Call of Cthulhu Sustained Less-Lethal Campaign Discussion

[klecser]

The goal of this thread is to provide a forum for Keepers who would like to discuss particular challenges and tips for running sustained, less-lethal Call of Cthulhu campaigns. One-shots and convention play are outside of the scope of this discussion. If you like those styles of play, I support you! This thread is not an invitation for individuals to pitch or defend their preferred style of non-campaign gaming. The goal should be to discuss and aid Keepers who have particular issues that they would like to discuss related to sustained groups of investigators. This could be for solving problems or just because it is fun to discuss things.

A "campaign" is a series of connected scenarios that have frequently occurring or reoccurring characters or elements. I acknowledge that you could run a very deadly campaign in which there are new investigators every time. The players would always have memories of past events, but their characters would not. This can be very fun. That is not this discussion. Another goal of this thread is to discuss Keeper techniques with sustained character development and experiences. Some Keepers and groups will prefer the style of more lethal Call of Cthulhu gaming. Awesome. You do you. Once again, this is not that thread. If you find sustained less-lethal CoC to be "not in the spirit of the game" and/or personally offensive to you, fine. You don't need to tell us. We've heard your argument. Move along.

To get us started, here are the Chapter headings of a forthcoming Miskatonic Repository product that will discuss these issues. Let me know if there is a an aspect you'd like to discuss, or pitch your own start to the discussion!

Player Agency

Mechanics That Respect Neurodivergence

Companion NPCs

Planning Connections and Arcs

Weird Tech As Sustained Projects for Investigators

Edited March 25, 2022 by klecser

[werecorpse]

For mine the issues for long term campaigns are I think more mechanical? They are 

1. Character survivability - both combat and sanity

2. Reasonable advancement - what skills might be problematic at higher %, what non standard abilities may create issues and how to handle them (spells, gear, tech, allies, societies etc)

3. Back up characters and Troupe play 

4. Downtime and between scenarios 

I’ve just (last night) finished a Down Darker Trails campaign using the 2 rule book scenarios and the Shadows over Stillwater scenarios.

I use Delta Green bonds & home scenes to help San preservation and for in between scenario world building. I allow first aid and medicine to each restore +1 extra hp on a hard/+2 extreme/+3 critical success to keep characters active after combat scenes. I have found very high dodge skill to be slightly problematic in play. I think the armour rules could be looked at to make them more nuanced and more accessible to improve combat survivability but I haven’t tried it out. 
When giving out San bonuses at the end of a scenario they seem very generous. I have allowed up to half to be allocated to the Luck skill and as much as wanted to be used to restore bonds.

I had a year pass at one point in game and the character evolution felt insufficient. 

[klecser]

9 hours ago, werecorpse said:

For mine the issues for long term campaigns are I think more mechanical? They are 

1. Character survivability - both combat and sanity

We run a very psyche-focused game where complete avoidance of combat is the usual goal. I enjoy the "you were too early" or "you were too late" model of furthering mystery while still solving this issue. I write about it in this blog post:

We have retired one character because of SAN burden. My group has a system whereby if they anticipate seeing something terrible, somebody takes one for the team and investigates. Of course, that probably only works about half of the time. They often can't anticipate what will happen and all take the SAN loss. 😉 

 

9 hours ago, werecorpse said:

2. Reasonable advancement - what skills might be problematic at higher %, what non standard abilities may create issues and how to handle them (spells, gear, tech, allies, societies etc)

I have found this one to be less of an issue than I expected, I think because of three reasons: 1) My players aren't just using downtime for skills. Anything significant can cost time, and that includes learning spells, researching and building weird tech, financial management for wealthy investigators (if they want to spend big money on big things they have to commit the time to adjudicate that), and skills. 2) I have a world spanning campaign in which my players are frequently thrust into situations they don't have the skills for, so they prioritize improvements in the skills they need at that time. 3) Maybe I should have lead with this one: I cap skills in my game. An investigator can have one skill that is their "primary" skill at up to 90. All other skills are capped at 75 unless it makes story sense to go higher. My players are decidedly anti-min/max. I'm fortunate in that my players are very philosophically aligned with me on role-playing.

9 hours ago, werecorpse said:

I use Delta Green bonds & home scenes to help San preservation and for in between scenario world building. I allow first aid and medicine to each restore +1 extra hp on a hard/+2 extreme/+3 critical success to keep characters active after combat scenes. I have found very high dodge skill to be slightly problematic in play. I think the armour rules could be looked at to make them more nuanced and more accessible to improve combat survivability but I haven’t tried it out. 
When giving out San bonuses at the end of a scenario they seem very generous. I have allowed up to half to be allocated to the Luck skill and as much as wanted to be used to restore bonds.

