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If one's running CoC in a modern era, would it be alright to expand "Library Use" to include general web searching and research online? Or would it be better to split it into an entirely new "Internet Search" skill?
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Dec 10, 2020 21:39
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Dr. Lunchables posted:I assume you’re using the modern sheet, not just updating every skill from the 1920s sheet, right? Because I’d just use “Computer Use” for internet searches. I'd more sort of got the impression that Computer Use was more intended for, like, hackers and stuff, but I guess it could be expanded for that too. Thanks for the suggestions - I like the idea of renaming "Library Use" to "Research" as well. EDIT: Has anyone had experience (as a Keeper or an investigator!) in a campaign set in the present day? How does everyone having a smart phone change the dynamics? EDIT2: Though thinking about it, given how anxious people get when they lose their phones, run out of battery, or lose signal, it would be a great chance to lose some Sanity. 
DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Dec 11, 2020 |
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Dec 11, 2020 01:37
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I've been running a campaign set in the 1930s using the classic CoC rules, where the players are basically part of an early version of the Federal Bureau of Control from the game Control. It's sort of in a transitional spot between CoC and Delta Green, and their job is to find and secure strange and paranormal artifacts. There's an overarching theme of competing against Nazi and Soviet agents who are also running around across the world, trying to gather paranormal items and eldritch tomes for their respective governments as well. Anyway, so with this setup it lets me run a bunch of one-shot scenarios under this guise. I've already run a longer introductory scenario as the "Pilot", followed by Dead Light (the magic box that the Dead Light is sealed inside) and I'm currently running That Jazz Craze from Harlem Unbound. I'd like some ideas for other published modules that would be recommendable while I think up a larger original scenario as a "mid-season arc episode". Are there any that come to mind? Maybe one involving the King in Yellow? The only requirement I have is that the modules need to have some kind of paranormal object or item at the center of the story.
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Mar 21, 2021 00:36
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Nessus posted:You do Dead Man's Stomp yet? I haven't even heard of that yet, but will look it up now that you mention it! EDIT: Ah it was included in the Starter Set. I bought the Keeper rulebook for 7E EDIT2:  https://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-starter-set-pdf/ quote:In Paper Chase, the search for a missing professor leads to a grizzly discovery. What, did he get eaten by a bear? That's not very lovecraftian! DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Mar 21, 2021 |
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Mar 21, 2021 02:01
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I want to run the "Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays" Delta Green scenario that features The Traveler, but I can't for the life of me figure out where the hell to actually buy the module. I've heard it comes with the Delta Green Handler's Guide, but it's not in the latest edition handbook that I have. Does anyone know where the first edition handbook can be obtained?
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Apr 9, 2021 20:16
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Lumbermouth posted:It’s in this one: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/99212 Ahh thank you so much, I was going nuts!!
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Apr 9, 2021 20:58
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Is there a published CoC mini-campaign that's recommendable? The prospect of doing something like Masks of Nyarlathotep is daunting, but I want something a bit more than a bunch of one-shots. Ideally I'd like a sort of shortish campaign, about 3-5 adventures, as a model to learn from for making my own campaign.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:58
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CornHolio posted:
 
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Jun 25, 2021 21:03
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CornHolio posted:I'll be honest, I'm debating whether to throw in something from that as well I think it would be very cool.  More to the point, you mentioned you weren't too familiar with Eastern philosophy/mythology -- have you looked into The Children of Fear? It's a 7e Chaosium campaign all based around adventures in China, Northern India and Tibet. I haven't run it myself, but it looks interesting and relevant, and even if you don't run the campaign itself, maybe it could give you inspiration and ideas? Reading this review about it, it seems great and like it might be right up your alley: quote:In a campaign of this kind, ranging from China in the turbulent 1920s along the Silk Road to Tibet and colonial British India, questions of colonialism and racism, not to mention cultural appropriation, are almost sure to arise. All I can say is that Lynne Hardy and her fellow writers have done an extremely sensitive, painstaking, respectful and even reverential exploration of the traditions and cultures involved, even when they’ve turned a dark mirror to some of their most alarming aspects to create the villains of the piece. Almost every creed or social fabric is presented on its own terms, whether the strictures of the Hindu caste system, or the extremes of Tibetan Bon lore – in authentic terms that nonetheless will at times push your Culture Shock meter up to 11. Racism in the British colonial context is presented unflinchingly, with no attempt to handwave or airbrush over its impact on the campaign. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 22:36
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Would anyone care to take a look at or give feedback on an adventure I've written (and am currently playing through with my group)? It's about a dog and an idyllic town near Providence, Rhode Island. A Very Good Dog (It's meant to be part of a larger campaign where the characters are all part of a clandestine pre-Delta Green-like Federal agency called the Bureau of Irregular Investigations, whose job it is to track down unusual and mysterious artifacts and events, which is why it kind of leads off with certain things already assumed)
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Jul 23, 2021 02:15
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PipHelix posted:Goddamn, we're very much on the same track - I was definitely thinking of Stephen King's The Jaunt when figuring out the nature of the crazy - first time a sane PC gives an instruction to the crazy one I was gonna post the 10-hour Do The Mario video, say that's what they perceive the other person as and oh, yea, the crazy person experiences it as taking 10 hours. Thanks. These are all great points, and very sensible. I'll work 'em in!
