Here we go. Monday brings the next in-game adventure of the Innsmouth Garden Society.
As for the panels with Larry and the garbled dialogue in his second panel. That’s intentional. Patience.
I’d appreciate it if you could tell your buddies as I have a feeling these will go quickly.
So I’ve been meaning to try out a Lovecraftian RPG and so far I’m not sure where to turn. Recommendations? I know of Trail of Cthulhu that’s more recent and a different one from the… 80s I think. I hear the Arkham Horror board game is fun also, any thoughts?
Arkham Horror is good, and is very much ‘let’s cram ALL the Mythos into one box’ mode. Still, it’s a long/complex game.
I’m rather fond of Betrayal at the House on the Hill for good spine-chilling board gaming. A group of people go into a house. One of them is there to betray the others… and you don’t know who, or how, until they are revealed… Explore the strange, strange house. Discover things best left unfound. And when the time comes… try to survive.
I will second the recommend for Betrayal at the House on the Hill. It’s a great game. For something directly lovecraftian I’d recommend Elder Sign. It’s fun and it plays a lot faster than Arkham Horror.
Arkham Horror is pretty solid. Trail is meh imo, I’d recommend tracking down Ye Olde Call of Cthulu. If you’re up for something on the extra bizarre side try Cthulutech.
Go with the “old” Call of Cthulhu, d100 system. You won’t regret it.
For the board game arkham horror is quite fun indeed.
I really enjoy Trail. But it’s a very different flavor from Call. Call is more like a Lovecraft story in that it can be long, meandering, 100% chance of losing Sanity, may not all hold together… Trail is for people who prefer a tighter RPG. For one-shots, it’s much better. It can be played like a pulp book/film or in a more Lovecraftian style. The latter brings it closer to the chance of losing Sanity. I just prefer the system.
I have tried a few Cthulhu systems over the years and the one I enjoyed the most, oddly enough, was the d20 Call of Cthulhu written by Monte Cook. It is a great all-in-one book.
What I would like to try is Trail of Cthulhu as I hear good things about it and I would like to try CoC Fate game.
As a Savage Worlds fan, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Realms of Cthulhu. It uses the Savage Worlds system, but you can make it as pulpy or harsh as you feel your players would enjoy.
Classic CoC is awesome. HAve you Seen Actung Cthulhu!? Basically it’s WWII with sanity draining Elder awesomeness.
Second the Achtung Cthulhu vote. It’s like Saving Private Ryan’s Sanity.
Oh wow! Thanks everyone. I have ordered a copy of Betrayal as it sounds like something my friends and I would dig! Also, I’ll look into some of the recommendations for pen and paper Cthulhu gaming!
Damn you and your sneaky alt text!
It’s almost like you want me to keep reading your excellent webcomic, so you create a mystery that I have to keep reading to find out what is happening.
Devious trickery! =)
Brian,
You are a bastard. A charming bastard, a delicious comic-tease of a bastard. Even a lovable bastard. But a bastard none the less.
I was looking forward to this weekend, but now it is just blocking Monday’s comic from getting here sooner.
I feel like Larry’s being called back to his realm and Sam is losing “The Narrative”.
No, Larry! Don’t make Sam do something douchey and get himself ostracized.
Dammit! Fine, since we don’t get to see Larry’s words in that panel, I am left to speculate the possibilities.
“Gray proposed. I said yes.”
“The 6th edition is coming”
“I really like boobies”
*mumble mumble mumble* followed by “Sorry. let me spit out my gum”
“I really want to play in your Karthun campaign.”
The first one made me choke on my coffee.
I played a Call of Cthulhu game once. My thing when I do tabletop games is that my characters always have an element of goofy irony to them:
– When I played D&D for the first time, I was a warrblade built around Intimidate who would run away when he failed to Intimidate. “RAWR FEAR ME. […] OH GOD THEY AREN’T SCARED RUN RUN RUN RUN”
– When I played Dark Tides (a friend’s awesome homebrew setting) I was an intellectual Tybral (think gorilla with armadillo plates) whose whole thing was flipping out and using brute force in combat.
– When I played Call of Cthulhu, however was the best one. I was a gambler who didn’t take chances. Every time we entered a new room, or opened a container that potentially contained stuff resulting in SAN loss, I’d put my face against a wall and cover my eyes. Good stuff.
Shouldn’t it be “purrmione”?
Oh god I’m nitpicking spelling errors in puns, stop me before I go to far!
It should be! I’ll have to fix it this evening. Thanks for the heads up!
