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Wasn't it possible to make a joke-build in older CoC whose best move was 'I dive kick the mythos'? Who could, with enough Str and Siz, and 99% Kick and Martial Arts, kick for 3d6 that isn't Impaling like an AK47?
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Dec 27, 2017 03:44
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Night10194 posted:Wasn't it possible to make a joke-build in older CoC whose best move was 'I dive kick the mythos'? Who could, with enough Str and Siz, and 99% Kick and Martial Arts, kick for 3d6 that isn't Impaling like an AK47? BRP was originally designed for RuneQuest so that's probably possible and not that surprising. A number of older games, Deadlands comes to mind, can be easily broken when you max out the physical attack traits. It's honestly a combination of poor game testing, the belief that no one would do that, and/or no player characters would survive long enough to reach that level and if they did they earned it.
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Dec 27, 2017 05:29
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In GURPS Monster Hunters a lot of enemy types are highly resistant to firearms, to encourage hunters to use axes, fire, explosives etc rather than just riddling everything with bullets. ...that's resistant, not immune. If your gun is big enough then it can kill supernatural gribblies just fine. A heavy machine gun is about the point where you can stop worrying about lack-of-internal-organs and researching weaknesses etc and just turn things into fine mince.
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Dec 27, 2017 06:01
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OSR-based Horror game Silent Legions has a Slaughter die mechanic - you roll a Slaughter die at the same time that you roll damage, and if it come up as a 6 or more, you deal triple damage. A combat knife has a Slaughter die of 1d6, while a heavy machine gun has a Slaughter die of as much as 1d12. Kavak posted: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. Delta Green is cool because in some cases it goes by the idea that "if the GM is giving you easy access to anti-materiel rifles and C4, it means it's not going to help you", while also acknowledging that a government agency with access to American military might is of course going to be able to flatten any drat thing that it wants. The wrinkle is whether or not you can identify the target, whether or not you can bomb it in time, and whether or not there's something in there that you need to recover first. (or you're a Cowboy and you don't have access to these resources)
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Dec 27, 2017 06:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:OSR-based Horror game Silent Legions has a Slaughter die mechanic - you roll a Slaughter die at the same time that you roll damage, and if it come up as a 6 or more, you deal triple damage. Note that Slaughter dice generally don't function against supernatural threats, and they tend to have pretty good Slaughter dice themselves.
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Dec 27, 2017 06:17
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Daeren posted: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. Sounds a fun discussion. You have a link?
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Dec 27, 2017 11:20
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 COLD WIND BLOWING – PART 3 This Poor Bastard The book suggests that the investigators might want to hold a séance with a Oujia board – can we get a citation on whether that's historically accurate or not? If they do and they succeed on the Occult roll the planchette spells out M-A-R-C-O-P-O-L-O before shattering. Marco Polo was actually Venetian, but asking locals will get directions to a street called Via Marco Polo. Otherwise, the book suggests hitting the books. Library Use turns up a sketchbook by a Nicholas Burnett which includes sketches of landmarks in Trieste. One of them depicts a carved lintel above a doorway showing a scene of Bacchus with his maenads; it's identical to the frost image and costs that one investigator SAN 0/1. It's annotated with 'carved doorway, Via Marco Polo, 6 June 1761'. The investigators are headed to a deserted villa on Via Marco Polo, though it may be hard for them to recognise the warped and cracked lintel as being the one from the sketches. They'll either have to break in or talk to one of the neighbours to get the key. The investigators are alone until they reach the cellar, at which point Winckelmann manifests (SAN 0/1D4). He moves slowly as if under water, and as he gets close investigators will be able to see the decay on his ghost bod. He recreates the moment in life when he hid the medallion before disappearing; digging up the flagstone he indicated reveals the Medallion of Ithaqua.  