Mark Meer, the voice actor who played not only BroShep but also a bunch of aliens in the Mass Effect trilogy, has a side gig as a Keeper of Arcane Lore. That doesn't mean you should knock on his door next time you're in the market for a dark ritual to summon Yog-Sothoth—it means he runs a mean game of Call of Cthulhu.
The tabletop RPG based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos authors who followed him, Call of Cthulhu calls its game masters Keepers because it sounds cooler than "Dungeon Master." Meer acts as the Keeper for two highly polished actual-play series on the Call of Cthulhu publisher's YouTube channel, Bookshops of Arkham and Graveyards of Arkham. What marks them out from most other actual-play shows is that where normally the game master plays everyone else in the world, in these two series Meer has some assistance—guest actors who portray some of the more important NPCs.
"You're usually keeping many balls in the air when you're being a game master," Meer says. "Having someone else it's like, OK, I don't have to play all the characters in this scene—this person plays the main character in this scene while I sit back and take care of the rolls and also probably play other NPCs in the scene."
In play, this makes for some powerful moments. It's great to see the players react to someone showing up in a straitjacket to sit on the floor in front of them and pretend to have had their brain broken by cosmic horror. "Being able to have other characters embodied by people who aren't you and having them bouncing off the player-characters as well, that's a lot of fun. Roleplaying games are essentially collaborative storytelling with your friends. Get some more friends involved? That's always nice."
With guests playing memorable cultists and witches and the like, it's especially effective as a tool for horror (though seeing Meer delight in pretending to be a cannibalistic ghoul is super creepy too). Horror RPGs have always been a popular alternative to the traditional fantasy ones. When players move on from Dungeons & Dragons, it's often horror games—whether Call of Cthulhu, or Monster of the Week, or Vampire: The Masquerade—they try out first.
"I've always been a monster kid, a horror fan, for as long as I can remember," Meer says. "I love Halloween, that sort of thing. Just the aesthetics of it attracts me. Beyond that, I do think in terms of roleplaying games—I've used this analogy before, but Dungeons & Dragons and superhero roleplaying games, etcetera, they all tend to be power fantasies. You are the hero of the story, and your character might die, but it's going to be in a heroic way. But horror games and in particular Call of Cthulhu are powerless-ness fantasies. You are the victim in a horror movie and maybe, if you're lucky, you might survive with some shreds of sanity intact."
That's an attractive idea for horror fans, and horror games can have a level of effectiveness beyond what the genre can achieve in other media. When you're immersed in a player-character, having their life and sanity threatened is even more impactful than when it happens to a character in a work of fiction you're reading or watching. You just have to let yourself sink into the role to experience that. "I suppose you could bluster your way through a Call of Cthulhu game," Meer says, "but that's not really in the spirit of things. You should allow yourself to be terrified, and allow your character to be in mortal peril."
While actual-play series like Critical Role and The Adventure Zone paved the way, shows in other genres like Dimension 20 and both Bookshops and Graveyards of Arkham have continued their good work of successfully turning tabletop roleplaying games into popular entertainment, reaching viewers who don't necessarily have an RPG campaign of their own going on.
"Even if you have one," Meer says, "trying to schedule everyone so that you can all be in the same room and rolling dice together? That's very difficult given most people's schedules. And so if you have something that you can throw on as a podcast or just watch as a YouTube video, then it gives you your fix a little bit."
Mark Meer will be a guest at PAX Australia, which runs from October 11–13.
