JDS

I am planning on using the Mythras rules in a fantasy setting, but I would like to ad the stock demi-humans. Other than those races, I don't plan any other significant changes.

Is there a supplement other than Classical Fantasy that covers this?

I like the AC! concept, but would want to use the 7E rules.

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

Ah, but is it eldritch, squamous and rugose?

Good point. Its hard to get really authentic rugose these days.

So, what period is your favorite? 

Mine is a Homebrew, replacing the core Flames of Freedom occult with Mythos (very easy to do). This is the Revolutionary War period)

15 minutes ago, Grimmshade said:

Not really seeing why you're so adamantly against other people having fun their way. Some of us like good props and not always having to do all the work ourselves. It's cool if you don't like MoN, but it's also cool if we do. I generally don't make 4 posts about something I'm not interested in, but whatever. 

I made one post, and then responded to people responding to me. Nowhere do I suggest that I am against people having fun in any specific way. 

8 hours ago, mvincent said:

Given how successful and beloved the recent MoN edition was, I'm not sure of your point. The price-tag was a bargain for some. The MoN HPLHS prop set costs more than the campaign, and it too was totally worth it.

For contrast: I paid $500 for Platinum editions of each of my last two D&D campaigns (and twice that for additional props/miniatures), and I was happy with the result (though MoN was better).

A well-made campaign can provide say, 200 hundred hours of enjoyment for 5 adults. Meanwhile, the hourly value of an adult's free time can be worth tens if not hundreds of $. If I can run a better campaign for 13¢ per person-hour, I'll take it.

We just finished our 33rd session in my Tuesday campaign. That's 147 hours so far, and my investment is $50. Five players and me, that means I'm at a nickel a man-hour, and its still got a long way to go. 

14 minutes ago, Grimmshade said:

The 7th edition version pdf is $60, and the original is only 248 pages compared to 666 in the new version. 

None of my players have read either version. 

Plus, I hate running games with PDF's.

I haven't bought a hard copy in fifteen years. And there hasn't been a scenario written that I would pay $60 for. Frankly, Masks is pretty much a run-of-the-mill CoC adventure, shallow draft, if a longer run than most.

2 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

It is a two-books-plus-full-of-handouts slipcase. If you click on the link, you will see a picture of the content.

The pdf costs $17.50 on Drivethru.

Keeping in mind that this is an old campaign, well-known and often-read.

I see no point in running a campaign where your players are very likely going to know it as well as the GM.

$129? You have got to be kidding.

My recollection of that scenario is a bit vague, but in the 1920s Peru saw regular traffic from geologists hunting minerals, archeologists hunting ruins, and a variety of the natural sciences poking around, so you could literally run into a person with that background wandering in the wild, perhaps after a mishap that left him short of supplies and needing to join up.

There was serious political issues going on in that period, too, so a reporter, mercenary, or would-be gun runner could be encountered wandering around the backcountry, on the hunt for news.

That's all I've got.

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

Gotcha.  I follow the concepts of ritual magic in my games, so we will inevitably differ.  Your Cthulhu Will Vary😁

That's the beauty of a Mythos based more on tone than specifics.

14 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

There have been various stories involving vampires only being vulnerable to the holy symbols of their own religion, so perhaps terrain features would only work for true believers.  One reason for occult items being rare is that they should be really difficult to make in the first place, unless the powers behind them are deliberately using them as booby traps for the unwary.  (Dear God, not another Lost Ark!  How many is that this year?)

See, I don't see occult items (books are another matter)as that hard to make; if you apply the transformative principle, than use should equal creation. For example, Aztec sacrificial knives becoming attuned to Yis after X number of heart extracts. The greater the use, the stronger the connection, which should keep the number fairly small, but still enough to ensure a few escaped the Spanish policy restricting invasive medical procedures. It also explains why items keep cropping up.

3 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Only to about 1/6 of the world's population, so I can see why it wouldn't bother you.  (By the way, I am a Christian minister!)

I don't see terrain features as being holy. And I can't see how tossing an occult item into a body of water that the thrower doesn't view as being holy works. There's at least sixteen rivers in North America which were viewed as holy to Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as numerous mountains and hills, so I just don't see the validity.

Plus I have always avoided RL religions in my games unless historically relevant.

I am looking for clear, workable solutions to destroying occult items within a long-term campaign.  From a variety of sources, I came up with what I have, which should suffice. From the literature, occult items, especially books, are supposed to be rare, so their viable destruction would see to be implied.

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

Arguably 5000 BCE.  Traditional enough?

Wonderfully crafted grimoires have a nasty tendency of going unopened, unread, and torched at the first opportunity....

Not holy to me, so nah.

Yeah, burn before reading is a sound practice.

28 minutes ago, Darius West said:

I see what you are going for I think.  Here are some other fun suggestions that up the difficulty a bit...

Boil in a poisonous mercury solution.   Subject it to a high magnetic field.  Disassemble under the light of the dying moon.  Cast it down from the summit of a holy mountain.  Bathe it in running water for X amount of time.  Smash it with another enchanted item.  Crush it in an industrial diamond press (a fringe technology in the 1920s). Feed it to a monster. Execrate it under the dung of a most unclean beast. Use astrology to determine it's most inauspicious moment, and hit it with a hammer.  Bathe it in the Holy Ganges.  Gift it to a well-intentioned klutz.  Leave it in a room with a 3 year old and a screwdriver, after showing the 3 year old how to use a screwdriver.

3 year olds with screwdrivers are the 5th horsemen of the apocalypse.

Not bad. When did the Ganges become holy? Polluted, yeah, but Holy? 

