Is this worth playing?
>>46819206
Yes.
>>46819868
Why?
>>46819940
The historical side of things is fascinating, it's a great World War II game.
The Lovecraftian / supernatural aspect isn't that great, though.
>>46821020
What's wrong with it?
Interested in the skirmish game they are coming out with.
Cyborg Mi-go, yes please.
>>46823464
Forgot the pic.
That's what got me interested.
Anyone have any experience with Spartan's Dystopian Legions rules? It seems that will be the basis of the skirmish game, and all I know about Spartan is their love of dice pools and exploding 6's.
>>46819206
Bumping this. Does anyone have good stories regarding it?
Not sure. I'm running a WWII game semi-based on it though.
People know WWII is about to get bad, they just don't know how fucked they actually are.
>>46823527
God damn it.
People will never stop raping Lovecraft's corpse will they, as long as there's money to be made.
>>46828728
>WW2 is about to go bad
Was it good at any point?
>>46829526
>Was it good
Yes. It started out pretty comfy.
Right up until the we-are-not-alone part.
>>46829480
Its Nazi super science, what do you expect?
If you don't have a problem with people running from/fighting Cthulu on a motorbike with a bazooka, then you're probably not a purist. That's not a bad thing (as I’ll explain I don’t think you can even really play as a purist), but it does mean you probably don't have much interest in the mythos past superficiality, which most people don’t because it’s full blown neckbeard to care that much. Part of what makes Lovecraft's stuff unsettling is the feeling of insignificance and helplessness in the face of ancient incomprehensible beings. It deals with beings bigger in every sense than you, which leave you with very little you can do to even register as a nuisance let alone do anything to harm or hinder them. Player agency runs counter to this. Cosmic horror doesn't tend to work when you can do something about it, it's supposed to make you feel powerless and insignificant. There are exceptions to this though so I suppose a Lovecraftian roleplaying game isn't an entirely unfaithful concept. The Dunwich Horror, for example, is an exception to this trend, but being an exception is exactly what makes it good in my opinion. I suppose it's really all about how well the campaign sticks to the atmosphere necessary for it to be faithful, and I just don't think many GMs and definitely not many players have the right mindset, familiarity or skill to actually do it.
>>46830097
reminder that cthulu was put back to sleep by a boat
>>46830482
For someone who doesn't have a lot of experience with Lovecraft, would you care to explain?
>>46819206
This reminds me of a really good thread a while back where someone basically asked for a lot of inspiration for Cthulhu events in his WW1 game. It was a quite solid thread and I'm kind of upset that I can't find it.
Does anyone here remember that, and did it get archived/do you know a good way I could look for it?
>>46830498
Bad fanfic-tier wanking of how a "veteran gamer" exploits a beginner DM/Keeper
>>46830482
Yes another exception, and one that was actually kind of fucking stupid.
>>46830498
In The Call of Cthulhu, the surviving Norwegian sailor the protagonist interviews left a manuscript detailing his encounter with Cthulhu and how he and a fellow sailor stopped it by ramming its head with their boat.
>>46830643
Completely ruined it for me. They may as well have hit him in the testicles, it would have had the same dramatic impact.
>>46830511
An enemy plane has seen a crucial troop movement and got shot down over the trenches before it could return across the front line and report. The pilot got out and must now be tracked down lest he somehow be able to get his message across no-man's-land.
So the party sneaks into the death zone at night and finds all kinds of sanity testing mundane things. Eventually they hear movement and suspect it could be the German pilot hiding. They discover a cottage torn to shreds by artillery, but a cellar still seems somewhat intact. It is a bunker in the death zone while the German shelling starts again. Inside is a hidden room, now unveiled because of a cave in. There they find Launet's goomicronicon and the story reverts from chasing to being chased. The sound they thought revealed the German was actually something very old and very indestructible that now wants to eat their minds.
The cottage has always been a dark place, long before it became a cottage. It is an ancient site, charged with mystical auras and inhabited by powerful things. It can be a nest, a secret library, or an inconspicuous altar block. With man came cultists, and over the ages this grew into a secret society of devout demon worshippers. After its decline, only the cottage remains.
And it never became a problem until the French and the Germans started digging trenches around it for miles on end.
Now whatever remains of that old evil has been starving in the back country for a very long time. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of panicked aggressive young men are carted right to its doorstep and nobody notices when a few go missing or start behaving a bit oddly. This is the rebirth. With that many sacrifices it can regrow to its old might.
>>46832009
The horror is inevitable, but still based on player curiosity. The crucial situation will be escaping from a haunted battlefield without having facilitated the rebirth. If they manage I'd have them come out on the wrong side and get shot on sight in the epilogue.
You have 4 pools of dread to draw from:
>The cruelty of the enemy and his weapons
>The inhuman conditions where you cannot tell fellow starving soldiers from rotting corpses in the mud
>The bureaucratic failure of the chain of command and subsequent fatal harshness in the field
>And of course the actual creature or Mythos context.
I would take special care to play up human reactions and hanging on to any sense of society or purpose because without it you have murderhobos in hog heaven.
PCs will be armed and will have to follow orders. What you can and cannot get away with should be central at first. Of course eventually the party will be on its own and will have to make its own decisions. But hilarity ensues when it turns out what reports of this actually reach superiors.
One way to play it would be to present evidence of the supernatural, slowly build up a threat, but keep the officers oblivious and have them at best annoyed, at worst reaching for their sidearm to effect order in the ranks if pressed with reports or reservations concerning a possible supernatural presence. Then the chain of command breaks away and the creature comes out. Maybe something could have been done earlier, but now...
>>46819206
I don't like it. Not because it's bad, which it isn't. but because it misses the flavor for me.
To get into Achtung Cthulhu you really have to buy into the setting, and that just uses WW2 for flavoring while actually setting up its own little reality bubble. Valid, but it comes out too pulpy and babby's first Cthulhu.
The way I see it there's 2 ways to get into Weird War 2: heroics, and era accurate horror.
For the heroic route I'd go with Godlike. You may have to update the mechanics a bit with Wild Talents and Nemesis, but that'll be easy. The tone is very Hellboy, but not over the top, rather low key. Powers are pretty common, but they don't make supers who can fly, are bulletproof, and have laser eyes. Instead a front line soldier may be able to sense danger, a spy may be able to walk through walls, a tank mechanic may be able to punch through steel. It really comes together on the gritty side.
For era horror I'd stick to World War Cthulhu. It's a more flexible, more modular setting book that tries to put the spoopy into history instead of going alt history for good.
Then again I used neither for my WW2 seed.
>>46824442
Spartan is making it? Ew shit rule writers desu.
>>46819206
Worth what?
>>46835097
Money? Time?
