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Post by Scott on Jan 18, 2015 12:30:30 GMT -5
Are you ready to DM something for one of my orphaned PCs yet?
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 18, 2015 14:43:06 GMT -5
I wrote some game notes about integrating one of your characters into the "Welkwood party" and I was considering DMing a Greyhawk game when Ray is finished running Masks of Nyarlathotep. I think I told you about that idea -- to sort of pick up where you left off.
When can you make it up here?
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Post by Scott on Jan 18, 2015 14:57:28 GMT -5
For the regular Friday night group, I would be able to make it before Ray completes Masks, if he runs it all. There's a lot left.
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Post by GRWelsh on Apr 22, 2016 12:22:03 GMT -5
We finished "Masks of Nyarlathotep" last fall, and although I enjoyed it, I didn't think it was the greatest adventure I'd ever played in. I enjoyed Ray's original one-shots more. I recently listened to an audio production of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" read by Mike Bennett. It was pretty good, and it got me to thinking about how the East Indies islanders had magic signs to ward off the Deep Ones. In the story, according to Zadok Allen: In an RPG you could do something similar with magic words/chants/rituals that are effective, but make the character seem eccentric at the least and dangerously insane at the worst. A few years ago, Gene wrote: This should perhaps be played as if you don't shout "FLGH MGHHUI HASTUR!" right now then the game is over for you. Then using a gun is redundant and perhaps unnecessary And I thought that pretty much summed up my thoughts on how this should work in a Lovecraft RPG. It shouldn't just be that using magic or spells in the game take away "sanity points" but that the game is set up in such a way that sometimes an action that seems insane to everybody else is the only rational thing to do.
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Post by geneweigel on Apr 22, 2016 13:55:05 GMT -5
Yeah, that notion is how I handle Cthulhuism in D&D so its even "regular magic" is beyond their scope
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Post by geneweigel on Apr 22, 2016 16:44:57 GMT -5
Like the notion of ultraplanes that are best avoided by those trafficking in sorcery because its too chaotic.
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Post by grodog on Oct 11, 2016 19:46:35 GMT -5
A few years ago, Gene wrote: This should perhaps be played as if you don't shout "FLGH MGHHUI HASTUR!" right now then the game is over for you. Then using a gun is redundant and perhaps unnecessary And I thought that pretty much summed up my thoughts on how this should work in a Lovecraft RPG. It shouldn't just be that using magic or spells in the game take away "sanity points" but that the game is set up in such a way that sometimes an action that seems insane to everybody else is the only rational thing to do. That strikes me as making the best of a horrific situation, and sometimes that means choosing the most ludicrious of the options available. And that reminds me moreso of Delta Green than than it does 1920s CoC, perhaps because of the more cynical, modern attitudes toward government, religion, politics, science, etc.---that Murphy's Law/"fuck my life" zeitgeist that has Mulder knocked out while the giant Antarctic alien flying saucer (a la The Thing) takes off, witnessed only by Scully
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Post by GRWelsh on Nov 20, 2016 16:38:56 GMT -5
I bought the 7th edition slipcase version, and I've been reading through it over the weekend. My imagination keeps coming back to Lovecraft and this game. My ideas are around how to present it in such a way that player characters may end up choosing to do things that at first seem insane, and to mine the original Lovecraft stories for the rationale. For example:
You might seem like a psychopathic serial killer if you are caught in your cabin up in the mountains removing brains from skulls of people who recently went missing... but, you know, there might be a really good, sane reason for it.
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Post by grodog on Nov 20, 2016 16:47:16 GMT -5
I'm going to run some CoC at NTX (and probably GaryCon) next year Allan.
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Post by GRWelsh on Nov 25, 2016 14:56:08 GMT -5
What scenarios are you going to run, Allan?
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Post by grodog on Nov 25, 2016 16:54:06 GMT -5
I'm going to run "Grace Under Pressure"---an old Pagan Publishing sceanrio from TUO#2.
Allan.
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 2, 2016 13:11:52 GMT -5
Here are some ideas I had around a CALL OF CTHULHU game, and Lovecraftian games in general.
You could run a game in which the characters are scared, but the players are delighted because of recognizing all the lore ("Ah, the Mi-Go! So in this adventure we're going up against the Mi-Go!"), and curious about how the GM will present them (what "new angles" the GM will give to the Mythos, so to speak). This kind of campaign could fall into the trap of feeling like a "tour of the Lovecraft world of fiction," however, or worse a "tour of Lovecraftian world of fiction" if you are including stuff from some of his inferior imitators... The advantage of doing this is there is a lot of lore to make use of, and there may be a certain satisfaction for players to get to interact with the people, places and monsters of the stories ("I was shouting out the names of subway stops when I was eaten by a shoggoth!" a player proudly recounts). But a disadvantage is that by including all things Lovecraftian one may be missing out on the most essential Lovecraftian element of all, which is being confronted with the unknown.
So, another way to run the game would be in which the characters are meant to be scared, but so are the players. It would take more effort and originality on the part of the GM, but it would mean the players as well as their characters would be having that "what the hell is this?!?" reaction. And, aside from the sanity point system for the characters, players may sometimes find what they choose to do seems insane, but perhaps really is not. For example, the protagonist in "The Thing on the Doorstep" shoots his best friend... But how is he going to explain that anybody in way that doesn't sound insane? And the protagonist in "A Shadow over Innsmouth" comes to believe he is a hybrid Deep One, which sounds insane, but is true. Shouting Aklo phrases in public might make other people think you are deranged, by maybe that is all that prevented them from being trampled upon by some advancing yet invisible Yog Sothothian horror...
