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moths posted:
You can do it digitally, provided that you have the know-how and the willingness to, but once again having to actually complete and sign and NDA will do a fantastic job of weeding out angry grogs. You know, since odds are they don't have any friends who would willingly let them sign such a document. In all seriousness though, it just means they'll get people who want to playtest and have already organized a group. Which means they just might be who they need to playtest the game.
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Sep 5, 2012 15:01
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Guildencrantz posted:I'm interested in using one of these systems to run a non-Cthulhu horror game that shares some themes with the mythos. The premise is that the PC's are an X-files-esque task force in 1970's Poland, tasked with combating and concealing the supernatural, while navigating the bumbling communist bureaucracy and dealing with the issue of working for a thoroughly reprehensible institution that's mostly a tool of oppression. Cue horrific world-shattering discoveries and so on. I think any of the GUMSHOE games would work well, but which you use is dependent on the PCs. Trail of Cthulu PCs are 1930s investigators. Esoterrorists PCs are a modern X-files-type task force (but note they are working on Esoterrorists 2.0 and wanted to have it done by the end of this year). Night's Black Agents PCs are working against conspiracies infiltrated by vampires Fear Itself PCs are more "normal people" who may not actually survive long. I don't own Esoterrorists, but to me either that or Trail of Cthulu (which I do own) sounds great. The former is too modern and would need to be scaled back to 1970s, the latter too long ago and would need updating. Trail of Cthulu has FAR more material available, though, and at least one adventure is set in the 1950s.
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Sep 5, 2012 16:49
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homullus posted:I think any of the GUMSHOE games would work well, but which you use is dependent on the PCs. Thanks a ton! I'll probably go with Trail, then. I think it'll be MUCH easier to update to a different part of the industrial age than scale back from the information age, since that changed investigation tools so radically (computers, cell phones etc). This way I'll just have to fiddle with the professions and equipment, and the players will probably like it better if I replace/add stuff to the book rather than cut stuff out of the book, which would feel like they're being hamstrung. Plus, I really need a good insanity system, since I really want to explore that idea here.
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Sep 5, 2012 18:35
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Are they planning to update Delta Green's setting at all? As written, it doesn't really make sense in a post 9/11 context without some handwaving - which is fine, but I suspect the DG authors are better at it than the average grog.
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Sep 6, 2012 09:50
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I'm sure you can update the feel of it, and it's pretty necessary to do so. Switch over from a very 90s 'big government conspiracies run everything, are bringing black helicopters to unwittingly feed you to Mi-Go/yet another avatar of Nyarlathotep' style to one more about dingy amoral bureaucrats who know exactly what they're doing and don't care. Extraordinary rendition, private security companies, and growing international tensions offer a pretty fertile ground to work with, imo, so long as they don't go for a lazy 'map the war on terror onto space aliens' approach. From rumours I heard, they were updating the plot to have Delta Green as the victors in their struggle with MJ 12 or something, so having their very dodgy networks crudely grafted onto government power sounds like it could be good. I think the one thing that they really do need to do is flesh out what some of the other country's agencies are doing, given the increasingly questionable US hegemony today - Delta Green had 'lol magic mounties' and 'the entire UK paranormal division is overrun by trepanning brain wasps', but the main show was still very much American. I'd like to see how they could integrate a more international feel into it, while keeping the distinct DG feel.
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Sep 6, 2012 11:07
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WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:I'm sure you can update the feel of it, and it's pretty necessary to do so. Switch over from a very 90s 'big government conspiracies run everything, are bringing black helicopters to unwittingly feed you to Mi-Go/yet another avatar of Nyarlathotep' style to one more about dingy amoral bureaucrats who know exactly what they're doing and don't care. Extraordinary rendition, private security companies, and growing international tensions offer a pretty fertile ground to work with, imo, so long as they don't go for a lazy 'map the war on terror onto space aliens' approach. From rumours I heard, they were updating the plot to have Delta Green as the victors in their struggle with MJ 12 or something, so having their very dodgy networks crudely grafted onto government power sounds like it could be good. They talk about all that stuff in the latest Unspeakable podcast. From what I got, the new edition will still be firmly US based, DG kinda wins, and the governments now know and want to harness the Mythos.