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Aug 2, 2021 18:49
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PipHelix posted:Literally played a Terror on the Orient Express death-replacement PC as a stray dog that adopted the party. Checking out and 100% stealing if any good. Repaying the favor since you did so nicely for me! I love this concept, it sounds so delightfully chaotic, but I would be going nuts trying to find a way to convey this and execute it in a sensible way to my players. I would be careful of the complexity, or even explain privately to the player affected out of character, like lay it out clearly how this mechanic works. Props to you as a GM to run this concept, but personally I would find it difficult.
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Aug 2, 2021 23:27
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Anyone ever think about putting Mind Flayers from D&D in Call of Cthulhu? Everything about them just screams Lovecraftian horror, especially the whole thing about their Elder Brains and the way that even mind flayers fear what happens if the tadpoles in the Elder Brain pools are allowed to live after a colony collapses. I've looked on Google and haven't found any talk of it, though. I just love the idea that if you place many of the monsters you see come up in a CoC context with characters who aren't heroic D&D adventurers, now they're suddenly insurmountable and terrifying creatures from worlds unknown, rather than big bags of hitpoints to be slain for loot.
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Aug 5, 2021 00:12
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One thing which I would like is some kind of mechanic that rewards the characters for pushing themselves harder, for discarding more of their sanity and humanity in an effort to stop or slow the progression of cosmic horror. So that yes, by the end, you may be able to delay the reawakening of the Great Old Ones by a millennia but at the cost of becoming as monstrous as they. Something that would give them more and more of a sense of sacrificing every resource at their disposal for even the smallest chance at survival.
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Aug 13, 2021 20:55
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For one-shots, you can't really go wrong with the Haunting, which comes with the quick start rules.
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Sep 23, 2021 00:40
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I have sort of the seed of an adventure without the actual plot of it. Can anyone suggest where to take this idea and expand it into a full scenario? The idea is that the investigators are in the classic Cthulhu 1920s-30s era, either already part of an investigator organization or soon to be one. They are called upon to investigate a curious discovery unearthed in a 2 billion year old shale deposit in West Texas. In the layer, perfectly preserved, is a 2021 Tesla Model 3 registered to a young woman from 2024, said woman's skeleton, a 2026 iPhone 16, and, in the back seat, a 3d printed aluminum dodecahedron covered in indecipherable swirls and mathematical equations, mounted upon an aluminum plate. Upon the plate is laser-etched a curious diagram containing mathematical equations and symbols that are completely unknown to the early 20th century, and upon whose vertices are written the investigators' names. The woman is a 26 year old physics PhD candidate from UC Berkeley. In her phone are a series of recordings of her last days, and a final clip of the last moment when she found herself 2 billion years in the past. I don't really know where to go with this idea, but I think it'd be amusing to have the players role play as people from the 1930s encountering 2020s era technology for the first time. I'd appreciate any tips or ideas for an actual plot!
