, Ore. 0:06:09 NEWS. Delta Green: Strange Authorities by John Scott Tynes is getting new material! So it’ll take a little longer. Oath 21 still languishes under Shane’s slacking and Scott’s overdue Delta Green column. Greg demands to know whether things that he wrote will be in the new issue. The outline for Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game is under review. Will it have more than just shotguns? If Shane has his way, Greg and Ken Hite will soon take over rules development. Greg Stolze’s hands are made of baby butts. Coming soon: An awesome reading of the original Delta Green teaser story, “Final Report,” recorded by longtime radio announcer Allan Tynes, the father of author John Scott Tynes. We’ll have a snippet of it this episode and the whole thing online for listening soon. Kickstarter approved Pagan Publishing’s Bumps in the Night fundraiser so it’ll go live soon. DriveThruRPG is working on high-res PDFs of Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown to put them on sale. Ross pronounces “Hastur” funny. We love the Hotel Carcosa. Ross’ new story is “Zombies in Afghanistan.” Ross is putting recordings together for YouTube and AP podcasts. Tell us in the comments if you want to hear the full recording of Scott’s shenanigan-filled GenCon game. Greg talks about Mask of the Other, which a reader described as “‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ crossed with Black Hawk Down.” Greg wrote an introductory scenario for the Delta Green RPG called “Wormwood Arena,” where investigators must go undercover to infiltrate a dangerous cult. Greg has another Delta Green adventure called “Star Chamber,” where the horror unfolds in memory and in conflicting perspectives. 0:40:05 INTERLUDE. An excerpt of John Scott Tynes’ “Final Report” read by Allan Tynes. 0:41:18 MYTHOS HORROR GAMING IN THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Ross’ Yakuza game set in post-WW2 Japan. Research! Taking advantage of player expertise. Take care where you hang your plot points. The challenge of keeping your players in suspense. Watch for misunderstandings and conflicting assumptions. The perils of the infodump. Mythos horror in the modern day. More information is not always a good thing! Scanning Mythos tomes for fun and prophets. Giving the players access. A digression into the Gumshoe model. The key things to research: Interviews and social norms. Laws and law enforcement. How does research happen. Communications. Geography. A few key details to evoke the setting. Making it accessible while keeping it strange and interesting. Policing around the world. Using the unpleasant mores of the day for misdirection and versimilitude. | 2/13/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitUnspeakable! Episode 4 – Dan Harms and How to Horrify Your Players | We’re not even remotely on schedule! But we’re here. And at three hours this is enough podcast to horrify any set of ears. Unspeakable! episode 4 is hosted by Ross Payton of Role Playing Public Radio and Zombies of the World, Shane Ivey of Arc Dream Publishing and The Unspeakable Oath, and Adam Scott Glancy of Pagan Publishing. Scott just last episode was a guest and has already been promoted to cohost. That’s how fast things move here at the Oath. Our guest today is Dan Harms, author of The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia and uncounted pieces of Cthulhoid brilliance in The Unspeakable Oath, Worlds of Cthulhu and elsewhere. We’ll be talking about scaring your players at the Call of Cthulhu game table. Subscribe to the Unspeakable! podcast feed at http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/?feed=podcast Or subscribe at iTunes. Show Notes 00:00:00 INTRO. 00:00:25 WELCOME. Who are these people? Scott appreciates Dan’s treatment of Tsathoggua, the Great Old One who is so much more than an angry bunny rabbit. More about teasing out horrific details from the source material when only hints are given in the Call of Cthulhu rules. 