Inspired by this awesome map (http://www.mockman.com/dreammap-bw.jpg) that Benoist shared on Facebook (linked, not embedded because of too damn big).
What's the best system for a game set in the same place as HPL's trippy weird fantasy cycle? OD&D, CoC or something else entirely? And why?
Discuss.
Quote from: The Butcher;597271What's the best system for a game set in the same place as HPL's trippy weird fantasy cycle? OD&D, CoC or something else entirely? And why?
I think it depends on what you want to do with the Dreamlands. If you want to run Mythos-style adventures, I'd probably use CoC. If you just want to use the world for fantasy adventures (and have the mythos be background more than features), any version of TSR D&D with slight mods would probably work well, as would many other fantasy RPGs. The only ones that might not work well are those that concentrate on gritty realism -- too much realism sort of ruins the dream feel. IMHO.
I used the Dreamlands with my AD&D First ed game where you could go through the Dreamlands and then basically your AD&D character would be translated to OD&D stats, and the OD&D rules would be the reality of the Dreamlands (a paladin would become a fighting man, an illusionist a MU, and use the to-hit chart of OD&D and so on). I also used a variant of that with the Outdoor Survival board standing for the Dreamlands with OD&D rules. Worked really well too. The change of pace as well as the commonality of rules worked really well to mark the otherworldliness of the Dreamlands.
With CoC, you could do the same thing by using RuneQuest rules and translate characters into their Dream-selves the way Kuranos was to his real world counterpart.
Currently working on converting the Dreamlands sourcebook from Chaosium to Savage Worlds so I can run it Realms of Cthulhu style. I'm considering a scenario in which the players have both a "waking world" character and an "avatar" fantasy character when they enter the Dreamlands.
Benoist makes a good point about CoC and runequest. You could also easily use Ad&d as well, incorporating some of the Ravenloft and masque of the red death rules.
I'd probably use OD&D, myself, for something set entirely in the Dreamlands, although Stormbringer would work pretty well, too. You could add Sanity to Stormbringer, if desired. CoC also has the advantage that there was an actual Dreamlands supplement published. I had it, don't remember much except that there were some really weird spells, and a dreaming skill that allowed manipulation of dream events.
For a game that happened in both the waking and dreaming worlds, I'd probably use the InSpectres variant UnSpeakable. While dreaming, any result that causes death or insanity forces the character to wake up; characters that go insane in the dreamlands are still sane when awake, but forget how to dream until they buy off their dream insanity (treat the quest to remember their dreams as an InSpectres mission, with mission dice used to buy off the stress/insanity.) Going insane in the waking world is permanent, though.
I have a real problme with Dreamlands. Only played it once and it was a while ago but we were in a typical CoC game which for us is zero combat lots of fully immersive roleplay and lots of horror and running away. Then in dream lands the party of Actor, history professor, bulter, lord became another D&D party somehow without even noticing he shift we were gettign tooled up with scimitars and crossbows and donning chainmail and going out to find foes to conquer.
Now I think it's because our roleplaying wasn't good enough and maybe the GM didn't do enough to differentiate it from D&D but those old D&D tropes are so heavily ingrained that they slip on like an old pair of slippers.
So on that basis I would use keep using the CoC rules if I did it again deliberatley to link the PCs back to their origins and I would make sure as a GM that I described everything as though I was in the 1920s and highlight those differences more than falling into 'fantasy' speech.
As for just running it as a mythos based fantasy game I would just use Runequest or strombringer and add Sanity
I love the idea of using it as an OD&D setting; it's a set of inspirations from earlier in Lovecraft's career, the Dunsany period, that has little or nothing to do with the later Mythos stories. So play up the fantasy angle foremost.
A common trope in 50's and 60's fantasy was the real world protagonist that finds himself in a fantasy world - Harold Shea syndrome - you could go all Randolph Carter on the group and make them modern folks thrust into the dream lands as characters.
Quote from: The Butcher;597271Inspired by this awesome map (http://www.mockman.com/dreammap-bw.jpg) that Benoist shared on Facebook.
That is an awesome map!!!
I would probably use Stormbringer only because of the CoC supplement, but it would be an awesome OD&D game as well...but with OD&D, I think it would become less about emulating HPL's Dreamlands and more of your own creation.
Ultimately, it will work best with whatever system you and your players enjoy most.
Quote from: The Butcher;597271What's the best system for a game set in the same place as HPL's trippy weird fantasy cycle? OD&D, CoC or something else entirely? And why?
Legends & Labyrinths.
