EricW

Some carbide lamps were actually extremely bright, they generated a very intense pure white light.

My grandpa had an old carriage carbide lamp, it was as bright as any modern automobile light. An automobile would have no problem traveling 30mph down a good road at night using a carbide lamp.

There's a theory called the uncanny valley created by roboticists to explain why it is so difficult to create a convincing Android.

If something doesn't look remotely human, we're kindof OK with it. If something is indistinguishable from human, we accept it as human. But if something seems almost human, it really messes with our heads, most people find that very difficult to cope with.

This is the horror of The Thing, or HP Lovecraft's story The Whisperer in the Darkness. 

Not a direct answer maybe, but something to bear in mind. That which terrifies us the most is the alien which can almost pass for a human.

5 hours ago, KeeperXav said:

You're a wizard, 'arry!

Ha:-). But in CoC this is a bad thing!

Perhaps the snake phobia is cured, she finds she can communicate with snakes, an awareness of something distant and colossal drawing closer in her dreams. Secret SAN check every time she tries to use her ability.

Lots of original CoC stories have characters who tamper with mythos artefacts drawn closer to the gods than they want, like The Haunter of The Dark.

Perhaps the solution is to create an entirely new game - Brainstorm to see what people want out of a game, see what happens. Who knows, your group could be the mythical god time progenitors of a brand new world, or even a series of worlds - perhaps even a Chronicles of Amber like shadow campaign of players striving to dominate the omniverse with their vision of cosmic order. 

Of course, once creation was sufficiently advanced, some of the more powerful creations might not be entirely happy to remain the helpless playthings of powerful player character demigods - especially if some of those demigods choose to procreate with their mortal minions.

On 7/14/2018 at 6:58 AM, soltakss said:

All we need to do now is to decide what campaign to run. Nothing Gloranthan this time, as we have done Glorantha, although we might return once the new scenario packs start appearing. Suggestions were Dark Ages, Robin Hood or Sci Fi, but we need to talk about that a bit.

Cthulhu of course. The stars are right, diabolical plans are afoot, your players are humanity's final chance to step into the breach before Earth descends into a screaming nightmare from which there is no escape, where even death is no guarantee of liberation from the hellish rule of the Great Old Ones.

38 minutes ago, metcalph said:

What was the Chaos at the Battle of Night and Day?

Fair point. The Trollkin curse and breaking the compromise were a bit iffy.

The Yelmalios have scruples when it suits them.

In Orlanth is Dead the Sun Dome contingent of the Lunar Army turn on the Lunars after the Lunars unleash chaos magic against the Orlanthi - blatant use of Chaos violated the Sun Dome agreement with the Lunars.

Having said that there are other examples which are less clear. In the Battle of Night and Day the Yelmalios fought on the side of Nysalor, even though the Great Army of Restraint were using Chaos against the troll foes. 

Old messages written on the wall is good, maybe a mild san check when they ask a question about something current then notice the answer in the writing, and can’t be sure whether it was there before. 

Perhaps the messages could direct them to a hidden key. 

Take one of the players aside and tell them they are now working against the party, due to a malign influence. If the other players figure it out and break the spell (maybe remove a cursed locket or some such) they might get a clue - after all, the victim was in contact with the mind of the perpetrator, maybe they learned something.

All good fun.

I love the description of the Summons of Evil from Orlanth is Dead.

Fatigue should have a dramatic effect on perception skills. Think about late night study or driving, the point comes where you might be awake but nothing is working properly. Super fit people can stay effective for longer, and there are drugs which can help maintain performance for a while.

Quest for the Wind Sword - a desperate Orlanthi attempt to stop Lunars getting their hands on an Orlanthi artefact.

If the Lunars get hold of the Wind Sword, they might do great damage to Orlanth, maybe even create a "healed" version of Orlanth as part of the Lunar pantheon.

Lunar players of course would be attempting to get hold of the sword for the goddess.

