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You know, is a weird undead creature like Fenalik immune to the Baleful Influence? Also, are the penalties that "owning" a piece brings just roleplaying penalties like pains and aches, or do they come with actual statistical deficiencies?
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Dec 25, 2017 00:50
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PurpleXVI posted:You know, is a weird undead creature like Fenalik immune to the Baleful Influence? Also, are the penalties that "owning" a piece brings just roleplaying penalties like pains and aches, or do they come with actual statistical deficiencies? He's absolutely not immune. He's learned that the hard way. The penalties are just roleplaying penalties, but if an investigator gets hurt in combat or the like it's gonna be on whatever part of them is affected by Baleful Influence.
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Dec 25, 2017 00:53
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I will admit I quite liked the detail of bad poo poo repeatedly happening to the LEGS of SOLDIERS as the players learn more about where the leg might be. It's a good bit of foreshadowing writing.
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Dec 25, 2017 01:53
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It's also why I think a savvy palyer would immediately suspect the soldier automaton without needing to roll or eliminate the others.
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Dec 25, 2017 02:09
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The automata going berserk is one of my favourite scenes for style.
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Dec 25, 2017 02:58
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Bieeardo posted:The automata going berserk is one of my favourite scenes for style. Venice is my favourite non-Dreamlands adventure so far. Romance, gondolas, clocktower shenanigans... what's not to love?
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Dec 25, 2017 03:37
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Right?!
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Dec 25, 2017 07:24
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Agreed! This is so good!
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Dec 25, 2017 07:35
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Also the chance to beat up fascists. That's good too.Falconier111 posted:
Just caught up on the thread. If this was in the shamanism section, isn't it probably someone using the shrink power?
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Dec 25, 2017 07:36
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Yeah, Venice is a strong contender for best scenario in the campaign. Personally I'm a big fan of Lausanne too, so I appreciate that Milan is book-ended by two really strong scenarios. COLD WIND BLOWING – PART 1 Our heroes dine with Herr Winckelmann, a personality with a long-term sense of obligation; he introduces them to a powerful contact, and hints toward the Right Leg. Background Hope you all had a holly jolly holiday! This is going to get kinda complicated so bear with me. If you have never heard of him (as was the case with me before reading Horrient), Johann Joachim Winckelmann was an influential art historian and archaeologist who is considered to be the founder of modern archaeology. In Horrient, his studies of ancient Hellenic societies led him to discovering the Mythos, which he studied in secret. He came into contact with a lloigor colony and was compelled by them to make a delivery of a magic medallion to the colony near Trieste. His murderer was a lloigor cultist who wanted the honour of delivering the item to his masters, but Winckelmann had hidden the medallion and it remains lost to this day. As a side-note, Darren Maclennan criticised the use of a comparatively obscure historical figure for a cheap thrill in his review. He also suggested that if your players don't know who Johann Winckelmann is, you should treat them like they've been living under a rock and talk him up like a 1700s Justin Bieber. If you're not familiar with the lloigor, they're kind of like Mythos dragons. They're invisible vortices of psychic energy who have the ability to drain magic from humans, as they did back in the good ol days when they used to have legions of human slaves. They have a 'unified' mind structure with no subconscious or capacity for imagination; this make them ultra-pessimists and contact with the lloigor mind can inflict suicidal depression. When they do need to take on a physical form, they go for big reptile monsters. The Trieste lloigor live in the Postumia cave network and are worshippers of Ithaqua the Wind Walker – the magic power they steal is used to amplify the effects of the bora, the vicious winter winds. Their cult is old and deeply entrenched in Trieste, with dozens of cultists throughout the area. The cult discovered the Right Leg of the Simulacrum and handed it straight over to their masters. The investigators will have to steal the Leg from a veritable dragon's den. Makryat traced the Right Leg and figured that the lloigor cult found it and it's probably rotting on the lloigor treasure pile. The investigators have been doing well so far, but Mehmet is worried that taking on a whole-rear end cult is probably more than they can handle. As such, he's dropped a line back to Constantinople saying that he's found the piece in Trieste. The Brotherhood of Skin have come to collect, though that means they're trespassing on the lloigor's turf. These aren't like Faccia's incompetents back in Milan, these are real Brothers of the Skin and they are absolutely not loving around. In addition, Winckelmann's ghost still haunts Trieste. He's been waiting for someone like the investigators to show up and complete the delivery of the medallion.  