But, seriously, between those two options I'd got with OD&D. Lovecraft's Dreamlands are pulp fantasy with a vast underworld filled with cthonian horrors and the main characters go on to rule entire realms.
Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath is basically OD&D: The Novel.
Back when Avalon Hill's Runequest was published I used HPL's Dreamlands as my fantasy campaign setting. It took a little work (mostly setting up the different cults of Dreamlands). The players seemed to have a lot of fun with it. I've often thought about revisiting the idea with Mongoose's RQ II or maybe Openquest.
At first I restricted players to human cultures for play, but as the campaign went on I eventually allowed a Cat sorcerer to join the party as well as a Ghoul who had fled the underworld and was trying to live away from his people.
They also had some pretty climactic battles. They wound up going to the Dreamland's moon to help in the struggle against the Cats from Saturn and the Moonbeasts. They wound up chasing down a crazed priest of Hypnos who was trying to drive the inhapbitants Dylath-Leen mad by destroying their ability to dream. They also tangled with a Nyarlathotep cult and lots of other stuff.
The world works really well as S&S fantasy setting, you have lots of strange and gonzo elements, primeval forces and plenty of magical horrors running around
Does anybody know a source to find D&D stats for moonbeasts? I've been wanting to use them in my AD&Dish game.
Baran_i_kanu, a regular here, has a bunch of Dreamlands creatures statted up over at his blog:
Dreamlands and Mythos creatures (http://theosrlibrary.blogspot.com/search/label/Cthulhu%20Mythos)
There you go.
Quote from: Beedo;597478Baran_i_kanu, a regular here, has a bunch of Dreamlands creatures statted up over at his blog:
Dreamlands and Mythos creatures (http://theosrlibrary.blogspot.com/search/label/Cthulhu%20Mythos)
There you go.
Wow, that is just what I needed! Thanks.
Quote from: Internet Death;597476Does anybody know a source to find D&D stats for moonbeasts? I've been wanting to use them in my AD&Dish game.
Realms of Crawling Chaos for Labyrinth Lord has them p. 28.
That is a damn impressive map!
Personally, I'd probably use some kind of OD&D variant - maybe Lamentations of the Flame Princess? - or an older version of RuneQuest. But that's because I'd probably focus more on the weird fantasy elements than the ties between the waking world and the Dreamlands.
(http://www.gamehobby.net/images/white_dwarf_magazine/white_dwarf_080_front.jpg) (http://www.gamehobby.net/images/white_dwarf_magazine/white_dwarf_081_front.jpg)
Issues 80 and 81 of White Dwarf (August/September 1986) ran a crossover of CoC and AD&D, a two part adventure module called Ancient & Modern: A Scenario for Schizophrenic Roleplayers - an epic adventure across time and space.
The real world part was played with CoC, the fantasy part with AD&D.
But I don't remember if the fantasy/AD&D part was set in the Dreamlands proper.
What's the attraction of using OD&D in particular for the Dreamlands? I mean, it's certainly doable, but I don't see anything that makes it an ideal fit.
Oh, and thanks to Eldritch Skies, I'd probably use Cinematic Unisystem, incorporating Ghosts of Albion magic. :)
Quote from: Dan Davenport;597582What's the attraction of using OD&D in particular for the Dreamlands? I mean, it's certainly doable, but I don't see anything that makes it an ideal fit.
I think that, to me, there's three different elements that play into my liking the idea.
First, there's the sense that the Dreamlands and OD&D mesh well in terms of tone, with a look towards a feel of wazoo fantasy where anything can happen; it captures a feel of pulp fantasy that meshes well with the way OD&D came to the wargaming hobby and took it by storm because it was so open and "wow you can do whatever with this thing."
Second, there's the rules themselves that are bare bones enough and open enough to allow - and demand - for a lot of personal interpretation. The very broad archetypal nature of classes like the fighting man, the magic user and the cleric meshes well with a world of dreams with a slightly indistinct, blurry focus, with the archetypal nature of dreams themselves. Thematically, the rules and flavor work hand in hand very well.
Third, the presentation of the random exploration of the Wilderness in Volume 3 of OD&D,
Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, is sometimes very reminiscent to me of a world of dreams and fantasy (in the original sense of the term). That's an aspect I found has been totally wiped out by all the clones of the game. For instance, when you explore the wilderness on the Outdoor Survival board and come near a keep, you will have a Champion that comes from the keep to challenge you. This is page 15. The fighting men within the keep will challenge the fighting men in the group to a jousting match. Magic Users will uses geas to send passersby to hunt for treasure for them, and Clerics will ask for donations to their Church or Monastery. This to me feels very dreamlike, where you have the knight on the bridge near the keep in the wilderness that stands there waiting for someone to challenge in a jousting match, like you are in some Arthurian half dream or something. This framework can be extrapolated on to mesh with the Dreamlands so that it all works together and creates a compound superior to the sum of its parts.
