More Great NPCs of History (The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Episode 179)

[Paul Fricker]

Listen here: https://blasphemoustomes.com/2020/03/31/more-great-npcs-of-history/

In this episode, we once again seek out historical personages who might make interesting Call of Cthulhu NPCs. We have restricted ourselves to the classic 1920s and Gaslight time periods to best fit your games.

This is a follow-up to our first Great NPCs of History discussion in episode 173. That time, Paul and Scott got so carried away (mainly with monkey glands) that Matt never got to present his selection. In an uncharacteristic display of fairness, we let him go first this time and still managed to squeeze in three NPCs.

This episode was recorded a couple of weeks before the CORVID-19 pandemic caused us all to self-isolate, so we were all gathered together in Paul’s studio. That all seems like such a long time ago now. We have one more such episode to release before those recorded remotely. You may notice a change in sound quality once this happens.

Links

Things we mention in this episode include:

• Nellie Bly
• Nellie Bly, the musical
• “Nelly Bly”, the song
• Six Months in Mexico by Nellie Bly
• “Ten Days in a Mad-House” by Nellie Bly
• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
• The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
• Ellen Wilkinson
• The 1913 Suffrage Pilgrimage
• The Communist Party of Great Britain
• Communist Women’s International
• The Black and Tans
• 1926 General Strike
• The Jarrow March
• “The Call of Cthulhu”
• Franz Kafka’s literary executor
• The Dead Zone by Stephen King
• All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
• Red Army Faction
• Masks of Nyarlathotep
• Edgar Laplante
• King Con: The Bizarre Adventure of the Jazz Age’s Greatest Imposter by Paul Willetts
• Ballyhoo men
• Medicine shows
• Tom Longboat
• Vaudeville

The Old Ways Podcast

We recently attended the funeral of Jackson Elias, again. This is getting to be a habit. Our good friend Michael Diamond included us as mourners in a recent episode of The Old Ways podcast playthrough of Masks of Nyarlathotep. You can find our appearance by proxy in chapter 5 of the New York season.

Type 40

Paul recently met up with Alan and Nicky from Type 40 and learned all about their “artefacts from imaginary universes”. As well as Call of Cthulhu props, they also make all sorts of strange items likely to appeal to fans of SF, comics and other such things.