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I read a story called Pickman's Modem once. It was not very good, but probably not Chaosium fiction bad.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:51
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And honestly, there are so many ways to do 'The Internet is creepy and hosed up' without needing to make the Internet itself the supernatural bit. I mean, all you have to do if you never want to sleep again is read about Malatora or soulbinders or transformation fetishists or the FF7 House and speculate on what those idiots would get up to if they got their hands on actual power.
Whybird fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 10:37
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Halloween Jack posted:Well, the stories I mentioned were in Chaosium-published books. It's pretty common for those to contain stories that don't even rise to the level of Lovecraft pastiche; it's more accurate to call them CoC fanfiction. In another story I didn't mention, someone accidentally summons Nyarlathotep with a computer, and he appears in his robe and wizard hat, ready to cast fireball. It was less like reading a Lovecraftian story than like a peek at early CoC modules that resembled D&D style dungeoncrawls. Would you be talking about things like the scenarios from The Stars Are Right! by any chance? I dunno, I kind of enjoyed Fractal Gods at least. It strikes me as a very early 90s computer nerd adventure. It's all about how a floppy disc cover mounted onto a computer graphics magazine is actually EVIL and a secret gateway to a dimension of fractal beings who seek to invade our reality. Like, it straight up says that the evil program is called BEACONS.COM, I would totally run it set in 1991 and the players are part of a computer user's club who are the only people who can stop the end of the world. Use some demoscene music as the soundtrack. I hear you on how well-crafted modern tech horror should underline alienation in society, but I think there's room for "and the laptop was POSSESSED!" stuff if done with some perspective. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Aug 15, 2014 |
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Aug 15, 2014 12:32
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Halloween Jack posted:Well, the stories I mentioned were in Chaosium-published books. It's pretty common for those to contain stories that don't even rise to the level of Lovecraft pastiche; it's more accurate to call them CoC fanfiction. In another story I didn't mention, someone accidentally summons Nyarlathotep with a computer, and he appears in his robe and wizard hat, ready to cast fireball. It was less like reading a Lovecraftian story than like a peek at early CoC modules that resembled D&D style dungeoncrawls. Those Chaosium stories sound terrible. I feel like alot of Cthulhuesque stories tend toward being along the lines of CoC fan fic than aping Lovecraft's style. I read those Arkham Horror novels from Fantasy Flight and while they're not great they're pretty entertaining for what they are. That Campbell story you mentioned sounds pretty good. I haven't read anything of Campbells before I'll have to look out up.
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Aug 15, 2014 22:29
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KomradeX posted:Those Chaosium stories sound terrible. I feel like alot of Cthulhuesque stories tend toward being along the lines of CoC fan fic than aping Lovecraft's style. I read those Arkham Horror novels from Fantasy Flight and while they're not great they're pretty entertaining for what they are. Campbell's deliberate Lovecrast pastiche is mostly collected in Cold Print and it's pretty good. I've heard his other stuff is worth checking out, too. I am sure some of the other posters in the thread went to GenCon but here is my report. I didn't make it to the Call of Cthulhu 7th ed panel or the Delta Green: Lovecraft to Tradecraft panel, but I did make the first Delta Green panel and was lucky enough to play in Greg Stolze's "Blacksat" Delta Green game. Delta Green Lots of background type stuff at this panel. They talked a bit more about the distinction between the "cowboys" (who are the more traditional Delta Green operatives) and the Program, which are the ones working for/with the more official group and the remnants of MJ-12. It sounded like one of the main themes for that is the relationship between freedom and resources. Cowboys can decide how to approach a problem completely on their own, but are very limited on funding and supplies. But if you're part of the program, you have a lot of resources - at the cost of having to work with and often obey unseemly or terrible people. They specifically mentioned the Laundry and how that's not their intention at all with the program stuff. There were also three recording devices including one from RPPR, apparently, so I assume a podcast version will go up eventually. As for the kickstarter? No exact date was given on it, but they were shooting for "soon." Specifically, Fall 2014. Shane Ivey said that they basically want to wrap up the stretch goal volume of stories for Tales from Strange Anatomies before launching the Delta Green kickstarter. They also said that by next year's GenCon we would have all read the new book. (Probably.) I couldn't decide if the "Stop trying to put Ghatanothoa in everything! You're not going to make Ghatanothoa happen!" was a Mean Girls reference, but I choose to believe that it was. Blacksat - There was no NDA on this but it was a really fun session and Greg Stolze made it sound like it would eventually be released, so I don't want to spoil it. I will say that the parts of the system we used were simple and fun and will feel very familiar to BRP fans. Stolze runs a great game, but that isn't surprising. Apparently he is working on a set of missions that will gradually introduce players to the different mechanics. So they'll start with skills and sanity, then the next mission (with different characters) will work in combat, and so on, until all the mechanics have been introduced. And, if you want, you could then take the survivors from those intro missions and make them into your "real" Delta Green team. Between those, I feel really stoked for the new game. It was also my first time really playing a horror game (as opposed to running) and that was great fun.
