Quote from: Cave Bear;938194You know, now I really want to run a contemporary Call of Cthulhu game just so I can play off of the Millennial Google-hubris.

You want to type the search string: necronomicon+cthulhu+summon into Google? Sure thing, the Delta Green agents will be knocking at your door within an hour, assuming the cultists don't find you first.

You need at least a VPN and a dozen proxy servers if you want to safely search for mythos lore online, and even then you aren't sure to find anything of use because:
a) Most of the relevant information is password protected, or hidden on unsearchable onion sites
b) The few snippets of relevant information you can find are buried under mountains of useless garbage. The next time your computer has an error message, try Googling the solution yourself. High tech search tools are only useful if you know what to search for, and even then they might not be so helpful if your problem isn't very common.

c) There is no reason ritual magic needs to be easy. It requires discipline and will to establish an altered consciousness that allows the caster to use it. If a giggling Internet troll reads the Necronomicon to his buddies off of his phone, nothing is going to happen. The magic words aren't the spell. They are a component of the spell. In the CoC rules, you usually needs to spend months with a tome to yield a spell. That doesn't change because it's on a PDF instead of dubiously-sourced vellum.

CoC presumes anyone can cast a spell once they know it. In some games I have run, you can't use magic until you fall below a certain Sanity threshold. That gives a purpose to undergoing sorcerous rites of passage, such a burying an initiate alive for a number of hours to rattle their mental well-being.

Ritual magic often calls for a congregation as well. Using the COC system, this means a spell has an enormous Magic Point cost. It's unlikely one caster can manage a 100 point cost. They need a whole congregation of initiated people that can share their MP with him. That takes time and effort, of the kind that can draw Delta Green investigations. It's not impossible, but it is hard, and it gives an easy avenue for PCs to step in.

Face it, over 99% of people that manage to download a real copy of the Necronomicon, and not one of the hundreds of decoy versions, are not going to approach it with the degree of seriousness to succeed in using it.

There is also the idea of using mythos texts on the web to spread insanity. Based on Lovecraft, that isn't easy. A character in The Mountains of Madness has read the Necronomicon. He isn't insane. It's a book of weird mythology, but it didn't melt his brain. It is only when the expedition to Antarctica verifies the Necronomicon for him that he has his breakdown. WIthout verification, it is just another unpleasant horror book in a world full of them. In The Dunwich Horror, Armitage is familiar with the Necronomicon, and seems a stolid sort at the beginning of the story. He does suffer a nervous breakdown reading it later in the story, but that is when he is reading with the intent of using it to fight a monster, with the knowledge what it says is real. And even then, he doesn't go completely mad.

Moving to Chamber's The King in Yellow, we do have something that can really drive you mad from just reading it, bur really, who is going to? If it gets loose on the Internet, are there really enough people that will put in the effort to read an old play? Have you ever tried to get your players to read a two-page handout? Sure, there will be isolated nutballs that have read it out there, but its never going to be an epidemic.

This isn't the first time the world has had easy access to esoteric lore. The 60s and 70s had plenty of people delving into these things. Lovecraft's own era had a thriving spiritualist movement. It is noteworthy that characters in his books are frequently already versed in the tomes they name-drop. It is just that that it is just that magic is hard. Owning a spellbook doesn't make you a wizard.

I really like the vibe of Cthulhutech.  Unfortunately the mechanics were a hot mess.

Quote from: Cave Bear;938186That hasn't changed at all. See: Anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, pro-lifers, ISIS, etc.

Exactly my point. Many horrors remain. What I would want to avoid is having a 'meta-Cthulhu' game that turns into a big meme joke.

Quote from: Baulderstone;938245Have you ever tried to get your players to read a two-page handout?

Been there. Its makes me sad as a person.

Quote from: Cave Bear;938194You know, now I really want to run a contemporary Call of Cthulhu game just so I can play off of the Millennial Google-hubris.

Oh fuck yes.

Oh, there's another place where I want Cthulhu.