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Sep 20, 2012 11:42
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Yawgmoth posted:I guess I'll start us off with a question: me and my friends love Arkham Horror, but we've gotten really good at it and thus the threat of the Ancient One awakening is less of a threat and more "bonus round for laughs after sealing 6 gates." Can someone make a recommendation for an expansion to get that would make things more challenging without just making things straight-up harder? All three of the large expansion board are basically "maintain me or bad things happen." The consensus seems to be that Innsmouth and Dunwich are good and Kingsport is not. I'm not sure how to challenge you without making things harder, though. With Dunwich, spawned monsters disappear into vortexes which eventually spawn the Dunwich Horror, kind of a mini-boss. If you let him live he'll add doom tokens. Innsmouth is pretty close to the same, you need to spend clues in locations to keep the Deep Ones track from filling up or the Ancient One spawns immediately. However, the Innsmouth board is generally harder and you can be jailed just for being on it at certain points in the game You can also get the expansions just for the herald varient, where you add additional effects that make things more difficult. (Though that's probably the opposite of what you're looking for). Also, the expansions have "Gate Burst" Mythos cards which, if they pop in the right location, can blow away your seals. Frankly, I find the best Arkham experience is just to throw it all together and let the randomness reign supreme. You're going to lose unfairly sometimes and you're going to win easily sometimes, but it's truly the journey that's important. When we play, we do it with the Innsmouth and Dunwich boards plus all of the small expansions. There's a lot of features from the expansions that I'd hate to miss, like Personal Stories or Injury/Madness cards that add extra choices in the game.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:25
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spamman5r posted:All three of the large expansion board are basically "maintain me or bad things happen." The consensus seems to be that Innsmouth and Dunwich are good and Kingsport is not. I'm not sure how to challenge you without making things harder, though. I've found Kingsport to always be the 'friendly' expansion. Its more about things that don't screw you quite as hard or even help you sometimes. For example, I think Kingsport was the expansion that introduced the guys that were basically anti-heralds (Bast, Hypnos and the other one). They aren't necessarily a huge advantage, but they can make the difference between victory and defeat in some cases. But I do agree that its the most uninteractive board just because I can't ever remember having a very compelling reason to go there (and my group usually only plays half blasted, so board gimmicks get thrown out of the window until dramatically (read: hilariously) appropriate).
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Sep 20, 2012 19:59
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JDCorley posted:Well, I don't know. It does emphasize the "pulp" end of pulp horror. Lovecraft's stories, for all the RPG nonsense that has built up around them, did have a bunch of slightly ill thought out action, and d20 does that pretty well. And the GM directions/advice section is actually pretty amazing, well beyond what Call of Cthulhu did for many years. The way people responded to the D20 version was strange. For my group, it was our first non-D&D game besides D20 Modern. But .. everyone really got into it, and while our first game ended up pretty silly, we had some great sessions. All of the characters were really distinct and interesting, if sometimes a bit pulp-y. In a follow-up game set in the Victorian period, we even had a few moments that seemed to actually unsettle the players. No one really seemed to miss the D&D spells and powers after a couple games - they did get very creative at applying dynamite and bits of garbage wired together with springs, however. I'm not saying that the D20 version is perfect, but we had a good time with it overall. The art and formatting for the book was cool - very evocative compared to the standard two column text of most D20 D&D books. And the chapter on DMing in there is still one of my favorites and one of the best I read until Apocalypse World. I eventually ran another CoC-themed game in the World of Darkness system and was actually more pleased with how it worked in D20. Speaking of systems, would a Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green game work well with the Apocalypse World hack Monster of the Week? Or is MotW too much like Buffy?
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Sep 25, 2012 18:12
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ack posted:They talk about all that stuff in the latest Unspeakable podcast. From what I got, the new edition will still be firmly US based, DG kinda wins, and the governments now know and want to harness the Mythos. "Project GABRIEL isn't a directed energy beam at all! It's a manifestation of the appalling power of Quachil Uttaus!" "....does it still work, though?"
