Old Man Henerson

11 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Well it's easier when it is a correspondence by mail.

Well, there you have it. I wonder if they each poked at each other's books, like if Howard asked if cthulhu was really that strong, and Lovecraft asked how Connan could stand seeing so many monsters and not go insane.

11 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It's not a bad take or idea. IMO, the Mythos, as presented by Lovecraft is pretty much unplayable as a RPG campaign. A One shot sure, but  not as a campaign. The heroes in the stories go through one adventure, and barely get through that. Some don't even make it. For instance the author in Call of Cthulhu is pretty much  toast after he writes down the story.

So any attempt to really run a campaign sort of necessitates weakening the Mythos. If you play it strictly as Lovecraft wrote it, investigators would not even last as long as they do now.

Call of Cthulhu It does seem much more suited for one shot adventures. It is sort of surprising that it became so popular when you have to tone down the monsters like that to even run a campaign. Do most people play Call of Cthulhu as a one shot?

11 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Well, based upon what we've been told, he probably would just reform after such weapons.  Now if radiation bothers him or not could be an  issue. If not he becomes a walking Chernobyl. If it does bother him, then he might not be able to reform or go into a sleep until the radiation decayed enough for him to withstand it.  Which, for him, might not be a serious issue. 

Now maybe advanced technology would be effective against the more powerful Mythos beings, but that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing for humanity. It would be pretty easy for any of the space travelling races to chuck bit rocks at us from space and make us go the way of the dinosaurs. In fact, it would be very Lovecraftian if the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs was really some conflict between Mythos beings.  

 

So you can pull it in any direction you want.

Yeah, I will see how the story goes,. The end goal for my game is for the PCs to gain superhuman psychic powers by taking the soul stones the children of the planet water who has ravaged the earth and gain enough power to face it head on in psychic combat.

Perhaps I will make a book about it or make a log on this site.

20 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

PM me an email address and I'll send you the  Superworld and RQ3 SIZ tables. I can even throw in a tool that coverts mass or weight to SIZ or vice versa. I find that helpful in working out the SIZ  value for exotic animals.

The formulas are:

kg = 2^(SIZ/8)*25 or SIZ = log(kg)/(log2)*8-log(25)/log(2)*8

lbs=2^(SIZ/8)*25 or SIZ = log(lbs)/(log2)*8-log(55)/log(2)*8

Expect slight differences due to the slight differences between converting from kilograms to pounds and for rounding off.

 

The  RQ3 SIZ table is the same as the one for Superworld, except that  RQ3 compresses all the lower weights into the SIZ 1-7 range , and transitions to  a linear progression of +1 SIZ = +1 metric ton at SIZ 100. But from SIZ 8-88 the values are the same  for both systems, and pretty much every related game from Chaosium until recently.

Thanks again for all the help. I will send you an email address and pick up the chart then. Thanks for everything. 😁

3 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Also your stealth conflict gave me an idea.. I am going to have psy power.... And while I hate divination in general... I could use a 1 round precognition that save people from surprise ambushes! ^^

The danger sense power might be a better option if you don't want the PCs to know about the ambush well in advance.

3 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

euhhhh I mean 2/3rds of what motivated Lovecraft was not nihilism but his Portuguese neighbors eating garlic.

20 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

That's a good point. Part of the thing about Lovecraft was that he had a somewhat sheltered upbringing and was reclusive, and a lot of the Mythos lore seemed to have been inspired by his inability to cope with  New York City. So a case could be made that many of these Mythos horrors are not as SAN busting as they seem to be, since Lovecraft would have lost SAN to stuff that most of us wouldn't even be bothered by, like who is riding in the same streetcar.

It is a wonder that Lovecraft made friends with Howard in the first place, I cannot imagine a more incompatible pair.

I digress that Cthulhu and horror is not my cup of tea. the idea for this thread came more from the thoughts I have been having about the mythos for a while now, especially since I have been writing a book and making a campaign that deals with these concepts.

