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The Unspeakable Oath - Issue 21
Arc Dream Publishing is proud to present The Unspeakable Oath 21, the latest long-awaited installment in our more-or-less quarterly digest of tools, scenarios, and reviews to make your Cthulhu Mythos games more terrifying than ever. The Unspeakable Oath 21 “The Dread Page of Azathoth,” an editor’s column by Shane Ivey. “The Mock Auction,” a Tale of Terror by Adam Gauntlett. “Saucer Attack 1928!: The Dunwich ‘Horror’,” a Mysterious Manuscript by Bret Kramer. “Engines Underground,” a Mysterious Manuscript by Greg Stolze. “Ein Konto der Hexeraserei im Lindheim,” a Mysterious Manuscript for Trail of Cthulhu by Adam Gauntlett. “Das Teufelherz,” an Arcane Artifact for Trail of Cthulhu by Adam Gauntlett. “Sukakpak,” a scenario by Jason Morningstar with conversion notes for Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Cthulhu Dark, and Nemesis. “Unaussprechlichen Klutzen,” a Fiasco playset by Graham Walmsley. “The Man With a Thousand Faces,” a Call of Cthulhu scenario by Richard A. Becker. “Tradecraft Meets Lovecraft,” a Directive from A-Cell by Adam Scott Glancy. “She Had Everything,” a Message in a Bottle by Brennan Bishop. The Eye of Light and Darkness, with nine The Unspeakable Oath 21 is illustrated by Vicente Silvera Catalá, Robert Mansperger Jr., Bradley McDevitt, Jason Morningstar, Brennen Reece and Todd Shearer. Cover art is by Todd Shearer. It is edited by Shane Ivey with Adam Crossingham, Dan Harms, Greg Stolze and John Scott Tynes. The Unspeakable Oath 21 is sponsored by Atlas Games, Chaosium Inc., the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, Innsmouth Free Press, Miskatonic River Press, NecronomiCon 2013, and Pagan Publishing. If you like the Oath, thank them and buy their work!
- GenresRole Playing Games
68 pages, Paperback
First published August 3, 2012
About the author
Shane Ivey
50 books22 followersManaging editor and president of Arc Dream Publishing, www.arcdream.com.
Editor-in-chief of The Unspeakable Oath, www.theunspeakableoath.com.
Editor of Delta Green, www.delta-green.com.
Editor-in-chief of The Unspeakable Oath, www.theunspeakableoath.com.
Editor of Delta Green, www.delta-green.com.
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August 18, 202270pp, July 2012 -- and maybe the first UO issue that left me... lukewarm.
Which probably starts with the cover, which depicts a roadster crashed into a giant worm thing, which is eating one of the passengers (presumably) in silhouette in the background, while in the foreground a guy with a head injury looks on. It's fine, but for some reason doesn't fill me with excitement -- and I'm not entirely sure why.
Inside, we get what we'd expect from issues 22-25, more or less:
* 3 mysterious manuscripts (a book that argues that some Lovecraft story event really happened in the game world and was really aliens, which... I just don't know I'd give people a book that says that unless I wasn't going to make it Lovecraftian -- like, giving them a book that says "this thing from the game you're playing is really this other thing from a game you're not playing" doesn't feel useful; a midlist novel where the subplot is remembered differently by everyone who reads its, which is fun; an account of a witch hunt, which is fine as a manuscript to get players into the plot)
* one small tale of terror (all about a scam auction, and then the options they give you are "maybe it's not a scam"?)
* the usual columns, reviews, one page short story (serial murderer of women is destroyed by woman who knows how to summon monsters -- which maybe in 2012 was fun, but today left me pretty cool)
* some adventures.
A few notes on the adventures:
* One is a short one-shot where the PCs are flown out to investigate a death on a survey crew, which is a fine setup, but kinda seems mostly to be about having nightmares and then finding glyphs and then convincing everyone to leave.
* Another isn't an adventure at all but a Fiasco playset about ordinary folks doing dumb things with Cthulhu spells, which is fine, but -- well, I was sort of hoping less about ordinary people and more about cultists and investigators. That is, this is a Cthulhu playset, and I want a Call of Cthulhu playset, if you see what I mean. (I mean: I want someone to turn the rpg Call of Cthulhu into a Fiasco playset.) Ah well, but you can't really complain that this thing isn't this other thing that you want. But still...
