The Listening Club TTRPG Special - Episode 1

Billy here, the voice of Alice in the Magnus Protocol, and today I'm here to tell you about the Magnus Archives Mysteries. Immerse yourself in the world of the Magnus Archives with the Magnus Archives Mysteries, a cooperative puzzle and deduction board game from the designer of the Magnus Protocol Mysteries. Become an interim archival assistant and help John, Martin, Tim and Sasha uncover the truth behind six new supernatural mysteries. Perfect for fans of escape rooms, the Magnus Archives mysteries can be played at home by superfans and new listeners alike. No previous knowledge required. Crowdfunding for the game begins on the 9th of March on Kickstarter. Go to www.rustyquill.com forward slash mysteries to find out more and to sign up for notifications as soon as the project goes live. That's rustyquill.com forward slash mysteries. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone, it's Kareem, the voice of Simon Fairchild and the Eternal Tavern Keeper. Today I'm here to tell you about Old Gods of Appalachia, a podcast on the RQ Network. Old Gods of Appalachia is a multi-award winning horror audio drama produced by the brilliant team at Deep Nerd Media that is currently releasing its much anticipated fourth season. In the mountains of central Appalachia, blood runs as deep as these hollers and just as dark. Since before our kind knew these hills, hearts of unknowable hunger and madness have slundered beneath them. These are the darkest mountains in the world. How dare we think we can break the skin of a god and dig out its heart without bringing forth blood and darkness. Old Gods of Appalachia is a multi-award winning, critically acclaimed audio drama podcast. Old Gods sits alongside this very podcast as one of the most popular fiction podcasts in the world. Experience it for yourself by searching for Old Gods of Appalachia wherever you listen to your podcasts. or go to www.rustyquill.com or www.oldgodsofappalachia.com for more information. Hi everyone, this is Alexander Jane Newell, founder and CEO of Rusty Quill Ltd and voice of Norris on the Magnus Protocol podcast. Just taking a moment to introduce some special holiday content along with some updates from Rusty Towers. In case you didn't know, production for the Magnus Protocol has been on a bit of a break while we previewed our original theatre production, Magnus Live the Hilltop, in London, England. The initial run of this new work for Stage, which features original cast performances from both the Magnus Archives and the Magnus Protocol, has now finished, but no worries if you missed it, these first shows were just a demo, and since it went so well, we can do more showings in the future, along with making a recording of the last preview show available online for anyone who couldn't make it. So keep an eye on our socials for the latest info on all that. With that sorted, we're now back at Rusty Towers and working hard for Protocol to return in Spring 2026, but in the meantime, we thought we'd give you a little thank you for everyone's patience and support during this period. So, with that in mind, I get to introduce The Listening Club, an actual play of the Magnus Archives tabletop roleplaying game by Monty Cook Games. GM'd by our very own Jonathan Sims, this light-hearted adventure follows an investigation into a mysterious podcast company called... Mouldy Pencil Productions, and features Anusha Battersby, Lorian Davies, Ian Hales, and Pip Gladwin as players. We'll also be releasing some different ETRPG content at a later date as part of our fundraising stretch goals for Protocol. Lastly, before I hand over to Johnny's thinly veiled assassination of everything I stand for, I just wanted to let you know that Rusty Fears, our fan favourite horror writing competition, is back. If you want your work featured on this feed as part of our effort to showcase new and undiscovered writing talent, then be sure to head over to rustyquill.com forward slash spheres for more information. That's all for now, we hope you enjoy this latest mouldy pencil production, and as always, thanks for your support. Hello, everybody, and welcome to a very special episode with me, your host, Jonathan Sims. You might remember me from such podcasts as The Magnus Archives or The Magnus Protocol, But today we are going to be playing a short session of the Magnus Archives role-playing game from Monty Cook Games. I say we'll be playing it. I'm stripping down the rules a bit. But, you know, have a good time. Joining me are some voices you will hopefully know as well. Anusha, hello. Who are you? Hello, Johnny. I'm Anusha. I play Gwendolyn Bouchard in the Magnus Protocol. And I'm a big RPG nut, so I'm very, very excited for this. Fantastic. Ian, who are you? As you