MrTim: I think there was some sense of “decide what you want to achieve this session”, but we’ve pretty much settled into straightforward per-session XP awards.
BJB: I’ve played Elizabethan Mage run by @Phil_Masters with GURPS, so that’s probably about as good as it gets. And it was great. The Vampire game I’m playing now is good fun, but it’s with experienced gamers who don’t take angsting seriously – while at the same time our characters are facing genuinely hard decisions.
I will say that playing a What We Do in the Shadows vampire game, rather than Vampire game, is quite appealing 
And every time I think about Bookhounds of London it hybridises itself in my head with Black Books.
Sign me up!
Session 6 - Take Those Dice Outside: The Whartson Hall Gamers discuss Dragon Warriors
I’m always glad to hear that I wasn’t alone in preferring the various Moldvay/Mentzer/Cyclopedia D&D rules to the AD&D rules.
I enjoyed the broader discussion of game books. The ones I ran into as they were published were Lone Wolf and the TSR series of “1on1” gamebook sets in which each player has their own book for their character/party.
I did pick up the Dragon Warrior pdfs as a result of listening to the sessions after adding them to my drivethrurpg wishlist out of curiosity earlier. Still haven’t gotten to use them but they are a better than average RPG read.
Session 7 - Now You’re Locked Down In The Basement: The Whartson Hall Gamers discuss Call of Cthulhu
(part 1 of 2)
I think there’s enough appreciation of this type of nostalgia that you could get quite an audience by putting this on a podcast service or two. At least, I quite enjoy these trips down other peoples’ Memory Lanes.
We tried iTunes, but they kept saying “your RSS feed doesn’t work” (with no details) while every validator said it was fine.
By the way, John, you are aware that you only need the Keeper’s Rulebook to play 7th edition? The two-volume set is not necessary, although the Investigator’s Handbook is amazingly cool and useful.
No, I didn’t realise that. Can’t say it changes my overall view; and for me personally there’s no reason to buy another version. I’m finding the general trend, perfectly illustrated by recent CoC re-releases, is to inflate the scope and size of everything, which I don’t think is especially helpful and not necessarily an improvement.
I rather like 7th Ed, myself, but I agree with Jon that bigger and prettier doesn’t necessarily improve the content, but the new Masks, for example, isn’t so much bloated as clarified.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter for me because I own the game already. It’s like Traveller in that respect: the current version is probably fine and I’d suggest it to new players over tracking down the messy old version, but I’m not going to buy it all again when the old one still works.
7th edition CoC character sheet is definitely a step backwards, though. Really cramped and cluttered.
I’ll definitely agree with that. It really seems to be designed for use as a form-fillable PDF.
The mechanics mean you have to have your full, ½ and ⅕ skill values available, both because of success levels and (if you’re using luck spending) because you need to know how much you need to spend to get a particular level of success. Which is tricky to lay out in a non-cluttered way, at least without a much shorter skill list.
Session 8 - Translating from the Original Mad: The Whartson Hall Gamers discuss Call of Cthulhu (again)
Session 9: So I Let The Dice Fall Where They May…: The Whartson Hall Gamers discuss Tunnels and Trolls
Man, Myth & Magic is garbage, but the adventures appear to have been written under the influence of some pretty good drugs.
On a related note, I now want Whartson Hall to play a game of Timeship. Completely rules as written.
As much as I’d be happy to oblige when it comes to many gaming requests, I’m afraid you’d have better luck trying to fire Herbie Brennan into orbit from a ship’s cannon than getting me to play one of his games.