I've been wanting to run a Call of Cthulhu game for a long time but I've got a problem: I hate Cthulhu.
Not Cthulhu himself, and not Lovecraft, Lovecraft is great. But the modern era I feel has diluted the horror, and the RPG hasn't helped. Too much showing, too comprehensible. The 7th edition seems to be aware of the path the RPG was on when it removed stuff like servitor races.
They actually wrote a whole supplement about it, Nameless Horrors, mentioning the tragic situation where a horrible monster appears behind the investigators and they're like "Oh it's a ghoul, they resist guns so we'll need melee attacks." But then they release a fucking Field Guide to "mythos" monsters with a dichotomous key, as if you're birdwatching or some shit. You can tell a blarp from a goob cause a blarp has an orange schmengle and a goob's is blue. Which I feel misses the point of Lovecraft so hard it's not even on the register.
So I kind of want to look away from Chaosium altogether. Anybody else in the same boat? This is a thread to share stuff that you've seen in media or came up with yourself that fits the Lovecraft/Call of Cthulhu themes and imagery, but isn't mythos. Stuff your investigators won't recognize. The greatest fear is the fear of the unknown, after all, and the mythos is the opposite of unknown at this point. Here's some of my faves.
Michael LaBossiere's adventures are good examples and I think they're all free now. Short, freaky, monster-a-week style scenarios that provide good ideas for stuff of your own if you don't like the format.
The Secret World's Filth is awesome - http://thesecretworldguide.weebly.com/filth-lore.html - and I'm cribbing some of the ideas for my own contribution to the thread: Something akin to the Filth leaks in a cave and links the minds of those exposed, forming an alien consciousness that gets smarter and more demanding with each new brain in its network.
And pic related, Rawhead Rex, the child-eating Irish Grendel.
>>46994016
Check out some Hellboy. Sure all he has to do is smack the bizarre things but that's because he's big mojo. Everyone else has a damn hard time dealing with it all, even if they know what hocus pocus is supposed to deal with the nonsense that's going on. It's often the case that there's some trick making the case complicated.
In my CoC one-shots, I always tried to come up with something completely new, that still evoked the atmosphere and feel of Lovecraft's works. Minimal explanation, few answers, just terror and frenzied attempts at survival and slap dash solutions. The entire genre is about fear of the unknown and unknowable, which basically precludes using established, familiar threats, unless you can angle them in a way that evokes the same response.
Kenneth Hite does some good work on both reinventing stale Mythos creatures and providing new or underused ones in his Ken Writes Anout Stuff work.
You ever played a religious monster? Not even posing as a religious person, but full on devout?
>>46993893
Currently am.
Hes a devout religious pawn of some of the greater organizations in 40k.
>>46993893
A troll of Pelor.
Was weird.
>>46993893
Isn't this what all Paladins are? We literally murder hundreds if not thousands of individuals In the name of our God(s).
If we're not seriously devout than go fuck a cucumber you veggie lover.
Hey everyone. It's been a while. TV guy here.
I know that this has been a long time coming, but I wanted to show this to you guys. It's a short teaser for Night Shift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E72EmcPWDv8
FAQ:
>What is Night Shift?
About two years ago on /tg/, a bunch of anons came up with an idea for a game setting. Night Shift is that product--a story about a gas station in the middle of nowhere, and the creepy occurrences that happen during its late-night shift.
>So why the shitty trailer?
Night Shift was originally meant to be a game setting. Then, NSW Anon started to make a game. Eventually, he and I started writing a script for the pilot of a TV show based on this. You guys loved the idea. But after our proposal was shot down, we decided to go ahead and try to make it an indie short film.
We couldn't find a suitable director, so we shelved it for a while. Then, NSW Anon and I agreed that I should film it. I've got a rag-tag team of actors, editors, and a film ready to start--but this teaser was filmed and edited 100% by myself. Hence the bad quality... But I promise you that the final product will be better.
>When will the full film be released?