Anyway, this is for a campaign set in 1776 using Flames of Freedom (realistic).

13 minutes ago, klecser said:

You didn't mention Pulp, but what you are describing sounds very much what Pulp is.

It isn't.

1 hour ago, EricW said:

So if players stick to figuring out the identity of the perpetrator and burning their house down when they aren't surrounded by servitors, or when their god is not sitting on the altar behind them, they should have a pretty good chance of surviving - and are following a well worn tradition which has served mankind since the mad Arab wrote his book all that time ago.

Classic Mythos is very individualistic, usually just a single leader, a modest following, and an elder being with time on its hands.

What I prefer is elder beings with a full schedule, making pulling power from them a long-term and large-scale undertaking. 

I've been heavily influenced by the writings of Tim Powers and RW Krpoun, I guess.

On 4/13/2022 at 6:47 AM, klecser said:

But you do make a good point of one way to sustain long campaigns: go more Pulp.

I didn't make mention of, nor reference to, pulp. 

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Honestly, my players were such degenerates that they never tried to destroy any magic items, instead favoring figuring out how to exploit them for $$$.

My personal favorite schtick is wearable items that you can't take off.  I had one player who put on a familiar summoning ring that couldn't be taken off, but he figured out how, using a micro-gate, and then on his next character he put on the Pallid Mask AND read the King in Yellow.  The mask doesn't come off either, and sort of welds to one's skin.

I think any item destruction needs to be a scenario in itself, with attendant dangers.  On the other hand I think it is wiser to take the eagles to Mt Doom with the ring.

 

My players are exactly the same way which is why I want it easy for them to destroy the. Other, it is: look at the distance to Mount Doom on map, look at pawn shop across the street....'

So far, what I have:
Item's primary aspect is stone or clay: lightning.
Metal: Encase in a block of bronze, bury.
Paper or wood: Burn.
Bones or leather: dissolve in a mix that is 3 parts strong rum, 1 part pure vinegar, and 1 part black gunpowder.

How do you handle it in your campaigns?

I'm referring to the amulets, dagger, and other ominous life-changing trappings that crop up frequently in scenarios.

6 hours ago, klecser said:

I wonder if the Thompson/flamethrower question is not: "How do I contend with players having these?"

But more so: "How do I prevent min-maxers from min-maxing?"

And that does have answers.

1) How reasonable is it to expect that your history professor would think of "Tommy gun" as the answer to [insert X problem]?

2) There are many creatures that a Tommy gun has zero effect on.

3) The cultists have just as easy access to the guns.

4) A Tommy gun may be legal, but disturbing the peace and public endangerment are not.

Of course, different groups find different playstyles interesting/fun. Can you go gonzo with weapons and have a campaign with consistent characters?

1) I don't micro-manage my players that way. Perhaps it is unrealistic, but I don't care for it.

2) Not in my settings. If it breathes, it bleeds. Anything immune to physical harm is in our plane of existence is on a short lease, and there's a way to send it back. It may not be canon, admittedly.

3) They certainly do. That's what makes a good session. I like to have the PCs deal with various issues by staging investigations in areas with rebel activity, and the like, as well.

4) Cultists rarely conduct rituals in the town square. Its normally deep in the boonies, in the cellars of old houses, and the like.

I don't 'go gonzo' with anything. I figure anyone hunting cultists trying to end the world would think to take a firearm along. What sort of idiot wouldn't? What sort of cult leader planning to destroy reality wouldn't spend a few bucks arming his followers against intrusion? 

But yeah, it is very possible to have consistent characters. I've done it many times since 1979. And CoC certainly has a decent weapons listing, not to mention weapon supplements.

9 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Flamethrowers are primarily for use against mythos creatures.  On the other hand, most people find flamethrowers highly intimidating, and fire is a grisly way to die as opposed to a nice clean bullet.

Yeah, but seventy pounds for less than ten seconds of flame doesn't seem like a good trade-off.

I always figure that if fire will kill it, so will bullets. 

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Oh, I don't disagree, and let me add that most states of the Union have an easy purchase/open carry policy for flame throwers, which are used for "burning off" in agricultural areas, and they're cheap.  Yes, you can literally roam the streets of Arkham with a lit flamethrower and the local police can't complain (I checked the laws of the day).  Flame throwers can be bought by catalogue easily too, and are the go-to weapon for dealing with the mythos imo.  I'm telling you this in confidence, as it is a great thing to know when you are a player, but a nightmare for Keepers.

On the other hand, if I want to attract players for a game and they want violence, I think I'd offer them a different style of game using a different system.  CoC shouldn't be about shoot-outs but about solving mysteries imo.

Flamethrowers are still legal. But not very useful as weapons, IME. I've got one.

I like a mix of gunplay, roleplay, and investigation in my campaigns. It brings a good variety to the table.

7 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

Dubble post, please ignore. 

What are you hiding?

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

I have no problem with anything about your comment save for the ultra-violence.  IMO CoC should be primarily a game of detective work.  I think that the more it becomes a game of violence the higher the body count will get by default, as fights are deadly.

If one is determined to run a game where there is plenty of violence, in my experience, the best way of surviving is thru high stealth skills and plenty of ambushes.

I find that extra violence tends to make it easier to recruit players (I only game online), and it breaks up the investigations, keeping things fresh and interesting.

Plus there's always players who, when things get complicated, will point out that in the 1920s you can buy Thompson SMGs at Sears & Roebuck, and BARs through the mail. So it is best to be prepared.

And to be honest, I didn't pay $99 for a Roll20 Pro subscription not to use tactical maps. 😀