Thanks for the fresh bake.
Ran a zombie apoc game using All Flesh Must Be Eaten. Went pretty well. The system was easy to use and the players liked it. Started off as a bunch of normal college kids coming back from a party when they ran into a traffic jam and then the outbreak happened. Several session later, they made it back to their dorms, hooked up with a few locals who had cabins in the woods and went out to secure the location and fortify it. Ended there but was fun over all.

>>96133537
How's the End of the World RPG series?

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...this scenario is pretty much just Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum from 2018

>>96133537
You need to change the thread questions whenever you make a new thread. Usually something in line with the theme.

>>96134802
Well tell the class about it for those that haven't heard of it.

>>96134970
Hush now, they made a new thread when no one else did. Be grateful.

>>96135696
No one else likes Asian horror? It’s a Korean horror film with basically an identical premise. A YouTube paranormal investigation channel spends the night at an abandoned mental hospital to try and reach 1,000,000 viewers for a big payday. The module even has a scheduled ouija board ritual where the movie has a planned exorcism. It’s weirdly, specifically close (even the fake psychic character, kind of?). I get being inspired but they published and started selling Viral within 4 years of the movie coming out.

>>96135812
Well I will check it out then anon. I love Kingdom, another Korean horror film as well as few others from the same director such as Monstrom.

>>96135822
>>96135812
Sorry, Monstrum. Cause I can't spell.

>>96135812
yeah its basically that plus a touch of fulci

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>>96135812
I generated a bunch of junjislop

>>96134970
Fuck. I forgot to change it. Sorry about that.

>>96134970
>>96135700
I would have made it but I fell asleep.

Book Club starter questions:
>What works?
>What's cool about it?
>Why is it so effective?
>What is the best part of it in your opinion?
>Thoughts on the characters?
>Is the villain effective?
>If you had to pick a moment that really scared you, which would it be?
>Is there anything you feel could have been expanded upon?
>What would you change?
>Would you use it as inspiration for a game?

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>>96133537
There is a SCP board game. Thought I share it here with you guys especially since this thread is dedicated to the Scarlet King.

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>>96135812
I'm a fan of Asian horror, but haven't gone too indepth with them yet. Mostly The Ring/Ringu, Grudge and Dark Water so far, as well as Junji Ito's stuff. But it's something I really want to get more into.
Are there any other scenarios/games which capture Asian horror well?

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>Be me
>Only person in my group who runs Call of Cthulhu
>Enjoy it (I'm not one of those people who bemoans being a forever GM) but like to use cons as chances to be a player
>Sign up for a game at anime con in my town
>Keeper running it says she's new to running it but has experience as player
>We're using pre-made characters from Doors to Darkness
>Keeper says if there's any items not listed on the character sheet that we want to ask and she'll approve them
>Notice there's no light source on mine (I'm playing the priest), which is something in my experience players always forget to bring
>Ask if I can have a lantern (We're playing in 1901 so no flashlights)
>Keeper agrees
>Turns out the scenario is entirely around monsters who can't enter light
>We're supposed to have a limited amount of glowing crystals which burn out to keep them back
>However, my having a lantern keeps us completely safe for 90% of the finale
>I even use the lantern flame to make jury-rigged torches for the other PCs
>About 75% through, Keeper admits she's never gotten this far without SOMEONE dying
>We all end up living, though only barely
Unintentionally breaking someone's con game was fucking hilarious. She did a great job and the fact things still remained scary is a testament to how well she handled the horror but MAN was she struggling to deal with the fact I brought a lantern.

>>96139994
Strange Tales of Song Ling RPG is short but great.

It's not the Asian horror of Ringu or Grudge, but the style of old Hong Kong ghost movies, or chinese movies like "A Chinese Ghost Story" and ghost C-Dramas. Those stories are like the "Ravenloft" of Asian Horror.

>>96139994
Not a scenario but an interesting starting point for exploration might be the Shadow Book of Ji Yun. It's a great repository of folklore and "true" paranormal occurrences recorded by an 18th century Chinese politician that could make for interesting inspiration.

Is there a good rpg for doing spooky cyberpunk stuff?
Apart obviously from Pondsmiths "cyberpunk" and shadowrun.

>>96139481
>SCP board game with an official Scaroet King model
I fucking kneel.

>>96144557
My Cthulhutech spiritual successor that consists of a few paragraphs at the end of my houserules notes .doc and a bunch of stuff fin my head.

And some mothership modules, I guess, if you can stand NuOSR with "figure out how combat works yourself" rules.

>>96134802
Did anyone play theee guys next module, Inversion? The premise looked interesting though I hated actually playing Viral since it boiled down to a railroad with 20 [ages of fluff that doesn't matter.

>>96134220
Fuck it, I'll bite.

The End of the World series is supposed to represent the players experiencing an apocalyptic event. It could be just when said event just started, shortly after it started, years after it started, etc. The core books setup each different flavor of apocalypse and catalogs each major milestone in them well enough to give you an idea of where to start but doesn't flesh shit out in a lot of detail.

The system works well enough and uses standard d6s. It's a rules lite narrative affair. Since you are roleplaying as a group of retards who enjoy roleplaying that got dropped into the apocalypse, your stats are gonna be middling and fucking up is fairly commonplace. As such, it's a pretty banging game for one shots where everybody winds up dead. In fact, the players should go into it fully expecting to die. Surviving the game isn't really the point so much as trying to have a memorable death. It's the End of the World after all, not Anon's Save the Universe.

Grab a particular version of Hellscape you think would make a good horror movie backdrop for a no survivor movie with 100% of the cast being sidekick tier characters and see how long you can survive a meat-grinder with whatever bullshit reason to be out in that meat-grinder you see fit.

I personally liked the little gray aliens going full Mats Attacks on our ass.

Thoughts on Memento Mori?

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>>96133537
Oh hey this is exactly the sort of general I was looking for. I'm thinking about running a low powered skinwalker/doppelganger game inspired by No I'm not a Human. What would be some recommendations for that?

>>96144557
There is a gurps book called Cthulhupunk that might give you some ideas, if nothing else.

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>>96139481
>Scarlet King model
Cool. Does this game have his minions like Jeser and Moloch?

Speaking of human sacrifices and HPL.

The man used them very sparsely: Keziah kills children in The Dreams in the Witch-house (altough it's not exactly sure what they do, they seem useful to return in the real world) and in the Call the cultist offer them to Those with the Dark Wings (do they need to feed off on them? Actually, what are they, even?).

While this is all fine and dandy and defintely helps him stay away from the gothic/pulp novel overused tropes, I'm partial to the nips ideas of human suffering as magical fuel (Silent Hill style) and the haunted location as really a nowhere of mass murder/playground for foul shit (Corpse Party).

So... what are some ideas to make it a tiny bit more lovecraftian than "crazy hypergeometrical witch kidnaps and kill children in her pocket dimension"? Not necessarily less pulpy, but somehow more inspired.

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>Never DM'ed anything
>Offer to be keeper for CoC
>8 People from the local shop sign up

Oh god I'm nervous what the fuck do I do. I can't remember every single stat on the page and people are gonna be mad oh god.

I live and breathe weird fiction/horror literature and film but I'm god damn terrified what the fuuuuuuuck.

>>96156763
The sacrifices in Call are just because it's what the cultists think works. It doesn't do shit. Cthulhu does not give the slightest shit about humanity. It's like ants leaving dead ants at your doorstep. You either wouldn't notice or just think "that's weird" before moving about your day.

You want good shit? Have a literal wizard show up throwing down fucked up spells from Shadow of the Demon Lord. Yog-Sothoth freely shares his gifts to anyone batshit enough to pay him a visit.

>>96157803
>4 players max
>run The Haunting
>keep it tight, clean, elegant
>ruthlessly crush those who defy you

>>96157803
8 is too many
especially for a first time keeper

>>96157803
As the others said, 4 should be absolute maximum of players for a new GM. I'm Gming for years and I wouldn't go near a table with more than 5 players and that is if everyone involved has the rules down to a t.
If I had to recommend a first session it would probably be something like a quick investigation followed by ONE combat encounters with human enemies. When everyone especially the GM is still getting familiar with the rules, things tend to drag on quite a bit and you don't want to be stuck in a fight that has the concluded while everyone at the table is already tired. Or something prewritten.
When I start a new game or group I always treat the first session as a one-shot.

>>96158167
>>96160107
>>96160352

I'll definitely split into two different games, The Haunting is on my list, then after those maybe some of the pre-mades that came with the game screen.

I'll just focus on the first game and see how it goes.

Thanks all.

>>96160869
I'd recommend reading The Alexandrian's articles about running a mystery to give you an idea of what the nuts and bolts of actually setting and moving through scenes looks like. It's in the GMing 101 section on his site. Seth Skorkowksy also has a good video specifically about running the Haunting that I found helpful the first time I ran it. He's also got a bunch of other really practical review/how tos of other CoC modules, including the ones included with the keepers screen, so it might be worth checking out.

>>96155094
I remember The Night Shift has some similar mechanics that could make this concept work. If you want to, I have a video about this game if you're interested to give it a watch. https://youtu.be/oGCvPCfTdIU

>>96155094
What are you looking for in a system?
Because generally what I refer people to look at in these situations is Unknown Armies 2nd Ed. Percentile dice that works great for a horror system, combat is incredibly dangerous, and the character sheets are surprisingly simple yet very effective for giving each character something to give themselves identity with things like rage impulses, fear reflexes and personal goals having mechanical use
Then there's the more granular sanity system where it's not just treated as a second HP bar which can have some fun moments here.

>>96157803
>8
Way too many like the others said. You'd need to cut that shit down heavily.

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Insect monsters are the scariest.

>>96133537
How far into grimdark do you have to go before it stops being oppressive and horror based only to become comedic because of how over the top it is?

I got a game called Astro Inferno and the guy who made it went so far into the weeds that it is an absurdist comedy by mistake. You might be taking a gig from a mound of talking flies united by hivemind calling itself Lord Agrizriel, Prophet of Phlegm, who runs the House of Guts to go into the Wastes of Flayed Fetuses in order to find the Hammer of Satan's Kindness so the Lord can be crowned the Pope of Disembowelment at the next meetup of Damned Clergymen.

Does Paranoia in Straight style count?

Oh hey, Cthulhutech 2 finally came out.
(And it's on the vola)

It distresses me that whenever I read about people running horror games, 90% of time it's premade scenarios/campaigns and very rarely does anyone discuss coming up with stuff on your own.

