In my blog entry today, I talk about how I'm writing about 20 pages of background information for the Raiders of R'lyeh book about what the occult world looked like in 1910, including a lot of material describing the practice of Edwardian Magick.

So the question is, how effective would you want "real world" occultism to be in a Cthulhu setting? 100% ineffective (ie. the magicians have it totally wrong?), or only that 90% of magicians are complete wankers doing useless things but there's about 10% of the occult corpus that actually does something?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;691147In my blog entry today, I talk about how I'm writing about 20 pages of background information for the Raiders of R'lyeh book about what the occult world looked like in 1910, including a lot of material describing the practice of Edwardian Magick.

So the question is, how effective would you want "real world" occultism to be in a Cthulhu setting? 100% ineffective (ie. the magicians have it totally wrong?), or only that 90% of magicians are complete wankers doing useless things but there's about 10% of the occult corpus that actually does something?

RPGPundit

I think the occasional Magician should stumble upon something 'man was not meant to know' and go insane, etc...

I certainly wouldn't want all/most 'occult' magic to be real. Just little gyms of true madness in a morass of hokum.

So lots of real world Occultism that's 90+% useless.

Call of Cthulhu products seem to bring out every author's Kitchen Sink Historian.
I love a good piece of historical occultism if it can be put in motion in the structure of the game.
If it's just "And remember kids, in 1913, Aleister Crowley looked sideways at this flower pot and then called upon Azazel to make a cheese wedge. So...work that into the game somehow." then fuck it: I can read up on that stuff on my own, without it being presented as an RPG book.

Quote from: Zak S;691149Call of Cthulhu products seem to bring out every author's Kitchen Sink Historian.
I love a good piece of historical occultism if it can be put in motion in the structure of the game.
If it's just "And remember kids, in 1913, Aleister Crowley looked sideways at this flower pot and then called upon Azazel to make a cheese wedge. So...work that into the game somehow." then fuck it: I can read up on that stuff on my own, without it being presented as an RPG book.

To me real world occultism is basically like a red herring/obfuscation factory in CoC.

 But yes, it goes without saying that it should be presented in a manner immediately relevant to gaming.

90% to 95% goobledigook with about 5% to 10% stuff that works just to keep the Players guessing.

And yes, either excise everything from Aleister Crowley or just paint him to be the fraud he was. One of the most surefire ways I use to identify a nutter these days is if they quote Aleister Crowley at me.

Usually, only "magic" that comes from the Cthulhu Mythos works in my Cthulhu games, but of course an obscure piece of what seems like "ordinary" occult lore could very well turn out to be just that. The common magical activities of occultists and occultist societies don't have any effect. The influence they may exert is quite mundane in nature. The same goes for religious groups and movements.

I do enjoy for folklore to be effective on occasion, i.e. using garlic to ward off vampires and such.

L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Parsons and an elderly and practically senile Aleister Crowley attempt some masturbatory* thelemic magic and all three are eaten alive by a passing shoggoth irritated with the racket they're raising.

/scene

...

*=Parsons and Hubbard beat off together in an attempt to channel magic powers, IRL.  Also IRL Crowley told Parsons that Hubbard was a quack and a fraud (and coming from Crowley that's quite the accusation) and to avoid him; Hubbard then stole Parsons' wife and several thousand dollars and disappeared over the horizon.  Its fun to watch stupid beat on stupid!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;691159Its fun to watch stupid beat on stupid!

Slightly unfortunate way to put it given the earlier imagery conjured up, and I just lost 2d6 SAN points.

Is this a binary choice, one or the other? The obvious answer is 90-10 with the balance in favour of chicanery but could you make it situational, like most of the stuff works if you happen to be near a black temple or something, but otherwise doesn't, and only masters know the right times and places?

Also there's a Delta Green scenario that has a pagan cult of women who are unwittingly serving Shub-Niggurath, but it's presented by the actual cult leaders as a new-age sort of "woman as the mother-goddess" "good" movement (including "spiritual crystals" which are in fact foci for draining POW from the unsuspecting cult members), the DG Cell has the job of breaking up the cult without killing a bunch of civilians and banishing a Dark Young.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;691159L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Parsons and an elderly and practically senile Aleister Crowley attempt some masturbatory* thelemic magic and all three are eaten alive by a passing shoggoth irritated with the racket they're raising.

