Hello, RPG hivemind!
My boyfriend has expressed some interest in running a CoC game for me and some friends. This would be his first time GMing, though he's been playing D&D, FATE, Fiasco, Paranoia, and probably some other games for a while now. So I was thinking of getting him the starter set for christmas.
I took a look at the books proper as well, but even one of them is twice as expensive as the starter set, and it seems like you need both the Keeper's and Investigator's book. Am I understanding that right, or could he - as a newbie GM, mind - make do with one of them? If so, which one?
Now, for the starter set, have any of you used it? Is it good? What are the premade adventures (no spoilers, please) and characters like? Would you recommend it?
I'm very new to lovecraft. I've just watched video essays over the topic. So in Swedish class (I live in Sweden) we were assigned to read a book (Didn't matter if it was in Swedish or English), make a review/analysis of it and then make a text about the author, and I thought of reading any of Lovecrafts books. So should I pick one of the books in the title, or any of his other book.
PS.
This is a pretty small project, we have until easter or something. So I can't read a 1000 pages book (Edit: didn't know about him writing short stories. I first saw a book that looked like just one story with 500 pages, but actually had multiple of them)... I know Cthulhu is already pretty long, at least in comparison to Innsmouth (said that Cthulhu had 500 pages (edit: it doesn't...) and that Innsmouth had around 100).
Update: I’ve read “the unnameable” now and I really liked it. I decided to read a bunch of his novels to then make an analysis of his work in general. We had a really short class today so I didn’t want to read something really big right of the bat.
1.0(a)_(33564) was released at some point, relatively recently, but I'm not sure exactly when. No thread on the forums and GOGDB has no build-related information. GOG doesn't appear to have posted a changelog.
EDIT: The correct GOGDB page: https://www.gogdb.org/product/1189711155#builds
If I understand correctly, the Steam version was updated as well: https://steamdb.info/depot/22341/ (no thread on the Steam forums either)
UPDATE:
> After comparing 1.0_(14415) and 1.0(a)_(33564) side by side, it seems the only difference is one line in goglog.ini on the newer version.
>
> DelSubKey_0=false was added under both [1189711155] and [1189711155_remote]. Still have no idea what this effects.
Contains major spoilers for The Curse of Nineveh campaign!
I ran The Curse of Nineveh campaign in Call of Cthulhu which lasted for more than twenty sanity-rending blood-soaked sessions. To commemorate it I commissioned artist @ChrisCantArt to paint us a picture of the climax. And boy did he deliver!
The climax started when the British monarch George V was possessed by the baddie, and one of my PCs murdered him right at the center of the annual royal garden party. This was just as London was about to be attacked by an avatar of Yog-Sothoth. It decimated the artistocracy at the soiree, and the characters barely survived - although one quite lost his mind.
Here the PCs have commandeered one of the many anti-air batteries scattered around London. It took quite a few barrages for it to finally fall. Fantasy Grounds VTT supported throwing "only" 30 dice at one time, so we ended up having to roll for damage in batches. They ended up dealing 12,461 HP of damage before the avatar went back to whence it came.
A few days later the same PC executed Edward VIII as part of the epilogue - another possession, or so he claims to this day. Later the whole thing was explained away by a German superweapon attacking London and their agents murdering the kings, so Weimar Republic took the blame. This paved the way for the eventual (expedited) rise of Hitler, more appeasement of Nazi Germany, and the start to an Achtung! Cthulhu campaign we're thirty sessions in, some players still using the same characters from the campaign in the 20s - if battle-weary and low on Sanity.
The PC who killed the two kings even met the next king George VI as the king personally launched a special section of the intelligence services at the onset of WWII to investigate the budding Nazi research into the Cthulhu Mythos. The king understandably has quite a keen interest in Cthulhu Mythos himself as a result of his dad and brother being murdered under rather curious circumstances. This time the king survived the encounter.
We couldn't be more thrilled how the image turned out! It captures the chaos of the scene, and even shows the PCs as I described them to Chris.
I don't know if this has been posted before, but I just realized that The Shining(Stanley Kubrick) is a perfect Call of Cthulhu, non-mythos type exposition. The evil, haunted hotel that slowly drives its tenants mad, with a rather extensive history of strange deaths and dealings. The crazy father with hidden agendas and the odd conversations with the hotel of horrors. The mother, noticing the suspicious, slow mental decline of the father, attempting the protect her son. And last but not least, Danny, with his psychic gift and the weird possession that takes over him. Plus, the NPC of the main chef, with background knowledge and the gift, as he comes back to help, only to get slaughtered by the BBEG.
I just thought I'd mention it.
Hello everyone!!
I would like to know if anyone has played this game yet, it was released in 2018 as you can see in this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Cthulhu:_The_Official_Video_Game
I played it and liked a lot, a good and very atmospheric experience... but I don't know if all the legend is correct while studying the game's plot... and also there is a monster named The Shambler that I have never seen before... I think it is not related to Cthulhu after all... I just got disappointed because I was expecting the summon of Cthulhu himself and after that some kind of battle or run for your life chapter....
