Best way to run Call of Cthulhu long term?
After your first session is done, invite your players for a second session. This is a good starting point.
>>88981090You can run one of the books, which are designed for long-form campaigns. Otherwise, the keeper book you posted says that exposure to the mythos attracts additional mythos phenomenon. So people who have one paranormal encounter tend to snowball them together until either they die horribly or it consumes their life.
>>88981166My Call of Cthulhu runs tend to be short. It's a pretty hard system
>>88981333I see, thanks. I'm trying to adapt it to a cryptid hunter campaign, so I want it to run a little longer
Ignore the grimderp mythos aspects or ignore the mythos altogether.
>>88981512Yeah basically start of with regular and treat it as a bunch of cases the same characters work on. Then you can start lightly layering mythos in but as stuff they hear about but dont interact with directly.Then maybe a cult but its just lame teens larping or something. Then give them a mythos based scenario that has them travellijng to different areas to collect ot stop different things to basically unlock the final level directly related to your chosen great one.
>>88981090Provide lots of sanity restoring opportunities, don't railroad PCs into sanity losing encounters, provide heroic levels of hitpoints so cultists don't alphastrike PCs to death.
>>88981166Alternatively, after your first session is done, invite your players for your first session
>>88981090Cthulhus in the cradle and the silver spoonThe little boy hastur and the man in the moonWhen you coming home brain I don't know whenBut we'll get together then
Beyond the Mountains of Madness is the greatest Cthulhu campaign I know of, but it's very Lovecraft. It's not even close to the pulp of Masks of Nyarlathotep, and it's one mega-adventure.But it's perfect for a solid year of Cthulhu game if you can take some tedium to build atmosphere early on.
>>88981090Pulp Cthulhu instead of the default.>>88981336Oh, so it was just a bait thread. See ya, then.
>>88981512>You know how to best run a dungeon crawler? Ignore the dungons entirely, and definitely the whole "kill things and loot gold" aspect of it
>>88981090Ignore the sanity rules.
>>88981333>Otherwise, the keeper book you posted says that exposure to the mythos attracts additional mythos phenomenon.I may be in a minority and this may be an extremely minor point but I've never liked this approach. Something like a curse may fulfill this article but even a curse has a cause. There's something about attracting repeated mythos exposure just by way of being an 'investigator' seems anti Lovecraft to me. >>88981090>Best way to run Call of Cthulhu long term?1) Have the players roll back up characters, create reasons for the back up characters to be connected with what the primary characters are doing. Explain to the players they are likely to lose the primary characters at some point. 2) Select a group of Call of Cthulhu modules you would like to run. READ THEM ALL. Take notes and look for opportunities where one module can hook in to another so you can blend them together without the players awareness one has ended and another has begun. >Best way to run Call of Cthulhu long term that is an open world, sand box?This is much more difficult, you'd be looking at long term campaign modules using the method outlined above. Be prepared to allow the players to investigate asynchronously.
>>88981090Number 1 is have your players write up several characters and tell them that characters will most likely die or go insane at some point.Also make sure they have a reason to show up.Number 2 is to start small and not jump straight into horror shit to fast.Starts with thieves, gangsters, a murderer, or something mundane that leads to a cult or artifact.Number 3 allow your players to get the option to have one of your characters leave the party when it makes sense to lower sanity while they are gone and switch to a new character
>>88981090It isn't really meant for long term, but they have a couple of mega campaigns like Masks or Orient Express that a more long form in structure. Skimming over those would probably be a good start to making your own.
>>88984541>I may be in a minority and this may be an extremely minor point but I've never liked this approach. Something like a curse may fulfill this article but even a curse has a cause. There's something about attracting repeated mythos exposure just by way of being an 'investigator' seems anti Lovecraft to me.IDK, I could see it working... it doesn't necessarily have to have any logic behind it. Slowly drip feeding the investigators evidence that they're actually somehow partially responsible for all the misery they're looking into sounds kind of Lovecraftian.
>>88981090>Best way to run Call of Cthulhu long term?Start with an introductory oneshot where the PCs met and maybesurvive.Then make them make an "investigator's organization", like told in the manual, and grab PCs from there to play in various adventures, creating a series of vaguely interconnected storylines.Like Delta Green, where the PCs are part of the conspiracy, but even if they die you can make new DG characters to drag into new DG investigations.
>>88985125Kind of flies in the face of the universe is uncaring. Lovecraft's protagonists mainly sought out answers rather than being pursued by them.
>>88981166/thread
>>88985357Not necessarily; I wasn't thinking along the lines of GOOs are turning their attention on the investigators and are actively trying to stop them, more like the act of investigation acts like bait for things better left undisturbed and draws attention to a planet that would otherwise be mostly left alone.
