Call of Cthulhu d20 Preservation Society

[Tom Cashel]

How about using Brian Lumley's Titus Crow stories as a template for an ongoing campaign?

Here's a snip from Amazon.com:

Lumley's prose has a baroque feel that lends an antique patina to Crow's world (supposedly in the 1960s and '70s), and his blend of horror à la Lovecraft, adventure reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and techno-science fiction with shades of Asimov is always pleasantly surprising. Titus Crow makes for solid and enjoyable reading that deftly crosses genres.

Seems like this would dovetail with D20 CoC quite well.

 

[teitan]

Hello my name is jeff37923, and I play d20 CoC.

The only disturbing thing is that I get to watch people discuss how the Necronomicon is real on the local goth boards between games.

Dude, it is, I have three copies on my bookshelf, one by Simon, One by Wilson and one by Giger!!!!

Jason

 

[Turanil]

one by Giger!!!!

Hey! But I have it too!! I had completely forgotten about it! Maybe it can get a fair price on ebay? I am willing to sell, it, I don't care about this book anymore.

 

[teitan]

I tend to run Cthulhu at higher levels than most. I start my PCs out at level 5 and whatever hit points they have when they are done rolling is what they get. The only level based benefits I give are skills, feats, BAB and Defense bonus. I think that too many hit points and the game loses its feel but most D20 PCs are much weaker than their BRP counterparts and I think this is the best way to handle it, higher starting levels. I also ruled that they had to use the skill in the adventure before they can put more points into it.

Most of my campaigns tend to focus on conflicts with humans and cultists with an occasional mythos creature at the climax but an easy out to keep players from dieing too much. I want them to come back and play after all!!!

Who cares if Chaosium isn't supporting D20 Cthulhu though, with the conversion notes in the book and the Screen, we have enough to convert our own stuff. Now I just need Masks of Nyarlothotep!

Jason

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I love all things CoC. However one of the things that kind of bugged me about the d20 version was the concept of levels and advancement which seems to slowly take away the bleak hopelessness which has made the game so popular. I think it is a similar reason why I never found Ravenloft so frightening - zombies are pretty scary but not to 6th level characters with 40 hp.

I played in a CoCd20 campaign, and I've played the original, and I can tell you that levels and the like really didn't take away any of the scariness. In fact, these things added to the hopelessness at very appropriate times - we got up to 5th-6th level, and it was pretty demoralizing (in that good "CoC" way) when we realized that all our nice pretty levels and hit points would do us no good against some of the various baddies we faced. It sure seemed easy for critters to hurt us pretty badly - heck, the most tense combat encounter in the campaign was against dogs! Everything else pretty much involved us running away.

 

[Narfellus]

I agree. Levels and more hitpoints in CoC d20 only get out of hand if the GM allows it. It can be easy for unexperienced gamers to accidentally kill Cthulhu, but then they aren't playing CoC at all by that point, just some game with vaguely similar rules.

 

[Turanil]

It can be easy for unexperienced gamers to accidentally kill Cthulhu, but then they aren't playing CoC at all by that point

Not even D&D. I did read once that Monte Cook told they had done a fight between Cthulhu and 20th level D&D PCs (i.e.: the iconic characters from the PHB brought to 20th level). He said that they couldn't kill him, that Cthulhu slew many PCs and that finally they were only able to banish him.

 

[TerraDave]

I've only played BRP CoC, but the D20 book--at least without playtesting--struck me as one of the all time great stand alone RPGs (books).

I also have heard that was more successfull commercially than expected. Surprising that so little support has come out for it...or is that par for the course for Chaosium? (still doesn't explain the lack of 3rd party material, or does it, given licensing arrangements?)

 

[TerraDave]

D&D CoC

Not even D&D. I did read once that Monte Cook told they had done a fight between Cthulhu and 20th level D&D PCs (i.e.: the iconic characters from the PHB brought to 20th level). He said that they couldn't kill him, that Cthulhu slew many PCs and that finally they were only able to banish him.

Has anyone here used the appendix to add Cthulhu fun to their D&D campaign? Would be very interested to read how it went.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The only thing I've used from the CoC d20 book, is the section on monsters and using them in standard D&D campaigns. "All you Need is Cthulhu" article by Monte on the old WoTC website. The Starspawn too.

The fact that Chaosium fumbled the ball so badly with this opportunity still pisses me off.