>>96173458
I think a lot of it comes down to expectation from the audience. The harder you fish for any sort of reaction, be it shock, fear, or amusement, the more likely that reaction is going to be amusement, amusement, or amusement.

If shit's played straight and also subtle, you can go pretty far into grimdark without hitting comedy.

>>96175981
I get completely flouridated when I try to think of modern scenarios so I don't think I'll ever run an original DG adventure.

Though you obviously have to dig through a lot of crap to find something that's not another collect-a-clue then fight or run in the climax.

>>96175935

Oh my god, they managed to make the ghouls non-edgy and have furry races

I'm honestly speechless

>>96173458
I avoid grimdark entirely, but I've found my definition of "grimdark" is pretty specific. Most peoples' is.

Ran a game where one of my players told me he "loved how grimdark (the setting) was", while I'm over here thinking "but I fucking hate grimdark and specifically made (the setting) to NOT be grimdark".

That's when it truly dawned on me just how variable and inconsistent genre definitions can be. In the end expectations matter more.

Are there any modules that go something like
>Enter building
>Go down hall
>Turn around
>Door has been replaced with a band to another hallway
Or a similar premise? I got the itch to run a game like that and I wanted to know if there was anything I could ape off before committing to writing my own

>>96173458
It's all in presentation as how things are described and visualized can shift how one reacts to the concept. Take the "feed me a stray cat" scene from American Psycho. It's an intentional absurd bit of black humor that highlights how the protagonist is breaking from reality. Now imagine if you were walking down the street and you saw a guy killing a cat by ramming it's skull into the slot of an ATM machine and saying he has to feed it.

how would you run a strayan game?
maybe some aussie deep ones besiege a small port town that the investigators are in and they have to make their way to the only bush plane in the area to escape

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>>96139481
Please tell me there is Sarkicism in this.

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First time GM about to run a game of Call of Cthulhu. Can someone please explain to me how guns are balanced against each other in this game?

I understand that there's a large variety for realism and flavor, but there's so many differences between them mechanically and from what I can tell there's little to no downside to just taking the strongest gun every time. What I'm asking is, if the players are going to be carrying a single-shot rifle, what reason is there to pick anything other than an elephant gun, for example? Alternatively, if they're going to carry a shotgun, what's the point of ever using 20-gauge rather than 12-gauge?

What am I missing here?

>>96186584
Very common question, you have to read between the lines. Shotguns can't Impale and every damage die they use increases the target's AP by 1 if they have armor.
>enemy has a 2 AP kevlar vest, you use a 4d6 12ga shotgun, their AP is treated as 6 (2+4)
So basically, shotguns do more -raw- damage, rifles do more -potential- damage.

>>96186584
>>96186729
Also note that the weapon table has some errors that've never been corrected for some reason. For example, the Cavalry Lance has no DB listed, but it's MEANT to be your mount's DB.

>>96178483
Logical followup to all the rape in 1e, eldrich rape babies.

>>96186729
I understand that there are categorical differences between weapon types, such as pistols, rifles, shotguns, etc., but I don't really see why you wouldn't just get the weapon with the highest damage dice respectively for each category when there's little to no mechanical trade-off for it, and it doesn't feel like an enormous roleplay difference which particular brand of pistol they choose rather simply get the best one.

>>96186584
it's just legacy cruft and autism
DG just splitting the types up into light-medium-heavy and letting players name the model if they want to sperg about gear is better (though i'd argue heavy is a pointless category too)

>>96184629
Those are the coolest depictions of the Klavigars I've ever seen. Holy fuck.

>>96186584
>I understand that there's a large variety for realism and flavor, but there's so many differences between them mechanically and from what I can tell there's little to no downside to just taking the strongest gun every time. What I'm asking is, if the players are going to be carrying a single-shot rifle, what reason is there to pick anything other than an elephant gun, for example? Alternatively, if they're going to carry a shotgun, what's the point of ever using 20-gauge rather than 12-gauge?
Two extra things I'd think of is size and plausible deniability. For example elephant guns are FUCKING HEAVY. And if somebody becomes suspicious of you in a city, explaining what you need an elephant gun for won't be easy without being dragged off to an asylum.

>>96188488
Cost, rarity, malfunctions, impale vs non-impale, armor penalty for shotguns, and so on. That said, the gun tables have some weird flaws in them and you can easily fix them via houserules. Example, RAW shotgun slugs are broken, basically making rifles pointless. What I do is greatly reduce their damage based on range, similar to regular shotguns, since RL slugs rapidly lose their kinetic energy over distances.

>>96191082
Slugs aren't actually TOO broken if you consider most rifles can fire multiple shots.

>>96188085

Apparently not, they toned down the edgy. So we have furry werecats from Ulthar and non-edgy ghouls.

(contrariwise aside from being of more colors than black the Nazzadi seem pretty much consistent)

>>96157803
Was in a similar situation but was running Last Things Last in Delta Green as a first time Handler. I had almost the same amount of players, so I just split it into 2 separate games, but that also allowed me to make minor tweaks between them so they both got to talk with each other about how their games ran.

>>96133537
Any tips for running DRYH online?

>>96192569

Never did it online, but the dice/token cycle don't seem too interwebz-friendly.

>>96192590
That's my impression but it's been popular on /tg/ for ages and I suppose I thought someone knew a good diceroller or virtual setup for it. I'd do it in person but lmao as if I knew anyone for it.

>>96175981
Horror is extremely hard to deliver effectively without sufficient prep even if you're using a premade.

>>96192907
The trick to running a horror game effectively is to stop thinking you need to actively spook or jumpscare your players.

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>>96189180
It is great. Have these individual images of them to better appreciate the details.

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>>96195386

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>>96195393

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>>96195396

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>>96195411

>>96155094
Ran that myself
Hunter the Vigil 1E Chronicals of darkness

Can you describe the idea more

>>96192907
Yeah but if they're doing prep they might as well come up with something new. Especially in case of Delta Green posts it almost feels like everyone is just regurgitating the 5 same scenarios/modules over and over and over and over again.

>>96135700
Shit excuse.
>>96134970
Let's give it a go then. I don't know much about SCP lore but it seems that the King is reality's innate counterreaction to modernity?

>How do you show the impact of society-wide SAN damage without immediately resorting to cultist everywhere?
>Is there a sweet-spot for the downfall of civilisation or will the dark gods always try to drag us further back into screaming ignorance?
>What systems support culture at large as as an entity that interacts and can be interacted with by PCs?

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>>96133537
>>96197061
Reading up on the King brings to mind this take on "anti-civilisation", it's all the more unsettling for being mundane. Civility is a Lord of the Flies-like fiction that can be (and in this case with ecstatic relief) cast away to reveal worse-than-feral instincts bubbling below the surface.

Here's the rest of the thing btw. Dude's a very effective bite-sized horror content creator.
https://imgchest.com/p/agyveamxj48

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>>96197061
>it seems that the King is reality's innate counterreaction to modernity?
That is just one interpretation in a SCP-001 proposal. Most articles simply depict him as a ruthless conqueror with an eldritch army trying to end existence. It reminds me of the lich from Adventure Time.

>>96196021
>Yeah but if they're doing prep they might as well come up with something new.
Your mistake is thinking that something new doesn't need its own prepwork. It's twice as much work to design a scenario then work on it.
>>96193283
Maintaining a specific atmosphere is important. It's much harder to do when you're effectively playtesting.

Which tabletop system is the best at doing horror and action? I already have my pet system of choice for it but I know others have theirs.

>>96133537
I'm really kind of just over that whole design. It's so cliché and kitschy now. You see it everywhere. Ooooo spooky eyes floating around a monochrome baphomet. The Nightreign Libra thing was another recent example.

Fucking yawn. It's the Tumblrina equivalent of a T-pose.

>>96200224
"Less is more" very much applies to that archetypal ur-conqueror nemesis.

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>>96201463
forgot pic

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>>96200224
King's King made great use of drapes (sorta like a Hastur with less mold and more blood...).

>>96133537
Trying to design a location for Warhammer fantasy . It’s a place where one of the old ones killed a thousand gods before Belakor caved his head in. My question is what are the remnants of a chaos god like? There are massive corpses there that hurt to look like, tracts of land that loop around on themselves, bizarrely desecrated temples never built by any hand, ghosts of obscenities, but what else? What does it look like when a nightmare dies? What scar remains when an infection in reality heals?

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>>96183055
>how would you run a strayan game?
We know the Great Race had atleast one major outpost on that desolate waste. The K'nyaan are also always a good choice, preying on people who get lost in the outback. Maybe even have them hiding a major city under Ayers Rock.
Also you could have some fun with the Wandjina, native aboriginal spirits from the Dreaming. They could easily be anything you want them to be. Or perhaps an interpretation of the Mi-Go. Sitings are in the rise and someone is offering a cash prize for any evidence of these strange spirits.

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>>96201479
A clutter of skulls is hardly an improvement, anon. I've literally seen Warhammer illustrations with fewer skulls, and Warhammer has long been considered comedy because of how campy they get with the skull motif. It's fucking old and worn out like your mom's pussy at this point.

The feminine version is the eyeless facemask, pic related.

>>96202393
You know how chromatic aberration is a thing in optics? Just like a weird aura outlining things in the corners of your vision but it's colors your mind perceives but your eye does not see. A persistent tinnitus which warbles in a random melody you cannot reproduce yourself but everyone with you knows instantly what you're talking about while you're there. Everything you touch feels like it's vibrating in slow motion, too fast to be a pulse, too slow to make a sound or be visible. While you're in the area, your body does not regenerate: the ordinary wear and tear of just being alive just accumulates until you're eventually exhausted and in constant pervasive pain. Even the local flora and fauna have grown in contorted ways that emote chronic pain.

What are some examples of evil / eldritch trees?

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>>96202863
When they aren't trees?

>>96202863
Birches

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>>96202863
Or when it's got major wicker-witch winter fey bloody brambles vibes.

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>>96203263

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Anybody ever experimented with the concept of characters filming/broadcasting/livestreaming a horror scenario? I was watching Late Night With the Devil and liked the concept of having my PCs as broadcasters or hosts of a show, maybe with a few 'on the ground' in a haunted/corrupted location, while trying to keep viewers watching and dealing with emerging supernatural phenomena. Like a show-within-the-game situation. I might try to develop this further to run as a one-shot, but I'm still in the ideas phase. I think it could be a lot of fun having to juggle screen personalities though.

>>96204717
There is a scenario called Viral that is about this idea.