Baby It's Cold Outside As the investigators disembark, they get the first taste of the bora, which forces a Strength roll from them to resist being knocked clean off their feet. In addition, every night they sleep in Trieste they must resist getting their magic drained from them by the lloigor; they must roll POW or lose 1D6 MAG. Investigators who fail the roll have terrible dreams of giant monsters moving around in dark water or of a howling thing racing towards them at impossible speeds – this knocks off 1 SAN. Investigators who lose more magic points than they have make up the deficit as additional hours they spend sleeping every night. Local doctors are familiar with the symptoms and say it's an illness that comes up in these parts this time of the year, but they can't do anything to help. The investigators' lead from Professor Smith is to look up Johann Winckelmann. If an investigator is an archaeologist or can succeed on an Archaeology roll then they already know who he is. Other investigators will come up short in their inquiries until an amused city clerk recommends the Museo di Storia e d'Arte where Winckelmann's mausoleum stands. It's a literal dead end, but investigators will be intrigued by the frieze on the mausoleum wall. It depicts a group of humans making offerings to animal spirits, but the humans have been worn by time and appear to have disproportionate or missing limbs, while the animals spirits look like oriental dragons and could have been carved yesterday. Archaeology identifies it as early Roman, but there's no creatures like that in any Roman myths. Cthulhu Mythos brings to mind the lloigor and a dozen other serpent-like beasties – along with a SAN 0/1 for the suspicion that the artist was working from personal knowledge. Inside the mausoleum is Winckelmann's sarcophagus, atop which is a reclining figure holding a medallion with a man's head in profile.  Researching Winckelmann in the library – literally looking him up – is more fruitful. A full day's research turns out tonnes of information on the man, including the details of his murder for a collection of medallions he was carrying at the time. These medallions are on display in a velvet-lined box in the museum, a collection of seven that display Classical historical scenes. Spot Hidden lets investigators notice that wear on the velvet indicates there must have been eight medallions at some point. Consulting the curator reveals that the medallions were left to the museum by the Termona family, of whom Antonio Termona is a noted scholar who lives nearby. In the library, the investigators notice a man sitting in front of a book with his arms folded into his jacket. He reads the pages in front of him then waits for an attendant to come around and turn the pages for him. He reads and waits again. Investigators might also be inclined to check out the Locanda Grande where Winckelmann was killed. Library Use determines that it was knocked down and replaced with the Hotel Vanoli. As they approach the Vanoli, Spot Hidden lets them notice a pale face watching them from a window. If they ask hotel staff about that room, they will say it's unoccupied and has been for a long time.  There's a joke about tentacle porn somewhere here but i'm not the one to make it Antonio Termona is a bigwig in the lloigor cult. He's been charged by his masters to find the Winckelmann medallion and has totally screwed the pooch on it so far. As is what happens when you fail the lloigor, his left arm was amputated and replaced with a scary-rear end tentacle. He wears his sleeve pinned up and claims that it's a war injury, but suspicious investigators can Spot Hidden to notice there's something writhing under his shirt. His house is full of valuable-looking Mythos antiques that he fished out of the lloigor cave; all of them are covered in what looks like a strange glaze but is actually limestone secretions from stalactites. If the investigators can get past Termona's scary butler Marco (who had one of his eyes replaced with a tentacle and wears an eyepatch to hide it), Termona is quite friendly and welcoming to the investigators. His family holds Winckelmann's diary and personal papers and he's willing to share them with the team. The papers are in Latin and are nothing more than rough notes on his excavations. The diary is in an ancient Greek dialect and Termona claims to have never read it – a lie. He's willing to lend it to investigators and even recommend a translator who can help them. After they leave, Termona gets in contact with the cult and arranges for someone to tail the investigators. He hopes they will find the medallion so that he can steal it and present it to the lloigor himself. Next time: being this close to a gang war between rival cults! Down With People fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Dec 25, 2017 |
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Dec 25, 2017 13:00
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I think one of the things I appreciate about this campaign is that a lot of the more competent and intelligent villains are perfectly willing to let the protagonists succeed to some degree, to do the hard work, so they can pounce on them farther down the road. Rather than just attempting to murder them right away. EDIT: Does it say what Termona will do if the Investigators go: "OH MY GOD, YOU'VE GOT A TENTACLE" or otherwise do something stupid and/or hostile towards him? Because I can think of a lot of players who wouldn't just politely let it slide in the hope that they can still get access to the diary without getting stabbed in the back.