00:11:10 Scott persuades us that Dan Harms makes a good bulletproof vest. 00:23:20 NEWS. Announcing Delta Green: Strange Authorities, a collection of the award-winning Delta Green fiction of John Scott Tynes, coming in January 2012 from Arc Dream Publishing. Strange Authorities will be published in ebook, paperback and maybe hardcover. The guys tell stories while Shane flounders around for the cover art to show them. But our listeners can see it RIGHT NOW! 00:31:55 Dennis Detwiller is still working on a new fiction collection, Delta Green: Failed Anatomies. He’s also hard at work sending out the autographed copies of Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly. 00:35:15 The Unspeakable Oath issue 21 is coming soon! Honest! We’re working on it! 00:41:10 Shane is working on the rules parts of the Delta Green role-playing game with help from Greg Stolze. Also: Being in the officially reinstated version of Delta Green will not make your investigators any happier or more cocksure. 00:50:45 Scott says Pagan Publishing is gearing up to run a Kickstarter to print Bumps in the Night, a collection of classic-era Call of Cthulhu adventures that draw from non-Mythos supernatural folklore. Scott is working through production of an Actual Play recording of the seven-hour Delta Green game he ran at Pax. (It was based on "Divine Fire" by Ross' friend Tom Church.) 01:05:46 Ross just finished a successfully Kickstarter for Killsplosion, a rules-light player-vs.-player RPG. Part of the funding paid for a video camera that Ross will use to interview game designers. Also, Ross’ pregen in a mountain climbing adventure needed a better Climb skill. 01:11:06 Ross’ book Zombies of the World has been picked up by Barnes and Noble! Now he’s working on a novel, Dead Power. 01:12:53 Dan has a Wall Street scenario in Miskatonic River Press’ Tales of the Sleepless City. In playtesting: Fury of Yig. (Not a bag of dicks!) He’s working on a couple of other scenarios. “The Chapel of Contemplation,” from The Unspeakable Oath 18, will appear in the new Spanish translation of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook from Edge Entertainment. Dan encourages you to submit short pieces for the Oath! Especially stuff that is uncanny and horrific and weird. Shane hijacks that discussion to talk about the upcoming new Delta Green Shotgun Scenario contest and how we’re going to clamp down on the word counts for it. Dan has a book coming: an annotated edition of The Long-Lost Friend, an 18th-century manual of folk magic. 01:23:01 INTERLUDE. “Sounds of Tindalos” by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, courtesy Divine Industries. Copyright 2011. Visit www.thickets.net. 01:24:01 SPONSORS! Sacrifice your time, money and blood to the people who support The Unspeakable Oath. | 12/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitUnspeakable! Episode 3 – Adam Scott Glancy | We’re back on schedule! This month’s episode clocks in at a svelte 2 hours and 13 minutes. Your hosts are Ross Payton (Role Playing Public Radio, Zombies of the World) and Shane Ivey (The Unspeakable Oath, Arc Dream Publishing). In this episode we interview Adam Scott Glancy of Pagan Publishing. Subscribe to the Unspeakable! podcast feed at http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/?feed=podcast Or subscribe at iTunes. Show Notes 0:00:00 THEME MUSIC: “Nyarlathotep” by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, courtesy Divine Industries. Copyright 2011. Visit www.thickets.net. 0:01:07 WELCOME: Shane is back on Tolkien like a junkie mainlining heroin after ten years clean. Also, hello to Adam Scott Glancy, multiple award winner for looking like Walter from The Big Lebowski and for writing amazing Call of Cthulhu sourcebooks. We talk a bit about picking music for the Ennie Awards. 0:09:30 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS: If you don’t, we will sacrifice you to Tsathoggua. Miskatonic River Press with The Legacy of Arrius Lurco for Cthulhu Invictus. H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, Sept. 16-17 in L.A. and Sept. 30 - Oct. 1 in Portland. Atlas Games with Cliffourd the Big Red God and Cthulhu Gloom. Innsmouth Free Press with Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time. 0:19:10 AN ASIDE: LARPing in Hollywood is not like your Earth LARPing. 