>>96204717

Almost literally Ghoulboys

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>>96202863
I talked about it in the thread before but you don't even really need to make the tree into a monster itself. Truly ancient trees have a unique energy in and of themselves. Some reaching thousands of years old, a sort of living bridge to the past. Imagine the things it could have been witness to, what pagan rites could have been performed under it and perhaps still replayed in its own form of living memory, a conduit to ancient and possibly profane times that could be unlocked if you knew the right way to reach to it.

>>96202863

There is a good if slighty pulpy scenario about an evil tree (of sorts) in Out of the Woods for Trail of Cthulhu.

In more general terms, we have stories about man eating trees at least from the 1800s (the Yateveo) and the subsequesnt century gave us the alraune (well, not technically a tree, but it's a monstergirl so /tg/ will like her). Japan has the Furutsubaki-no-rei, the Jubokko and theYamanashi no kai. muslim tradition the Zaqqum. Your mileage may vary about the greek lotus tree (not evil per se but dangerous as fuck).

Lovecraft himself tried his hand at the idea with a story which has the not particulary original title of The Tree.

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>>96206982
NTA, but the other side of said tree. Has space perfect for some weird ceremony inside of it.

>>96207592

Looks comfy. I mean, nothing said you can't just chill out with your fellow cultists after yer olde evil sacrifice.

>>96207696
Maybe the real cult was the friends we made along the way.

Had a really good session Cthulhu Dark tonight lads. The doom is sinking in. I'm glad I reread Dreams in the Witchhouse.
Still a cool system but I think I'll get deeper into CoC. I still don't grok combat or chase rules.

>>96205581
I read somewhere that Viral is a ripoff of a Korean or Japanese CoC scenario a dude made and he never got compensated.

>>96204717
I ran a DRYH one shot, characters woke up in hell and one of the characters was a popular streamer. As time went on he started losing connection to the real world and thus viewers but instead demons started tuning into the stream and giving him tips via chat.

>>96207792
Literally the same here lmao
Did a pair of one shots to give the players a feel for the system and they like it, so now all that's left to do is figure out what the hell is next. Maybe expanding on the town's lore could net a few good hooks, but that won't explain why Azathoth has such a strong influence on the town...
>>96133537
Ran a zombie apoc session a while ago using a custom system of my design. It could be ass for all I care but the highlight would be using a real world location.
The players used their local knowledge to add to the depth and apparently using a map was a lot of fun. I think the takeaway is players like being involved in deciding aspects of the world without the responsibility of keeping track

>>96207703

Have to admit now I want to run a cult of very mean cultists that unironically love each other. Or maybe some sort of old ladies, all tea and niceness, that use their air of perfect respectability to cover up their shit

>>96207816
there's a korean horror movie that its heavily based on, was that it?

>>96202810
True, I like all the details you can get out of one draped fabric more than anything else.
>>96202863
Gallow-boughs at the crossroad are a classic place to stumble across the devil for a reason. "Strange fruit" nicely sums up the way our fear of uncanny things can be a projection of the nastiness we hide within ourselves. Old as they are the crooked yew at the town's centre could've been witness to many atrocities the "goodly" folk would much rather forget. Like it or not blood's soaked the earth to be drank deep by the roots and written into the rings...

Also: Darkwood.

>>96201479
Guy was basically an all powerful retarded spider with a blanket thrown over him.

King is such a shitty author. Bizarrely, he is an amazing writer. The difference between the two is a writer can really paint a picture with words and make you believe the world represented in text is a living thing, King is fantastic at this. An author can tell a story, a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end with a cohesive plot that flows very well, King is ABSOLUTELY horrible at this
Writing from the perspective of a housewife who is a self-hating Jew in great detail and passion? Good writing. Having that 30+ page read contribute fuck all to the story and that character never appearing again or influencing the plot in any god damn way at all? Terrible work as an author and King does shit like that constantly. It's why the guy shines at short stories that keep him from rambling on like US President.

>>96202863
Sometimes, just plain biology can provide some pretty freaky things.
-Strangler figs suffocate other trees, their roots eventually forming a hollow tube surrounding where the host once was.
-Bullhorn acacias are covered in thorns and have evolved to have ants live in them for extra defense.
-The scars from aspens dropping branches looks a lot like eyes.
-Speaking of which, quaking aspens can reproduce by cloning and theres a colony that takes up over 100 acres.
-Manchineels have a sap so toxic that just standing under the tree during a rain will give you blisters.
-Several tree species have blood-red sap

what are some good conspiracies?

>>96210018
Like real life conspiracy theories? Why?

>>96210018
I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you

>>96210018
My favourite one is what I came up with when I was 12. The tale of The Ark and it's 40 days and nights is an analogy for humanity's exodus from Mars when it was drying up and dying. We are not native to earth, and what is native wants to take back what's theirs...

>>96210882
That's not what a conspiracy is.

>>96207869
That sounds rad as hell, storytime a little? Did they know they were in hell? I find different uses of DRYH outside of the mad city interesting. Did everyone get a slow roll into the nature of btw you died and this is hell? What were the other powers?

>The real question is what does a hellish stream audience do?Are they worst or better then people. Do they say the N word more?

>>96210533
fictional conspiracies can work. I'm working to throw some in a campaign and I found out I am horrible of thinking up any.

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>>96211604
Basically we wanted to play a short horror scenario as an intermission to our standard campaign, I wanted to check out DRYH as I haven't ran it before. At that time I also happened to be inspired by Czarnosc (https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/2011/15715013/) and certain horror vidya.

One PC was the aforementioned streamer, he had 0 personality of his own (as in he was acting so much the original himself stopped existing) and had some extra trauma I don't remember. His exhaustion talent was perfectly faking his entire persona etc. to draw the most attention or popularity, madness talent was getting info from the chat and video comments, directly to his brain, even for future or hypothetical videos he wouldn't make. Another PC was broken PTSD vet, his whole unit killed and he used a friend's corpse as a body shield when the OpFor was making sure everyone was dead; except when they shot him he realized he wasn't yet dead. His exhaustion talent was (in short) shooting really well and his madness talent was making himself stop exist to survive peril (like in that ambush he survived). Last character was a crazy goth chick with a ghost BF, exhaustion talent was the ghost helping her see stuff, madness talent was the ghost obliterating stuff with it with supernatural power.

The group woke up in a dilapitated hut with no memories of their last day and immediately saw some super misshapen dude in a labcoat, one of the PCs had a gun so they shot him dead, and the labcoat guy just dissolved. They heard another one rushing from the outside (it was actually the same guy post-respawn) and barricaded the door, the guy would bang on the door and scream something incoherent, they ended up killing him over and over again until he was reduced to a harmless vegetative form. They had 0 idea of what the hell was going on. The "hell" was partially desert, partially war ruined metropolies (think: pic related), partially other bizarre landscapes.

>>96212364
>>96211604
tldr of the plot is that unspecified glowies captured people with immense trauma and otherwise 'appropriate potential' for an experiment to explore a newly discovered dream-realm. The PCs would accidentally drift there sometimes in dreams, but the plan was to hook them to machines so that they tact as a taxi for the reconnaissance and research team. Obviously it went FUBAR in almost an instant.

Aside from the mutated denizens of the hellscape, there were also demons (DRYH Nightmares) who were pissed off at the PCs for daring to not be mutated, and for upsetting the status quo with their appearance. Anyway, the group established that the actual soul of the goth chick's BF was in the very same hell, trapped in a lone "intact" skyscraper by the demons who were slowly breaking him to turn him into one of them. The party had something close to the Matrix lobby shootout scene at the ground floor, except iirc they first crashed into the building with a truck. Later they also dealt with another boss type nightmare in the elevators and reached the bf. Around that time the streamer guy had basically 0 real world audience (they got bored of what they thought was a lame marketing campaign for some new movie or game) but instead already had several hundred thousands of locals and demons watching and that's when the PC realized that fact. Later one demon even sent him a hope coin via superchat to comment on the events.
>The real question is what does a hellish stream audience do?Are they worst or better then people. Do they say the N word more?
The way I had them act was like, imagine if you had lulz-hungry internet hate machine /b/tards from 2008, but more numerous, raiding a modern livestream except it's not a raid because they're the website's target demographic.

Anyway the bf gave them a few options on how to act, but with pressure from the goth chick and the chat's demons the group ended up learning coming back to "reality" wouldn't be real either.

>>96212377
To pursue the truth, (super brief version, and I also forgot some minute details) with information from the goth's bf and some traitorous stream viewers (the demons who helped the group for teh lulz), the party raided a checkpoint to steal an executive demon's headset which would allow them to issue a few commands to the hell/demons.

They also stole a tank from there and travelled via a ruined highway to a "Gate", while pursued by fiends. At the "Gate", they issued a mysterious (as in they didn't know what it'd do) command to "purge" everyone within a huge radius of (the party), and then quickly a second command to wake up (the party).

The group woke up in the true reality - grim and barren version of the earth consumed by an alien (or supernatural, never specified nor decided myself) entity, with all of humanity naked/unconscious as the entity fed off their emotions. Most of people remained in the "normal" illusionary reality, the risky elements would be sent to hell to wear them down quickly for more emotions and to repurpose their psyche into demons for further increasing the security, and the elements too dangerous to be slowly worn down in hell would be purged - directly devoured by the entity in the "real" reality. The goth chick's bf was supposed to be purged but he managed to fool the entity into downplaying the danger and so it tried to turn him into a demon instead.

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>>96212400
Anyway, as the party was sent in for the purge, but then also awakened, they witnessed all of this, and their last bit of info from hell was some directions to follow and some mysterious codes to memorize. As there was suddenly a fuckton of unconscious people in line to be purged other than them, the group evaded all the tentacles and went towards where they were guided. What they found was a (mostly) intact bunker.

At that point the streamer guy realized what was up and disagreed hard. He enjoyed his acting, and would love to have an audience forever, while the PTSD vet just wanted to die but literally coudldn't, and the goth chick said that with her bf gone the entire world can burn for all she cares. Nobody's mind was changed after an argument and so they jumped each other; the streamer was on his own so the two overpowered and killed him. Then they went deeper into the bunker.
Inside, there was a still functioning nuclear missile launch facility.


It was fairly awesome but first time playing DRYH was confusing as hell for everyone, and playing online made it even harder. On the other hand I'm pretty sure the mechanics contributed at least a little to the tension, so I'm glad I tried it. Not sure if I'm gonna try running it again though, maybe irl.

>>96210930
A murder drones TTRPG would actually be fire

>>96212056
Some of my favorites
>Tommy Wiseau is D.B Cooper
>The second coming of Christ already happened
>Time Traveling Big Foot
>The lizard men of Ubaid

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>>96133537
How would you adapt the mechanics of SCP-105? Her ability seems to work like portals.

