seneschal

Thanks for the reminder — but get busy promoting the hell out of them anyway. 😉. Your customers need to be acutely aware of all the fun goodies you have to offer them and your “other” titles have tended to get lost in the shuffle.

Agree with tailoring the material to the game’s strengths and weaknesses. Would it be better to do this slowly and gradually with small adventures and campaign modules rather than a giant comprehensive campaign book? We’ve got to both draw in new players and make Chaosium money so they are willing to publish new product to support the game and let customers know it lives yet. “Bad Medicine for Doctor Drugs”. Is insufficient and badly dated. Ironically, Fantasy Games Unlimited is still publishing new adventures for Villians & Vigilantes to this day. With its fancy new editions of Cthulhu and Runequest selling like global hotcakes, can Chaosium do at least as well for Superworld? After all, you’ve got an existing edited and playtested product ready to sell. You know of the lethality issues that limited its appeal the first time around. Make adjustments, support it, sell the hell out of it and make some money. You are the 500-pound gorilla compared to Monkey House Games. Believe in your product af least as much as they believe in theirs.

Please continue to support small followings. Cthulhu and Runequest are great but your own recent company history demonstrates that you need more than two arrows in your quiver to succeed. Everybody and his brother and his brother’s shoggoth has a Lovecraft game these days. You want a broad, deep bench of product that will appeal to many types of players even if one of your game lines hits a snag.

Mallory’s “The Death of Arthur” has usually been my go-to version of events although I’ve enjoyed more “historical” interpretations such as “The Silver Chalice” and Mary Stewart’s Merlin series. Arthur starts out as the brash young hero, fighting giants and leading his troops to teach the (Byzantine) Roman emperor to show some respect. Then he becomes a background character in his own novel while Tramtrist struts his stuff as the Lone Ranger of the Old West(ern East Anglia?). Who was that masked knight anyway? While the adultery and civil war denouement is depressing and avoidable you understand why folks made the choices they did and they manage to have some exciting adventures along the way: And to be fair, Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot spend decades trying to straighten out their characters and relationships. That’s what makes the end so tragic; you’ve got people in their 60s ultimately deciding to act like 15-year-olds and it destroys everything they have worked for. Oh, love Mary Stewart but Mordred is still the bad guy. Go earn your own kingdom, slacker!

A nice POD edition of Superworld would would be a good option. It would help keep the product alive as a physical thing without burdening Chaosium with inventory. I’d combine it with the Companion for completeness and playability. While I agree with others that Champions is the better rules set, Chaosium is currently in a stronger position to promote its product than Hero Games. And Superworld remains a historically significant game. Take full advantage! I’d have a terrible time getting my hands on Champions 3rd edition if I ever lost my copy. Why let the V&V folks have all the fun and profits?

I don’t get your tongue-biting outrage. We’re all about women being strong, confident and capable, right? Right? I gave you historical examples of how women have been strong, capable and effective throughout American history, specifically from the late 19th century through the 1940s. This offends you? Nuts! As for all the rest, I dislike having politics shoved into my role-playing. For me, it spoils the fun. I think it could also spoil the fun for a lot of potential new players, creating an unwelcoming environment for folks who just want to escape real life for a while and enjoy a game. If you want to dump politics into your games at your table, fine. But I don’t think it would be beneficial to the general customer base to take the Cthulhu product line in that direction. I think it would harm the overall quality of the material and would ultimately hurt Chaosium’s sales and profitability. And that’s the whole point of this thread. Does this offend you, too? Again, nuts! Since the Call of Cthulhu game line is based on a specific author’s work, it is unproductive (especially for Chaosium) to attack the reputation of said author. It would be like Disney Corporation saying, “We love Mickey Mouse but, gee, we don’t know about that Walt guy!” I mean, if you and the others despise Lovecraft so much, why are you eager to play his role-playing game? And why waste your energy fulminating at a man long dead? You can’t change the past. Save it for running campaigns your players will love.

