Mythos Maunderings with Mike Mason 0:00-2.15Straight into the guest introduction this week with Jeff explaining that with the exciting news of Moon Design taking a management role at Chaosium, it is more than time that Tales of Mythic Adventure turned its attention to the iconic Chaosium game, Call of Cthulhu. Jeff has been playing Call of Cthulhu since the early 1980’s and MOB has a copy of the first edition of the game (or thinks he does, but see below...).

Jeff is therefore pleased to announce that the guest on this episode is the Line Developer/Editor for Call of Cthulhu, Mike Mason. Jeff feels that this is a bit of incestuous nepotism, given that Mike works for Chaosium (but I presume by "incestuous nepotism" he means "in-house advertorializing", since as far as I am aware he is neither related to Mike nor in a relationship with him).

Mike manages to respond to this introduction, and explains that the TOMA virtual green room is this time in Nottingham, England. MOB is in sunny Melbourne, Australia, and Jeff is in his bunker in Berlin.So What Does a Chaosium Line Editor Do? 2:15-4:15Mike’s role is to look after the Call of Cthulhu game line. He works with authors to develop manuscripts into scenario books or source books. Mike also does some writing himself and is the co-writer for the just-about-to-be-released seventh edition. He does not go into any details about the incestuous nepotistic side of his duties, which is perhaps just as well. All things Cthulhu is what Mike’s role involves; all Cthulhu, all the time. He was the lead writer on the seventh edition rules, and worked with Paul Fricker on the new Investigator’s Handbook; this has occupied him for much of the past several years. MOB breaks in to explain that for some reason at Gencon he was wearing (the absent) Paul Fricker’s badge, and many people came up to him to say nice things about CoC7 under the impression that he (MOB) was Paul. This explanation will possibly clear up any future confusion for listeners given the mistaken impression that Paul Fricker is a face-shifting hive mind inhabiting the bodies of two middle-aged men simultaneously.

So What's New in the Seventh Edition? 4:15-13:15 Previous editions of Call of Cthulhu have not seen any major rule development. The core rulebook had grown and expanded on an ad-hoc basis, with new material being to an extent bolted on. However, Mike explains that the new edition has been substantially reorganized, so that all information relating to particular situations are now in the same place. There are also tweaks to the rules, including an opposed rule in combat, to fix a glitch where repeated misses could mean that combat dragged on without any hits being made. A chase mode has also been introduced, as chases are almost as integral to the Cthulhu Mythos as combat itself. Indeed, as Investigators will know, running away from the horrors of the Mythos is possibly more important than combat itself. This chase mode will allow, for instance, replication of the chase scene in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, one of Lovecraft’s most exciting and best stories. There is also a push mode to allow characters to retry failed rolls, but they have to be able to justify their first failure. Push mode is important in a game with investigative and noir elements such as Call of Cthulhu, where clues need to be reached in order to allow the game to continue.

With all of these changes however, the design ethic for the new edition has been to be backwardly compatible to the previous editions, and provide improvement with continuity. There was a worldwide play-test and the feedback was highly positive.

Jeff asks the leading question as to why gamers should come out and buy the seventh edition, and the response if that the new edition provides a fully integrated set of rules, and also provides large numbers of optional rules to reflect the way that Keepers have modified the original rules over the years.