At this point, that's unknown. During the summer when everyone has time off, we plan to shoot 5 minutes proof-of-concept footage. After that, we'll make a Kickstarter to fund the full film.
Thanks for sticking with us all these years, /tg/... I'll be around to answer questions for a bit.
Wow, so after 2 years, Night Shift is finally happening? About time! But I'm glad that it's finally coming. Can't wait to see more.
>>46994025
Yep!
Thanks for the support.
It's getting late here. I'll probably stay up for another hour, and if the thread doesn't get much activity before then, I'll just repost this tomorrow.
>>46993837
Holy. Shit.
I have never been more hyped. I was in those threads from the start, and that setting turned out so much better than I'd ever hoped... the fact that you guys are going ahead with this is fucking fantastic.
Posted this on /v/ already but it seemed more at home here. Basically I'm making a fan game based around the Siege of Vraks, with lots of trench warfare and tanks. I just finished the heavy bolter gunner sprite and did some quick animating work in Scratch to test it out. The actual game will be made with more powerful software, but I wanted to see what it would look like (animation is in the link, not sure how to convert from scratch to .gif sorry):
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/107634460/#player
>>46993634
Cease and desist in 5... 4...
>>46993634
I'd like to say cool, and it is, but all I'm seeing right now is a cool gif of a Krieger doing krieg stuff kriegerly.
Do you got any plans on what gameplay elements you're going to focus on?
>>46993634
Looks good senpai, keep it up
Is The Culture an interesting place to set a game?
On one hand you have lots of interesting intrigue and shit going on through Contact.
On the other you have the average person being basically interchangeably unimportant for anything with no hope of changing that. And Mind's are basically railroading GMs on steroids.
Thoughts /tg/? How do you run a game set in The Culture
>>46993518
bump with some ideas
>Use Eclipse Phase for system
>Players are all Contact agents (and their drones maybe?)
>Give them mess to solve that isn't very important at all to get them into what kind of resources they have available
>Slowly give them more Mind attention and oversight as their tasks get more important, potentially both helping and frustrating their efforts
last bump I guess
You probably won't have much to do within the culture, unless you've got a rogue Culture Mind or a primitivist rebellion. Instead, I think you're better off playing "Benevolent Contact" by sending them into other civilizations, to mess with the locals or bring them into line with what the local Minds want.
Alternately, you could put them into... Special Circumstances. Pick your game world to invade, dictate the Culture's goals or the local problem that's creating the special Circumstances involved... and go.
Could be fun. Could also be terrible.
How might an adventurer prevent his corpse from being desecrated?
Someone might be able to do a curse or jinx on the corpse after his passing
Fire.
>>46992646
>Adventurer
That there's old words, choomba. All you's needin' is a couple of well-placed bombs that activate when your dead body is moved.
>I was only 9 years old
>I loved the space wolves so much, I had all the merchandise and movies
>I pray to Leman Russ every night before bed, thanking him for the life I've been given
>"Leman Russ is love" I say; "Leman Russ is life"
> /tg/ hears me and calls me a fegget
>I know they were just jealous of my devotion for the space wolves
>I called /tg/ a cunt
>They call me a faggot and send me to go to sleep
>I'm crying now, and my ass hurts
>I lay in bed and it's really cold
>Suddenly, a warmth is moving towards me
>It's Leman Russ
>I am so happy
He whispers into my ear "A fortress circumvented ceases to be an obstacle. A fortress destroyed ceases to be a threat. Do not forget the difference."
>He grabs me with his powerful metal hands and puts me down onto my hands and knees
>I'm ready
>I spread my ass-cheeks for Leman Russ
>He penetrates my butt-hole
>It hurts so much but I do it for Leman Russ
>I can feel my butt tearing as my eyes start to water
>I push against his force
>I want to please Leman Russ
>He roars in a mighty roar as he fills my butt with his love
>/tg/ walks in
>Leman Russ looks them straight in the eyes and says "Never forget this. When night comes again, as it surely will, only your brotherhood will protect you. Preserve it, and you will endure. Let it fracture, let it fail, and i tell you truly: our time, humanity's time, will be over."