might imagine, I am Ian. Ian has, and I play various Trevor Hurberts in various Magnus titled things. Magnuses. Magnusums. Pip, hello. Hello there. I'm Pip Gladwin. You'll of course remember me as Taxi Driver from close to the end of the first series of Magnus Protocol. Fan favourite, of course. I can hear everyone cheering. So pleased that Taxi Driver is back. Very happy to be here. Really driving the series. I've also appeared in Chapter of Multiverse. I've also appeared in a little bit... I think I was in a trailer for Trice Forgotten. I was. Not a taxi driver, but close. And also Cry Havoc. Drew says Cry Havoc as well. That was me. Finally, Lowry. Yeah, hello. I am Lowry and I play Celia in both Archives and the Magnus Protocol. And my pronouns are she, her. Oh, yes. I'm so sorry. My pronouns are he, him. This is Anusha, mine is Sheeha. And Pip. He, him. This is Ian, I'm he, him. To be clear, the lovely people who have joined me are not playing their characters from the podcast. Okay, I'll cross that out then. I had Taxi Driver written down here. So instead, we are going to start with a little bit of character creation. We have been through the various safety tools, lines and veils, X-card stuff before the recording. So a little bit of introduction to the conceit of the game. It's non-canon in the sense that it doesn't take place in any of the Magnus universes that we have visited thus far. The title of this adventure is The Listening Club. You are all fans of the popular horror fiction podcast series, The Armitage Library, in which the narrator, Arthur G. Neville, will take various strange, spooky stories and happenings, narrate them investigate them or he's been having a bad time over the last sort of three series he's fallen down a bit of a paranoia hole in the fiction because well obviously the podcast claims to be real but obviously it's fiction now you all like to listen together but i would be interested to hear your thoughts on like how does this work are you all a group that like goes around someone's house to listen together you will hit character creation itself in a second but i want to get a sense of the group how are people feeling i love the idea that we have a discord and maybe we get together for the big ones to listen together yeah i'm getting a very only murders in the building vibe where we all end up in a cafe or same a hundred percent a bar just like every so often and just with our maps spread out the table like is it a weekly podcast it is weekly yes although it goes on some weird long hiatuses sometimes that like there's clearly something happening production-wise behind the scenes. But when it's coming out, it's definitely weekly. So we are going to go through character creation. This is going to be a slightly abridged version of the cipher system character creation which is in itself very quick and simple You will broadly end up with a three descriptor which is a blank blank who blanks essentially So Anusha does anything leap out there I quite like something along the lines of the more no-nonsense, scholarly, but also quite fastidious. I quite like the idea of you picking no-nonsense, simply because I know in real life you are extremely high nonsense. I'm full of nonsense. I'm quite enjoying the idea of giving you this role-playing challenge. Ian, do any of these words leap out to you? I mean, I don't know what it says about me, but cynical came front and centre with lights on it. Yeah, cynical Ian. We got no nonsense, we got cynical. We're shaping up to be a hard-boiled listening club to a fiction horror podcast. Laurie, what about you? I mean, fastidious was the one that leaped out for me. Fantastic. And Pip? Being inquisitive is always a deeply suboptimal trait to have in a horror story. So let's go inquisitive. Fantastic. Next, you want to pick one of the four sort of classes, I guess, four character types, which will determine kind of what your role is. There is the investigator who sort of looks into things. There's the protector who punches things or protect things or does physical stuff. There is the elocutionist who is the talky one. And there is the occultist who knows a bit about, you know, the occult. I don't know what this says about me as an RPG player, but I'm weirdly drawn to elocutionist. You could be a no-nonsense elocutionist. I mean, investigator sounds like a fastidious trait. Can't go wrong with investigator. So that leaves Ian and Pip, occultist or protector. Maybe we go with the inquisitive protector and the cynical occultist. Yep, I'm fine with that. Let's go for it. All right. And finally, we will want a character focus. These are bits that go on the end. The first one on the list is carries a gun, but this is set in the UK, so I don't think any of you carry a gun. So your options