The Role Playing Public Radio Forums
General Category => Role Playing Public Radio Podcast => : Shallazar September 05, 2011, 11:36:15 PM
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I'm planning on running another long ass campaign. I'm considering another lengthy Cthulhu related adventure, however I'm interested in some other opinions. What are some great published campaigns (other than Road Trip, Masks of Nyarlathotep, and the New World) ?
I'm going to record the sessions and post them on the community site, so if there is something out there that you believe just needs to be run and recorded - I might just give it a shot.
Thanks!
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Delta Green is perfect for a long campaign - start by focusing on one of the minor groups like Karotechia - PCs investigate one of their pawns. They work their way up the ladder, find their South American lair and then have a glorious battle to wipe out the evil nazis.
Then you can switch to a major group - MJ-12 or the Fate or the cult of transcendence - the players fight them to a stalemate or possibly even win at a great cost but they find out that the mythos is eternal...
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Though they are more like setting book rather than adventure, I'd suggest The Deadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor. I GMed a few games for it, and the setting is simply amazing.
Another great alternative would be The Mysteries of Mesoamerica by Pagan Publishing. Though it has a few adventures, I could definitely see running an entire campaign by linking those adventures together.
Delta Green, as Ross said, can be easily converted into a long adventure. Eyes Only features many more adventures, as well as expanding on the Fate. And Targets of Opportunity could provide great starter enemies, ones that could be more easily defeated than the big players but that could link to the others in later scenarios.
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World of Synnibar!
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Thanks for the suggestions Ross and Dom!
What about more non Cthulhu genre things?
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EDIT: hey I just saw that 'Cthulhu related adventure' bit.
MY BAD. :downs:
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Thanks for the suggestions Ross and Dom!
What about more non Cthulhu genre things?
genre things? Do you mean ideas or published campaigns? What genres?
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Not cthulhu or horror related I guess is what I meant by genre things.
And yes, published campaigns. Classic campaigns that you could recommend. I'm shooting for diversity in these suggestions.
Is there a campaign book for synnibar? Otherwise that's just too much work for me at this point Moondog.
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The Enemy Within - Warhammer Fantasy - considered one of the best campaigns ever written for any RPG
Night Below, Rod of Seven Parts, Against the Giants, Temple of Elemental Evil, Scourge of the Slave Lords - classic D&D campaigns
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It has been years, so I am not sure if this is the full title, but I was in a game for old World of Darkness Vampire called something like "The Transylvania Chronicles". It was a four book series from spanning the Dark Ages to modern nights, and kind of lead itself to go straight from there to the End of Times books White Wolf did before they reset. I was pretty good, assuming you like the old Vampire rules, although I suppose you could use the story and the new Vampire rules pretty easily.
That is the only epic style campaign I can think of that I actually was a part of, so not much help otherwise.
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Ebay the World's Largest Dungeon and upgrade it for Pathfinder! ;D
Oh, and while I definitely stand behind Mysteries of MesoAmerica... The scenarios are pretty cool, but they have very different styles, geographical locations, and chronological timeframes... my read of them does not have them flowing well together as a single campaign. Plus that one scenario *WILL* kill all your players. See either Ross's AP on the main site or my AP on the community site if you have doubts.
I'm just about to finally finish up your Masks campaign, I'm an hour into Welcome to Die right now. I can't wait to hear new recordings of your games soon!
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Red Hand of Doom is pretty
horrifyingly lethal good. I enjoyed it.
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We've got the world's largest dungeon at my FLGS.
I'm still super conflicted as to what I want to run. But I was thinking WFRP. The enemy within you say? Sounds like a winner.
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The reason I ask is because my thesis is on roleplaying games as a collaborative storytelling medium and what effect that has on narrative. The plan is to end up with a final product that which consists of 1) My "original" game written up as a standard adventure, 2) the actual play transcript and 3) the discussion of the transcript vs the original write up.