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Sep 26, 2012 09:31
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Thanks for the tip-off on the Horror on the Orient Express Kickstarter, I'm terrible at actually finding stuff on that site and had no idea. 
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Sep 26, 2012 11:46
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I love Call of Cthulhu RPG, used to be a Delta Green GM. In France, Sans Detour editions has been reprinting old chaosium books at an insane rate for the last few years. It's pretty expensive and some titles are nothing more than a quick cash-in but on the other hand... This is the collector edition of the Mountains of Madness campaign translation they made. Yes, the wooden box is part of the package. If you can read French, I recommend http://www.tentacules.net/, the ultimate website for Call of Cthulhu RPG. GMing Tips, reviews, old photos... those guys have EVERYTHING you need for  .
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Sep 26, 2012 13:57
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And if you read Spanish, the guys at Edge are doing an awesome work with new editions of sixth and Masks of Nyarlathotep. On the pricy side, but, hey, they do look good.
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Sep 26, 2012 16:12
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ack posted:They talk about all that stuff in the latest Unspeakable podcast. From what I got, the new edition will still be firmly US based, DG kinda wins, and the governments now know and want to harness the Mythos. I'm really excited for it. DG was always my favorite setting in any RPG, and I'm very excited to see where they take it next.
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Sep 26, 2012 16:16
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If you haven't been watching, the tremulus Kickstarter has been blowing up quite a bit, and there's only about a day left. If they make the last goal, we get what looks like Ken Hite presents InnsmouthWorld. And that's something the world wants to happen. And the Horror on the Orient Express Kickstarter has  less than two hours left if you want to get, ahem, on-board.
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Oct 1, 2012 03:12
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I kinda hope that Blunt refuses to take a DG codename.
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Oct 1, 2012 04:29
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gently caress it, I'm upping my tier, everyone needs dice right?
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Oct 1, 2012 04:35
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Esoterrorists isn't Cthulhu- it's about a world where consensus reality means that magic isn't real, a group of wealthy psychopaths trying to tear down any concept of sanity or security so they can throw fireballs and live forever, and the players trying to stop them. Excellent game. D20 CoC has one thing going for it, and that's that John Tynes, whose worship is unaccountably not yet recognized by the IRS as a religion, wrote the setting stuff. Tynes' vision of the Mythos is excellent. Alone in the Dark 1 was the game with all the Mythos stuff- the others are about gangsters and pirates, if memory serves.
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Oct 1, 2012 06:23
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Pope Guilty posted:Esoterrorists isn't Cthulhu- it's about a world where consensus reality means that magic isn't real, a group of wealthy psychopaths trying to tear down any concept of sanity or security so they can throw fireballs and live forever, and the players trying to stop them. Excellent game.
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Oct 1, 2012 10:27
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Splicer posted:Given that the Consensus Reality part of oMage was my favourite thing about the game and I was always rooting for the Technocracy I'm suddenly much more interested in this RPG. Well, consensus reality says that there's no such thing as magic, right? Reality is safe, sane, stable. Thing is, the less stable the world is, the less sane and reliable people are willing to believe the world is. So the Esoterrorists are involved in any number of plots to start wars, cause crimes, and increase belief in the supernatural. The only legitimately supernatural thing that ever works in The Esoterrorists is summoning creatures from outside reality into ours, and even that almost never actually works- usually it's more like manufacturing a fake body of an alien or a monster, or strangling people to death in a way consistent with a local legend about a haunting and setting it up to suggest that the ghost did it. Or hell, maybe they'll sponsor terrorist attacks, or divisive religious fundamentalist preachers, or racist organizers, or media that promotes rape culture. Anything to make the average person's life and psychology less stable, less secure, and less certain. Why? Because if they can destroy people's belief in the fundamental stability of reality, terrorize the public's sense of security, and get everybody to believe in magic, the consensus will shift and they'll be able to do all the fun magical poo poo wizards in D&D can do. The only cost is that the masses of humanity will consist of insane, terrified, traumatized slaves to their Esoterrorist king-gods, but that's what the Esoterrorists want anyway: infinite power for them, life in a horror movie that never ends for everybody else. Esoterrorists scenarios have two major parts. In the first part, you figure out what the hell those goddamned Esoterrorist fucks are up to this time and put a stop to it. (It's basically never a legitimate paranormal phenomena because there's no such thing.) In the second part, the veil-out, you manufacture a cover-up to keep the masses from ever finding out what happened- because even the knowledge of what little the Esoterrorists do get up to would contribute to their cause. e: Oh, and Fear Itself is basically the world as it transitions from The Esoterrorists to the world that the Esoterrorists are trying to create. Horror is seeping into the world, and there's not a whole lot you can do but try to survive it. Also, if you're looking for some new and interesting monsters, The Book of Unremitting Horror is a book of critters and villains for this setting. Lots of cool stuff and worth a read on its own. Pope Guilty fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Oct 1, 2012 |
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Oct 1, 2012 11:23
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Pope Guilty posted:that's what the Esoterrorists want anyway: infinite power for them, life in a horror movie that never ends for everybody else. Also, want to play this now with Fox Mulder as an NPC and (unwittingly) one of the setting's greatest villains.
