The Mythos Files: A Cthulhu/X-Files Mashup

Hi All,

First post for me in a while…I’d been in gaming hibrenation, but it’s Spring again…

I’ve had this on my back burner for a while, a Mashup of the [URL=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu”%5DCthulhu%5B/URL%5D Mythos and the [URL=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files”%5DX-files%5B/URL%5D. And while I’m waiting for my D&D gaming group to be available to play again in a couple of weeks, I thought I’d move it to the front burner, throw some dough against the wall, and see what stuck.

One can see how the two series would mesh well together, both center around investigation of the truly unknown and terrible (whether that be the [URL=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos_deities”%5DOld Ones[/URL] or the Aliens of [URL=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51″%5DArea 51[/URL].

Just let all that goodness soak in and get your creative juices floating on that…

A few questions for input (or at least thought by me if no one else is interested):

1) What rule set – The no-brainer is to use the Call of Cthulhu rules and update them for more futuristic things (like cell phones – whether they be the 90s monstrosities from the original series or more modern phones, gps, etc.) or something else altogether (FATE, d20, GURPS) OR even a completely homebrewed (or Frankensteined) ruleset (I dabble in these a lot). What are your thoughts?

2) Nature of the Cthulhu Mythos *actual* involvement – Is it direct and apocolyptic OR (as I’m leaning towards) very subtle and mostly an influencer of the Cthulhu cult (with an occasional off-camera intervention…perhaps with that crucial witness npc)?

3) OK, so we have the Old Ones, Cultists, FBI Agents (and other competing adventurers)? What else? Do we keep things like the Men-In-Black? What else? What would you like to see in there?

4) Other thoughts?

I’m going to keep building on this, both at rpg.net and on my blog at High Adventure Games. Your thoughts would be most welcome!

Game On,

~AoB

Mash-up RPG

OK, its time to build the PBP I mentioned here. I plan on doing two of these actually. The second, HAGIS: The Mythos Files, will essentially be The X-files meets Call of Cthulhu. I’ll table it for a bit since its a bit more complicated…plus my wife will be involved. She’s not a gamer as of yet, but has expressed an interest in such a game…in fact, I’m not sure if we’ll do that one as a PBP…It might need to be live. The first will be HAGIS: Atlantean Adventures (Aega Mythea?) and will be  set in the Atlantean world (High Swords & Sorcery a la Bard Games Atlantean Trilogy…with my own spin of course).

OK, Here’s the mix:

The Atlantean Trilogy (Bard Games’ The Arcanum, The Lexicon, and The Bestiary…the last two of those were also published as a combined volume called Atlantis: The Lost World). This will serve as the core setting. It is essentially our own Earth or proto-Earth before the Oceans drank Atlantis. It contains all the real-world cultures all mashed up anachronistically. This is my favorite setting of all time.

FUDGE/FATE – I like the aspects provision or Fate (kind of like the Spiritual Attributes of TRoS). We will be making free and frequent use of  metagame elements. In fact, I plan on the players having much more information than their characters do. It will be expected that player and character knowledge will be kept in different buckets…I’m going to think about how much interchange between these two will be permitted/encouraged. I also am looking at the 5by4 Magic system on Steffan O’Sullivan’s page….or maybe the Magical Medly system…hmm, need to think on this.

Castles & Crusades – I really love this game. I’m still not crazy about the Vanican Fire’n’Forget style magic, but its really not that hard to write that out. The point here is that I’m going to be using class-like structures, call them archetypes, whatever. Pretty much pick a class from any source D&D, C&C, The Arcanum, etc. and I’ll adapt it to our Mashup.

the HAGIS TriDie system – as previously discussed, roll three d20’s and use the median result (unless we have some meta-game funk going on and then either the hi or lo result is used….).

True20 – I’m looking at their positive/negative tags and their magic system.

No Kung-Fu is better than swords crap.  So monks and martial artists are pretty much out for this dance.

As I look at this, I realize that my Mash is a mess. That’s OK though; it was only intended as a brainstorming session. I will work on tightening this up and throwing some of it out….I only need *one* magic system for this. I can always try another one later.

~AoB

Seafood

I found this Evilkid comic on Raincoaster’s blog and had to port it over here. I did, after all, snarf hot coffee the first time I saw it.

~AoB

The X-Files Movie Sequel and the Slippery Path to R’lyeh

I read on E-Online that The X-Files movie sequel is on the way. I’m pretty excited about that, as is my wife, who is very into the X-Files. In fact, her enthusiasm for The Files has led her to embark on a second attempt at gaming…this time into the dark recesses found in The Call of Cthulhu Role-playing Game, (CoC).

Her previous foray into the world of gaming was an experiment in the realms of D&D 3E which was not, shall we say, her cup of tea. She’s well versed in many gaming ideas, of course (since that’s my thing). However, she really hasn’t expressed any interest in playing after I coerced her into that ill-fated D&D game. Perhaps that was the problem, the coercion bit…hmmm, food for thought. Anyway, out of the blue, she asked to try out Call of Cthulhu. I was shocked, but quickly agreed and began my plans.

Her first game had been a solo-player game (with me GMing), and I thought that the social interchange between players may have been lacking. My brother and another gamer friend have moved to the area, so I’ve recruited them to join us for a one-off session. I questioned my wife about what she found interesting about CoC. The result of these dinner-table interrogations was that:

1) She was intrigued by what could be so horrible that one was actually gambling your sanity in learning about it (Experiencing the Mythos in CoC often leads to “Sanity Rolls” which lead to losing varying amounts of sanity for characters in the game). She was also intrigued by the horror and drama inherent in the genre (she has read a fair amount of Lovecraft in her day).

2) She isn’t into mechanical aspect of the game. She doesn’t need to know that because of Rogar’s 19 Strength, he is much more effective in combat and can lift gates 95% of the time. She does not like lengthy character creation processes. She wants the game to work. She doesn’t want to know why it works. She does not want to have a need to understand a multitude of rules to play.

3) I’m just so gosh-darn cute, she wants to spend more time with me.

So, I’m on the case…..After the session (which looks like it will be in August), I’ll post a synopsis of how it all went down. She seems pretty excited about this, and joins in when I randomly emote “R’yleh” around the house.  Cheers, for now.

~AoB

The Great Pumkin is a Great Old One….and Cthulhu is proud

More goodness (er, that is evil, depraved goodness) from the You Tube….

I stole it from raincoaster who stole it from Dr. Mike.

Cheers and Stuff,

~AoB