The Dreamquest of Unknown Kaddath never struck me as having the same sense of sanity-blasting horror as some of Lovecraft's other works, so I don't think I'd use CoC. I had the Dreamlands supplement for CoC from 3rd edition or so I think, but it never really seemed to fit well into the rest of the game. I think Shoehorning Dreamlands into that game was a big mistake.
Dreamlands is more Weird Fantasy than it is Weird Eldritch Horror. I think it needs that feel, and CoC doesn't really deliver that in my view.
I'd use something that I could do fantastic, weird, horrifying, and wonderous. I'm not sure what that is off the top of my head, but between the two choices in the OP, I think D&D comes much closer than CoC.
Quote from: Benoist;597278I used the Dreamlands with my AD&D First ed game where you could go through the Dreamlands and then basically your AD&D character would be translated to OD&D stats, and the OD&D rules would be the reality of the Dreamlands (a paladin would become a fighting man, an illusionist a MU, and use the to-hit chart of OD&D and so on). I also used a variant of that with the Outdoor Survival board standing for the Dreamlands with OD&D rules. Worked really well too. The change of pace as well as the commonality of rules worked really well to mark the otherworldliness of the Dreamlands.
With CoC, you could do the same thing by using RuneQuest rules and translate characters into their Dream-selves the way Kuranos was to his real world counterpart.
That's pretty cool! For maximum contrast and WTFness I think I'd rather use CoC for their waking selves (assuming there will be waking-self RP at all), and OD&D for the dream-selves.
Quote from: Dan Davenport;597582What's the attraction of using OD&D in particular for the Dreamlands? I mean, it's certainly doable, but I don't see anything that makes it an ideal fit.
Already answered upthread; Justin articulates it better than I could.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;597405But, seriously, between those two options I'd got with OD&D. Lovecraft's Dreamlands are pulp fantasy with a vast underworld filled with cthonian horrors and the main characters go on to rule entire realms. Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath is basically OD&D: The Novel.
I actually think that D&D (any variety) is a pretty horrible fit for the Dreamlands. There are nothing like D&D-style clerics or magic-users in the Dreamlands. Combat is rare, and when it does occur, it bears no resemblance to D&D-style combat.
I also think that people are severely downplaying the continuities between Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories and his other Mythos tales. Among other things, many of the same gods and creatures appear in both. Nyarlathotep, recall, appears at the conclusion of Dream Quest. Ghouls are a major presence in both the Dreamlands and the waking world. The artist Richard Pickman appears both in "Pickman's Model" (a pretty standard "Mythos" tale) and "Dream Quest" (in the latter, he's become a ghoul).
Yes, the Dreamlands stories have a different 'feel' or 'ethos' than Lovecraft's other stories -- the Dreamlands stories are not really about 'cosmic horror'. But, really, Lovecraft's Dreamlands tales bear almost no resemblance to 'swords and sorcery' (of the sort written by R. E. Howard or even C. A. Smith).
On a more positive note, I think that if one wanted to run a game that resembled Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories (especially "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath"), one could do a lot worse that Choasium's excellent "The Dreaming Stone" campaign (the only CoC campaign published specifically for the Dreamlands, I think).
If one wanted to use the Dreamlands as a setting for a more 'swords and sorcery' style campaign, then I would still recommend using the CoC magic system, as modified by the CoC Dreamlands book. I think that it does a pretty decent job in emulating the nature of magic in the Dreamlands (certainly far, far better than D&D!). Perhaps downplay or remove Sanity Loss for using magic (but introduce some other 'cost').
If one wanted more detailed combat, perhaps introduce the 'major wounds' or 'hit locations' systems from BRP, or just use RQ6. Double PCs' hit points for more durable heroes.
Quote from: Benoist;597610Third, the presentation of the random exploration of the Wilderness in Volume 3 of OD&D, Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, is sometimes very reminiscent to me of a world of dreams and fantasy (in the original sense of the term). That's an aspect I found has been totally wiped out by all the clones of the game.
I had a DM who used the Talisman board for our campaign. Random encounters were flipped as cards. It was an interesting way to do it.
