Call of Cthulhu: The Iron Devil

CHOO CHOO MOTHERFUCKERAllied intervention in the Russian Civil War was a complex and murky affair, but it did result in many American troops being stationed in Vladivostok in 1919. One company of soldiers was given a mission to bring supplies and munitions to allies near the front, which can only be delivered by an armed and armored train. Little do the soldiers know they will encounter more than cagey ‘allied’ soldiers, corrupt officials, and bandits. Something dark and monstrous lurks in the wilds, something powerful enough to prey even on a train filled with soldiers. This game was recorded at Gencon 2013 and was run by Pagan Publishing‘s Adam Scott Glancy. Enjoy!

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40 Comments

  1. Just when I am to make a long train trip myself. Great.

  2. >ASG Game

    YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES

  3. Only five hours. Was mr Glancy ill or something?

  4. Oooooh, is this the famous Glancy Armored Train game????

  5. The first dice were rolled, what, ninety minutes into the scenario? 😉

  6. The recording leaves one tantalized about the (unplayed) part two … which I guess is all about following up on the Cthulhu cult.

  7. I’ve been waiting for this since Ross talked out it at GenCon. Hurray!

  8. Dear Adam Scott Glancy.
    Please publish these WWI scenarios so I can give you my money.
    Please!

  9. I really do want to buy these WW1 scenarios. If they don’t ever plan to be published I might just build some myself.

  10. hrm. this might be my least favorite ASG scenario. but I probably owe it a second listen. throwing in the historically-accurate random encounters with no actual player interactivity or plot significance was…not…indicated. how long did the flag encounter take? and how much did it actually mean? as a format for historicity, I prefer ASG telling irrelevant anecdotes solo to his having indecisive players try to figure something out. I usually find his games really soothing, but this didn’t quite work for me on first listen. maybe it was just the lack of Greg Stolze? (tell me there’s Greg Stolze GenContent coming up preez)

  11. Hi, long time listener who just wanted to say thank you to the RPPR crew and comment on one thing about the scenario.

    At one point, Adam Scott Glancy said that “Chernobog” was a proper name, which has a caveat to it (I am not sure if he knows this already and was just saying that the characters do not, but I wanted to mention it just in case it is useful). In Russian, “chernii” means “black” and “bog” means “god”, so “Chernobog” is “black god.” In some mythology, “Chernobog” has a counterpart, “Belobog,” and “belii” is the word for “white.”

    Thanks again for running this podcast.

  12. Once again ASG delivers another scenario that feels like like having Mr. Peabody as your GM. When you cannot tell the cultists from the rn of the mill douchebags, you have my kind of COC.

  13. I guess I should ask the question here in hopes that Mr. Glancy will see this and deign to answer. (But don’t let that stop you if you have answers and are not ASG!)

    Towards the very end of the actual play, mention is made of the deathless masters in China of the Cthulhu cult so briefly mentioned in HPL’s story. I gleaned no further information from the Call of Cthulhu, nor (surprisingly) from the trustworthy encyclopedia authored by the estimable Mr. Harms when I poked around for further information on these shadowy figures.

    So … can anyone point to any leads on them? These cultists would seemingly make for great antagonists in almost any era, but especially from 1890 – 1939, when various Western travelers mounted famous expeditions to Tibet, or as here, in 1919’s Siberian Expedition.

  14. It’s a good thing the players asked questions at the rail yard. I think that was almost the only point of player action in the whole game with the rest being more or less the captian giving orders.

  15. To elaborate, I love listening to ASG games but I suspect I’d get bored pretty quick in one.

  16. I can only assume ASG is allergic to cash money cause I also want him to take my dam money already.

  17. Such a short game for ASG! Great job though.

  18. The players decided to boobytrap the supplies rather than just destroy them, and did most of the decision-making in the escape sequence. I would imagine they could have probably been more generally independent if they had decided to, but with military hierarchy and an NPC at the top of it that does tend to lead to just doing what the NPC says, at least until the NPC goes insane or gets eaten.

  19. I feel cheated when any ASG game is less than 8 hours. 🙁

    Still really awesome! I can’t for another one! Ross, have you considered having randoms of just you and Glancy talking historical period games / extensive historical lectures? I’m sure you’d get lots of money.

  20. Beej has a point. If you ever need to fill an hour on the podcast, just call Mr Glancy up and get him to talk to you about bizarre historical events for an hour.

  21. Great… ChoCho on a ChuChu… Love that line. This was great. Who is gonna try to stop a guy with a grenade in each hand. It never stops. Thanks Guys.
    Loved the Resident Jew too. funny.

  22. Looks like the whites really set the mold for our anti-communist allies. Glad to hear that that tradition started at the very start of the commie era.

