0:11

This is writer and game designer Robin D. Laws.

0:13

And this is game designer and writer Kenneth Hight.

0:16

And this is our podcast, Ken and Robin Talk

0:18

About Stuff. And with brought to you by Pelgrain

0:20

Press. Stuff we're here to

0:22

talk about in this episode

0:24

include... Oklahoma and GMCs. A

0:26

Kentuckian Oath. A New Reality

0:28

Horror Menace. And the

0:30

Phantom City Hoe. Rejoice

0:48

while the prophecy is fulfilled.

0:50

The Definitive Edition has arrived.

0:53

Whoa, is that a new

0:55

Arts-Modrica? Not just new, it's

0:58

the Definitive Edition. 20

1:00

years in the making, it's a love letter

1:02

to our favorite game. Ooh, it is kinda

1:04

thick. Did they include, like, every rule from

1:07

every Arts-Modrica book ever? Almost.

1:09

It's still the fifth edition, but

1:11

supercharged with 20 years of awesomeness.

1:13

Okay, can I still use my

1:15

old Megas when I save the

1:17

Tribunal from that infernal plot? Of course!

1:20

Your stories, your characters, they're all

1:22

welcome here. Think of this

1:24

as a grand reunion, a homecoming for

1:26

the wizards we once were. This art

1:28

is gorgeous in a way. So much

1:30

easier to find things? I'm ready! Ready

1:32

to delve back into mythic Europe to

1:34

see what new wonders await! Ready

1:37

to weave great magics once more! Then

1:40

let us begin a

1:42

new saga, my friend!

1:45

Go to atlas-games.com/bakarzmagica now

1:48

to get your crowdfunding reminders.

1:50

And the stories we'll tell will

1:53

echo through the ages. The

2:01

rattle of dice, the thump

2:03

of miniatures, the crunch of

2:05

Doritos, and the benevolent

2:07

gaze of Peter Frampton coming alive welcome

2:09

us once more into the

2:12

original OG gaming hut, because we

2:14

are in a basement in

2:17

Oklahoma City where we

2:19

are going to discuss people not

2:21

in basements elsewhere in

2:23

Oklahoma. Because today, Robin,

2:25

we are going to, I believe,

2:28

stretch out into one of the

2:30

campaign frames a

2:32

little bit in the new Trail of Cthulhu

2:34

second edition. Again, tell us more. Tell us

2:36

more about the new campaign frame. Well, if

2:38

I must. In the new campaign frame, there

2:40

is a small town named Bishop, Oklahoma that

2:42

has been out there in

2:45

cowboy country in western Oklahoma and

2:47

strangers have come to town and

2:49

built a some kind

2:52

of scientific experimenting station nearby

2:55

and they are engaged in some sort

2:57

of mythos-chicanery. We don't know what they

2:59

are talking to the sky, they are

3:02

measuring the earth, but those noises under

3:04

the earth that the old settlers said

3:06

used to happen, they have started up

3:08

again, the snakes have begun shifting around

3:10

so maybe something is doing something with

3:12

the electromagnetism. I tell you,

3:14

I don't know what it is. It is

3:16

Stranger Things in 1930s Oklahoma. Stranger

3:19

Things meets the mound because that

3:22

is under alien skies. The new small

3:24

town western campaign frame invented by the

3:26

beloved and talented Gareth Ryder Hanran for

3:28

Trail of Cthulhu second. It will be

3:30

on Becker kit soon. It will be

3:32

on Becker kit soon. So I had

3:34

another town picked out. Do we want

3:36

to go with this other more sort

3:38

of kind of baseline town or do

3:40

we want to switch this over to

3:42

Bishop? Let's stay with the next town

3:44

over, Locust Grove. I think that that

3:46

is a good idea, not

3:48

least because Garady has some NPCs

3:51

for Bishop and I don't want

3:53

to trample his GMCs. No, they

3:55

are superior NPCs. Absolutely. He is

3:57

non-improvised. He has probably sat and

3:59

thought. good.

10:00

He sometimes acts as mayor or

10:02

one of his relatives does. But

10:04

Jim Hale's son, Jim Jr.

10:06

is sort of the star

10:09

at the school at Locust Grove High.

10:11

He's the quarterback. He's the king

10:13

of the school. Donald Hale, his

10:15

other son, not so

10:17

much. He's on the school paper. He

10:19

has every now and again, loudly expresses

10:21

his desire to get out of this

10:24

nowhere burg and go to somewhere fancy

10:27

like Oklahoma City or Tulsa. But for

10:29

now he's still in town. And

10:31

so he's sort of the insider outsider.

10:34

He's the photographer, like I say, on

10:36

the school paper. So he's always around

10:38

with his camera. He's probably seen a

10:40

lot of stuff. He's, you know, used

10:42

to being sort of on the edges

10:44

of big business when big

10:46

Jim and little Jim sit and they talk about

10:48

what the bank's going to do. So he has

10:50

some information there. And he also sort of has

10:52

an idea of what the kids who don't like

10:55

his brother think, because more often than not, he's

10:57

one of the kids who doesn't like his brother.