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Aug 18, 2014 17:26
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That sounds awesome, I hope the audio for that panel shows up somewhere. drat as if I needed another reason to want them to finish up with "Tales From the Failed Anatomies," rewards, I've been dying for volume 2 and the audio versions.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:29
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KomradeX posted:That sounds awesome, I hope the audio for that panel shows up somewhere. I think last year it took a month or two for the panel to show up online; the RPPR and Unspeakable! guys have a lot on their plates. (The DG panels for the last couple years are online already, if you haven't checked those out.) Someone else on RPG.net said the full game KS won't be until January, but I swear I heard fall '14 at the panel. Edit: I did, but they changed their minds later. I'm also really stoked for volume 2 - I was initially leery of the DG fiction collections (because of lukewarm RPG fiction collections and lukewarm Lovecraft-inspired stories in the past) but I loved both Tales from Strange Anatomies and Strange Authorities. I've really only held off on the other novels/collections because I suspect there might be bundles in the kickstarter. Bonus Stolze quote (as well as I can remember) from the first panel, that underscores the problem with trying to weaponize the Mythos: "These things cannot be understood by humans - and when you start to understand them, you're no longer human." Sionak fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 03:47
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It's weird, but I hope Sans-Detour gets the french license for this. Normally I prefer buying my RPGs in english, as translations are usually terrible and also more costly because despite Quebec being a french-speaking province, we have to import all our french books from France so they all cost 10$+ more. But Sans-Detour's french edition of Call of Cthulhu is loving amazing. Everything from the art to the design to simply the paper quality feels great. Look at this: http://sans-detour.com/index.php/L-Appel-de-Cthulhu/work-in-progress-terreur-sur-lorient-express.html These are the seriously the first time I thought paying more for the French version was worth it. I got all the Delta Green books from them.
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Aug 20, 2014 16:20
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Yeah the 7e backer proofs came out and they're... not as good. The art is mostly great, but really uneven. And it's all peppered with tentacle and old god clip art without any real sense of purpose. I wish my French was better. Or Spanish.