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Dec 25, 2017 14:04
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PurpleXVI posted:I think one of the things I appreciate about this campaign is that a lot of the more competent and intelligent villains are perfectly willing to let the protagonists succeed to some degree, to do the hard work, so they can pounce on them farther down the road. Rather than just attempting to murder them right away. Nope! I'm guessing it goes badly for the investigators, though. Termona's an extremely well-respected man and the investigators are a pack of (heavily-armed) rich tourists who just tried to shoot him because they thought he had a tentacle in his shirt. In Fascist Italy. If they non-violently confront him about it, I imagine he plays stupid and has Marco throw them out. poo poo happens. The diary isn't a super important clue anyway, but maybe you'll just have to improvise something when they come back with the balaclavas and crowbars to try and break into the joint. If Termona does die here, there's so many Lloigorites in the Trieste area that it doesn't affect things in the long run.
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Dec 25, 2017 14:19
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Also CoC isn't the kind of setting where the PCs are so obviously dangerous and loaded that the old 'let them take the risks then steal the macguffin' trick seems stupid. Like, over in D&D Country, you're talking the possibility of fighting a heavily armed group full of powerful magic. In CoC you'd be up against some rich tourists from out of town who no-one might miss and where only a couple of them know which end of the gun the bullets come out of.
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Dec 25, 2017 14:25
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Been updating my Sergeant Nerd blog again, inspired by some of the posts here. Latest topics have been the action economy and action points. It's pretty action packed, I'll tell ya.
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Dec 25, 2017 17:38
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Night10194 posted:Also CoC isn't the kind of setting where the PCs are so obviously dangerous and loaded that the old 'let them take the risks then steal the macguffin' trick seems stupid. Not to mention the baleful influences are really annoying and dangerous, so better to have some chumps suffering from them instead of you for as long as possible, ideally until you can swoop in to steal all of them at once.
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Dec 25, 2017 19:03
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Betrayal At House On The Hill, 10 Voodoo Trigger: Find a Mask on the Balcony, in the Catacombs, or in the Gallery or Junk Room. You don't do Cthulhu, but you do do voodoo. Sorry. Ok, so this is the first haunt for which this is really going to end up spoiling it. So if you think you might play this at some point in the future, you should probably skip reading this one. That said, it's not a particular good one. Like many of the iffy Haunts, It has a lot of really good creative ideas, but they don't translate into good gameplay. The traitor (who is Zoe Ingstrom by default because she likes dolls, thus fulfilling our Scary Little Girl quota) has quite a lot of setup to do when this starts. They can assign each remaining Hero one of five voodoo dolls; if there are less than five heroes, they can choose which dolls to use. In addition, each doll is in one of two dangerous locations which triggers a curse on the Hero it's associated with. The first is a Wax Doll, tossed into the Furnace Room or an oven in the Kitchen. The hero matched to it gets 1 point of physical damage per turn. The second is a China Doll, balanced on an open windowsill in the Balcony or Tower. The hero matched to it has to roll 4 dice every turn, and if the result is less than the turn number, the doll falls and shatters and the hero dies instantly. The third is a Stone Doll which has been dumped into mud in the Graveyard or Underground Lake. The hero matched to it has to make a Might roll every turn and, if the result is less than the turn number, lose a point from every trait. Yea, big ouch. This one's going to be a priority to use given that the traitor knows people's stats. The fourth is a Glass Doll placed between flickering candles in the Pentagram Chamber or Chapel. Apparently the candles make really spooky patterns on the glass or something. And apparently this drives the target mad, because they take 1 mental damage per turn. Whatever. The fifth is a Rag Doll tossed into a rose bush in the Gardens or Conservatory. It's like the Stone doll, except it's a Knowledge roll instead of a Might roll, and the penalty is 2 physical damage instead of 1 off each trait. That's all the rules for the traitor, though. They can't do anything else except run around attacking normally. What the Heroes are supposed to do is to work out which doll is theirs, and where it is. To do this, they're given some rather vague clues by the traitor which are printed in the traitor's guide. But they're kind of weird, honestly. For example, the clue for the Wax Doll is "Fire burns good and evil." Not only does nobody evil ever get burned, but apparently they're implying furnaces are evil? Huh. Once the heroes have figured out where they think a doll is, they get to make a Knowledge 2+ roll to have the traitor tell them if there's a doll in their room or not. Any hero who finds their own doll can destroy it; if they find someone else's, they