Love it. I do the same thing with rewards. They have choice. They can do Luck or SAN. They also get to choose low mid or risk the roll. So, if the reward is 1D6, they can roll the die and risk getting the one. Or, they can take an auto 3. Most of mine like to roll. They are a little bummed when they get a 1 or 2, but elated when they get a 4, 5, or 6. I'm not an original or current designer, but I suspect that the SAN rewards in scenarios are written with a "this won't last very long anyway" bias to them. They need to be adjusted for extended campaign play.

9 hours ago, werecorpse said:

I had a year pass at one point in game and the character evolution felt insufficient. 

Consider asking your players what they consider to be "fair" and collaborate together on a system? I think that bringing in the "anything you want to prioritize takes you time" perspective has really helped us. I have skill-focused investigators, weird tech-focused investigators, and spell-focused investigators.

Periodically, whenever I haven't felt good about progression, I'll grant my characters special unique boons. I've only done it twice in 54 sessions. One boon was from Bast, Mother of Cats, and the other was knowledge from a Serpent Sorcerer. This is more meaningful because it has a direct story connection.

I'm a huge believer in "go large or go home." Why are we hamstringing our stories? Why shouldn't investigators work to save the Dream Echo of Randolph Carter and gain the Silver Key as a result? (I have very strict limitations on it's use and it took them 30 sessions to gain all the knowledge to access and use it) That said, I understand the argument that participating in that story can't feel EASY or it cheapens it. I think it is possible that investigators can face such terrible odds that at some point skills in this game are irrelevant compared to decision-making.

Thanks for posting!

Edited March 26, 2022 by klecser

[SunlessNick]

One thing I'd suggest is waiving SAN loss from reading tomes, and just leave the reduction in maximum sanity from Cthulhu Mythos being increased.  Part of the reason for this is that people in Lovecraft's stories generally don't go insane from reading books, even the Necronomicon - several of the cast of At the Mountains of Madness had read it before the story even began.  The closest is Armitage in The Dunwich Horror, but that could be attributed to the specific revelation it gives him about the Whateleys.

[JDS]

Player Agency: 
I have the players be part of an informal organization, generally working for a single patron. This allows me to fee the PCs missions rather than endlessly involving friends and family. This also lets me use non-mythos (X-files) missions and purely secular missions to keep things varied. 

Companion NPCs
Other than the patron and a patron-cut-out, I don't run NPCs as part of the party. I find players tend to meta-game input from such NPCs. 

Planning Connections and Arcs
The patron is an individual, not an organization, and missions come down via the cut-out; as an individual, the patron's whims eliminates a deep need for connections. 'The boss read about this, and wants you to check it out' will suffice. Being informal, if the PCs decide to track down connections from a case for a while, there will be little opposition, as the patron has no pressing agenda, nor a need for justification.

Weird Tech As Sustained Projects for Investigators
I do not use weird tech. It clashes with my view of the genre.

Edited March 27, 2022 by JDS

[Darius West]

I am glad people are having this discussion. It is very possible for a Keeper to run a less lethal CoC campaign.

For a very long time CoC suffered from a "single session" mentality, where high character mortality really destroyed the possibility of actual roleplay.  The experience was... 

Player1: Oh, umm... We have that slimy item for this... Oh wait, do we?  I mean I'm playing an accountant now, and that was back 3 dead characters ago on my antiquarian, does anyone even know or remember what it was for?

Keeper: Remember we agreed that characters kept diaries and everyone agreed they automatically read the diaries?

Players: (collective shrug)

Player 3: Hey umm... My present character is a Lawyer okay, after my last guy, the Librarian died in the warehouse shoot-out, two rooms ago remember? So has my new Lawyer read the diaries?

Keeper: Yes, it's automatic.

Player 4: Oh, my last character the Salesman was the last in my pile, he also died in the warehouse, and I don't have any more.  Can I just resuscitate my Professor and give him a new name? 

Keeper:  No.  Give me a moment and I'll run another 6 pre-gens off for you on my computer.

Thankfully the CoC community seems to be coming out of that way of doing things I hope, as it detracts from the experience imo.  This is not to suggest that death and madness shouldn't be a constant threat, but they also shouldn't be a certainty every session.  CoC shouldn't degenerate into a shoot-out imo.  Shoot-outs are not a strong feature of Lovecraft's writing, and characters in general shouldn't be armed to the teeth like Mexican bandits unless they are actually Mexican bandits (who were definitely about in the 1920s, but not featured in Lovecraft's writing).