Quote from: Doctor Jest;597618Dreamlands is more Weird Fantasy than it is Weird Eldritch Horror. I think it needs that feel, and CoC doesn't really deliver that in my view.
CoC isn't, but BRP is a good choice, especially Stormbringer which already has its own pseudo-dreamlands in its mythos.
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;597580Issues 80 and 81 of White Dwarf (August/September 1986) ran a crossover of CoC and AD&D, a two part adventure module called Ancient & Modern: A Scenario for Schizophrenic Roleplayers - an epic adventure across time and space.
AWESOME adventure! I highly recommend hunting it down.
Quote from: Akrasia;597746Yes, the Dreamlands stories have a different 'feel' or 'ethos' than Lovecraft's other stories -- the Dreamlands stories are not really about 'cosmic horror'. But, really, Lovecraft's Dreamlands tales bear almost no resemblance to 'swords and sorcery' (of the sort written by R. E. Howard or even C. A. Smith).
You're kidding, right?
Sure, Lovecraft's Dreamlands don't bear much resemblance to Howard's two-fisted fantasy adventure tales. But they bear a strong resemblance to Smith's fantasy, and to a few scattered Howard stories. What they look like is, basically, a Twilight Zone-style story in an archaic fantasy setting. That is, instead of being about a hero defeating enemies with a sword (and possibly sorcery,) it's about ordinary people (well, ordinary for a pre-modern setting) encountering something fantastic, with a little weird or horrific twist at the end.
And a lot of early OD&D play looked like that, especially when there's a strong emphasis on tricks and traps or unusual monsters instead of straight-forward combat. Which is why people have been suggesting OD&D for a Dreamlands campaign; it's very simple to whip up gonzo elements for OD&D, and the combat is so simple and abstract (but deadly) that it fits the very cursory combat descriptions Lovecraft used in "Dream-Quest".
And make no mistake, Justin was correct when he singled out "Dream-Quest" as a quintessential D&D story. A lot of travel, a lot of encounters with weird creatures, some running away, some fighting, and a huge underworld setting (with a stone staircase exiting in a forest.) It's very gonzo D&D, but it's definitely D&D. The early Dreamland stories have lots of deaths and some exploration, but very little fighting (except for "Polaris".) They are less like D&D, but still viable.
Quote from: talysman;597826...
And make no mistake, Justin was correct when he singled out "Dream-Quest" as a quintessential D&D story. A lot of travel, a lot of encounters with weird creatures, some running away, some fighting, and a huge underworld setting (with a stone staircase exiting in a forest.) It's very gonzo D&D, but it's definitely D&D. The early Dreamland stories have lots of deaths and some exploration, but very little fighting (except for "Polaris".) They are less like D&D, but still viable.
Aside from the fact that the Dreamlands includes a huge underworld region, it is pretty far removed from any kind of D&D-style setting.
As I mentioned earlier, there are no counterparts to clerics or magic-users in the Dreamlands. Magic is
completely different than that of any D&D system.
In terms of the goals of the characters in the Dreamlands stories, Carter could care less about finding 'treasure' or 'magic items'. And he actually zips around the world (and the moon) pretty quickly. (No cautious 'dungeon crawling' or 'hex crawling' for him!)
Kuranes becomes a king, but it's
not because he attained 'name level', acquired a bunch of followers, and carved out his own realm. He became a king because he was such an amazing
dreamer.
Look, I certainly don't want to accuse anyone of 'wrong' fun or anything. And one could run a D&D game in a setting that is loosely based upon the Dreamlands. But I find it baffling that anyone would recommend OD&D (or any version of D&D) as the most 'natural' system for the Dreamlands!
Quote from: Akrasia;597828As I mentioned earlier, there are no counterparts to clerics or magic-users in the Dreamlands. Magic is completely different than that of any D&D system.
I'm suspicious that you aren't actually familiar with the original D&D rulebooks. (If all you've seen are retro-clones, then you're missing out on a lot of the elements that make OD&D naturally resonant with the Dreamlands.)
Either way, you're getting caught up on the weird specifics of specific emulation. There are no D&D-style clerics in the Dreamlands? Sure. I guess we just won't use clerics then. Done. It's not rocket science.
It's like the people who say Moria doesn't read like the transcript from a gaming table. Well, no shit. It's a novel. Not a gaming transcript. But if someone said, "I want to run an adventure set in a giant dwarven complex filled with orcs and balrogs." D&D would still be pretty high on my list of systems to use even if Gandalf doesn't look much like a D&D magic user.