can give that information to them to come destroy it. Oh, and the heroes are now no longer required to stop after uncovering a new room; they can dash as far as they like into the unknown, stopping only when they want to draw a card or search for a doll (or they run out of movement, of course). The traitor wants to kill at least half the heroes; the heroes want to destroy all the dolls. My main problem with this one is that it's really dependent on the prior knowledge the hero players have of what rooms there are in the deck and where they are. First timers given the fire clue might well think to look for the kitchen, but will they guess there's a furnace in the house? When they find it they'll perk up, but if an experienced group is playing, they can dash to the basement and explore as fast as they can until they find it. The Stone Doll's probably the worse for this, as there's no way a naive player would think there would be an underground lake in the house. Plus, as mentioned above, once you know the list of possible doll locations this haunt gets a heck of a lot easier. Oh, by the way, the flavor text of the Haunt when the heroes win actually tells them that destroying a voodoo doll of yourself is probably a really stupid thing to do. Pay the Piper Trigger: Find the Girl, Holy Symbol, or Ring in the Pentagram Chamber; or get Bitten there. Hey, what can we steal from the Pied Pier of Hamelyn? We already did the evil music thing back in The Dance of Death. So, um. Rats! The person to the left of the haunt revealer has just remembered that they're actually a wererat, and they want to perform an, um, "wicked rat-thing ritual" (that's the actual text in the Haunt). They spawn Rats equal to twice the number of players in any empty rooms with card symbols, spreading them as thinly as space will allow. Rats aren't too much of a problem - Speed 3 Might 2 Sanity 1, killed rather than stunned on attack - but they can team up with each other, adding their Might together for a single attack which can't damage them on failure. What the traitor wants to do is to go to the Pentagram Chamber and make Sanity 3+ rolls. If they make 4-5 rolls, depending on the number of players, they win. Each successful roll also spawns a rat in a room next to the Chamber. Once the traitor is in the Chamber, no-one else can enter or affect them. The heroes win if they can kill all the Rats in the house.. or presumably if they can kill the traitor before they get to the Pentagram Chamber, but the text doesn't mentioned that. There's no special rules at all for the heroes other than "watch out for groups of rats". A fairly basic Haunt, but could be OK. A big blob of rats meeting up together and attacking at Might 8 would be a rather bad thing, but the Ring is one of the triggering items and that allows Sanity attacks which could easily wear down the rats. The text and explanation really need to be better, mind you. Amok Flesh Trigger: Find the Crystal Ball in the Dining Room, Junk Room, or Master Bedroom. The Crystal Ball turns out to contain a sample of cloned flesh. And whichever person picked it up? Just dropped it. So now it's free. And it's growing, and growing, and - well, it's The Blob. Oh, and it was made by the person to the left of the haunt revealer, who really wants it to spread, and thought that leaving it in a crystal ball in an abandoned house and then leading some people there on the off-chance someone might break it would be a great way of ensuring this. The Blob starts in the room where the Crystal Ball was, and each turn expands to every other room that can be accessed from a room it's in. The traitor then rolls a dice, and on a 2, it expands again. Anyone in a room with the Blob, including the traitor, becomes a "Blob person" whose only function is to move around at speed 2 and drop bits of Blob wherever they end their turn, although those offshoots don't expand until the main Blob catches up with them. If everyone is dead or blobbed, then the traitors and blob-people win loud clanging sound followed by head hitting desk as everyone blobs themselves so that everyone wins oh hang on, it doesn't actually specifically say in the traitor's tome that the blob-people win too. But it does say that if a hero is turned into a blob-person, they should help the traitor, but not that they win by doing so. So who knows. The traitor doesn't get to find out what the heroes are trying to do, but it's quite involved. The Blob can't be attacked in the normal way. First, the heroes have to study the Blob by making Knowledge 3+ rolls in rooms adjacent to it (I should mention that it is legal to make a roll of this kind in the middle of movement, so the heroes aren't guaranteed to get themselves eaten by examining the Blob). After a number of rolls equal to the number of players, the heroes know what chemicals can hurt the Blob. They can go get them from one of 13 rooms with a Knowledge 3+ roll, one ingredient per room, then toss them into the blob from an adjacent room with no roll. Once the Blob has been hit with items equal to the number of players, it's destroyed, and the heroes win. So, it's ok, but leaves relatively few options for the heroes at any given moment, since regular combat items won't help against the Blob, and there's only one stat that's used for anything related to it - Knowledge. As commonly happens, the traitor themselves doesn't get a whole lot of special stuff to do, and their win text specifically describes all the heroes being absorbed into the blob rather than clubbed by the traitor character, so they probably forgot them again.
