What the hell is this? Stygian, Reign of the Old Ones is a computer RPG set in the works of HP Lovecraft. You play as a survivor of Arkham Massachusetts, where, after an event called the Black Day where Arkham got sucked into some kind of messed up dimensional rift ruled by the Old Ones, you are trying to find a way to escape and get back to Earth. You must contend with the deadly 1920s Chicago Mafia, horrible flesh-eating ghouls, dark sorcery, the cult of Cthulhu, and more! See the video trailer below! Can you survive the physical and mental terrors of Arkham? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgAEAbBpbVM That looks cool! How does it play? This is your standard vaguely infinity engine isometric RPG. You get a party of Lovecraft characters/Lovecraft's real-life wife, you roam around doing quests and whatnot, and because this is Lovecraft you have a sanity bar that doubles as your MP. Combat is turn-based on a hex map rather than real-time with pause. Where this game differs from most of the rest is in its sanity mechanics. As you go more and more insane from looking at Cthulhu and witnessing various horrors, you pick up terrible mental afflictions that overwrite your standard dialog tree with "The Voice of Madness". I will be showing this - as well as the other unique sanity mechanics - off in this LP! Are you going to include more pretentious literary bullshit? No one liked that! Shut up. Yes, I am - I've read most of Lovecraft's works, and a few of his inspirations such as Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Chambers. We're going to be taking what Lovecraft actually wrote and comparing it to what the developers are giving us here. Don't look at me like that! It's relevant for once! Hey Lovecraft was a big racist, he named his ca- The game is going to address this. Hold off on that right now. We will get to it. Oh man, Great Evil King, are you going to be playing an actually good game for once? No. Did you watch the trailer and think "this looks like a cool game with great atmosphere?" The game is Lovecraft as filtered through two fifteen-year-old kids trying to tackle adult themes. One of the character classes is "sex wizard", and they recover sanity by reading porn magazines while resting. Really. The sexless town of Arkham is full of prostitutes and other weirdos, and the sanity mechanics include an "angst meter" that, as you get into fights, forces you to select mental illnesses to screw over your character. That "voice of madness" mechanic I referenced earlier? Yea. The gameplay is a miserable mess of survival horror and losing control of your character because a trained soldier who fought in World War I saw a dude get killed by ghouls. Combat is slow, tedious, and RNG prone, and the developers sudden whiplash between horror and juvenile comedy makes it impossible for the game to maintain a consistent tone. I am playing this so you don't have to! Audience participation? Audience participation? Au- Yes! You, heroic goons of Something Awful, get to inflict whatever character you want on me, and I will be stuck with him or her. I'll be going through the character creation process below, and I need you all to vote on which unfortunate person is going to wander the land of Cthulhu and prostitutes. We can be male or female. We need to choose an age. Young characters get an attribute boost but lower skill points, Middle Aged characters are the balanced option, and Old characters eat a stat penalty but have higher skill points. You get more skill points as you level up, but not attributes. We need to choose an archetype. Each of the archetypes has 4 sub-archetypes - one that has no boosts nor penalties, and three that have a tradeoff. Scientist: Generic Academic, no penalties. Researcher: Faster Scientific and Medical Research, -1 Physical Defense Psychiatrist: +1 Psychology (used to determine motives), -1 Supernatural Defense Physician: +1 Medicine, -1 Melee Attack, -1 Ranged Attack Patrician: Generic Aristocrat. Prodigal: Start the game with more money, but lower sex appeal. Cursed Bloodline: +1 Occult (magic), +5% critical failure chance (misfiring guns to hit our allies, etc) Bankrupt Royalty: +1 Survival, less money. Note that Aristocrats come with a butler companion who is pretty handy in combat. Gangster: Generic criminal. Thief: +1 Stealth, -1 Melee Attack. Note that ammo is fairly scarce in this game. Hitman: +1 Firearms, +50 ANGST (the not XP for mental illness not-levels) Con Artist: +1 Speechcraft, -1 Physical Defense Adventurer: Generic Explorer Pathfinder: Lower chance of random encounters, but smaller inventory size. I've never had inventory be an issue in this game. Mountaineer: +1 Athletics, -2% Critical Success Chance Big Game Hunter: "Higher damage to beastly enemies", -1 melee attack. Note that explorers come with a friendly dog companion! Detective: Generic investigator Occult Detective: +1 Occult, +50 Angst. Ex-cop: +1 Firearms, -5 total Sanity Bounty Hunter: +1 Stealth, but you have to be Materialist philosophy. Secret Society: Generic occultist. Mesmerist: +1 Psychology, -5 total Sanity. Alchemist: Considerably higher