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Aug 20, 2014 16:27
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Sionak posted:I think last year it took a month or two for the panel to show up online; the RPPR and Unspeakable! guys have a lot on their plates. (The DG panels for the last couple years are online already, if you haven't checked those out.) I just can't wait for it. Drivethrurpg is having a sale on all Cthulhu related products in honor of Lovecraft's birthday today so I ended up buying Delta Green Countdown since that was one of the only books I didn't have, I'm very excited to see how they update some of these other factions. In Unspeakable Oath 23 they talk about how GRU SV 8 could actually now be involved in weaponizing mythos knowledge for better funding since by now a lot the people given Stats in DG:Countdown would have died of old age. Though I like the idea of that happening but with the added fact of a departmental civil war with half of them supporting it and the other half sticking to the burn it all old school with all the violence of using the Russian mafia to deal with their internal dissent. I'll have to looking for the panels on RPPR and Unspeakable!, I've been listening to a lot of the actual plays of Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu from RPPR and I really enjoy it and wish I had the notes for some of the games they've ran cause I would love to [s]subject[/] run them for my group. I'm normally very weary about Role Playing fiction (especially the one's they put through the start of every Shadowrun chapter now which varies in quality greatly) but I read, "Once More From the Top," in either Book of Cthulhu or Book of Cthulhu 2 and loved it so I had no problem backing this on Kickstarter. Which to bring up something you said earlier about the new Delta Green being different from The Laundry I really enjoy. I happen to love The Laundry Files books and the game is pretty good and I've viewed it a bit as Delta Green for the Post 9/11 World and one that is more rooted in our world where Delta Green is that 90s conspiracist world view. Which now with the different levels of play I think are going to make a great melding of the two. moths posted:Yeah the 7e backer proofs came out and they're... not as good. The art is mostly great, but really uneven. And it's all peppered with tentacle and old god clip art without any real sense of purpose. Oh Chaosium never change with that, though this is very disappointing to hear. Wasn't there a thing where at first Chaosium wanted to use the money raised for either Horror, or 7th edition to fun some other project first?I could have sworn I was talking to a friend about that a few months back but I just can't remember. Edit: Anyone have any idea what these Big Idiot Bad Post, Av's are about? They replace the stupid Newbie one?
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Aug 20, 2014 17:41
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Is there a more comprehensive collection of CoC monsters than the Malleus Monstrorum? I only ask because it was published in 2007.
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Aug 21, 2014 01:03
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For aesthetics, that French version of Terror on the Orient Express looks simply amazing. It is one of the best looking RPG products I've ever seen. Since I started with the d20 version of CoC (which has mostly great, full-color art), it was actually a bit off-putting to see the line art in Chaosium's corebook. It seemed much less evocative to me. I'm hoping that the Kickstarter for DG makes full-color an option for the art that Dennis Detwiller's been sharing for a while on his blog. I also really like listening to the RPPR adventures, then going back and reading the adventure to see what else could have happened (if it's published and not one of their originals). If it's an adventure that I'm thinking of running later, it's almost like getting to play through it myself. For the fiction collections, I've been really impressed so far. I wasn't that crazy about Alzis in the DG corebook (oh, another master manipulator NPC..) but his appearance in Strange Authorities sold me on the character. And Tales from Strange Anatomies deftly avoids the problem that a lot of gaming and Lovecraft fiction have, where way too many things are categorized and over-explained. Many of the chapters are just weird, in the best way.
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Aug 21, 2014 18:23
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As a Kolchak fan, I'm really interested in running the first scenario from Unseen Masters. Any advice on toning down the S&M element? I'm considering eliminating it entirely, but I'm not sure how much that will hurt the plot.
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Aug 26, 2014 23:11
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NilkNarf posted:As a Kolchak fan, I'm really interested in running the first scenario from Unseen Masters. Any advice on toning down the S&M element? I'm considering eliminating it entirely, but I'm not sure how much that will hurt the plot. From what I remember, isn't it a red herring? Also, are there any writeups for playing as a ghoul in the Laundry RPG? I know the Laundry employs ghouls.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:50
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clockworkjoe posted:Also, are there any writeups for playing as a ghoul in the Laundry RPG? I know the Laundry employs ghouls. p.95 of the Laundry Agent's Handbook has the rules for it.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:52
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NilkNarf posted:As a Kolchak fan, I'm really interested in running the first scenario from Unseen Masters. Any advice on toning down the S&M element? I'm considering eliminating it entirely, but I'm not sure how much that will hurt the plot.
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Aug 28, 2014 17:35
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Ettin posted:p.95 of the Laundry Agent's Handbook has the rules for it. Thanks!
