Three Views of the Weird West part 1

https://blasphemoustomes.com/2020/09/29/three-views-of-the-weird-west-part-1/

We’re back and we’re saddling up our shantaks, filling our waterskins with space mead and heading out to where the land is weird. For a long time, we thought that “weird west” just meant Austin, but it turns out to be a whole subgenre. Let’s hope we can explore it before the heat, outlaws and eldritch monstrosities leave us as nothing more than bleached bones amidst the sagebrush.

This is the first of two episodes exploring the weird west in gaming. With the release of Down Darker Trails, Cthulhu has followed the pioneers out to a strange new frontier. We thought it would be interesting to map out some of this territory.

In this instalment, we discuss a couple of the weird west games that predate Down Darker Trails. First, Matt guides us through the pulpy mayhem of Deadlands. Then, Scott preaches the word of the King of Life Reborn and the glory of Dogs in the Vineyard. Oddly enough, we also mentioned both these games in our episode about our favourite game mechanics.

Once again, the lockdown means we recorded this episode remotely. We hope we’re getting the hang of this.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Deadlands: The Weird West
• Savage Worlds
• The Esoterrorists
• Manitou
• Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
• Judge Death
• The Mandalorian (2019)
• The Burrowers (2008)
• Adios A-Mi-Go
• The Shining by Stephen King
• Deadlands Noir
• Hell on Earth
• Lost Colony
• Firefly (2002)
• The gunfight at the OK Corral
• Dogs in the Vineyard
• The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints
• The State of Deseret
• The Milgram Experiment
• The Mormon settlement of Utah
• Joseph Smith
• The California Gold Rush
• “Jailbreak” by Greg Stolze from One Shots for Unknown Armies
• Vincent Baker’s post on Story Games about withdrawing Dogs in the Vineyard from print
• DOGS

Calls for The Blasphemous Tome 6

We have almost finished writing issue 6 of The Blasphemous Tome. This is the annual printed fanzine we send to all out Patreon backers. While this is shaping up to be a pretty packed issue, we are still accepting submissions until the 18th of October. This could be a short article or story of up to 500 words or a piece of black-and-white artwork. We are licenced by Chaosium and are free to include material written for Call of Cthulhu. Ping us on social media if you would like to send us something.

Anyone backing us by the end of November should receive their copy by the end of the year, as well as one of our chthonic Christmas cards. We will send out a second batch of Tomes in the New Year to anyone who backs us before the end of December.

500 Patreon Backers!

We recently passed a major milestone. Over 500 of you wonderful people are now backing the podcast on Patreon. Thank you so much to you all for such generosity! It is genuinely humbling. Your backing has allowed us to put a lot more time into producing the podcast, which we hope is paying off for everyone. We are profoundly grateful.

Matt on Into The Darkness

Matt has been busy recording stuff with our good friends at Into the Darkness. As well as the ongoing Two-Headed Serpent campaign, Matt has recently run his scenarios, “A Saturnine Chalice” and “Pulvus et Umbrus Sumus”. Check out the Into the Darkness website for more details.