Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

[McCoy]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Is this what you're looking for?

http://dracandros.com/Jebgarg/Nidoking/cthuchrono.htm

Yes, precisely!

 

Looks like I'm going to have to tweak it though. Looks like according to this everything interesting happened within the last billion YBP. Wanted to tie the creation of the moon 4.527 YBP with a war. Proto-Earth colonized (or perhapse even constructed) by the Elder Things some 5 billion YBP, 4.53 YBP someone (some thing?) hits Proto-Earth with a Mars-sized planetoid named Orpheus. 99% of all shoggoth-based life is exterminated, the rest monsterously (by the Elder Things' standards) mutated. Ejecta from the collision accretes into the Moon.

[jkwleisemann]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Actually, I'm in the process of doing so right now. I'm setting up for a possible Teen Hero game, and one of the characters bopping around in my head is what you might have gotten if Wilbur Whateley hadn't been raised by his parents.

 

Of course, he *does* have a few issues with getting along with his classmates... something about the fact that when he enters a room, folks feel this vague urge to leave it....

[assault]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

The only direct CoC crossover I played was with Runequest' date=' since the systems were pretty compatible.[/quote']

 

Superworld would work well in a Cthulhu/Supers game, for similar reasons.

 

I've only got the Worlds of Wonder version of Superworld, not the full version. It definitely had potential, but I didn't see any particular reason to prefer it to Champions.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Champions 3-D from 4th Edition had a great adventure on a world where Cthuloid monstrosities had 'won'. 'The Anopheles Strain' or something like that...

 

In Champions In 3-D the adventure was called "Horror World," but Allen prefers the title "ANOPHELES: Atrocities From Beyond." IMHO this is the most successful merger of horror and supers that I've seen, and explicitly stated as inspired by Lovecraft. Mr. Varney has kindly put the entire text of the adventure up on his personal website (with Hero Games's kind permission): http://www.allenvarney.com/anopheles.html .

 

I was also partial to the Champs adventure Demons Rule by Charles Brown. That one actually set part of the action in rural New England, with the writings of pulp horror author "Howard Pickman" playing a pivotal role in the action. BTW Mr. Brown has errata to DR, and a couple of characters cut from the final published version of the adventure, on his website devoted to the pre-5E incarnation of DEMON: http://members.aol.com/DEMONTh254/Driver.html . (Click on the link in the lefthand menu entitled "The Black Files.)

 

If you did want to combine Champions with Call of Cthulhu, I'd suggest following the link in my signature, then scrolling down to the CoC listing. Lots of material from that game, and the Mythos in general, converted to HERO.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

On a tangential note: I doubt it will ever come up, but I've decided that the Qliphothic Realm underlies every Hero campaign I run. The SAME Qliphothic realm, meaning that it's theoretically possible for characters to move from one campaign to another using it, however unlikely that might be.

 

Hmm. Maybe that's where all those hyperdrive misjumps end up.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

On a tangential note: I doubt it will ever come up, but I've decided that the Qliphothic Realm underlies every Hero campaign I run. The SAME Qliphothic realm, meaning that it's theoretically possible for characters to move from one campaign to another using it, however unlikely that might be.

 

Hmm. Maybe that's where all those hyperdrive misjumps end up.

 

I would not want to find my starship caught in Quemetiel's gravity well!!

[Peregrine]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Also' date=' most groups who play Supers aren't in it for exploring themes of helplessness and isolation; if they were, they'd be playing CoC.[/quote']

 

Which is precisely why I don't play CoC, or any horror, for that matter. And why I do play Champions.

 

If the supers triumph in the end, was it really CoC? If not, why bother?

If the supers don't triumph in the end, why bother at all?

[assault]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

If the supers triumph in the end, was it really CoC? If not, why bother?

If the supers don't triumph in the end, why bother at all?

 

Obviously a CoC/superheroes game isn't a Silver Age ultra-four colour game.

 

The closest it would get to that is a kind of Doctor Strange type of thing, where the Mythos just gets ripped off for critters. There are similar, more Bronze Age variations. The Dire Wraiths and the Brood were critters from the Marvel Universe who were weird and alien enough to fit in the Mythos.

 

For more CoC-like source material, you would probably want go with something like Zenith (http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/z/zenith.htm ). It's not quite strict Mythos, but draws on it at second hand. It's also very very Iron Age, in the good sense.

 

As for heroes triumphing in the end: in fact, in CoC, it is entirely possible for heroes to "triumph". As long as the world survives for another day, they've triumphed. It's exactly the same kind of triumph a Batman-style street level hero experiences everyday.

 

If you save some lives, protect some innocents, and thwart the plots of some bad guys, you've won.

 

Sure, you're not going to slap down Yog-Sothoth in one on one combat, but if you can stop his lackies from summoning him, or you can banish him before he eats the world, and preferably your soul, you've won.

 

Incidentally, one of the most Cthulhu-ish plotlines in Zenith was resolved with a rather elegant plot twist that would be completely and utterly unplayable.

 

I think a Cthulhu-esque game would have to involve a gradual buildup, rather than being a Monster of the Week game. The latter would just be wrong. The former might work nicely, as the PCs work through layers and layers of mystery about what is really going on...

