Making less-terrible Cthulhutech-esque RPG

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Post by Username17 »

The basic cultist level monsters are:
  • Bolgani
    Deep One
    Ghoul
    Human
    Mi-Go
    Moon Beast
    Ophidian
    Tcho-Tcho
Now, of those, only the Moon Beast and Mi-Go don't get a standard humanoid hit location chart. Tcho-Tchos are small, and Ophidians have fangs, but they have the same standard hit location chart as a Deep One or a Human. They both take potentially lethal hits to the chest and head. They both walk on their legs and carry things in their arms.

Image
Moon Beasts don't use the humanoid hit location chart.

Image
Mi Go don't use the humanoid hit location chart either.

But "Headless Quadruped" really isn't that rare of a template either. A lot of Yaoguai like the Hounds of Tindalos are going to use that same hit location chart. Winged Insect is also pretty common as well once you hit the Yaoguai level - that's a Shan or a Byakhee hit location table.

So you need:

Humanoid
  • All Union Species
    Most anti-Union UN species
    Dimensional Shamblers
    Wendigo
    Ghasts
Winged Humanoid
  • Star Spawn
    Nightgaunts
Winged Bug
  • Mi Go
    Shan
    Byakhee
Shelled Invertibrate
  • Yithians
    Star Vampires
Quadruped
  • Guard Dogs
    Attack Pandas
Headless Quadruped
  • Moon Beasts
    Tindalos
Worm
  • Dholes
    Cthonians
Bird
  • Shantak
Amorphous (no hit locations)
  • Shoggoth
    Fire Vampires
    Alien Colors
So that's nine. If we wanted to put in a "Humanoid with extra Arms" thing for Gugs and the carnivorous plant slaves of the Shan, that would bring us to an even 10. I honestly think we can get all of those on a two page spread. I think we could add 2 to 4 more of them like "Giant Spider" and "Tentacled Horror" for shit like Leng Spiders and Flying Polyps that aren't even in the current design docs, and still fit it on a 2 page spread.
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Post by Lokathor »

Whales / Dolphins / Fish?

Octopus / Squid / Kraken?

Godzilla / Alligator? (that is, normal forms that happen to also have a tail added; if adding a tail is a simple operation perhaps we don't need winged and non-winged variants because adding wings might be the same sort of operation)
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Post by Red_Rob »

Dark Young? Hunting Horrors? Lloigor? And that's not even getting into the odd shapes you can find Unique creatures like Yog Sothoth or Shub Niggurath taking.

Also, is the assumption that there is still a normal military alongside the mecha? Because then you get into hit locations for vehicles. If everything is going to need hit location charts for multiple angles along with damage effects for every location I can see it getting pretty bloated very fast.

Look, locational damage has only ever worked in systems where one of two things is true. The first is if all the combatants are the same basic shape. There's a reason that Battletech never went balls-out with weird mech types, it was enough hassle including 4-legged mechs and still fitting all the location charts on a 2-sided cheat sheet. The second is if you only include hit-locations for the few largest combatants on each side. This is commonly found in wargames where the rank and file troops and vehicles just get an armor and wounds score, whilst the largest mecha and supertanks get their own data sheet with unique hit locations and things. But trying to model locational damage against every creature in a conflict including living fungus, formless monsters and Godzilla sized God-beings seems like it would run into severe complexity and granularity issues almost immediately. This isn't a computer simulation, you can't just have fractal complexity and individual hit charts for 10+ different monster types without players brains frying.

Also, area damage and burst weapons are notoriously awkward in locational systems. Machineguns and missiles are a big thing in anime combat, and resolving them without taking an age is a big headache. What happens when a Giant sized monster swats a Human sized guy? Does it only hit him in the leg, or do such attacks get to hit multiple locations? What about a flamethrower or acid spray? What about a Kaiju standing on a Magical Girl? It seems like there should be at least some chance the target survives, but working that out sounds awkward in an entirely locational system.