>>96214032
We're getting a graphic novel, so maybe a game might be on the table.

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Why do people act like all the monsters Lovecraft wrote were invincible? A Deep One should be easy to shoot at.

>>96218612
he's just like me...

>>96218612
Most of them haven't read Lovecraft's stuff, is why. They get all their info from shitty memes.

>>96223036
This.

Mighty Cthulhu gets taken out by being hit with a fishing boat in the only story he actually appears in.

But a century after the fact, "Lovecraftian" is synonymous with Lovecraft, even though the former is literally built on decades of stuff by other people building on decades of stuff by other people building on decades of stuff by people who just borrowed some thematic ideas Lovecraft himself didn't even invent.

>>96214062
Do people not understand what conspiracies are? This topic is making me think people don't know what conspiracies are.

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On the topic of "beating Mythos monsters"…

>>96218612
I mean yeah easy to shoot at. Like a bear
The hard part is putting them down for good.

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>>96139994
Recommend [Rigor Mortis], a JiangShi film set in Kowloon City. Modern western horror touches on the chinese vampire movie premise.

It's a ride, I promise.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x94u2ge

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>>96218612
Because Lovecraft himself was a jibbering nerveless lanklet. His self-inserted response to an IRL existential threat is to melt in place; that's why his monsters seem invincible.

The self-inserted response of his peer Robert Howard, the guy who wrote Conan, is
>fan the ugly mother with the big irons
>shit I'm out of rounds and it's still moving
>where's my woodaxe
>C'MERE YOU
The Innsmouth People, Dunwich Horror and Martin Beach Horror would all have gotten lever-action resolutions. More ethereal types like Erich Zann's monster would have gotten a technological solution like multiple radios playing a vinyl recording of Erich Zann's composition arranged for orchestra.

Difference in author's psychological makeup is the factor.

>>96230466
Get that reddit shit out of here.
Gayest fucking bullshit faggotry ever spammed on this board by the gayest fucking losers.

>>96232568
You're just mad he blew you sky high.

>>96232552
You've never read lovecraft

>>96228537
Cthulhu wasn't taken out by a boat, the boat just slowed him down. The stars just weren't right, you'd know this if you read the book.
IF that even was Cthulhu.

>>96235031
It could have been one of his star spawn.

>>96218612
Because >>96223036 and >>96228537
It's funny, the reddicucks over at the CoC subreddit had a meltdown some time back when somebody made a thread about how a Star Spawn could be killed in a single round by a single attacker using automatic fire. The general response was
>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GO PLAY DND YOU HAVE TO DIE IN COC YOU CAN'T FIGHT BACK CHUD

>>96235548
Doesn't a star spawn have like, 100 hp? I know automatic fire does a lot but I really doubt there's any gun that can do 100 damage in a single round.

>>96235009
I have. A binge years ago, most of his stories, some essays; the references I made didn't come from cliff notes.

>then you should recognize him as a genius
He had one brilliant idea, but apart from that was not a great writer. He seems unable to conjure voices, tones and personalities too different from his own.

His attempt at scientific realism in Mountains of Madness forexample shows him to be unfamiliar with the language of science and impatient with the process of realism. I am unsatisfied that MC could decypher advanced alien hieroglyphs at first hand with no Rosetta, uncovering the whole history of the alien race in a few hours. This smacks of authorial impatience to get on to the good bits, and the presumptuous hope that you the reader will not object.

>Dude he's writing about eldritch
>just suspend your disbelief
He invoked realism by invoking science; ignoring the expectations of realism at first convenience leaves everything else hollow.

>>96235738
https://www.reddit.com/r/callofcthulhu/comments/wybh9m/raw_browning_vs_starspawn/

Apparently, with middling luck, one Investigator with MG can almost kill a star spawn in one round.

>>96235938
>the references I made didn't come from cliff notes.
Evidently they did since you mentioned how, if Howard wrote it they'd have blasted the Dunwich horror with guns, ignoring the fact that that's literally what fucking happened. Or how in the music of eric zahn, they'd just "have a recording of an orchestra", which entirely misses the point of the story.
>He seems unable to conjure voices, tones and personalities too different from his own
Untrue, but that's subjective so I won't argue
Also complaining about unrealism in a science fiction story is quite a take, because that means you aren't going to enjoy literally any science fiction story. Would you rather have had Lovecraft completely shift the tone of the story and have his protagonist spend dozens of months in Antarctica, decoding the hieroglyphs, only to THEN have the shoggoth appear? Do you not see how that'd ruin the flow of the story? Plus, the hieroglyphs in question were mostly pictograms, and gauging a story from pictures is not an impossible task.
If you wanted to show an actual example of science done wrong it'd be the fact the mi-go corpse could not be photographed but could be seen, and now THAT would just be wrong, but the Mountains of Madness thing is completely fine, and it's really weird you took issue with that specifically.
Also calling Lovecraft a jibbering nervless lanklet is a completele misrepresentation of his character and a modern imagining by people who wanted to smear him because he didn't like blacks.

>>96235983
NTA but
>the reddicucks over at the CoC subreddit had a meltdown some time back when somebody made a thread about how a Star Spawn could be killed in a single round by a single attacker using automatic fire.
>literally not a single negative comment in sight

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How can we make dragons scarier?

>>96232552
>The Innsmouth People, Dunwich Horror and Martin Beach Horror would all have gotten lever-action resolutions.

Wilbur's brother got destroyed by some spell-casting professors. Which all considered seems pretty satisfingly action-y (but not stereotypical action-y) to me. Wilbur himself was unclimatically rekt by a fucking dog, if you really want to bitch about that story.
The Martin's beach horror MO was really not connected to its size: it hypnotizes people (and makes the bystander explictely dumb in the meanwhile). Sure, whatever could kill a whale would presumably at the very least wound it, but it definetly was not some Achab in the boat vs angry Moby Dick situation.
Not really sure about your point with the Deep Ones. A Sam Spade character would most certainly kill a bunch of them (the soldiers easily mopped up Innsmouth), but the protagonist was trying to escape a whole fucking town. Even with a gun and general badassitude, that would not exactly be the ideal plan.

If REH wrote a modern cthulhu-ish tale... wait, he did that! And the protagonist of The Black Stone not only doesn't go in any part pew pew against the mythos, but even faints at the sight of a big black toad.

(he certainly did wrote more action-horror shit, with some mythos reference even. Professor Kirowan is a thing. But have you considered that maybe the whole point is not how the monster could be fought?)

>>96235938

They don't decipher the Elder Things' writing, they reconstruct their story with murals. Pretty easy for alien art, I can concede, but I don't think them waiting for months in the city would've made pacing or "realistical" sense.

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>>96237231

Toss the whole DND big talking lizard style.

I read once a wild "believer" take about Nessie of all things that stayed with me. That it wasn't some plesiosaur but that it was (along with most dragons of legends) a big venomous invertebrate living in swamps and the like, destroying the local environment with its toxins and IIRC easily escaping in caves and the like. Supposedly this is based on some early records of encounters with Nessie that described it on land as abusrdly repulsive, not the relatively normal if big reptile that it was "canonized" in the years. The, uh, worms not leaving bones upon death was the reason why there are no fossils or the like.

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>>96235989
>the Dunwich Horror //was// blasted with guns, dumbass
I have forgotten most of what I read. It's been 10++ years. I just remember what pleased/annoyed me most.

>recording Zann's music for orchestra as an offensive measure is missing the point of the story
Conceded.

>complaining about realism in a science fiction story means you won't enjoy any science fiction story
In my defense I'm not complaining about the unrealism of the SF components - shoggoths, twisty cities - just the backdrop of realism being done in a rush. Imagine seeing a rock face carved with Tomb Script Mandarin or First Dynasty Egyptian without knowing either language, and knowing what is said in a matter of hours.

>Would you rather have had Lovecraft completely shift the tone of the story and have his protagonist spend dozens of months in Antarctica, decoding the hieroglyphs, only to THEN have the shoggoth appear
Lovecraft has unholy heathenish artifacts in his other stories, Call of Cthulhu being one; make the inscriptions on, say, a ritual altar the Rosetta, plus two years of prior research at Misk. U. yielding a working lexicon of key terms/expressions from the Rosetta cross referencing other dead language texts, THEN handwave interpreting the hieroglyph wall to half a day.

I'm not sure why you seem to think Mountains of Madness needs to have the Aristotlean unities of "same place same day same people"; that's a formula for dramatic tragedy, which first requires a Heroic (ie Mortal Paragon) MC, and some kind of hubris. MoM is not a dramatic tragedy; none of the exploration team are that kind of heroic, no hubris, aka "overweening pride" detected, and the expedition does not end in personal tragic horror, like Oedipus losing his eyes. I say throw out the Aristotlean formula. Dragging out the pacing past Aristotlean Unity will not hurt a horror story; see the hunt for Dracula, the first Alien, and The Thing. A lot of good horror are slow-cooked dread.

con

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>>96235989
>If you wanted to show an actual example of science done wrong it'd be the fact the mi-go corpse could not be photographed but could be seen, and now THAT would just be wrong, but the Mountains of Madness thing is completely fine, and it's really weird you took issue with that specifically.
I have no problem at all with the Mi-go scene, even with the weirdness of an organism that can't be photographed. I actually like it the most out of the whole text. The meticulousness of the dissection process should have been expanded to everything the team tries to do. Lovecraft was capable of CSI'ing everything up. He just didn't. Like I proposed, he wanted to rush to writing the good bits.

>Also calling Lovecraft a jibbering nervless lanklet is a completele misrepresentation of his character and a modern imagining by people who wanted to smear him because he didn't like blacks.
Him being repulsed by jeets and niggers is natural for his time and temperament; minimal fault. If anything, that should win him points here in Kekistan. I maintain that he is a nerveless lanklet, however; so many of his MCs come across as gutless intellectuals I strongly suspect them to be selfinserts. I have no absolute proof that he is nerveless, only circumstantial evidence from his biography: finds a qt3.14, can't keep her, sperglike struggle to explain his feelings; retreats from NY to huddle in his familial home, Providence, for the remainder of his life; resorts to selling his furniture out of lack of gainful employment; Unknown Kadath ends in a yearning for the England of his childhood. He is a pitiable, unmanful figure.

