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"You enter a 10 ft. x 10 ft. room. You see Cthulhu. Roll for Initiative."
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<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2295017" data-attributes="member: 2205"><p>I've used rat-things, byakhee and Hounds of Tindalos, and I did run a small town on the frontier that was fairly obviously riffing on Innesmouth, but I tend to shy away from the more well-known Mythos elements, and instead focus on more "Mythos-esque" stuff.</p><p></p><p>It's a bit hard to maintain the mystique if the players start shouting things like "it's the Big C!" and laughing when Cthulhu comes up out of some lake in your D&D campaign. I recommend some of the same techniques used in the stories; keep the details close to the vest until the very end. Let the tension and dread build naturally by not having mythos beasties pop up like zombies in DOOM to be mowed down by the uber-capable PCs. Make sure whatever "mook monsters" they do fight are also clearly very afraid of the mysterious creature under the water, or whatever it is.</p><p></p><p>Also, changing the names and appearances slightly works well for me. My "byakhees" used a picture that I scanned from my copy of <em>Creatures of Rokugan</em> (and I don't think I ever actually named them) for instance.</p><p></p><p>Oh, and are you using Sanity? It just seems wrong somehow to use Cthulhu elements without Sanity playing a role in your game. Although the CoC/UA mechanics work well, I actually prefer the horror and sanity checks Mike Mearls wrote up for <em>Darkness & Dread</em> as a more native d20 alternative. Also, Bruce Baugh wrote up a small pdf called <em>d20 Sanity</em> (I think) that translates the CoC style sanity point for point into a native d20 style mechanic.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 2295017, member: 2205"] I've used rat-things, byakhee and Hounds of Tindalos, and I did run a small town on the frontier that was fairly obviously riffing on Innesmouth, but I tend to shy away from the more well-known Mythos elements, and instead focus on more "Mythos-esque" stuff. It's a bit hard to maintain the mystique if the players start shouting things like "it's the Big C!" and laughing when Cthulhu comes up out of some lake in your D&D campaign. I recommend some of the same techniques used in the stories; keep the details close to the vest until the very end. Let the tension and dread build naturally by not having mythos beasties pop up like zombies in DOOM to be mowed down by the uber-capable PCs. Make sure whatever "mook monsters" they do fight are also clearly very afraid of the mysterious creature under the water, or whatever it is. Also, changing the names and appearances slightly works well for me. My "byakhees" used a picture that I scanned from my copy of [i]Creatures of Rokugan[/i] (and I don't think I ever actually named them) for instance. Oh, and are you using Sanity? It just seems wrong somehow to use Cthulhu elements without Sanity playing a role in your game. Although the CoC/UA mechanics work well, I actually prefer the horror and sanity checks Mike Mearls wrote up for [i]Darkness & Dread[/i] as a more native d20 alternative. Also, Bruce Baugh wrote up a small pdf called [i]d20 Sanity[/i] (I think) that translates the CoC style sanity point for point into a native d20 style mechanic. [/QUOTE]
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