[CoC] "Hellboy" and "Blade II" as Call of Cthulhu inspiration

[Klaus]

These ideas remind me a lot of the Eldritch Earth campaign seed I wrote for Fiery Dragon's Counter Pack IV: Occult Horrors & Investigators. There are no magic-wielding classes, and anyone can gain access to spells through special feats. Spellcasting causes wither non-lethal or lethal damage, depending on your ability in harnessing those energies. Plus you can learn feats that allow you to turn, rebuke or command creatures , be specially good at slaying or perform amazing feats of strength (among others).

 

[ledded]

Ledded ---Got some stats for Comic Book Guy? I'm curious.

There is a Rogues Gallery thread for Medallions, OldDrewId has a link to it in his sig but I dont have it right here in front of me.

He's the only one with a combat class as the start, i.e. Tough Hero, though he has super low strength and no combat feats at all. Mainly took tough to be able to survive, and to represent that he's extemely fat with a horrible diet so he can take a lot of punishment

Reminds me of my "Nerd Force" proposal --- a team of hardcore nerds who emerge from their basements to challenge the unknown and battle threats to the space-time continuum. There would be a tough guy [expert in the Klingon martial arts and the lightsaber], the ultimate tech support guy, the grad school dropout who works at Borders....

Well now, to be fair, only Joe (the comic book store owner) and maybe Crystal (the student) are nerds. My character is a black P.I. with a couple levels of charismatic and charm:female (yes, I took a game mechanic so my character would get chicks. I know, I'm biggus geekus).

Ken Hite has an article in Pyramid about using Black Ops in alternate times, including the Wild West.

As a big pulp fan, I like the thirties-era idea --- think Shadow = Man in Black, and imagine a whole team of near-Doc Savage caliber heroes fighting Nameless Horrors, mad scientists, incursions from Hollow Earth, and the Thule Society...

Sounds great, I'm a big pulp fan but the closest I've come to getting my group to play anything pulp is a WWII-superheros-CoC comic book style adventure. It was great fun, and I've been trying to nurse a story hour along about it ("We were like gods once...").

 

[JPL]

There is a Rogues Gallery thread for Medallions, OldDrewId has a link to it in his sig but I dont have it right here in front of me.

He's the only one with a combat class as the start, i.e. Tough Hero, though he has super low strength and no combat feats at all. Mainly took tough to be able to survive, and to represent that he's extemely fat with a horrible diet so he can take a lot of punishment

Well now, to be fair, only Joe (the comic book store owner) and maybe Crystal (the student) are nerds. My character is a black P.I. with a couple levels of charismatic and charm:female (yes, I took a game mechanic so my character would get chicks. I know, I'm biggus geekus). .

Sounds great, I'm a big pulp fan but the closest I've come to getting my group to play anything pulp is a WWII-superheros-CoC comic book style adventure. It was great fun, and I've been trying to nurse a story hour along about it ("We were like gods once...").

He's a sex machine to all the chicks. Then I can dig it.

One of the ideas I'm always recycling is a Wold Newton / Planetary type pulp campaign...analogues of famous characters like Sherlock Holmes and James Bond all coexist and interact throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Full-fledged superheroes never catch on, but starting in the late 1930s there's a wave of "mystery men" [like JSA: The Liberty Files], and there's a second wave of "science heroes in the early 1960s. Most of these adventures sort of happen off the radar of the world at large, dismissed as fiction or exaggeration by the public...but by 2004, there's a good 150 years of rivalries, conspiracies, and forgotten wonders for the heroes to explore.

I've run two one-shots for d20 Modern [a steampunk Fu Manchu thing, and a modern Jonny Quest-meets-Sliders thing], and in my mind, they both coexisted in this continuity. If I GMd more often, I'd love to explore other points on the timeline and tie it all together.

And Cthuhlu, of course, goes with anything.

 

[Salcor]

I was actually planning on starting a campaign bases on the Blood and Guts rules, where the players would be reservist augmenties in Iraq. They would get ambushed, which would led to a modified version of the Game Mechanic scenario 'Coming of the Reaper," which would then led to The 12 to Midnight scenario "Weekend Warrior," which would take place at the character's base of operations. Basically it would be them dealing with a Iraqi Weapon of Mass Destruction that would turn people to Zombies. Following these scenarios they would be picked up by Department 7. Haven't figured out is Dept 7 would be with DoD, NSA, CIA, or DOE. Then from there they would go off to fight fun and scary things.

Salcor

 

[JPL]

Sounds good. Iraq, as the former Mesopotamia, is a great place to awaken sleeping evils.

You could always use the Department of Homeland Security as the patron organization. It has the advantage of being brand-spanking new, so the heroes would be the very first team of their kind.

 

[ledded]

That does sound cool Salcor. I had a very similar short one-off campaign set in a WWII era (WMD with zombies, advanced OSS Dept 7-ish agency, etc) but we ended up adding superheros to it also and it sort of evolved into something... different... from there. It was a lot of fun, and the story hour for it is fun to write when I get a chance to update it.

 

[Morpheus]

It's struck me for some time that if we're really battling against nameless cults and elder gods from beyond space and time, I don't want a bunch of busybody New England antiquarians on the case...I want guys with big guns who outrun shockwaves and have good one-liners and take no prisoners.

And then I saw Hellboy this weekend, and I thought...del Toro, he gets it. Just as the Bram Stoker vampire mythos can go in a completely different direction --- Blade or Buffy, f'rinstance --- so too can the Cthuhlu mythos.

I think a lot of the criticism of CoC d20 [too much like D&D, not deadly enough, etc.] was based on knee-jerk reactions about the limitations of d20. But I say, why not intentionally go that direction, using d20 Modern [a deliberately "action movie" kinda game]?

Keep the CoC d20 spellcasting system and Sanity, tweaked as necessary to insure that PCs might be able to experience some truly crazy stuff without going permanently insane.

Use the Mythos as the setting for a monster hunting game. Go toe-to-toe with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. A team with SWAT or Spec Ops type training and a very high threshold for weirdness [and maybe one or two have an advanced degree in a dead language] seeks out the mad cultists, the otherwordly incursions, and the colonies of Deep Ones dwelling in the sewers...

You just described Delta Green, a sourcebook for modern-day CoC. Run, don't walk, to get the d20 version when it comes out. Very soon, hopefully...

 

[Dirigible]

It's struck me for some time that if we're really battling against nameless cults and elder gods from beyond space and time, I don't want a bunch of busybody New England antiquarians on the case...I want guys with big guns who outrun shockwaves and have good one-liners and take no prisoners.

You're fired from Call of Cthulhu. Clear out your cyclopean vault of chthonian morbidity.

 

[Stormborn]

You just described Delta Green, a sourcebook for modern-day CoC. Run, don't walk, to get the d20 version when it comes out. Very soon, hopefully...

According to www.yog-sothoth.com Delta Green with dual stats for d20 and CoC is at the printer in China (as of March 30 at least.) Once thats out i would be suprised if we see anything more from Pagan, the company is down to the last man.

I can't wait. Although I wish it was for d20 Modern. But then again, between d20 Modern and CoC d20 a combo wouldn't be difficult.

 

[JPL]

You're fired from Call of Cthulhu. Clear out your cyclopean vault of chthonian morbidity.

But...but I...