>>88984541>I may be in a minority and this may be an extremely minor point but I've never liked this approach. Something like a curse may fulfill this article but even a curse has a cause. There's something about attracting repeated mythos exposure just by way of being an 'investigator' seems anti Lovecraft to me.No anon, it's just that the veil is broken. At the end of the Call of Cthulhu, the protagonist realizes he now knows too much. He can never return to an ordinary life, he knows that one day Cthulhu will rise from R'yleh, and that he'd be incredibly lucky to die before that happens. His investigation changed him, made him aware of things that were always there, but he had not seen before.These things always existed. Those alien whisperers in darkness, forgotten cemeteries leading to deep, unknown eldritch cities below the earth, those cults that formed before the dawn of civilization who have infested all faucets of "polite" society: these things were always there. Investigators don't suddenly get targeted by the mythos simply because they know about it, rather, knowing about it makes them far more likely to see it where no one else will. The veil that separates our world from theirs is an illusion: there's no dualism about it, our world is their world and vice versa. And like with every illusion, once you see past it you can no longer be fooled by it.
>>88985835>more like the act of investigation acts like bait for things better left undisturbed and draws attention to a planet that would otherwise be mostly left alone.So then exactly like I said here. >>88985357>Lovecraft's protagonists mainly sought out answers rather than being pursued by them.>>88986076>knowing about it makes them far more likely to see it where no one else will. >And like with every illusion, once you see past it you can no longer be fooled by it.Mythos events are extremely rare things, you make it sound like just because an investigator saw something one time he should necessarily possess this unique talent to now perceive it wherever it exists. That to me sounds a bit trashy, mostly mythos encounters should be because the investigator chooses to actively pursue it.
>>88981090Put Cthulhu on hold and talk to someone else for a few centuries
>>88986519It's not a talent anon, it's waking up to the reality of things. The mythos is not extremely rare at all, hell, just look at Arkham and the surrounding area. There's a Innsmouth, Dunwitch, the Church of Starry Wisdom, the color out of space, Charles Dexter Ward, Herbet West(iirc), the Mi-Go, and many many more, all in the area surrounding Arkham, or at the very least New England, in the 1920s.The point is precisely that these things are not rare at all. they inhabit the same world we do, they do not exist in a separate "other world", the difference between ours and theirs is purely illusionary.It's cause and effect: once you realize that there's an ancient civilization of fish-men under the sea and you notice the fact your neighbours skin is showing signs of turning green and scaly you're going to start putting 2 and 2 together. Collective delusion is the ONLY reason mankind is unaware of the mythos. The mythos is there and it's extremely open about the fact it is.
>>88986910>It's not a talent anon, it's waking up to the reality of things.No such thing, the 'waking up to things' is simply knowledge of the mythos acquired from old forgotten tomes and such like. >you notice the fact your neighbours skin is showing signs of turning green and scaly And that's dumb, so incredibly retarded. You're saying that I would only notice my neighbor is turning in to the fish people if I had it pointed out to me. No thanks. No thanks, just no. You're entitled to keep your opinion of course but I don't need to hear any more about it.
>>88987055NTA but, if someone you knew right now, right this second, started having odd colored skin and it started flaking and he said it was a "skin condition" you would 100% believe him. You would not even fucking think he's turning into a fish person.
>>88987109>You would not even fucking think he's turning into a fish person.>Your neighbor's skin is showing signs of turning green and scaly.Pick one.
>>88987118If someone happened to have Jaundice and dry skin at the same time he would pretty much look like a fish person man.
>>88987159>If someone happened to have JaundiceA doctor would be able to confirm it...BIG difference between that and fish person metamorphism. Notwithstanding the fact fish person metamorphism had to be hidden from normal people at the onset of its advanced stages. Other anon is taking the John Carpenter In The Mouth of Madness approach to the mythos, the one which I find to be the least Lovecraftian.
>>88981090Make it a legacy thing, start in the past with characters encountering something fucky, do that story untill it resolves, then jump forwards in time. They're now playing the descendants of those first PC's who've had the legacy of what happened passed down to them dealing with the same kind of shit. Jump forwards in time again to the next generation, and so on and so forth until you reach the modern day
>>88987211>A doctor would be able to confirm itRight, and all he'd have to do is not go to the doctor to confirm it.>Notwithstanding the fact fish person metamorphism had to be hidden from normal people at the onset of its advanced stagesAdvanced stages sure, but the point was you could interact with people who are in the earlier stages of transformation and not have any idea of it. You'd only know if you knew what to look for.
>>88987260>Advanced stages sureErgo no mythos knowledge needed. I witnessed my friend's rapid transformation in to a big green scaly monster an unprecedented event in the annals of science! And now my newly acquired shoggoth radar detects them inside every closet! It's dumb.
