TheRPGSite

Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: jhkim on January 31, 2007, 12:25:40 PM

Title: Horror in Victorian London: The Golden Dawn
Post by: jhkim on January 31, 2007, 12:25:40 PM
From Sending the police after the PCs. (http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4108&page=4), I wrote:

Quote from: jhkimMy current Call of Cthulhu campaign is Victorian London rather than modern-day, so they have a police force but it lacks many modern qualities. The PCs are all reasonably upstanding middle class gentlemen, and I gave them a friendly contact fairly highly placed on the police force. (Inspector Craig, who believes in the unknown to a fair degree, though they aren't sure of his loyalties.) So while they have had troubles with the law, they haven't had any trouble over little stuff. When they got in trouble, it was for big things rather than petty charges.

One of their adventures included that the Deacon of Rochester Cathedral was being controlled by an evil power and involved in dark magics. To stop his evil plan, they snuck onto the cathedral with guns and dynamite -- planning to stop him and blow up the clay statue of Christ which he could animate. When two of them were caught in the aftermath -- now that's getting in trouble.
with the reply,
Quote from: BalbinusJohn,

Could you give us some more details of that game in a new thread?  It sounds interesting and it's a setting I personally have never got quite right.
I have a web page on the campaign (who knew) with session summaries, an (incomplete) character descriptions, and some similar stuff.  

The Golden Dawn Campaign (http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/callofcthulhu/goldendawn/index.html)

The concept is based on John Tynes' Golden Dawn sourcebook, but I've taken it a fair bit off from there.  There are a lot of resources for Victorian Call of Cthulhu which I've drawn on -- the Cthulhu by Gaslight book and the Sacraments of Evil selection of adventures.  

The main thing which I'm emphasizing is that here, as members of the Golden Dawn, the PCs are the cultists.  They aren't an evil cult, but they're the ones with all the secret connections, mystic power, and so forth.  The watchword of the game is that since the first scenario, evil has always spread indirectly from their actions.  

One of the themes of the game is that I'm taking all of the icons of British mythology, at first building up a potentially nice view of things, but then having them turn out horrible and twisted.  The cathedral adventure was a good example.  This is based on the published adventure Sacraments of Evil, but changed around.  The monster of a sort was a statue of Jesus.  In my version, though, the dean was not a random killer, but someone who genuinely believed in a new revelation he had and who tried to kill an evil man (the villain from the last adventure that the PCs had captured) for what he had done to an innocent girl.  However, the PCs knew that his visions were from an evil beneath London which they had awakened.
Title: Horror in Victorian London: The Golden Dawn
Post by: Balbinus on January 31, 2007, 04:05:28 PM
John, many thanks, I'll print off some details from your site.  Excellent stuff.
Title: Horror in Victorian London: The Golden Dawn
Post by: mrlost on January 31, 2007, 05:45:40 PM
Very nice, I've long been interested in a Cultist game as a change of pace. I wouldn't have thought of non-icky Cultists though.
Title: Horror in Victorian London: The Golden Dawn
Post by: Hastur T. Fannon on February 01, 2007, 04:58:40 AM
"Deacon of Rochester Cathedral"? "Dean", surely?

Deacons fill a role in the ecclesiastical hierarchy somewhere between choirboys and the woman who polishes the communional rail - the liturgical equivalent of the scrub-nurse...

But I'm carping.  This sounds fantastic
Title: Horror in Victorian London: The Golden Dawn
Post by: jhkim on February 01, 2007, 11:10:16 AM
Quote from: Hastur T. Fannon"Deacon of Rochester Cathedral"? "Dean", surely?

Deacons fill a role in the ecclesiastical hierarchy somewhere between choirboys and the woman who polishes the communional rail - the liturgical equivalent of the scrub-nurse...

But I'm carping.  This sounds fantastic
Oops.  Yes, it was Dean in the game and summaries -- I just miswrote in my quick summary post here.
Title: Horror in Victorian London: The Golden Dawn
Post by: RPGPundit on February 02, 2007, 10:30:59 AM
I don't know if I'd really call the Golden Dawn "cultists".  They are certainly a group that could have been subverted by cultists.

RPGPundit