are... It's a Nerf gun. It's back on the list. You know what? I'll keep it on the list with the caveat that, like, you don't actually. Let's start with Pip. For your inquisitive protector, which of these leaps out? My brain immediately went to wears a badge and then just wanted to define it as just being like, yeah, it's just like a nice badge that they wear. Not like a police officer. No, not even close. They just have a badge, which doesn't help with character creation at all. I will say that like mechanically, because you get little special abilities from these, where's a badge generally denotes some sort of authority. So you would need to decide what sort of official body you worked for. Was it the Environment Agency? Is it the Office of National Statistics? Are you an Ofsted inspector? For international listeners, Ofsted is the body that assesses and ranks schools. Have a think about what sort of badge you might have. I'm not necessarily going for where's a badge, but I'll think on it. I was more being silly. I'm sorry, Pip. I'm sorry, Pip. You were being silly. That's good, though. During character creation, I was, yeah, I know, I'm so sorry. This is why I only get to play taxi drivers. I bring a serious horror story to delight, to thrill, and you're undercutting the tone, Pip. I've undermined it. You've undermined it. I'm sorry. Please move on from me. I'm very sorry. All right, Ian, can you rescue us from this pit of ridiculousness? I was going to do the badge bit as well, but no. Would Rather Be Reading really does, I think, work with it. Yeah. It's nice. Absolutely. Yeah, I like that. A cynical occultist who would rather be reading. Perfect. Lory. Never says die. Never says die. Anusha. Infiltrates. Ooh. Infiltrates. I like it. I like it. I'm going to go for, just to round it out, just to double down on the inquisitive thing, I'm going to go for looks for trouble, because, again, terrible trait to have in a horror story. It's like, go home. First to die. He's wearing a red shirt, is what I'm saying. Anusha, you are a no-nonsense elocutionist who infiltrates. Ian, you are a cynical occultist who would rather be reading. Laurie, you are a fastidious investigator who never says die. And Pip, you are an inquisitive protector who looks for trouble. Now, I'm going to give you all some stats to reflect that. In this game, you have three stats, four if you count the stress that you will be accumulating across the course of the game. You have might, which is your sort of physical beefiness. You have speed, which is your quickness, your dexterity, your precision. And you have intellect, which is your thinky brain stuff. How this manifests is you have pools. When I ask you to make a roll, you will be rolling a 20-sided dice and trying to hit a number based on the difficulty level. It goes up and down in threes. For a level one challenge, you need to roll a three or higher. For a level four challenge, you need to roll a 12 or higher. If you really want to do something, you can lower it by one level, by three points, by spending three from the appropriate pool. So if you have like 10 points in your might pool and you're like, oh, I really, really want to punch this guy, you can spend three of those points to lower the difficulty from, I don't know, a nine to a six. So let's start with Anusha. Your starting value for being an elocutionist is 10 might, 11 speed, and 13 intellect. Okay. You have an edge in intellect of one. Edge means that it's slightly cheaper for you to spend intellect points. So you only need to spend two points of intellect to do some effort and lower stuff. Thank you. Could you choose two of the following skills? Skills automatically lower things by one level. deception discerning motive intimidation persuasion or performance i think performance and discerning motive perfect so if you can jot those down there's also special abilities and that sort of thing but you know what i just don't feel like you guys are special enough you know i'm so fastidious rude kind of a bit normal we all now have badges that say special so no nonsense you hate frills chit chat gossip and anything else that obscures what's important you pry straight talk and focusing on the facts you recognize that sometimes your severe manner can hurt other people's feelings so you moderate it for your friends but not so much that you compromise your goals with unnecessary distractions you get plus two to your might pool you have an additional skill which is researching oh you are resilient so you can ignore the first three points of stress you would otherwise take from shock. Okay. And you infiltrate. You get a couple more skills, which is you can choose deception, disguise, lockpicking, pickpocketing, or stealth. Right. It's pickpocketing. Perfect. There's