What is your favorite CoC time period?

Philotomy Jurament · May 02, 2010, 10:45:47 AM

Quote from: Rezendevous;378102I like Delta Green...

Yeah, a well-run Delta Green campaign can be very, very, good.

danbuter · December 07, 2010, 10:38:46 PM

I strongly prefer modern day Cthulhu. I also like to add in Delta Green stuff, and a bit of pulp flavoring. My last campaign had Nazi scientists in the Antarctic, having discovered the Plateau of Leng in the 1930s. They used some kind of life-lengthening serum and were trying to bring back minor monsters to inflict on the rest of the world.

I also ran a campaign set in Hue during the Tet Offensive. I used lots of factual information regarding units. Part of the battle was a small group of NVA summoning byahkee to help win the fight. The campaign was to survive fighting the regular NVA and to take out the cultist. The guys I played with really liked it.

kregmosier · December 07, 2010, 11:33:25 PM

Modern Day, if only because it is the time period I'm most familiar with.

However, that Doctor T. J. Eckleburg sign would be great with "Occultist" instead of "Occulist".

(seriously, a Gatsby/Lovecraft mashup would be a swell one-shot or con game, i think...)

hanszurcher · December 08, 2010, 12:09:27 AM

Quote from: Simlasa;377517I said 'other' because my longest running COC campaign so far was set in and around 1969 San Francisco... lots of wild things going on and all that open-mindedness was perfect cover for some really nasty cults to get some new members.
You've got Charles Manson, Robert DeGrimston, The Zodiac Killer, H.R. Puffenstuff... and Anton LaVey on the Hammond Organ.
Oh, and all that hallucinogenic sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll stuff.

I have to agree with Simlasa, I voted other.
I do like 20/30's era, but my games lately are set around the 60-80's. Admittedly, largely do to a case of the raging childhood nostalgia and a love for Italian horror movies of the time.

Quote from: Simlasa;377517I've always wanted to play COC set in the '50s... with beat poet stuff mixed in with Mickey Spillane flavored sleaze (watching 'Kiss Me Deadly' always brings Lovecraft to mind)... with a back ground of Tiki bars, hot rods and strip clubs. Maybe do it up as an earlier era's Delta Green with lots of old 'Dragnet' flavor.
The '50s just seem really decadent to me.

You might enjoy giving Move Under Ground a read. (It's free to download from the author's web site...or for hard cash from Amazon)

Simlasa · December 08, 2010, 03:14:58 AM

Quote from: hanszurcher;424051You might enjoy giving Move Under Ground a read. (It's free to download from the author's web site...or for hard cash from Amazon)

Oooh! Thanks for pointing that out!
I remember my first time reading 'Dr. Sax'... hoping the Dr. would turn out to be Nyarlathotep... and being disappointed at the happy ending.

DKChannelBoredom · December 08, 2010, 03:27:47 AM

that is a hard one. I ended up voting for present day, as my love for Delta Green/X-Files style campaigns has been the greatest for the last couple of years. But like most others, I also love the classic setting and had so many good experiences with that era. The Dunwich/Insmouth-feel of desolated rural town can be a bit tricky to generate in modern games, and that is really one of my favorite things in Call.

Maybe the "new" Masks... will tip me towards classic era once it arrives here from Carco.. I mean Chaosium.

Bill White · December 08, 2010, 06:10:41 AM

Quote from: Simlasa;377517I said 'other' because my longest running COC campaign so far was set in and around 1969 San Francisco... lots of wild things going on and all that open-mindedness was perfect cover for some really nasty cults to get some new members.
You've got Charles Manson, Robert DeGrimston, The Zodiac Killer, H.R. Puffenstuff... and Anton LaVey on the Hammond Organ.
Oh, and all that hallucinogenic sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll stuff.

I've always wanted to play COC set in the '50s... with beat poet stuff mixed in with Mickey Spillane flavored sleaze (watching 'Kiss Me Deadly' always brings Lovecraft to mind)... with a back ground of Tiki bars, hot rods and strip clubs. Maybe do it up as an earlier era's Delta Green with lots of old 'Dragnet' flavor.
The '50s just seem really decadent to me.