I get the appeal of locational damage, the first Wargame I ever played was GW's 6mm Space Marine game and I have a sizeable Battletech collection. I just think either saving it for the bigger monsters or using a system with a similar end result but less granularity on the front end will avoid a whole lot of problems trying to integrate it across multiple creature types and scales.
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Post by Username17 »

I have no doubt that there will be a sidebar on adding appendages to things to make new hit location charts. However, even if the Nightgaunts just simply conform to those guidelines, we'd want to include them as samples if Nightgaunts appear in the basic book as a sample Yaoguai (which I assume they would, because they have name recognition and are indisputably public domain).

We also want whatever we call the Dark Young hit location table. Probably going to want a hit location table for cars and tanks.

Going by RadiantPhoenix's sample, it looks to me like we could get about 9 to a page including the numbers for the six arcs of fire. That means that we could probably have the vehicle charts on the same page as the critter charts, but if we need to have a separate vehicle chart page, that is not the end of the world.

Character advancement of heroic tier characters would be selected rather than rolled. You always get to decide what your magical girl is studying.

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Post by Grek »

@Rob: Dark Young, Lloigor and a variety of military vehicles are definitely in. Hunting Horrors are on the maybe list. Yog Sothoth and Shub Niggurath are not things that you can realistically fight and don't get stated up.

Damage comes in five meaningful varieties:
  • Standard: This is the base mechanic for damage. One attack roll, one hit location roll, one soak roll. Base damage is reduced by soak and a static armour value based on hit location.
  • Shrapnel: Lots of projectiles in the air, coming from a single source. Lots of people may get hit. One attack roll, one hit location roll per person hit and one soak roll per person hit. Facing differs from person to person.
  • Environmental: There's ambient bad stuff that a character touches. No attack roll, one hit location roll and one soak roll. Facing depends on the specific hazard - pools of acid are always from Below, while napalm is always from Above.
  • Concussive: A large, uniform force big enough to hit every part of a victim does so. No hit location roll, one soak roll. Attack roll is replaced with a Dodge roll; success on it lets you move and take no damage. Failure means that every hit location takes damage in all your hit locations. Large creatures inflict this on much smaller creatures.
  • Precision: A small, precise force strikes a victim in a specific area. Called shots and fighter planes shooting King Kong's face. One attack roll, one soak roll. Attacker chooses their hit location instead of rolling for it. Small creatures inflict this on much larger creatures and opponents of the same size can inflict this sort of damage by taking a special aim action.
Grenades, bombs, and most explosions do Shrapnel damage. Pools of acid, fires, napalm, falling debris (unless it is exceptionally large), razor wire and electric fences do Environmental damage. Being hit by a bus or stepped on by a Kaiju as a human-sized creature is Concussive - the ability to survive it as a Magical Girl is based on having much more armour than a standard human, rather than any fundamental difference in mechanics. Depending on how realistic we want to be, flame throwers will either do Standard damage (they actually have a rather small cone of fire) or Concussive. Machine guns do Standard on burst fire mode and Concussive on full auto. Both flame throwers and automatic weaponry have the option of walking the weapon across an area on full auto instead, in which case their damage type is switched to Shrapnel and hits everyone in an arc. Being personally struck by a missile is a Standard attack with some large damage value - most humans will not survive the impact. Their explosion can be any type of damage at all, depending on the payload.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

I presume those five vectors of damage are supposed to be a separate classification the five elements? (Red, Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow)

i.e., you can do "Standard Red damage" or "Concussive Blue damage"
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Post by Grek »

I see no reason why you'd want to have "Red damage" be a thing. But you could have Standard Fire damage or something, and I'm willing to be convinced about the Red damage thing.
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Post by Lokathor »

Each of the five magics are doing something based on physical principles, and the results end up affecting targets that exist in standard space. The fact that you probabilistically altered a bullet's temporal location into someone compared to performing a spacial angular adjustment to get it inside of them is unimportant compared to having a bullet in them from shooing normal style in terms of the damage it will cause.

