My Borderlands go all Cthulhu!!!

[Le Noir Faineant]

Hi all,

I am planning to run two games this year, one being a rather conventional rerun of the old I6 module (albeit under the Warhammer 2e system, set in the Empire's Ostmark), and a Cthulhu: Dark Ages campaign, starting with the old Keep on the Borderlands module.

For this game, I want your advice:

I am completely new to the CoC rules, let alone the DA rules. All I got so so far is the basic DA rulebook. What more will I need to provide an interesting DA game?

I would also like to hear if some ofyou have tried this before, and how it worked out, what you changed etc.

Also, any other suggestions and ideas are very welcome!

As to the setting and the perspective of the game, I want to set it somewhere in the Wilderlands, maybe between the Council Lake and the CSIO.

As possible sequels to the campaign, I am thinking of using either The Redwood Scar or The Last Breaths of Ashenport, two d20 adventures with distinctly cthulhuable stories.

As I said, any input will be very welcome!

Yours,

Rafael

 

[jdrakeh]

Cool. Waaaaaaaaaay cool. I've really been wanting to run a medieval campaign with elements of Cosmic Horror, myself. That said, I also want to keep it as free of High Fantasy as possible, so my bit would be more like The Name of the Rose meets Call of Cthulhu, rather than Gygaxian Fantasy meets Call of Cthulhu (D&D has precious little "medieval" in it, despite claims). Still, Gygaxian Fantasy meets Call of Cthulhu has its own appeal and I look forward to hearing more about your efforts

 

[Le Noir Faineant]

Many thanks! I'll keep you informed about how this works out...

 

[Set]

The Seneschal is *totally* a bad guy.

And you do not want to know what people are storing in the bank...

Or what the 'mystery meat' is in the stew at the inn. When you find a strip of meat with a ring on it? It's too late to run...

That old hermit with the mysterious defender? It's not a cat. It's a hound, and it's not just a hound, it's a Hound.

The caves are filled with unspeakable altars to unspeakable things, and the 'orcs and goblins' you expected to find turn out to have been humans all along. Deformed, misanthropic, howling, cannibalistic, with their eyes sewn shut, and some of them having extra vestigial limbs and conjoined twins, and casting spells like you've never seen before as they mewl and grovel to their tentacly space-gods, but yeah, pretty much human...

 

[Aholibamah]

I think that to make this work well you could make use of Cthulhu inspired monsters like:

Yuan-Ti
Aboleths
Mind flayers
as examples and place a strong emphasis on the creepy and mysterious. NPCs encountered should now and then be profoundly disturbed by the implications of the horror they believe they have witnessed.

there is a 3.5 supplement as well called Lords of Madness you might want to check out.

 

[Soel]

I did just this thing a couple of years ago 'cept I used Hastur instead of the squiggly-guy. Caves were adjacent to a quarry wherein a slab containing eldritch glyphs was unearthed by a meddling wizard who the pcs were sent to find.

I replaced almost all the creatures. Highlights include -

a tribe of Nilbogs, who set themselves alight and tried to jump down on the pcs,

a gate to Carcosa itself (set on the banks of the Styx, with Stygian Clay Golem enforcers,)

and one player, (who just had to say it 3 times,) got a rude awakening in the form of a lung elemental (failed Fort = pc expelling all of his breath, which then procedes to attack his now suffocating self. Success meant just passing the dead lump (yes, as a solid!) out of your body the old fashioned way.)

 

[Le Noir Faineant]

Wow, thank you for the many ideas!

I'll see what I can do with that.

The mysterious meat idea is surely stolen - maybe I'll have one or two gaming sessions with the party fighting the usual goblin marauders, and then have them have a rest at the Inn...

Also stolen is the idea with the hermit, albeit I am not sure how I will use that one in the final game. My idea of the hermit was that of a priest who had simply gone mad after reading a spellbook that was too powerful for him...

The Nilbog idea also intrigues me, because setting the Keep on Fire would be a totally unexpected move...

As to LoM, I have that ready for possible side adventures and flav stuff.

As the BBEG/tentacled entity of the game, I would like to use "The King in Yellow",
I think - I am not decided if I want the players to undertake a classic "no return"-campaign, or just scare the hell out of them... My idea of using the "King" would be that he also is just a demented magician, and not necessarily an otherworldly entity.

For those of you who know the Wilderlands setting, I am also thinking of making him a lost member of the old Viridian royal house...

 

[Aholibamah]

I got the Chaosium book "The King in Yellow" which is interesting, a rather more subtle than usual Cthulhu book. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it for your purposes but you might want to look up some reviews, maybe take a look at it. It certainly has a Carcosa chapter in it, though Carcosa is a dreamlike city and it mostly consists of detailed encounters rather than maps and ideas.

On the other hand if you can get your hands on the Dreamlands book that might be more helpful to you. Several of the monsters (gugs, ghouls, nightgaunts, things like that) are given interesting locations, and there are good ideas for weird places, plus several adventures that could probably be adapted. I've found that CoC adventures really can be adapted without too much trouble.

 

[Le Noir Faineant]

Thanks! Will check those out - a friend of mine has a rather big CoC collection, and I think I'll draw on that.

 

[jdrakeh]

Yeah, for fantasy CoC both the Dreamlands sourcebook and strange period fiction such as that of Lord Dunsany should be good for inspiration.