I had four players for this one. Effectively drawn from the background material for the evening's game, it was also informed by two different games run by Caleb Stokes on RPPR's Actual Play feed, as well as one recorded for The Drunk and the Ugly. I basically reverse engineered it, and ran it as an afternoon prequel of sorts to the evening scenario for Saturday, Lover in the Ice.
The basic synopsis of the scenario is this: Counterculture author Ryan Whitehead and his college dropout, drug-addled friend (along with a translator/editor, and assorted other camp followers) travel to Brazil to investigate a traveling tent city following in the wake of the construction crew for the Trans-Amazonian Highway, discover a jungle parasite that reproduces in the most horrific way possible (turning their hosts temporarily into hormone-fueled horrors of sex and violence), and investigate what was going on, and then have to escape.
I ran this one as a playtest several weeks ago. In that playthrough, two of the group survived, the others not so much. One of the characters was infected. However, the run through of the game revealed several problems with my scenario as written, and I made significant revisions to the endgame for the con. These problems mostly revolved around a too quick reveal where the group stayed together.
Fortunately, this run of the scenario had none of those problems. The group split up, and the reveal was more or less simultaneous for all involved. One of the four player characters was infected by a seeder almost immediately, then spent the rest of her all too brief life trying desperately to hold herself together. She wound up getting cut down by gunfire from soldiers of the Brazilian Army.
At the end of the scenario, the players are presented with an Alamo style situation. The few surviving, non-infected civilians, the surviving soldiers who now occupy the camp, and the player characters are surrounded by enough of the young adult Amantes (the horror) that they are presented with a stark choice, stand and fight, or run away and try to get to safety. If they choose the latter course, they have several directions they can flee in (though only two hold any real hope of salvation). The three survivors chose to stand and fight.
Unfortunately, the stand and fight option is effectively a stand and fight and die option. In this way, I effectively narrated the ending, a TPK, as the group was simply overwhelmed by the numbers of the Amantes.
We had a couple of seasoned Call of Cthulhu veterans in the game, along with one player whose only previous exposure to RPGs was D&D. I'll talk more about her later. The game went well, and was a huge success.
The game basically concluded about 15 minutes early, so I timed it perfectly.
Showing posts with label H P Lovecraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label H P Lovecraft. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Cthulhu Invictus: A Review
OK. I'll admit it. I've gone in the past few years from a guy who'd never run a horror game in his life to somebody who counts Call of Cthulhu (and particularly its third-party setting, Delta Green) amongst his favorite systems.
One of the things I like about Call of Cthulhu is the ease with which it can be modified to play cosmic horror in a variety of historical eras. The core rulebook itself provides support for games set in the Victorian era, the 1920s, and current day. A few years ago, Cthulhu Dark Ages took the tentacled beasties back to the 10th Century. Cthulhu Invictus, Chaosium's latest for the game line, takes Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, the Deep Ones, a whole bunch of new Lovecraftian horrors from ancient mythology and Cthulhu himself all the way back to the First Century AD, during the Julio-Claudian dynasty, when the Roman Empire was at its absolute zenith.
Cover and layout:
Cthulhu Invictus is a gorgeous work. The front cover is haunting, the interior illustrations (mostly charcoal and or pencil drawings) evocative of the setting, and the rest of the layout economic and best of all, uncluttered.
4 out of 5.
Content:
The challenge of gaming in a historical period can be daunting for a gamer unfamiliar with the period, and requires different thinking than a modern day or more recent setting period might. Wisely, Cthulhu Invictus acknowledges this.
Chapter 1 begins with a good section on Rome the city, as well as Roman culture, followed by a timeline of historical events leading up to 80 CE (the setting pretty much wraps up around this time, during the reign of Titus, who was the son of Vespasian, who was the last man standing during the Roman Civil War of 69 CE, known as the "Year of the Four Emperors." This is then followed with a very thorough survey of the myriad of regions of the Roman Empire, along with barbarian territories on its border. This section takes up a good third of the book, meaning that Chaosium did its job.
Chapter 2: Character Creation takes a look at some of the differences between a 20th Century and 1st Century game, with a suggestion on character names, new occupations, aging, money, etc. Besides the obvious differences in occupations, it's worth noting that aging is tweaked substantively to reflect the shorter lifespans of the day.
