TK Nyarlathotep

Hey all. I'm a long-time Call of Cthulhu fan, a slightly shorter-time BASIC fan, and a brand new Glorantha/RQ fan! I am like a little baby to you, and I defer to your wisdom. Where should I start to really grok Glorantha, as a setting, a franchise, and more? Where should I begin in my quest to grasp the intricacies and history of the world? Obviously the Glorantha corebook coming later this year will be a great starting point, but that's not out yet! So what should I read in the meanwhile? Thanks, TK Nyarlathotep

By the way, thank you all for not eviscerating me, taking my words into account, and really giving some valuable input and feedback. Y'all are aces!

Which is to say, if they're searching for immorality, they're already practicing Mythos Magic, what more do they want!?

Pg. 29, first paragraph under "Ascend the Stairs of Immortality": "This spell is said to have been used by Taoist alchemists when they wished to find immorality", assume it means "immortality".

That clears things up a fair deal! I run my home games as episodic "movies" or as multi-episode "seasons" of a TV show, like American Horror Story or Channel Zero, so they're mostly standalone stories. Good approach!

Can't say that's a concept I can get behind, at least if I'm running horror rather than Pulp.

Possibly true - if you feel like they might have higher sanity, definitely feel free to boost it up! One of the things I like to emphasize to people is that, unlike more traditional games, Call of Cthulhu never really was "balanced" in the traditional sense - it does not fall apart if you tinker just that little bit too much. It's very elastic! Therefore, more helpful NPCs could and should have higher sanity (maybe an older edition oversight?) while less helpful or antagonistic NPCs could stand to be a little more crazy. *SPOILERS FOR Mister Corbitt* I think Mister Corbitt's seemingly-normal presentation is a symptom of his insanity, not something he does when he isn't feeling insane. Therefore, low sanity is definitely a problem he has. Same with the guy who steals body parts for him whose name escapes me.

Since Sanity is ranked out of 100 in previous editions anyway, I'd say their Sanity is probably their Sanity. So if Corbitt's sanity is 36 in 6e, it's probably 36 in 7e. Make sense?

I'm gonna be honest, I wish I'd thought of this in my campaign. Maybe if I run it again. Good idea!

The Dead Light is exceptional and is already 7e compatible.

For one-shots, Dead Light is phenomenal! Running it for my Cthulmas Special next Wednesday.

Before the day draws to a close, happy Cthulmas all around! Thank you for the list, BigJackBrass, that's very helpful! Some ominousness that I very much appreciate in EricW's post. Thank you!

I did, indeed, see that monograph, and three of the scenarios are written in very bad English.

Question: Are there very many fun Call of Cthulhu or Horror scenarios that, if not set in and around Winter and the Holidays, could easily be transferred to the general area of November to January? Nothing like a bit of nightmare fuel to get you into the holiday spirit.In the interest of fairness to players, I'll ask that spoilers be marked.I was thinking "Mr. Corbitt" from Mansions of Madness as a Christmas party when the group notices The Suspicious Thing and chooses to investigate. The Winter atmosphere could easily go from cheery to oppressive, as it goes from a well-lit, bedecked hall in the warm with friends, to a cold, poorly-lit home barely decorated for the holiday with no one but Mr. Corbitt and his...guest inside.Any others that would be easy/fun to transfer to the Holidays?

I agree, Ep. 6 might make a better optional epilogue than a mandatory part of the story. It doesn't tie up a whole lot, and a mi-go shoggoth seems downright quaint compared to being reduced to screaming at the sky by the manifestation of corrupt birth herself.

That's actually a fairly good point. Perhaps rely on the players to affect their trauma, instead of their stats - accepting they make it out alive. My players are due for a date with Shubby without anything like a boat or any tricks to fight back - they should be allowed to survive if they get lucky enough to do so. Thanks for the feedback!

Are these dreams a clutch of stifled memories? Was there something in my mind? There are things they say man was not meant to know Is this shadow out of time?

Hey all, So I had a thought. In my opinion, sanity loss becomes just a little too swingy once you go higher than 1d10. To help alleviate this a bit, I've decided to try an experiment where, instead of 1d100 and the potential for the players to lose only 1 or otherwise negligible amounts of sanity, I'm gonna try increasing the number of dice the way one would with damage. So instead of witnessing a great old one and taking 1d10/1d100, they take 1d10/10d10, for a potential minimum number of 10 Sanity loss right there on the spot if they fail. It will take a bit longer to count, but I see it as a worthy risk for maximizing the impact of a truly terrible being. No escape into "Well, I might roll well". Just madness and despair. What do you lot think? Good idea? Bad idea? Other ideas?

I really like this! An interesting adaptation - in my 1927-based Innsmouth game, Innsmouth is actually going to be a tourist town for the maximum creep factor of being /invited/ in. Excellent work!

