Chapter 3
THE PERILS OF THE UNKNOWN DOOM

I wish I could say I went home and hit the phone. I don’t wish to give you any further evidence of my lack of social confidence and shyness, but it is unavoidable if I am to be honest in this tale.
It took me an age to pluck up the courage to cold call the first number. It was one of the Runequest groups. The guy on the other end of the phone seemed very nice and understanding though. I explained I’d not played Runequest before, strategically not mentioning I hadn’t played ANY roleplaying games before. He asked if I’d played Call of Cthulhu and I had to confess I hadn’t (it wasn’t until later that I discovered the two games shared the same rules and game mechanics .. Though, obviously, very different settings!)
Not a problem he said. He told me the address they played at, but then mentioned that the following week was their once a month gaming night at a pub in Liverpool. If I showed up early he would go through the character creation process with me and I’d have my character introduced during the session.
I thanked him, scribbled down all the details and rung off. It was the only call I ever made.
Now I had a target, something to set my gaming sights on. I set about planning another trip to GAME in Liverpool. This time I was going to buy RUNEQUEST. I hit DICING WITH DRAGONS again to reread what Ian Livingstone though of it. I figured it was a great idea to be familiar with the rule system this other group used before I sat down with them. Maybe even to have rolled up my own character in advance. I didn’t relish the idea of playing a game with a whole room of strangers and not knowing what dice to roll for the most basic of operations. Of all the games I’d previously reviewed and considered as my second purchase, Runequest had come out on top. Lots of people appeared to play it and it seemed free of the stigma that D&D had acquired due to being the leader of the field. I was a bit sad I wasn’t going to play D&D, but it was out of my hands.
Around this time I had also discovered the British gaming magazine WHITE DWARF. This had a regular column devoted to Runequest and I looked eagerly through it for hints or tips. While this Runequest obsession wasn’t as acute as my previous Dungeons and Dragons one, I had still built up quite a Christmas Morning anticipation fever when the day dawned to ride the train over and enter the cellar of dreams for the third time.
  I was surprised and a little relieved to see a different wizard sat behind the counter this time. He was an older guy than the one who had sold me the Red Box. He was also deeply engaged in  conversation with a customer when I descended, but I didn’t panic. I knew what I was after and trolled over to the main display to find the RUNEQUEST box among the other games.
It wasn’t there!!!!!!!! I worked my way through a second time and still couldn’t see it. They had a number of boxed sets that listed themselves as support items for Runequest, but the main box with it’s armoured Battlemaiden wasn’t among them. I couldn’t believe this. I had less than 2 days before the Games Meet in Liverpool and the game isn’t in what must be the best stocked games shop in the universe. I glanced up at the counter. The Elder Wizard appeared to be explaining the finer points of a box of paper chits to a customer. I swallowed my mounting gaming panic and wandered over. It all appeared to have unfolded from a tiny Tardis-like plastic box no bigger than paperback book. Tiny chits of paper portraying cars and bits of roadway had spread across the counter. The rule book looked like a pamplet. Was this a roleplaying game??
“What is this?” I asked, suitably intrigued and forgetting my crisis for a moment.
“CAR WARS, nothing is more fun in a tiny box! Comes from Austin, Texas, the home of Steve Jackson Games.” I ooooo’ed in appreciation. He pushed a tiny chit toward me.
“Want a go?” Within minutes I was screaming around the counter top attempting to ram the other customer’s paper chit car. He already had 20 minutes experience of table top crazy driving on me so it wasn’t long before my car was a twisted mass of imaginary metal. I plugged a couple of good rounds into the side of his vehicle as I limped away from the paper road sections.
“Runequest?” I breathlessly said, dragging my brain back to the present and wiping burning hot brake fluid from my mental jacket sleeve.
“Just sold the last one,” he said “Could be a week before we get some new stock in.” At glanced sharply at the victorious Auto duelist stood beside me.
“Not me!” he said a little defensively.
“I am supposed to joining a gaming group in a couple of days, they play RUNEQUEST …I wanted to try and learn the system before I played.
“Complex system, RuneQuest. Not one I’d recommend to a new player!”
Oh great, I thought .. Not only do they not have the blinking game, but he has sussed how inexperienced I am as well.