However, it is conceivable that there might exist an effect which gives bonus armor against only a certain type of attack form, such as Red/Angular enemies having extra protection against Red attacks. I don't think it would help the game too much though, on top of already having possible energy types for damage and hit locations and all that. It might be better to not include such a thing simply because you don't want complexity to get too high.
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Post by Lokathor »

Hate to double post but it's not even on the first page any more, and this is a slow forum.

So I went through the topic and collected up a lot of what has been said about setting and mechanics. Now this isn't anything new, it's just all the relevant stuff from earlier in the topic compiled into big globs, since the topic has been going quite a while now folks might care to skim over things again.

I've also made a beginning on getting things together in terms of a PDF and put it up on Github. Right now it's just got some draft chapters that Frank had segments of. Doesn't really contain any special formatting at all, but folks may care to have a look at it.

So one thing that we should talk some about is mundane technology. Archanotech is pretty well outlined, but what about other technology? What are the sorts of future improvements that the world has that changes the face of life and the face of warfare. Particularly in the realms of
  • Computer Science / Information Technology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Biology / Medicine
  • Material Science
  • Nanotechnology?
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Post by Username17 »

Yeah, I put up a bit over ten thousand words, which makes things about 5% done. Woot. More seriously, I think it's more than 5% done because most of the concepts are up. Next bit I want to work on is the spell lists for the Summoners and Witches, and the spell lists for the cultist level ritualists.

People pretty clearly wanted Arkham style spell names when we polled, so spells will be named things like Cloud Memory and Mists of Releh.

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Post by DrPraetor »

*Bump* Is this still on?
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Post by Username17 »

DrPraetor wrote:*Bump* Is this still on?
Yes. It has permission for licensed material and everything.

If hyzmarca doesn't do it, I'll put together a master timeline shortly.

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Post by hyzmarca »

I've been preoccupied with getting my finances straight after my father's death and the simple matters of not getting kicked out of my home and not starving to death after losing 90% of my income as a result. I haven't really had time to deal with this, but I certainly intend to.

Not too sure about a master timeline, yet.
There is a lot of stuff that I presented that, in hindsight, I'd like to change. And there's some stuff that I'd like to cull in the name of simplicity.

And I'm pretty sure there's some flavor issues that Frank and I disagree on, but we haven't really discussed that.
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Post by DrPraetor »

Okay, I've got the story vignette with the cannibalistic cat-girl prostitute; I'll just put it in ultra-low-contrast grey text on a background with faux blood-splatters, and we can bulk the page count out to 350 by Monday.

More seriously, the core conceit of sailor moon fights Shoggoths in a killer robot seems to be about mature enough to test.

Myself, I'm still unclear on what the Union is supposed to be like, and whether there are humans hostile to both the Union and to the aliens or not. I suppose that will be settled in your future history / timeline?
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Post by hyzmarca »

DrPraetor wrote: Myself, I'm still unclear on what the Union is supposed to be like, and whether there are humans hostile to both the Union and to the aliens or not. I suppose that will be settled in your future history / timeline?
I'm pretty sure that the current concept is that the Union is basically like the EU but with a lot more guns. It's a supranational defense union. It's not meant to replace sovereign nations so much as to be as it is to be above them regarding not being eaten by Cthulhu and other areas of mutual defense.

The basic inspiration would be fictional depictions of the UN and Interpol. (You know, the ones where Interpol agents break down doors and shoot people).

The key aspect we're going for is diversity of body law and culture throughout the Union. So that your internal men of mystery and Sailor Scouts and go to Bejing and it feels like Bejing, Paris that feels like Paris, and London that Feels like London, and so on.

The Union started out as a military alliance between the remains of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and whomever else wanted to join up.


The idea is that we do have humans hostile to the Union, yes. That's one of the things that I'm sure we should run with.