* And the long one is a 1920s adventure where you have to get into a silent screen star's mansion and figure out what's happened to him (which is that he was driven insane by magic which he pursued to become a great actor). There's some fun stuff here -- you're alone in the mansion with him, but since he can appear as anyone, you might now know that you're alone because he keeps taking on roles of both real people and all his old characters. It might work out really well, or it might just sort of be a slog, and I can't tell from this. And also: this actor got his magic from the evil Tcho-Tchos in Asia, and there's a red-herring in his Chinese-American manservant, who is just a normal guy with a family, not a cannibal lama. And while it might be fun to say, "aha, you fell into this trap of thinking he was the bad guy because of your / your character's racism," -- well, it might also just degenerate into racism at the table. That is, in grad school, we often ran into this question with some works: is this author critiquing X by depicting it this way or are they just depicting it because that's what they see. Like, if you use the trope of the Ancient and Mysterious East, how do you keep from falling into the trap of just repeating it uncritically?
So: in all the other issues, there was one or usually more articles that made me go "oh, wow, what a great idea" but this issue doesn't quite grab me that way.
Which probably starts with the cover, which depicts a roadster crashed into a giant worm thing, which is eating one of the passengers (presumably) in silhouette in the background, while in the foreground a guy with a head injury looks on. It's fine, but for some reason doesn't fill me with excitement -- and I'm not entirely sure why.
Inside, we get what we'd expect from issues 22-25, more or less:
* 3 mysterious manuscripts (a book that argues that some Lovecraft story event really happened in the game world and was really aliens, which... I just don't know I'd give people a book that says that unless I wasn't going to make it Lovecraftian -- like, giving them a book that says "this thing from the game you're playing is really this other thing from a game you're not playing" doesn't feel useful; a midlist novel where the subplot is remembered differently by everyone who reads its, which is fun; an account of a witch hunt, which is fine as a manuscript to get players into the plot)
* one small tale of terror (all about a scam auction, and then the options they give you are "maybe it's not a scam"?)
* the usual columns, reviews, one page short story (serial murderer of women is destroyed by woman who knows how to summon monsters -- which maybe in 2012 was fun, but today left me pretty cool)
* some adventures.
A few notes on the adventures:
* One is a short one-shot where the PCs are flown out to investigate a death on a survey crew, which is a fine setup, but kinda seems mostly to be about having nightmares and then finding glyphs and then convincing everyone to leave.
* Another isn't an adventure at all but a Fiasco playset about ordinary folks doing dumb things with Cthulhu spells, which is fine, but -- well, I was sort of hoping less about ordinary people and more about cultists and investigators. That is, this is a Cthulhu playset, and I want a Call of Cthulhu playset, if you see what I mean. (I mean: I want someone to turn the rpg Call of Cthulhu into a Fiasco playset.) Ah well, but you can't really complain that this thing isn't this other thing that you want. But still...
* And the long one is a 1920s adventure where you have to get into a silent screen star's mansion and figure out what's happened to him (which is that he was driven insane by magic which he pursued to become a great actor). There's some fun stuff here -- you're alone in the mansion with him, but since he can appear as anyone, you might now know that you're alone because he keeps taking on roles of both real people and all his old characters. It might work out really well, or it might just sort of be a slog, and I can't tell from this. And also: this actor got his magic from the evil Tcho-Tchos in Asia, and there's a red-herring in his Chinese-American manservant, who is just a normal guy with a family, not a cannibal lama. And while it might be fun to say, "aha, you fell into this trap of thinking he was the bad guy because of your / your character's racism," -- well, it might also just degenerate into racism at the table. That is, in grad school, we often ran into this question with some works: is this author critiquing X by depicting it this way or are they just depicting it because that's what they see. Like, if you use the trope of the Ancient and Mysterious East, how do you keep from falling into the trap of just repeating it uncritically?
So: in all the other issues, there was one or usually more articles that made me go "oh, wow, what a great idea" but this issue doesn't quite grab me that way.
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