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Oct 14, 2021 19:42
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PipHelix posted:Not to be a spoilsport but I don't think too much of 2020 technology would survive 2 billion years. If she's buried, maybe a lava flow hit her, but you're still not really going to have any salvageable technology. If she's in a coal seam that means she was buried in like a swamp or bog. The dodecahedron has the power of plot though, so what is your plan for what this is and how it works? It it like a forcefield, temporal bubble or something? How did it preserve the tech but the woman is a skeleton? I was thinking that the phone was kept intact and charged through the power of ~lovecraftian magic. I was thinking the dodecahedron was some kind of mythos-powered artifact that she, or perhaps someone she worked with, had created, and through it gained the ability to travel through time. Maybe something having to do with the Yithians, perhaps? PipHelix posted:Here's an idea, the skeleton is outside the field. Fossilized into the coal, with the car perfectly preserved in a geode-like cavity. Oh I like this, it's stark and poetic! Hostile V posted:Realtalk you should look up the scenario Artifact Zero and mash that up with your idea, that would be a neat twist to put on 2000s stuff ending up in the 1920s if the T-radiation exists before it's properly discovered. Hm, intriguing. I'll look it up. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 03:25
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Owlbear Camus posted:Ran Last Things Last this weekend. Put Baughman's apartment in Waukesha and his cabin north of Oconto, WI. Somebody needs to get the username NEW BOOTS GOOFIN. Fantastic. 
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Oct 18, 2021 17:29
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Just lmao if you don't cosplay as HP Lovecraft when you Keeper for Call of Cthulhu.
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Oct 19, 2021 14:20
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Are there any good videos or guides out there with tips for exciting CoC combat? Like 99% of what I found on Youtube is for D&D.
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Nov 4, 2021 16:33
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Pththya-lyi posted:I think the whole Tcho-Tcho concept has too much toxic baggage to work, even if an author uses it with the best of intentions. I'd love to be proven wrong but I'm not holding my breath. Hard agree here, and it's also why I've personally decided not to have Deep Ones feature in my game either, as it has unbearable tangs of "ethnic mixing" garbage indelibly written into it.
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Nov 5, 2021 02:39
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My personal game setting is like 75% CoC 7e with 25% Delta Green, taking place in the 1930s with the investigators working for a clandestine government agency, like a proto Delta Green, as basically an excuse to have an investigator organization like in Pulp Cthulhu. The atmosphere and feel is generally somewhere in between low Pulp Cthulhu/a more forgiving CoC7e. I think this is a good medium for a long-running campaign based on X-filesish oneshots, as having more sturdy characters lets them develop the characters more.
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Nov 17, 2021 20:00
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Nessus posted:That's a pretty good tone and style I'd think, and it kind of plugs you into the 'main' environment for a lot of Call of Cthulhu content - and punching Nazis has that freshly squeezed zest, too. What kind of set up with the agency do you have? Thanks for the props! My Investigator Agency is basically a reskinned Federal Bureau of Control from the Control game, called the Irregular Investigations Agency. The guise is that the agency was created around 1933 amidst the flurry of "alphabet soup" agencies created by FDR's New Deal programs, and is a semi-clandestine agency under the Department of Commerce. Its mission is to investigate and suppress public knowledge of and illicit traffic in unnatural Mythos-tainted objects, or contain and prevent the spread of Mythos events and creatures.
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Nov 17, 2021 22:45
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PipHelix posted:https://twitter.com/Kekeflipnote/status/1451942844801982464 The Black Cat of the House With A Dozen Young
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Nov 20, 2021 00:10
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Then again, a scenario about a national response to a Cthulhu Mythos event sounds extremely interesting. Like asking the question "What if Delta Green failed to keep it a secret" could be a fascinating delve. You could have a mass media uproar, key individuals of the Program getting outed by whistleblowers, congressional inquiries, players having to keep up with ingame social media, tons of stuff!