I can see the push for a modern era take. Lovecraft’s stories were at the time of publication set in the right now. Cthulhu could reach out and grab you as you were walking to the newsstand. Doyle did the same with his Sherlock Holmes stories; they were cutting edge modernity. So having a current era campaign makes sense. On the other hand, what is “modern” keeps shifting second by second. Cthulhu Now, published in the 1990s, is now itself a period piece. There is a certain charm to period pieces, and they have the advantage that the setting doesn’t drastically change before you can publish the next supplement. Personally, I think that updating Sherlock Holmes to the 1930s or whatever the current year is hasn’t worked well. Not sure yet about Cthulhu.

Would it be more like BRP’s psychic powers, where you have the skill and it just happens if you make your roll? Or would it be more like one of the magic systems where you’re spending magic points and maybe POW even if you fail?

Privilege, eh? What sort of privilege would that be? Because we are usernames on an online discussion board you don’t know, really, whether I am male or female, what racial or ethnic background I come from, or what my socioeconomic status is, or what language I speak at home. Here’s what you do know: I enjoy role-playing games as you do. I’ve read and enjoyed Lovecraft’s short stories. I care about Chaosium’s continued success. I made a statement you happened to disagree with. I’ve never attacked the persons or characters of people who have disagreed with me either here or elsewhere on Triff’s forums.

People have been enjoying Lovecraft’s stories for nearly a century and a role-playing game based on those stories for 38 years. His personal opinions only become a problem if you go out of your way to make them so. I’m sure I could find things Arthur Conan Doyle said and believed that I’d disagree with. That doesn’t prevent me from enjoying his Sherlock Holmes stories and movies and games based on them. We live in a world in which things that were fine until five minutes ago are suddenly “problematic” and “racist” — everything from the Cat in the Hat to vanilla ice cream to movie robots encased in white plastic. This type of thinking ruins everything it touches — film franchises, sporting events, children's’ books. If Chaosium subscribes to it, they will destroy the game that has brought them so much success. And ruin their customers’ fun in the process.

Not sure what you are talking about, g33k. I meant what I said. The only “chan” I’m familiar with is Jackie (kick-butt actor) and Francis (kick-butt preacher), both of whom you can catch on Youtube.

Think about who the women of the Twenties and Thirties were. They were the daughters and granddaughters of the pioneer women who participated in land runs, created and ran farms in an age before mechanization, who persuaded those toxic males to give them the vote, who smashed up saloons with axes and pushed through Prohibition. They weren’t wilting violets wallowing in victimhood. They were tough as nails. They ran businesses and charitable organizations, launched social and religious movements that changed history, held society together during the Great Depression, and raised the men (and women) who prevented the Germans and Japanese from dividing the globe between them. Recognizing their accomplishments is misogynistic? These women weren’t marginalized. They were active and influential participants in society. They made stuff happen.

Hmmm, women got the right to vote in the USA in August 1920. They were hardly oppressed in the Thirties and in the Forties pretty much ran the country while all the able-bodied men were off fighting World War 2. In addition to their considerable social influence they did most of the shopping. Can’t imagine a business staying afloat long that disrespected them.

But see, soltakss, that is a valid reason for disliking Lovecraft. His stories didn’t do the job for you. I have similar feelings about F. Scott Fitzgerald; two chapters into “The Great Gatsby” I realized all the characters were unsympathetic jerks. Why should I care what happens to them? But I don’t go on websites devoted to Fitzgerald's work and complain about his moral failings, real or supposed. The guy’s dead, after all, and it would upset his admirers. Why spoil their fun? Nick, your concerns would be appropriate for a literary discussion but BRP Central is supposed to be a fun website about role-playing. Part of the reason I play is to escape politics and other real-world issues. I want to solve mysteries, slay monsters, save the kingdom and get the girl. I’m not interested in using my gaming table to critique the past and its supposed faults or to make comments about current events. If I wanted to do that I’d go elsewhere. Yet if I object to folks to must inject their wokeness into discussions of talking warrior ducks and tentacle monsters suddenly I’m the one whose being political and must take my thoughts to another thread. I mean, come on, we should be at each other’s throats about side saddle use in Glorantha instead. 😉 Would Stormbringer fans be edified if I used their threads to attack Michael Moorcock’s character or to complain that the Young Kingdoms failed to live up to my notions of how a society should be managed? No, they’re interested in the best way to construct demon objects for all sorts of politically incorrect purposes in a fantasy setting. And that’s as it should be.

