Call of Cthulhu: New World Colonists

After my pal and I watched the Black Goat short film he suggested I run a historical game about the Roanoke colony. While I'm not sure the campaign will be about Roanoke exactly, the game will take place sometime during the 16th-century and focus on the colonial experience.

I expect a rather different tone to emerge in this game than a classic 1920's/30's era CoC scenario.  Though the Age of Exploration is so removed from Lovecraft's 1920's and 30's, the Cthulhu mythos seem particularly suited to the mysteries lying in wait behind the veil of discovery in the New World.

The Age of Exploration evokes desperation and tested-faith particularly well. The benefit of operating outside of a Lovecraftian purist setting is that I feel more comfortable experimenting. Specifically this game will emphasize survival horror elements more than the traditional CoC session might.

CoC is an investigation and horror game. Adding a survivalist edge will take some research on my part. In New World Colonists, maintaining ones scarce resources, shelter, and warmth are sufficient distractions to keep most from questioning the uncanny. The survival component of this game applies just as much to the cold in pathless woods as it does to horrors from deep space.

Technology is also a significant consideration. Firearms are slow and unwieldy, light requires oil or wood, and medicine cannot alleviate some of the malady's modern science solves with a few pills. But perhaps the most interesting element of this game will be the developing relationship players will make with the indigenous peoples.

Kid Movies

There are two children's films which peaked my interest in fantasy at a young age. My father read me portions of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and decided too, to show me the animated 1977 film, also and aptly titled The Hobbit. Today I can only recall fragments of the movie. But one scene is particularly vivid to me, at least visually -- when the party of hobbit and dwarves were imprisoned by the elves. I remember that the artists/ writers chose to portray the elves as blue-skinned xenophobes. Or at least this is the impression I am left with all these years later. I don't think I ever saw the film twice. 

Certainly Tolkien's elves are inhuman, they are such exemplary beings that others marvel at their aura's of splendor. Throughout The Lord of The Rings, Legolas' supernal perception aided the fellowship again and again. LoTR elves are the most superior of Middle Earth's races, or at least were before the age of men. But the film's elves were cruel, malevolent, and their scowls set them as unsightly. Perhaps the film writers or artists sought to adapt the elves to a more abrasive portrayal, one more fully represented by an almost fully dwarven party.

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The other film I can only recall fragments of, but has bound me to fantasy nonetheless is The Last Unicorn, animated in 1982. All I can really remember from this film is a scene that I found fully haunting at the time. Before the climax, in a decrepit castle the film's protagonist's are confronted by a sentient skeleton who spoke eloquently but craved wine with absolute depravity. One of the characters remarked something to the effect of, *"but a skeleton doesn't have a tongue to taste." To which the skeleton mentioned something to the effect of, "Just to know that wine runs down my bones brings comfort in memory."* I just remember feeling that this was just such an odd and somehow macabre interaction. I don't want to see these films again because I don't want my perceptions of them to change. I remember them fondly, and hope always to do so.

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* Paraphrased.