Noooooo! I don’t wanna wait…
Awesome as alaways, and I’ll keep checking in…as long as it takes…sigh.
Good to see another IGS story beginning. Nooodly weirdeness!
Hey Brian, will the guys ever play some Shadowrun?
There is a very good chance for that someday.
That would be fun.
I’ll have to be the asshole who says it.
“I’ll bet she saved him a comfy seat. If ya know whadda mean.. Because, you know, that chair looks very comfortable. “
Its his dad isnt it? Sam is beeing groomed to replace him cuz hes gonna pass away?
Sheesh man like i dont have enough ominous worries hanging over my head now im worried about a fictional character. So i guess bravo for making me care about him
Poor Sam…not only the bad news, but now his evening is ruined before it begins…
On another note, has anybody ever heard of or conceived of using “super” pulp heroes in their Cthulhu campaign? Think Captain America, The Shadow, Doc Savage, Hugo Danner and the like taking on the myriad Eldritch horrors. Amongst other more obvious advantages, their sanity might be more resilient than most, due to the strange and unusual being old hat for them.
Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a traditional Cthulhu game? I always thought the point was to embrace the horror of it… though any game I’ve played in usually turned into black comedy/horror, where we all knew we were going to die, the only questions were how and why…
That said, there are a number of games that use creatures inspired by the Mythos that don’t use Sanity systems as well, like Pathfinder. Once you get to a certain level in that, you can just punch out a shoggoth and keep going with no ill effects. I’ll be curious to see what they do with it now that Cthulhu himself is actually getting statted up in the next Bestiary though.
What if they make the Beholder a Minion of Cthulhu!? 8| Makes sense, what with the tentacles and all…
I agree, originally CoC was supposed to be existential horror that the player wasn’t meant to *survive,* much less defeat; My idea would definitely defeat that purpose, making it more supers vs. monsters pulp adventure…but as you said, this would just be one more flavor in a vast array of mythos settings, so it’s okay!
While I think of it, if you’re looking for some pulp action Lovecraft-Lite, you may want to check out the third volume of Atomic Robo. While the whole series is fantastic, Atomic Robo and the Shadow out of Time has a really Lovecraft inspired storyline. Admittedly there’s plenty of humour and so on in it, and not much terror, but it’s damn good fun.
I’ve heard of Atomic Robo, it’s awesome! Can’t wait to get it!
I’m not sure about Marvel, but I know DC has a clone of Cthulhu in their universe.
My guess is, the final test is either something pretty horrible, like “if you fail, you can never dm again.” Or “if you go insane in this, you lose your mind in real life.” Oooor. The premise has been a lie, and there’s another reason for all this.
I think that everybody has lost their minds at least a little bit so far.
WOW! I am caught up on the archives! At first I was happy, then I was like “ahh, now I gotta wait for the next one.” So this is what real-time comics feel like.
…so am I going to be the guy who points out that Brian didn’t say there were any answers forthcoming on Monday? All of you who’ve said your weekend has been spoiled by this cliff hanger…well…it could be a while before we see what’s going on out of game. Sorry to be a killjoy 🙁
Not oft that the story leaves us utterly in the dark until last second. Sam’s going through with the game after all and I don’t see utterly fatal consequences coming from the narrative. Perhaps a little sanity loss and such like…
Or ostracism/ inability to dm.
The final narrative test may very well be that Sam has to fill Brett’s usual spot in the gaming table… But I see something a bit more… Difficult than that.
So if Larry costs Sam the girl, the lesson here would be that to be a good DM you can not have relationships to hold you back. I mean as a gamer my self that just seems not worth it on any level. To Hell with the DM training, find someone and be happy man.
The common literary trope here is that Amy throwing herself at Sam is indicative of her sexual immaturity and so Larry’s bad news is, even though Sam would love a relationship with her, it shouldn’t happen and he needs to let her down.
My guess on the chance that’s where the story is going to go: 13ish%
I’m totally hooked in and excited to see wherever you take this.
Psst – Hermione, not Hermoine.
My guess is that the ongoing issues with Gray’s behavior have cause an insurance-up.
Looks like Pop may have t close the shop.
Rereading these in the time of Covidlockdown, and I’m wondering (I honestly don’t remember if you stated it elsewhere) if you just wanted to get away from doing the “geeks with geeky superpowers” thing that seemed to be so prevalent at the time an focus more on slice of life. Love the story, whatever the reason, and proud to be a patron. Just wondering aloud.