Carcosa BRP Hack

[otiv]

Would it be appropriate to discuss a Carcosa BRP hack (based on Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer) on these forums?
Because I'm scratching out notes for one.

[tkdco2]

I don't see why not, although it may be appropriate to put the thread in the Non-TSR Classics forum. I think this place should be okay, though.

[Finarvyn]

I think I'd rather see all Carcosa threads in the same place so that folks can find them better. If we get too much non-standard clutter I can always move the threads or create a sub-board to stash the threads. Too much of a good thing is always a nice problem to have.

[Vile Traveller]

Sounds like a spectacular idea!

[tkdco2]

I have toyed with the idea of using Stormbringer for Carcosa. Maybe Jale Men, being adept at sorcery, use the Melnibonean or Pan Tang traits.

[otiv]

Now, does Stormbringer have sanity rules? Or should be port those over from Call of Cthulhu?

Also, we briefly discussed (in another thread) the idea of having a separate skill for each type of sorcerous ritual: Conjuration, Binding, Imprisoning, Banishment, Torment, and Invocation. Do we still want to do that?

How about psionics? Do we want to have one skill for psionics? Or break it up? I kind of like the AD&D 2e categories: Psychometabolism, Psychkinesis, Clairsentience, Telepathy, Psychoportation, and Metacreativity. Maybe include a Meditation advanced skill that sets the limit for your other psionic skills?

What are your preferred houserules for Runequest/Stormbringer?
I actually agree with Lindybeige in regards to weapon skills. youtu.be/_XMl5bmHmuI
I think I'd prefer skills vs. armor types. So you could have an Attack vs. Light Armour skill, an Attack vs. Medium Armour skill, and an Attack vs. Heavy Armour skill.

[tkdco2]

I haven't played Runequest, but I have the 3rd Edition. I think my Stormbringer game is the original. No rules for psionics or sanity, so you'll have to use Call of Cthulhu for the latter. In my game, the denizens of Carcosa are probably used to eldritch horrors to some extent, so I don't use sanity rules.

[otiv]

There are some references to insanity effects in Geoffrey's Carcosa book, it's just very vague on the actual rules of insanity (which I understand is intentional.)
I imagine that the men of Carcosa are much more resilient against the effects of insanity than Call of Cthulhu investigators (or, insane to begin with). I could see there being sanity rules for major things like encountering The Great Old Ones or even as a simple pool of mental hit points against psionic attacks, just that men of Carcosa don't roll sanity checks every single time they glance at a book.
Sanity rules could still be useful here even if they aren't used to the same extent that they are in Call of Cthulhu.
Sanity rules would also be really helpful in cases where men from other worlds get transported to Carcosa somehow.

I don't suppose you've played Unknown Armies? In UA you have track sanity on multiple axis such as 'Selfhood', 'Isolation', and 'Violence'. Furthermore, while failed sanity checks bring you closer to a psychotic break, successful sanity checks make you increasingly 'hardened', further distancing you from normal people but in the opposite direction.

[tkdco2]

I haven't played Unknown Armies. Maybe I'll try to get more info on it.


Where are the references to insanity in the Carcosa book? I don't remember coming across them, except for certain rituals. Keep in mind I have the Expurgated version.

[otiv]

The hyperlinked Carcosa Digital edition has insanity effects in some of the hex descriptions, usually as abilities used by Spawn of Shub-Niggurath. There is also robot that fires insanity missiles, a rock formation with insanity rays, etc. Actually, it seems that there are alien energy weapons with insanity effects.

I'm one of those guys who likes to tinker with systems a lot, so stop me if anything I propose sounds too fiddly.

Unknown Armies is fun. It's kind of a different take on Call of Cthulhu/the urban fantasy genre. Last game I was in played out like a Cronenberg film. It does get conflated with story-games though, and I think the rpg.net crowd latched onto it for a while. I just like it because of the insanity mechanics.

There's this other game I really like, but that's much further removed from D&D and Rune Quest. It's a Japanese game called Nechronica. You play as the sutured and reanimated corpses of children called 'Dolls' in a dead world ruled by a necromancer. Anyway, that one has a fun sanity/relationship mechanic called 'fetters'. Each fetter gives you an attachment to a character or an item, accumulates stress, and has an effect upon the attached character or object when you accumulate too much stress. For example, you might have a fetter that makes you really fixated on another player character's beautiful eyes, and if you get too many stress points on that fetter your character is driven by impulse to rip the other character's eyes out and take them for yourself. It's a really unforgiving mechanic too; you accumulate stress after ever round of combat!