Because I was told to sod off of the Gateways to Terror art discussion I didn’t comment further when one of my fellow gamers trashed H.P. Lovecraft in the Critical Role thread. Fortunately, someone else objected. Because it wasn’t the objector who was injecting politics into the discussion. The anti-Lovecraft comments are Exhibit A in my previous contention that political correctness ruins good gaming. Let’s think out this objectively for a moment. Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an imaginative writer who channeled his personal hurts and fears into gripping tales of horror and suspense. Flawed human being? Sure, but no worse than, say, President Woodrow Wilson. Both men were products of their time, and Wilson still has (at least at the moment) buildings and schools named after him. Lovecraft’s writings have inspired decades of horror and science fiction fans and more recently a couple generations of role-players. Lovecraft is not only the source material for the world’s first horror role-playing game (currently eclipsing D&D overseas!), but without him Chaosium would be a footnote in gaming history. RuneQuest had gone out of print, all its other licenses had expired, and Chaosium survived the Nineties and early Two-thousands solely as “The Cthulhu Company.” So here we are in 2019. Chaosium has revived, shiny new editions of Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest are selling like (digital) hotcakes and gaining new fans. And someone feels the need to condemn the guy who made it all possible because he lived nearly a century ago and didn’t conform to trendy current notions of propriety? That’s just not right.

The Cove — idyllic seaside artists’ colony menaced by a shark and possibly by the nefarious doings of one of its members. And the crazier events get, the crazier the inhabitants’ works of art get. What can we do with this? Hmmm. We know Cthulhu stirring in his sleep sends psychic ripples that can disturb sensitive individuals such as artists. Maybe it can disturb wildlife, too. The crazy violent paintings and sculptures are predictive; they come before the first shark attack. But that’s not the end of it. First its one shark, then squads of them — and barracudas. Dangerous jellyfish wash up to carpet the beach. Then armies of large voracious crabs invading homes and studios. Seals attack and overturn small boats. It is “The Birds” with sea creatures. So the question is, is there anything the PCs can do about it? Cthulhu and/or Dagon are beyond human control but if the answer is “no” that deprives the players of any agency in the scenario — something I hate. Is some member of the community purposely or inadvertently drawing the attacks? Perhaps the local anthropologist is studying an artifact he found and attempting to translate the inscriptions on it. The thing is a weirdness magnet. The more Mister Science messes with it, the worse things get outside.

I hadn’t heard of the TV show or the TV movie but they sound interesting. My favorite Thing is the black and white 1951 version.

Chillfest continued — “No, dammit, I don’t want to play another hand of rummy!” “Yeah? Well, if you pull out that blasted harmonica again I’m gonna shove it in your ...!” So our intrepid whalers are bored, at one another’s throats, possibly ill, and they’ve just had to lock Herschel in the secondary storeroom for everyone’s safety. And then they start to get hints that maybe they aren’t alone on the ice after all. Tools or supplies go missing. Doors they were sure they securely fastened are found banging open in the wind. The small boat they use for fishing is damaged. They hear even stranger than usual sounds outside and something seems to bang on the walls of the cabin. Is it all nerves and weather? Can they believe what they are seeing and hearing? What if Herschel disappears? Could he really survive out there alone with no gear?