>>96237939
>I'm not sure why you seem to think Mountains of Madness needs to have the Aristotlean unities

NTA but aside from the fact that HPL generally use it, the problem is diegetic.
It's a modern antartica expedition. If they took their sweet time (at the city or even earlier, at the camp), someone would've tried to search for them. Ironically it would've made sense if his was before radio.
This in turn makes the lurking "monsters" (the escaped ET and then the shoggoth in the cave) have urgency, if at times obscured by the more, uh, worldbuilding parts.

Also, as I said, they don't decipher the writing, but pictures. It's as if they entered a natural history museum and got their hands on a full educational video of the history of earth, not on books.
A rosetta stone plot (common in scifi since the fifites, not so in HPL times) makes for quite a different type of story, I don't think anyone did it in horror. I suppose it could be done (don't know what you could base the translation trigger on, but anyway), but not for an isolated expedtion on earth in the last century.

Mind you, it that was an RPG and you as a player asked me, the answer would be pretty simple. Didn't the Elder Things kept proto-apes/prehumans as pets, in their decadence? "You don't really feel the city THAT alien now, anon. Maybe even strangely familiar, perhaps in some dreams?"

>>96238108

Sonia had to go to Cleveland to work. The marriage was going nowhere because they basically couldn't even see each other and he didn't want to still get a bit of her money she gave him every month. Pretty logical and manlike thinking, if you ask me. Not sure what the fuck you think he did with "explaining his feelings", but anyway the Kadath thing is a reference to Dunsany, not to himself.

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>>96237375
>Wilbur's brother got destroyed by some spell-casting professors.
An acceptable alternative, though still an uphill solution compared to a Winchester 54 running 30-06. Have handled guns, own no guns due to country laws; the heady, semidivine sensation of having a firearm against things that don't is akin to having a motorcar against things that don't. Perhaps having guns and technology would have been too easy a solution against the Horrors, but then Lovecraft's formulaic
>oh my god the trotters
>those unbearable indescribable TROTTERS
way of tying things up is equally lazy.

>Wilbur himself was unclimatically rekt by a fucking dog
I partly retract my statement: Lovecraft is //sometimes// capable of realism.

>the protagonist was trying to escape a whole fucking town.
>Even with a gun and general badassitude, that would not exactly be the ideal plan.
Accepted. I have powergamer instincts. There is no cure.

>have you considered that maybe the whole point is not how the monster could be fought?
Not really; I just imagine what I might have done if I isekaied into the MC's shoes, and given that this is 1920s-30s, I'd get the guns and axes out. Lovecraft personally had a .22 revolver and several inherited .22 rifles; no larger calibers. He had guns but was a noguns soul.

>Pretty easy for alien art, I can concede, but I don't think them waiting for months in the city would've made pacing or "realistical" sense.

Refer to >>96237939, the last greentext segment. I say Rosetta stone would have bridged pacing and believability nicely. I say handwaving alien languages as being decipherable to <6hrs is BS, because I tried writing a curse in ancient Egyptian and it still took me three days using the internet, a collection of transliterated text, and an egyptological index. This was for an output about 80 words long. Deciphering a whole wall in 6hrs with zero prior knowledge of an unhuman, utterly alien writing is unbelievable to me.

Deep woods Bigfoot horror

>>96238304
>An acceptable alternative, though still an uphill solution compared to a Winchester 54 running 30-06.

I'd... suggest you read how the Dunwhich Horror was.

Anyway the answer to the Mountains of Madness featuring no translation from alien languague is... having a magical translation device work on alien language because THAT would feel more realistic? Am I reading that correctly?

Also, the Thing is an almost perfect example of classical unities, and Alien is close to that.

Sell me on Delta Green.
I keep seeing it's name pop up lately. Enough so that I'm willing to look a little deeper to find out what it actually is.

>>96238150
>"You don't really feel the city THAT alien now, anon. Maybe even strangely familiar, perhaps in some dreams?"
Yes to this. If MoM's translation scene was handwaved with this I would have accepted it.

>Sonia had no job
>and HPL didn't want to take her money
>Pretty logical and manlike thinking, if you ask me.
HPL was consumed by, in Sonia's words, "intensely fixed ideas." Hardly logical. Part of why she brought him to NY is to introduce him to some smart cultured Jews, to wean him off his Jew-hate. It doesn't seem to have worked.

>manful
HPL hated his $17 a week post office job and quit after a fortnight, even though he needed the money. Sonia and his aunts supplied this lack. Hardly manful. He is sound of mind and somewhat of body. There is no excuse to live on a woman's money like a gigolo.

I maintain HPL was an ineffectual intellectual of the same cast as Stirner and Marx. I am not sure that even comparing him to a godless Jew like Marx would have roused him to manful vigor.

>>96238369
Call of Cthulhu but it's modern and your a Glowie, it can be more reasonable stuff like finding a missing VIP taken by cultists or
>Battling a possessed corpse in a septic tank then bargaining chicken heads for info with a clump of tadpoles a day later
It's not uncommon to get into a gunfight with deep ones

>>96238549
https://youtu.be/Albop3XB8-o?si=noQ51qQZzP7N2r9O

The main reason people like it because you're not uncovering a conspiracy
You're in one

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>>96238355
>having a magical translation device work on alien language because THAT would feel more realistic?
Not a translation device. A Rosetta has the same text in multiple languages, like a royal edict from an emperor. From having two known languages right beside a third unknown language of the same text, you can derive the vocab and grammar of the unknown language. Two years "off screen" making a field lexicon out of a Rosetta artifact at Misk. U. is not too much in order to decypher a whole wall <6hrs firsthand.

>Also, the Thing is an almost perfect example of classical unities, and Alien is close to that.
The Unity yields more benefits for film, and even then it could be stretched: both Alien and Thing plotpoints took several days, up to a week. I say MoM, as a text, can afford to stretch at least as much in terms of plotpoints and episodic crises without harm to the story.
>but muh pacing
>ur killing iiiit
I'm not. Given that the expedition is a scientific venture, using an epistemological narrative would have been ideal for a
>srs science hat nao
tone at no loss to pacing. Stoker did this (I have other criticisms of Stoker, but the epistemological form contributed so much to the modern novel).

>pls see how the Dunwich Horror was
Size of barn, invisible, yet tangible. Let's say it's the size of four elephants stitched together; that ugly mother will definitely leave prints. Cue caltrops, bear traps, tangle traps, baby powder, colored chalk, and .303. The human capacity for murderous improvisation is immense. Just talk to farmboys and poachers.

>your .303 ain't do shit pewfag
How about 20 x .303 from 3 guns? If you empty a Glock into a grizzly it will stop; a .22 will kill a grown pig, says Charlotte's Web. If 20 won't do it, use 60 and bill the mayor.

>>96238571
Damn, that vid does a lot of heavy lifting. I'm sold. Gonna go take a serious look when I can.
I want to believe.

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>>96237375
>rekt by a fucking dog
I take it back saying that this was realistic. Rereading the text now; Wilbur is by the time of his attempted burglary 7' or more, with gorilla arms and high IQ and EQ; he can see Dr Armitage being suspicious and hostile to his plans to summon Yog S. without anything to the effect being said, and has planned around the obstacle: he will heist the necronomicon from Misk. U. . He also saw the chained bulldog on his way in during office hours.

Unless the guard dog was a Tibetan mastiff or some other giant breed, there is no way a 7' ft Goliath with knowledge of the guarddog and the library layout to get killed in his attempt. This is B-movie writing.

>the dog's rending paws
one of many failures at realism. Dogs don't rend with their paws. They go for the throat and face with teeth.

Lovecraft has no concern for realism whatever. It doesn't matter to him if he makes the story unbelievable even within its own premises, he just want to get to writing the good-good quick-quick.

I said originally and now say again: he had one tremendous idea, but is not a great writer.

>Whateley... discoursed incoherently
I want to just smack him for lines like this.

>>96238627
>>96239048
What god awful fucking posts

>>96239628
>AI slopping reddit-spacing retard has dogshit posts
>surprised by this
Nonny...

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>"From the Dead Sea steps the monster to take the helples maid. Very horrible are the descendants."

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>"A lot of knowledge promises the book of the mad Abdul Alhazred for the Greek, Saracen and Jew. Instead a lot of fear and fright comes for the three wise men from the flying devils."

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>"With a lot of light and thunder out of a bright crown of light steps the high towering monster. With a lot of hewing it was chased away."

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>"The Saracens batter the terrible dragon spawn quite bravely. Many a head and limb is crushed until it lays dead in the sand."

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>"Not sword and not spear cut into the misshapen beast, but fire and pitch bring the monster down. Tekeli-li screams the beast while it fades away in the flames."

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>"With thundering hooves the brave order knights beat the horrifying creature to death."

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>>96239628
>I fully believe that a super smart 7' giant can be taken down by a guard dog that he knows is there
>the same super smart giant that used defensive measures against dogs in his accelerated boyhood

>>96240273
>Near the central desk a revolver had fallen, a dented but undischarged cartridge later explaining why it had not been fired.
>All at once the dog started up abruptly, gave a frightened bark, and leaped nervously out of the window by which it had entered.
Gee, I wonder how he could have died.

>>96241015
I feel like no matter how strong you are a german shepherd or something can just kill you if it gets a good bite in.

>>96173458
Boy, this fucking game is incredibly bizarre.

You need to make a check to accomplish a task. You have to roll under your skill on a d20 to succeed and anything higher than a 16 is fail no matter what your skill is, so you are locked at 16 for all practical purposes.
Simple enough. A successful roll generates a story point, you get an additional story point for every 5 points you roll under your skill and if you roll a 1 you double the amount of all story points generated. Every point generated can be used to carry out an action, so the amount of shit you can do on any given turn varies.

There are tiers for damn near everything. Items/weapons have tiers, distance is judged in nebulous tiers, social shit? Tiers.

Then you got bizarre as fuck dice that crop up like d3, d60, d80, d666 and more. The d666 is satanic dice where you roll 3 d6 and assign the results with the highest value to lowest in left to right placement.

It's a batshit game and a real fucking slog to penetrate because the guy who made it really wanted the book to come off as some kind of edge Lord art house book so the formatting is atrocious and random blurbs going on about demonic seals and alchemical ingredients and dead gods and such are all over the place

Then the world.....holy shit, the world. It's literally nothing, everything, and has no rhyme or reason. Everywhere is connected to everywhere else by endless darkness that is infinite unless you know the exact path to walk to go somewhere in particular. The final destination could be the size of a country or as small as shack.
Kudos on making the CRB seem like a cursed object, I guess.

>>96241103
Did it get uploaded yet?

>>96238666
There is a quote from somewhere that sums up the Cowboys versus MJ-12 as, "We're the government conspiracy, they're just the government."