also various things to, like, you know, make connections within your group. But we've established that you're all just a group of friends, just cool friends hanging out. So, Ian, your cynical occultist who would rather be reading. We'll start with occultist. Cool. Your starting pool values are a might of 9, a speed of 11, and an intellect of 14. You also have an intellect edge of 1, and you are trained in occultism, and you may pick one other knowledge skill, so astronomy, biology, geography, history, mathematics philosophy physics psychology or researching Astronomy Marvellous And you have artifact affinity which means any task involving interacting with a sinister artifact is going to be one level easier. Excellent. Good, good. Cynical. You can't help but question claims taken for granted by others. You're not necessarily a doubting Thomas, a sceptic who refuses to believe anything without direct personal experience, but you've often benefited from questioning the statements, opinions, and received knowledge presented to you by others. So you get another plus two to your intellect pool. Ooh. And you get the skill discerning motive. And you can have another science skill if you like. How about physics? You want some physics? Yeah, let's go. Yeah. Yeah, you can have some physics. Right. And you would rather be reading. Yeah. You start with a bunch of books. I haven't bothered to give any of you any equipment because I don't feel like there's a lot of equipment people carry around to sort of listen to a podcast. but you definitely have a pile of books just on you at all times. You also get two other non-combat skills in which you are not currently trained, but you will be trained shortly. Do you want biology? No. You want medicine? Oh, you could have publishing. Ooh, we're going for publishing. Okay, so we'll say publishing. And how about religion? Oh, history. History? Yeah. History. We'll go for history, yeah. Marvellous. And that's you. Fabulous. So let us figure out what our fastidious investigator is like, Larry. That's me. You. Your starting pools, you have a might of 12, a speed of 11, an intellect of 11. You have a speed edge of 1 and an intellect edge of 1. Both your speed and your intellect are slightly discounted. You can have two of the following. Discerning motive, forensics, intimidation, perception, persuasion, researching or tracking? Forensics. Tracking or persuasion? Tracking, because I think it's funnier if she's just trying to persuade everything of the things she's deduced and no one will believe her. Perfect. I'm also going to give you decipher as an ability, which means you can spend an intellect points to make an intellect roll to try and decode anything written in like coded language or messages. Ooh. Fastidious. You're a stickler for accuracy and detail. You can't stand a mess, whether it's your home or office or a conceptual mess stemming from a failure to plan. Your stuff is neatly catalogued and perfectly ordered, so you never have to dig around looking for something. Meticulous, you believe, is never wrong. I like that. So you are careful. You have plus two to your intellect pool. Oh, great. Yeah. Oh, you're already trained in forensics. So I'm going to say that you will also get the skills researching and identifying. And you, as I recall, never say die. Basically, you can make a recovery role as an action. Normally recovering from stress takes a 10 minute break. You need to actually sit down and be like, you can do it as a single action. Put down improved recovery. And at some point, Once per session, I'm going to say, let me know. Oh, I'd like to get rid of some of this stress, please. And you'll like grit your teeth, borrow your brow and pow on through. And finally, Inquisitive Protector, who looks for trouble. That's me. So that you can protect from it. Yeah, you've got to know where it is. Yeah, absolutely. Of course. So Pip, you are a protector. You start with a might pool of 12, a speed of 12 and an intellect of 10. Yeah, strong, fast and dumb. You start with one point of edge in might and one in speed. You get a skill in one of discerning motive, forensics, intimidation, perception, stealth, or tracking. Let's go perception, because I've got to know where that trouble is. I don't want to double over other people, so let's go intimidation. Okay, and I'm going to give you the ability protector. You designate a single character to be your charge. It says in the description, you can change this freely every round, but I'm going to say that one of the other characters is your charge. And as long as they are near you, their defence tasks are easier because you're there being like, excuse me, back up, please, to a monster. And inquisitive, you can add two to your intellect pool, so you're not quite as, you