0:23:33 NEWS: Toren Atkinson is dead to us! Except for all the art he’s still doing for us and letting us use the awesome music of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. He has a job now which means he can pay his rent but can’t find time to keep recording this podcast. Happy birthday . . . to you. Happy . . . birthday . . . to you. Happy . . . birthday . . . Mr. Lovecraft! Happy birthday . . . to you. More on the Ennie Awards at GenCon 2011 -- Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity and Yog-Sothoth.com. Scott says Paul MacLean plays Call of Cthulhu like a lemming on crack. The 30th anniversary Call of Cthulhu hardback. The status of TUO 20 and 21. At PAX, Scott is doing a panel on horror in gaming and is running a Delta Green game that adapts some of the “Divine Fire” scenario by Ross’ friend Tom Church. 0:42:15 INTERLUDE: “Shhh...” by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, courtesy Divine Industries. Copyright 2011. Visit www.thickets.net. 0:44:05 INTERVIEW WITH ADAM SCOTT GLANCY: How he came to Pagan Publishing. What he likes in the Oath. What he likes best in Call of Cthulhu and what would he change. One-shots vs. long-term games. Behind the name “Karotechia.” Bret Kramer being a great writer. What defines Delta Green in the 2010s? 2:08:22 THE END: Shane wusses out so he can go to work. Coming soon: “The Night Mission,” actual play from GenCon. Rate us on iTunes! 2:11:15 NYARLATHOTEP! | 8/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitUnspeakable! Special Presentation: The Unspeakable Oath and the Delta Green RPG | At GenCon on Thursday night, August 5, 2011, we held a panel discussion on The Unspeakable Oath and Delta Green. First we talked about our plans for the Oath. Then we talked about launching Delta Green as its own roleplaying game. Here you can listen to the whole thing. Shane Ivey (that's me), Greg Stolze, Kenneth Hite and Monte Cook were there from the beginning. Adam Scott Glancy joined in later. Please forgive the horrible droning background noises. There was an event in the next room where they were greatly enjoying having a microphone and speakers. Special thanks to Ross Payton for recording the panel and then producing it to minimize the background noise and make the audience audible. 0:00:00 What’s planned for the Oath? That’s up to you. We look for great submissions but don’t really have a scheme for each issue. 0:05:35 What were the highlights of the Oath to you? New perspectives on the Mythos. Short, strange elements that can be put into an ongoing game. Unusual times and places. The Eye of Light and Darkness, and the art of good reviews. 0:20:30 Things people want: Scenarios for Cthulhu Dark, Trail of Cthulhu, Realms of Cthulhu. Material on HPL’s influence as game tools. What to do with Cthulhu now that he’s a plushy. Help for brand-new GMs in building scenarios. How to get the player characters involved in the first place? How to make it really scary? The tale of the horrifying immortal parrot. Making the horror unknowable again. Props and handounts. 0:45:23 Scott joins in and describes his players’ many fumbles. 0:46:30 Monte Cook’s Shandler Chronicles. 0:50:35 The Delta Green Roleplaying Game. Bringing Delta Green into the modern day and addressing the things we fear now. International influences. Choosing a system. Tailoring BRP and CoC to Delta Green. A new book, not just the old book plus new material. A supplement with the updated history for gamers who have all the old material and don’t want the whole new game. 1:02:30 Why things for Delta Green are so much more difficult in the 2010s than in the halcyon 1990s. The fragmentation of Delta Green: the conspiracy, the outsiders, and a quasi-legitimate agency. None of them is going to make player characters any happier than any other. What kind of Delta Green campaign do you want to run? Where do you want to explore your paranoia? International tensions. Updating the antagonists. The need for new adventures. 