Hello all. While my game has been on hiatus since around the time Part 4 was posted (job changes, school starting, players unavailable, etc.), I have had plenty of time to look through A Time to Harvest and have found myself very satisfied - that is, until Part 6 rolled along. I would like to preface all of this by saying that I do not wish anything resembling ill will on anyone who worked on it. I don't think any less of anyone who enjoys part 6 and intends to run it. I don't even entirely think it's an awful thing on its own! I just--well, let's get to the analysis. Major, MAJOR spoilers ahead. If I'm being honest, I really, truly, sincerely thought Part 5 would be hard to top. The introduction of a Great Old One isn't just a Big Thing, it's a Cataclysmic, Game-Changing, Completely Campaign Shattering thing. Any player characters who want to continue after that are a true and genuine asset to a Call of Cthulhu campaign - more power to them. Infinite amounts of power to them. They're gonna need it if they think they're gonna run the risk of running into something like that again. But, sadly, for me, the appearance of a Great Old One themselves is when the third act comes to a close, and the epilogue begins. It's when the final scenes play out, the characters decide their future, and the endless struggle continues at another time, in another place, with another group of people. I do not consider a trip to the moon to be an epilogue. It is, if anything, an entire campaign unto itself - one where the climax is not that and the investigators have likely not yet actively been brutalized physically and/or emotionally by Shub-Niggurath itself. The ruin of Cobb's Corners is, to me, the ultimate expression of a Lovecraftian ending - a journey to the moon to rough up some mi-go and thwart a dastardly, maniacal scheme seems, to me, kind of a copout. Like if the Blair Witch Project had an extra 15 minutes tacked on where Heather goes back in time and burns the Blair Witch at the stake to prevent her from becoming immortal and changing history or something. As I said before, it's a great ending to another campaign. I'd happily field some adventures trying to study, build, maintain, and then ultimately utilize a moon portal for the FOC to combat the mi-go through. But, sadly, it is not, to me, where I would end A Time to Harvest. The rest of the campaign feels so dark and ominous and genuinely horrific, that I feel the ending is just too much pulp - the players will never fear being kitted out with moon magic and going into space. As for how I'll modify this, it's a difficult call, but I think I have my epilogue planned. After the conjuration of Shub-Niggurath, I think the hills will buzz to life all around Cobb's Corners, and the investigators will take one last blow to the mind as they witness armies of mi-go teeming to life from the hills and fluttering to the sky into the arms of one of their gods, vanishing once more into the distance from whence they came - perhaps with mass offerings of Pasquallium in tow. The survivors and the sane may choose what happens next - and in their lives over the next few days, they will be encountered by a half-mad and gun-wielding Roger Harrold (really Daphne Devine) who rants at them about their abandonment issues, how they were promised they would go to the stars, and that it's all (somehow) the investigators' fault. Perhaps not a Lovecraftian ending, but a suitably bleak one no matter what they do. They survived - that's victory enough. All that having been said, I still dearly love Chaosium and will more than happily participate in next year's Organized Play campaign! This one was so great that my response to the ending and my need to say it out loud should say far, far more than my silly little complaints. Until next time!

For my group, I use the instrumental music of The Residents, the soundtrack work of Goblin, and the music from both The Binding of Isaac and The Binding of Isaac Rebirth.

Harvest is also VERY newbie friendly. Running it for a group of exactly one CoC vet, and they're all enjoying it suitably.

Furthermore - if you don't know, you'll learn just by playing the game. I sure didn't realize I could reduce my players (who had previously conquered a wing of the Galactic Imperial Navy, saved China from the grip of an evil sorcerer, and brought a city built in an ancient prison out from the grip of a mad tyrant) to paranoid conjecture about "mushroom people" just by intimating a race of beings called "Fungi From Yuggoth". Get some good setup and learn!

Indeed! My advice to you would be simply this - know your players. What scares them? What doesn't? Is tension being built for them, or just annoyance? Read the room. Everything I know about scaring CoC players in less than a paragraph. What more could you ask for

Part of my ongoing trial is that my players and characters are consistently scared. The paranoid conjecture, the rampant guesses, the wild uncertainty, and the frequent admission that players are afraid to leave for their cars the night after game are all very encouraging signs to me, and I want to keep those coming. I may not even have a concern at all. The players have bought in and want more Call of Cthulhu, so there's no reason that they wouldn't continue to buy in and continue wanting more Call of Cthulhu, but I like to have my bases covered and to keep the momentum. I also like hearing the ideas of others, so, as they say, every little bit helps. As for pulp-versus-puritan, I've tried and strike a balance - none of the original group in my A Time to Harvest group has died yet, but that's because when the game declares them "dead", I give them an out that might be harder on the character than just dying (one character confined to a wheelchair, the other struck a bargain with a higher power, which is never a good thing in the Mythos). That seems to keep players afraid, but not rolling new characters for no reason other than poor fortune.