Probably a lot easier playing a non-affiliated shaman, the requirements are a lot less specific. Shaman characters don't have to be boring, and being a shaman offers all sorts of options for weird otherworldly encounters, strange alliances, even heroquests. The other players will go nuts when their shaman insists on actions or quests which make very little sense to other players, because they are moved by some tragedy or issue which only they can understand. Especially funny if one of the other characters is a sorcerer who holds the spirit world in contempt. 

On 5/29/2018 at 12:41 PM, davecake said:

I have a PC who is an ogre who was initiated this way. It is interesting, because it invites initiation to Cacodemon, but doesn't insist on it (and actually having no Storm magic would make it quite obvious who was suspect in many cases). For this purposes I'm saying Ragnaglar may be dead as an independent deity, but still functions as a sort of 'stealth Thunder Brother', able to get basic Storm magic as a member of Orlanths household. In this way my PC is able to use some Storm magic and avoid suspicion as an obvious chaos plant -- but he has no magical defence against discovery by Uroxi, unlike Cacodemon, and no outlet for his cannibalistic urges, which are becoming more intense. 

I think a few Chaos heroquests are like this - ooops, take a very wrong turn at an important cultural heroquest, and suddenly you are cast in the enemy role and become chaotic. Similarly, take a very wrong turn in some other major cultural quests, and you find you are Chaotic now - eg do a quest about Orlanth being the chief, but lose your temper and slaughter someone who petitions the chief for justice, and suddenly you are an Urain cultist now. Or if you can't get the right allies to support Yelm's justice, but you accept the aid of un-Just allies against a more Just opponent, even if you win you might find yourself as Kazkurtum not Yelm. And in this manner Chaos doesn't always depend on maintaining an external cult for cool chaos powers to be available to the corrupt and villainous - the potential is hidden there in the fears and hatreds of the community. 

Wouldn't the cultist become chaotic Orlanth, Orlanth the Destroyer, rather than becoming a straight out Urain cultist? Access to many of Orlanth's powers, without the restraint of Orlanth's honour? 

Or maybe hero quests which upset a chain of events which leads to victory over the Devil causes the utter destruction of the heroquestor. After all, in their version of the myth which they corrupted Wakboth succeeds in his attempt to destroy the world - so how can they return to a world which they helped to destroy? Perhaps this is what protects Glorantha from the consequences of truly devastating chaotic hero quests.

Regarding skill rolls, one thing I've noticed is you have to be in peak condition to fly well - rested, relaxed, not suffering any illness. Flying skills deteriorate noticeably if anything is wrong.

Flying requires coordination of more controls than driving a car. That coordination is easily disturbed.

If say you had just seen something horrible, or were stressed by some unpleasantness, or even popped a sleeping pill the night before, this might affect your flying more than it would affect someone's driving.

Obviously this situation eases a little with improving skill - but old hands I've talked to are very conscientious about doing everything right.

I'm very close to getting my pilot license, currently training on a single engine high wing Cessna.

I have no problem flying other single engine aircraft - I've also flown Pipers (low wing), some of the controls are a little different but not so different to cause a significant challenge.

Flying a twin engine plane - you have to do separate training for that, easy to get into trouble is what I've heard.

Flying a jumbo jet - the basic principles are the same, but there are substantial differences in how the controls respond. The jet is a lot faster, when it lands the cockpit is a lot higher off the ground, the controls are more complex, the engine doesn't respond the same as a piston engine.

I would have a lot more chance of flying and landing a jumbo jet with single engine training than someone who had never flown, people would probably survive if I had to land one, but there's a good chance the plane would be pretty banged up.

Flying a helicopter - one of the guys tried flying a helicopter, his pilot skill let him keep it in the air, but when he landed he instinctively tried to flair - to pull back - like a fixed wing plane. Not a good move if you are flying a helicopter.

I'd say a single pilot skill, but if someone has to fly something radically different to what they've trained in, you would deduct a significant penalty. So if myself with my single engine piston skill tried to fly a blackhawk, I better roll a critical.