“What about Call of Cthulhu?” I suddenly remembered the chap on the phone asking if I played that.
“Yeah, both Chaosium games. Use practically the same game mechanics.”
I was pleased that aside from the word Chaosium (which was the publisher of both games it turned out) I had understood practically every word he’d said. He reached past me and pulled out the dark green box of CALL OF CTHULHU.
“This isn’t going to help you with your Rune Magic” he mentioned, sliding the box across to me. “But if you hadn’t played a percentile based system before, I’d pick Call of Cthulhu as an excellent starter.”
Damn, just when I was getting cocky and thought I was getting game terms. I gave him my best “Of course I understand you” smile and handed over the cash for the game. I made a mental note to look up “Percentile Based System” in Dicing With Dragons. Ian would know!

Upon leaving the shop I felt a weird lurch in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t planned on Cthulhu being the second game in my RPG Library. I’d not had a chance to get all excited about it and plan on buying it. No Christmas Morning feelings … I felt cheated out of an important part of the experience.
I also still felt nervous that I was going to be woefully unprepared for the RuneQuest night, but looking at the painting on the cover of the Cthulhu boxlid, I couldn’t help but be excited. A weird old house lurks in a thunderstorm. Three figures stood in a graveyard, lit only by a lamp held in the hand of a man whose face you can not see. One window in the house is illuminated with sinister purpose.
It had been a few years since I’d read my Lovecraft books, but I remembered them well enough. This wasn’t standard fair ghost stories or boring slasher horror. This was cosmic oddness, creatures from wildly different dimensions wanting in on our cozy little world. They didn’t care that just being here was poison to us, they hungered for our world. This could be a great game afterall, even though I suspected I would probably never play it with people.

On this occasion the box stayed sealed until I was safely on the train. When I finally popped it open I was surprised by the extras included. A huge world map (with suitably Lovecraftean tentacles writhing away in the corners!) a sheet of character figures in sinister silhouette, a sourcebook of the 1920s (until this moment, I had forgotten the era the stories had been set in!) and a big chunky rule/source book with a bilious green monochrome cover depicting some shambling monster. There was also a set of garishly colourful dice that seemed to clash madly with the tone set by the rest of the game.
I was quite surprised by adult way the rulebook read. After the D&D books, which had an unmistakably gosh/wow and childish tone to them, this book read as though the author was talking adult to adult. This really shouldn’t have surprised me, after all I’d read enough Lovecraft to appreciate that the themes in this game would be madness, darkness and soul shredding horror. Cheerful Dwarves with battle axes and hot Elven Battlemaidens need not apply! (I was already missing the imaginary Elven Battlemaidens though!)

Getting off the train in Birkenhead I didn’t make the same photocopy mistake twice. Instead of grabbing my bus outside the station, I walked down to Argyle Street and visited a photocopy shop there. I got ten copies of the Call of Cthulhu character sheet before stalking out into the gathering gloom to find the bus stop across from the Old Classic Cinema. I had also had the foresight to have packed a notepad and pencil with me. This was to have allowed me to dice up my first RuneQuest character on the bus. Now instead of some hairy Nomad Adventurer from the foothills of Glorantha I was creating Professor Stephen Salem. A brooding Antiquarian bookseller with a mysterious past and late of New York. He would wander in and out of a dozen adventures in the following years, but for now he was just an exercise in filling my first character sheet. The Call of Cthulhu box was a lot deeper than the D&D box. It allowed me to fling my dice around a bit. It also allowed the movement of the bus to fudge a few rolls so my Professor had a scary high score for his Intelligence and Power. Feeling a little guilty about my first actual cheating while gaming, I kept the pathetic dexterity and strength rolls. While Stephen Salem was going to be uncanny in his sensitivity to magic and bookish in the extreme, he was never going to be able to run away from a shambling horror. I predicted he would probably have his face gnawed off pretty sharpish if I ever actually played him.
Confession: Okay, okay …Who am I trying to kid with the “hairy Nomad Adventurer from the foothills of Glorantha” stuff. Had I got RuneQuest that day, the first character I’d have brought into existence would have been the girl in the battle bikini with the glowing sword from the cover of the box. Damn, it is hard staying honest when you’re putting your memories down for posterity.

