Gentlegamer
Adventurer
"You're right! Standing in the back of the party with your eyes closed DOES work!"
"You enter a 10 ft. x 10 ft. room. You see Cthulhu. Roll for Initiative."
ShadowDenizen
Explorer
Hastur! Hastur! Hastur!
Klaus
First Post
In a Masque of the Red Death adventure (specifically, Red Tide, from the boxed set), the PCs search about a ship that crashed into port in San Francisco without a single living person aboard.
I placed a small statuette of the crouching Cthulhu in the ship.
The PCs wouldn't touch it with a 10'-pole!
I placed a small statuette of the crouching Cthulhu in the ship.
The PCs wouldn't touch it with a 10'-pole!
Rodrigo Istalindir
Explorer
Uh, I attempt to disbelieve the illusion?
Yup, all the time. Certain elements are blended in, but not so much as to stand out. The biggest example is Tharizdun, which is the just name that Yog-Sothoth is known by on my world. I was running a group through RttToEE, and Lareth the no-longer-beautiful was that way not because of the reason listed, but because I had read Dunwich Horror and Lareth was starting to resemble Dad a bit more as he aged.
I played in a campaign once where some of the gods of the Forgotten Realms were trying to manipulate Cthulhu into destroying their rivals - the setup was that the big C was far more powerful than any individual god, with an utterly alien mindset but he could possibly be manipulated via some of the primal rules of the multiverse. Turned out the manipulators didn't quite know what they were doing, and things of course got more than a little out of hand. Our PCs clashed with some Cthulhu cultists - the old one's influence on Toril grew stronger as he ate more deities - and of course got to read some musty tomes and deal with magics that were far too dangerous for any sane person to even consider using, but most of the Cthulhoid action occurred way over our heads and we only saw hints and portents of what was going on.
Basic campaign plot was that our PCs were specified ahead of time as mostly evil, and each was on the run or otherwise an outcast. Each had a unique magic item, that turned out to be much more than it seemed. Through various machinations we became aware of what was going on among the gods, and the most likely outcome (Cthulhu eats the world), so being self-serving types we looked for a way to escape. Along the way, we discovered that most of the unique magic items we carried actually held the essence of defeated gods, who were using us to hide from their rivals and also to make their escape. All except my characters item, which I ultimately discovered was a staff bound to Nyarlathotep. Which of course meant that when we did make our escape to a little-known alternate prime (a place called Earth, as it turned out), I brought along the herald of the old gods that would inevitably doom this new world, too. Fortunately, I figured it out before the rest of the group and kept it from them until we made our escape, otherwise my mighty mage probably wouldn't have survived to make the trip, but as it was he figured he had enough time to figure out some new escape route before Cthulhu and company got around to tracking us down...
Worked very well as a premise for a closed campaign (this was in University, where our group makeup changed every four months due to co-op work terms, so all our campaigns lasted that long). It hit the Lovecraft style very well, since other than one critter my mage summoned with a variant summon monster spell, all the mythos critters were hinted at rather than acting as normal D&D monsters.
We knew something bad was going on, but didn't figure out the Cthulhu angle until a month or so into the four-month campaign. We players thought it was pretty cool, mostly because it was handled so well - if we'd just been killing Fungi from Mi-Go for loot instead of orcs or gnolls, then it wouldn't have been quite so well-received, I'm sure. Of course, this was also 15ish years ago, before the official D&D versions of Cthulhoid deities had much prominence, might be nowadays it wouldn't have as much impact.
Basic campaign plot was that our PCs were specified ahead of time as mostly evil, and each was on the run or otherwise an outcast. Each had a unique magic item, that turned out to be much more than it seemed. Through various machinations we became aware of what was going on among the gods, and the most likely outcome (Cthulhu eats the world), so being self-serving types we looked for a way to escape. Along the way, we discovered that most of the unique magic items we carried actually held the essence of defeated gods, who were using us to hide from their rivals and also to make their escape. All except my characters item, which I ultimately discovered was a staff bound to Nyarlathotep. Which of course meant that when we did make our escape to a little-known alternate prime (a place called Earth, as it turned out), I brought along the herald of the old gods that would inevitably doom this new world, too. Fortunately, I figured it out before the rest of the group and kept it from them until we made our escape, otherwise my mighty mage probably wouldn't have survived to make the trip, but as it was he figured he had enough time to figure out some new escape route before Cthulhu and company got around to tracking us down...
Worked very well as a premise for a closed campaign (this was in University, where our group makeup changed every four months due to co-op work terms, so all our campaigns lasted that long). It hit the Lovecraft style very well, since other than one critter my mage summoned with a variant summon monster spell, all the mythos critters were hinted at rather than acting as normal D&D monsters.
Mouseferatu said:
We knew something bad was going on, but didn't figure out the Cthulhu angle until a month or so into the four-month campaign. We players thought it was pretty cool, mostly because it was handled so well - if we'd just been killing Fungi from Mi-Go for loot instead of orcs or gnolls, then it wouldn't have been quite so well-received, I'm sure. Of course, this was also 15ish years ago, before the official D&D versions of Cthulhoid deities had much prominence, might be nowadays it wouldn't have as much impact.
Kid Charlemagne
I am the Very Model of a Modern Moderator
One of my pet projects is to build a Cthulhu-centric D&D homebrew campaign world to use as a break from my regular game. Emphasis on the horror aspects, etc. I haven't decided if I should create a seperate world, or make it a "real-world" game based in a 16th century time frame...
Vocenoctum
First Post
I used several CoC adventures in Shadowrun. The 1920's one's were pretty easy to insert. There was a theme town modeled after Arkham. It culminated in a low-speed chase in electronic model T's as the players tried to outpace Animatronic Cthulhu.
Later on, the Mi Go were introduced. Through an arcane ritual, a wraith spirit was implanted into a beetle fleshform, creating a giant intelligent beetle with Alien Tastes. It was scary for a bit, slowly revealing them.
For D&D, I've avoided direct stuff, though I've made the Far Side a bit more Cthulhu-ish. Soon the group will be headed to visit a shattered Asylum and we'll see what elements worm their way in.
Later on, the Mi Go were introduced. Through an arcane ritual, a wraith spirit was implanted into a beetle fleshform, creating a giant intelligent beetle with Alien Tastes. It was scary for a bit, slowly revealing them.
For D&D, I've avoided direct stuff, though I've made the Far Side a bit more Cthulhu-ish. Soon the group will be headed to visit a shattered Asylum and we'll see what elements worm their way in.
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Mouseferatu said:
In the long-running game group I was a part of, the main GM for the group always used such things even before CoC was published (using the stuff in the first-priinting Deities and Demigods book and homebrewing stats for everything else like the Dreamlands creatuers). After that point, he went whole-hog into mising D&D and the Mythos. It was just a standard, expected part of playing in his games that the Mythos in some form would be present.
One of my old mega-dungeons had an enclave of Deep Ones on level 4B, but the campaign ended before the players ever encountered them. I'm also a big fan of using Shoggoths as a "generic D&D" monster. But other than that, I'm another vote in favor of playing up the Lovecraftian flavor of things like Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental God, but not using the actual Cthulhu Mythos names, which are IME too familiar to most players and would be too likely to come off as a joke (the same as if I named an NPC Obi-Wan or Spock or Aragorn).
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