4 hours ago, Stormkhan Cogg of Pavis said:

The problem I find is that there is nowadays* a demand for more! Got a superbeing able to wish people away? No probs. Let's have a superbeing that can wish planets non-existence. Planet-schmanet ... lets watch a film where the bad guy can just click his fingers and ...

Back in the day (1920s), the whole concept of super-Gods actually not caring what motivates us parasites was a chilling nihilism. It's what made Lovecraft scary! It was the concept of our insignificance. And this horror, this futility, is carried over into the game. It's like the whole "journey" narrative. Which is more the challenge - fighting against the odds or just saying "we can't win" and making our characters open a vein?

* My inner Miserable Old Git is being channeled here.

Lovecraft would honestly faint at the mere thought of a world like ours. By the book's description, Cthulhu's can barely take a boat to the face when the stars are right, how could he possibly stand up to nuclear weapons, railguns lasers, or antimatter? If that is the case, who is to say that Nyarlathotep and the rest of the old one gang can withstand the power of advanced technology, who is even to say that they are the only powers in the universe?

On 11/24/2019 at 9:52 AM, Atgxtg said:

Well that was more of a  shift  in TSR at the time.  It used to be t hat all  the gaming companies were run by gamers, and they were all friendly with each other and even eager to show off their  latest stuff to their fellow gamers, which usually mean  "the competition". When TSR transitioned from a some gamers, to a gaming  company and got all businesslike  things started to change, at least for bigger compnaies. You can s ee it in the old magazines. Dragon used to contain articles and ads from all sorts of other games and companies, but eventually it morphed into al almost exceuive in house  supprt mag. Same with White Wolf once Games  Workshop got big.

Because I believe Cthulhu is in the public domain now, so  everyone can tap into it, provided they don't use someone else's game system (at least not verbatim).

Interesting. I did not know any of that. To tell the truth, I have not really followed the development of RPGs That much. The more you know.

On 11/24/2019 at 9:52 AM, Atgxtg said:

There is an  older, better version of the SIZ table that not only gives values for more numbers, but doesn't have all the errors. I could put it on a spreadhseet. 

I would love that very much. Thank you.

On 11/24/2019 at 9:32 AM, lordabdul said:

If you want your players to have epic battles against giant monsters, it doesn't really matters what the monster is called, as much as how cool he looks and what its stats are. Just make him as powerful as needed to make the battle challenging while avoiding a TPK. Just note that naming the monster "Cthulhu" or "Nyarlathotep" or whatever might set the wrong expectations with some of your players, who might decide to just run away and avoid the fight altogether because in CoC you never fight those things face to face if you want to live -- so use those names with care (remember the players that they're playing DnD or whatever it is you're playing, and/or change the name a bit, like "Kethe-lhu" or something).

As for Mythos creatures not being that powerful, there are plenty that are dangerous but definitely killable. My players just head-shot-killed a Deep One last week in one roll.

At first, I wanted to include the mythos monsters like Cthulhu and others into my game I am working on, especialy since it was heavily inspired by the End Time monograph, but I decided against it as I thought it would be far more creative for me to make my own mythos beings.  The three main deities I have planed for the PCs to fight are still very much inspired by the mythos however, and are based on Cthulhu, The King in Yellow, and Nyarlathotep.  As for the scarryness of these beings, my players and I have never done anything remotely related to Cthulhu, and are rather lax on the seriousness of them, so we would be very okay with fighting them in a game.

11 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

It's just, depending on how close to you there are.. they might think, "I wanted an horror tentacle thing, but I got something else, damn" 😮

But, at any rate, twits and surprises are usually good!  

Yeah. My PCs are good for anything, so there should not be too much trouble. I just need to finish up all my monsters, companions, bosses and bang out the plot so we can get started.

And Don't worry, there will be twists, lots of them. 😎

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

No. Not quite. What happened was that Chaosium and TSR both asked for and got permission to use both the Cthulhu Mythos and Elric in thier games. TSR released stats for such in their Deities & Demigods books, but later pulled them.This question was actually raised in one of the old issues of Different Worlds where someone asked Chaosium why the pulled that stuff from Deities & Demigods and  Gigi D'Arn responded that Chaosium didn't do it, and she had no idea why TSR did. So it was TSR's call.