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Dec 25, 2017 21:06
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EVERYBODY AT HOUSE ON HILL BETRAY ME, I FED UP WITH THIS WIRLD!!!
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Dec 26, 2017 01:03
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AMOK FLESH 
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Dec 26, 2017 01:06
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I love how a lot of these betrayal motivations are on par with Tommy's ransacking freakout in The Room.
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Dec 26, 2017 01:31
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Down With People posted:Antonio Termona is a bigwig in the lloigor cult. He's been charged by his masters to find the Winckelmann medallion and has totally screwed the pooch on it so far. As is what happens when you fail the lloigor, his left arm was amputated and replaced with a scary-rear end tentacle. If I was a player in this campaign I would probably spend way too long trying to convince the keeper that he can't mean 'left arm' because we already have the left arm, and not being able to use one or more limbs is a clear sign that he has a piece of the simulacrum.
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Dec 26, 2017 05:12
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Obligatum VII posted:Not to mention the baleful influences are really annoying and dangerous, so better to have some chumps suffering from them instead of you for as long as possible, ideally until you can swoop in to steal all of them at once. I kind of want the players to turn this around and make someone else their baleful influence mule. Like, trick the blackshirt in the romance subplot that he can get the girl and real power in the party if he collects the leg.
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Dec 26, 2017 05:45
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COLD WIND BLOWING – PART 2 The Translator Termona's recommended translator is Marcius Montanelli, fellow cultist. He receives the investigators in his home office, where he sits in a wheelchair covered by a big blanket. This is because he too has earned the lloigor's ire and has lost a leg as a result – Hard Spot Hidden to see his tentacle twitching under there. He is a polyglot who mostly translates for businesses, but is looking forward to the new university semester as it gives him a chance to flex his Latin and Greek skills. Like Termona, Montanelli is already familiar with the diary. Alternatively, the investigators might choose to go to a separate translator instead, or even work on it themselves if one of them has Classical Greek in their repertoire. The diary is Winckelmann's chronicle of his studies into the Mythos, a lot of it detailing his interactions with the lloigor. Notably, the diary actually contains the workings for a Contact Lloigor spell. The investigators only find this out if they translate it themselves, though. Translation takes a day and a half and if handled by Montanelli or another translator results in a heavily bowdlerised copy with the really juicy Mythos details excised. A home-made translation makes the diary into a hefty grimoire that teaches Contact Lloigor, although actually studying it would take months. Whatever translation they go with, they'll learn Winckelmann had interactions with the 'Things' in Postumia.  I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me For the rest of the scenario, the investigators can enjoy being followed by loving half the population of Trieste. In addition to the more unsavoury but mundane elements of Trieste society looking to make a buck off them, the investigators have any and all of the following tailing them at any point in time, starting with: The Lloigor Cult: The Lloigorites (my term, patent pending) have appointed low-ranking culty Cesare Druni to track the team. This was a bad choice because Druni is very tall, very thin and has some anime-looking red hair with a single black lock in it. Spot Hidden picks him out right away, and if confronted Druni claims to want to practice his English but was basically too anxious to start a conversation. Sure, whatever. Later the investigators see him get bundled into a car by two Turks for his troubles. Next time they see his hair it's on a short fat dude. That brings us to… The Brotherhood of Skin: As mentioned, they are not loving around. Fahim Salleh and a small army of Brothers have been sent to find the Simulacrum piece. They have heavily modified themselves with skin magic, often possessing decentralised organ arrangements that let them walk away from otherwise lethal injuries. They are disguised as regular Turkish businessmen, which means very serious-looking men in suits and fezzes. This shouldn't bother (non-racist) investigators until they realise they just keep seeing these dudes everywhere, even loitering around outside their hotel rooms. The investigators might be of a mind to follow one of the Brothers, which if they're successful at leads them to a run-down pensione hotel by the docks that the cult is using as their hideout/people abattoir. Salleh and two other brothers (one with Druni's face) will be hiding here; they will try to kill the investigators with butcher tools as soon as they're discovered. If things go bad, Salleh feigns death; his Lego organs set-up will let him survive to fight another day. The Blackshirts: These loving guys. They're doing the thing that Blackshirts do, which means hassling foreigners and anyone else who catches their attention. Funnily enough, their omnipresence is the main thing stopping the rival cults from really throwing down with each other and settling this poo poo once and for all. Helmut Grossinger: AKA