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Dec 6, 2021 15:12
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Like everything, it'll be another event that further drives the wedge between the haves and have nots. You'd mentioned the government cutting checks for those who lost property in the event, favoring rich property owners. That's a great one! I'm not sure it'd be just so "ho hum", though. Wouldn't a mass reveal that the universe is crawling with invisible horrors everywhere be a great way to hype up the security state? Like a Weird 9/11. What if somehow the Innsmouth thing got out if Delta Green's existence was exposed? You'd have literal genetic taint with magical monster DNA going around, driving national paranoia and presently-existing racial tension. For sure it'd reach an equilibrium eventually, but I think your work is to speculate about how that equilibrium would be different. I remember pre-9/11 you could still go all the way to the boarding area to say goodbye to departing loved ones at the airport. I remember not having to take off your shoes or being able to bring on bottled water, nailclippers, and toothpaste. I also remember how for more than entire decade after 9/11, "ARE TROOPS  " was an entire part of the culture. For COVID, we seem to have settled into an equilibrium, but lots of things are different. Plastic barriers at retail, an entire generation of students and kids whose lives have been warped by remote school, the mask/no mask thing becoming part of existing political cleavages, and so on. How would a big part of Michigan being contaminated by hypergeometry warp the new normal? Like even small everyday life things -- for example, you can't take the train or drive through this part anymore, so certain towns start to become way more important as highway traffic and freight are diverted through them instead. Would refugees farther from the epicenter be like the new FEMA Katrina refugees? How would the existence of hypergeometry affect the whole "new age woo" scene, would they find new validation in it? Could there be new cults spreading on Facebook based around this? What about tourism to the boundaries of the exclusion zone? You could model it on Chernobyl tourism! Imagine someone selling tickets to visit the spooky place in Annihilation, or every now and then TikTok Influencers getting warped doing the "Exclusion Zone Challenge". I think a great reference would be to look up the lore around the "Mystery Flesh Pit National Park": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDeJDtkS39s
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Dec 6, 2021 19:43
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Dr. Lunchables posted:How tall is the zone? Would planes fall from the sky, perpetually, Donnie darko style? Wait if electrons can't flow or move then wouldn't that be, like, extremely bad for the stability of matter? I'd probably just chalk the "simple machines only" rule up to 'mythos magic' rather than reach for a more scientific explanation, because you rapidly reach the point where that zone is physically incompatible with existence.
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Dec 7, 2021 04:07
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Are there any prewritten scenarios out there that involve extreme fundamentalist Christian cults (things like snake handling rituals and stuff) where the Holy Spirit, or Jesus or whatever that turns up when they worship turns out to be some kind of Mythos god or Great Old One? I want to run that kind of scenario but I don't have the time to write it myself.
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Dec 10, 2021 21:27
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Pththya-lyi posted:There's Jeffrey Moeller's "Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home," arguably the strongest scenario in the anthology The Things We Leave Behind. There's even a website for the cult: https://jamesalday.github.io/ladybug/ My campaign is set in the 1930s, do you think it would be easy to adapt it to the pre-computer era? Eg.: are there clues and plot points that don't necessarily revolve around the investigators searching the web and so on.
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Dec 10, 2021 23:17
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I like how Lovecraft was such a racist, sheltered baby that his horrifying idea of the apocalypse was New York City on New Year's.
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Feb 25, 2022 22:12
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I have an idea for a scenario to flesh out. In 1934, Investigators are given the cover of being workers for the Census Bureau and told to go to the town of Innsmouth where about six years ago the government conducted a raid to root out the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Their mission is to find out the whereabouts of the Esoteric Orders strange artifacts and tablets. They wind up finding out clues leading them to a secret underground concentration camp near the warehouses at the old Marsh refinery by the bay where they find out that the government has been keeping the Deep One Hybrids and other Innsmouth townsfolk captive. For the past six years the government under the auspices of the P4 Office of Naval Intelligence has been performing hideous and cruel vivisection and breeding experiments on the Deep Ones, and the artifacts are in the hands of P4, classified with the top-secret clearance heading Delta Green...
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Mar 14, 2022 14:42
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I've suddenly got a hideous idea for a scene, but not a scenario to go with it. What do you guys think of this:quote:Player's character is looking through a keyhole. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Mar 26, 2022 |
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Mar 26, 2022 00:44
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echopapa posted:Census Bureau would be a strange cover in 1934, because the U.S. didn’t conduct a census that year. You could move it to 1930, pick some New Deal agency as a cover (WPA photographers?), or have Innsmouth folk be very skeptical. Ah thanks for this tip!