The bus ride seemed to be over in an instant, thus were the time compression effects of CoC Character Creation. It made 25 minutes feel like barely 5 had passed … and was probably the first occasion when I actually noticed how time seemed to vanish when roleplaying gaming touched my life. I reached home and briefly slid my second cardboard box in alongside Dungeons & Dragons on my new gaming shelf to see how they looked together. The shelf also contained a copy of White Dwarf and a copy of IMAGINE, a British gaming magazine from TSR (The Cambridge branch of the Dungeons & Dragons company), I’d also got a boxfile with a huge amount of scribbled notes, drawings and maps. This contained the seeds of my own Insane Fantasy Game REALITY RIDERS. A berserk experiment in gaming madness that would take shape as soon as I had assembled some willing victims, but let us not jump ahead in this tale too swiftly now. I had Call of Cthulhu and though this wasn’t RuneQuest, I had a small window into how the system worked. I set about digging through the rules.

Chapter Three

The Legend of Saltahar
Two days passed slipped past in an eye blink. I was back in Liverpool looking for a grubby City Centre pub whose name quite escapes my memory. My nerves were back again and I half expected to bottle out of going. By some stroke of luck I found the place and then discovered that thanks to my paranoia about being late, I was actually hugely early. A cardboard sign proudly proclaiming the Mersey Fantasy Gaming Society was propped up on a chipped and yellowing radiator. An arrow on the sign pointed to an unappetising doorway and a narrow gloomy staircase. Without getting a drink from the bar (I’d a couple of cans of Pepsi in my bag for when I got thirsty … it hadn’t occurred to me that using a pub for a game night was anything but a handy gaming space!) I wandered upstairs. I reached the function room, which was really just a large open plan area beside some toilets. A small gathering of very hairy guys and one bored looking girl where already around one end of a table. A couple of them looked up at me as I entered, but nobody asked who I was or offered to introduce themself. I walked across and taking note of the character sheets, dice and boxes with bad fantasy art spilled over the tabletop, redundantly asked “Mersey Fantasy Gaming Group?”
“Yeah, sit down anywhere.” the most hairy guy said. He looked a lot like Lemmy From Motorhead. A fact I’d have found strangely comforting in any other social situation. Without pausing for breath, Lemmy went straight back to recounting a gaming anecdote. I sank onto an uncomfortable leather stool and listened to his tale. It was a fairly dull story than contained too many references to players I didn’t know so I didn’t appreciate either the humour. I did enjoy the sense of excitement that the storyteller obviously had. Everyone around the table seemed keen to share some story or other. It was my first experience of the gaming phenomenon of Glory Tales.
Glory Tales: The compulsive need that Players have for telling stories from their experience at the gaming table. These are usually recounted with the sort of passion reserved for things that happened in reality. I’ve come to relish this sport over the years and have my own Glory Tales that I will roll out and repeat given half a chance. I’ve even allowed the habit to inform the name for this ebook. One of the things I will say in defence of this pastime, though the sources of most of these tales are completely imaginary adventures created as a shared fantasy between gamers, they probably have as valid a reality as most of the tales told in any pub or by groups of people gathered anywhere. Probably a similar social mechanic is at work with most tales of sexual conquest, fishing skill or footballing prowess you overhear in pubs or where ever people gather in significant numbers. Gamers however are probably more honest in confessing they wished it happened, rather than pretend it actually did.

So I sat and listened. I was waiting for the proper moment to bring up the awkward fact that I didn’t have a character ready to play. However, nobody seemed inclined to ask me even such mundane details as I my name. I decided to do the thing I’ve always done when social situations begin to overwhelm me …I pulled out a sketchpad and commenced drawing. I got working on a shaven headed warrior priest doing something unpleasant to a dragon the size of a horse. It is probably a good time to mention how quickly I draw. While lots of artists spend days getting pictures to blossom gently into life on their paper, I am of the school of hack it in swiftly. The speed I draw scares other artists sometimes. I once took a still life class. After three weeks the teacher had to explain that I was a commercial art student and as such worked very quickly. Apparently some of the students had approached him in a slightly panicked way, seeing me drawing five or six studies while they had just completed one drawing.