Medical Research rating, Lower Trading Value Depraved Occultist: This one deserves its own screenshot. Actor: Generic Performer Movie Actor: Higher Sex Appeal, more likely to get addicted to drugs Juggler: +2 Throwing, +5% Critical Failure Chance Busker: +1 Subterfuge, less starting money. Captain: Generic soldier Military Intelligence: +1 Subterfuge, -1 Physical Defense Marine: Starts the game with "Aimed Shot" ability, -5 max Sanity. Bouncer: +1 Melee, -1 Reaction (Initiative, basically. Who goes first). Next, we need a belief system for our character. Our options are: Humanistic: Regain sanity by performing altruistic actions. Materialistic: Hedonism. Get high, get laid, whatever. Nihilistic: Cannot regain sanity through actions, but has a higher mental resistance. You still get sanity through rest and whatnot, you just don't get any dialog options letting you ramble about Jesus or porn or whatever to get sanity back. Divine: Gets sanity by praying and whatnot. Rational: Get back sanity by doing science or medicine stuff. The game recommends we take the science or medicine skills. Esoteric: Get back sanity by ranting about magic and reading Aleister Crowley books (really). Lastly, we need a portrait and a name for this wonderful individual. Men: Women: Alright! Give me a character, and we can get this show on the road. List of updates Sex Wizardry: Cuck Rising Reign of the Bad Coding Random Men On Street Break Game Let's Not Talk About Race Attack of the KKKultists It's not Unoriginality, it's CANON! Random Child Abuse Ambush of Sheer loving Incompetence PEE-PEE INTO FOO-FOO Stop! Put those brains down! Let's Not Talk About Manifest Destiny It's Not Nativism! We Swear! The Amount of Sheer loving Incompetence On Display Is Amazing Clap Your Hands, Seals! Sweet Jesus Make The Hurting Stop The Care and Feeding of Dickmutants Duel of the Cornutos Absolute Garbage Postmortem: Dunning-Kruger TheGreatEvilKing fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Aug 22, 2020 |
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# ? May 30, 2020 23:34 |
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# ? Apr 19, 2024 08:25 |
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Let's be a nihilistic elderly female prodigal depraved occultist named Bertha.
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# ? May 31, 2020 00:05 |
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ultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female prodigal depraved occultist named Bertha. Hahaha hell yes
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# ? May 31, 2020 00:08 |
ultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female prodigal depraved occultist named Bertha. Unfortunately you have to be either prodigal or a depraved occultist, those are subclasses of aristocrat or occultist respectively.
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# ? May 31, 2020 00:14 |
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Ooh this looks interesting, don't think I've heard of this one.ultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female prodigal depraved occultist named Bertha. Haha I was trying to come up with some sort of adventurous old man/butler team but I don't think I can top this.
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# ? May 31, 2020 00:14 |
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Unfortunately you have to be either prodigal or a depraved occultist, those are subclasses of aristocrat or occultist respectively. Ah, I misread. It's a pretty clear choice for depraved occultist then.
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# ? May 31, 2020 00:19 |
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https://imgur.com/gallery/0vuXnUO here's bertha
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# ? May 31, 2020 00:31 |
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There is a real weird lack of hair colour variety on those portraits, especially the female ones. Not a single lady with blond hair for some reason? Weird observation aside, this looks super interesting, I'm looking forward to it!
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# ? May 31, 2020 00:34 |
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Captain Hygiene posted:Haha I was trying to come up with some sort of adventurous old man/butler team but I don't think I can top this. Literally batman
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# ? May 31, 2020 00:59 |
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Remember playing this one a while back. Tried a minimum sanity character to start, ended up switching out for a (relative) beacon of mental fortitude. So more than a bit curious how the sanity effects work out other than "inconvenient at best". Which is to say, ultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female Best of luck with this one.
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# ? May 31, 2020 01:35 |
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Reading the archetypes I thought pet dog had a fair chance of beating sex wizard, but I should have known better.