the weird dude from the library. Poor ol Grossinger is an object lesson in what happens when you gently caress with the Mythos cults. He was/is an investigator and a drat good one who was getting a little too close to the Lloigorites for their comfort. As such, they decided to totally ruin his loving life. Grossinger's hands and tongue have both been melted off with acid. His Sanity's not great but the man's trying his best and he soon sees the investigators as kindred spirits. If approached, he gives a totally incomprehensible warning to them. Winckelmann: After translating the diary, the investigators feel like they're being watched. If they turn around, they see a pale-faced stranger who disappears the next time they look. Now that they've got the diary, it's time to really turn this haunting up. Fenalik: Oh yeah and this loving guy is still around. It's kind of a shame that after Venice he's not super involved in this scenario. Total Party Kill suggested maybe having some atmospheric encounters with him, like the investigators are walking along when the bora splashes warm blood all over them. Otherwise, he's always down to clown if he thinks the investigators are in danger.  Thriller, Thriller Night The bora has torn down the power lines near the hotel the investigators are staying at and caused a blackout. The staff have given all guests a supply of candles and matches and are serving a candlelit dinner in the common dining room. If investigators attend, Winckelmann starts loving with them, doing things like making the table levitate off the ground or making them think their food is full of maggots. Aside from the table, all of the effects are largely only perceivable by the investigators, and they soon make fools of themselves in front of everyone. Things get worse after dinner. Termona trusted one investigator in particular with the diary; that investigator gets pushed up against a wall by an invisible force and hears the word 'tagebuch' whispered in their ear (German for 'diary'). They later find a bruise on their shoulder that bears a resemblance to the god Bacchus. For the rest of the night, the investigators suffer all kinds of poltergeist shenanigans. These escalate until they are literally thrown out of their bedrooms, costing them 1/1D6 SAN. The exception to this is the room with the diary. Whoever's in here is instead woken by the freezing cold. The fireplace burns with an eerie blue flame and frost gathers on the windows. Instead of ferns, the pattern it traces out a picture of Bacchus surrounded by his maenads. Suddenly, the fireplace goes back to normal and the frost melts to slush. The investigator will need to be treated for incipient hypothermia. If the investigators don't get right into researching Bacchus the next day, the hauntings come back, much more violently. Next time: medallion get!
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Dec 26, 2017 12:14
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If I were running this I'd turn Blackshirt Commander Dude from Venice into a running antagonist, or at least have him send word to his buddies in Trieste that these guys are to be squashed. Maybe make a point about why cults stay hidden by having one or two of the factions put together a hit squad but just get gunned down in the street Because gently caress You, We Rule This Country. Just for looking at the local patrol in a funny way. Has anyone else been keeping track of the OMINOUS FORESHADOWING back in dream-Lausanne? We've had the Milan scenario, which was probably the barbed-wire cage with the singing coming from it. We've had the clocktower automata, which crosses off the procession exactly (and is another giant clue that the soldier automaton contains the leg). Now we have the street with the icy winds as well. Have any of the others been crossed off yet?
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Dec 26, 2017 16:29
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I feel like the lloigor's chosen form of punishment is really questionable. It just makes their cultists even less likely to succeed any tasks in the future. Edit: This scenario becomes ten times more hilarious if the investigators somehow manage to spark of a 4-way brawl between the two cults, their vampire stalker, and the fascists. Also, the lloigor cult seems... really incompetent. Really, that's the guy you assigned to tail the group? Obligatum VII fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Dec 26, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2017 18:29
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The lloigor cult is also a bunch of idiots who worship a group of semi-imaginary dragons whose primary goal is 'have shiny things.'
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Dec 26, 2017 18:55
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The lloigor are kind of psychic/magic vampires that don't really have a physical form and exist in a different state, mentally and physically than humans. They most likely use their methods because they don't really understand how humans work, just how to compel them with maximum brutality. Lloigor essentially bully or compel people to serve them as well because they're ultimately just going to feed on them. Delta Green's take on them is that they are incredibly pessimistic because their mental state doesn't allow them to be anything but that. They still have self preservation instincts but their world view is just short of suicidal nihilism.
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Dec 26, 2017 19:15
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I love how there's all this weird-rear end mythos stuff the players have to deal with but there's also a dracula stalking them. Nothing with tentacles, just a dracula.
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Dec 26, 2017 20:00
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In Delta Green the Lloigor are also directly at war with the Great Race of Yith over the fate of earth. The Yithians want there to be a nice clean nuclear holocaust so by the time the sun is a red giant a race of giant beetles will have evolved and they will be the perfect hosts for them to inhabit. The Lloigor want there to be no nuclear holocaust....so that there will still be humans on Earth when Cthulhu arises and drives all of mankind insane. This is so a race of immortal sorcerers will invent an Asian empire thay will act as the last safe refuge of sane mankind in addition to being a despotic sadistic dystopia that oppresses the average human to an insane degree and only survives because they've made pacts with Hastur and Tsathoggua and the ruling class of nobles now share blood with those two Elder gods. They pretty much only want to do this because, well, it's a comfy environment they understand. And while the Yithians just like to snatch personalities and ride people, the Lloigor will generally just bully people into submission with their depression aura and repeatedly give them/remove their cancer whenever they feel like it. All things considered the Lloigor aren't great entities to be around or associated with.
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Dec 26, 2017 20:47
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Obligatum VII posted:Edit: This scenario becomes ten times more hilarious if the investigators somehow manage to spark of a 4-way brawl between the two cults, their vampire stalker, and the fascists. If I was running this, I'd pretty much have to stage the climax of this one like the battle scene at the end of 'You only live Twice'. Only substituting the party for Sean Connery, the two Cults for the Ninjas, and horrific skin magic and pyro/telekinetic mayhem for Guns and Swords.
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Dec 26, 2017 20:52
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Deptfordx posted:If I was running this, I'd pretty much have to stage the climax of this one like the battle scene at the end of 'You only live Twice'. Only substituting the party for Sean Connery, the two Cults for the Ninjas, and horrific skin magic and pyro/telekinetic mayhem for Guns and Swords. The party I was in made this happen (well we aimed the three groups we found out were following us at each other and blew up the building they all thought we were in). Fenalik sadly wasn't involved.
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Dec 26, 2017 22:57
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:The lloigor are kind of psychic/magic vampires that don't really have a physical form and exist in a different state, mentally and physically than humans. They most likely use their methods because they don't really understand how humans work, just how to compel them with maximum brutality. Lloigor essentially bully or compel people to serve them as well because they're ultimately just going to feed on them.
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Dec 27, 2017 00:04
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Loxbourne posted:Has anyone else been keeping track of the OMINOUS FORESHADOWING back in dream-Lausanne? We've had the Milan scenario, which was probably the barbed-wire cage with the singing coming from it. We've had the clocktower automata, which crosses off the procession exactly (and is another giant clue that the soldier automaton contains the leg). Now we have the street with the icy winds as well. These are all correct! The bit where the Lion gets wings and flies off is an additional bit of foreshadowing as the winged lion is a symbol of Venice. The street that lacks shadows and is strewn with garlic bulbs represents Fenalik. The other three haven't happened yet. Obligatum VII posted:I feel like the lloigor's chosen form of punishment is really questionable. It just makes their cultists even less likely to succeed any tasks in the future. To be fair to the lloigor, they can actually use those tentacles. You lose a leg, you get a cool prehensile limb that you can use to kill people. Just a shame it's not exactly socially acceptable. As for Druni, well, any large organisation is going to have trouble delegating tasks to people. wiegieman posted:I love how there's all this weird-rear end mythos stuff the players have to deal with but there's also a dracula stalking them. Nothing with tentacles, just a dracula. 
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Dec 27, 2017 00:58
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I'm not too familiar with the Mythos. Is there any way for the players to face down the vampire, or is that an utterly hopeless endeavour? I know my players, once they realized they were being stalked by a vampire, would go to... extreme lengths to take him out.
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Dec 27, 2017 03:15
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did GURPS ever make a sourcebook for Horror gaming, and/or specifically CoC-esque games? If so, did they ever make an analogue for Sanity mechanics? What was that like?
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Dec 27, 2017 03:25
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Any Mythos problem can be solved with sufficient firepower. The problem is 90% of the time in CoC or DG you're not playing people with access to that stuff. So yeah magic vampire stuff can be avoided with judicious applications of dynamite and firearms but you're playing dilettantes and investigators on a train, where the hell are you going to get that stuff? I remember hearing about a game set in WWI where you're Allied soldiers against the Mythos threats and the game spells out how heavy of a grade of explosive or how high a caliber of bullet you'll need to kill a god/annoy a god into leaving. There was an amusingly high amount of them that could be killed by the weight of nations pointing guns at them.