It's been speculated that they probably didn't want to publish stats that might draw attention to Chasoium's Strombringer and Call of Cthulhu RPGSs.

Yeah. It would make sense not to advertise for your competition. Things have changed a lot though since then, now every one and their dog has Cthulhu running around in their game.

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yup. Oh, and the cube square law helps too. Since the SIZ table is logarithmic this means that for every 3 points you add or subtract to SIZ you should probably add or subtract 2 points to STR and possibly CON. THat helps when making real world creatures based on other real world creature. 

Thanks for the tip.  The SIZ chart in the book can be a bit hard to read at times, so this will be a lot of help in the future. Thanks a lot!👍

13 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

As a GM this your story!
But try not to disappoint players expectation!  

Don't worry, I will not disappoint. 😉

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Well bewfore there was a Call of Cthulhu RPG, Sandy Petersen wrote Gateway Bestiary, a supplement  for RQ2 with stats for alot of animals, dinosaurs, and monsters. It included a sampling of Cthulhu Myhos nasties as well. I don't kn ow if he had s tarted CoC yet, and took their stats from hsi notes, of it he just wanted to be able to add Mythos nasties  to  a RQ campaign. Either way, it certinaly gave peole the idea of adding mythos elements to a RQ game or a related one, like Stormbringer. 

I had heard of stuff like that a while ago. They even put Cthulhu into a old, D&D list of gods, though I think they got in trouble for it and had to remove him. 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

A lot of animals  and creatures are the same or similar across multiple BRP games. For the most part a Lion is still a lion. Recently, animal s tats have been reduced a little, but not all that much and the values are usually close enough to  work and  compatible with whatever BRP system  you are using. And it is very easy to turn an animal into a monster by upping some attributes, increasing the armor, and/or adding some sort of special power or ability such as flight or fire breathing. But, it much easier not to have to rein vent the wheel. I'll also say that when it comes to stats for creatures  and a animals the SIZ table is your friend, since it will  give you the right ballpark to work in, and can help to stat things up in a consistent and relative manner.

I actually just did that today or yesterday making a monster. I took most of the stats for a giant squid and modified it into a flying squid monster. Now that you mention it, I also remember reading a blurb somewhere in the Big Golden Book about how you could use the mutation powers to make a bunch of new monsters from existing animals.  Right now I am trying to make a creature by taking the stats from the ghost, and a while ago I transferred the Yellow mold from D&D bestiary into BRP stats. So from now on, I think I will try to modify animals and monsters to create my new set of monsters.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yea, but in those circumstance it  is usually better to sprinkle the Mythos into  another game, rather than run CoC. 

Most everyone who wrote Lovecraftian Horror other than Lovecraft tended to  brighten up the outlook a little.  That's not to  say it was raninbows an unicorns, just that it was less doom & gloom that Lovecraft's own works. 

Yeah. I have no plans running a Cthulhu game, I just wanted to see if any one else had ever thought of such a thought about the mythos.  I do like elements of the mythos though, as you  have seen in my posts, as I think that fighting beings like Cthulhu sounds like one of the most cool and epic battles one could have in an RPG.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

BRP was created from RuneQuest so if you can get an old RQ2 or RQ3 Bestiary you can get a lot of creatures  for BRP. Even RQG  stats can port over. Many of us who  platy  BRP have RQ, Stormbringer,  CoC, etc. so we have  a lot of stats that will work in BRP.  Some might use a little fine tuning, but they are functional as written. So you can swipe some stuff it you want or need to.  MAybe customize an existing animal to make it a monster.

I have never thought of that before. I will have to look into those books some time. Thanks for the tip.

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

What happens after the cosmic planet eater? One thing about going big is that it is a tough act to  follow, especially if  you have to power the PCs up  to do  it. 