While they're in the library, Grossinger makes his move. He emerges behind a stack of books with his stumps thrust out, silently motioning for the investigators to follow them. If they do, he takes them to his hovel down in the seedy part of town. He hands them various scraps of paper, burnt in places, that seem to be fragments of a diary. They contain bits of his research into the lloigor and reference Ghatanothoa and 'human fish'. Among the fragments is a photo of Grossinger during happier days in Bavaria, back when he had a wife and a kid and hands to hold them.  After they take his notes, he ushers them back out and points to the north-east: he wants them to travel to the Grotte di Postumia and destroy the lloigor cult. Good loving luck. It's up to you if you want his mutilated body to appear somewhere later or if he arrives at a timely moment to help the investigators.Let Me Show You What The Howl Is For The investigator who picks up the medallion feels a shock before a blast of cold air rushes out of it. They hear a terrible howling in the distance and feel a chill running up their arm (SAN 1/1D3). They are now bonded to Ithaqua (the Wendigo, the Wind Walker) unless they can succeed on an Extreme Power roll. From now on, they're immune to the effects of the cold and indeed revel in the winds of the bora, but they can hear the terrible hunting howl of Ithaqua every day they stay in Trieste. This forces them to make a roll for SAN 1/1D6 every sunset, with failed rolls costing a flat 1 point after 6 points have been lost to this. If this causes them to go permanently insane, they abandon the mission to go as far north as possible and worship Ithaqua in his domain. This effect is permanent, lasting even after they dispose of the medallion, but it's unlikely to come up after leaving Trieste – best retire to the tropics to stay safe and sane.  The investigators may want to return the diary to Termona if they're unaware of his true motives – Grossinger is waiting for their return in a nearby alley and tries to warn them away. If they ignore him, Marco shows them right into the sitting room and locks the door behind him (Listen to detect). If they realise they're trapped, they may try to escape: breaking down the door requires a Strength roll, and while there is a window in the room it's too narrow to wiggle through unless someone smashes it. Either approach means a fight with Marco, who has been left by Termona to stand guard. If they don't escape, Termona comes in and maintains his friendly act from their previous meeting. He's interested in finding out what they learned from the diary; if they whip out the medallion he's overjoyed. Marco, Montanelli and as many other cultists as necessary to make even numbers with the investigators come in and try to capture them. They'll probably use their tentacles for this fight, which can stretch out three meters and attack like a whip – SAN 1/1D4 to witness. If the investigators lose, they'll be taken to Grotte di Postumia. Alternatively, if the investigators win the fight or attack Termona or Montanelli first, they'll eventually spill the beans on the cult. They're okay with telling the investigators about the lloigor – they figure that between the cult and the lloigor themselves that's a self-solving problem. If they kill Termona well, there's plenty more human fish in the sea. A different culty steps up to replace him in later scenes. Next time: spelunking!
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Dec 27, 2017 11:35
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So wait, how are the Investigators supposed to find the drat thing if they don't get the clue to hold the seance?
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Dec 27, 2017 11:55
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Kavak posted:So wait, how are the Investigators supposed to find the drat thing if they don't get the clue to hold the seance? If they don't hold the seance, there's the sketch in the library. But that's the only clue. It's not a particularly good setup for a mystery.
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Dec 27, 2017 12:55
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Down With People posted:The book suggests that the investigators might want to hold a séance with a Oujia board – can we get a citation on whether that's historically accurate or not? Wikipedia claims the Ouija board was first sold as a parlour game in 1890 and was widely popularized as a tool for serious attempts at divination during World War I, so the timing is about right, at least. It was evidently put to some pretty interesting uses; Mark Twain's estate was involved in a court case in 1917 over the rights to a novel supposedly dictated to its writer by the spirit of Twain via an Ouija board.
