内山靖二郎

A collection of three retellings of Call of Cthulhu RPG sessions, like the rest of the series.

As with the previous volume, I found it enjoyable overall, and interesting in several ways: as a description of the actual storyline, how the author came up with it, and the players' feedback and comments, which are inspiring and entertaining; the passive insight into Japan that I get from reading it; and finally as an insight into a particular set of game sessions and how they were structured and received by players.

The three sessions are all quite different. One focuses of "Japanese Horror", with a mixture of watery themes and cosmic horror themed around a sinister god. The second is a gory zombie-themed action scenario. The third is more of a weird sci-fi story.

I found all of them interesting. I agreed with the players though that the first two were a bit excessively nasty and downbeat, particularly given that this set of three revolves around a high school. This happened in the last volume too. The author's own love of rather grim horror obviously plays into this; I do wonder if he's noticed, since the players seem to repeatedly make it clear that they prefer less gore, less horror and more weird in their games but it doesn't seem to have too much effect. I feel the same.

That being said, they're full of interesting ideas, and it's fun seeing how the series progresses and grows as the characters are shaped by events around them.

Obviously it's a rather specialised taste and not for everyone. However, if you read Japanese (or would like to improve yours with some pretty advanced reading, like me) and are interested in roleplaying games, in horror or in weird and fantastical fiction, they're worth a look.… (mehr)

A fun collection of "replays" of Call of Cthulhu games. These are basically the opposite of dramatised readings, I suppose? The game sessions are turned into short stories, but not completely: rather than writing a novel based on an RPG campaign (which several other authors have done), these retain the players' interjections, the GM's comments and so on, so it's like reading a mixture of a playscript and a novel. It sounds weird, but it really isn't hard to get used to.

The stories and the players' misfortunes are entertainingly written, and they sound like quite a fun bunch. It's also really nice to get a Japanese perspective on the game, which gives a novel feel to everything. They bring different assumptions, genre conventions and cultural background to the table, and I really enjoyed that aspect. The GM has also come up with three quite original stories that seem to be quite strongly rooted in Japanese history and culture. The second story is deliberately trying to evoke a "splatter horror" feel, and so I liked it rather less than the other two, but the premise was still interesting. I also liked the little discussions after each game where they talk about what worked, what didn't, and what to work on for next session. If I have criticisms, it's mostly that I get impression the scenarios were rather linear, but it's not really fair to conclude that from a writeup like this.

I can't tell how interesting this would be for someone not interested in RPGs but interested in Lovecraft. Probably not hugely, to be honest, because the game aspect is a big part of it. If you are interested, though - and you can read Japanese! - this is well worth a look.… (mehr)