1:42:45 Pagan’s new non-Mythos scenario book with the mythological Bedouin rape monster and Blair Reynolds screaming "No! No!" Good night, folks. | 8/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitUnspeakable! Episode 2 – Dennis Detwiller | UPDATE: The day this went live, Dennis Detwiller and his wife welcomed their second child into the world. Congratulations, Detwillers! And nice timing! In this long-overdue mega-episode we talk about Cthulhu, gaming, and a bunch of related stuff. Subscribe to the Unspeakable! podcast feed: http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/?feed=podcast Or subscribe at iTunes. Your hosts are Toren Atkinson (The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, Caustic Soda), Ross Payton (Role Playing Public Radio, Zombies of the World), and Shane Ivey (The Unspeakable Oath, Arc Dream Publishing). In this episode we interview Dennis Detwiller: partner in Arc Dream Publishing, art director for The Unspeakable Oath, co-creator of Delta Green, author of the upcoming novel Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly, and IP creator for PlayFirst Games. Show Notes 0:00:00 THEME MUSIC: “Nyarlathotep” by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, courtesy Divine Industries. Copyright 2011. Visit www.thickets.net. Also: Welcome! Who are we? Why does Shane’s microphone still suck? Road Trip, Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity, The Unspeakable Oath, and Progenitor are up for Ennie Awards. Vote for us in the past! 00:05:55 SPONSORS: Bow down and sacrifice your money to them! Atlas Games (The Antactic Express by Ken Hite; Cthulhu Gloom, which Shane and Toren love). Innsmouth Free Press (Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time, 26 Cthulhu Mythos stories spanning the ages.) Miskatonic River Press (New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley, Our Ladies of Sorrow.) H.P. Lovecraft Literary Film Festival in Los Angeles, Sept. 16-17, 2011. (See The Whisperer in Darkness; challenge Guillermo del Toro on shoggoths; Toren and various Pagan and Oath people go way back with the HPL Film Festival.) 00:11:55 UNSPEAKABLE NEWS: Oath 19 is out. Oath 20 is on the way to subscribers and will be at GenCon. We talk about what’s in them. A little about Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly. We’re doing lots of stuff at GenCon, August 5-8. Ross talks about Zombies of the World. The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets are writing new music. A fancy hardback edition of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook is coming. Joe R. Lansdale does a comics adaptation of "The Dunwich Horror." The Kingsport expansion for the Arkham Horror boardgame. Black Bag Jobs for The Laundry RPG; we talk about its accessibility for non-British gamers. Ross loves Killing Floor, a scary co-op FPS, and Cthulhu Saves the World on the PC. Toren loves Fallout 3 but not so much the Vegas one. Also, Paizo’s flipmats. Shane ran "A New Age" for Delta Green with some new rules and wrote a lot about it. Graham Walmsley’s Stealing Cthulhu has Shane working on an ancient and long-forgotten DG campaign. 1:20:20 INTERLUDE: “Shhhhh” by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, courtesy Divine Industries, copyright 2011. 1:22:08 INTERVIEW WITH DENNIS DETWILLER: Inside Delta Green: Failed Anatomies, a Delta Green anthology from the 1920s to the modern day. A couple of the stories are already online, “Punching” and “Intelligences.” We talk about the fun of fighting the good but futile fight. Making familiar monsters new and horrifying. Long-term play in high-lethality games. How tabletop game design informs videogame design. The value of killing player characters without remorse. Trail of Cthulhu, Cthulhu Dark, investigative play and the role of narrative control and resource management in horror gaming. The place of Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly in the Delta Green fiction canon. All about GODLIKE and its ties to the Oath and our friends at Pagan Publishing. Other stories and things Dennis is working on. What’s up with The Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man. We remember Coming Full Circle and Realm of Shadows. Why Dennis loves Masks of Nyarlathotep — the old one, not the one with all the extra adventures. Shane needs a reminder to follow up on a conversation with Masks author Larry DiTillio. | 7/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitUnspeakable! Episode 1 – John Scott Tynes | We're proud to present the first episode of Unspeakable!, the monthly podcast of The Unspeakable Oath. Subscribe to the Unspeakable! podcast feed: http://theunspeakableoath.com/home/?feed=podcast Or subscribe at iTunes. Unspeakable! is hosted by Oath editor Shane Ivey, Ross Payton (Role Playing Public Radio, Zombies of the World) and Toren Atkinson (Caustic Soda, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets). In