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Oct 1, 2012 12:00
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Oh man oh man. I think the Tremulus Kickstarter is actually going to make it to the Innsmouth level. Ohhhh maaaaaan. I cannot believe how much material they are making for this Kickstarter.
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Oct 1, 2012 16:10
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moths posted:If you haven't been watching, the tremulus Kickstarter has been blowing up quite a bit, and there's only about a day left. If they make the last goal, we get what looks like Ken Hite presents InnsmouthWorld. And that's something the world wants to happen. I playtested tremulus yesterday and both myself and my wife love it. The questionnaire approach to getting the players to determine what is actually happening in Ebon Eaves is a fantastic device to get games started with little to no preparation. The moves system flows smoothly back and forth between the Keeper and the player(s)and it works great in 1:1 play as well as in groups. I heartily recommend supporting the kickstarter. If you give at 20 dollar level now you get pdfs of the game and all the stretch goal awards (something like 2 new playsets and 30 new playbooks). If you like Apocalypse World / Dungeon World rules, or "story games" in general, and you love Cthulhu gaming, this is pretty great.
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Oct 1, 2012 19:26
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neongrey posted:gently caress it, I'm upping my tier, everyone needs dice right? Yeah, I went to $75. First time I ever went that high on a kickstarter.
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Oct 1, 2012 19:27
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Joining this thread after I backed both tremulus and Horror on the Orient Express and am getting ready to start a DG game with a new RPG group. Also figured I'd post this - if you have money to piss away on really cool poo poo, the Cthulhu playing cards kickstarter has some pretty nifty decks of cards to buy - but also has some very cool but super-expensive Cthulhu poker chips. If you've got several hundred dollars burning a hole in your pocket, then The Pot Is Right for you.
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Oct 1, 2012 21:24
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And tremulus succeeds at $62,723! Looks like we're headed into Innsmouth!
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Oct 2, 2012 07:12
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This can only be a good thing, Now I wonder when we will get the PDF's it says delivery October, but from their updates it looks like they are still messing around with formatting for the rulebook, and we have no idea how far along the spat books are. I'm expecting the rulebook/playbooks fairly soon, with the playsets coming over the next few months, which is fine by me.
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Oct 2, 2012 07:55
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Grey Hunter posted:This can only be a good thing, Now I wonder when we will get the PDF's it says delivery October, but from their updates it looks like they are still messing around with formatting for the rulebook, and we have no idea how far along the spat books are. I guess we'll get the Ebon Eaves playset and core playbooks first, and everything unlocked as stretch goals will have to wait until the end of the year. Let's hope for an update with info soon, I really want to give this a try.
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Oct 2, 2012 09:43
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ack posted:I guess we'll get the Ebon Eaves playset and core playbooks first, and everything unlocked as stretch goals will have to wait until the end of the year. Let's hope for an update with info soon, I really want to give this a try. I have access to the playtest edition and I cannot wait for the "pretty version" with the completely laid out playbooks. Also (having played in the authors excellent "escapees from an institution" game), I am really looking forward to the five "madmen" playbooks.