In a few short minutes I’d drawn the bald warrior priest (I figured there was enough hair around the table already!) and had started on the dragon. My artistic endeavours seemed to be as ignorable as I was to the guys around the table, but the loan female gamer took an interest. Now the less kind of you might suspect this was my subtle female gamer seduction technique, but honestly it wasn’t. I really do draw when I’m nervous, helps me focus my mind away from whatever awkward social situation I‘m in. The fact it attracted Beth, as she introduced herself straight away, was a rather pleasant side effect. She asked if she could look through the rest of the drawing book, then “coo’ed” and “arrr’ed” in a delightful way through my other drawings.
“You’re really good at this!” she said “do you do it for a living?” I confessed I didn’t, but intended to once I’d finished art college. Once the social niceties were out of the way and she’d looked through my drawings, she asked if I would do a drawing of her character. She dragged a character sheet in front of me. I recognised the style of the sheet from Call of Cthulhu, roughly the same layout and similar wording. Beth’s hand writing was microscopic and very untidy. I could hardly read the notes she had filled the sheet with.
“Probably best if you tell me what she looks like.” I prompted, suspecting that this girl expected me to able to draw an illustration based on just her character sheet information. However vividly something lives in your imagination, it is quite a struggle to expect others to see it from a tatty A4 sheet of paper and copious spider like notes. [Note: She was the first to do this, but she wasn’t the last. I’ve drawn character portraits for the 30 years for a massive range of players. Some really do think I can work from just a list of stats and an equipment itinary.]
Beth commenced telling me about Sala’thar. After 20 minutes I’d got quite a good drawing taking shape in front of me. It looked something like Siouxsie Sioux from Siouxsie And the Banshees, but with a battle axe and minimal armour. All my RuneQuest dreams were coming true, here was my battle maiden … already impressed with my art skills and, dare I hope it, an actual fantasy gamer, not just someone’s girlfriend.
Yes, I really hoped she wasn’t someone’s girlfriend, I might even have offered up a quick prayer to Mithras that she was looking for a sweet natured art student gamer! Life is just that good sometimes, isn’t it?
I pulled out a set of colouring pencils and began to bring Sala’thar to life on the page. It was easily better than anything else in the drawing book I’d done before.  Never underestimate the creative power of a lovely muse and hormones! I carefully tore it out of the drawing pad and gave it to her.
“Sign it, you might be famous one day!” she insisted. I scribbled my name and a bolder soul might have included their phone number. The only numbers I had the courage to scratch alongside my name were the day’s date. My impromptu art performance had finally attracted the attention of the others around the table and while I’d been drawing more people had slunk in and sat down. One slightly less beardy and wizardy looking guy was sat on the other side of Beth. He introduced himself, but his name went into and out of my brain almost immediately. He did however have a blank character sheet and some dice. With the skill born from a person who has swallowed the Runequest rulebook completely, he drove me through the character creation process at a 100 miles per hour. I realised, with belated horror, this was our Dungeon Master and wished that I had made a mental note of his name!
By 9.00 the table was heaving with gamers, beer glasses and someone unrolled a map of a fantasy town that was staggering in it’s detail. Laid out on a huge sheet of A2 paper and appeared to contain information down to the type of rubbish found in the back yards of slums, it was amazing! The whole thing would have taken weeks to prepare. I was impressed at the dedication of the nerdy mind that had breathed life into this place.
A collection of badly painted metal miniatures were heaped together on an outline marking of an Inn. The Hydra’s Scrotum was my first imaginary pub. It was probably as comfortable as the tavern I was currently in, thirsty, but now cut off from the downstairs bar by the press of gamers between me and it. I felt sheepish about opening one of my cans of Cola since nobody else seemed to have brought their own drinks from home. I just thanked providence that I wasn’t desperate for the toilet, since the route to those also seemed blocked by gamers from the Biker Zone.
“You’re gathered en masse at the Hydra’s Scrotum!” our Dungeon Master proclaimed. “Your action in stealing the Sword of Night from the catacombs has angered the Thieves Guild. Already two of your number have been assassinated because of this.” , this prompted  grumbles from two unhappy looking players at the far end of the table.