The idea is to have both hostile nations that are politically opposed to the Union (IE, they have the same priorities by El Presidente for Life doesn't want to be a member for reasons) and those that are ideologically opposed (IE, they think that mythos tech and races are impure and should be purged).
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Post by Lokathor »

Two partial timelines have been posted which mostly agree with each other.
1927 - The US Federal Government discovers Deep Ones and hybrids living in the Innsmouth, Massachusetts. They arrest the entire population of the small port town and attempt to cover it up. This attempt fails miserably when pictures of the interred Deep Ones make it into a newspaper. After five years of highly sensational litigation, the population of Innsmouth is released. Most fade into obscurity or return to the Ocean.

September 1937 - France, Britain, and Canada enter World War II.

October 1937 - Several thousand Deep Ones rise up upon the shores of Newfoundland. They immediately march upon the nearest recruiting station and enlist in the Canadian Forces. While Y'ha-nthlei remains officially neutral, over 30,000 Deep Ones serve in the militaries of various Allied powers.

1945 - George Marsh, a Hybrid born in Innsmouth, received the Medal of Honor for valorous service above and beyond the call of duty on the island of Iwo-Jima. He goes on to write a bestselling autobiography detailing his childhood experiences in the interment camps as well as his actions in the Pacific Theater. It's made into a popular motion picture which is eventually remade twice.

November 1963 - Fearing potential nuclear war, Soviet Remote Viewers warn the American Secret Service of an assassination plan by a Communist Sympathizer named Oswald. Oswald is arrested and convicted with little fanfare and spends the next twenty years in prison, where he becomes a Born Again Christian. By the 1990s he's a popular televangelist with a weekly show on CBN.

1967 - The Supreme Court decides Loving v. Virginia, striking down Virginia's anti-miscegenation law and affirming a universal right to marriage.

April 1968 - Outspoken Civil Rights Activist Tlka'nipri is shot by James Earl Ray. He dies of his wounds three days later. Martin Luthor King, Jr. is also hit in the attack, but eventually makes a full recovery.

July 1969 - Apollo 11 Lands on the moon. Neil Armstrong steps out of the lander first and says the immortal unforgettable words, "What the fuck is that thing?" The Moon Beasts feel that the Apolo landing is a violation of their sovereign territory and declare war upon the Earth.

1970-1984: The Earth-Moon War.
The conflict starts off slowly since the Moon Beast space-launch capabilities aren't much better than Earth's. Indeed, Earth pretty much ignores the whole thing for a while. America attempts to negotiate the release of the Astronauts, but no one takes the threat seriously.
On the Moon Beast side of things, the Beasts and their allies, the Men of Leng, staged a major offensive in the Dreamlands, overrunning several Ghoul strongholds and obtaining access to several physical pathways between Earth and the Dreamlands, allowing them to stage assaults on Earth without traveling through intervening space.

Earth's defenders were not prepared to fight an enemy that could move troops through the land of dreams, and several world capitols fell in the initial blitzkrieg, which the Moon Beasts had designed as a decapitation attack. In just a few short weeks Lunar forces controlled DC, Moscow, London, Paris and, Beijing. Able to attack anywhere in the world with little warning, there was no effective defense against them.

Fortunately, though the Dreamland gave the Lunar forces an unmatchable mobility advantage, it was not sufficient to counter Earth's tremendous population and industrial output. Even the use of the Moon-beasts's small nuclear arsenal against major manufacturing centers was insufficient to blunt human industrial output.

A failed assault on Y'ha-nthlei is universally regarded as the worst strategic blunder in the history of interstellar warfare. It brings Dagon himself into the conflict on the side of the Allies. Meanwhile, Ghouls displaced from their dreamland homes by the Lunar army seek refuge amongst the UN forces and teach them how to shift physical matter to the Dreamlands and back again.

In the end the Moon-beast forces are driven back by the might of human industry and are forced to surrender in the face of nuclear annihilation.

A new, permanent, American-Soviet military alliance establishes bases in the Dreamlands and on the Moon.

1992 - Phizer patents Re-Agent, a drug capable of restoring life to dead tissue.

