Coming Soon: Reckoning of the Dead Radio Podcast

Hello world, or at least that very, very small section of the world that follows our blog. We hope all of our followers are safely tucked away during this unprecedented world event and finding ways to stay healthy and hopeful. Noah and I are both staying at home, doing our parts to delay the spread of the coronavirus. The ironic part is that we’re now living closer to one another than we ever have. I’m home with wife and adult daughter, KC and Eve, and we’ve started a creative project that we hope to share with you soon.

We’re calling it “Reckoning of the Dead Radio: The House of Ryan plays the House of R’lyeh.” Wordy, I know, but it accurately describes our efforts. I’ve turned our breakfast nook into a makeshift audio recording studio, with mics, mixer, and digital recorder. KC and Eve have agreed to play the Call of Cthulhu linked campaign The House of R’lyeh, published by Chaosium in 2012. Better yet, they’ve agreed to let me record our sessions and release the recordings to the general public. Since I know a good number of RPG industry folks, including one of the authors of The House of R’lyeh, I’ve asked some to read the handouts for us, so you can follow along with the clues as KC and Eve uncover them. The response has been an overwhelming “yes,” and I’ve got guest voice-overs pouring in.

The plan is to release an episode a week as we play through the entire book of five linked scenarios. Each scenario is in turn linked to a specific H. P. Lovecraft short story, I won’t tell you which ones so as to not spoil the surprise. I’ve made slight changes, because I can’t resist tinkering with things, and Noah is helping me write the linking sections between scenarios.

Eve, who has never worked with audio files before but has experience editing digital video, expressed an interest in editing the raw audio recordings. She’s been hard at working cleaning up each track, erasing my vocal fumbles and bad jokes, and layering music beds and foley (sound f/x) to enrich the listening experience. I’m trusting her judgement, although I have asked her to keep one or two of my bad jokes. What better way to meet the Ryan family than hear some of Dad’s lame jokes? Another friend, Jimmy,  is helping me work out hosting, and we are on track to release Episode 1 very, very soon. I’ve still got to come up with some kind of logo . . .

So stand by dear friends, and I hope you’ll enjoy “The Ryans in R’lyeh.” (Look, I’ve already shortened the title.)

Matt