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Dec 27, 2017 13:00
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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 Horror includes an optional system for CoC-like gaming where failing a Fright Check inflicts [margin of failure] Stress points. Stress first fills a Stress track, then a Derangement track, then gets converted immediately to psychological Disadvantages. The Stress track empties very fast as long as the character is in a calm place. The Derangement track empties very slowly, and requires psychotherapy. The character also takes a -(Stress+Derangement)/2 penalty to Fright Checks and other rolls negatively affected by being scared, like bomb disarmament. There's a suggestion that Lovecraftian horrors go straight to adding Derangement instead of Stress. There's also a suggestion for CoC-style temporary/indefinite insanities based on swapping the usual Fright Check reaction for a small table of thematically appropriate effects; the two examples are a Gothic table (chills!) and a Grity table (more CoC-alike). And because this is Ken loving Hite writing there are also suggestions for Unknown Armies-style fight/flight mechanics. GURPS Horror is an excellent book and even if you're not going to play GURPS it's one every GM should have on their shelf if they intend to run a horror game.
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Dec 27, 2017 13:32
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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. I forget which urban fantasy setting reviewed in these threads had it, but I loved a setting tidbit that during WW2 awful magical monstrosities were unleashed on the Eastern Front... and no one noticed because holy poo poo that was a hosed up warzone in real life.
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Dec 27, 2017 14:31
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Cythereal posted:I forget which urban fantasy setting reviewed in these threads had it, but I loved a setting tidbit that during WW2 awful magical monstrosities were unleashed on the Eastern Front... and no one noticed because holy poo poo that was a hosed up warzone in real life. was that Cold City/Hot War that Hostile V reviewed? I thought the shared setting was cool af too. I always thought the most frightening version of a CoC/Delta Green situation would be one where humans have the ability to fight back well enough that we don't have to kill the horror from the stars because we can incapacitate it and then derive all kinds of super hosed up poo poo from the vivisection & ensuing experimentation. a setting where the great old ones & elder gods actively keep each other away from ever materializing on Earth, because one of them managed to do so back in 1923 but humanity subdued it and disappeared it and the rest of them are extremely concerned about the fact that they can't locate or perceive the missing space god at all any more
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Dec 27, 2017 14:43
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Night10194 posted:Wasn't it possible to make a joke-build in older CoC whose best move was 'I dive kick the mythos'? Who could, with enough Str and Siz, and 99% Kick and Martial Arts, kick for 3d6 that isn't Impaling like an AK47? I had at least one player go that route. Vanilla*, it's Ok but in no way game-breaking. Martial Arts just (NB. This is classic 6th Edition) doubles base damage. So a 2d3 punch, make him a bruiser and add in a d6 Siz/Str bonus and you're average a respectable 7.5 damage. More than a Sword Cane or any but the largest calibre Pistol. But still less than your Rifles, Axes and similar, and you may get multiple shots with the lighter Pistols. If you just want raw damage you still can't beat the classic point-blank Shotgun blast in the face. *There may be supplements that expand on the Martial Arts rules, 'Secrets of Japan' for example? But none that I know of off the cuff.
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Dec 27, 2017 15:10
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Kick did d6, so 3d6 with Kick. I think you could handle a fair number of minor entities and drop-kick a Mi-Go that way. Still not as good as majoring in archeology and headbutts, though.
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Dec 27, 2017 15:13
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Freaking Crumbum posted:was that Cold City/Hot War that Hostile V reviewed? I thought the shared setting was cool af too. "The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom." Just... not taught in the way that the GOO expected to have gone about it.