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Dec 27, 2017 03:28
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BinaryDoubts posted:I'm not too familiar with the Mythos. Is there any way for the players to face down the vampire, or is that an utterly hopeless endeavour? I know my players, once they realized they were being stalked by a vampire, would go to... extreme lengths to take him out. We'll get into all the ins and outs of taking down Fenalik when the time comes.  Suffice to say there's way and means, but Fenalik's powers mean a straight-up fight against him is almost impossible to win. In addition, Fenalik just doesn't want to fight the investigators at this point and his powers let him choose when and where a fight happens, so players would have to be extremely obsessive and on-the-ball if they wanted to take him down this early.
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Dec 27, 2017 03:28
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Hostile V posted:Any Mythos problem can be solved with sufficient firepower. The problem is 90% of the time in CoC or DG you're not playing people with access to that stuff. So yeah magic vampire stuff can be avoided with judicious applications of dynamite and firearms but you're playing dilettantes and investigators on a train, where the hell are you going to get that stuff? I remember hearing about a game set in WWI where you're Allied soldiers against the Mythos threats and the game spells out how heavy of a grade of explosive or how high a caliber of bullet you'll need to kill a god/annoy a god into leaving. There was an amusingly high amount of them that could be killed by the weight of nations pointing guns at them. I'd play a scenario during the Christmas Truce where both sides have to coordinate artillery strikes on some awful tentacled Thing From Beyond The Stars.
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Dec 27, 2017 03:32
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Obligatum VII posted:Edit: This scenario becomes ten times more hilarious if the investigators somehow manage to spark of a 4-way brawl between the two cults, their vampire stalker, and the fascists. If I was running this, there would absolutely be a point where a man in the back yells "Everyone attack!" BinaryDoubts posted:I'd play a scenario during the Christmas Truce where both sides have to coordinate artillery strikes on some awful tentacled Thing From Beyond The Stars. Arc Dream's Delta Green makes a big deal out of how the weapons of man are useless against the Mythos, but RAW Cthulhu can get blown back to R'lyeh with a Tomahawk to the face. Kavak fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Dec 27, 2017 |
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Dec 27, 2017 03:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:did GURPS ever make a sourcebook for Horror gaming, and/or specifically CoC-esque games? If so, did they ever make an analogue for Sanity mechanics? What was that like? GURPS has a "Fright Check" mechanic - when something scary happens, you roll some dice, apply some modifiers (+ how scary the thing is, - your levels of Strong Will, + if you have relevant phobia or Weak Will, etc.) and check on a chart, where the results can range from "nothing happens" to "stunned for a round" to "you run away screaming and pick up a 1-point quirk related to what scared you" to "you're catatonic for 1D6 months and you now have a severe phobia"
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Dec 27, 2017 03:35
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Hostile V posted:Any Mythos problem can be solved with sufficient firepower. The problem is 90% of the time in CoC or DG you're not playing people with access to that stuff. So yeah magic vampire stuff can be avoided with judicious applications of dynamite and firearms but you're playing dilettantes and investigators on a train, where the hell are you going to get that stuff? I remember hearing about a game set in WWI where you're Allied soldiers against the Mythos threats and the game spells out how heavy of a grade of explosive or how high a caliber of bullet you'll need to kill a god/annoy a god into leaving. There was an amusingly high amount of them that could be killed by the weight of nations pointing guns at them. That was Achtung Cthulhu!, a World War 2 Mythos game I actually ended up enjoying a readthrough of a lot more than I expected I would. I actually tallied up a list of the Elder Gods that could be categorically be solved with Enough Boom. For example, Dagon and Hydra are noted as actually only being immune to small arms fire, and any sort of military deployment will be able to chunk them into gore pretty easily - it's the fact that they don't really show up without 500 angry, gigantic fish people that causes issues. There's also a corruptive, terraforming fungus god thing that can be murdered with tactical deployment of (a poo poo ton of) household bleach, and a cloud bank that caused the Bermuda Triangle that can somehow be killed with artillery fire, presumably aimed straight up. Looking back at that chat log, 11 of 25 Elder Gods in the book about them are explicitly permanently killable via sufficiently thorough artillery barrages, and another handful are permanently killable in ways that don't involve explosions.
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Dec 27, 2017 03:44
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