know, you're actually pretty even across the board. You seek to learn the mysteries, wonders and occult secrets of the world. Your inquiries are often made by examining what lurks in the archives of organisations dedicated to researching the astonishing, the esoteric, and the weird. Learning something new is its own reward, even when it's sometimes unsettling. Excellent. You're trained in researching, and do you want astronomy, geography, or history? Let's go history. Lovely. And finally, you look for trouble. Yeah, you're a fighter, you're a scrapper. You relish taking off the kid gloves and confronting your opposition in the most direct way possible. I'm going to give you fists of fury. You inflict two additional points of damage with unarmed attacks. This is very funny to me because I don't know how much punching there's going to be in this game. Excellent. I think you might spend the entire game looking for something to punch and not doing so. But, you know. I mean, if I don't have lockpicking, you will have many doors to punch down, potentially. I will punch every door. What if none of the doors are locked? I think that should be everything in this somewhat abridged character creation. I'm going to go through and I would like you to introduce your characters with their name and a little bit of a description. So Anusha, can we meet your character? You can indeed. So her name is Margot Maria Bradley. She is 27 years old. Description wise, she's around five foot three, five foot four. She's got a kind of smooth, dark bob with a full fringe, very piercing, dark eyes, tan skin. And you know, those big framed glasses that I could never pull off like those ones with like the really thick frames. She's got some of those. She wears lots of very big jackets, like big denim jackets that look far too heavy for her and kind of swamp her a little bit. They've got lots of patches and badges and things on them, usually in docks or converse. And she, despite the fact that she has several tattoos and piercings in her ears and things like that, she has nothing on her hands whatsoever except one ring on her left middle finger and she always carries a sizable tote bag. I feel like I know Margot. Yeah. Ian, could we meet your cynical occultist? Yes. If you're very lucky, you will find Alphonse Platt scurrying sort of, well, no, no, he's not a scurrier. He is a loper. 42 year old, he's tall. So well over, I would say six, four. One of these people with very elegant limbs. He doesn't move quickly. I want to say sallow as a descriptor. Sorry, I've got to highlight elegant limbs. Yes, yes, yes. Excellent. Elegant limbs. He's a dancer. Is he Slender Man? Yeah, kind of, yeah. Can we put that as an extra special ability, please? Elegant limbs. Yeah, you have elegant limbs. Just remind me, if I set a task too difficult, be like, I have elegant limbs, will they help? And I'll be like, no, they won't help. It's a ballet dancer in his free time. Have you factored in the elegance of my limbs? Yes. Okay, that will happen. He runs an imprint, online book imprint, that does occult magic and philosophical printings of other people's stuff. He has three rats Rod Jane and Pushkin Oh no I going to feel so bad about killing him Nope the rats are really well trained And they live in this house that basically they could live off for about three years Margot will adopt them if all else fails. She loves rats. Absolutely, yeah. Has scratchy tattoos that aren't about adornment. They are very definitely wards to keep things, you know, ticking over. pip please introduce us to your inquisitive protector my character's name is barry knapp spelled k-n-a-p and he's in his sort of mid-40s he's getting like slightly too old for the job that he does now which is working as a bouncer and i think he got into podcasts very recently you know when you try and have a conversation about podcasts with you know maybe mid-40s is too young. Maybe let's push him up to early 50s. Oh, wow. Okay. Nothing wrong with going up to early 50s. I don't know. I plan to myself, you know. But yes, I think he's got into podcasts quite recently. You know, he's not super knowledgeable in that regard, but I think someone who's had what they perceive to be quite a boring life and now sort of taking some real joy in this little group and being part of a little community and getting to kind of indulge a special interest kind of thing and i think he's getting to be himself late in life not late in life early 50s is not late in life but you know what i mean to be fair he is now a player character i'm walking it back i'm walking it back he's now a player character in a horror uh rpg so it is probably quite late in his life i mean he's practically dead he doesn't know that yes absolutely you're absolutely right and lori could