2X97 - The Present.

-----

1927: Deep Ones discovered in Innsmouth, Massachusetts and become public knowledge after the escape of one of the citizens from the interment camps.
1930: Y'ha-nthlei joins the League of Nations and by 1932 successfully petitions the US government to release the population of Innsmouth.
1937: France, Britain, and Canada enter World War II. Y'ha-nthlei remains neutral along with the US, but 30000 Deep Ones enter into the Canadian and French military forces.
1941: R'lyeh joins the Axis Powers along with Italy, Germany and Japan. Successful joint Japan-R'lyeh invasions of China, Australia, Thailand and Malaya are launched.
1945: George Marsh receives the Medal of Honor. Feature film is made detailing his life. Atomic bombing of Japan occurs.
1952: Major earthquakes felt throughout the United States. Not recognized as early Cthonian weapons testing until mid 1970s.
1963: Soviet Remote Viewers warn the American Secret Service of an assassination plan by a Communist Sympathizer named Oswald.
1967: The Supreme Court decides Loving v. Virginia, striking down Virginia's anti-miscegenation law and affirming a universal right to marriage.
1968: Civil Rights activists Tlka'nipri and Martin Luther King, Jr. are shot by James Earl Ray, with the former dying of his wounds.
1969: Apollo 11 Lands on the moon. Neil Armstrong makes first contact with the Moon Beasts.
1970: First nuclear attacks by Moon Beast forces arrive through the Dreamlands. DC, Moscow, London, Paris and, Beijing, etc, are all hit or captured by Lunar forces.
1971: Soviet forces attempt spavce invasion of the Moon. Landing attempts shot down by Lunar missile defense program.
1972: Edgar Cayce, employed by the US Army, descends the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber in hopes of locating a physical entrance into the Dreamlands.
1973: Physical entrance to the Dreamlands located in Nigeria. First United Nations expeditionary force into the Dreamlands is launched, successfully establishing the first Earth beachhead into the Dreamlands. Secondary bases are soon established in Kansas, Siberia, Brazil and beneath the North Sea.
1975: As the Earth-Moon War continues to rage on, Ghoul refugees from the Dreamlands apply for asylum from major earth governments.
1980: Failed invasion of Y'ha-nthlei by the Moon Beasts through the Dreamlands brings Y'ha-nthlei into the conflict.
1983: Operation Moonhammer is launched by the United Nations in December, marking the first Mecha-scale conflict by Earth forces. Dagon rises from the Pacific and flies to the Moon armed with state of the art nuclear weaponry.
1984: Unconditional surrender of last remaining Lunar forces after the atomic bombing of Tycho crater.
1988: Cthonian Earthshaker located in South America and fought using prototype "Gunboy" mecha. Battle is wildly successful.
1992: Phizer patents Re-Agent, a drug capable of restoring life to dead tissue.Cthonian War continues to heat up.
1994: Gunboy MkI mecha goes into full production.
1996: Victory in the First Cthonian War declared by the United Nations after two years of no apparent attacks by Cthon.
2000: Turn of the century sees the arrival of the first Goat Spawn on Earth. After discovering that the Moon Beasts have been defeated, the Goat Spawn announce their presence to the UN and reveal the existence of Shub Niggurath.

2001 to 2031: I have no idea what happens during this period. Maybe this is a good time for Cthulhu to show up. If a third type of mecha needs introduced, this would also be a good time for that.

2032: First Mi Go scouts arrive on Yuggoth using Borean Gate technology. Landings are made in the Arctic using Mi Go spacecraft.
2034: Shudde M'ell awakened by Ithaqua's arrival on Yuggoth, heralding the begining of the Second Cthonian War.
2035: Earth slowly losing the Second Cthonian War as Gunboy mecha prove unable to successfully combat Ithaqua.