>>96238627
>The Unity yields more benefits for film,

So... you concede that in three examples you somehow fucked up two? And that you didn't even know about pictograms in MOM?

I somehow don't think talking about killing an intelligent invisible killer brachiosaurus (that they had literally to make visibile, even) with rifles can be a sensible course, or pointing out that being tall doens't make you impervious to dogs so I'll just drop that.

>>96241015
>>96241087

To be totally fair Wilbur's death IS particulary anticlimatic, if totally in the realm of possibility (hell, I'd even ask myself if the dog didn't bite at the tentacles, they might be pretty weak and prone to hemorraging). I think HPL could've just made him die at a guardian's gunshot or something.

>>96238440
>There is no excuse to live on a woman's money like a gigolo.

Which is way they divorced, anon. That's the point. He couldn't get a job, much less at a post office, she had one but needed to change city (jn which he certainly couldn't have more chances).

But I guess you prefer to rave about Marx and atheism.

>>96243127
>so you concede that out of three examples you fucked up two?
I was picking conveniently; as I have said, Alien and Thing do not adhere to the Unity. The benefits they get from it, as films, are slight in comparison to theatre, and as a text, MoM benefits even less than film. There is no absolute need for the Unity in text at all.

>HAAHAA your examples FAILED
>you LOSE
Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, House of Usher. The Unity is not needed. Even in Dunwich Horror they are not needed; they are not absolutely needed in MoM, and I propose that abandoning the rush to clock plotpoints will be better realism and pacing.

In the course of arguing with you and rereading Dunwich, I also realize that Lovecraft doesn't go for accuracy in his language. He goes for shock and sensation. His realism will always fail because he simply doesn't care for it at all. We are at odds.

>So you admit you don't even know about the pictograms?????
Mandarin is pictograms, Aztec wall carving is pictograms, hieroglyphs as the Egyptians used are pictograms. The thing about pictograms is they do not mean 1:1 the thing represented. In advanced languages they go ~65% "wheel means wheel", ~35% "wheel means the WH sound". This is true for mandarin, Aztec, and Egyptian hiero, with varying ratios. It is Lovecraft that doesn't know that pictograms are not 1:1 shape:concept, but 3:2:1 shape:concept:sound. In fact, the more developed the culture is, the more abstracted this ratio becomes, like mandarin: one character being composed out of multiple sub-pictos. An advanced alien civ that has noneuclidian architecture, deep space travel and genetic mastery, is still using 1:1 pictograms that a HUMAN can read? Lovecraft wouldn't win anything above an honorable mention in an SF writing contest.

I will not be rereading MoM just to fight you. It is not worth reading.

>>96243153
>Marx and atheism
missing the main point, which is the cast, or character-type, of ineffectual intellectual. Marx, Stirner, Lovecraft, Vaush, and Simpsons Comicbook Store Guy. Above average intelligence and education, below average real-world competence, then compensatory hyperinflation of intellectual superiority.

>that is why they divorced
They divorced because at bottom Lovecraft was a sperg. Going into the full list is going to take an essay elaborating his sperghood. He is not worth that effort.

>THEY divorced
She pushed for a divorce, he aquiecsed, and then didn't update the divorce status on public records for a long long time. The woman was a virago, the Ayn Rand type; Lovecraft was a nerveless lanklet. It's not a mutually agreed divorce: she pushed because she had too many reason, he folded because he had no counter offer. Lovecraft is a man who, while jobless and on stipend from his aunts and his wife, will tour america looking for colonial artifacts. I think it's amazing she picked up and stuck with him that long.

>>96243127
>being tall doesn't make you impervious to dogs
Of course not. Just overwhelmingly favored:
>tall
>120-170IQ
>has learned to deal with hostile dogs as a lad
>knows there's a dog on Campus Grounds
>lose to dog
>dies
>mfw
On tabletop, this might happen if Wilbur Nat1 or Doggo Nat20. In Expected Reality™, aka Realism, I'd bet on Wilbur winning. It's not underwhelming that he lost, it's really unexpected. Lovecraft doesn't know how the real world works, and it shows.

>I'm not going to argue with you anon
Fine.

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>>96246459
>>96246492
>>96246585
You are such a fucking faggot holy shit

>>96246585
You are legitimately too low IQ to talk about this stuff man. It's actually fucking absurd to me that you can't realize why Lovecraft had Wilbur die to something as mundane and relatively non-threatening as a dog, and how something like THAT can catch your panties in a twist over muh realism.
And this isn't even going over your pseudo intellectualism, the fact you namedrop fucking Vaush in one of your posts, and the consistent Ai slopping and retarded arguments you bring up. You're a retard dude.

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If any other writer was given a character that was the half son of Yog'Sothoth, seven feet tall and a genious he'd be a powerful force to be reckoned with a serious recuring character. If not a god in his own right due to being a demigod of an Outer God then he'd a god by mortal standards by being some evil cultist corperate CEO overlord with godlike power due to his billions and occult knowledge. But nope with Lovecraft hes smart for a country hick and gets mualed to death by a dog like a toddler.
Imagine if Wilbur was thought to just be another epstien client and someone goes digging but the truth is far more horrible than just child rape. Progressing to child ritual sacrfice and then the truly occult and alien rituals and revelations. I can imagine a line of inquiry being the sanity blasting former spook who was in charge of reviewing the hidden cam sex tape blackmail tape but when they see Wilbur undress and his non human form they lose their minds

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>looking for references to draw Zhar and Lloigor
>image search is suddendly filled with anime lolis
Did a new fucking anime come out about anime great old ones?? This is gonna take a while isnt it

>>96250022
There is indeed a new anime featuring the GOOs assuming 'human' forms to fuck with humanity by forcing them to play a rigged gameshow or die.

>>96241298
Idk.
Id tell you just buy a copy, but apparently it's been removed from drivethrurpg and is only available from their web store with a 70 Euro shipping fee.

>>96246585
>>96246492
>>96246459
>>96249012
Anon, in the time you tried trolling us and failed this hard, you could've just read MOM, The Dunwhich Horror, Dracula AND watched the two movies you can't even remember.
Hell, maybe even Poe (no unity in TFOTHOU? What did you your teachers even do to you?).

thoughts on Mothership? I want to play it but the price tag is steep

>>96250548
Eugh.

>>96255619
The guy who made it used AI assets and just fiddled with them a bit and outright traced artwork from other creators and changed textures around too. It made art hoes pretty angry, but that actually makes me like it more. It's pissing off the conservative minded folk by going deeeeep into satanic worship bullshit, pissed off the liberal minded folk by 'stealing art', and the final product is some kind of batshit cursed object in the shape of a gamebook. I HIGHLY doubt I will ever run a game using it, but it's definitely staying in my collection as interesting mess of a book.

Been thinking of writing a CoC scenario, tell me if you guys fuck with this idea or not
>set in the 1950s, the players are hired by an older gentleman to investigate his brother's increasingly erratic condition, who, after a trip to France, took a bizzare and morbid interest in the occult, and who entirely locked himself away in his house for the past 2 weeks, not answering any phone calls
>The investigators will be able to investigate various things about him, like his movement patterns, the odd locations in town he frequents, and talk to his equally eccentric friends, with a strong implication that he might be suicidal, which would hopefully be enough to get them to try and forcefully enter his house
>If they do they will find him dead in his study, with grievous wounds thay could not be self-inflicted, alongside an antique music playing machine from the 1880s, playing an equally old recording. What they don't know at the time is that the machine is playing a recording of a song of Eric Zahn, and by hearing it they are now hunted by the same shadows that haunted the violonist all those years ago.
>The shadows are blind and deaf, for now, but they can sense fear, which is represented by the amount of sanity loss an investigator suffered over the course of the scenario. If you've only lost a couple of points you'd appear as dim, and they'd, at best, know your general direction, but a substantial loss of sanity in the double digits will mean that you able to be accurately detected from far away.
>Over the next few days the investigators will begin seeing more and more strange events as the shadows close in on them, and, upon realising that they are cursed, will try to find a solution and after a longer investigation, even travelling to France, where their employer's brother found the recording in the first place, they will learn that the only way to un-curse themselves is to play the music backwards.
There's more to this but this is the basic premise. Thoughts?

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What's a funny CoC oneshot? Might run it in Cthulhu Dark though.

>>96255880

Diss the quest giver, at least partially. They are related/friends with the brother, or even the old guy. Try to make the people theoretically close to them.

Are the players familar with HPL? Because in that case I'd try have some quirk over the most basic premise. If not, it's fine.

>>96235938
>This smacks of authorial impatience to get on to the good bits, and the presumptuous hope that you the reader will not object.
Ignoring that you don't realize that hieroglyphic languages are sometimes used pictographically and that it is isn't actually implausible that a broad meaning could quickly be inferred in that case, you got this exactly backwards.
Lovecraft was writing for pulp magazines. The "presumptuous hope" was that his audience (and editor) were willing to read a story as slow and patient as The Mountains of Madness already was.

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>>96133537
What are some good SCPs that can be used for a game?

>>96260127
iirc the Elders are implied to have played a role in uplifting humanity so it'd make sense if we had a limbic-deep ability to grok their memes so as to act in accord with them. The Laundry Files has Enochian (sorcerous tongue inately capable of compulsion) work on that very basis. Also sensible to note that fiction exists within a wider context as a product too.

Speaking of I'm thinking of cobbling together an adventure for said setting that's effectively the Colour out of Space meets techno-magic. Open to any optics / pigment / art trivia people may have to share, so far I'm noodling with the following:

>Olo (impossible-in-the-wild colour seen when blue sensitive cells are stimulated without triggering any others)
>Cherekov radiation (subverted waste-containment site is a suitably "Bond" cultist stronghold, having a atmospheric blue flash on some alien world test site which leaves warded PCs OK-ish but kills bystanders is a cool SAN damage set piece)
>Marian Blue (lots of near-idolatry around images of the Virgin, should be easy enough to make the "visions" induced by one since redacted by the Vatican eldritch pigment in origin)
>Daltonism and Tetrachromacy (some degree of matriarchal eugenics tying into Virgin-worship in colour cults?)
>Yves Klein (good red herring, may have seen "true blue" and pursued IKB as a coping mechanism, room for a Zima Blue autolobotomite reference)

Since it's Lovecraft lite I may flavour the initial lot who pop up on the Laundry's radar as nerds recreating scenes from Hitchhiker's Guide for laughs, the Hooloovoo-prism goes horribly right.