Chapter 3: Skills modifies the skill list, adding a lot of the same skills that are found in Cthulhu Dark Ages, a host of new weapons skills, and obviously deleting the historical anachronisms from the regular Call of Cthulhu game. Credit Rating is effectively replaced by Status, Natural History is replaced by Natural World, and a few other skills are added.
Chapter 4: Equipment and Supplies adds Roman era equipment.
Chapter 5: Recovering Sanity (a single page) outlines the difficulties in recovering sanity in a day when Sigmund Freud wouldn't exist for another 1800 years.
Chapter 6: Combat, adds some important changes to combat to add more options to melee combat, as well as adding a variety of new melee and ranged weapons, armor, herbs, and poisons.
Chapter 7: Siege Weapons briefly outlines the larger siege weapons of the period, as well as Greek Fire (which is something of an anachronism for a game set in the First Century, as Greek Fire really wasn't developed until well after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, and well into the Byzantine period (which is the reason it's called Greek Fire, not Roman Fire). My guess is that the various Siege weapon skills in Cthulhu Invictus will be about as useless as the Operate Heavy Machinery skill in the base game.
Chapter 8: The Grimoire, speaks about Roman religion, provides a host of new spells, new tomes, and melds right into Chapter 9: Bestiary, with a variety of new creatures, as well as hints for how to work existing Mythos creatures from the corebook into the setting. Rejoice, oh, Dark Young fans...you can be devoured by them in Rome as well as Arkham.
Chapter 10: Cults and Secret Societies takes a look at the more esoteric religions, cults (both mythos-related and more benign) evolving in the Roman world at the time. While Christians may object to the description of their own religion at the time, considering its small following some 250 years before the rise of Constantine, cult is probably an apt description.
Finally, the book wraps up with a section on the legions, a short scenario, and a bibliography/selected reading list.
The section is thorough, and gives a good amount of information for running a Roman era game. I don't think it could be better without becoming a history tome.
5 of 5
Overall Value:
For the most part, Chaosium seems to be content to live off of past glories. The company does a lot more republishing of its classic titles (and slight revisions to its rulebook) these days than publishing new titles. Cthulhu Dark Ages was an exception to that a few years ago. Still outside of the Monograph program (where Chaosium sticks a front cover on what is otherwise an author written, edited, and laid out creation), whose work can only be regarded as of uneven quality (Cthulhu Invictus itself saw an earlier life as a Monograph, this new version is a much improved revision), a lot more third-party stuff from publishers (Pagan Publishing/Arc Dream, Miskatonic River Press, SuperGenius Games, Goodman Games, etc.), as well as third-party licensed games (Pelgrane's Trail of Cthulhu, Realms of Cthulhu etc.) than actually gets put out by Chaosium.
Still Cthulhu Invictus shows that Chaosium can still support its game. A book of scenarios is published for it (Cthulhu Invictus Companion), and Miskatonic River Press has published a campaign for it. Hopefully this won't be the last we see of the game.
At a cover price of $25, if you like Call of Cthulhu, have an interest in the Roman era, and like the idea of throwing the two together in a blender and hitting frappe, you could certainly find worse places to spend $25 than Cthulhu Invictus.
5 of 5.
One of the things I like about Call of Cthulhu is the ease with which it can be modified to play cosmic horror in a variety of historical eras. The core rulebook itself provides support for games set in the Victorian era, the 1920s, and current day. A few years ago, Cthulhu Dark Ages took the tentacled beasties back to the 10th Century. Cthulhu Invictus, Chaosium's latest for the game line, takes Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, the Deep Ones, a whole bunch of new Lovecraftian horrors from ancient mythology and Cthulhu himself all the way back to the First Century AD, during the Julio-Claudian dynasty, when the Roman Empire was at its absolute zenith.
Cover and layout:
Cthulhu Invictus is a gorgeous work. The front cover is haunting, the interior illustrations (mostly charcoal and or pencil drawings) evocative of the setting, and the rest of the layout economic and best of all, uncluttered.
4 out of 5.