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Apr 12, 2022 17:28
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Siivola posted:Black-lotus-as-a-street-drug has been in the metaplot since the OG DG days. What if there was a MTG Card so rare and so expensive and so cool that it had eldritch, mind-warping properties and could drive you insane just by collecting it??? 
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Apr 21, 2022 14:56
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midori-a-gogo posted:Sweet, sorry if my question seemed a bit obvious - I love to play but I've never really interacted very much with the community so I'm a little clueless about what people beyond my friends are into. I guess next I need to see if Chaosium would be interested. Hell yeah.  I've always heard that CoC was the biggest TTRPG in Japan instead of D&D and that the primary audience playing it was majority women so I would be fascinated to see what they have going on.
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Apr 29, 2022 14:46
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Kumo posted:Our pandemic response Zoom rpg group got burned out on 5e, so we started a Call of Cthulhu game. In my experience, the information gathering and defensive skills are well worth boosting up to >50% level. Spot Hidden, Psychology, Listen, Dodge, Library Use, or possibly your choice of Intimidate/Fast Talk/Charm/Persuade. It's better to have high numbers in 1 skill than a "somewhat better than baseline" in a number of skills.
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Apr 30, 2022 16:02
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Hi thread! I wrote a custom scenario for my campaign, and I'm pretty happy with how most of it has come out. I'd love to get some feedback from folks on it, as I still feel like the last part of it could be made a lot more concrete and tighter, when compared to the beginning of the scenario. A lot of it was heavily inspired by the Delta Green scenario "Observer Effect", the structure of which I adapted for a 1930s setting and to fit with the overarching themes of my campaign. The Furious Engine.
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May 13, 2022 20:58
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Mycroft Holmes posted:The problem with this scenario is that you have created an even more extreme version of CoCs "nothing matters, we are all doomed" problem. By making it a stable timeloop, you have told the players their actions are meaningless, as the world will end July 9th, 2029, no matter what they do. What reason is there to continue the campaign? I legit never thought about that. Uh...
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May 13, 2022 22:36
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PipHelix posted:
This is the third ostensible scenario in the campaign, but Karoly is already dead by the time it rolls around. MaKenzie goes back in time but because the historical records are scanty and her Cthulhu math is untested, winds up with the wrong "time coordinates" and her time travel fizzles, sending her to the wrong time. Though his notes and published papers could still serve as a 'contagion' for an overarching campaign theme of gathering and suppressing the knowledge vectors before they spread! Or maybe they could form the basis of a mathematical cult (like the "Pythagorean Society" in the summer jam for example). For background, my campaign centers around Daoloth, the Render of Veils, who is depicted as a kind of negative/anti Azathoth, whose influence causes the universe's mathematical and physical laws to warp towards a state incompatible with sanity and normal existence. In my depiction of the mythos, Daoloth is a kind of "perverted order" whereas Azathoth is "insane chaos". The Convergence is a manifestation of Daoloth's power finally melting through and causing the universe to transition into being part of the greater underlying reality (sort of inspired by the theory of false vacuum decay).
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May 24, 2022 19:19
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PipHelix posted:I mean, language goes where it goes but the original meanings of 'meme' and 'viral' with respect to ideas, and the passing of knowledge are seemingly pretty relevant here. Your guys have bought themselves *at least* 90 years, but there's no reason that they can't keep moving the horizon back. I like this idea, and it's very similar to the 'ultimate horrible truth' that the characters will discover hopefully someday in the campaign. I've just concluded this adventure, and the players ended up throwing the dodecahedron in the sea, though it seems they believe they've escaped the time loop rather than just playing their part in its inevitable fate. Perhaps I can introduce Azathoth as Daoloth's polar opposite, and pose the players with a choice. Do they help Azathoth and doom the universe to an insane thriving out of control, a reckless Gotterdamerung of fire and chaos? Or do they accept Daoloth, embrace the hypergeometric infection of causality, and do their part to help the universe converge into a new, crystalline order? quote:PS, I really dig your ideas. I remember you discussing this module when it was just an idea and it really came together nice. Good Job! Oh thank you! I'm glad you like them. I love the theme of 'spooky math and physics', as a person who's into those subjects, and I hope at least that my unorthodox take on the mythos is enjoyable to my players. They seem to be loving it so far!
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Jun 8, 2022 18:24
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).