Alternatively the Dutch counterpart of Laundry goes by the Gallery (an outgrowth of rijksmuseum antiquarians) and could reach out for help tracking down anomalous art collections (unusually there doesn't seem to be anything eldritch about what's depicted in the paintings, turns out to be the Colour).

>>96269214
That's a really good 682.

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>>96252786
One thing I like is how fast character creation is compared with other systems
It’s solid but leaves a fuck ton of shit wide open for the GM to figure out and one or two things could be explained better such as the initiative system in the game
Which I fooking love but the book does not explain it properly

It also expects you to use your head and put two and two together
Modules included in the core set are also really good as far as RPG adventures go

I’ve also talked with friends and old play test versions of the game were a bit scuffed and large sections were cut out and replaced, the newest version of the game is the most refined one.

Another thing is that the base progression options are deliberately handicapped so that GM’s can create risky bizarre new methods of production, that can be discovered in play, or have progression tuned totally at the whims of the table and GM

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>>96133537
>fucked this up a bit posting on a tiny phone screen
Would it make your average 30s something online weeb ttrpg player sad and nostalgic if for a campaign everyone were playing teenaged PC’s in 2012 or 2014?
Where you have to stop the world from ending

Thinking of running something somewhat inspired by old tokusatsu such as power rangers Kyoya No Kemono Doukokusu and some of the edgy seinen action manga of the time
Leaning into the horror and angst

I think the better question though for pepole here is if such a campaign would make (YOU) sad and nostalgic? Or if it would be a hell yeah 2010s nostalgia trip

>>96260902
3063 is a really good one for a long-form big bad.

>>96260902
The Ikea one and things in that vein. Stay away from the power scaling cancer ones that try to out cool the rest.

>>96260902
I think the disease ones can be interesting like SCP-610.

>>96276575
To make me nostalgic, I'd need to be a teenager before 2010, like in real life.

>>96276565
So how do they do initiative? Is it by roll or by action? Any modifiers from attributes or skills thrown in?

>>96260902
SCP 4885. Don't tell your players it's going to be your big bad until they stray on their first corpse.

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>>96283234
Well the book doesn’t explain it well but it works really fooking well, and feels more natural than most initiative systems
The GM declares threat
The players declare their actions, then once the players have declared everything roll and resolve
Sometimes you can use a speed test to figure out who resolves first but most things are simultaneous
Surprise might mean that you roll speed or be unable to act.

With big horror monsters such as the xenomorph the GM can make the monster automatically inflict harm on its turn unless the players use their actions to dodge the fuck out of the way

I’ve been becoming more and more of a fan of simultaneous initiative systems as the years go on
This one is one of the best in terms of elegance intuitiveness and simplicity

>>96287480
Justin A. over at the Alexandrian comments on combat in Mothership seeming a bit schizophrenic in how it approaches turns: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/51642/roleplaying-games/mothership-thinking-about-combat

That said, I do like Mothership's 'default' approach like you describe. You hang injury or loss directly over the player's next action, creating tension: "He's going to be on you in seconds. He raises the axe, ready to strike. WDYD?" A lot more cinematic than a very prescribed traditional 'turn-by-turn' approach.

Can any of you kind anons sell me on the latest Unknown Armies edition? I love the setting and lore and the way magic works. But I'm also not fully bought into the system (character creation is one thing I can't wrap my mind around... do you really need a conspiracy style board of connections to make characters?) and the type of campaign this game lends itself to. Comedic? Tongue in cheek? Epic and dramatic? Horror, of course. But there's so many variations and at times it seems like it's meant to be serious but also with Pornomancy and some of the premade one-shots, seem to veer more into dark comedy.

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My group have been playing Call of Cthulhu for a couple of years now and now want to try some Delta Green.

I would like recommendations for a couple of good introductory scenarios so we can get our toes dip in the system.

If possible, I would like some scenarios that I can run back to back in a mini campaign

>>96133537
>Scarlet King Edition
I find it really, really funny how they retconned Sanna into some sort of eldritch void Tiamat expy BUT still somehow benign just to shit on the SK. Like in the Song of Sanna he’s actively getting mutilated from the effort of raping her and that’s after needing a sneak attack.

>>96289082
I can't speak to 3rd edition, I only half played a single session that fell apart due to substance abuse. But you don't have to use the conspiracy board character generation method, the point buy method is in the players book, I think.

As for tone, my game has ended up a lot more pulp horror than straight horror. It still works though, if you do it right the players are sort of forced to play into their characters obsessions and it's easy to get them to pave their path to hell with good intentions. The horror of UA is less
>Oh my god, the monster is going to kill us!
And more
>Oh my god, I just used all those orphans as bait for my enemy, I might be the monster!

>>96294411
Oh, my current game is 2nd edition, also.

3rd edition seems interesting but I'm not sure if I can get my group past the more story-gamey elements.

>>96288787
Interesting.

Anyone got the pre-gen characters from Heart of Darkness? It’s all I’m missing

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Anyone else kinda disappointed with the characterization of Nyarlathotep in this campaign? He really doesn't feel like an all-powerful mocking alien god, more like some generic saturday morning cartoon villain that shakes his fist at the pesky investigators for foiling his plans. I mean, I know this was written by the he-man writer, but I didn't expect for fucking nyarlathotep to act like skeletor.

>>96302453
Is it otherwise good? I'm looking for a good adventure for an 1920's Egypt campaign.

>>96302701
Yeah it's good otherwise, and the egypt chapter is arguably the best

>>96302710
Hmmm perfect, I might borrow the egypt chapter then. Even if Nyarlathotep is a bit of a wet blanket.

>>96302779
It's not that he's completely trash it's just that... I probably would have done him very differently.

>>96293995
>Last Things Last (Husband fail to revive wife, locks the thing that came back in the septic tank)
>A Victim of the Art (Kid unware summons a Byakhee which kills people that trouble him)
>Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays (Body snatcher on native American reserve)

>>96302803
In the 4th edition I've just read a little, the way he talks feels a bit off yeah. Kinda like "foolish humans you cannot stop me a powerful god, now run along and don't meddle since you are powerless anyways"

>>96303070
Exactly! It feels really odd and silly and almost disjointed. On the one hand it says "oh Nyarlathotep doesn't actually care if the Investigators foil his plans because he's immortal and can just try again later" but on the other hand he consistently gets pissed off when they do foil his plans, it's really odd.
It also doesn't make sense in the Mythos perspective if you ask me. Nyarlathotep is powerful enough to erase the Universe with a flick of his wrist if he really wanted to, but he's struggling with a single planet and 4-5 guys trying to stop him?
If I ever run this campaign I'll definitely portray him in a very different light. More distant, less caring, almost like a spectator who views the activity of his cults less as a goal and more like entertainment for himself. I'd also unironically make it possible Nyarlathotep to side with the Investigators if they impress him enough, to ACTUALLY show just how little this entire thing matters to him. Sort of like a "Yeah, I know these guys have been worshipping me for the past 20 thousand years and are preparing the entire world for my arrival but you guys are way more fun so I'm rooting for you now".

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>>96303095
I feel the half life, especially the first one portrayed a nylarathotep like figure really well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BPUZImpCxA

He is allways in the background watching your progress moving things in the background felt but not directly seen until the end
When he speaks it is cryptic with a very uneasy feeling that he is not telling the truth or choosing his words in a very uneasy manner and his appearance often raises more questions than it answers

The Gmans actor mark shapiro described the way he speaks as if he was almost in multiple timelines

In the second game he is much more tangible but only shows up in the beginning and end
For most of the game though a casual player of half life 2 would believe that all their actions are of their own free will, even though the game is linear first time players of a half life game will often feel like they are in control
Though in the background you see him slowly watching your progress and if you are good with patterns make you question what you are doing on this path and whether you are really free ?

Less is more for nylarlathotep in most cases
You want the players to feel his presence on occasion but not directly see him most of the time, sticking with half life 1 should be a good guideline

Because a rpg is inherently a live medium you should avoid directly taking control away from the players
Let them make choices of their own free will with tangible effect for change instead of banking on a single way forward
But with the implication of his presence you may still be able to have them doubt their choices and even doubt their indecision he is in for the long game after all

I think the way you are thinking of running him is probably better than the module
Having him apathetically question if the PC’s will change anything even though he is the main enemy he is not actively hostile to them
The more change the players make in the world and with his plots the more impressed he gets

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>>96288787
I’ve done a few things to make the combat click a bit better mainly with a pound of flesh
Player characters with firearms can spend a round to steady aim which gives advantage on firearms attacks but only if you have a clear shot, so cover the monster moving in unusual patterns and other PC’s in the way may obstruct this
Regardless of a clear shot it also makes it so you shot resolves first as long as you don’t move from your position

Another thing I’ve done in firearms combats is so that each SHOT with automatic weapons
can affect all opponents within a 3 meter wide line

In some cases visual cover may grant disadvantage on firearms attack in addition to its normal protection
Only one player currently has a smart rifle and an ocular graphical rendering interface, to get a clear shot on a target in cover he needs his target marked by another camera or optic which has lead to the other players moving drones and such shit

Advantage/disadvantage for d100 rolls at my table has been invert the d100 to the better or worse result if applicable

Other than that it’s mostly been reading player intentions and coming up with shit on the spot
Honestly has worked shockingly well for a stressful heavy hitting tactical RPG despite how barebones it is and the system really makes players consider their choices before it is resolved in a spectacular gamble
Combats have ranged fro fear and hunger tension to some really spectacular engagements where several PCs were maimed and died

>>96301885
Bump?

So, I'm toying with the idea of a voodoo story. I'd want the PCs to be from the other side on how these things usually go - not necessarily vodoisants, but that community. Which means the religion would be "good", and probably a way to fight the mythos.

Problem is, in these stories you have a clear opposition that is the voodoo itself and I'm not sure what to use. A "standard" mythos incursion sounds pretty boring, and a "evulz WHITE sorcerer, checkmate colonialists!" sounds even worse.

Any idea?

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>>96305338
If it's not contemporary a really good thing to do is look at is Haiti in the 50s to the 80s. Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier leaned heavily into vodoun, Papa even modeling himself in public appearances after Baron Samedi and led his secret police in a reign of terror with religion fueled brutality.
It's nowhere true to life but watch Serpent and the Rainbow for a pretty fun depiction of this setting and a sort of fight between the food and bar aspects of voodoo in this world.

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Struggling to design Zhar and Lloigor but slowly chugging along
>>96305338
There are two ways really
>make voodo a neutral force that can be used by any side
>just dont make the villains white, research history involving fighting between communities or neighboring countries, you will find countless shit.

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How do you like your ghosts to be written? Haunting places or objects?