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Aug 28, 2014 17:57
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I threw this out in the October chat, but it got lost in a flood of arguing about board games. So I'll ask here: what tips and tricks do you use to keep combat tense in horror games in general and in Cthulhu in particular? I have noticed in many games, both my own and actual plays, that a lot of the tension drains away when the players feel backed into a corner and have to fight. Once the combat rules are out, people can't help but switch into a more strategic mindset. I can think of some workarounds - leave escape routes open (but at a cost), keep combat short and unpredictable, and use combat very sparingly - but I'm curious to know what other people do or if they've noticed this trend.
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Oct 8, 2014 17:12
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The only combat I think I ever successfully had feel tense like campaign surrounding it was the one where the party encountered their fairly obviously undead former friend (obviously because they had to kill him earlier in the campaign) who took damage from attacks in the sense that his body was shredded, but not in the sense that it mattered, and even where they would take off a limb or something he would continue moving per usual, slowly killing those nearby with a touch. You could have gone a few ways with that, but one of the players had previously jury-rigged a "miniature Sun" by duct-taping dozens of UV flashlights together, and he correctly guessed that this would drive off what seemed to be a ghost of some sort animating a body. But everyone was losing their poo poo up until that point, with the damage coming just slowly but steadily enough to be worrying, and I thought they might resort to jumping out the third-story windows to escape.
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Oct 8, 2014 20:05
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Sionak posted:I threw this out in the October chat, but it got lost in a flood of arguing about board games. The GM at my CoC game doesn't give anybody time to think. In a high tension situation, you pretty much have 5 seconds to make a move. If you can't decide in that time, your character basically panics and stands there agape. You can't bring out the miniatures and grid and let everybody plan their moves as if it were DnD. I could see how that would suck out all of the tension. Granted, we use a somewhat loose interpretation of the combat rules but it suits our purposes just fine. Things like strict turn order and exact movement ranges kinda go out the window. Everybody being able to sit around and plan out the perfect move isn't ideal for tension. If everybody has to think on their toes, more potential exists for things like panicking and making a mistake. The best way to ruin the mood in combat is to have to break out a rulebook. Good intense fight music helps the atmosphere a lot too. This is a good example we use a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppqjBGJxsNI
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Oct 13, 2014 00:49
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If you backed Horror on the Orient Express, start watching your mailbox. This thing is a beast; The box is about 1/4" shorter than a standing M:tG card, it's completely filled with books. Except for the props, but there's also one book full of props. And everything looks so intensely Chaosium, if that makes sense. I'm really happy with this, and I've only leafed through the first book and some handouts.  Interestingly, the box promotes that it's got rules for 6th and 7th, but 7th was supposedly backwards-compatible.
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Nov 29, 2014 04:14
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So, er, what's the state of 7th Edition? Is it out yet or what?
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Mar 19, 2015 20:48
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Yoshimo posted:So, er, what's the state of 7th Edition? Is it out yet or what? It's out in pdf but not in print so far as I understand it.
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Mar 19, 2015 20:55
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You can buy the pdf now at their website. The last message about the printed versions on their kickstarter was that copies should be delivered by the printers sometime in May 2015, and would be shipped to backers immediately.
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Mar 20, 2015 08:26
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Xzov posted:You can buy the pdf now at their website. The last message about the printed versions on their kickstarter was that copies should be delivered by the printers sometime in May 2015, and would be shipped to backers immediately. Good Luck with that. Horror on the Orient Express has been on my FLGS's shelves since december and I've yet to hear anything about getting mine from Chaosium.
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Mar 21, 2015 15:41
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You should have gotten that quite a while ago. Double-check your mailing address and contact them ASAP. Here's something interesting:  A guy took the Cthulhu Wars figures and painted them using a basic and effective technique. Instead of trying to make them look like actual monsters, he painted the pieces to look like statues made from different materials. You can see more of them here. I hadn't planned on painting mine, but they're really bright and cartoony - so this is probably what I'll end up doing.