No-title chillfest — Your iced-in remote whaling station is a classic adventure and horror setting. Your protagonists are few, they are trapped in a hostile environment that could easily kill them without any supernatural agency, and they are crammed into claustrophobic quarters with only themselves and all their personal faults and foibles to keep them company. They can’t easily go out for a walk and a breath of fresh air to relieve interpersonal tensions, and except for a few tough tasks necessary to maintain the station and their lives, they’ve got nothing to do but stare at the walls and each other and the pile of dirty dishes they’ve just finished arguing about whose turn it is to wash. And the wind outside makes all sorts of eerie sounds that a bored mind could interpret as animal noises or whispered words or anything. Your scenario should reinforce the discomfort, the underlying stress, the need for and perhaps lack of group discipline. The inhabitants of Ice Station Zero and the base attacked by The Thing were military personnel with firm rules and a base commander to enforce them. Your whalers, however, are civilians and the captain sailed home to his wife. Who decides who is in charge? What happens if others disagree? So there are all sorts of dangers even before we add a monster. A heavy snowfall threatens to collapse the roof of the cabin. Firewood and/or rations could run low. Lack of a varied diet means vitamin deficiencies and the physical and mental disabilities that could cause. An expedition member could become alarmingly depressed and suicidal or murderously aggressive. If someone goes nuts, where and how could the others restrain him?

Yep, “coffin-birthed” would be the correct adjective.

Maybe the viewer doesn’t merely see somewhere or somewhen else. Maybe he or she gets sent there, too, and has to figure out how to get back before it is too late. Maybe the next person to use the lens sees his pal being crowned god-king or being “invited” to dinner (or both) by the people or beings there. Maybe the two realities open up to each other on a periodic basis (see Louis L’Amour’s “Haunted Mesa”). And if the PCs can get there, maybe They can get here. The adventurers think they have escaped and are enjoying a refreshing and well-earned lemonade at Canyon’s Edge Cafe when the bad guys show up, again, for Round Two.

Reflectoscope — When using the special lens the PCs see something in the canyon that shouldn’t be there, something that can’t be viewed otherwise. Maybe they’re gazing into the past (or future), seeing a busy village from that lost civilization (or Buck Rogers visiting the Arizona Org in the 25th century). Maybe these folks notice and decide they don’t like being spied upon. Ditch the Hounds but give the offended party some unpleasant means of expressing their displeasure.

I like your adventure seeds. I really think you took the right tack in The Janus Head one in that you came up with an original critter to fit the setting rather than trying to shoehorn a known Mythos monster into it. After all, Lovecraft typically used each of his horrors once, in the story that introduced them. And investigators shouldn’t have a “Tolbin’s Guide to Mythos Entities” to fill them in. Each monster should be unique, a surprise. So, Les Voyagers might be stalked by a wendigo. But it might be a classic loup garou that shipped over with them to escape French justice. Or a Native American skin changer more interested in stalking the PCs’ guides (members of a rival tribe) than those stupid, inept Europeans. Or Bigfoot. Despite its seemingly supernatural stealth and cunning, maybe it is simply a hungry bear/puma/wolf as in Bwana Devil/The Ghost and the Darkness. Lewis and Clark later discovered that an irate grizzly can take a volley of musket balls without even slowing down. With real life monsters like that around, who needs the Mythos? During your scenario, have various NPCs suggest all five possibilities and others, meanwhile dropping nebulous clues that might support one or more of them. If your adventurers survive and escape, maybe they never do find out exactly what was attacking them in the dark. That’s OK.

St. Canard’s sorceress turned superhero Morgana Macawber could give Elvira Mistress of the Dark a run for her money in the, um, physique department. Even quiet houseduck Binkie Muddlefoot has a distinctly non-avian profile. Dunno, maybe its the corrupting influence of big city life, or perhaps ducks are careful to conceal their feminine charms around those violent, horny humans. 🤔😉

Perhaps some time in the stocks enduring afternoon heat, splinters, flies, public humiliation and the occasional thrown rotten vegetable would teach those young rascals some manners. The city guard may not care about a wealthy guildman’s wounded pride but surely there are laws against public nudity on the books.