[JDS]

54 minutes ago, Darius West said:

  CoC shouldn't degenerate into a shoot-out imo.  Shoot-outs are not a strong feature of Lovecraft's writing, and characters in general shouldn't be armed to the teeth like Mexican bandits unless they are actually Mexican bandits (who were definitely about in the 1920s, but not featured in Lovecraft's writing).

Heresy!

The problem with CoC is that scenarios tend to copy Lovecraftian fiction: one villain or small group, deranged, who is/are working to summon forth (insert elder being here). PCs save the world, and are scarred for life.

It's a tough sell, because if all it takes is one whack-job who finds a book or artifact to bring down all of Mankind, we wouldn't last long enough to read this thread.

The key is to go corporate: Cthulhu isn't going to get up early because of one guy with a book. No, to really get Elder Being face-time, you need a proven track record, a portfolio of success, and lots of support. Drawing a Elder Being should be about as complex as building a Fortune 500 company. Devoted people are going to have to extract the maximum effort out of a lot of wage slaves over an extended period of time to have a shot at the big time. There's going to be set-backs, hostile take-overs, and recessionary impacts.You're going to need to absorb smaller cults who have fallen behind the times, and merge with fast-climbing cults who will bring energy and assets.

This will give the PCS endless opportunities to investigate seemingly-unconnected things that start becoming connected, to shoot it out with gun thugs, amoral security, and low-ranking believers, and generally have the sort of good times that PCs expect.

The first season of True Detective is a prime example of how this works: they plugged away for years, uncovering layer after layer that went back generations. Another great source is the McCarthy view of communism and its infiltration of the West. Or the expansion of Wal Marts.

You want lots of minions who are just following orders, looking the other way, getting a few bucks on the side. Then people who have seen unearthly things, but had their curiosity numbed by the application of money. Then the first people who actually know bits and pieces. And so on.

So, first you build your occult organization, and then you set your PCs against it. You include lots of violence because that keeps players interested, and it keeps a lot of NPCs from sharing information (because they're dead). Slowly, a bunch of unconnected (make sure some scenarios are really unconnected) events start piling up until the players trust no one and nothing, and see conspiracy everywhere.

 

That's how I see it being done.

 

[klecser]

On 4/9/2022 at 6:04 AM, JDS said:

So, first you build your occult organization, and then you set your PCs against it. You include lots of violence because that keeps players interested, and it keeps a lot of NPCs from sharing information (because they're dead). Slowly, a bunch of unconnected (make sure some scenarios are really unconnected) events start piling up until the players trust no one and nothing, and see conspiracy everywhere.

 

That's how I see it being done.

 

This is a really good example of a human cultist-focused approach.

Another way to do it is in our campaign: Mythos creatures/deities just don't care about humans unless they: 1) get in their way or 2) can be used/manipulated in some way.

Being a science teacher, and a big fan of theoretical xenobiology, there is a pervasive false assumption that makes it very easy to derail any realistic discussion of theoretical encounters with alien beings. Many people make the assumption that alien beings would actually care about people. And giving up that assumption is just as nihilistic and terror-filled as other common Mythos tropes. There is also the assumption that alien technology is even understandable. SETI has shifted it's focus largely from searching for intelligible signals from space to searching for phenomena that look like "magic" to us.

In light of these considerations, I find "humans must be stopped at all costs" is giving agency to people that they likely wouldn't even have. And also results in combat encounters that most alien species wouldn't bother with.

"But that's boring."

If someone finds it boring, that's ok. It's your game. I don't boring. Learning that there are advanced civilizations that don't even bother with people or are even amused with attempts of people to influence things? That's an angle. "You oppose my plans? pfffft. Go ahead, you lame meat-bag." And I find that to be particularly interesting story-telling, because it forces people to confront the concept that humans likely aren't as amazing as they think they are. And I think that is truly terrifying to a lot of people.

Now, that doesn't mean that investigators can't influence things, or have an impact. Underestimating human potential is a noteworthy theme in of itself.

The last few posts have brought up a really great question: Why do people Cthulhu? For some, I can see that the desire to replicate the style of short-story telling that H.P. Lovecraft did is a really strong pull. And I respect that. But many of us also see novel-style or epic poem-style storytelling as being very much possible too. You don't have to sacrifice elements that make cosmic horror interesting to run a lengthy story. And I completely agree: investigators don't need to suffer frequent death in order to make those stories interesting.