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Post by geneweigel on Dec 2, 2016 13:57:30 GMT -5
Thats a good question. Would people expect known "Cthulhu-ism" because its a game therefore losing the mystique?
Is there a Lovecraft era Cthulhu Mythos story thats a retread? Everytime Nyarlathotep showed up he was completely different.
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 2, 2016 16:03:25 GMT -5
Thats a good question. Would people expect known "Cthulhu-ism" because its a game therefore losing the mystique? Is there a Lovecraft era Cthulhu Mythos story thats a retread? Everytime Nyarlathotep showed up he was completely different. I would argue that no, Lovecraft didn't do retreads of the same ground, but did rework certain themes. So, Dagon's island rises out of the sea as R'lyeh rises out of the sea; and Arthur Jermyn is horrified to find out about his ancestry and the protagonist in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is horrified to find out about his ancestry; but I wouldn't call these simple retreads in the sense of an author just unoriginally repeating himself. My impression is that HPL didn't seem that concerned about his fictional universe being internally consistent, either. I get the feeling he approached each story on its own merits, willing to lift elements and themes from earlier stories to get the best result, without any obligation to have everything "line up" in the same way that for example Tolkien did with Middle Earth. That was imposed upon the HPL stories by those who came later. Nyarlathotep is one of the very few recurring entities... although several get mentioned more than once, Nyarlathotep makes multiple 'appearances,' and you're right, he's completely different each time. So maybe that is a key to how to use them in an RPG: only use 'Cthulhu-isms' in different, original ways... never fall back on the familiar.
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Post by geneweigel on Dec 2, 2016 19:18:17 GMT -5
In the mid-80's I was totally hooked on this madness. I inscribed a quote from DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH (1922) into the wall next to my bed NYARL'S INTRO but I was bugging out on HPL at that time. I didn't know if he was making some kind of reference or what at that time. If you knew me at that time you probably thought my babbling was insane. A lot of my "chicks" were thinking such, And I kid you not, I think that if I had the control that I have now I would be in an alternate reality,
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 7, 2016 9:40:00 GMT -5
Maybe you would have become a Dreamer of Earth like Randolph Carter, Basil Elton or Kuranes... I've been rereading the HPL Dream Cycle/"Dunsanian" stories, and I've been trying to figure out how they fit in with all the others. There are references to what one now would call the "Cthulhu Mythos" in the later ones: Azathoth, Yog Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, etc. So I think there was some idea by HPL to link it all together, but also to keep it beyond being neatly and easily explicable. Like you can't just say "Great Old Ones are really just powerful extraterrestrial aliens" because there are these other dimensions involved beyond just our physical spacetime and there is the revelation that "Illusion is the One Reality, and Substance is the Great Imposter."
My hypothesis is that the early Dream Cycle stories had nothing to do with what we would later call the Cthulhu Mythos, and it was only in later stories with Randolph Carter that HPL thought of ways to possibly link them up. I'm glad he did this because I love the Dream Cycle stories, and I think linking them in with the other stories gives them an added dimension and depth to transform into more than mere Dunsanian imitation. I could be completely wrong, however, since there are some names in Lord Dunsany's stories that sound decidedly similar to the Great Old Ones... So, the roots may all be interwined, even though it isn't always obvious.
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Post by geneweigel on Dec 7, 2016 13:08:43 GMT -5
I think my mind was on the idea that I got from the biographies by Lin Carter (1972) and L. Sprague DeCamp (1976) which mentioned him being a dreamer in real life and this raised the question to me of what dreams are.
A major thing that happened to me at that time (1981?) was the prediction of someone's death from a dream. This had me questioning whether HPL's writing compulsions, to blur out fictional ideas with non-fictional authenticity, was some kind of allusion to an alternate reality talking through through his dreams. I mean it is in his mind that there is an R'lyeh that he could see clearly but I was getting a notion that he had doubts that he had invented it and perhaps even used this as a way to add to the mystique.
Add in that most of the contributors to the Mythos blurred the lines as well. Even that "real" Necronomicon despite its obvious fakeness was a big add on to the question maybe HPL had comparatively hit on something.
It seems silly looking back but at the time when the world was chaotic to a teenager it seemed more possible. A lot of people projected their occult sensibilities on me at that time because I was the guy with the long hair. But I was more into fairies and dwarves than demonology.
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 7, 2016 13:17:59 GMT -5
It wasn't just you, it is a whole "thing" for Lovecraft fans to blur the fictional and the real, and this is a major "thing" also in Alan Moore's Lovecraftian comic books -- The Courtyard/Neonomicon/Providence -- which has HPL as a character within the Cthulhu Mythos, and influenced by it, and writing about it, but without being conscious that any of it is real. I find that sort of thing to be a bit too smug and cute, like when someone puts too many twists in a movie.
I bought one of those fake Necronomicons back in the 80's -- the one with the Sumerian gods -- and felt ripped off... I was ripped off! Not because it wasn't 'real' but because it had nothing to do with Lovecraft! It was just a mish mash of Sumerian god stuff. Completely lame. If you're going to write a fake Necronomicon, at least integrate the Lovecraft 'excerpt' from it that appeared in "The Dunwich Horror":
Nor is it to be thought...that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substances walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men somtimes know them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones where Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.
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Post by geneweigel on Dec 7, 2016 14:27:36 GMT -5
I tried to get my oldest (15) to read some HPL but I can't even get her to read Poe. I used to read her the Grimms' folklore collections but once she started reading on her own it was all school work and mediocre book club garbage. Just recently she read my original Annotated Dracula so there is hope yet.
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 8, 2016 13:55:02 GMT -5
I think with kids any voluntary reading at all is a check in the win column.
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