Videopete Posted May 19, 2019 Share Posted May 19, 2019 We have HP Lovecraft and his Mythos but have not seen RPGs based or inspired by other writers. So for a CoC hack I present you Goosebumps and Other Nightmares based on the wrtings of R.L. Stine, where you play as children dealing with horror investigation. Of course there should be one for Steven King, Steven King and of course Clive Barker. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLBrown7289 Posted May 20, 2019 Share Posted May 20, 2019 You could also have one for Dean Koontz, I like his book PHANTOMS...of course I always thought he got his idea of the Ancient Enemy from Lovecraft's idea of a shoggoth. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Videopete Posted May 20, 2019 Author Share Posted May 20, 2019 20 hours ago, JLBrown7289 said: You could also have one for Dean Koontz, I like his book PHANTOMS...of course I always thought he got his idea of the Ancient Enemy from Lovecraft's idea of a shoggoth. Ben Affleck was the bomb in that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakob Posted May 22, 2019 Share Posted May 22, 2019 I'be been toying for some time with the idea to try and extricate the mythology of Laird Barron's horror cosmos from his works ... that would make for a great modern horror setting in a Lovecraftian tradition that is still quite distinct (and contains no Cthulhu mythos trappings at all). But I'll never get around to it. Maybe someone else will do it for me ...? 2 Quote My RPG Blog: Swanosaurus - A Fierce and Beautiful Creature Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonHook Posted May 23, 2019 Share Posted May 23, 2019 I love F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series. It also has an undertone of Mythos. I'd love to see a game book that more clearly defined the strangeness from that universe. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrippyHippy Posted May 23, 2019 Share Posted May 23, 2019 (edited) Well, there is the writings of Robert W. Chalmers, who is referenced through Call of Cthulhu too, and to be honest there is enough scope in CoC to do most gothic horror tales. TSR did make a Masque of the Red Death box set for it's Ravenloft, based on the Edgar Allen Poe story, although it had little to do with that story, truth be told. Other games have close influences - like Vampire: The Masquerade being similar to the writings of Anne Rice or Kult being similar to the writings of Clive Barker. Ken Hite's Night's Black Agents directly references Dracula in a campaign too. There isn't many as a result of direct licensing though. As much as anything, I think many horror writers tend to write individual stories rather than trying to create an overarching mythos. It would be quite difficult to create a unified 'Worlds of Stephen King RPG' for example, because the stories he tells aren't really connected in terms of backstory. Edited November 8, 2019 by TrippyHippy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Posted May 23, 2019 Share Posted May 23, 2019 Back in the mid-1990s, West End Games, as part of their Masterbook generic roleplaying system published a boxed set and a handful of supplements based on Brian Lumley's Necroscope series. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLBrown7289 Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 (edited) On 5/20/2019 at 3:45 PM, Videopete said: Ben Affleck was the bomb in that. Hee hee, just a couple weeks ago I watched the movie (hadn't seen it in years), it was pretty terrible. But the book was a fun read and it reads a LOT like a CoC scenario. And reading this thread reminded me that years ago I ran a CoC game inspired by T.E.D. Klein's short story 'Black Man with a Horn.' It's in his anthology 'Dark Gods'. Another story ripe for a scenario in that same book...'Children of the Kingdom'. Edited June 9, 2019 by JLBrown7289 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seneschal Posted June 9, 2019 Share Posted June 9, 2019 The irony is that cheesy B movies make great RPG scenarios. Of course, with tabletop games you have an unlimited special effects budget. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLBrown7289 Posted June 10, 2019 Share Posted June 10, 2019 (edited) 15 hours ago, seneschal said: The irony is that cheesy B movies make great RPG scenarios. Of course, with tabletop games you have an unlimited special effects budget. Yep, absolutely, for years CoC people have been recommending the movie Q, a b-movie where winged serpent god Quetzalcoatl (sp?) terrorizes 70s New York City. I finally saw the movie recently, it is just awful as a piece of movie-making (Michael Moriarty chews the scenery so much I thought the dude was going to get indigestion)...but it's a great CoC scenario! Edited June 10, 2019 by JLBrown7289 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seneschal Posted June 10, 2019 Share Posted June 10, 2019 But “Q” is waaaaaay too recent. Go back to the innumerable black-and-white films of the 1930s through the early ‘60s starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, J. Carrol Naish, or George Zucco (among others). Mad scientists, world-weary detectives, apes with human brains (or vice-versa), space aliens of all descriptions (did you marry one? some of them are hotties), zombies and werewolves and indestructible murderers and vampires created by SCIENCE!, old dark houses, cults that meet at the same cozy home where you attended a Tupperware party last week. It is too much popular culture to allow to go to waste. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordabdul Posted June 10, 2019 Share Posted June 10, 2019 On 6/9/2019 at 4:13 PM, seneschal said: The irony is that cheesy B movies make great RPG scenarios. Of course, with tabletop games you have an unlimited special effects budget. Which is why CoC saw at least two scenario books (Blood Brothers 1 and 2) entirely dedicated to taking cheesy B horror movies tropes and turning them into one-shot scenarios! It's super fun to run in between big campaigns, or when a key player can't make it to the table one night. 3 Quote Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dark Posted October 10, 2019 Share Posted October 10, 2019 On 5/23/2019 at 11:45 AM, Kevin said: Back in the mid-1990s, West End Games, as part of their Masterbook generic roleplaying system published a boxed set and a handful of supplements based on Brian Lumley's Necroscope series. They also did World of Tales of the Crypt and World of Species for Masterbook in the licensed horror genre. According to Lumley's website, there were four supplements for World of Necroscope: Deadspeak Dossier, E-Branch Guide to Psionics, Wamphyri, and Operation: Nightside. One I've only heard about but never seen a copy of was Leading Edge Games' RPG for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColoradoCthulhu Posted November 7, 2019 Share Posted November 7, 2019 One of the early classic D&D modules, Castle Amber (Module X2), is based on Weird Tales' author Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Amber_(module) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kronovan Posted November 8, 2019 Share Posted November 8, 2019 On 5/23/2019 at 8:45 AM, Kevin said: Back in the mid-1990s, West End Games, as part of their Masterbook generic roleplaying system published a boxed set and a handful of supplements based on Brian Lumley's Necroscope series. They did and the results were so poor that it pains me to even think about it. I personally feel that the Necroscope setting just begs to have a good RPG translation done for it, but it has to be a better effort than West End Games' treatment. When I saw the thread title Necroscope was the 1st setting that came to mind. I feel it's perfectly doable with a number of different RPGs, provide the right talent and effort is applied to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColoradoCthulhu Posted November 9, 2019 Share Posted November 9, 2019 Why didn't I think of this one before? The original version of the RPG 'Chill' from the 1980s is strongly based on the works of both Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chill_(role-playing_game) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atgxtg Posted November 18, 2019 Share Posted November 18, 2019 On 11/9/2019 at 12:33 AM, ColoradoCthulhu said: Why didn't I think of this one before? The original version of the RPG 'Chill' from the 1980s is strongly based on the works of both Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chill_(role-playing_game) Niot to mention a lot of Universal and Hammer films. It remains my favorite horror RPG. Considering how stats and skills worked, it wouldn't be hard to adapt to CoC7 rules, either. 2 Quote Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lawrence.whitaker Posted November 18, 2019 Share Posted November 18, 2019 We are releasing 'Casting the Runes', based on the stories by M. R. James early next year, using the Gumshoe engine. 3 Quote The Design Mechanism: Publishers of Mythras Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike M Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 The Curse of Seven, a new forthcoming Gaslight campaign - each chapter is inspired by different "horror" authors like M. R. James, Dickens, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, E. F. Benson, Conan Doyle, Arthur Machen, Robert Louis Stevenson, and so on. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seneschal Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 Don't forget Kipling! He's not all jungle tales and Just So Stories. 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigJackBrass Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 (edited) Marcus L. Rowland's Forgotten Futures has had a sourcebook and adventures for William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder since 1996: The Carnacki Cylinders FF is a great game in its own right, but the sourcebook, stories and adventures are easy to run with CoC. Edited November 19, 2019 by BigJackBrass Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Henerson Posted November 21, 2019 Share Posted November 21, 2019 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. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atgxtg Posted November 22, 2019 Share Posted November 22, 2019 2 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said: 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. Licensed settings tend to be a bit of a risk for RPG companies, as they need to pay for the license. In practice this works out to less profit per sale, and it turns into a balancing act between the increased sales due to the license vs. the cost of the license. Plus there is always the risk of a successful line being halted due to licensing issues down the road. Quote Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Henerson Posted November 22, 2019 Share Posted November 22, 2019 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. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdomino Posted November 22, 2019 Share Posted November 22, 2019 Kronovan, I ran a Necroscope game using Night's Black Agents. NBA lets you custom design your vampires; it was relatively easy to create Lumley's version using the rules. The PCs ran away screaming in the first scenario when they encountered a low level vampire. Fun times. M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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