2036: Elder Things discovered beneath the Antarctic and revived using a combination of Ghoul science and more advanced versions of the Re-Agent formula.
2038: Ubbo-Sathla captured in Greenland by Union forces along with tablets describing eldritch knowledge.
2040: First prototype of the shoggoth-based "Throne" mecha completed with Elder Thing cooperation. Significant advances made on the Borean Front as a result.
2045: Second Cthonian War ends.
2056: First Youma sightings made in Japan. Affliction is determined to be due to "Black Goat Energy"
2057: Youma agents opens a gate to the Abyss, allowing the second wave of Goat Spawn to begin arriving.
2060: After four years of unsuccessful attempts, the first Youmafication patient to be successfully treated is declared clean of BGE after the Mahou Shoujo Program defeats and captures her.
2065: Earliest members of the Mahou Shoujo Program begin suffering from "Magical Girl Shock Syndrome", resulting in a restructuring of the program toward the current Mentor-Protege relationship.
2076: Last of the second wave of Goat Spawn finally defeated, leading to a generation long respite while Shub Niggurath prepares a new generation of Dark Young.

2077 to 2096: Again, room for stuff to happen here. If Randolf Carter III is doing something, now is a great time.

2097: Today. Third wave of Goat Spawn and Dark Young are expected to arrive any year now, Cthonian sightings are on the increase and the Mi Go are preparing for a second invasion.
I think that most of those concepts are pretty solid. We also want to have a lot of the timeline filled in even if the "welcome to the 6th world" type chapter at the front doesn't cover every detail right away. Things seem a lot more real if you can make references and allusions to events that you only fully describe later. It's the rpg setting version of foreshadowing. Plus it can make for good plot hooks and inspiration for the GM.

The major sticking point that wasn't quite resolved was exactly how much the water level rises compared to today, and what effect that really happens on the geo-political landscape when combined with the Moon Beast Sneak Attack (which should probably get a cool name to remember it by, like Hydra Strike or something). There's going to be major cities somewhere (even though a lot of stuff is as decentralized as possible to make quick elimination as hard as possible), and where exactly those cities are and what they look like was never really picked out. Frank has written stuff on the 12 Wards, and each Ward should probably have at least one location described enough to use in game (like After Sundown's "___ by night" segments) as well as having a tourist guide type of mention of other places or features within the ward. That all could become very long, but I think that in a game where the setting is very strange it's entirely justified to spend a lot of efforts on working out what that weird thing looks like.
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Post by DSMatticus »

It pains me to admit this, but other than a handful of the big names my grasp on the Cthulhu mythos is really bad. Other than voraciously consuming a bunch of the source material, what's some recommended reading to familiarize myself with the needed horrors and start having loud, angry opinions on aspects of this thread?
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Post by DrPraetor »

Okay, how's this for a vignette? The dialogue needs work:
Esau loved to watch his aunties eat. They consumed food with both economy and sensual grace, and without recourse to the crude orifices or mastication of a bipedal worm. Each of Aunt Pusidaapzen's minor tentacles had an absorptive surface, exposed when she relaxed her pericarp, that would both secrete and reabsorb digestive enzymes, and through which she tasted his cooking. She held a half-melted masala-coated sauteed parsnip in each minor tentacle. Ordinarily, while she ate her pericarps would curl underneath her food, to prevent spillage. However, the protective organs were not entirely under voluntary control, and they twitched and fluttered, which Esau instictively interpreted as a sign of distress.

Pusidaapzen talked by rubbing one or another of her many cuticles together; she had no trouble talking and eating at the same time, but ordinarily avoiding doing so around humans. This was another sign of her anger and anxiety.

"How do they say we hate humanity?", she sang and whistled, like a choir of crickets and dragonflies taught to speak in a human voice. "Because you are the heirs of our civilization, and we acknowledge it? Because we not only wish the best for you, but work to bring it about?"

Esau was sensitive to her subtleties, and heard the notes of fear beneath the outrage. "Finish your dinner, auntie, I did not mean to upset you. Because they cannot put forth a rational argument for their antipathy, they whisper it behind your back and marshal their venom in the shadows. They have a reactionary view of the human psyche, and change is abhorrent to them. That is the truth of it, whatever they say in public."

