What System For...?

[Aldarc]

Game concept: You are not investigators trying to stop the cultists of the eldritch horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. Instead, you are the cultists who are doing everything in your power to bring about machinations of your eldritch cult.

 

[Reynard]

Game concept: You are not investigators trying to stop the cultists of the eldritch horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. Instead, you are the cultists who are doing everything in your power to bring about machinations of your eldritch cult.

Needs more information about what PCs actually DO in play. Are they stealing ancient texts from libraries and universities? Are they kidnapping sacrificial victims? Are they exploring the for reaches of the world for lost and forgotten knowledge?

 

[Aldarc]

Needs more information about what PCs actually DO in play. Are they stealing ancient texts from libraries and universities? Are they kidnapping sacrificial victims? Are they exploring the for reaches of the world for lost and forgotten knowledge?

Yes, and more. Pretty much what you would imagine cultists to do. Maybe not all of it is nefarious. After all, a lot of the Cthulhu Mythos stems from a xenophobic fear of the outsider and the "Other." So what does that look like on the other side? Do the cultists see it that way?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

My game concept is Kaiju with human PCs that's basically a Godzilla movie.

How rules light are you willing to go? Tiny d6 Mecha & Monsters is right there, and the system's so basic that adding in more human-scale stuff from the rest of that sprawling line is a trivial exercise.

Somewhat more crunchy and there's Savage Worlds Dawn of the Daikaiju, which would probably be my go-to. Slightly harder to tweak in human scale stuff, but hardly complex.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, and more. Pretty much what you would imagine cultists to do. Maybe not all of it is nefarious. After all, a lot of the Cthulhu Mythos stems from a xenophobic fear of the outsider and the "Other." So what does that look like on the other side? Do the cultists see it that way?

If you don't have a particularly strong archtypical action, I would go with something that mostly stays out of the way but enables whatever actual weirdness will show up. Witchcraft might work, or just good old fashioned GURPS.

 

[Wolfpack48]

This is a fun thread!
My game concept is Kaiju with human PCs that's basically a Godzilla movie. I've run a few games like this in the past as one-shots, usually with a lot of homebrewing and hacking. I usually allow the players to control giant monsters in monster battle scenes (sometimes hilariously working at odds against their human characters).

Like I said, games are usually one-shots, and the tone is fairly campy, so I'm not looking for anything with a high investment cost or something that's too crunchy.

Systems I've used in the past before:

• HERO/Champions, but I find it too crunchy
• Call of Cthulhu (yes, this took a lot of hacking)
• Savage Worlds (I found the dice mechanics didn't fit the genre well)

Thoughts, ideas? Thanks in advance!

BRP could handle this quite easily and would probably be easier than adapting CoC.

 

[TheHand]

BRP could handle this quite easily and would probably be easier than adapting CoC.

Yeah, I picked CoC since I could re-stat some of the eldritch horrors as kaiju, or at least use them as a basis between scaling them and the humans. I may look at BRP in the future.

 

[TheHand]

How rules light are you willing to go? Tiny d6 Mecha & Monsters is right there, and the system's so basic that adding in more human-scale stuff from the rest of that sprawling line is a trivial exercise.

Somewhat more crunchy and there's Savage Worlds Dawn of the Daikaiju, which would probably be my go-to. Slightly harder to tweak in human scale stuff, but hardly complex.

I'm not that familiar with Tinyd6, but that looks like it's worth a look! Than you.

I have the Savage Worlds supplement you mentioned and tried it. It worked OK, and I've really enjoyed SW for other games, but it felt like SW mechanics weren't the best fit for what I was going for.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I'm not that familiar with Tinyd6, but that looks like it's worth a look! Than you.

It is extremely rules light but playable, and there is a remarkable amount of support material for the overall system, as a poke around DTRPG will reveal. Hopefully it works for you - and if not, at least it's not a huge investment, and at least you can tweak it easily if it's close but not quite there.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Yeah, I picked CoC since I could re-stat some of the eldritch horrors as kaiju, or at least use them as a basis between scaling them and the humans. I may look at BRP in the future.

Repurposing the old ones as Kaiju makes a lot of sense. The chapter on Superpowers would work for them as well as for the Jaegers if you wanted to go Pacific Rim with it.