/scene

...

*=Parsons and Hubbard beat off together in an attempt to channel magic powers, IRL.  Also IRL Crowley told Parsons that Hubbard was a quack and a fraud (and coming from Crowley that's quite the accusation) and to avoid him; Hubbard then stole Parsons' wife and several thousand dollars and disappeared over the horizon.  Its fun to watch stupid beat on stupid!

The Trail of Cthulhu adventure I wrote called The Big Hoodoo includes a kind of "placeholder" magic system intended to stand in for Enochian magic; it involves creating weird acrostic matrices (like the Sator square) in place of the crazy Enochian language.

The PCs in The Big Hoodoo are Bob Heinlein, his wife Virginia, sf editor Tony Boucher, and a young Phil Dick in 1952; they investigate the suspicious death of Jack Parsons--and a thinly fictionalized L. Ron Hubbard is a prime suspect.

I include bits of Crowleyana in the adventure, and sometimes players who take the occult seriously are a bit discomfited by that.

Bill

Synopses. Enough summary to tease and tempt to self-research, but not enough to glaze over eyes. A weird happy median for one's inner 13 yr old and one's Mature GM.

As for what % of the stuff works? Depends on the table's take on the setting. There'd have to be enough to tantalize to explain exploring back then, but rare enough to feel safe in the age of PROGRESS! Somewhere between 30% to 10%.

First off, there has to be access to mild phenomenology, otherwise ectoplasm craze, séances, etc. wouldn't have cache up into the upper classes' parlors and salons. So Dreamlands, hauntings, ESP stuff should be far more accessible, closer towards 30%.

Then there has to be the remote parts of the world hosting mind-blowing mysteries to the imperial consciousness, and their sense of superiority. This encourages travel! So Easter Island moa, voudoun loa and zombii, lost cities of the Americas and SE Asia, trance rituals of Bali and Indonesia, etc. And that stuff should be closer to 20% functional magic of its own sort, possibly tapped Elder Sign magic, possibly just functional mysteries on their own.

And finally the real Mythos stuff should be around 10% to 5%. Rare nightmares coming to life. Stuff that requires piercing more than one's share of mystic veils to even glimpse a once-in-a-lifetime-but-still-too-much Mythos experience. Things in remote, unwanted areas and secret societies sheltering them, which come into conflict with PROGRESS'! ravenous and imperial maw.

None. That's one of the things I dislike about CoC, more and more non-Mythos magic crept in.

Which IMHO, defeats the whole point of the Cthulhu Mythos. The only sort of "magic" that is real in it is somehow related to the Mythos, like Nyarlothotep being the Black Man of Witches.

It should be presented like all other magic is just BS, while Mythos magic is real. Though not necessarily "magic", but some sort of alien science

"And I woulda summoned him, too, if not for you meddling kids!"

IMHO, horror works only on uncertainty.  The more you can accurately label and categorize it, the less effective it is.  Of course you want to go 90:10 ... at least.

Quote from: Bill White;691202I include bits of Crowleyana in the adventure, and sometimes players who take the occult seriously are a bit discomfited by that.

One of the best lines out of any of my players, in my campaign's history, came when another player questioned his faith.  The first player and his ladyfriend (another player) were born-again Christians, as were a couple others in our large gaming circle.  How come, says the second fellow, you two claim you're Christian when your character is an Crom-worshiping berserker and she plays a bitch princess who knifes her lovers when she tires of them?

Well, said my friend, I figure that the Lord God, omnipotent and all-knowing creator of heaven and Earth, has enough on the ball to figure out the difference between a game and reality.

The premise always stuck with me.  The way I figure, I decide how my world works in every particular: what's true, what's not, what works, what's hokum, what's considered "good," what's considered "bad."  People who can't stand that my POV might not agree with theirs are at best a poor fit for my campaign, and might not be a good fit for anyone's.

Quote from: Piestrio;691148I think the occasional Magician should stumble upon something 'man was not meant to know' and go insane, etc...

I certainly wouldn't want all/most 'occult' magic to be real. Just little gyms of true madness in a morass of hokum.

So lots of real world Occultism that's 90+% useless.

That's an awesome little typo. Forget the libraries, they're useless; real magic is the province of the boxing gym and jujitsu dojo. Get your cadence on the speed bag right and you too can summon a hound.