I plan for the planet eater to be the big finale of the game, so there probably won't be anything else after that, otherwise I would be worried about what came next.

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes, although as you get more f amilar with the game this becomes less of an issue. It's just that it is easy for a GM new to the game to  overdo it. If you give the PCs an even fight then it could go either way, and even if they win, the PCs will probably lose a few people.

It's just general GMing. You get the hang of it. Plus to pull a Yoda, "unlearning what you have learned". D&D teaches DMs and players things that do not work elsewhere, and it usually catches some of  them by surprise and causes confusion. For instance, charging the archers  with melee troops isn't such a great tactic in BRP as a couple of arrows  can actually take a character out of a fight. IMO D&D players have a harder time picking up BRP than even non-gamers, because they tend to assume things that don't apply anymore. 

I always respect a fellow fan of Yoda. 👍 Yeah, there is a lot to unlearn from D&D, more than I ever imagined. It is actually pretty surprising because my experience with D&D has been rather casual, yet there is so much of it that is now embedded into my perception of rpgs. I will learn though, as you said, and with each game I will get better and better.

Thanks again for all your advice. I am actually quite surprised that this post has generated so many comments as it was my first post.

18 minutes ago, midwinter said:

Are the Mythos creatures really that invincible? When I look at some of the deities in the rulebook, some are less impressive than others. Atlach-Nacha has 50 HP, 12 points of chitin and fur. Well, whatabout a bunch of veterans with Vickers machine guns and handgrenades vs the deity? Or why go to extremes, why not just a crazed miner with a case of dynamite?

Or a senile old man looking for his lawn gnomes. 😉

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes, but very dangerous. The problem is that with a big jump a PC could get caught in between power levels and be vulnerable. It's usually better to just let experience and time work to increase the pwoer level over time.

Good to know, thanks a lot. I had planed on setting up 2 or 3 check points in the game I was working on so that my PCs could move up their power level as the story progressed and their powers would be sufficient to take on the cosmic planet eater I have planed for the end of the game.  Like you said, a more organic approach might be the best option.

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Uh no. That's why we mean about odds. In D&D it doesn't matter because it is about hit points number of attacks and damage done. If a PC has five times the hit points of the opposition, attacks three times as often, and does twice as much damage, they can effectively, offset the odds. If something unexpected happens, it can usually be fixed up with healing magic or even a raise dead.

But in BRP all the extra attack from grenades, SMG etc, do not offset the increased chances of a bad guy getting a critical or impale, nor do they offset the lack of defense for the PCs. It's not so much that the fight is even or not, only that, ultimately, it doesn't matter if a NPC or twenty get killed in an adventure, as that is what they are for, but just one PC death can causes some problems. Either a player isn't playing or they have to create a new character. Dead characters tend to stay dead, and lots of plot threads and such might not matter any more, and so on.

Even  be careful if they are important. In most cases an ambush will kill at least one PC, and is the best chance for a Total Party Kill you'll generally see. Even Conan isn't so tough in BRP if he take an impaling arrow to the head. Just do a playtest ambush with your players and see what happens, and how quickly.

I think I see it now. Enemies should have lowish skills to keep the PCs alive, and mass engagements should kept far away from the players, unless they have a significant advantage, (Like the high ground LOL) Fighting smart and tactically sounds like the best option for this game. 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Mary Sues tend to be boring. Railroading in general is bad, since players like to have (or at least believe) that they have some sort of freedom and can choose  what they do. Otherwise they don't need to be there.  Now as GM you can craft adventures in such a way that the players have a strong incentive to take the path you want them to  take on an adventure, but ultimately it should be up to them, and  any strong-arming should be done by NPCs in  game, as opposed tot he  GM.

I run a lot of Pendragon, a sort  of cousin to BRP (if you saw it you could figure out most of  it just by knowing BRP), and, because it has a setting with a somewhat fixed timeline, there are a lot of scripted events- that is things that  are going to happen. It also has  it's own Mary Sue figures, such as  Lancelot, and the Christ-like Galahad. Now as GM one of the tricks to running a good Pendragon campaign is  to make sure that the characters always  have  some  choice of action and that their actions can  impact the adventure in some way. The players should  never feel that their characters don't matter or can't affect  things. Art times they might have to take orders (although they can choose to disobey and suffer the consequences), or just be a small part in a big army , but they still get to make choices and those choices matter.

Thanks for the all the advice. I will be sure to craft lots of incentives into the story, lest I end up a star on r/rpg horror stories. 😅

59 minutes ago, Travern said:

In Robert E. Howard’s tales, the Mythos entities encountered are considerably less powerful than those in stories by others in Lovecraft’s circle.  For instance, superstition and incomprehension/misunderstanding rather than cosmic pessimism feature in his “Tale Black Stone” and “The Tower of the Elephant”.  Generally, his bold and brawny heroes can dispatch them with honest steel (no worrying about failed sanity with them).  One could brew up a BRP horror campaign around those stories instead of those by HPL, CAS, Bloch, Campbell, et al.

In any case, it sounds as though CoC’s Lovecraftian cosmic horror may not be quite to your taste, especially considering your forum handle    Have you checked out The Esoterrorists or Monster of the Week?

Yeah. Cthulhu is not for me, I was just curious if anyone else had thought of the same idea. Also, good job spotting my handle, 😉 I found that story absolutely hilarious, especially the irony of Henderson and co. doping a yacht onto of a meeting of Cthulhu worshipers. I much prefer how William Hope Hodgson portrayed the cosmic horrors in his book The Night Land, they were quite fearsome, but theoretically killable, and were actively fought against by the powers of good.

As for RPGs, I sprung for the Big Golden Book a few years ago, but I am only just getting around to trying to put something significant together. I liked the idea of having a simple set of rules that could be applied to any story I could imagine. Now, however, I am finding that such freedom comes at the cost of hand crafting most of monsters for my story.

I guess that I have never liked the pessimistic tone of Lovecraft. 😕 To me, things like Cthulhu represent the ultimate enemy to defeat , something to be feared for sure, but not to cower and shrink away from.

The monsters of Lovecraft are the ultimate darkness, and to uphold the light, even in the face of such overwhelming odds just speaks to me in such a profound way.

36 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

That depends upon which rule tweaks you use, but overall BRP isn't really well suited towards Cosmic Elder Gods. They can be done, and in several ways (Strombringer's Lords of Law and Chaos write ups, Chthlhu's Elder God stats, Gloratha's stats for semi-divine beings such as the Crimson Bat), but most are beyond the comfort zone of the game mechanics. But usually, when the game is adjusted to handled superheros and elder gods, the common thugs are sort of left behind. 

Yeah. I suppose that would be the case, when you are that powerful, thugs tent to just run away anyway. I am still a bit fuzzy on how the different power levels work. From the description the book gave, I thought that superhuman level meant you could go toe to toe with Cthulhu or more powerful beings.  As a side note, do you think it is possible to change the campaign's power level mid way through the story? Like say if your PCs gained some kind of mega power up and you wanted them to face greater enemies?

40 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I'd try to avoid that. Realistically, and not surprisingly, it's a situation that would kill most heroes.  One thing I would try to do is give the  PCs some sort of terrain where they could bottleneck the horde and face them a little at a time. There is a point where  it turns into an exercise in the laws of probability rather than a fight. For instance, a hundred orcs, each with only 5% skill, fought in succession, will probably take down a master swordman just through the nature of dice and random  rolls. So it no longer becomes about how the characters fighters or skill, but more a matter of when  those critical hits show up.

Oh, and along a similar note, don't ambush your PC very often. I know D&D loves ambushes and does a ot of them, but in D&D it is because an extra round of attacks can make a minor menace more of a threat. In BRP a good ambush means people getting hit with no defense other than armor, and can often wipe out half a group of PCs before they even get to react.

I will be sure to remember that for the future. Alternatively, you could give the PCs access to better weapons like automatic weapons, grenades, or even a tank to even the odds.  You are also right that D&D loves ambush attacks. It would certainly be better to focus less on ambushes unless it was important.

47 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Mary Sues are bad for storytelling and adventuring purposes, so I'd wouldn't try to run that sort of situation. When you get to the point where you know the characters cannot fail or be beaten it becomes very boring. Yes, we all know that in most stories the hero has a certain degree of script immunity, but most stories also make some effort to hide that, and many will surprise us by allowing a hero to lose or at least suffer a major set back or injury.

If a GM wants to run a Mary Sue in their campaign, then just dictate it, like they do in those sorts of films. Just don't be surprised when most of your players are less than impressed. 

As an author, I will have to watch my self for Mary Sue characters in the game, It is so tempting to rail road the story like that. It is even tempting turn my PCs into Mary Sues as the story progresses so that they can complete my plot ideas for me. 😅

Hi guys, I have had this idea for a long time now, and I have searched all over the internet, but I have never really found anyone talking about it.  What if the Mythos was not actually all it was made out to be? What if, while certainly powerful cosmic beings, the great old ones were not all powerful. What if all the talk the cultists make about the Elder gods being so powerful and invincible, was just that, all talk; cleverly designed to demoralize their enemies.

What do you guys think about this idea? Would it make a great game?

Thanks for the advice Nick, and thanks to all you guys for the help. I feel a lot more confident about running this system now.

Now all I have to do is generate the base form of my monsters, finish up the plot, and I am ready to go.

10 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

It's one of the reasons. Generally an impale or even just a high damage normal hit are all factors. The main reason why numbers are so telling is because of the limits to the number of attacks and parries a character can make, and the effect of multiple actions on a character's skill. A warrior with 100% skill fighting two guys with 50% skill is almost in an even fight. That doesn't happen in , say D&D, where two 5th level fighters do not equal one 10th level fighter.

I have to admire the groundedness this game has to offer in regards to combat, though I think it could get in the way if you want to make some cosmic Elder God fighting superhero when a common thug can bring you down with a lucky role.

Also, how would you handle a situation where the PCs have to fight a horde of enemies? Give them a backup army of redshirts?

6 hours ago, seneschal said:

Hmmm, she escaped with the Handsome Lead (tm) in Lowlander IX, the LEGO Disney Princess Movie, The Revengers:  Iron Legacy, Man, and with the evil emperor's hunky great-grandson in Solar Wars -- Absolutely No Hope.  I suspect it is the princess.  🤔

Not to mention how in Solar Wars -- The Last Straw, the princess can now fly through space using unlimited MarySue power!

Yeah, I am beginning to see that now. I am still too used to the hack & slash combat of D&D, I will have to rethink my encounters now. Thanks for the tip.

That sounds like a good idea. At first, I thought that enemies with 50%-70% were supposed to be the norm for enemies, as they would have to be effective if they were soldiers of an enemy organization; but, I can see that having far less skilled enemies would keep PCs alive much longer, and at the vary least, make it look cinematic, even if they missed all the time.

How would you handle larger encounters though? If any enemy can kill you so quickly, the best thing would be to try and engage fewer enemies at once.

I thought The Night Land and Call of Cthulhu were in the public domain. I did not know there were problems like that. Anyways, I plan on running a game of it myself using the Big Golden Book in the future. It should prove to be an interesting experience.

Speaking of William Hope Hodgson, why not adapt his book The Night Land? It is such a unique setting, and it seems strange that no one has adapted it yet into a RPG, what with CoC being so popular these days.

Yeah. This game is way more damaging than D&D.  I learned that the heard way when I tested the game with my brother the other day and a critical hit took him down to half his health, and I even forgot that critical hits bypass armor. Less skilled enemies seem like the way to go for the start of a game.

Wow. Thanks for all the advice guys. I will be sure to use it. I am a bit new to the whole basic role playing system, most of my RPG experience comes from AD&D, so I was more used to that.