  23. Gaming with Historians is like what ASG does, in my experience. At least it turns out that way often in one of my RP groups where we there are three of us from that field of studies.
    But he does his research well and presents it well. This was fitting in the “unique places to fight in during WW1” series. After tunnels, airships, bi-planes and armored trains not much is missing. The Mountain War between Italy and Austro-Hungary maybe. 😉

    Not the strongest of the ASG / GenCon actual plays, but I enjoyed it.

  24. Did the airship game ever get posted? Because I don’t remember it.

  25. I do not think so, but it gets mentioned often.

  26. Author

    The zeppelin game was run before I had a Zoom H2 so it was never recorded :O

  27. All these ASG make me feel he’s leading up to some grand Magnum Opus.

    Adam Scott Glancy presents the Complete Cthulhu Mythos history of WW1, containing accurate dates, times and the complete life story of every single individual involved (in both the Mythos events and WW1)

  28. I would pay a small amount of money to just listen to ASG just talk about random historical stuff.

  29. Yes, I am working up towards a Magnum Opus. There will be one (probably two) volumes of “Horrors of War,” a scenario anthology and sourcebook on the Great War. Ross recorded some video for my Kickstarter pitch while we were at GenCon, but I’ve been very busy finishing my work for the New Delta Green Role Playing Game, and haven’t had time to finish editing the video and submit the project to Kickstarter.

    Yes, I want to record “The Last Flight of the L58” scenario, which is set aboard the German Zeppelin. I have a local group of players here in Seattle I plan to run it for. I may offer it as a backer reward for the Kickstarter.

    And yes, I am dying to come up with a scenario set on the ground during the Alpine War between Italy and the Austro-Hungarians. The working project (on the back burner) is set amidst the panicked retreat of the Italian Army during the Battle of Caporetto.

    And if you want more historical ramblings ask Ross & Tom to have me on more often.

  30. Ross & Tom to have Adam Scott Glancy on more often.
    *DONE*

  31. I’m not only one of those professionally perverted historian-anthropologist GMs, one that does Tekumel to boot, but one that in my unspeakable antediluvian past focused on Mongolia/Manchuria/East Siberia/The Maritimes. And yes, they’re all distinct regions not equal to “Siberia”. So I both loved, loved, loved this scenario, and was also randomly assaulted by SAN-blasting violations of the good honest plain reality of non-New-England-born-blue-eyed-lads.

    )HPL, transported in his early 30s to Vladivostok, and set loose to work his too-good-to-work-for-a-living genius on the world? Fanfic horrorshow, droogies.)

    Chernobog as a train, thousands of miles from its meta-mythically-bogus homeland, is a pretty sweet rebirth for an entity that felt to me to be played out upon its first appearance. (A revoltingly ab-natural rebirth, naturlich.) I really liked this scenario and would love to see it promoted all to hell. Glancy, are we both Seattleites? I’m an armchair RPG’er lately, but if you have time and energy to kill, drop me a line and let’s do lunch or something sometime.

    PS: Semenov had some Buryat heritage, but I don’t know the details. It’s kinda evident (to me, at least) that a considerable amount of the animosity directed towards him by his peers and enemies was racial and cultural — and I say this as a great big fucking Red who is no fan of him historically. The Buryats are the northernmost Mongolic-speaking peoples, in ways the most religiously and culturally diverse, some of the most highly educated and agitational, and also involved in mass-producing latest-generation Soviet military aircraft. I think the last MiG-29s were built in Ulan-Ude.

    Thirty-odd(coughveryoddcough) years ago, I was standing on the ice over Lake Baikal as a wee d/tyke listening to a Cuban pseudo-tin-drum band play while we ate fried whitefish and drank syrupy vodka. Yes, all of us. Siberia is not a nightmare.

  32. To be honest the games’ Siberia was probably as well researched in the fine detail as my USA is when I run a game set there. 😉

    I would be okay with the Adam, Tom and Ross History hour every few month 🙂

  33. ASG, I’m absolutely stealing Chernabog for a fantasy western. Fantastic concept, and I certainly would love the ASG and RPPR unnatural history hour podcast!

  34. Yeah, another ASG episode! I would really like to learn the names of some of the books Glancy uses for reference materials.

    I had just finished listening to U-Boote Heraus last week or so, and was telling my GF that I’d like to pick up some submarine books when next we go to 1/2 price books. She gave me the weird look and nodding that she usually reserves for when I start talking about craft beers and RPGs.

    Inquiring mind wants to know!

  35. while I was fascinated with the history and incidents in the area, I will agree that this wasn’t really a game, but more of an impromptu RP exercise. Still a very interesting listen, but not really a game. I actually was thinking people’d get all the way through it without a san check.

  36. So the part 2 of this scenario are we ever going to hear it or was it not recroded?

  37. on my second listen, the line of the night is now Caleb lamenting quietly, “Where are the Mi-Go when you need them?”


  38. Before Choo-Choo Charlie, there was the Iron Devil!

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