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Mar 21, 2015 16:06
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moths posted:You should have gotten that quite a while ago. Double-check your mailing address and contact them ASAP. I've contacted them a bunch of times, and their response has been that they're still collating backer rewards and shipping out things. A lot of people are in the same boat as me it seems.
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Mar 21, 2015 16:48
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Ugh, I'm sorry to hear that. You might try posting about it in the KS comments section. Be polite, but explain how you're getting the run-around.
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Mar 21, 2015 17:05
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This is gorgeous, and makes me wish I had both the cash to buy a copy and the talent to do something similar with it.
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Mar 23, 2015 08:58
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Big shakeups at Chaosium! The following went out to Kickstarter backers on June 2:quote:The Great Old Ones have returned! And three days later (June 5) this dropped: quote:Posted by Chaosium Inc.  It looks like things are in better hands now, but it's anybody's guess when this will get untangled.
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Jun 6, 2015 06:14
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Interested to see CoC7e, didn't know it was on the way, sounds like strange things happening though. CoC6e is the only RPG book I've ever read front to back in basically one sitting, growing more and more excited.
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Jun 6, 2015 09:45
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Haven't played call in a while, starting up a campaign in 6th edition. I may just be blind, but I really can't find what skill is governing the use of explosives. The closest I've seen is that chemistry can make some basic ones. Am I just missing it, and if not how do you guys tend to handle that?
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Jun 9, 2015 21:11
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ZypherIM posted:Haven't played call in a while, starting up a campaign in 6th edition. I may just be blind, but I really can't find what skill is governing the use of explosives. The closest I've seen is that chemistry can make some basic ones. Am I just missing it, and if not how do you guys tend to handle that? If it's been a while, i suggest checking out the 7th ed. quickstart rules. They changed and simplified a few mechanics, but it's still pretty compatible with all the old stuff. I love it. Oh and explosions are mentioned on page 57, and specific types in the gear section, page 65.
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Jun 9, 2015 21:27
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Yea I'd play 7th, but the other people would rather play 6th since we've got a book or two for it. Thanks for the page info, I had seen the one about the damage, didn't realize the weapon list had the skills for them in it. Weird that you've got 4 different skills applying to the various ones, but I guess I can figure something out with that.
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Jun 9, 2015 21:45
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Evil Mastermind posted this over in the Industry thread:Evil Mastermind posted:Sandy Petersen gave a very frank interview about the changes at Chaosium, with a lot more information about why this is all happening than we normally get in these situations. I'm listening to it now, and it's pretty interesting if you're into the behind the scenes goings on.
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Jun 10, 2015 15:03
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Huge sale at Chaosium right now: http://www.chaosium.com/ I picked up the Achtung Cthulhu line and some other books.
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Jun 11, 2015 03:07
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clockworkjoe posted:Huge sale at Chaosium right now: http://www.chaosium.com/ I guess Sandy found those bodies he mentioned in the podcast. Seriously though, killing off dead inventory like this is win-win for both the consumer and the business. I've been aching for something like this for ages.
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Jun 11, 2015 03:53
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So in the car today there was some song with the singer sluring the lyrics a bit, and it sounded a lot like "that's what i'm F'tagn about". My new goal is to work this into a campaign, and maybe I'll have to make a guy based on a wrestling personality just to make everyone else at the table hate me even more.
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Jun 13, 2015 13:27
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clockworkjoe posted:Huge sale at Chaosium right now: http://www.chaosium.com/
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Jun 15, 2015 07:07
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minidracula posted:Found out about this from the deals and steals thread. Although I bought some PDFs from Chaosium at the end of last year, I'd like to support the closet-clearing and rehab of the company finances, and get some sweet stuff on sale. Any recommendations on things to get in hardcopy? Right now, poking around some, I'm mostly interested in some novelty dice, and, well... you know: I have enough dice (novelty or otherwise; doesn't mean I won't buy some though!). Look at the licensed books. Tales of the Crescent City looks pretty neat.
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Jun 15, 2015 07:54
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