Her pericalps shivered in unison, like the trailing fringe of five many-colored shawls, damp with iridescent fluids. She extended a major tentacle and ruffled Esau's hair. "You were right to tell me, and I will hold my anger and counsel you. The truth is to be confronted squarely, if we leave you any legacy let it be intellectual integrity. These are men and women of education, of power and influence. Swallow the bitter pill of falsehood and mollify them. You see that I am afraid? I wear my dorsal tubes on my sleeves, but you must be subtle. They may despise us, but their reactionary envy makes them hate you, whose birthright is the stars."

"I must be honest, also." Esau said. "If I had the intellectual reserves to reassure them, I would have."

Pusidaapzen hissed and whistled in thought. "Another treatment, so soon? Are you sure you are prepared?"

The treatments expanded Esau's mental faculties so that he could appreciate - increasingly, mimic - the cultural and scientific achievements of the ancients. Each treatment was exquisitely painful, physical recovery took months, and in the aftermath Esau was increasingly repulsed by the callow banality of the so-called human condition.

"Survival is a moral imperative. I endure what I must." He said.
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Post by DrPraetor »

Her tentacles look sort of like peeled bananas when the pericalps are relaxed; I need to work that in, somehow.
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RadiantPhoenix
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Location: Trudging up the Hill

Post by RadiantPhoenix »

Some parts of town may look slightly...

Image

... different.
Artless
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Post by Artless »

DSMatticus wrote:It pains me to admit this, but other than a handful of the big names my grasp on the Cthulhu mythos is really bad. Other than voraciously consuming a bunch of the source material, what's some recommended reading to familiarize myself with the needed horrors and start having loud, angry opinions on aspects of this thread?
I'll defer to AncientHistory's scholastic expertise for the most representative of titles in the "canon," but At the Mountains of Madness is the most often referenced work behind Call of Cthulhu itself near as I can tell, and the story most people I know found as the entry point to the world. The other novellas are good starting points, I guess. Although I don't find Lovecraft's work the strongest stuff to use the Mythos, I can't readily recall something to recommend as a way to get acquainted with it. Also, I don't think many others are public domain.

There are a handful of stories like Color Out of Space or The Hounds of Tindalos that basically just present one of the various fauna people in the universe could encounter, if you're looking for stuff like that I would say to find an anthology and pick a story at random.
Last edited by Artless on Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DrPraetor
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Post by DrPraetor »

If you click on the monsters:
http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Cthulhu_Mythos

It tells you the stories in which they appear, and you can read them for free online ( http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lo ... horror.htm
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lo ... hhouse.htm
<- I would actually start with these two.)

The Color out of Space is my favorite; but it's short on the weird science angle which looks to feature prominently in this particular game.
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name_here
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Post by name_here »

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is mandatory, because this game has player character Deep Ones and it's the Deep Ones big story.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
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Dean
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Post by Dean »

DSMatticus wrote:It pains me to admit this, but other than a handful of the big names my grasp on the Cthulhu mythos is really bad. Other than voraciously consuming a bunch of the source material, what's some recommended reading to familiarize myself with the needed horrors and start having loud, angry opinions on aspects of this thread?
If I were to list 5 Lovecraft stories that would most effectively trigger a lifelong admiration for his work it would be, in order:

1: The Shadow over Innsmouth
2: The Shadow out of Time
3: The Color out of Space
4: The Rats in the Walls OR Dagon, some short one with great ambiance
5: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

In just the length of one regular book you would have read 5 amazing stories and met some of his most high profile monsters.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

Here's my own personal Greatest Hits:

-Whisperer in Darkness

-Call of Cthulhu

-Mountains of Madness has some setting implications for Sentai Fhtagn. And it's like the only thing ever to actually lay out what a shoggoth is.

-Second Shadow over Innsmouth.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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