Content:
The challenge of gaming in a historical period can be daunting for a gamer unfamiliar with the period, and requires different thinking than a modern day or more recent setting period might. Wisely, Cthulhu Invictus acknowledges this.
Chapter 1 begins with a good section on Rome the city, as well as Roman culture, followed by a timeline of historical events leading up to 80 CE (the setting pretty much wraps up around this time, during the reign of Titus, who was the son of Vespasian, who was the last man standing during the Roman Civil War of 69 CE, known as the "Year of the Four Emperors." This is then followed with a very thorough survey of the myriad of regions of the Roman Empire, along with barbarian territories on its border. This section takes up a good third of the book, meaning that Chaosium did its job.
Chapter 2: Character Creation takes a look at some of the differences between a 20th Century and 1st Century game, with a suggestion on character names, new occupations, aging, money, etc. Besides the obvious differences in occupations, it's worth noting that aging is tweaked substantively to reflect the shorter lifespans of the day.
Chapter 3: Skills modifies the skill list, adding a lot of the same skills that are found in Cthulhu Dark Ages, a host of new weapons skills, and obviously deleting the historical anachronisms from the regular Call of Cthulhu game. Credit Rating is effectively replaced by Status, Natural History is replaced by Natural World, and a few other skills are added.
Chapter 4: Equipment and Supplies adds Roman era equipment.
Chapter 5: Recovering Sanity (a single page) outlines the difficulties in recovering sanity in a day when Sigmund Freud wouldn't exist for another 1800 years.
Chapter 6: Combat, adds some important changes to combat to add more options to melee combat, as well as adding a variety of new melee and ranged weapons, armor, herbs, and poisons.
Chapter 7: Siege Weapons briefly outlines the larger siege weapons of the period, as well as Greek Fire (which is something of an anachronism for a game set in the First Century, as Greek Fire really wasn't developed until well after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, and well into the Byzantine period (which is the reason it's called Greek Fire, not Roman Fire). My guess is that the various Siege weapon skills in Cthulhu Invictus will be about as useless as the Operate Heavy Machinery skill in the base game.
Chapter 8: The Grimoire, speaks about Roman religion, provides a host of new spells, new tomes, and melds right into Chapter 9: Bestiary, with a variety of new creatures, as well as hints for how to work existing Mythos creatures from the corebook into the setting. Rejoice, oh, Dark Young fans...you can be devoured by them in Rome as well as Arkham.
Chapter 10: Cults and Secret Societies takes a look at the more esoteric religions, cults (both mythos-related and more benign) evolving in the Roman world at the time. While Christians may object to the description of their own religion at the time, considering its small following some 250 years before the rise of Constantine, cult is probably an apt description.
Finally, the book wraps up with a section on the legions, a short scenario, and a bibliography/selected reading list.
The section is thorough, and gives a good amount of information for running a Roman era game. I don't think it could be better without becoming a history tome.
5 of 5
Overall Value:
For the most part, Chaosium seems to be content to live off of past glories. The company does a lot more republishing of its classic titles (and slight revisions to its rulebook) these days than publishing new titles. Cthulhu Dark Ages was an exception to that a few years ago. Still outside of the Monograph program (where Chaosium sticks a front cover on what is otherwise an author written, edited, and laid out creation), whose work can only be regarded as of uneven quality (Cthulhu Invictus itself saw an earlier life as a Monograph, this new version is a much improved revision), a lot more third-party stuff from publishers (Pagan Publishing/Arc Dream, Miskatonic River Press, SuperGenius Games, Goodman Games, etc.), as well as third-party licensed games (Pelgrane's Trail of Cthulhu, Realms of Cthulhu etc.) than actually gets put out by Chaosium.
Still Cthulhu Invictus shows that Chaosium can still support its game. A book of scenarios is published for it (Cthulhu Invictus Companion), and Miskatonic River Press has published a campaign for it. Hopefully this won't be the last we see of the game.
At a cover price of $25, if you like Call of Cthulhu, have an interest in the Roman era, and like the idea of throwing the two together in a blender and hitting frappe, you could certainly find worse places to spend $25 than Cthulhu Invictus.
5 of 5.
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