The entire focus of CoC as a sytem, OTOH, is completely out-of-whack with the vibe I get reading Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories. Someone else recommended BRP-but-not-CoC and I'd say that's a lot more plausible.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;597834I'm suspicious that you aren't actually familiar with the original D&D rulebooks.
Your suspicion is unfounded. I've owned a boxed set of OD&D since 1980.
The OD&D rules have built into them, among other things, a strong focus on treasure gathering (it's the default assumption of what the PCs are going to do). That seems completely contrary to the nature of the Dreamlands. Likewise the OD&D focus on building strongholds at higher levels, etc.
Sure, OD&D is minimal enough that it can be tweaked or hacked to fit a variety of different settings. But even given that, it still doesn't strike me as an
obvious choice for the Dreamlands.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;597834I
Either way, you're getting caught up on the weird specifics of specific emulation. There are no D&D-style clerics in the Dreamlands? Sure. I guess we just won't use clerics then. Done. It's not rocket science.
Yeah, you could modify
any rules set in order to suit your needs for a given setting. That still doesn't make OD&D a 'natural' choice! (Although I will concede that it is much easier to modify OD&D than most other rules systems.)
Quote from: Justin Alexander;597834It's like the people who say Moria doesn't read like the transcript from a gaming table. Well, no shit. It's a novel.
Again, though, there are non-D&D systems with magic systems (and other features) that are much better at emulating Middle-earth than OD&D is. Likewise for the Dreamlands (IMO).
Quote from: Justin Alexander;597834The entire focus of CoC as a sytem, OTOH, is completely out-of-whack with the vibe I get reading Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories. Someone else recommended BRP-but-not-CoC and I'd say that's a lot more plausible.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think that the magic system described in the CoC Dreamlands supplement does a reasonably good job at capturing the feel of the Dreamlands. And I also recommended that Sanity be ignored or downplayed, as well as some BRP combat options introduced (for those who want to emphasize that more than CoC does). Do those things, and you have BRP.
Quote from: Akrasia;597828As I mentioned earlier, there are no counterparts to clerics or magic-users in the Dreamlands. Magic is completely different than that of any D&D system.
Actually, there's clerical magic in "The Cats of Ulthar". There are definitely lots of magically-endowed materials, such as the stone used to create Elder Signs. And there are mysterious texts in the temples of various cities. Whether you choose to implement these as CoC-style rituals or D&D-style spells is a matter of personal choice. All the D&D spell system really requires is that a character can only produce a limited number of spell effects per day; the fluff around this can be changed to fit different models of how magic "works".
The fluff around clerical magic probably needs to be changed, since "Earth's gods" are very real in the Dreamlands but rarely if ever do anything for their worshipers, according to the priests. But you can say that cleric spells come from commanding non-angelic spirits in the name of the gods, instead of being performed by the gods themselves. The cleric's faith gives strength of will, and thus the ability to command. The mechanics don't change, just the explanation of what is happening; it's actually my preferred interpretation of magic in standard OD&D settings (so that I can leave the question of the "reality" of the gods unanswered.)
What about treasure? Randolph Carter is on a quest for a location, so he doesn't quite fit the normal pattern of a treasure-hunter. And yet, he certainly finds some: the moon-wine he gets from the zoogs counts as treasure, certainly. Of course, he uses this to get information out of a priest, but that fits Carter's personality; someone else might behave in an entirely-different manner.
I guess what I'm saying is: don't confuse emulating the setting with emulating the story. The setting works just fine with D&D, since "Dream-Quest" was one of the inspirations for D&D. For emulating the story of a dreamer like Carter or Kuranes, I would choose UnSpeakable, as I said before.
For me it depends on what style of game I want.
For more fantasy and pulpiness I'll take D&D.
For more danger and death I'll take CoC.
The cool thing about the Dreamlands is it's malleable. You can fit it to any system or style of play really.
My Mythos conversions on my blog came about after I read this a decade ago:
http://dreamsoffreeport.wikispaces.com/The+Ooth-Nargai+Campaign
I reworked a campaign for Basic D&D, removing 3e-isms such Halflings, Gnomes, Kolbolds, Orcs, etc and languages such as Abyssal, Aquan, etc. Too much D&D mixed in for my own tastes. It's also the reason I wrote up my versions of Cat, Deep One, Ghoul, and Serpentman PC classes a long time ago.
I would agree that D&D is suitable to the Dreamlands; and more eminently suitable in particular would be several of the recent OSR games. Certainly LotFP, and in all likelihood from what I've heard DCC.
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