>>96305973

A tiny bit too depressing perhaps but a solid suggestion.

>>96260902
Any of the anti-memetic ones, if the players are immune somehow.

>>96306833
I like my ghosts to BE the haunted place. Give me that Overlook Hotel, baby.

>>96305338
A bokor can be good or evil, just have the villain be a black Haitian or Creole, or even some aspect of Baron Samedi (you can even have a good white bokor, as they did exist, there are white people in New Orleans who do voodoo).
The adventure "Tell Me Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?" is set in New Orleans and has a black bokor as the villain; along with the King in Yellow stuff. It can easily be changed up to replace Hastur with Baron Samedi or something.

BTW, I ran that adventure with my group a while ago. They considered asking the Klan for help when they learned of what Papa Screech was planning, but decided against it because the the two high CR investigators that would usually be sent to do it were a German industrialist and his Jewish accountant. They didn't think they'd be listened to.

>>96303289
>Less is more for nylarlathotep in most cases
I have a rule to never namedrop Mythos deities, make it unclear if the Black Pharaoh and the Father of All Bats are the same deity or something different.
I also just replace his overt gloating with Penhew; he's a sorcerer who gates over to gloat at the investigators. Make him the primary villain to do the Skeletor bits, while Nyarlathotep remains mysterious.
Nyarlathotep never actually intervenes; because he doesn't care or even his own avatars are vying against each other in some strange way.

>>96314797
Spot on. There's a reason entities have a laundry list of other names. People knowing what is behind things (even if they don't know as much as they think they do), reduces the fear of such a thing.
Throwing out odd names they've never heard of will keep them on their toes.

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>>96310747
or a giant sky-scraper

>>96310747
A grieving structure that wants something is always interesting. It need not have ever been human.

>>96303095
Personally, an interpretation of Nyarlathotep that I find interesting is that the cosmos is his toybox and we are his toys. Whatever amuses him at the moment defines his actions.
Sometimes, he wants a challenge and adds a way for mankind to "defeat" him. Other times, he wants to feel the rush of torturing an entire species while they're unable to fight back. Like a bored, spoiled child with an infinite amount of toys, he will eventually break some for his own amusement. Perhaps there is some greater goal, in theory -- eons from now, his favorite toys might ascend to godhood and become as Cthulhu and the other gods are -- but for right now, all he wants to do is play his favorite and only game: "Make Humans Suffer."
Nyarlathotep isn't a generic doomsday villain, he's Satan mixed with Sid from Toy Story.

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>>96139481
Cool. Does this game have models of his cult?

>>96323864
Yeah that's my interpretation of Nyarlathotep too, a bored kid in a sandbox, only the bored kid is an omnipowerful god with complete dominion over all reality.
There's one caveat to this though, he is fickle, and it works both ways. If he personally likes a human, or a group of humans, he would act benevolent towards them, because they amuse him. Now, Nyarlathotep's benevolence is not something you should ever desire, frankly, it might be worse than the malevolence, but it is something you could gain.
>he's Satan mixed with Sid from Toy Story
Nah, it's a lot worse than that. He's God mixed with Sid from Toy Story.

>>96175981
Really? I always improvise all the horror I do. Seems to be working a treat-I managed to make Pathfinder 2E scary.

>>96196021
Keep in kind that's because it's an investigation based horror. I had to run one of those in Dungeon Realms recently and found it quite difficult to out enough redundancies in to the investigation to make sure my player could find it.

It required maybe a little steering from me but the end point went very well.

>>96293995
The Blacksites book is what I recommend.

>>96175981
I think it's because Call of Cthulhu has so many premade scenarios and campaigns that people just sorta default to using them.
That being said, I like to take published scenarios and change them until they're somewhat unrecognizable. I use them as a basis for my own adventures.

>>96324798
>quite difficult to out enough redundancies in to the investigation to make sure my player could find it.
That's the trick, you don't commit to anything. Don't allow red herrings, if the players think the butler did it because you accidentally RP'd him being a bit too suspicious, then he becomes suspect #1.
Either the butler really did do the murder, or the butler is hiding something unrelated or even he's being framed.
The players don't need to know that the investigation is just whatever they stumble into.

what are some nice small one shot games you'd recommend?

I've been fine with MoSh and Liminal Horror, something along those lines but different would be nice.

>>96139994
https://neon-rot.itch.io/jin-go

>>96150742
>"figure out how combat works yourself"
what issue did you have with it?

>>96252786
>I want to play it but the price tag is steep
it's literally free on their website, how is that too steep for you? do you want to be paid to get the pdf?
and there's a sharethread on this board

It's nice if you catch what it's going for, kinda bad if you notice something that doesn't work and instead of thinking about it you complain that the system is shit. Tons of third party material to use even in other systems if you prefer them, like Mork Borg.

>>96276575
I think that by the 10's we didn't have as much of a monoculture as there was in the 00's or before. My internet experience was totally difference from the internet experience of some of my friends, we had our own hobbies supported by piracy and forums/groups/sites, even for music we had noticeable different youtube algorhythms.

Maybe in 10-20 years we'll have enough distance that things seem smaller and only the very big stuff stands out and that makes it easier to summarize a decade.

>>96287480
And if players seem to lose momentum when they get the chance of acting together you can always hurry them up, give them a time limit, or even feed that one player that wants to do everything to take an action and fuck everyone's waste of time. It's a bit more demanding on the GM but it's just like running non combat in a rush.

>>96303434
>Advantage/disadvantage for d100 rolls at my table has been invert the d100 to the better or worse result if applicable
You're taking away crit chances tho
I never went into detail about camera feeds, drones and smart guns, I prefer the feel of weapons as a desperate solution but I probably could had acomodated some players that wanted that stuff now that I see your take on it. It does sound fun.

The thing with everything being so bare bones is that tthe GM ends up giving it a ton of personal flavor. And this sometimes means not liking it and making it awful, or making it feel like the other game you wanted to be running.

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Today I will steal ideas from RPGmaker games...

I'm so tired or Analog horror, I miss the days of ARG horror series like Marble Hornets, TribeTwelve, EMH and DarkHarvest00.

>>96338493
My biggest issue with analogue horror is that it limits itself so much with the whole powerpoint shit of just showing scary images. I feel analoge horror works best when it goes for the found footage route and implements live action, but the only ones i've seen that actually do that are Dreams of an Insomiac and The Oldest View (tbf TOV is animated in 3d but it utilizes elements and places that exist in real life). This implementation of real life elements is why Marble Hornets worked so well, cause it felt like something real that you would find in an abandoned VHS.

>>96338493
>I'm so tired of (shitty series)
>I miss the days of (shitty series)

I planned on making a sci-fi horror game that would kind of become more of a rug pull. It would start with the players in power armor, but over time, the armor would get more damaged or would have to be abandoned for a bit to get something done. Is there any system for BRP that uses power armor? I heard m-space has it, but it is in the foundation supplement or something. Does anyone have the rules for that?

>>96338407
I did like the "good" ending of the game, certainaly a take on the eldritch horror bit.

>>96343022
What exactly are you looking for? Rules to simulate the degradation of their armor over time? Seems like something you can leave mostly to GM fiat.

>>96343039
More or less what options different power armor can take. I was gonna let them go crazy or do a bunch of different mods, if available, while slowly having certain features break down over time. Everyone would have their specialty for their character and their armor, but it would eventually be stripped.

>>96343048
If your preferred system has armor with different greebles you can stick on them you could just say it's power armor and go with that.

>>96308663
Antimemes are great. Love the Antimemetics Division stories. Would kill to run a game where players with Antimemetic powers and/or resistances work to fight other Antimemes. It'd be kinda awesome.

Actually, Don't Rest Your Head has all the elements of antimemetics don't they? Nightmares and the Mad City require that you overcome their Antimemetic properties via insomnia, and that taps you into its powers. Might be a cool crossover, there.

>>96306833
Haunting people

Anyone got a link for the Sutra of Pale Leaves yet?
It's not on the usual place as far as I can tell

>>96333672

Intriguing. Care to explain how it works?

Why do people say they want to play a horror campaign and then spend the session bantering and making meta jokes like it's guardians of the galaxy? It's like no one wants to play anything remotely seriously

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>>96352027
Have you tried setting ground rules before starting the session, or did you just hope everyone is on the same page and you're just seething their consensus wasn't your own unspoken rule
Or more likely you're just a no games having assmunch

>>96352027
Most movie horror is probably seen as tongue in cheek cheesy shit, maybe those were their assumptions.

>design a short survival horror campaign
>characters are stranded in a flooded, overgrown city
>lots of lovecraft themes, story is basically color out of space with lots of alien plant shapeshifting
>want to give the players good amount of freedom
>decide to do this by giving them only a thin red thread as orientation while letting them know about lots of optional places they can explore
>group completely ignores everything outside of the thin red thread
>barely scrapes by, almost always venture out with zero resources
>outright refuse to use many of the available resources because they are afraid anything can increase their insanity (there is no reason to assume this)
>two players already went insane and they rerolled as two black brothers called jamal and tyrone
>wing every encounter and get through them with nothing but endless luck
>the one time a player gets heavily burned by an enemy it's no big deal because they have stockpiled nothing but a super rare healing + perm stats upgrade item, which they were afraid of using until now
>campaign is nearing its end and they have not even explored 10% of what I built and they haven't found a single answer to anything yet
I thought I was real clever when designing the campaign in a way that you can complete it without ever finding out what's going on.

>>96355137
Classic RPG syndrome. Neve using what you stockpile in case you need it later.
Atleast they were able to save someone's bacon with all their resources
>campaign is nearing its end and they have not even explored 10% of what I built and they haven't found a single answer to anything yet
Hey, best part about that is you an recycle anything they haven't seen for another game. So it's not like it's wasted or anything

>>96202863
Ellum do Grieve
Oak he do hate
Willow do walk
When Yew travels late

>>96181384
Read the DG shotgun scenario BESTOW and read/watch some backrooms slop.

>>96355890
>you an recycle anything they haven't seen for another game
true. seeing how little they found out, I can safely create a sequel for the campaign without telling them it's a sequel and get them by surprise when they meet their old characters.

Might run the lightless beacon for some aussies
Any good location to replace the new England setting?
Just far away enough from city centers that the players will be needed to investigate why they arent responding on their radio instead of just sending in the authorities

>>96364411
2 or 3 hours out of Narrendra. Very far from actual civlisation but lots of little country towns dotted around so you don't panic and think something bad must have happended

>>96133537
>Symbaroum
Anything similar in terms of setting and art design?