“More reprisals have been promised unless the Sword is returned.” Rapidly it became apparent we were bottled in. The Guild of Thieves had slowly forced the party of adventurers back into the grubby corner that was The Hydra’s Scrotum. Anyone who had tried to sneak out had been ruthlessly killed and their private parts delivered back to the Inn by special messenger. I tried to be clever and suggested that since I was a new face to the party, the Thieves Guild wouldn’t know me. I could walk out like a regular customer and go for help. I thought this was a good idea, but was put in my place and informed, for the purpose of the game, I was one of those who have taken part in the original theft. I felt a bit put out by this. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was a marked man because the Games Master said so! Well, he is the boss. Nut up or shut up as Woody Harrelson says in Zombieland.
“We’ve two options,” an overweight guy in a faded black tee shirt says. “We negotiate with them to borrow/rent the sword from them legitimately or we fight our way out. Once we’ve reached the edge of Noir Wood, we can vanish into the trees and rendezvous on the far side of IceSpike mountains.” He pointed a meaty hand to a densely drawn forest due north of the Inn. Beyond the forest was an impressive range of snow capped bumps. I liked the idea of fighting better than just renting the sword from the Guild. I’d not been here the week they had stolen the sword, so I had no vested interest in the thing or sense of accomplishment in having it in our possession, but it seemed wrong not to fight for it.
“If we fight, we fight!!!” one guy said in a voice that sounded impressive until you actually listened to what he said and realised it didn‘t really mean anything. My soul contribution to this evening had been to suggest I sneak out. This, it suddenly occurred to me, wasn’t the most impressive thing I might do in front of Beth. She was still sat beside me and in the imaginary candle light of the Inn, her hair glowed like dark brown honey. She was like a medieval Kate Bush, with slightly too much eye makeup and a battleaxe. She wouldn’t be caught dead sneaking out to fetch help. When the fight happened she would be dealing death with a grim smile on her defined elven features. I pulled out my imaginary blade and joined in with the calls for a battle to the death with the Guild.
“We need to explore all the options, no use walking into a gauntlet of Destruction. This sword is the only item that will cure King Madelinous’ son from his madness, but it is little use if we are all dead. Let us see if we can’t negotiate for a price. These thieves care for little but profit. Perhaps we can meet their demands and promise a boon from the King himself.” The overweight guy seemed to be the alpha male around the table. He called the shots and most heads nodded at his wisdom. I now felt a proper burk with my bare bodkin out, but didn’t announce I was putting it back in it’s battered leather scabbard. The evening of negotiation had begun. We sent a message out to the Thieves for their price. It returned that they would let us go for
1) the return of Sword,
2) three eyeballs from our party
3) the youngest of us to be tortured in the town square.
Since I was the new member I assumed I was “the youngest” and didn’t fancy this part of the deal, despite the fact the eyeballs couldn’t come from the one who was going to be tortured. We sent out a counter offer that included less eyeballs and a guarantee that the tortured member of the party wouldn’t actually be tortured to death. We tried to hang onto the sword as well, but increased the amount of gold we promised them in compensation.
Their demand now increased to
1) four eyeballs,
2) the sword and
3) the death of the youngest member of our party.
These thieves played hardball and it appeared they had us well and truly trapped. Overweight guy was examining the possibility there might be a tunnel system under the town that would allow us to slither through sewage and escape. I didn’t mind the idea of raw sewage, since it was fully imaginary. My only objection was, and I naturally kept it to myself, that I wouldn’t be that attractive to Battlemaidens caked in fresh effluent. The sewer plan is quickly ditched as non-starter. The diameter of the drains was tiny, meaning we would need 9 potions of polymorph self to transform us into rats. We are playing the wrong game for that magic potion to be available … and anyway, we couldn’t carry the sword in rat form either, not even if we all cooperated like a little rat army.

The tension builds, or it should have. With so many people around the table and so many rather naff plans being put forward, it is getting hard to concentrate on anything. Maybe it is just me, but I figured that games would be best elements of fantasy literature emphasised, not the dull standing around stuff. If I had been the Games Master of this dull debate-a-thon, after 30 minutes of failing to do anything, I’d have sent an burning Orc dipped in pitch into the Tavern just to stir things up a bit.