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Dec 27, 2017 16:19
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Freaking Crumbum posted:I always thought the most frightening version of a CoC/Delta Green situation would be one where humans have the ability to fight back well enough that we don't have to kill the horror from the stars because we can incapacitate it and then derive all kinds of super hosed up poo poo from the vivisection & ensuing experimentation. For something along those lines, check out “A Colder War” by Charles Stross here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm
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Dec 27, 2017 19:17
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Cythereal posted:I forget which urban fantasy setting reviewed in these threads had it, but I loved a setting tidbit that during WW2 awful magical monstrosities were unleashed on the Eastern Front... and no one noticed because holy poo poo that was a hosed up warzone in real life. There was something like that in Godlike. Someone who became/summoned Baba Yaga's chicken legged hut and it was more than capable of steam rolling large volumes of soldiers and war machines.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:55
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Tasoth posted:There was something like that in Godlike. Someone who became/summoned Baba Yaga's chicken legged hut and it was more than capable of steam rolling large volumes of soldiers and war machines. It also reminds me of Cold City, which has Nazi zombies and other...stuff roaming around post-war Berlin, but their actual war use was less than spectacular. Of course, this leads to Hot War.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:46
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And then maybe eventually A|State.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:46
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Freaking Crumbum posted:a setting where the great old ones & elder gods actively keep each other away from ever materializing on Earth, because one of them managed to do so back in 1923 but humanity subdued it and disappeared it and the rest of them are extremely concerned about the fact that they can't locate or perceive the missing space god at all any more
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Dec 27, 2017 20:47
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That's easy. You're summoners.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:58
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My takeaway from the mythos is that everything is fragile. Alien messiahs killed by wayward boats. Time travelers hiding in the space between apocalypses. The survivors of a space empire dissected in their sleep by clueless explorers. Treating some monster as a universal constant when even death can die seemed to be missing the point.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:59
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Oberndorf posted:For something along those lines, check out “A Colder War” by Charles Stross here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm
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Dec 27, 2017 21:20
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Bieeardo posted:That's easy. You're summoners.
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Dec 27, 2017 21:37
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Oberndorf posted:For something along those lines, check out “A Colder War” by Charles Stross here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm thanks! I've never read that before, so you made another interminable shift of drudgery at work slightly less so. in the imaginary setting I'm proposing, though, the technology we derive from cosmic horrors isn't handled with an overt sense of "oh gently caress we're playing with powers beyond our ken this could lead to a global extinction event" but rather "ugh, I can believe my iGate can only transport me between Earth and XK-Masada because my idiot dad won't pay for the trans-dimensional plan that includes unlimited interplanetary access. and I've got last year's model too, so it takes a full minute for the drat thing to summon a servitor to bring my morning latte. loving piece of junk!" the horror is that we're capable of deriving technology from cosmic monsters and then becoming so complacent with the functionality that it becomes pedestrian and we get bitchy when our blasphemous machines don't literally fulfill our wishes at the speed of thought. all-powerful, emotionally stunted humans colonizing the known universe in spaceships powered by murder because they're just really really really bored is much more horrible than some alien monster coming to eat our brains.
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Dec 27, 2017 21:59
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Freaking Crumbum posted:in the imaginary setting I'm proposing, though, the technology we derive from cosmic horrors isn't handled with an overt sense of "oh gently caress we're playing with powers beyond our ken this could lead to a global extinction event" but rather "ugh, I can believe my iGate can only transport me between Earth and XK-Masada because my idiot dad won't pay for the trans-dimensional plan that includes unlimited interplanetary access. and I've got last year's model too, so it takes a full minute for the drat thing to summon a servitor to bring my morning latte. loving piece of junk!" Yeah this is basically the Laundry Files series, especially the later ones.
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Dec 27, 2017 23:51
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:A number of older games, Deadlands comes to mind, can be easily broken when you max out the physical attack traits. It's honestly a combination of poor game testing, the belief that no one would do that, and/or no player characters would survive long enough to reach that level and if they did they earned it. Deadlands, of course, solved this problem by explicitly handing the GM an invincible zombie cyborg GMPC from the future with instructions to use him to kill off uppity player characters who got too powerful for the game. Without stats, of course. I'm still surprisingly angry about this.
