Adventure Games

H. P. Lovecraft

The past few months have been crazy.  I am going through a separation with my wife, my daughter has gone off to university, I have moved out of my home, and I am taking a stress leave from work.  However, there have been many opportunities for growth for me during this period.

I am very pleased to have gotten back in touch with friends that I thought I would never hear from again.  One is Kent Haryett.  Kent and I met at the University of Alberta in the early 1980's, and spent a lot of time together socially.  Kent convinced me that I should do a Master's degree in England, and we both ended up going to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.  I finished my Master's, and Kent convinced me to continue to do a PhD.  I did.  Kent went back to Edmonton, completed a law degree, went into private practice, and now has several lawyers working for him in a very successful firm.  

Kent had a kind of magic about him.  One of the things that we did in Newcastle was to play adventure games, like ‘The Call of Cthulu’, a game based generally on the horror stories of the author H.P. Lovecraft. One member of the group is the 'Master', and leads the group through the adventure.  Each player has at least one character with a number of different skills and strengths.

One evening, four of us in our group needed to know whether one of the characters had had his brain eaten by an anthropologist who believed that such behaviour could enhance one's prescience.  It was necessary for us to dig up the grave (this is all done virtually), and exhume the body.  Sure enough, the skull had been stitched, and the brain had been removed.  

That marked the end of that evening's adventure (some of the adventures lasted six months).  I got onto my bicycle and began to ride to the other side of town.  The quickest way back was along Elswick Road, and the very old Gothic era cemetery.  At one point, a fish and chip wrapper flew over the wall of the cemetery and hit my front wheel spokes and went 'Whack!, Whack!, Whack!.  

I nearly jumped out of my skin. It is certainly the most frightening event in my life.