10:59

So he's sort of, again, a little bit of

11:01

a foot in two camps, but he's always around.

11:04

And he's maybe a little more sympathetic to

11:06

big city types like the investigators than maybe

11:08

other people at the high school, if you

11:10

need to get the kids view on stuff.

11:12

It's nice to me, though, that maybe he's

11:15

looking into something and that his purpose in

11:17

the narrative is to disappear or have something

11:19

horrible happen to him early on. And well,

11:21

if so, Jim Hale will put up a

11:23

reward by God. Yeah, this is

11:26

a horror game after all. So we

11:28

need someone shifty and scary who may

11:30

indeed be in league with whatever mythos

11:32

organization or entity is doing things around

11:34

the town or possibly is just a

11:36

weird creepy guy who leads you when

11:38

you follow him into more information, but

11:40

does not, in fact, turn out to

11:42

be one of the bad guys. And

11:45

this is Tom Blevins. He's had a

11:47

rough time in the war. He's

11:49

badly scarred. He reeks of

11:52

cheap wine. He's sort of the

11:54

local handyman who people kind of

11:56

have to rely on because there

11:59

isn't another handyman. man, but he

12:02

knows what's going on in everybody's household, he's

12:04

maybe pilfered a few items or two, and

12:06

in one possible version of this, in

12:09

fact, that he's been suborned by the

12:11

sinister forces and can come and wreck

12:13

your car or try to chase

12:15

you down or just sort of give you a

12:18

threatening, baleful look or, you know, even

12:20

plant a strange idol in your shed

12:22

at the auto camp. Speaking of figures

12:25

that may or may not be involved,

12:27

I think that many of the local

12:29

towns, not a nice person like Mary

12:31

Lou McMurtry, but Mary Lou McMurtry might

12:33

not want to talk about Mrs. Ricka

12:35

Nicely, the widow Nicely, who lives out

12:38

on the edge of town in that

12:40

house that maybe could stand to lick

12:42

a paint. Maybe his yard could be

12:44

mowed a little more. But, you

12:46

know, on the other hand, her husband died

12:48

in the war or maybe it was in

12:51

the riot. We don't know. He's just gone.

12:53

And the widow Nicely has been living out

12:55

on the edge of town. No one's quite

12:57

sure how she gets her money. Maybe it's

12:59

an oil lease that her husband left her.

13:01

Maybe it's well, she can't she can't have

13:03

that much money because she's not putting it

13:05

into the house, but she's the

13:08

one out on the edge of town

13:10

who might have seen that mirage that

13:12

you're talking about or those willow wisp

13:14

lights. And maybe the

13:16

widow Nicely because she she keeps odd hours.

13:18

We see her lights on at her house

13:21

all hours. Really. We don't really know what

13:23

the widow Nicely is up to. But, you

13:25

know, no one would ever say a thing

13:27

against her in town. Obviously that wouldn't be

13:29

neighborly. And the person who's sort of interested

13:31

in her property and hoping to kind of

13:33

usher her possibly even into the next world

13:35

or at least get a second mortgage on

13:37

her house is Keith Courtney,

13:39

who's the city slicker who's recently

13:42

arrived to start buying up property

13:44

on behalf of some corporation or

13:46

entity or so forth and

13:48

could be a legal corporation or

13:51

it could in fact be a cult

13:53

entity. And though he seems very sort

13:55

of pragmatic and down to earth and

13:57

not necessarily admirable, but kind of

13:59

a. slick character and not, you know, charming

14:02

slick like T.C. Lowman's, but there's

14:05

something wrong with this guy. He

14:07

may be snooping around Mrs. Nicely's

14:10

property and he might have seen

14:13

some things or he might in fact

14:15

be the one bringing the things there

14:17

in order to drive her off and

14:19

claim whatever is on her property and

14:22

perhaps even more importantly whatever is under

14:24

her property. Mmm. Well,

14:26

if you have a rumor about Keith Courtney

14:28

that you want or rumor about when a

14:30

Nicely, the person who will tell it to

14:32

you or agree with you and tell you

14:35

another one is Mabel Jumper's and

14:37

she's out at First Baptist and the church would

14:39

rightly fall apart without her. She is

14:42

the church lady. She volunteers for all

14:44

the picnics. She takes care of the

14:46

kids at Sunday school. She's on the

14:48

roof committee, goes around and gets money

14:50

raised in the town whenever the tornadoes

14:52

come through and blow off pieces of

14:54

the roof. Church would down

14:56

right fall apart without Mabel Jumper's, but she's

14:58

got a tug on her and

15:00

she enjoys her position as

15:03

sort of the queen bee of First

15:05

Baptist, but she also enjoys sharing stories.