>>88987334You're misunderstanding the point. The point is that humanity would rather believe literally anything else than what they are seeing in front of their eyes. That cult that sacrifices humans to great old ones becomes just a criminal organization, that man's manuscript containing an ancient spell to break the confines of reality is just the ramblings of a madman, that grave from which an undead ghoul crawled out of becomes someone who was simply buried alive escaping.But if you know these things are real, if you've come face to face with them, you'll be far more likely to have doubts than someone who didn't. Even the most subtle thing. That's not to say you'll immediately recognize it, that's not to say you'll encounter it all the time or always be right, but you will be more attentive to it, and that will lead to you seeing it more than someone who doesn't know about it.
>>88987481First off you don't need to keep writing flowery descriptions to make a point. Secondly I'm not misunderstanding anything you typed.>but you will be more attentive to it, and that will lead to you seeing it more than someone who doesn't know about it.Hidden in plain site, sure, like if the elder sign was carved in to a relief along with a number of other symbols because I've learned what the elder sign looks like. However that doesn't mean my every day to day life is going to be replete with mythos occurrences just because I'm aware the mythos exists. I would need to go out actively hunting the mythos to discover it and without learning where likely I could find it my actions would be met with limited to no success.
>>88987580>However that doesn't mean my every day to day life is going to be replete with mythos occurrences just because I'm aware the mythos existsNo one said that. All I'm saying is that you're going to notice it far more if you know it's there.
>>88987602>All I'm saying is that you're going to notice it far more if you know it's there.It's more like knowing things, such as when Aldebaran is above the zenith makes this ritual possible or Goatswood is a likely spot for mythos activity. But inherently our own day to day existence is more or less the same as the Lovecraft universe with mythos happenings being few and far between.
>>88987671IDK about that man, I mean, a single flood in New England made hundreds of people see the corpse of mi-gos float in the rivers, to the point where their existence became an academic debate, the entire red hook sector was practically occupied by occultists for a period of time, and the meteorite containing the color out of space was studied by scientists and the finding were published.The mythos is not really as rare as it seems, a lot of it is visible if you have even a small idea of where to look.Hell, Antarctica has a giant fucking city the size of a country on it, that's not exactly obscure I'd say.
>>88987724Lovecraft stories start from the point of view of the protagonist being grounded in mundane reality more or less and he never really explored the ramifications of his stories going forward because they are majorly self contained. Later writers have explained away why mythos happenings aren't common knowledge particularly the discoveries in Antarctica. You'd think that if the events in the At the Mountains of Madness were common knowledge we'd end up with a completely different kind of understanding of the world which we live in and wouldn't have taken any special insight to formulate.
>>88983357>call of cthulhu can only be about cthulhu and only about lovecraft's version of cthulhuCreativity is dead.
>>88986076>words words wordsNigga the pretentious cosmic horror shit never interested me. CoC is great for general horror games, or if you do the mythos, blowing up monsters.
>>88985357The pov character and protagonists in The Call of Cthulhu are actively being targeted by the Cthulhu Cult because they know too much. A campaign doesn't have to be monster of the week, it could easily be about how they encountered something man was not meant to know, and are now targeted by the things earthly agents, and so musy unravel the cults activities to save themselves.It's a little bit more grounded than "you r cursed by mythos," but it's still a frame in which the characters are reactive before they are proactive.
>>88989571>but it's still a frame in which the characters are reactive before they are proactive.Presumably they are targeted because the character(s) were proactive in investigating and uncovering the Cthulhu cult.
>>88981090Give them ways to recover sanity. Ie they see a Shoggoth, they lose points, they destroy/banish it, they get them back. Otherwise it is a slow spiral down the plughole for all of them.
>>88989708>Ie they see a Shoggoth, they lose points, they destroy/banish it, they get them back.This was a rule in an older edition iirc. It's a pretty essential houserule and makes complete sense. I'd handle it like "getting used to the mythos", or applicable other type of monster/horror/whatever kinda game you're doing. When you kill a monster, you gain the Sanity you could've lost or the lower amount (i.e. Cthulhu is like 1d20 sanity on a successful roll, 1d100 on a failure, kill Cthulhu and you get 1d20 sanity), up to the max possible amount (+20 max from Cthulhu).Killing a monster should basically cause a pic related moment for your players.
>>88981090I ran it for 2 years. Use the key connection rule to give them an extra way to gain SAN. Throw them san, fudge rolls to prevent instadies with no recourse. The more SAN you throw at them the more you can take.
>>88992253Getting used to the mythos where you can't lose more than max SAN loss on a single type is KEY to making sure players survive. It makes seeing a deep one less of a "OH MY GOD FISHMAN IM LOSING MY MARBLES" since that's a 1 in 3 chance of it happening.
>>88981354The premise is just "you're looking for cryptids" or so? There's a lot of cryptids, so you can do plenty of episodes, so writing/mystery-wise you shouldn't have a problem.Make it somewhat episodic, with downtime gaps between hunts. This gives time for injured characters to recover or new ones to be recruited in place of casualties.
>>88992253It's a rule in the current edition as well. It's even a rule in Delta Green. People seem to forget it, *and* it's generally weighted that you'll lose more than you'll gain.
