Transcript:Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace

Pre-Show
TALIESIN: Good evening, children, and welcome to Call of Cthulhu, Shadow of the Crystal Palace. We'll be getting into that vibe in a little bit. In the meantime, I'm Taliesin Jaffe. I'm your Keeper for the evening. This is possibly your first time watching this game or playing it, and it's almost mine, too. It's certainly my first time running it, so, be gentle. (laughing) I'm really excited to run this game, it's gonna be an awful lot of fun. This one-shot has been developed with our friends at Chaosium, the people who make Call of Cthulhu. It's a fun game, it's a very different vibe from your normal Dungeons & Dragons, and I'm looking forward to showing you what you can do with it. For those of you who don't know, Call of Cthulhu is the classic horror roleplaying game where players take on the role of journalists, academics, detectives, any of the kind of, pulp adventuring archetypes, to investigate terrors of all sorts. We'll have a special one tonight. Our story tonight has a soft connection, do I have it somewhere here? I believe I put it here. All the way over here. To their new Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, which is the perfect gateway product for anyone interested in Cthulhu, but not sure where to start. When they threw this at us, they were asking if we wanted to run it, and then we were of the opinion that we didn't wanna spoil it for you, so this game is a subtle prequel that you can either incorporate into your version of the game, or ignore and do something else interesting. Either way, depends on how things go. I have no idea. (laughing) The Starter Set gives you basic rules and some starter adventurers, and ready-to-play game characters, and some usable dice and prop handouts. We'll be talking about prop handouts in a minute. And you can go pick up the Starter Set right now and use the code, CRITICALROLE when you check out to get 10% off your entire order. Go to critrole.com/cthulhu and I will spell that for the uninitiated, C-T-H-U-L-H-U right now to check it out, and don't forget to use the code word when you check out. I have a lovely collection of investigators before me. I don't know if you can see them yet, including everyone from our own, Marisha Ray, Erika Ishii, Phil Lamarr, Travis Willingham, Ashly Burch, and Sam Riegel, who are joining us-- (laughing)

LIAM: I'll allow you just that once.

TALISEIN: I just got the one out. (laughing)

PHIL: It's the other one.

ERIKA: Oh shoot, I've been--

TALIESIN: Liam O'Brien will be joining us.

LIAM: Hello, darlings.

TALIESIN: Hello. I'm so happy everyone dressed up. Part of the fun of this game, and I'm gonna lay out a little bit of what I like about this game before we start playing so that people know what to expect, is that it's a little less heroic than what you're used to in Dungeons & Dragons, it's a little less of the killing of dragons and a little bit more of running for your bloody life. Poor Travis, I picked you especially for this.

(all laughing)

TALIESIN: It's also a very prop-heavy game, and I've gotten to develop a whole bunch of really exciting and interesting props that none of these players are ever going to find-- (laughing) Because they're gonna just go completely off the rails.

LIAM: I love prop comedy.

TALIESIN: This is--

MARISHA: Yes.

TALIESIN: This is the absence of prop comedy, I don't know what that is.

MARISHA: Rule of threes.

(all laughing)

PHIL: Or the roll of threes.

MARISHA: (laughs) Oh.

TALIESIN: With disadvantage. Couple other things. What do I also wanna cover? So, there will be some interesting props, hopefully, that we'll get to show off, and how that relates to the game and makes the game a lot of fun. I also wanna just put out for anybody who is interested in the genre, I'm a big fan of cosmic horror, I love cosmic horror. One of my favorite memories was walking home from the movie, "In the Mouth of Madness", which if you've never seen, the idea of walking home in a mist without another living human being there--

ASHLY: What the hell?

TALIESIN: Nearly gave me a heart attack.

ASHLY: Oh my god.

PHIL: Sam Niell, so good.

TALIESIN: And the high wire balancing act between the scale and fragility of the human experience set against a hostile world has always been my adrenaline candy. And before we begin, it's worth noting that the man behind the name most associated with this genre was a problematic mess, even by the standards of his time. But, it is a big genre with lots of big things happening in it right now, and many voices doing really important work that is going to be heavy, and terrifying, and great, and I'm excited to show what you can do with these tools so that you can join the nightmare choir of the never-living, and maybe make the story a little less about him and a little bit about you and what scares you.

ERIKA: Ooh.

TALIESIN: It's gonna be fun. So, I suppose unless anybody else has anything they wanna say before we begin.

TRAVIS: Should I leave? (laughing)

MARISHA: Can I be excused?

TALIESIN: I've hidden your keys. Your wife knows to lock the door.

TRAVIS: She wished me a goodbye just as second ago in text, I didn't know what it meant.

ASHLY: Is this part of the game?

TALIESIN: It was certainly someone who looked like her, it could've been anybody.

ERIKA: Don't do this, Taliesin, why are you doing this?

TALIESIN: I love you all. I'm getting it out of my system now 'cause we're gonna start light.

ASHLY: Are you? Are you getting it out of your system or are you just getting started?

TALIESIN: I'm getting a taste for it, it's like tasting human flesh.

ERIKA: Warm up, this is just a warm up.

PHIL: Right?

TALIESIN: Without further ado, my wonderful investigators, I will be your Keeper tonight and we will be having a Critical Role journey into Call of Cthulhu in a little story I have called, Shadow of the Crystal Palace. (laughs menacingly) (intro plays)