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Oct 2, 2012 22:45
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Just want to show some love for Cthulhu Dark. It's really nice because it lets you focus more on storycrafting and the social aspect, and you never have to stop to look something up in the book. I've been using it a lot lately for the games I DM, and one of my buddies has been using it for Sci-Fi/Horror games. It's pretty adaptable. discoukulele fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Oct 3, 2012 |
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Oct 3, 2012 00:13
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discoukulele posted:Just want to show some love for Cthulhu Dark. It's really nice because it lets you focus more on storycrafting and the social aspect, and you never have to stop to look something up in the book. I've been using it a lot lately for the games I DM, and one of my buddies has been using it for Sci-Fi/Horror games. It's pretty adaptable. In my experience, Cthulhu Dark becomes like a game of Paranoia but that may just be my group.
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Oct 3, 2012 04:57
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Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Grogthulu Rea'lly wgah'nagl fhtagn.  SO HYPED RIGHT NOW.
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Oct 3, 2012 05:23
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On the tremulus forums they've mentioned an initial release around the 15th which is pretty exciting, though I imagine the stretch goals will be a lot longer coming
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Oct 3, 2012 05:40
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aeonicals posted:On the tremulus forums they've mentioned an initial release around the 15th which is pretty exciting, though I imagine the stretch goals will be a lot longer coming Like, October 15th? I am really excited to try this out. I was planning on running a Call of C'thulhu game for my D&D group (none of us have played it before, but we all like horror, so it seemed like a great idea), but if tremulus is coming out that soon I may wait for that. Seems a bit simpler, and more story-driven, so that's a plus. Really wish I had found this thread when the Kickstarter was still going. Looks like I'll be paying full price for the game. BlackFrost fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Oct 9, 2012 |
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Oct 9, 2012 09:45
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Well, its the 15th onwards for the kickstarter pdfs. The latest update said they would be missing some images, so it looks like backers are getting the rules, then the finished product will be out after that. still good for us backers though!
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Oct 9, 2012 10:37
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I'm thinking of getting either the Laundry or Delta Green, but can't decide which, because they are quite similar. Would someone with more Cthulhu-RPG-experience give me the ups and downs of both?
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Oct 12, 2012 06:02
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Hiro Protagonist posted:I'm thinking of getting either the Laundry or Delta Green, but can't decide which, because they are quite similar. Would someone with more Cthulhu-RPG-experience give me the ups and downs of both? DG is serious bussiness, The Laundry is satire.
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Oct 12, 2012 06:39
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ack posted:DG is serious bussiness, The Laundry is satire. To expand a bit on this, they've also got slightly different focuses. I haven't played the Laundry much, but if it's anything like the books, it's much more about the Mythos side of the Cthulhu-RPG experience. Sure, there's a lot of fun stuff about the bureaucracy and budgeting, but I always felt that the threat was much more heavily rooted in weird space bugs/spirits, and the Laundry's failure/success in reacting to them. Delta Green, by contrast, has a really heavy emphasis on the 'old men, running the world'/human curiosity applied to the mythos angle. Sure, ancient alien horrors are a huge threat, but what's even more of a threat are the people who decide that they should be trafficking with them to gain geostrategic advantage. Is worse if they're corrupted or enslaved by fungi from yuggoth, or if they manage to get a pet Grey feeding them weapon schematics? What will they do with it? I particularly like that ambiguity, it adds new complications to what's otherwise often a fairly simple story. Also, I'm kinda a Delta Green partisan, but on the serious/satire angle, I always found that it's quite easy to turn Delta Green into a super campy/fun X-Files-esque romp and back again, whereas the satire is more heavily baked into the Laundry setting - I can't imagine playing a serious, grim session of the Laundry.
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Oct 12, 2012 09:56
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Pretty sure it's not been mentioned yet, but A Colder War should be required reading for anyone planning on running any Delta Green incarnation. Actually I'd honestly include this in the OP.
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Oct 12, 2012 10:57
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Also the DG guys are coming up with a new version "soon" so you might want to wait on that and see how they compare.
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Oct 12, 2012 12:23
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