Unspeakable! we talk all about new and upcoming Cthulhu Mythos games and stuff that our fellow fans of Cthulhu Mythos games might love. Since this is our first episode it rambles a bit, but bear with us. We'll have some great guests to keep things lively. In our debut episode we interview John Scott Tynes, who founded The Unspeakable Oath back in 1990. As the founder of Pagan Publishing he oversaw such acclaimed Call of Cthulhu sourcebooks as Delta Green, Walker in the Wastes, Mortal Coils, Coming Full Circle, Realm of Shadows and The Golden Dawn, and the funny Cthulhu-themed miniatures game The Hills Rise Wild! Tynes co-wrote Wizards of the Coast's adaptation of Call of Cthulhu with Monte Cook and many of Pagan Publishing's writers. Tynes has been a videogame designer and producer for the past few years, starting with Flying Labs' Pirates of the Burning Sea. He is now a lead producer at Xbox Live Arcade. Like so many good things, it all started with Winona Ryder. Show Notes (0:00:00) THEME MUSIC: "Nyarlathotep" by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, courtesy Divine Industries. Copyright 2011. Visit www.thickets.net. (00:01:50) THANK YOU! The Unspeakable Oath 19 is sponsored by "The Atlantic Express" from Atlas Games, "Historical Lovecraft" from Innsmouth Free Press, and Miskatonic River Press. (00:4:08) UNSPEAKABLE OATH NEWS: We relaunched the Oath! "Delta Green: Through a Glass, Darkly." The Oath at GenCon. "Zombies of the World." (00:09:00) INTERVIEW: John Scott Tynes! (1:23:00) CTHULHOID NEWS: New music ("Shhh..."), new video ("20 Minutes of Oxygen") from The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. "Call of Cthulhu" video game, "The Wasted Land." "Re-Animator: The Musical." Lovecraft on "Supernatural." "Cthulhu Sleeps" by Deadmau5. "The Whisperer in Darkness" movie. Necronomicox, for your pleasure. Alan Moore's "Neonomicon." "The Festival" from Dark Vision Films. (1:44:25) CTHULHOID GAMES -- NOW AVAILABLE: Ken Hite's "Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales" (illustrated by Toren!) now on Kindle and Nook. "The Legacy of Arrius Lurco" from Miskatonic River Press. "Cthonian Stars" from Wildfire. "Age of Cthulhu 5" from Goodman Games. "Black Bag Jobs" for The Laundry RPG from Cubicle 7. (1:50:45) CTHULHOID GAMES -- PREORDERS AND FUNDRAISERS: "Dead But Dreaming 2" from Miskatonic River Press. The Doom That Came to Atlantic City from Z-Man Games. "Shadows Over Scotland" from Cubicle 7. "Burning Horizon," "The Void" and "Are You the Cultist?" from WildFire. French translations of Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown (with unauthorized editions) from Editions Sans-Detour. Spanish translation of Call of Cthulhu (with "The Chapel of Contemplation" from The Unspeakable Oath 18) from Spain's Edge Entertainment. "Eldritch Skies" fundraiser at Kickstarter. "Stealing Cthulhu" fundraiser at IndieGogo. (2:00:28) WHAT WE'VE BEEN PLAYING: "Cthulhu Dice" from TUO 18 sponsor Steve Jackson Games. "Strange Aeons" miniatures skirmish game. "Mansions of Madness" from Fantasy Flight Games. Shane launches a Delta Green game for his group with some new rules. (2:24:30) NYARLATHOTEP! | 5/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 6 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Great New Lovecraft/Gamer Geek Podcast.
A gurgle of fresh spew in the somewhat stagnanted pools of Lovecraft geekdom. Wonderful hosts. Seek them out in their other guises.
As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold (aka Canada).
Gird your loins and prepare to be probed.
Insanely fun!
I'm not a gamer at all- just a casual fan of Lovecraft- but this the Unspeakable Oath is so much fun to listen to, I don't even care that I don't play games. The guys are really fun, the interviews are great, and it's just an overall wonderful podcast. I can only imagine how much fun it must be to listen to for someone who's actually played the game :)
DG hits iTunes
Delta Green is one of the most refreshing updates to Call of Cthulhu I've ever read. This podcast is a forum for the creators to share their perspective on the birth of their game and what they are currently working on. The first episode was fascinating and I can't wait for the second.
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