>Leman Russ leaves through my window
>Leman Russ is love. Leman Russ is life.
ur not funny tho
Worst Chapter should be considered heretics for being furrie scum
You should go drink bleach, my boy.
How do you write interesting NPC's that'll be fun to the players?
Shotgun theory.
Throw anything and everything at your players, cast as wide a net as possible by using a diverse cast of NPCs, and let them choose what they like and which NPCs they want to revisit.
>>46992124
I see.
But what if it's an important character I want to make a recurring one? Is there a way to make sure they're good enough for the players?
Semi-automatic theory.
Make a character and go balls to the walls with him, if the players don't click with him have him die off introduce a new guy. Rinse and repeat as needed.
Stat me, /tg/.
>>46991523
STR: 5
AGI: 10
END: 8
HET: 6
WIP: 8
WIT:10
INT: 5
PER: 7
...
Awareness: 10
Athletics: 8
Stealth: 10
Survival: 10
Animal Handling: 6
Piloting: 3
...
ADR: 10
TOU: 4
CAR: 16
MOB: 11
CHA: 12
...
Pistol 15, SMG 15, Rifle 15, Wrestling 20
...
Beautiful (2), Tall (1), Natural Born Killer (3), Brave (2), Impressive Voice (Soothing)
...
Sneaking Suit
Knife
"Patriot" Submachinegun
>>46991523
+4 STR
>>46991523
-10hp
You're playing and arcade style rpg. Wizards have no limit to spellcasting, but you have to figure a way to make them still feel like wizards, while not having them overshadow everyone else. What's the best way to do this? Give things casting times? I'm using a sort of stance system, where each stance would have a handfull of spells that aren't just damage dealers. So if the wizard wants to use fire, he'd switch to pyromancy, or if he wants to manipulate the world in certain ways he'd switch to geomancy, and so on and so forth.
I could just reduce damage, but I want the wizard player to feel like, given the time and lack of interference, he can drop some pain on things. Glass canon and all that.
>>46991243
If you mean D&D style, just do what they did with the Magic User in Shadows Over Mystara; limit the number of spells per level he can cast on every stage you are at but make them all very powerful or very useful.
This makes him a very potent attack asset in combat but also makes his strong offensive abilities a limited resource he has to manage.
>>46991331
I kind of rushed things, so I'll explain a bit more in detail. I run con games, and I run what I call "arcade mode", which means you use premade characters, and there's very little info to keep up with. It's all strictly "tell me what sounds cool and you'd like to do". There's a deck of cards that you draw from for items like health potions and blessed throwing daggers (gives melee players a ranged attack without switching stances), and there's a special character specific deck you draw from when you kill a mini boss or whatever that gives you a different "stance". Pic related, it's the fighters character sheet. You would put a card over that square in the middle when you want to change stances (and weapons, and usually group roles. This is so when someone gets the fighter, they can eventually unlock a crossbow for ranged dps or a sword and board for more tanking).
Combat usually lasted pretty quickly, so maybe just give each caster stance a 1/2/3 system, where the 1 round spell is simple stuff, and the 3 round spell is pretty mean. For a con game that goes pretty fast in combat, 3 rounds is a good stretch of time I'd say.
What does it mean to "feel like a wizard", OP? I think the Warlock and Dragonfire Shaman feel plenty like a generic fantasy wizard. Do you want it to feel like the classic D&D vancian wizard? If so, why?
Share your stories
>>46990894
Is this...a lady knight thread?
Could someone post a pic of a giantess lady knight?
>>46990894
Don't you mean "that girl"?
What's the difference?
>>46992438
The difference of "this" and "that" are that "this" is the polar opposite of "that"...
tl;dr OP wants stories about excellent grill players.