Ideally I'd like to model it on a longer campaign but at the moment I'm happy to run pre-written things for practice and work out some things both as a GM and as an academic experimenter.
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Oh, and while I definitely stand behind Mysteries of MesoAmerica... The scenarios are pretty cool, but they have very different styles, geographical locations, and chronological timeframes... my read of them does not have them flowing well together as a single campaign. Plus that one scenario *WILL* kill all your players. See either Ross's AP on the main site or my AP on the community site if you have doubts.
They don't call the Well of Sacrifice the "Boneyard" for nothing!
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No, no they don't. ;D My players will still fondly reminisce about their exploits in that game, from 'celebratory morphine' to impromptu spelunking. It's a scenario with a very focused end... but nothing should really stop you from having fun along the way!
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There is too much Cthulhu going on as it is. No criticisms on the mythology of the game, the actual SETTING is good, just the system is poorly designed. When will they ever create a Cthulhu system where you don't end up with complicated game mechanics and characters who do not suck at most things they do.
My advice would be to run something less mainstream like the World of Darkness, Warhammer 40K or Dresden Files. That would be something I'ed like to see.
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:o WOD is NOT mainstream?????? Maybe in 1992.
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There is too much Cthulhu going on as it is. No criticisms on the mythology of the game, the actual SETTING is good, just the system is poorly designed. When will they ever create a Cthulhu system where you don't end up with complicated game mechanics and characters who do not suck at most things they do.
My advice would be to run something less mainstream like the World of Darkness, Warhammer 40K or Dresden Files. That would be something I'ed like to see.
The system...which has been around for about 25 years without needing major changes...is poorly designed. And it's really complicated to roll based on a percentile system.
And the point is for characters to not be little tin gods.
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There is too much Cthulhu going on as it is. No criticisms on the mythology of the game, the actual SETTING is good, just the system is poorly designed. When will they ever create a Cthulhu system where you don't end up with complicated game mechanics and characters who do not suck at most things they do.
My advice would be to run something less mainstream like the World of Darkness, Warhammer 40K or Dresden Files. That would be something I'ed like to see.
The system...which has been around for about 25 years without needing major changes...is poorly designed. And it's really complicated to roll based on a percentile system.
RIGHT
And the point is for characters to not be little tin gods.
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I'll counter your point Salkovich with the simple fact that one of the reasons Delta Green is moving to it's own system is that the BRP of Chaosium is starting to show it's age. For one thing, the Sanity rules are less than satisfactory.
I'm probably going to run Eclipse Phase once my friend finishes his one-shot and we run through it.
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I'll counter your point Salkovich with the simple fact that one of the reasons Delta Green is moving to it's own system is that the BRP of Chaosium is starting to show it's age. For one thing, the Sanity rules are less than satisfactory.
I'm probably going to run Eclipse Phase once my friend finishes his one-shot and we run through it.
Delta Green is moving to its own system because of licensing restrictions from Chaosium.
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Delta Green is moving to its own system because of licensing restrictions from Chaosium.
That is one factor, but for some reason I vaguely recall there being mention of the rules being an issue from discussions on the mailing list, but I can't find those posts.
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There is too much Cthulhu going on as it is. No criticisms on the mythology of the game, the actual SETTING is good, just the system is poorly designed. When will they ever create a Cthulhu system where you don't end up with complicated game mechanics and characters who do not suck at most things they do.
My advice would be to run something less mainstream like the World of Darkness, Warhammer 40K or Dresden Files. That would be something I'ed like to see.
less mainstream like World of Darkness, Warhammer 40k, and Dresden Files
you know, real underground shit
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The sanity rules are actually the one thing I really like about it. The way that it begins to start spiraling down quickly. Or at least the basic structure (the specifics about when you go insane and whatnot I'm not terribly attached too)...
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I'd honestly rather see The Esoterrorists over anything with Cthulhu in it.