15:08

Just taking a neighborly interest is not

15:10

gossip and that's what she'll tell you

15:12

right before she tells you the worst

15:14

thing you've ever heard about Big Jim

15:16

Hale. The one person she can't think

15:18

of anything mean to say about is

15:20

school teacher Dusha Shippman and she's there

15:23

in the story to give the

15:25

characters another friendly person to interact

15:27

with. If you have players who

15:29

enjoy a sort of

15:31

a romantic undercurrent, she can

15:33

provide that or she

15:35

can just be a sympathetic town's

15:37

person who's minding her own business

15:40

and is therefore someone you have to

15:42

protect from the Eldritch creatures. Dusha

15:44

Shippman can also maybe give you

15:46

the inside scoop on

15:49

the kids, the little Jim and Don

15:51

Hale and all the other teens that

15:53

you might be seeing out in town

15:55

riding their bikes in town or their

15:57

horses out of town. And she's a

15:59

chemistry teacher. So she could be the

16:01

one that you go to when you have some

16:03

weird science that your own abilities can't quite handle

16:05

or just go to get the equipment that you

16:07

need in order to use your own abilities to

16:10

do the weird science. Speaking

16:12

of horses, we should mention Jerry

16:14

Cotton, who runs the big cattle

16:16

ranch. It's not big for Oklahoma,

16:18

but it's big for the county and

16:21

he's got a lot of cow hands. So

16:23

he's always hiring on. So maybe if the

16:25

investigators have shown up and they're more work

16:27

with their hands, hobo type investigators and less

16:30

fancy science parapsychologist investigators, maybe they

16:32

can sign up with Jerry Cotton.

16:35

He's fairly successful. The depression

16:37

hasn't helped him at all,

16:39

but he's mostly been keeping

16:41

things ticking over again

16:43

thanks to the oil leases on his property. He's

16:46

told Keith Courtney off a time or two

16:48

as well, and he's always

16:51

ready to help out. If

16:53

someone's hungry or whatever, he shows up

16:55

with some beef and no one

16:58

tells the government whether or not it was

17:00

slaughtered illegally. But

17:02

the other thing about Jerry is, of course, he's got

17:04

all those cows, he's got all those horses. That

17:06

means animals going to get into stuff

17:08

and you find a cow with weird

17:10

wounds. Well, it's probably Jerry's. Jerry might

17:12

know a little thing about where it

17:14

was found and have no idea what

17:16

done it because he's never seen anything

17:18

like that in 40-odd years of ranching.

17:20

Ever since her father, the sheriff, took

17:22

sick, Holly McAllister has been just sort

17:24

of doing his job for him.

17:27

She's not officially the sheriff, but everyone treats

17:29

her as if she is because she's demonstrated

17:31

confidence. No one wants to

17:33

acknowledge in the 1930s that a woman could

17:35

do this job so they haven't formally given

17:38

it to her. She doesn't wear a uniform.

17:40

But... Well, plus that, I mean, putting Bob

17:42

on the sick pay and

17:44

Bob, you know, he needs his whole money. He

17:47

needs his whole check. Exactly. So,

17:49

you're using the McAllisters and even though

17:52

Bob is sick, the McAllisters are still

17:54

protecting them. She's just one

17:56

person in a small town. She's going to be over

17:58

her head if it comes to her. straight

32:00

up a street killing like William Gobel's

32:02

1895 shooting of

32:04

John Lawrence Sanford. Gobel, of course, goes on

32:07

to become governor and then assassinated as we

32:09

discuss in episode 602. So,

32:12

the dueling per se, as we sort of noted

32:14

at the top, is a specific

32:16

social code between people of a

32:19

certain social stratum, and

32:21

either once Jacksonian democracy

32:24

washes away the virtues of that

32:26

social stratum, or once people

32:28

realize that if you just stab a

32:30

guy, no one cares, which is what

32:32

happens in most of Kentucky, they move

32:35

on to sort of more the traditional,

32:37

you know, dry-gulp someone in

32:39

a bar and try and kill them type murdering,

32:42

or you have the sort of

32:44

long-standing vendettas and feuds of the

32:46

Hatfields and McCoy's and etc. out

32:48

in eastern Kentucky, which is again

32:50

settled either with drive-bys, gangster style,

32:52

or with the occasional run into

32:54

each other on the street and

32:56

gunplay breaks out. Right. And often

32:58

those were about land

33:01

ownership or control of other

33:03

commercial enterprises or about politics,

33:05

but I already said land ownership and

33:07

control of commercial enterprises. So, there

33:09

was something at stake, whereas very

33:12

often with these duels, it's just

33:14

butt heads insulting each other and refusing

33:16

to back down and often somebody wound

33:18

up dead. Yeah. So,

33:20

that was the way of the world.

33:23

And even, I should point

33:25

out, even John Randolph of Roanoke would

33:27

occasionally turn down a duel if he thought

33:29

the person was beneath dueling him. So,

33:32

he said General Wilkinson was in the

33:34

pay of the Spanish and a traitor

33:36

to America and contemptible, and he wouldn't

33:39

vote for anything that would give John

33:41

Wilkinson a nickel of public money. And

33:44

Wilkinson called him out and said,

33:46

I will duel you. And John Randolph said,

33:48

you aren't worth staining my weapon over. Go

33:50

about your business. Yeah. So, it's an even

33:53

more devastating thing to say. The

33:55

Nazis and Mussolini's regime

33:58

both re-legalized dueling.