I begin to long for a burning Orc, but it doesn’t come. Instead the various strategies are re-debated and chewed over yet again. I craftily sneak out my sketchpad and begin to draw another picture. Doodling a burning Orc it is preferable to stacking my dice into a tower with the D4 as a pointy roof. Perhaps the Thieves Guild are intending to bore us to death. Various real world conversations are breaking out around the table as the roleplayers give up remaining in character as their medieval selves and begin to debate Everton’s chances at the weekend. The Dungeon Master is giving them icy looks, but who can blame them. The Alpha Male of the group, a couple of his vocal second in command types and the Dungeon Master are the only ones appearing to have any fun this evening. I suggest dipping a few of the Tavern customers in pitch, setting them on fire and sending them out into the streets as a distraction. I am asked if I have really said this “in character” … meaning, did my character really loudly announce that to the packed tavern. I respond that I whispered it as a suggestion to our party leader and I get one of those looks that says “who invited you?” from the tubby Alpha Male.
Another 30 minutes of this passes and I’m wondering about dipping myself in burning pitch (though not out loud, naturally!). Finally a plan is settled on. We will storm out into the streets, splitting up to the four compass points and all making for the nearby dark woods. The Hydra’s Scrotum bizarrely has 4 exits. The party leader and his pals (including Beth) get the north exit closest to the cover of the trees. I get the south exit with a player who has done even less than me this evening. He gives me a look of weary resignation and we move our character figures to the bottom of the tavern floor plan. The others take the East and West doorways. On the command of overweight Alpha guy we pile into the dimly lit streets and commence running. I’m hoping for the odd thief or two to hack at with my sword, but the thieves guild is not there to oblige me with some entertainment this evening. Instead a rain of arrows begins to hammer down around us. The Games Master informs us we’ve been hit and rolls for our hit location. I’m not surprised to discover an arrow has hit me right in the throat and I’m lying in pool of blood. The small party of adventurers heading north has already made it to the tree line. They get to skirmish with an improbably small band of thieves (or so it seems to the dying brain of my character) and escape into the woods. I am struggling to remember if any of the guys who ran East or West made it out of the tavern alive. It is academic, we are packing up bags, hunting down dice that may have rolled under the table and generally saying our goodnights. Beth thanks me again for the picture and leaves arm in arm with the Games Master. I suddenly understand the arrow sticking out of my character’s throat a lot clearer.
I wonder if anyone is going to ask me if I am retuning for another session, but nobody does. I get out into the street and begin wandering down toward Central Station. I walk some of the distance with a couple of the other players who are now bitching loudly about the Games Master, and favouritism. I’ve now decided this whole evening was a learning experience, mostly in how not to run a game. My dreams of exciting adventures and heroic daring are cooling in the blood leaking out of my gaping neck wound. If I had been the Games Master I’d have given all the players a chance to have their moment of glory. I had a needless and nasty death in a grubby back alley because the guy in charge had a useless plan. Well, it might have been that or it might have been I was being punished most brutally for my “dip a few tavern customers in burning pitch and send them out as distractions” comment. Or it might have been because I’d been artistically wooing the Games Master’s girlfriend. For some reason known only to the Games Master the most obvious escape route was practically unguarded. If the Thieves Guild were as red hot as we’d been led to believe, surely they would have made the area between the North Exit and the wood a brutal killing ground. Hiding archers in the woods to riddle the escaping party members with poison tipped barbs as they fought through a press of dagger wielding thieves.
I crack open a warm can of Cola and walk into the harsh neon lit train station. For a moment or two my enthusiasm for gaming has been dulled by a room filled with basically unfriendly and quite vindictive people. Who wouldn’t cut a new player a single break on his first evening with a group? Not that Games Master, obviously. If they treated all their new players with such a welcome (burning pitch comments or not!) I doubted if they hung onto anyone for long! Still, they had a group of nearly 10 players who turned up for that abuse each session. I couldn’t muster even two of my friends. If I was going to get a group going, I was going to have to much craftier than the Thieves’ Guild.