I know several of his stories include other creatures such as Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth and Nyarlathotep but is there other stories about Cthulhu? Thanks.
It was really great fun to watch and it'd be brilliant to see CR branch out more into other tabletop games besides D&D. It would be amazing to have more to watch!
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
This quote talks about how our reason for sanity is because we know nothing as the human race, and if we delve too deep in arcane we will see the most horrifying things that will sap our view on reality, therefore we should be fearing what we don't know.
Whenever i notice or learn something, even if it's trivial, i remember this quote and feel discomfort. What makes H.P. Lovecraft's work horrifying is not the stories itself, but it's what they are trying to say. The statements like that paragraph i quoted terrifies me, because they are true. And there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do to prevent it. What H.P. Lovecraft shows us with his stories is that we live in a real-life horror story where the most unfathomable things lie beyond our reach, or maybe even in plain sight.
EDIT:
(Note: FYI, This post got a lot more attention in r/books, and this edit is a copy-paste from the thread in there.)
I've read that paragraph about a month or so, and I found out that Lovecraft was severely mentally ill just now in the r/books thread. But I really should have known, shouldn't I? Anyways, now that I'm looking at it again as i know about his mental state, that quote kind of just reflects his irrational fears that consume his mind even further rather than the reality. Though it is still pretty scary to read the work a man who lets his life be tattered over a threat that probably isn't even real.
Ironically, the combination of not knowing enough and lack of recklessnes is what encourages the fear of the unknown. H.P. Lovecraft refused to learn because he feared the unknown, and feared the unknown because he refused to learn. This paradox he was stuck in could be easily avoided by some bravery and no one should do the same mistake he did.
https://preview.redd.it/ztjfteouibf41.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=97201f8617a625791bf574bc4d8d3956b6e08108
Can someone ELI5 how it works? And is there any sort of character leveling like in DND?
This has been irking for a long time, according to At the Mountains of Madness:
"It interested us to see in some of the very last and most decadent sculptures a shambling, primitive mammal, used sometimes for food and sometimes as an amusing buffoon by the land dwellers, whose vaguely simian and human foreshadowings were unmistakable. "
And then in Call of Cthulhu:
" When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals. "
When you read about the Elder Things and the Great Race of Yith you notice that both species had some rather humane qualities when related with their own, the Elder Things are the most immediate example while the yithians showed too a communitary way of living, even going to the point of being rather polite to the creatures they swapped minds with.
But the similitudes end there, humans on average have terribly low lifespans, they are subjected to only 4 dimensions, their genome is easily alterable and their mind structure often can't cope contact with other entities of the Mythos.
So far as I understand according to Lovecraft humans are basically a sort of cattle and pet species developed by the Elder Things and gone wild, in fact, the closest thing I could think of are rodents, like rats, we can learn tricks, be fun and inventive while still being excellent test subjects, we can be permanently damaged in a psychological way when exposed to heavy stress and while smart by animal standards there are things we simply can't catch, like guinea pigs in some societies we are a plenty, cheap, easily breed and healthy source of protein and we can even be used for ritual sacrifice (andean cultures were prone to this).
It appears later Cthulhu and other associated entities noticed we had evolved in a sort of knockoff of the Elder Things, never as strong, long-lived, intelligent, succesful and independant as them but still somehow valuable, but then, once they got shutdown by the wrong star-aligment we evolved civilizations which, at least officially, support the ideas of order, the value of life, empathy and other aspects which appear utterly divorced from the nature of the Old Ones.
So, what happened?
Hello Keepers, players, and dabblers!
So I'd like to introduce a character with a similar effect to The Silence from Dr Who (if you don't want spoilers for s06 of modern Dr Who look away now.)
So the silence have an ability that causes anyone who sees them to forget them as soon as they look away, when they look back all the memories of the creature comes back. I have a building, and a number of characters that I'd like my Investigators to forget in a similar manner.
How would you go about doing this?
My first thought is to tell it to my players straight, and somehow they could figure their own way around it. But honestly it'd be impossible not to metagame that mechanic, and my group are all very good at not metagaming. 😅
I have been creating a few adventures myself, I have tried nowaday timeline, with technologies and hackings, and the 1990s timeline with a lack of communications and cultural differences. But I have found troubles with the timeline as both timelines lack the "Call of Cthulhu" feeling, the atmosphere of COC (Or maybe I am just so sucking at creating them......) The present timeline gives the players so many abilities to "dodge" upcoming danger and gain intel through the internet, I often have to set an NPC as a counter hacker to prevent them from going too far on their cell phone, and the1990s felt like nothing special about it, communications are bad but not bad enough to cut player's reinforcement from coming to save them. I had never tried any timeline before the 1990s as I don't have much knowledge of them and afraid of fucking shit up.
Does anyone has any idea which timeline is the best one to play, and please explain in detail, thank you.
Ojo con comprarlo en Steam porque el juego está muy roto, lleno de bugs. Hay escenas que no las podés lograr por fallas de paredes invisibles o crasheos del juego. Si lo compran por Steam no van a poder poner trucos como para pasar esas escenas ya que no deja modificar la app para activar los cheats.