I also don't think that this discussion would surprise any of the current designers. The challenge of any role-playing game is how to effectively market it. And the types of products that Chaosium publishes don't preclude the possibility of either death-focused or long-term focused games. They have published a ton of great campaigns. Yet, the death-focused "you get to be murdered in spectacular fashion" seems to be a big selling point. And it begs the question if that is a deliberate marketing decision because it sells books, or an artifact of the historical Call of Cthulhu community. Neither answer would surprise me. Or a combination. The designers are highly educated, highly intelligent people.

Edited April 10, 2022 by klecser

[JDS]

2 hours ago, klecser said:

This is a really good example of a human cultist-focused approach.

Another way to do it is in our campaign: Mythos creatures/deities just don't care about humans unless they: 1) get in their way or 2) can be used/manipulated in some way.

Being a science teacher, and a big fan of theoretical xenobiology, there is a pervasive false assumption that makes it very easy to derail any realistic discussion of theoretical encounters with alien beings. Many people make the assumption that alien beings would actually care about people. And giving up that assumption is just as nihilistic and terror-filled as other common Mythos tropes. There is also the assumption that alien technology is even understandable. SETI has shifted it's focus largely from searching for intelligible signals from space to searching for phenomena that look like "magic" to us.

In light of these considerations, I find "humans must be stopped at all costs" is giving agency to people that they likely wouldn't even have. And also results in combat encounters that most alien species wouldn't bother with.

"But that's boring."

If someone finds it boring, that's ok. It's your game. I don't boring. Learning that there are advanced civilizations that don't even bother with people or are even amused with attempts of people to influence things? That's an angle. "You oppose my plans? pfffft. Go ahead, you lame meat-bag." And I find that to be particularly interesting story-telling, because it forces people to confront the concept that humans likely aren't as amazing as they think they are. And I think that is truly terrifying to a lot of people.

Now, that doesn't mean that investigators can't influence things, or have an impact. Underestimating human potential is a noteworthy theme in of itself.

The last few posts have brought up a really great question: Why do people Cthulhu? For some, I can see that the desire to replicate the style of short-story telling that H.P. Lovecraft did is a really strong pull. And I respect that. But many of us also see novel-style or epic poem-style storytelling as being very much possible too. You don't have to sacrifice elements that make cosmic horror interesting to run a lengthy story. And I completely agree: investigators don't need to suffer frequent death in order to make those stories interesting.

I also don't think that this discussion would surprise any of the current designers. The challenge of any role-playing game is how to effectively market it. And the types of products that Chaosium publishes don't preclude the possibility of either death-focused or long-term focused games. They have published a ton of great campaigns. Yet, the death-focused "you get to be murdered in spectacular fashion" seems to be a big selling point. And it begs the question if that is a deliberate marketing decision because it sells books, or an artifact of the historical Call of Cthulhu community. Neither answer would surprise me. Or a combination. The designers are highly educated, highly intelligent people.

Interesting points.

'Why do people Cthulhu?' is a question that I think is too often left unexplored. 'Evil' or 'insane' is usually tossed out and it is business as usual.

But I believe it is something that, if explored, gives villains and cults greater depth. Admittedly, some Mythos beings don't attract followers with depth, but there's always room in any campaign for serial killers and murderous nutjobs. CoC is very inclusive in that regard.

The way I look at it, the business of being a cult leader for one of the more 'rational' of the mythos entities is akin to playing 3D chess with the stakes being your life, and getting the keys to the vaults of the Bank of England. If you do it right, you not only get power, but you get power that no one else has access to. That last part is something that often gets overlooked. Some people crave the unique; it is why some people pay staggering amounts of money for the original of a painting, when a $500 print is just as vivid. The idea of having something that no one else in the world does is very intoxicating to some personalities.   

 

[Darius West]

On 4/9/2022 at 9:04 PM, JDS said:

So, first you build your occult organization, and then you set your PCs against it. You include lots of violence because that keeps players interested, and it keeps a lot of NPCs from sharing information (because they're dead). Slowly, a bunch of unconnected (make sure some scenarios are really unconnected) events start piling up until the players trust no one and nothing, and see conspiracy everywhere.

That's how I see it being done.

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.

[JDS]

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. 😀 

[Darius West]

17 hours ago, JDS said:

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. 😀 

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.

[JDS]

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.