Whether you believe this phenomenon or not is entirely up to you.
Ever had your players do something you hadn't ever thought of them to do?
Mine went and talked to an old retired merchant dwarf, tried to nick a crystal ball of his, and are now trying to exorcise the dark beings within.
I hadn't even planned having the Dwarf in the campaign before this, I just told that the party saw doors in hills as they entered Dwarf Lands and figured that hill dwarves live in hills.
This is 90% of what RPG parties do.
You can spend days crafting locations and NPCs and quests and plot hooks, and then you mention a random detail off the cuff and suddenly it's the only thing they care about.
It's why I'm a primarily improv GM these days. I tried preparing stuff but it basically never got used. All I really need is a few statblocks I can grab if I need enemies for a fight, and otherwise basically everything else is off the cuff.
>>46990919
I knew this would be what happened most of the time, but I didn't expect this shit to happen.
System is D&D 5e
>The party is given a mission to escort a shipment from the human lands to the dwarf capital
>The party is told of the hill dwarves
>They decide to knock on the door
>at this point I am fucking panicked because I didn't expect this to happen and this is my first campaign as a DM. I Make up a generic retired merchant guy, he gives the party a feast because the paladin and a cleric are carrying the banner of the biggest military order in the continent
>A druid goes and explores the dwarf-hole
>asks what he sees, I panic again, make up stuff about trinkets, including a crystal ball
>druid uses detect magic
>I figure fuck it, everythings magical.
>He goes and asks the dwarf about his trophies, especifically the crystal ball
>I make up a story about the dwarf and his caravan getting lost in a blizzard, finding a cabin where an old lady lives, getting captured by un-formly horrors and then manage to trap the horrors within a crystal ball, but the old lady has to sacrifice her soul for it to work
>As a reminder of his failures and lost friends, the dwarf takes the ball as a memoir. And to keep it sealed, of course.
>The Druid, being a half-demon, tries to speak infernal to the crystal ball, agitating the horrors, while taking the crystal ball back to it's place in a glass cabinet.
>Night falls, the half-elf wizard steals the crystal ball
>Frames the half-demon of it
>The night-elf sees a vision in a dream I actually prepared for the half-demon to see, but whatever.
>The half-elf is intrigued, and wants to continue
>I brew up some bullshit about her seeing a dream where she is in a wooden cabin in a snowy forest, she ventures into the snowy forest
>sees dark figures
>tries to use magic, doesn't work
>tries to knife it, doesn't work
>runs back to the cabin
>the horror is in the cabin
>as she is about to get raped, she wakes up
(cont)
>>46991218
>she wakes up, goes to the cleric's room
>opens the door, the door creaks thank's to a botched sneaking roll (a botched sneaking roll while she was stuffing the ball into the half demon's bag was what made the cleric think the druid was sneaking about)
>on the last moment she goes to the half-demon's room and takes the ball
>tries to cut herself up and smear the ball with her blood to achieve... Something?
>she rushes into the cleric's room with the ball and almost cries about the horrors and shit (great roleplay desu, and it's his first session too)
>after some shit, the cleric is now exorcising the horrors from the crystal ball.
I have no fucking idea how it came to this, nor do I have any fucking idea how I managed to come up with all this shit so easily.
I wonder what they'll try to do next.
There are specific moments when you stop whatever you’re doing and question just what the hell is going on with your life. Normal people have it during a long drinking session, or after someone they love or knew died suddenly. Usually, you don’t have one at four in the fucking morning when you’re eighty feet underwater riding a fucking nuclear powered abomination of a machine that can’t decide if it wants to be a submarine or a TSF and settled on ‘Fuck it, let’s do both’ towards land in a sortie best defined as ‘high risk’ by the brass and ‘totally fucking retarded’ by pretty much everyone else. You should have never listened to that fucking recruiter.