You'll be interested in the Trail of Cthulhu adventure I'm working on for Pelgrane Press, called The Big Hoodoo. It's Lovecraftian noir in 1950s California as the investigators (including sf writers Robert Heinlein and a young Phil Dick) are drawn into the twisted web of deceit and chicanery surrounding the death of occultist rocket scientist Jack Parsons. The playtesters have had a blast with it, and I'm just about finished revising it, so it should be out soon.

Simlasa · December 08, 2010, 07:08:01 AM

Quote from: Bill White;424073You'll be interested in the Trail of Cthulhu adventure I'm working on for Pelgrane Press, called The Big Hoodoo. It's Lovecraftian noir in 1950s California...

That sounds cool, I was reading about Parsons recently... He' like a ready made subject for a CoC scenario (I'm assuming your adventure will play just as easily with CoC?).
I've also been reading my way through a big stack of Astounding from the 50's and getting lots of ideas I can riff off of... The overall tone is positive, open... This sense that mankind, using science and technology, will conquer all.
Interesting tensions to be had playing that optimism off against darker realities.

Bill White · December 08, 2010, 12:37:06 PM

Quote from: Simlasa;424078That sounds cool, I was reading about Parsons recently... He' like a ready made subject for a CoC scenario (I'm assuming your adventure will play just as easily with CoC?).
I've also been reading my way through a big stack of Astounding from the 50's and getting lots of ideas I can riff off of... The overall tone is positive, open... This sense that mankind, using science and technology, will conquer all.
Interesting tensions to be had playing that optimism off against darker realities.

That's exactly right! Parsons is like catnip to most CoC players, in my opinion, and part of the appeal I think is exactly the thing you're finding in 1950s sf--the tension between technological optimism and the (mostly unexamined) sense of Things We Weren't Meant to Know with bigger and bigger H-bombs, MAD, and so forth.

I know that conversions from CoC to ToC are relatively straightforward; ToC is actually fairly rules-light, so if you play CoC that way too it shouldn't be terribly problematic to convert it the other way. I know I've seen some discussion to that effect on www.yog-sothoth.com, but I can't find a specific thread right now.

Pseudoephedrine · December 08, 2010, 12:44:35 PM

I like 20's through to the far future. The cosmic horror theme needs technocracy to really be effective.

Cole · December 08, 2010, 12:52:03 PM

I prefer the 20's but I've gotten pretty good mileage out of the 70's and early 80s. One of my better CoC homebrew adventures had the PCs doing rogue operations in Cambodia.

Cole · December 08, 2010, 12:53:37 PM

Quote from: Bill White;424073You'll be interested in the Trail of Cthulhu adventure I'm working on for Pelgrane Press, called The Big Hoodoo. It's Lovecraftian noir in 1950s California as the investigators (including sf writers Robert Heinlein and a young Phil Dick) are drawn into the twisted web of deceit and chicanery surrounding the death of occultist rocket scientist Jack Parsons. The playtesters have had a blast with it, and I'm just about finished revising it, so it should be out soon.

How much modification does the scenario require it the investigators themselves don't include the historical figures?

stu2000 · December 08, 2010, 07:14:57 PM

I like Cthulhu in any timeframe, but I've had great fun with Delta Green, so I checked mo-dern. There's no period I wouldn't like, really.

RPGPundit · December 09, 2010, 02:13:54 PM

Generally speaking, my favorite is the 20s, but I'm not dogmatic about it. I would love to try running a Cthulhu Invictus mini-campaign someday.

RPGPundit

winkingbishop · December 09, 2010, 02:22:29 PM

20's, but I haven't met much CoC I didn't like. A few weeks ago we played Western CoC using some mods from a supplement I hadn't seen before - I believe Worlds of Cthulhu #2. It was quite a lot of fun for a one shot. I died first, so I guess I won? :duh: