Reading pundit's review of Raiders of R'lyeh got me thinking. Obviously there's long been a market for a CoC variant that allows the investigators to be a little more heroic and a little less dead*. How many attempts have been made? Does anyone have a master list?
Also, is there ever likely to be one pulp Cthulhu to rule them all, or will the market be forever split between a dozen different Cthulhu "heartbreakers"?
*Raiders also has the Edwardian age vs roaring 20s thing to differentiate if from CoC, but sounds like the pulp angle is an important feature as well.
Savage Worlds has Realms of Cthulhu, Achtung Cthulhu, Weird Wars I, Weirds Wars 2, and Weird Wars Rome.
Savage Worlds is inherently pulp and has quite a few settings for the mythos.
Silent Legions by Sine Nomine is built on OSR D&D so increasing HP / levels which definitely allows for pulp / cinematic action.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145769/Silent-Legions
BTW, if you are a horror RPG fan, get this book ASAP even if you never run it. It's chock full of useful bits easily ported over.
There is Ken Hite's Adventures into Darkness - which merges Golden Age superheroes and Lovecraft.
https://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=10502
And there is Chaosium's Pulp Cthulhu -
https://www.chaosium.com/pulp-cthulhu-pdf/
Just find an RPG that already does pulp. Then add monsters.
There's a lot more of them than there used to be. This, I think, is a pushback against an idea that ended up increasingly dominating a certain group inside CoC-fandom which demanded that PCs all be defenseless academics and dilettantes meant to get themselves killed in horrible ways and adventures where blowing shit up was not just never the answer, but somehow fundamentally wrong. People eventually woke up to the fact that contrary to that group's claims, this was not in fact something that the Mythos literature inherently demanded.
Delta Green is a game where you take the fight to the monsters.
At least a dozen. Though only about 4 big ones.
Call of Cthulhu of course.
Gumshoe: Which tries to "fix" CoC. Has several iterations now.
Beyond the Supernatural, which mixes in a bit of Ghostbusters. Sadly long out of print.
And a bunch of hybrids that say mix high tech and mythos or shift the setting to space.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1037637There's a lot more of them than there used to be. This, I think, is a pushback against an idea that ended up increasingly dominating a certain group inside CoC-fandom which demanded that PCs all be defenseless academics and dilettantes meant to get themselves killed in horrible ways and adventures where blowing shit up was not just never the answer, but somehow fundamentally wrong.
This is why, as I mentioned in another thread, I'm not a Mythos gaming fan. That "certain group" has been the most prominent voice since CoC 1st edition. Thanks to them, the Mythos now feels clichéd and played out.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1037637People eventually woke up to the fact that contrary to that group's claims, this was not in fact something that the Mythos literature inherently demanded.
Like Cthulhu being put down by ramming him with an ocean freighter, which was the climax to the original story "Call of Cthulhu", as written by Lovecraft. That "certain group" would complain about such a thing happening in a game.
Chthonian Stars doesn't have pulp. It does allow for some ALIEN, though. Lots of explosions and nukes. There's a watered-down version of it called The Void.
Quote from: RandyB;1037682This is why, as I mentioned in another thread, I'm not a Mythos gaming fan. That "certain group" has been the most prominent voice since CoC 1st edition. Thanks to them, the Mythos now feels clichéd and played out.
I think that for most people, that has more to do with just relentless overexposure, combined with the fact that Lovecraft's cosmological assumptions have gone from 'horrific rebellious thinking' in the 20s to 'minority view' in the early days of gaming to 'default' now.
QuoteLike Cthulhu being put down by ramming him with an ocean freighter, which was the climax to the original story "Call of Cthulhu", as written by Lovecraft. That "certain group" would complain about such a thing happening in a game.
The counterargument is usually that the ship really had nothing to do with it; it was just that 'the stars weren't right' and if they
had been right, Cthulhu would have shrugged off everything.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1037637This, I think, is a pushback against an idea that ended up increasingly dominating a certain group inside CoC-fandom which demanded that PCs all be defenseless academics and dilettantes meant to get themselves killed in horrible ways and adventures where blowing shit up was not just never the answer, but somehow fundamentally wrong.
I first noticed this when I started reading online rpg forums. A curious newcomer would ask about CoC and there would be an immediate chorus of replies along the lines of "It's all about how everything is hopeless and the PCs are doomed to fail and die horribly or go insane!" Whenever I saw those I would think to myself "Well, we
sometimes played it that way, but there are other things you can do with the game as well."
I notice a similar trend with Warhammer, except the chorus tends to be "It's all about filth and grime and the PCs getting some horrible disease and dying in the gutter!"
Quote from: RandyB;1037682Like Cthulhu being put down by ramming him with an ocean freighter, which was the climax to the original story "Call of Cthulhu", as written by Lovecraft. That "certain group" would complain about such a thing happening in a game.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1037689The counterargument is usually that the ship really had nothing to do with it; it was just that 'the stars weren't right' and if they had been right, Cthulhu would have shrugged off everything.
Whether the stars weren't right or Cthulhu just has a certain mastery over his physical form, he is pretty clearly not "put down" except for another long sleep.
Quote from: The Call of CthulhuFor an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where--God in heaven!--the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam.
(snipsnipsnip)
Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places.
Personally, I think that the stars WERE right for a short window and if the freighter hadn't made Cthulhu waste time and energy reshuffling physical form back into shape, he would have stayed awake.
Quote from: Dimitrios;1037690I first noticed this when I started reading online rpg forums. A curious newcomer would ask about CoC and there would be an immediate chorus of replies along the lines of "It's all about how everything is hopeless and the PCs are doomed to fail and die horribly or go insane!" Whenever I saw those I would think to myself "Well, we sometimes played it that way, but there are other things you can do with the game as well."
I notice a similar trend with Warhammer, except the chorus tends to be "It's all about filth and grime and the PCs getting some horrible disease and dying in the gutter!"
I never liked the absolute hopelessness angle, except as a sort of dark comedy. PCs are
likely to fail and die horribly or go insane, but as an old friend used to say, that just makes the game one of the most heroic out there. Investigators normally have no business getting involved with the Mythos, no real magic, hardly any power to speak of, merely mortal combat training and most often completely unprepared... but it is the right thing to do, so they risk everything.
Quote from: Omega;1037654At least a dozen. Though only about 4 big ones.
Call of Cthulhu of course.
Gumshoe: Which tries to "fix" CoC. Has several iterations now.
Beyond the Supernatural, which mixes in a bit of Ghostbusters. Sadly long out of print.
And a bunch of hybrids that say mix high tech and mythos or shift the setting to space.
BtS is not actually a Mythos game. It has some supernatural elements that seem to borrow a bit from Lovecraft but none of the actual mythos, to my recollection.
And I don't know how Gumshoe or Beyond the Supernatural would be at the level of CoC, or vastly above other games with Cthulhu themes that came out over the years.
Again, a reminder: Raiders of R'lyeh is intended to be a gritty-pulp oriented Cthulhu RPG.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1037689The counterargument is usually that the ship really had nothing to do with it; it was just that 'the stars weren't right' and if they had been right, Cthulhu would have shrugged off everything.
Yeah, which is a stupid argument.
Quote from: Dimitrios;1037690I notice a similar trend with Warhammer, except the chorus tends to be "It's all about filth and grime and the PCs getting some horrible disease and dying in the gutter!"
Yup.