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# ? May 31, 2020 02:41 |
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Sindai posted:Reading the archetypes I thought pet dog had a fair chance of beating sex wizard, but I should have known better. I thought about voting for one, but decided I could not in good conscience force a doggo to deal with sanity-destroying eldritch abominations. People though? Eh who cares, send em in
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# ? May 31, 2020 02:50 |
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ultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female
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# ? May 31, 2020 05:39 |
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loving hate when head go whoop
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# ? May 31, 2020 06:16 |
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What the eldritch gently caress is this game Okay then. ultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female
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# ? May 31, 2020 08:38 |
Well, it seems nihilist granny sex wizard has already won. Looking forward to seeing her adventures! Still, I'll toss out the Materialistic Female Middle-Aged Adventurer called Amelia, because a)dog, b)the pilot goggles portrait.
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# ? May 31, 2020 10:32 |
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I came here to vote for old lady sex wizard but clearly the thread didn't need my help for this idea.
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# ? May 31, 2020 11:21 |
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This game is absolute dogshit and I am here for itultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female prodigal depraved occultist named Bertha.
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# ? May 31, 2020 11:34 |
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ultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female If we can't handle this game at its worst, we don't deserve it at its best!
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# ? May 31, 2020 12:22 |
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you already knew wtf was gonna go on hereultrafilter posted:Let's be a nihilistic elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha. fluffyDeathbringer fucked around with this message at 14:29 on May 31, 2020 |
# ? May 31, 2020 12:31 |
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You full well knew what was going to happen when you mentioned that sex wizards were a thing, didn't you
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# ? May 31, 2020 14:26 |
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Crazy Achmed posted:You full well knew what was going to happen when you mentioned that sex wizards were a thing, didn't you I can personally confirm that evil king absolutely knew what was going to happen when he mentioned sex wizards
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# ? May 31, 2020 16:27 |
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I'm gonna dissent and say that Nihilistic seems like the no-fun-dialogue-options choice, so I suggest instead an esoteric elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha.
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# ? May 31, 2020 16:39 |
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Ratoslov posted:I'm gonna dissent and say that Nihilistic seems like the no-fun-dialogue-options choice, so I suggest instead an esoteric elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha. Pretty much this. As fun as Nihilism is, a crazy old woman babbling about sexual occult things sounds too good to pass up.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 00:56 |
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Ratoslov posted:I'm gonna dissent and say that Nihilistic seems like the no-fun-dialogue-options choice, so I suggest instead an esoteric elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 01:41 |
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Ratoslov posted:I'm gonna dissent and say that Nihilistic seems like the no-fun-dialogue-options choice, so I suggest instead an esoteric elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha. This.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 01:49 |
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Ratoslov posted:I'm gonna dissent and say that Nihilistic seems like the no-fun-dialogue-options choice, so I suggest instead an esoteric elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 01:58 |
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Ratoslov posted:I'm gonna dissent and say that Nihilistic seems like the no-fun-dialogue-options choice, so I suggest instead an esoteric elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 02:26 |
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Ratoslov posted:I'm gonna dissent and say that Nihilistic seems like the no-fun-dialogue-options choice, so I suggest instead an esoteric elderly female depraved occultist named Bertha. Yes.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 02:50 |
FYI: Materiaiism is sex stuff Esoterism is babbling about planar alignments and whatnot.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 02:56 |
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Changing my vote to materialism. The important part is to play a crazy old lady sex wizard, and I'm voting for whatever gets us there.
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 02:59 |
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:FYI: Just make the old lady sex wizard happen!
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 03:12 |
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Gridlocked posted:Just make the old lady sex wizard happen!
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 03:14 |
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Gridlocked posted:Just make the old lady sex wizard happen!
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 04:39 |
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Gridlocked posted:Just make the old lady sex wizard happen!
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 09:28 |
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Gridlocked posted:Just make the old lady sex wizard happen!
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 09:48 |
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Crazy Achmed posted:You full well knew what was going to happen when you mentioned that sex wizards were a thing, didn't you That's just gender-swapped George RR Martin and therefore perfect for our purposes
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# ? Jun 1, 2020 10:14 |
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I'm so glad everyone was already on board with old lady sex wizard. Can I throw in a vote for the Phryne Fisher portrait?
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 03:53 |
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I'm down for the adventures of magical demented Dr. Ruth. Look out for trolleys.
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# ? Jun 2, 2020 06:41 |
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# ? Apr 19, 2024 08:25 |
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Go for the old lady sex wizard. FalloutFan56 fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jun 2, 2020 |
# ? Jun 2, 2020 17:16 |