[David Johnston]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Which is precisely why I don't play CoC' date=' or any horror, for that matter. And why I [i']do[/i] play Champions.

 

If the supers triumph in the end, was it really CoC? If not, why bother?

 

I can answer that question pretty easily. Those are good critters. They're good critters even if the character encountering them ISN'T a neurasthenic intellectual with shaky sanity. You do not have to buy into that whole Lovecraftian "you can't handle the truth" drek to use them. Even _Lovecraft_ didn't entirely buy into it with every story. He once wrote a haunted house story in which the real source of the problem was this big blobby thing underneath the house and the story didn't end with the protagonists going insane or dying. It ended with them killing the critter by dumping a carboy of acid onto it and going home satisfied that they'd done a job well.

[Peregrine]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

If the GM runs the Mythos the way the previous two posters have presented it, I'd go for it. But far too many Mythos GMs get into the 'your characters die/go insane' meme; or, closely related, 'your characters barely survive, despite all their efforts failing miserably'. (Put another way, "you the players, and your characters, are small; I, the GM, am large'.)

[Korvar]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Given it's Supers we're talking about, you could have them as sanity-blasting as normal, but the Supers can (just) handle it, 'cos they're Super. Impress upon them Just How Bad it would be if poor Normals were subjected to this - Only You Can Stop Them!

[Kelcyron]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

I can answer that question pretty easily. Those are good critters. They're good critters even if the character encountering them ISN'T a neurasthenic intellectual with shaky sanity. You do not have to buy into that whole Lovecraftian "you can't handle the truth" drek to use them. Even _Lovecraft_ didn't entirely buy into it with every story. He once wrote a haunted house story in which the real source of the problem was this big blobby thing underneath the house and the story didn't end with the protagonists going insane or dying. It ended with them killing the critter by dumping a carboy of acid onto it and going home satisfied that they'd done a job well.

 

Another example is The Dunwich Horror. Yes, Armitage and company were changed by learning of the Mythos and it's threat, but they defeated Wilbur Whatley and his brother without going mad.

 

Kelcyron

[Brandi]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Well, not permanently mad, anyway-- Armitage has a day or so of delerious fever after he puts the big clues together, and it's hard to say if Curtis Whateley will bounce back from the shock of what he saw.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

"The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" features, if I recall correctly, a protagonist who follows the clues to uncover the strangeness, discovers the truth, and manages to piece together enough to stop the villain, all while retaining his sanity.

 

Of course, just knowing that the world contains things like the mythos is going to make you just a little bit odd compared to the people around you.

[Brandi]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Not completely retaining his sanity:

 

"It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark raving mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital."

 

He does get better, though.

[Boulder]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

huh, does anybody remember 3D Hero? One of the universe's was a realm totatly taken over by strange unusual creature. Some humans were running around with spikes from there flesh that made them want to embed themselves other's, which transfered the virus?

 

Were the survivers were slowly going insane and bugs would come swarming from mouths and the big bad guy head could pop off and run away, wasn't a very happy universe!

 

I had a good time running that, the group was checking out a building that one of the Focus people lived at and he was hoping to gather charges for his weapon systems. In the elevator a giant spider demon ripped out the floor and tried to eat one of the party. The Teleporter "jumped up" to the top floor, and started dumping computer monitors down the shaft (This was early computers, when they easily weighed 10-20lb's) and rolled a bloody 3 to hit!!

 

Bada a Bing, Banda boom the Spider wents SPLAT!

[OddHat]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Not completely retaining his sanity:

 

"It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark raving mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital."

 

He does get better, though.

 

Lovecraft was a man who lived in terror of his own private parts.

[Lucius]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Lovecraft was a man who lived in terror of his own private parts.

 

I wonder if his wife helped him get over that?

 

And on that note....

 

http://www.hello-cthulhu.com/?date=2003-11-30

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Hiding behind the palindromedary

[David Johnston]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Probably not. He was only with her for a few years before moving back home and writing a story about how all those foreigners in New York (where he moved to be with her) were really monsters.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

I can run CoC type scenarios in a supers game once in a while, but I'd never do it for an extended period. Difficult to run and pretty depressing for the heroes.

 

Rob

[starblaze]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

I ran the champions adventure Menace out of Time wherein the heroes ended up going back in time to the ice age and ran into a Flying Polyp. I got the write-up from the Surbrook's stuff webpage (thanks Mike!).

 

I also ran Demon's Rule and alot of fun with that too.

[BcAugust]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

Lovecraft was a man who lived in terror of his own private parts.

 

Actually, one of the interesting things about wasn't that... it was Lovecraft was one of the first writers to actually focus on what Non-Ecluidian geomentry would do to the brain. "A place with all the angles just a little bit off..." is a classic Lovecraft cliche. And a lot of the work they did in the sixties shows what happens when people are exposed to that.... they start going nuts.

 

So, even if it's Horror... it was actually sci-fi.

[zornwil]

Re: Anyone combine Champs with Call of Cuthulu?

 

One of our PCs is a dimensional mage and the player is a Lovecraft fan so it hooks up that way, with many of the places and creatures reused. But we're not running a horror-supers game, just using elements that fit.