Where are your games based usually?

[Noita]

Are your games always in America and always in Arkham or are you more European centric or somewhere else? 

 

Do your pc's have a base of operations? A shared house, office or mansion?

I'm starting a campaign where the pcs all met in 1916 in the American armed forces and then a decade later use a speakeasy as their meeting place. I'm European based but due to playing online find that the majority of my players are American.

Something I have noticed and is in no way a fault, that Europeans find playing in America far easier than the other way around. Due I think to growing up with American media and travelling more. Obviously this is just my opinion. 

 

[Valyar]

So far I have been running published adventures and I use the suggested locations. Never had the need to change the location as the books provide already enough information to run this game. Even if I don't have, I find it using the power of internet.

But you are right - because of the high levels of exposure of almost all USA layers in movies, books and etc, it is much easy to jump into a game based in USA and make it feel right. If the players are americans, then it is more tricky, the GM must have good education and understanding of the fine differences, which is sometimes impossible if you are not local or native, but for the purpose of our games - should be OK.

[BigJackBrass]

All over the place. I suppose that Britain tends to be our default for adventures we write, but otherwise we play published stuff and rarely shift the setting to a different one (even the Falklands for one memorable game).

Our PCs have no set base of operations because we usually roll up new ones appropriate to the campaign.

Edited March 26, 2019 by BigJackBrass

[mvincent]

I typically run continent hopping campaigns (MoN, HotOE, DotB, Age of Cthulhu, etc.). I like this because I get to learn about actual places. I particularly like European cities because I can explore them via Google Street view (and many of them are still similar to how they were in the 20's). I also found that I was able to run Venice much better after visiting the city in person.

As a US player: I would love to experience European locations as refereed by someone very familiar with Europe! An initial US home-base is still a good idea though (even if they won't spend much time there). New York tends to be popular.

fwiw: I dislike adventures in completely fictional cities (like Arkham), since the things I learn about Arkham won't benefit me outside of the game.

[Noita]

The internet certainly was a game changer. I played so much CoC in the 1980s and relied purely on books. I was lucky to have close relatives in the States so spent many fun holidays there.

I must admit the game influenced my travel locations all through the 1990s. Middle East I am looking at you!

[Joe Kenobi]

I've only ever played 1920s, usually set in Lovecraft Country (although also did Masks of Nyarlathotep over a couple years).

I have trouble imagining playing CoC with a modern setting. I'm sure there are ways it can be done well, but I've done so much in the 1920s that setting an adventure any other time feels like it would violate an essential part of the game.

[seneschal]

That’s the weird thing about popular fiction; stories written to be on the cusp of modernity at the time often come to associated with a certain mileu instead.  Sherlock Holmes’ adventures, Lovecraft’s horrors, Philip Marlowe’s cases were all intended to be hip and modern at the time they were published but they somehow feel off if you move Holmes out of the late 19th century, Lovecraft’s antiquarian narrators out of the Twenties, or Marlowe out of the Thirties and Forties.  Example, the Holmes movies set during World War II.

For what it’s worth, Professor Armitage and Company’s contemporaries include Tarzan, the Saint, Fantomas and Fu Manchu, the Hardy Boys,  aviators Anthony “Buck” Rogers and Carson Napier (of Venus), and veterinarian John Doolittle.  Also detectives Philo Vance and Lord Peter Wimsey, Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto, among others.  With all those bold adventurers and brainy crime busters running around, how did the entities of the Mythos get away with anything?

Edited March 28, 2019 by seneschal

[Noita]

Don't forget BullDog Drummond, gentleman adventurer! Yesterday I bought the first book from Amazon for under €2 for the kindle version.

 

[mvincent]

16 hours ago, Joe Kenobi said:

I have trouble imagining playing CoC with a modern setting.

• Yeah... anytime I hear "Cthulhu Modern", I think 80's
• If it's 90's, I think Delta Green (and lots of guns)
• If it's >2000's, I mostly just think Cyber-Cthulhu-punk

[BigJackBrass]

13 hours ago, mvincent said:

• Yeah... anytime I hear "Cthulhu Modern", I think 80's
• If it's 90's, I think Delta Green (and lots of guns)
• If it's >2000's, I mostly just think Cyber-Cthulhu-punk

When running CHILL I simply set it in a sort of pseudo-1980s, a combination of my memories and the way things looked in many films and TV series of the time. Bringing it up to date (the game was published in 1984) somehow strips it of its charm.

[Spence]

On 3/27/2019 at 10:03 PM, Joe Kenobi said:

I have trouble imagining playing CoC with a modern setting.

Just think about Carpenters' movie The Thing,  Scifi's series Helix, the series The Burning Zone, X-Files, Project Blue Book and so on.  Any of them give you material for a modern CoC game.  Just mode the plot to be driven by Mythos or a servitor.

It actually comes together pretty easily. 

Of course, when I run CoC it is almost exclusively one shot sessions with pre-gens. 

 

[Noita]

I have no problem with setting a CoC game in modern times. I love the idea of tech savvy cultists. That said it seems that most I play in are set in the Delta Green Verse.

 

[seneschal]

In the movie serials of the '30s through the '50s it was the villains who always had the gee-whiz gadgetry.  Super gizmos plus Mythos spells?  How will our intrepid investigators prevail?  

[Joe Kenobi]

22 hours ago, Spence said:

Just think about Carpenters' movie The Thing,  Scifi's series Helix, the series The Burning Zone, X-Files, Project Blue Book and so on.  Any of them give you material for a modern CoC game.  Just mode the plot to be driven by Mythos or a servitor.

It actually comes together pretty easily. 

Of course, when I run CoC it is almost exclusively one shot sessions with pre-gens. 

 

I think perhaps in a modern setting, it's harder to establish some of the isolation and idea of vast uncovered secrets that I associate with Cthulhu. The Thing is a good example of how to achieve that--but it does so by setting things in a remote location. I don't think of The X-Files as particularly Lovecraftian horror; more monster-of-the-week.

[Spence]

32 minutes ago, Joe Kenobi said:

I think perhaps in a modern setting, it's harder to establish some of the isolation and idea of vast uncovered secrets that I associate with Cthulhu. The Thing is a good example of how to achieve that--but it does so by setting things in a remote location. I don't think of The X-Files as particularly Lovecraftian horror; more monster-of-the-week.

True, the X-Files is not Lovecraftian horror in of itself.  But it is a wonderful collection of seeds that can easily be made that way. 

But I really don't run Lovecraftian horror exactly myself.  I like to run suspenseful horror or thriller horror instead.  The unexpected twist.

I will admit I am more pulp than purest and the periods I enjoy most are 1880's (Colonial British Empire and American Old West), 1930's (interwar period), 1940's(WW2), 1960/70's (Delta Green style), and 1980's (my Modern).  I am less inclined to enjoy modern era's once we had internet and cell phones. 

The big thing I have found is that players will enjoy a good horror game and will work with you to make it fun.  They really enjoy the unknown.

So in my one-shots I try to mix up traditional CoC Mythos with non-Mythos horror to keep them guessing. 

Edited April 4, 2019 by Spence