Mostly because the stuff presented in the Book of Unremitting Horrors is amazing, and the Outer Black stuff has some real potential to be fleshed out into something awesome and frightening, without being as played out as 'FORMLESS SHAPELESS HORRORS FROM BEYOND THE STARS OOGA BOOGA BOOOGA".
ish
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There is too much Cthulhu going on as it is. No criticisms on the mythology of the game, the actual SETTING is good, just the system is poorly designed. When will they ever create a Cthulhu system where you don't end up with complicated game mechanics and characters who do not suck at most things they do.
My advice would be to run something less mainstream like the World of Darkness, Warhammer 40K or Dresden Files. That would be something I'ed like to see.
less mainstream like World of Darkness, Warhammer 40k, and Dresden Files
you know, real underground shit
Hey, Z, wasn't there some system you like for this kind of thing? It was some kind of horror-sounding name. Enemy? Adversary?
Eh, I must be imagining something. Feels almost like I'm a single roll of the dice away from remembering. 8)
Seriously, though, I like the flexibility and scope of improvisation that Call of Cthulhu provides. I've listened to a few of the Gumshoe APs, and while the system seems interesting, the resource management aspect seems ill-suited for horror. Not that resource management *has* no place in horror, far from it - you have six shots left and five monsters, do you save one for yourself if you miss? However the resource management that is involved seems to be a little wonky - You can absolutely rock shit with one roll at the expense of every other, and it seems to strongly discourage any sort of long, drawn-out scene that the horror genre can benefit so much from, in the sense that you WILL run out of points before much time has passed. I like the Call of Cthulhu system for the way that it models that a person can have some strong skills that they will be statistically likely to be able to perform under stress and pressure, but that those mitigating factors can cause even an expert to fail. If the task is simple and there's no immediate stress/danger, you should be modifying the roll or not rolling. The simplicity of the system makes it a lot easier to adapt on the fly - while I love Pathfinder, I'm not going to be able to generate a wholly new adversary based on the characterization of a few moments, unplanned.
As for the 'formless shapeless horrors'... Well, ok, sure. I'm a science geek - I get giddy looking at the stars in the night sky already, so the thought of imaginary horrors lurking between the stars is a fun one for me. At the same time, not every game must be a grand, sweeping apocalyptic plot to destroy the world - sometimes it's not aliens invading, sometimes it's a simple haunted house. The nice thing about good old Call of Cthulhu is that if you have a cool crazy monster, just toss up a couple of stats or conversions and you've got a dandy little monster. The point is that the system is simple and easy to use, not necessarily the background material. My first Call of Cthulhu game I ran completely fresh, 100% original monsters other than the main adversary, which didn't come into play until the final minutes of the last session. I still haven't read any actual Lovecraft other than the short story that comes with the rulebook. But a bunch of players and a GM who've never tried the system before were able to pick things up and have a blast in a matter of minutes, and for my group that was a first. Call of Cthulhu's now our fallback for when no other campaigns are going, because dying and going crazy never seems to get old.
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I'm not a huge fan of the Dresden Files, the only way I'd be happy doing that is using dirty world, because I could give two shits about the magic components involved. I'm more interested in the detective and investigation in the books than I am with the magic battling magic end. Suffice it to say I won't do it cuz I don't want to.
As for WoD or 40k, I can only ever think of WoD as my first RPG and all the adolescent power fantasies that go with it.
As for 40k is there a particular scenario that is SUPER GREAT?
In response to the GUMSHOErs, the system is super awesome! I've run trail (the last 1/4 of Masks in done in Trail). If "Pathlore/LoreFinder" was out I'd totally run that. However I might just end up doing isolated scenarios in other GUMSHOE games, they're elegant. I'm waiting for Eternal Lies to come out before running another Mythos adventure- I know they're (Pelgrane) playtesting and have the soundtrack so sometime in the future... next year?
I recently picked up Ashen Stars and Chronicles of Future Earth, looking to run something from these maybe...