[tkdco2]

The 1E DMG also has a table for insanity.

[otiv]

Sept 12, 2016 14:27:13 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

The 1E DMG also has a table for insanity.

The 1E DMG is a treasure trove. Would you happen to know what page that's on?

[kesher]

"...a robot that fires insanity missiles."

That right there encapsulates everything that I love about Carcosa...

[otiv]

What is insanity on Carcosa, though?

Mental illness has a context. What do we consider insanity within the context of a world where robots fire insanity missiles at jale-skinned Cthulhu cultists armed with radium pistols and dinosaur-bone clubs?

That might be a topic for another thread.

I like to imagine though that Carcosans retreat from their fluorescent-colored reality into a pastel-colored fantasy of Edwardian era clothes, horse-drawn carriages, and pleasant manors in the country.

[tkdco2]

The table and explanations for the types of insanity are on pages 83 and 84 in the DMG.

[otiv]

Neat! Thanks.

It seems though that a lot of these, like kleptomania, are already things that player characters do by default.

A few I'd like to add to the list (from Being No One, by Thomas Metzinger)

Prosopagnosia
The afflicted is unable to recognize faces, including their own face.

Hemineglect
The afflicted is no longer capable of reading the left half of sentences or phenomenally representing events in the left half of their visual field. The afflicted may not dress the left side of their body or shave the left side of their face. Left, as a visual model of reality, ceases to exist for them.

Blindsight
The afflicted has a phenomenal hole in their vision; their conscious mind is blind to the affected area, but the visual information still registers with the unconscious part of their mind. The afflicted is considered blind, but they are able to correctly "guess" colors, patterns, and the positions of objects in front of them.

Anosognosia
The afflicted loses higher-order insight into existing deficit, and cannot update their self-model to account for deficits; if blind the character does not realize they are blind, if deaf the character does not know that they are deaf, etc.

Cotard Delusion
The afflicted suffers a delusional belief that they are dead, does not exist, is putrefying, or has lost their blood/internal organs.

[burningtorso]

otiv, my first campaigns were all conversions using variations of Stormbringer/Call of Cthulhu rules. I can try compiling some of my old stuff for you if you wish, though it's tricky since most of it was incorporated into the character creator programs I wrote.

[otiv]

Yeah, burningtorso, that sound's great!

[ritt]

This is a great thread full of good stuff.

Stormbringer and Carcosa, IMHO, go together like a shirtless dude with a crystal sword riding a giant cat and a green-skinned alien babe with six nipples.

1ed Unknown Armies is an unsung masterpiece of super-tight game mechanics and one of the few truly adult horror settings. The 1999 adventure Fly To Heaven, where the PCs have to foil a terrorist plot to fly a hijacked plane into the Sears Tower, is genuinely chilling in retrospect.

Maybe Carcosians can develop a skill called something like "Jaded" or "Mundanity" that acts as a back-up SAN roll... but at a cost. Perhaps at above 60% you can't see ulfire or jale anymore. At 70% you can no longer use any magic. 80% is color-blindness.

[otiv]

I like Mundanity as a skill!
It has an interesting symmetry with the Mythos skill.

I like it when characters from other settings (like Hammer-horror Earth as envisioned by James Raggi) cross into Carcosa and vise versa. Mundanity could represent both resistance to the madness of the Great Old Ones and the character's connection to the "Quiet Side" as Zak S. calls it in A Red and Pleasant Land.

With a higher Mythos skill your eyes open to the horrible truth of the cosmos and the Great Old Ones, and your mind shatters.
With a higher Mundanity skill you withdraw deeper inward into comforting delusions of a quiet life on Earth, but at least you can enjoy short-lived reprieve against the psychic assaults of Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu.

A character with low Mythos and low Mundanity would be more-or-less a 'typical' fluorescent colored nomad on Carcosa.
A character with high Mythos and low Mundanity though would be like some kind of planeswalker straddling both worlds, passing through the interstice at will.

*edit*

Papa Lazarou!

That's a black Sorcerer of Carcosa with high enough Mundanity to cross over into our world but high enough Mythos to maintain control.
youtu.be/s2F4ZWTjwTU