Post AkJ6jpda9i4ff1szhY by arossp@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by arossp@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AkIhIN5FiCNQQjdas4 by arossp@mastodon.social
2024-07-25T18:03:52Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I'm running an #UnknownArmies #TTRPG campaign, and was looking at my #DeltaGreen books as I was thinking about what I'd run next. And I was struck by how uninterested I've become in the existential hopelessness of the latter's setting. Unknown Armies is dark and grimy and has plenty of bad people doing bad things, but its core is quite human and hopeful. There was a time I loved the cosmic nihilism of Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green, but, for a lot of reasons, I now very much bounce off of it.
(DIR) Post #AkIhIO4a2BQvUwKZSi by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-25T20:49:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@arossp All that being true, it is quite easy to make the Cthulhu Mythos an inherently hopeless environment, particularly with Delta Green, since you have an organization with funding and support, along with personnel, who are in a prime place to pull together the threads of how mankind might remove itself from the eye of the Great Old Ones and avoid the coming destruction.That's it, that's all you have to do, inject the possibility of hope, and then have characters pursue it. Full-throatedly.I love cosmic nihilism. Don't get me wrong. It will always be one of my favorite things about many settings. But it's not the only option for those settings, and subverting the expectation of it can be quite fun.#TTRPG
(DIR) Post #AkJ6jpda9i4ff1szhY by arossp@mastodon.social
2024-07-26T01:34:23Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@lextenebris Yes, definitely, you can run them in a more hopeful way. But you'll be pushing against the material as written. Delta Green is pretty clear that the agents' jobs are ultimately hopeless and that Delta Green is destined to fail. The published scenarios and campaigns are relentlessly grim. And the Mythos, and cosmic horror by its nature, don't leave much room for hope. That's just not their jam.
(DIR) Post #AkJ8ldLt0GXi2tb01w by arossp@mastodon.social
2024-07-26T01:37:02Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@lextenebris I like that UA (and it was intentional on John Tynes's part) presents a distinct alternative. The Cthulhu Mythos is "Humans ultimately don't matter and are insignificant." UA is "Humans are the only thing that matters and are the most important thing in the universe." This doesn't make UA *better* in an objective sense than CoC/DG. I've just noticed that my perspective has shifted such that I'm much more drawn to that human-centric world building and themes.
(DIR) Post #AkJ8lebAMwMLuZkiUC by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-26T01:57:09Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@arossp I've never really cared much about "the material as written" since I end up writing my own stuff anyway when it's not being procedurally generated.If anything, the inspiration of things that already exist gives me a good reason to subvert them in some unfathomable way. You can also directly assume that the characters don't know that they are ultimately doomed to failure. Lean in on portraying that.Who knows, they might be right. Someday, eventually. Perhaps not within their own lifetimes, which really makes their effort that much more heroic.I appreciate what UA does and really enjoyed playing it back when it first came out. My problem with it is that it leans too far the other way.I end up coming away with a variant of the Babylon 5 line, "Imagine how terrible it would be if we really deserved everything bad that happened to us." In UA, humanity really is directly responsible for all of its own suffering and misery.In its way, to me, that's far more horrific and unpleasant in an aesthetic way than the idea that the universe simply is and uninterested in the human condition.#TTRPG #horror #Cthulhu
(DIR) Post #AkJ8sPacZNszODihJA by lextenebris@social.vivaldi.net
2024-07-26T01:58:23Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@arossp These days, if I'm playing around in that kind of space, I'm not playing either one of them because they're both too explicit about the relationship of humanity to existence.I'll play #Starforged with the horror turned way up. I really enjoyed the early ideas that went into #CthulhuTech with humanity actively fighting back using mythos' own nightmarish tools... possibly successfully, possibly simply converting themselves into something worse.I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on #EldritchAutomata, which is somewhat in the same space. I will always love the Cthulhu mythos, but in my own way, after this many years, I keep looking for ways to make it more horrific. By contrasting it with the possibility of hope. (And usually snatching it away and burning it, but I'm a sadist.)#TTRPG #Cthulhu