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Dec 27, 2017 23:54
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COLD WIND BLOWING - PART 4 Ted The Caver's Something Or Other The book says the investigators should have enough clues by now to point them to Grotte di Postumia. Here's the problem with this set-up: there's not really any hard evidence that indicates the Simulacrum piece should be there. In fact, there's plenty of evidence that the cave is full of evil psychic lizards, so players might question the wisdom of going anywhere near the place. Salleh has a letter from HQ telling him that the Lloigorites probably fed the piece to the lloigor, but the investigators might not have gone through all the trouble of finding and 'killing' him. You could have Termona or someone else drop a reference to it, or maybe have more spooky times with Winckelmann. Anyway. Postumia's actually a stop on the Orient Express, just 50 miles out from Trieste. The caverns themselves are also heavily controlled by the lloigor cult, who even have their people running the guided tours. As soon as the investigators leave Trieste, the Lloigorites mobilise, contacting their people in Postumia so they know to set a trap. Assuming Termona's alive, he boards the same train as the investigators along with a handful of other cultists, though he makes sure to ride in a different carriage. What they don't know is that they're being watched by Salleh and the Brothers, who also move out in the hopes of finding the Simulacrum piece's location.  Assuming the investigators don't try to break into Grotte di Postumia, they'll probably want to take the cave tour. Considering the awful weather this time of year, they might be the only ones. However, their tour guide Carlo is a Lloigorite, and the cult has a bunch of their people on the same tour posing as tourists while no less than 20 cultists go into the caves to wait. The tour is supposed to take two hours, half of which is spent riding in super modern trolley cars powered by a gasoline engine. All the cultists are carrying torches and weapons, but only a few have guns – don't wanna risk a cave-in. If you've ever been on one of these cave tours, you probably know what it's like. If you haven't I highly recommend it, they're really cool. The cave is lit up in places with electric lights, more often than not just to showcase a limestone formation with a funky shape. Carlo expects the investigators to die soon and points out the formations with morbid glee – the Sepulchre, the Brain, the Beheaded Dwarf. There's a river that runs through much of the cave; Carlo stops by it at one point and wades in to grab something out of the water. He comes back holding an olm, a 'pesce umano' that looks like a pale wriggly snake with vestigial legs. If there's a lady investigator, he waves it at her to try and freak her out – but this isn't likely to work on a newbie investigator, let alone one who by now has seen some real poo poo. Eventually, the investigators reach the end of the trolley car portion of the tour. Carlo leads them out and asks them to stand together – he says he wants to show them how black the darkness of the caves really is. He moves to one wall where there's an electric switch box and turns it off, plunging the cave into total darkness. Then, slowly, flicking lights turn on: the torches and lanterns of the lloigor cultists. Termona is there, along with more than a dozen others, surrounding the investigators. The book notes, 'Seasoned investigators may already have guns in their hands by now.' Termona lets his tentacle drop out of his sleeve and demands the medallion from the investigators. But before anything can happen, there's a scream from the outside of the circle followed by a torch shattering, then another. The Brotherhood of the Skin are attacking, swinging cleavers and meat hooks. They don't need torches – dead men's eyes see in the dark just fine.  DISRESPECT YOUR SURROUNDINGS poo poo hits the fan. The investigators are almost completely forgotten as the two cults go ham on each other. This scene does a fantastic job of capturing how hosed a cult vs cult fight would be. There's a long list of things to throw at the investigators as they're running away, and they're so good I'm going to include all of them in this post. - A Lloigorite hoisting a Brother into the air by a tentacle that comes out of his chest, the Brother swinging his cleaver around in vain. - A Lloigorite blows a Brother's brains out but the gunshot causes a stalactite to dislodge and fall on his own head, killing him. - An injured Brother slaps a patch of someone else's skin onto his wounds like it's a bandage. - Two Lloigorites advance on a Brother who is chanting as he cuts up a fallen comrade. His spell completed, he flings the lumps of flesh at the cultists, which immediately seal their faces shut and suffocate them (SAN 0/1D4). - As they flee down a partially-flooded corridor, they're intercepted by Carlo, who points a gun at the lead investigator. Just then, a 20-foot-long giant olm, mutated by years of exposure to the lloigors' magic, swallows him in one bite and disappears back into the water (SAN 0/1D4). - Salleh advances on the investigators, his eyes giving off the phosphorescence of decay. If they thought they killed him before, they lose SAN 0/1D3. Suddenly, the tip of Termona's tentacle erupts from his chest. Termona's laugh of triumph is cut short when Salleh just turns around and keeps attacking him anyway (SAN 1/1D3). The trick to this battle isn't to run it as like a real-rear end battle. You just want the investigators to be scared shitless and thinking they'll be next if they don't stop running. They might get to a point where they think they're safe – that's when they hear a large group of people approaching. The only place to hide is behind a set of stalagmites that look like pointy teeth. This calls for a round of Luck rolls; the investigator with the worst roll gashes their knee on one of the 'teeth'. Behind the formation is a narrow passage that just so happens to lead to the lloigor grotto. Next time: never cut a deal with a dragon! Down With People fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Dec 28, 2017 |
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Dec 28, 2017 00:29
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Loxbourne posted:Deadlands, of course, solved this problem by explicitly handing the GM an invincible zombie cyborg GMPC from the future with instructions to use him to kill off uppity player characters who got too powerful for the game. Without stats, of course. Only if the hellcows failed.
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Dec 28, 2017 00:31
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The cult vs. cult fight actually sounds like a pretty cool mess to run like hell through.
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Dec 28, 2017 01:14
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JackMann posted:Just caught up on the thread. If this was in the shamanism section, isn't it probably someone using the shrink power? Definitely, its just that the anatomy in the picture is bizarre. Speaking of which! GURPS Zombieland, USA PART 6 –  From behind a sign in the street to behind the pulpit. More people I missed! The Rev. Jim Fisher leads the Church of Pure Values and fills the role of wacky southern-style preacher right down to the copious Amens. He’s been convinced for a while that the End of Days is near, and guess what? It looks like he’s right! Except he isn’t, his stat block unambiguously says he’s delusional. Still, he has a sizable following in the town and in Autoduel he leads the Lakers’ crack infantry squad. The first time the PCs will see him is holding up his obligatory “The End Is Near” sign at the Council meeting. Whatever happened to the PCs in the last section, Link wants them railroaded towards hearing Fisher’s next sermon, whether they hear it over the radio in prison or attend the sermon itself. He’s wrapped a few important points up in his rhetoric: zombies mean the apocalypse is near; the Beast is the devil; you have to slay him by being part of the Army of the Lord. I’ll say it again here; I’m writing these updates as I read them, so I don’t know how much of the sermon will be relevant later or what, I’m just guessing. No, I’m not going to spend 20 minutes reading through the rest of the adventure. What, are you expecting me to put effort into this?  So some weird poo poo starts to happen. If the party’s still in jail they see Vic get dragged out, hear a gunshot, and meet a returning Vic who doesn’t remember them. If the characters are sharp enough, they catch a glimpse of that same black van from earlier driving by. Scare chord! Somebody seems to broken out the Men in Black memory wiper thing. Pasha Lee, if a PC has somehow already gotten her attention, will be invited out to a picnic before completely forgetting about them later that day; the party witnesses a small child running away from their mother screaming “she’s not my mommy"  before the mother sweeps them away. Hell, even Sheriff Muldoon will let them out of their cells/seek them out in the town and ask for help; apparently other members of the police department attacked her and she’s willing to trust the PCs as they seem to be on the level. If she leaves their presence for more than half an hour, she also forgets. Any rational person’s first instinct would probably be to get out of town, but if the PCs make the sensible and boring decision to leave town they’ll have two fight through posses of various groups in the town. They try to discourage leaving the town, only using lethal force if the party tries to push through, but, why would you try to leave the adventure like that? And you thought you hated closed MRIs! Eventually their investigations will lead the party to Doc Basset, who bought this newfangled medical machine from one Dr. Bob Smith of American Medical Technologies (a company that doesn’t seem to exist). The machine is extremely advanced; it’s some kind of full-body scanner that produces crazy accurate medical information but just looks odd to any characters with medical training. PCs can have themselves scanned if they are dumb. Any attempts to examine the machine more closely will be rebuffed. If the PCs try to break in to Basset’s office to get a closer look or stake it out, provided they don’t do it in broad daylight, they see Basset working with some shady types to load black boxes onto a van. If they spot the party, these folks will train their guns on them; if they back off, they’ll let them go. If not, the stranger opens fire, Basset presses a button that sets the boxes on fire, and the two of them lock themselves in the building while the van speeds away. If the party chooses to chase after the van, it leads them on a merry chase through the woods across logging roads. Even in the modern setting, the van’s inhabitants will shoot at pursuers, and eventually a few deputies will show up and pitch in against the PCs. Even if they do manage to catch the van, its occupants will fight to the death. Unless the PCs manage to fight off everyone involved, they’ll be dragged off to jail afterwards (though the police will retreat if outgunned). If the party tries to break into the clinic, the gunmen in there will also fight to the death, though Basset will hang back and won’t fight back even if he’s attacked. If captured, he won’t say anything. Eventually the police will show up and also throw them into jail. Wow, productive endeavor all around! Link does encourage the GM not to kill off the PCs here, though. Man, there are a lot of loose ends in this section. What happens if Sheriff Muldoon is still with the party when police show up? What happens if they try to tear apart the machine once the party’s disposed of its protectors? What happens if they tail the van instead of attacking it? If they kill any deputies, will the townsfolk react? It doesn’t help that the book’s organization is falling apart, with sidebars stretching into sections they don’t belong and areas getting disproportionate focus (the doctor’s office) at the expense of others (most of the allies the PCs might find in town are compressed into one page). Except for one. Next time: A Documentary of Lies
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Dec 28, 2017 01:18
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Mors Rattus posted:Only if the hellcows failed. there were so many redundant, back-up "break glass to TPK your players" NPCs and locations and encounters spread across all 3 settings. i can only conclude that whatever (minimal) playtesting was done, when the designers got their feedback, instead of bothering to change any rules, just decided to include a bunch of bullshit "ace up your sleeve" type stuff so that a GM could just obliterate any player that didn't want to ride along on whatever self-congratulatory railroad adventure was being presented.
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Dec 28, 2017 03:41
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Real subtle with the clone subplot, ZombieTown. Also, if you're going to have the local police be essential to maintaining the conspiracy, you should probably write them as being part of the conspiracy from the beginning. If people started getting obviously body snatched and are attacking the sheriff, I'm pretty sure my party isn't letting her out of their sight.
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Dec 28, 2017 03:51
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Yeah, that cult fight is pretty loving amazing.
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Dec 28, 2017 04:44
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"Antagonist eaten by a giant salamander out of loving nowhere" is the best.
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Dec 28, 2017 06:39
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poo poo, now I've caught up with the thread. Looking forward to more cat train adventures.
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Dec 28, 2017 06:41
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Down With People posted:It's up to you if you want his mutilated body to appear somewhere later or if he arrives at a timely moment to help the investigators. Again it's probably intended that he shows up to reveal a secret passage or with vital clues or something. But I find it more amusing to imagine that he shows up in some tense action showdown as a Crippled Master and kicks a cultist so hard his rib cage caves in.