you introduce us to your fastidious investigator elegy jones is I'm gonna go for about five five six forty on any given day you would see her wearing maybe jeans and like a wool jumper she has long brown curly hair and always has a backpack on her with you know notebook folders and like various organizing stationary items in it and I was toying with the idea of her being an accountant or is it more fun if her job is actually quite chaotic honest I don't think it's going to torpedo the whole conceit of the game if you're an accountant. Feel free to pull the trigger on that. Then, yeah, she's an accountant. She's very organised. She has routine. You know, she gets up, she has her smoothie. She has the right amount of nutrients that her body needs every day. You know, that's been calculated. And she has mugs that say things like tidy desk, tidy mind. And this is like such a very special thing to her. Like this is separate to the rest of her life and she loves it. And I think maybe to her, she's like, wow, it's like chaotic. But actually the notes, I mean, she keeps notes on the podcast, right? She has notes. Yeah, absolutely. So we have Margot, Alphonse, Barry and Elodie. Barry, who is your charge? As we've gone through, and I think this is just because of, who is the youngest person in this group? Very much Margot. Then it's Margot. Whether Margot likes it or not, I think just instinctively, he's just going to be like, no, this young person must be protected. Margot hates it. Do Margot and Barry have any sort of relationship familial or similar outside of the group? Did they know each other before? Or is this simply like, this is a young person and I'm a bouncer who just generally gets between sort of the more vulnerable people and trouble? Could Margot be the reason that Barry got into the podcast because he protected her from something? Oh, Margot occasionally went to... Is Margot more a pub or a club sort of person? I think pub. Pub? Yeah. So Margot periodically went to a pub that you did some bouncing for and you gradually got to know Margot and Margot was like, listen to this, this is really cool. And so for the last five, six months, like every time you've seen each other, you'd be like, oh, I've been listening to that podcast you like. Margot would actually be like, yeah, working at the bar as well. Oh, that works. She does gigs and stuff, so yeah. Yeah, Margot really does feel like someone who works behind a bar. No, that all makes sense. What would we call this bar? Do you want to make it a thinly veiled Magnus reference? The Angler's Head. The Angler's Head. Yeah, oh, lovely. Lovely, the Angler's Head. I'll be honest, is this London or Manchester? It could be either, because those are the two places that are in my head at the moment. Those are the two places in the world. That exist. Let's do Manchester. Manchester. Manchester. Brilliant. So we have now met the listening club. So that will probably be it. Can I just check before we do this? Ian, would Alfonso be the kind of person who has an accountant? Am I your accountant? Yes, I think he probably does. Your long-suffering accountant. Oh my gosh. Put it this way, you don't get much work from him. No. There's not a lot of money going through the books. I'm like, I just don't know if you need one really. No. Okay, I can look at them for you. Give me the sheets. That's brilliant. I love that. I just think it's better to do it right, you know. That's all I'm saying. You know what? You know how to get me, Alfonso. That is right. I'm blessed. Perfect. Well, we will see what horrible trouble these four podcast listening misfits get up to in the next episode. Thank you very much for joining us. The Magnus Protocol is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 International License. To subscribe, view associated materials, or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook, or email us via mail at RustyQuill.com. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This is ASR for you and a duurzame community. ASR does it. So, we can now listen to your podcast. central Appalachia, blood runs as deep as these hollers and just as dark. Since before our kind knew these hills, hearts of unknowable hunger and madness have slundered beneath them. These are the darkest mountains in the world. How dare we think we can break the skin of a god and dig out its heart without bringing forth blood and darkness. Old Gods of Appalachia is a multi-award winning, critically acclaimed audio drama podcast. Old Gods sits alongside this very podcast as one of the most popular fiction podcasts in the world. Experience it for yourself by searching for Old Gods of Appalachia wherever you listen to your podcasts. Or go to www.rustyquill.com or www.oldgodsofappalachia.com for more information.