Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

[tabascojunkie]

I'm working on a homebrew FH campaign and here's the set-up and a question. In the world there will be 2 different types of deities. The first will be the "standard " type of gods with established churches and recognised by governments, etc. and so forth. Some will be good, symbolizing truth or loyalty, a god of noble warriors, some will be not so good or evil, the patron of thieves or assassins, lord of treachery and deceit, all that kind of stuff. The other will be those of the Cthulhu Mythos. Cthulhu, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, all those guys. They will be rarely worshipped, and only by madmen or those seeking great power. Of course their followers will only find out in the end that they grant only horror, chaos and pain to the world and their disciples. The general public doesn't know about them and shouldn't. Just like in HPL's works, they are much older than the races now controlling the world, and many are locked away, imprisoned "until the stars are right ". Now the question is about sanity. Not necessarily the game mechanics of sanity loss, though ideas are welcome, but how sanity can be affected in a fantasy world like how it is in COC. In a standard fantasy world PC's face terrifying monsters on a regular basis but generally are mentally none the worse for wear after facing them. My thought is to explain sanity loss when facing the Lovecraftian nasties as because of dealing with creatures alien to the normal " Mortal Universe". Even the "standard deities" of the world, while possessing huge amounts of PRE and quite intimidating if need be, are not necessarily sanity shaking to encounter. They embody concepts native to the people of this universe and are considered familiar for lack of a better word. The other ones are totally alien and unfamiliar, therefore the mortal mind has difficulty processing what it sees and has problems as a result. Does ths sound reasonable or would it not hold water in your opinions? And no the PC's won't be encountering gods of any kind on a regular basis but dealing with churches and cults occasionally, and maybe lesser beings from their respective pantheons. So please, discuss amongst yourselves but out loud where I can hear you.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

Seems like a perfectly reasonable rationale to me (at least as far as "reason" applies to cosmic horrors). Certainly the entities that Lovecraft and his associates created for the Cthulhu mythos are often explicitly described as radically alien to humanity in thought, in composition and sometimes even in physical laws (like Frank Belknap Long's "Hounds of Tindalos").

 

BTW if you'd be interested in HERO writeups for some of these creatures, I'd suggest checking this section of Michael Surbrook's great website, "Surbrook's Stuff."

 

As far as sanity loss mechanics go, there have been several mechanisms proposed. The .pdf document The HERO System Genre By Genre, available in the "Free Stuff" section of the website, describes an optional Sanity stat for games in the Horror genre. The 4E sourcebook Horror HERO: Endless Nightmares added optional rules for the long-term effects of massive PRE attacks, and of ongoing stress. Several published writeups of Lovecraft-inspired horrors gave them a sanity-blasting aura, defined as Transform NND (stopped by successful EGO rolls); the stronger your will, the longer you can resist the effects, but eventually all succumb.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

Well, I've read a fair amount of Lovecraft, and the sanity issue has always been a bit of a sticking point for me. The first source of SAN loss is simply finding one's self in a terrifying position, threatened by a vastly superior force. That will put some mental stress on anyone.

 

The second mental stressor for a Lovecraft character is both more potent and more subtle: knowledge that doesn't fit your current worldview, and which requires you to either accept highly unpleasant (to put it mildly) concepts as truth, or deny your own senses and reason. Either of those options could be considered a form of insanity.

 

The problem with this approach for the modern gamer is twofold:

 

First, we are typically familiar with a large variety of non-real concepts, and are used to mentally handling concepts with no concrete backing. This gives us an edge in dealing with a deeply weird new concept, because we can keep it at arm's length mentally while evaluating it. (I've noticed that mundanes seem to have trouble dealing with ideas not grounded in reality)

 

The second issue is that Lovecraft tended to base his horror on the assumption that both the protagonist and reader would be operating from the assumption that the universe was set up to be beneficial to humanity and individual humans, and the revelation that it wasn't would be a hard mental shift to make. I think most of us here in the twenty-first century are quite comfortable with the idea of a universe that is uncaringly neutral at best and possibly slightly hostile. (recall the short story "The Cold Equations")

 

Between these two factors, most of the sanity-bending horror of Lovecraft's work is lost on me. His stories typically present an insteresting study of someone uncoering clues that point in a direction they really don't want to go, but fail to connect on a visceral level.

 

In terms of actual constructive advice, I give you a quote from Lovecraft himself: "The oldest and most powerful human emotion is fear, and the oldest and most powerful fear is the fear of the unknown." To keep your players on edge, keep them in the dark. Put them up against something that they know nothing about, not even its name. The key is not giving them enough information to make predictions or manipulate the situation to their advantage.

 

I've been on the recieving end of this treatment in a Deadlands game, and the GM had us fearing for our lives every round of combats that we were winning easily, and fleeing in terror from a place with no acutal indications of a threat.

 

In a nutshell: the less your players know about the Beings From Beyond the Veil of Reality (cue theremin), the better.

 

Zeropoint

[tabascojunkie]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

Thanks LL. My main concern is that a player might think "Okay why does the Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua turn me into a drooling invalid but the demon from the Abyss doesn't? " It makes sense to me, but I can see how others would have doubts. And you know, I don't have time right now cause it's about to be sleepy-bye time but I guess I need to check out Surbrook's site. And I've seen just a tiny bit of Killershrike's, but people rave about both of them. thanks for the input and please more opinions from all.

[tabascojunkie]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

Zeropoint thank you very much. That's just the kind of advice I need, being fairly green as a GM, and not even much of an active player for several years.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

You're very welcome. It's always nice when the information rattling around my head proves to be usefull to someone.

