It turns out that Commander Shepard runs a great game of Call of Cthulhu

Bookshops of Arkham | Call of Cthulhu Actual Play | Episode 1 - YouTube Bookshops of Arkham | Call of Cthulhu Actual Play | Episode 1 - YouTube
Watch On

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."

(Image credit: Chaosium)

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.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
Double headed wizard man holding arms up looking sad
A tabletop RPG designer made a game about the way FromSoft NPCs say cryptic stuff and go 'heh heh heh' all the time, and the result is a love letter to the 'grubby little weirdos'
A goblin's face getting melted off by a magic crystal in Thieves of the Tome.
Do goblin dice math, slap your D&D players with severed troll limbs, and take revenge on Shakespeare in this year's wonderfully weird ZineQuest RPG kickstarters
A Lovecraftian monster in a dungeon in Cyclopean: The Great Abyss.
This fascinating Lovecraftian RPG has me determined to build an army of ghoul-slaying cats—and no I haven't been driven mad by forbidden knowledge, why do you ask?
A woman with a lantern meeting a huge, skull-faced wolf in Legend in the Mist.
This tabletop RPG has one of the cleverest ways of teaching you the rules I've ever seen—and it's inspired by a D&D set from over 40 years ago
Dapper thief with facial scars and leather armor holding large Faberge egg
'I've spent my entire career trying to recreate the feeling I had when I played D&D for the first time,' says immersive sim godfather Warren Spector, with new game Thick as Thieves going multiplayer because 'you don't play D&D alone'
A sparkly anime lady, wreathed in magic.
Depersonalization is an RPG out of China that feels like it never stops getting deeper, once you figure out how to set it to English
Latest in RPG
Atelier Ryza's protagonist, Ryza, looks surprised as magic flares around her.
Japanese game producer argues that thick thighs on anime girls are a natural byproduct of economic recession
Monster Hunter Wilds official art
If you've captured them for a minute, monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds are legally allowed to leave
A catgirl with long white hair and ears
At least it's not NFTs this time: The new Wizardry RPG is a gacha game
Path of Exile 2 showing the Warbringer ascendancy class bludgeoning his way through a pack of hyenas
Path of Exile 2 speedrunner dominates official race with the game's 'worst' class
Avowed art showing companions having a picnic together under sunny day
All the Avowed ending choices and epilogue-affecting decisions
The creepiest guy leans in front of an NPC mid-conversation in Starfield.
Starfield promises it still exists as silence drives fans to space-madness, but it mostly just annoys everyone: 'They are deliberately choosing not to communicate more'
Latest in Features
OneXPlayer 2 pro on a table
I never thought a handheld PC bloated with Windows could replace my Steam Deck, but after gaming on an old OneXPlayer 2 Pro I can see now I judged it too harshly
Beyond the Ice Palace 2 screenshots
I’m not sure what’s weirder: that someone made a sequel to a completely forgettable 37-year-old game I played as a kid, or that it was actually worth the wait
Screenshot of Children of Clay showing a mysterious clay model
Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 10, 2025)
A goalkeeper in a plague mask wields an axe
Silent Hill gets a soccer league in FEAR FA 98, and you can play the demo now
The Sims 4 - stacks of laundry machines in a small laundromat small business next to chairs with laundry
The best part of The Sims 4 Businesses & Hobbies expansion is just coming up with fun small business ideas
Obenseuer
This brutalist life sim gave me a free tenement block to renovate, but my mushroom addiction kept getting in the way