If you ever got out of this radioactive death trap, you decided, you would find that motherfucker in his comfy Midwestern air-conditioned office and strangle him to death with his bootlaces. He was why you had to strap yourself into this thing three god damn hours ago and putter at little better than walking pace under the North Sea to get into position in time for the whole shindig to begin. Even if you’d been assured the nuke plant was well shielded from the cockpit, it didn’t stop the rumors. Or your occasional check of the Geiger counter in the HUD. Burning a bright green directly into your eyeballs despite the dark murk of the sea, you could see the nav point that marked your squad’s destination where you’d wait potentially another few hours running near silent in to see if this would get called off again, or you’d finally get the go signal. Hurry up and wait. Your favorite part of this.
“Hey, Foss,” you ask, blatantly ignoring the mandatory radio silence just like everyone fucking else who got dragged on an underwater patrol or entry. “Think this is the big one?”
“What, was the last twenty fucking times you asked me not enough to get the hint that you’re driving me fucking nuts when you keep asking that?” Foss grumbled back.
>>46990600
“Can’t section eight your way out of this one Foss.”
“No. Like the last time, and the time before that, and the time before fucking that, no, I don’t think we’re going to be storming onto the beaches of France in some re-enactors wet dream.” Your wingman replied. The water was too murky for the direct face to face laser comms most pilots were used to, but you could picture that movie star face of his scowling like he usually did when you decided to ask this question. It was a ritual at this point between you two. And no matter what Pam might imply, no, it was not stupid. Her rituals were stupid. And so was she. Fucking Pam.
Foss sighed over the mike. “Look, just keep scanning for activity on the sea floor, alright? We don’t have fish to toss at ‘em if they suddenly decide to swim.”
“That’s why I’m saying this is the real deal man,” you say, adjusting your course slightly to stay within ‘sight’ of the squadron leader. “They wouldn’t load us with this much if this was a false alarm. Blasting a sandbar to bits is just overkill for this shit you know?”
While that was one of your favorite patrols of all time, the point was easily seen. Everyone in the flight was loaded for bear. VLS cells, full mags of everything, everything for a good old bug hunt but the rail gun. Salt water fucked with it something fierce. “So if this isn’t the big one, what the fuckever it is has to be important.” You finish. “Fucking common sense.”
“Or, like the last time, you two idiots are chewed out by me again for not following protocol.” Aaaah, that sweet voice. Your squad lead, the wonderful bitch she was.
You open your mouth to say
[ ] “Unless the BETA can suddenly listen to radios, I think we’re alright Captain.”
[ ] “Sorry ma’am. I’m just sick of being in the dark. Literally.”
>>46990639
Dropped my trip.
>>46990639
>[X] “Sorry ma’am. I’m just sick of being in the dark. Literally.”
Submersible, nuclear-powered...we piloting an A-12? Bitching.
Sup /tg/
Playing a bit of a puzzle game with someone, and they sprung this shit on me. Anyone know what these moonrunes are saying?
There are no other samplings of this that I could find in the vicinity but I suspect it's a substitution cipher.
>>46989915
It's just a pigpen cipher. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigpen_cipher
>J H H F S M C O L
You'd have to figure out the key to use it.
It looks like a variation on a U.S. civil war era prison code. Draw a tic-tac-toe board and put 2letters in each space, then draw an x and do the same between each line. The character written is the box or space with a dot if it is the second letter. If that fails, try X then tic TAC toe board.
>>46989967
Nice, thanks dude. Will post pics of wizards.
If anyone has anything to add to this feel free, otherwise general cipher/puzzle discussion thread I guess. Should've noted that in the OP.
A pic related shows up in your setting going "SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT", what happens? If you don't have a setting, use the last setting you played in.
I've got axes and a paper cone
Rolled 3 (1d10)
>>46989170
Luckily for me, I come equipped with several noise-making features.
Unluckily for me, I have no idea what organics enjoy. Hoping this is an 8+.
>>46989170
Horribly, because no one would know what the fuck that means, unless a Rick happened to be there.