There's an entire genre of anime set inside of MMO', like Hack/Sign, Log Horizon, Sword Art Online, etc.
I like Overlord's take on it; it's implied that the world outside the game is some kind of cyberpunk dystopia where people need synthetic lung transplants from the pollution, the vast majority of people are unemployed due to all the jobs being automated, and a significant percentage of the population lives in neural-interfaced virtual worlds 24/7.

I want to run a Call of Cthulhu scenario where the PC's are playing an old-school MMO emulated on cortical-modem interfaces (with some mods installed to make the experience more immersive.) The game is called Carcosa Online; it's a fantasy MMO RPG that had almost one billion players at the height of its popularity, but has since dwindled into obscurity. The derelict server the players find themselves in is bereft of player activity...  but for one other player, evidently still using an ancient desktop, and his name is 「ＫＩＮＧ＿ＹＥＬＬＯＷ」. And now the players find that a critical error has occurred, and they cannot log out.

Quote from: Cave Bear;938356Oh, there's another place where I want Cthulhu.

There's an entire genre of anime set inside of MMO', like Hack/Sign, Log Horizon, Sword Art Online, etc.
I like Overlord's take on it; it's implied that the world outside the game is some kind of cyberpunk dystopia where people need synthetic lung transplants from the pollution, the vast majority of people are unemployed due to all the jobs being automated, and a significant percentage of the population lives in neural-interfaced virtual worlds 24/7.

I want to run a Call of Cthulhu scenario where the PC's are playing an old-school MMO emulated on cortical-modem interfaces (with some mods installed to make the experience more immersive.) The game is called Carcosa Online; it's a fantasy MMO RPG that had almost one billion players at the height of its popularity, but has since dwindled into obscurity. The derelict server the players find themselves in is bereft of player activity...  but for one other player, evidently still using an ancient desktop, and his name is 「ＫＩＮＧ＿ＹＥＬＬＯＷ」. And now the players find that a critical error has occurred, and they cannot log out.

Just wanted to say nice, really cool idea.

Quote from: Nexus;938383Just wanted to say nice, really cool idea.

Thanks!
I have another thread where I am laying out some more rough ideas for the scenario.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?35854-Carcosa-Online-(Call-of-Cthulhu-Adventure)

I like a bit of Cthulhu just about everywhere. But only in controlled doses.

Quote from: Cave Bear;938356Oh, there's another place where I want Cthulhu.

There's an entire genre of anime set inside of MMO', like Hack/Sign, Log Horizon, Sword Art Online, etc.
I like Overlord's take on it; it's implied that the world outside the game is some kind of cyberpunk dystopia where people need synthetic lung transplants from the pollution, the vast majority of people are unemployed due to all the jobs being automated, and a significant percentage of the population lives in neural-interfaced virtual worlds 24/7.

I want to run a Call of Cthulhu scenario where the PC's are playing an old-school MMO emulated on cortical-modem interfaces (with some mods installed to make the experience more immersive.) The game is called Carcosa Online; it's a fantasy MMO RPG that had almost one billion players at the height of its popularity, but has since dwindled into obscurity. The derelict server the players find themselves in is bereft of player activity...  but for one other player, evidently still using an ancient desktop, and his name is 「ＫＩＮＧ＿ＹＥＬＬＯＷ」. And now the players find that a critical error has occurred, and they cannot log out.

Cthulhunet. You could get that in the original TORG if you combined the Cyberpapacy Cosom with the Orrorsh one. Tharkhold could have been. But they dropped the ball there.

Or. Have a look at Nights Edge, the CP2020 horror setting. Just jack up the horror part.

Or pick up Deathnet for d20 and ramp up the horror aspect.

It doesnt take much to turn a VR setting into a horror setting.

Quote from: RPGPundit;939747I like a bit of Cthulhu just about everywhere. But only in controlled doses.

I like Cthulu under the sea.

Where everythings better.

Down where its wetter.

Quote from: Omega;939903I like Cthulu under the sea.

Where everythings better.

Down where its wetter.