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Dec 28, 2017 11:23
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PurpleXVI posted:Again it's probably intended that he shows up to reveal a secret passage or with vital clues or something. But I find it more amusing to imagine that he shows up in some tense action showdown as a Crippled Master and kicks a cultist so hard his rib cage caves in. The lloigor are invisible because they're scared Grossinger might see them. COLD WIND BLOWING - PART FIVE Ugh, I've been calling them the Brotherhood of Skin this entire review but they're actually the Brotherhood of the Skin. I like mine better. I hope they edit that into the third edition. Deals With Dragons Are Okay Sometimes The grotto is huge, a massive underground lake ringed with stalagmites. As the investigators look out over the black water, the lloigor bellow into their very minds: quote:SO...YOU HAVE BROUGHT IT AT LAST! I certainly hope they did. Receiving this transmission immediately costs them SAN 1/1D4, with failure requiring more tests to resist the depressing side-effects of coming into contact with the lloigor mind. They must roll Intelligence versus their own Power as they try to rationalise the waves of despair flooding them. If Intelligence prevails, they understand that the despair is an effect of an 'outside' mind. If Power prevails, they curl up into a ball and cry for 1D6X5 minutes. If they roll a 00 (book doesn't make it clear on which roll so I assume the Intelligence roll), they immediately try to commit suicide by jumping into the lake. The lloigor want the medallion. They only want the medallion and will keep demanding it. They ignore any requests for a deal because they simply don't care about the Simulacrum or most of the poo poo in their hoard, they just want the medallion. Investigators are free to look around the shores of the lake, which are actually covered in piles of scrolls and old magic items, all of them slowly being enveloped in limestone. It'll take half an hour and a Spot Hidden roll to find the pile that the Right Leg is sitting on top of, then some smashing with a heavy object to break it off the pile. The investigator who holds the medallion must make a Hard Power roll to be able to relinquish it. Alternatively, the other investigators will need to Persuade them to let go or be willing to hold them down and take it from them. The medallion can be chucked into the lake or left on the shore; if the latter, it slowly rises into the air and floats over the lake. They're free to go. However, if they don't hand over the medallion or can't… quote:GIVE US THE MEDALLION!  A wave washes out from the lake as one of the lloigor materialises a giant olm-like body and runs after the investigators. Better start running. If they turn around, they'll see this massive beast filling the corridor behind them – SAN 0/1D8. The earth starts to vibrate and the teeth at the entrance to the grotto threaten to crash down, requiring either a Dexterity roll to tumble through or a Dodge roll to avoid getting it by a falling stalactite. Failing either deals 1D8 damage. Pursued by the Brothers, the Lloigorites and possibly one of the lloigor, the investigators make it outside where the winds of the bora have been whipped into a fury, causing the investigators to take 1D3 damage every five minutes they stand exposed. If they need a getaway vehicle, there's a lot of automobiles around that belonged to people who got stabbed/shot/eaten back in the caves. If the lloigor is pursuing them, it launches an implosion vortex at them. If they can't get clear in time, they and everything else within five yards is crushed into a space the size of a tennis ball, dealing 100D6 damage (read: instant death). If the investigators were smart, they brought their luggage to Postumia. Otherwise, when they get back to Trieste, they find two extremely messily dead bodies around wherever they were keeping their poo poo. Thanks Fenalik! That'll also be 1/1D4+1 SAN.  Man gently caress Italy As the SOE leaves Trieste, investigators see Winckelmann one last time on the platform. If they handed the medallion over to the lloigor, he waves farewell, his face peaceful as he fades away. They gain 1D3 SAN. If they didn't, his screaming face is pressed up against each window as the train moves past, costing them 1/1D4 SAN. They'll also get 1D4 SAN for recovering the Right Leg. The book suggests giving them more Sanity if they held onto the medallion for knowing they've helped stave off the return of the Great Old Ones but uh, did they? Would they? Seems more likely they'd know they've doomed themselves to carrying around a piece of the loving Wendigo for the foreseeable future, for no clear benefit. Anyway, how loving good is it to not have to deal with any more Blackshirts? Next time: a very different dream!
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Dec 28, 2017 12:17
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Hey, are we heading for a new thread in 2018? I wanted to start posting something, but if the thread is about to restart in a few weeks, then maybe I should wait.
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Dec 28, 2017 12:28
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