I have no idea why this popped into my head, specially since I am trying to get ready for a BWR game that has nothing to do with Cthulhu.
Anyway I just thought the BE infection mechanics would be very cool for a Call of Cthulhu campaign. Specially one of the big world spanning campaigns like I used to play like Spawn of Azathoth or Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. It seems to me that BE is just screaming for some 1920’s LP’s you would be off to be eaten.
One of those late Friday at work Epiphany’s I guess. :eek:
I Corner The Thing That Hints At Cyclopean Alien Intelligences From The Unexplored Cosmos And Stab It In The Gravid Maw That Resembles Some Star Spawned Mockery Of A Human Face!
Your Friday afternoon idea is interesting as an exercise in drifting BE. (Has BE been drifted/re-imagined much? At all?) To tease it out a little…
It Revolves On This: a cabal of sorcerers, Mi-go, or mind-transplanted members of the Great Race conspiring to reawaken one or more of the Great Old Ones from their Earthly slumber. Very Arkham Horror. The other side would be human agencies - disparate groups of investigators, government agencies, occult groups. In the first phase, these human agencies would be manuevering to become aware of the Mythos; then in the second phase they’d be racing to stop the Mythos side from putting the pieces in place; the final phase - Reawakening instead of Invasion - would be to stop the reawakening of a Great Old One or the summoning of an Outer God.
As such, you’d need Lifepaths for pedestrian 1920s humanity. The more interesting set of lifepaths would be the Mythos ones: Mi-go stock, Human Mythos subsetting (for sorcerers, cultists and the like). FoN on the Mythos side - the side that I’d want to play - might be cultists, sorcerers, proxy politicians, aristocrats, Mi-go in positions of authority, isolated wizards like Wizard Whately, and suchlike.
While Firefight! might be useful in some situations - the raid on Innsmouth forex - I wouldn’t want such a game to go there. As such, no stats for Great Old Ones or Outer Gods. Psychology’d be removed wholesale, or perhaps be written from whole cloth as something else - the sanity-blasting sending of dreams from submerged Ry’leh perhaps. Technology Burner becomes the Mythos Burner.
Why remove Psychology? There is lots of foul magick in the Cthulhu Mythos…
And a very strange idea - what about a crossover of Iron Empires and Lovecraftian Horror? Strange cults of beings lurking in the Void infiltrating the planets of norhern Empires, slowly corrupting the highest nobility and turning them from the light of Mundus Humanitas to some much darker rituals, aimed to summon the foul, blasphemous creatures from beyond our understanding…
[we could even blast some Shoggoths with a fusor, yay]
Psychology is specific to the Iron Empires setting and the specific mechanics encoded in BE reflect that specific focus. While doubtless there are some Mythos elements that could use the Psychology system as written with only colour changes (sorcerers of Eihort perhaps?), the sheer scope and variety of magic present in the Mythos calls for something else I think. It’s for that reason that I proposed ditching Psychology or writing a magic system from scratch or lifting from the Magic Burner. Bear in mind that I was just brainstorming off of zeotter’s original brainstorming, so now’t was deeply considered.
Awesome sauce. Sounds good. Go write it. Then post it here.
Having a one-shot con-scenario that drifted in some Mythos references would be cool. It’s quite common to weave Mythos elements into all manner of settings and systems over here at UK cons (dunno about other countries). Omac is quality, but I can’t face another con where Omac is running again
I did some thinking along a similar line, but I ran into a problem. One of the features of CoC is that it’s an investigative game, so it relies on mysteries and hidden knowledge. Since the players generate the world in BE, there isn’t any mystery to be revealed.
You can ditch the collaborative aspect of the game, of course, and just have the GM invent the mystery, but you’re losing quite a bit of the value of BE if you do.
Or you can keep the collaboration and hope that, despite the players already having the information, they will be able to identify with the characters and do a good enough job of roleplaying their reactions to the unveiling mystery that they’ll be sufficiently entertained. Trouble there is, that requires some very good roleplaying, and it will still be extremely tempting for the players to follow up the non-red-herring clues first.
One solution to the dilemma might be to have the GM take each player aside and have them create a part of the mystery. Then the GM’s job would be to weave what each of them says together into a cohesive whole, and provide any creative input required to bridge the gaps. When he or she is done, you have a player-created campaign that still has a bunch of surprises.
This would vary by player count, but you might:
[ul]
[li]Ask player 1: what is the elder evil behind all of this, and what is its ultimate goal?
[/li][li]Ask players 2 and 3 to each describe an organization - cult or otherwise - that is working at cross purposes with the PCs, either to support the ultimate evil or to exploit happenings for their own benefit.
[/li][li]attempting to bring about the goal.
[/li][li]Ask player 4 to describe the supernatural servitors of the grand evil.
[/li][/ul]
Alternately, you could develop an overall plot together, and then allow each player - including the GM - to secretly change an aspect of it.
I just picked up a copy of Burning Empires last week & I’m taking my time reading through it, loving every page. I’m working on the section about scenes & experiencing a sense of profound gamer joy with every paragraph. I can’t wait to get involved in a BE campaign.
But I was thinking about the old CoC games I enjoyed playing in my youth, and most of them involved some secrecy, sure, but in later games the players knew exactly what was going on but played their characters as the ignorant investigators they were. Play enough CoC & you begin to predict where the story is headed, but the fun is having your character read the arcane book or open the attic door anyway. I think with an experienced group of CoC players it would be great to start with some World Burning & create the mystery together, making it perhaps so much more satisfying to pull apart the threads during the campaign until everything collapses like a house of cards.
And I’m thinking skill conversions can’t be too difficult. Mostly, I can already imagine a character with Library-wise, Antique Bookstore-wise, and Browsing Estate Sale-wise.
A very good idea. This kinda happens when we play anyway, I’ll have a rough idea for a big bad evil and as we play I’ll riff off cool stuff the players throw out and come up with elements of it on the fly.
Shoot, if TV shows can have continuity problems, so can my group.
It could be quite problematic - but worth the effort