[Darius West]

1 hour ago, JDS said:

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

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.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Darius West

[JDS]

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. 

[klecser]

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?

Edited April 12, 2022 by klecser

[rykemasters]

So far, my players have survived many more encounters than expected. I'm usually pretty lenient about players escaping difficult encounters, although with consequences on their sanity. They've also almost always been lucky on their sanity rolls, so that over five different adventures, there have only been two actual bouts of madness. When someone gets badly hurt in the middle of an investigation, I usually let them recover slightly more HP than rules would dictate if they can get treatment (2-4 depending on the quality of care they have access to). I've had  a character get hurt within 1HP of instant death, but they were in the process of escaping, one of the PCs was a doctor and my next adventure was planned to start in a hospital, so they made it out alive.

I've had the opposite experience, where a lucky critical hit with a shotgun ended an encounter with a powerful witch very early. I could have fudged it for her to survive, but the damage was such overkill I was afraid they'd think she was unkillable, when the plan really was for her to be fought physically, although it should have been difficult. She was just a witch after all, and ostensibly not used to modern firearms. Either way, the fight wasn't the real crux of the scenario, although it was a climactic moment, so it was okay. Besides, exploding a witch's head with a shotgun actually was decently climactic for them.

[JDS]

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.

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by JDS

[klecser]

13 hours ago, JDS said:

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

My "solution" to min-maxing is that I don't play Call of Cthulhu with those of my friends who are min-maxers. It is not an approach to gaming that I enjoy being at a table with. I play DND and Savage Worlds with my min-maxer friends. What you call "micro-manage," I call boundaries.

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

Edited April 13, 2022 by klecser

[EricW]

One thing which comes through clearly on HP Lovecraft's books is mythos characters are usually highly dysfunctional, focussed on their own problems rather than taking over the world, or both. They're vulnerable, or should be - once you know who they are.

The villagers in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" mostly just wanted to be left alone, so they could finish metamorphosing into Deep Ones. They tried to conceal their secret and discourage contact. The last thing they wanted was a fight - they all expected to live forever, and you don't get to live forever if you start gunfights all the time.

Old man Whateley and Wilbur Whateley from The Dunwich Horror - they came the closest to being world conquerors. But Old man Whateley was senile, and Wilbur was struggling to pass for human. Maybe if Old Man Whateley had tried his plot when he was younger - but there were still missing pieces to his knowledge. Maybe he didn't know how when he was younger.

Robert Suydam in the Horror at Red Hook - he sought immortality and power through necromancy. But in the end something went badly wrong. The hero Malone noted "He would often regard it as merciful that most persons of high intelligence jeer at the inmost mysteries; for, he argued, if superior minds were ever placed in fullest contact with the secrets preserved by ancient and lowly cults, the resultant abnormalities would soon not only wreck the world, but threaten the very integrity of the universe.".

But smart people mostly aren't put in contact with the mythos. And we have another clue why it generally doesn't work out, even when they are.

The one account we have of when lots of people delved into the mythos in a short period of time was the period following the publication of the Necronomicon, in H P Lovecraft's "The History of the Necronomicon". 

Quote (The History of the Necronomicon) 

 

... He [the author] is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.

In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’ surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice—once in the fifteenth century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (prob. Spanish)—both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical evidence only. The work both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his prefatory note; and no sight of the Greek copy—which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550—has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692 ...

 

I surmise there is this period between someone beginning to lose their mind to the mythos and mastering some really bad magic, when they are vulnerable. People mostly don't tolerate the kind of behaviour "terrible attempts" entails. Even after they master bad magic they are vulnerable - the mad Arab was killed by his own magic, or perhaps by a rival, who knows.

Other sorcerers like the old witch in "The Dreams in the Witch House", she lived in an attic kidnapping children - not someone who seemed particularly active attempting to conquer the world. Or Crawford in "From Beyond", the Church of Starry Wisdom in "The Haunter of the Dark" both seemed so fascinated by their dark knowledge, they had no interest in the human world, other than perhaps a source of victims.

My point is if you fight the mythos head on, you're mostly going to lose. But the human antagonists generally are not Professor Moriarty orchestrating a fiendish plot of exquisite cunning, they are usually unbalanced madmen who are totally out of their depth, messing with evil powers they cannot comprehend.

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.

[JDS]

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. 

Edited April 18, 2022 by JDS

[JDS]

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.

 

[klecser]

On 4/18/2022 at 9:03 AM, JDS said:

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

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

[JDS]

13 minutes ago, klecser said:

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

It isn't.