14 hours ago, Conrad said:

One of the buffoons that wrote that paper has been butthurt because of the amount of criticism he has faced. He wrote a hilarious letter to one of his detractors, squidmaster PZ Myers. https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/05/19/i-just-had-an-idea-for-a-movie-squidnado/#more-50910

Oh I agree, the idea of Earth compatible biological material making its way to Earth from another star system by chance and still being viable by the time it landed is just too silly to consider.

The only way something like this could have happened is if the material was deliberately transported to Earth by agencies unknown. Barring discovery of an alien transport Occam's Razor suggests this idea belongs in the circular filing cabinet with other ID theories.

But it makes a great post for a COC forum 😉

Restoration of Tien - either return Atyar (Tien's head) to hell, so Thanatar can be rejoined, or prevent Viking from severing Tien's head in the first place.

Preventing Viking from severing Tien's head would likely result in a hero cult with access to utterly terrifying knowledge stealing magics - and would likely attract a lot of attention from Tien's old adversary Lhankor Mhy.

A group of scientists have seriously proposed that Cephalopods (tentacled sea creatures like octopi) may have originated on another planet - but we all knew this already 😉.

International group of scientists suggest octopuses might be aliens

Quote

We review the salient evidence consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology. Much of this physical and biological evidence is multifactorial. One particular focus are the recent studies which date the emergence of the complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian Explosion of ∼500 Ma. Such viruses are known to be plausibly associated with major evolutionary genomic processes. We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction of H-W theory whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events. A second focus is the remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity (Cephalopods) culminating in the emergence of the Octopus. A third focus concerns the micro-organism fossil evidence contained within meteorites as well as the detection in the upper atmosphere of apparent incoming life-bearing particles from space. In our view the totality of the multifactorial data and critical analyses assembled by Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe and their many colleagues since the 1960s leads to a very plausible conclusion – life may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610718300798?via%3Dihub

The truth is sometimes stranger than fiction;

Quote

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Opening paragraph of The Call of Cthulhu

3d printed magical artefacts or other props might be fun. 

“... here, set still, what’s ailin’ ye?—I didn’t do nothin ...’” :-)

Definitely Iä Iä 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ_FQiYy7iQ

The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan scenario is apocalyptic.

End times also qualifies.

I haven’t tried either personally.

@klecser at what point did I suggest everyone should play canon? In what way is mentioning my interpretation of HP Lovecraft's take with supporting references not constructive? You're reading stuff into my response which isn't there.

On 02/04/2018 at 11:07 AM, BWP said:

I think that a chance of dying-of-fright (for PCs) is at variance with the concept of Maximum Game Fun, but as a GM I'd be happy to just decree that various NPCs can die in that fashion, to heighten the dramatic tension or whatever.

If someone really wanted a rule for it, I'd say that any fumbled SAN roll, or anyone who loses an amount of SAN equal to or greater than their current CON, has to make a CON roll to avoid an immediate coronary (or perhaps a brain hemorrhage).

At the same time, sometimes SAN loss is over-emphasised both in the rules and in various published scenarios.  I don't have any specific examples immediately to hand, but as a player I'm unimpressed when asked to make a SAN roll for something that is, in the scope of things, pretty conventional.  See a close friend mysteriously swell up and explode messily while you're standing next to him?  Sure, I'd be prepared to pay a penalty for that.  Stumble across a decomposing corpse of a complete stranger in an isolated location?  Well, I've no arguments that it would not be unpleasant, and perhaps a good reason to lose my lunch, but as a reason to lose SAN it seems excessive to me (particularly if my character is no stranger to the sight of unpleasant corpses, e.g., a Great War veteran, a police surgeon, etc.).

Someone who goes permanently insane could make a con roll - I mean, they're out of the game anyway.

Seeing a decomposing corpse - not pleasant. But it can affect people. Your war veteran might have seen one corpse too many. Anything unusual, like suggestions the person was murdered horribly - I mean, the killer might still be out there. Über stressful if you are alone in an isolated location, and suddenly frightened for your life.

People can be fragile. Look how many people have nervous breakdowns because of money stress or relationship breakups. Add even a tincture of supernatural horror and its easy to see why people's brains would run out of their ears.