 

Zeropoint

[Chiba Bob]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

When I GM CoC I have always handled sanity as something like a type of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) in my campaigns. When handing out mental disorders, they all revolved around the PTSD symptom called Avoidance:

 

"People with PTSD work hard to avoid anything that might remind them of the traumatic experience. They may try to avoid people, places or things that are reminders, as well as numbing out emotions to avoid painful, overwhelming feelings. Numbing of thoughts and feelings in response to trauma is known as "dissociation" and is a hallmark of PTSD. Frequently, people with PTSD use drugs or alcohol to avoid trauma-related feelings and memories. "

 

Except that in my CoC campaigns, sanity loss is PSTD on steroids. The mind would rather break than be reminded of these horrors. The ultimate effect of sanity loss is a kind of desensitization to horror. When a character reached zero sanity, their mind did 180 degree turn replacing Avoidance with Obsession .... at this point criminal psychosis is born. The monster hunter becomes the monster. This is why all CoC cultists have a zero sanity and are considered to be insane.

 

I have been working on my Delta Green Hero (modern CoC) campaign and have been working on how to translate sanity rules into the Hero System. I have settled on using Transform, Sane to Insane, Partial Transform, BOECV, Works Against EGO, AE, Improved Target Group, Variable Healing Method. Building the actual power is not problem but application of the power in a horror setting seems to be turning into pages of notes.

 

 

.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

Personally, I would say that even the good gods and their servants would have a tendency to drive mortals insane. Maybe not to the degree of the Lovecraftian nasties, but still...

 

So, say we're working with a Transform power construct (just for illustrative purposes). The most minor servants of the good gods, and the bad gods for that matter, have no Transformative powers in this respect. The big league servants have, oh, say a 3d6 Transform. This would have the effect of either creating a phobia, an extreme hatred, or an obsessive devotion, depending on the nature of the mortal exposed to the holy/unholy aura. The good and bad gods themselves would have maybe a 9d6 Transform along the same lines. Now, looking at the outsider gods, even their minor servants would have a 3d6 or more, and the effect of the Transform would be to turn the mortal into a gibbering idiot or a cultist (most of whom are gibbering idiots anyway). The big league servants would have at least a 9d6, often more, and the outsider gods themselves would be up around 12 or 15 dice of Transform.

 

Just spinning off the top of my head, this would be my suggestion. The numbers most likely need a lot of tweaking, especially since I don't know exactly what sort of campaign you're looking at.

[mangahunterd]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

Maybe a simple thing to do would be to give teh character a disadvantage as part of his sanity loss. Depending on the level of teh encounter and the type of foes faced it would have more severe side effects. Of course by doing it this way it allows the character to eventually buy it off. The reason being that as he experiences more of the otherworldy terror he becomes jaded to it. Of course this does not quite fit in with teh Lovecraftian feel that you will eventually go insane but it woudl be a good thing to do to your PC's because technically they are above "Normal" humans, that is why they are heros.

[Black Rose]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

Personally, I would say that even the good gods and their servants would have a tendency to drive mortals insane. Maybe not to the degree of the Lovecraftian nasties, but still...

 

So, say we're working with a Transform power construct (just for illustrative purposes). The most minor servants of the good gods, and the bad gods for that matter, have no Transformative powers in this respect. The big league servants have, oh, say a 3d6 Transform. This would have the effect of either creating a phobia, an extreme hatred, or an obsessive devotion, depending on the nature of the mortal exposed to the holy/unholy aura. The good and bad gods themselves would have maybe a 9d6 Transform along the same lines. Now, looking at the outsider gods, even their minor servants would have a 3d6 or more, and the effect of the Transform would be to turn the mortal into a gibbering idiot or a cultist (most of whom are gibbering idiots anyway). The big league servants would have at least a 9d6, often more, and the outsider gods themselves would be up around 12 or 15 dice of Transform.

 

Just spinning off the top of my head, this would be my suggestion. The numbers most likely need a lot of tweaking, especially since I don't know exactly what sort of campaign you're looking at.

 

Aside from the Lovecraftian deities (of which I only have one, co-equal in power with the creator deity, called the Outsider by those who know of him - not many) all of the "normal" deities have such an effect on their priests. I made it a rule that, in order to gain more power from a PC's god, they had to "open themselves up to the Truth of their God"; i.e., open their brains up to alteration by the deity (or chosen representative). This usually leads to PsychLims that bring the PC into closer alignment with their god, and occasional PhysLim (literally can't act in a manner opposed to their god's will) or DF (looking in a manner pleasing to their god).

[Blue Jogger]

Re: Opinions on Cthulhu Fantasy Hero wanted.

 

Thanks LL. My main concern is that a player might think "Okay why does the Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua turn me into a drooling invalid but the demon from the Abyss doesn't? "

 

I've always wondered why demons *didn't* have that reaction. Typically, if a demon suddenly appear in a town, every citizen would freak and assume that it was the End of the World (except completely pious people, I suppose). Even if it was Bob the Friendly Demon. People would run away for fear of having their souls dragged into the endless Abyss and being tortured forever, not because of Bob himself.

 

However, heroes are already completely freaking insane. They attack dragons, demons and undead, defy kings and deities, march into certain doom and destruction as if they were oblivious to their own fragile mortality.

 

Even when undead steals part of the souls, even when dragons bellow out rooms full of flame, even when demons appear. They still keep going. Unless they are blasted with magical fear, and even then, most times over naught, the effects are temporary at best and they continue on.

 

That, to me, is the very defination of drool-inducing insanity.

Psychological Limitation: Engages in apparently suicidal behavior for fun and profit. (0 pts, defination of Hero)

 

As oppose to everybody else.

Psychological Limitation: Avoids doing anything that is apparently suicidal in nature without very good reason. (0 pts, defination of Self-Preservation)