Why Games do Cthulhu Wrong

I will likely fall victim to this, but most games do Cthulhu wrong. Extra Credits hi-lights how Cthulhu, and mythos creatures in general, take the approach of using them as monsters to kill rather than representations of cosmic horror and the indifference of reality to man's existence. After all, as Counter Monkey said, if you stat it, they will kill it.


I am going to try my hardest to avoid this error. Fight with Cthulhu? Nope. Fight with an eternally living Aboleth. Yes. Encounter Yog-Sothoth? Nope. Discover the ruins of the Elder Things and fight a shoggoth that still wanders among the ruins? Perhaps.

Almost 400,000 Public Domain Images

The release of almost four hundred thousand searchable images into the public domain was brought to my attention by Death and Axes. I will likely use it to give players images of significant treasure, like this wrought iron box. I am sure you can find other uses.

Game Mechanic Hi-light: ACKS

After looking through several retro-clones I decided I would start hi-lighting various mechanics and system tweaks that I found better than the norm. In the Adventurer Conqueror King System there are three related mechanics that I like.

The first is that Autarch went back to basics and rebalanced their economy around how much income a peasant family could make from farming wheat. This is not an amazing work of economics, but it does give them a starting point to determine how much gold there is in the system and from there a method for determining how many NPCs of various levels you would find in a city of 10,000 people.

The first related mechanic is that PCs gain experience by bringing treasure back to civilization. So, if you bring back a magical sword and sell it for N gold you receive N xp. One condition on this is that you cannot have used the magic item during your adventures. If you benefit from the item you do not get to benefit from it again. This is likely to stop characters from getting bonus xp ever time they find a more powerful item and attempt sell their now obsolete items.

Tied into this concept of loot equaling xp is the concept of banking xp. If instead of gaining xp from your loot you can instead spend it on non-beneficial things (Nick Sly's notorious 10k gold drinking binge), and then if you character retires or dies you receive 90% of the value of that misspent loot as xp for your new character (Nick Sly later dies to a flumph, but fortunately the party finds an experienced wizard who wants to join the party).

The Problem with Torches

So I was looking for info on torches and I stumbled upon Lindybiege's Youtube channel. I have not yet gotten to look at all the videos, but there are three videos on the difficulties of torches and how movies characterize them (part 1, part 2, part 3).

I figure that there should be several options for the players to use for non-magical light in addition to torches, the most likely candidate being rudimentary lanterns. This should also make players consider magical items and spells that generate smoke free light a true boon. 50 gold to have a torch with continual flame? That is a steal.

The Dread Undercity: Toronto's PATH Systems

You can take inspiration from existing structures in addition to taking inspiration from spectacular wilderness. A great example to look at is found in Toronto. If every building on the surface of Toronto was left for ruin you would be left with a vast underground. Running under Toronto's financial district, and other parts of downtown, you can find the PATH. Soon to be nearly 60km of underground walkways, it is one of the world's largest underground cities. Each of these buildings alone could play host to a dungeon.



If you play on having several smaller dungeons, or levels, connected as one larger structure then you can take inspiration from a node based transit system:





Then, if you want a more orderly node structure you can rearrange the nodes in an orderly manner:



This design makes it easier to see where the lines connect and which nodes at the most important. This map is actually so structured that I am willing to bet that it could easily be run as a dungeon with minimal modifications made to the layout. It could also form the general design for an orderly megadungeon. Something like an ancient dwarven city.

Environs of the Megadungeon: Inspiration from Denali Wilderness

Maybe it is a little inspiration from the Song of Ice & Fire, maybe it is the overly long winter I just experienced, but I want the megadungeon and its environs set in a colder land than you would find in most quasi-European settings. This does not mean that the players would be constantly trekking through snow and ice. Witness Denali Wilderness, a national park located in the interior of Alaska.

Below the treeline you have scenes like this:



and the park is centred around the highest peak in North America Denali (Mount McKinley):



although, in the upper reaches you would have glaciers and ice fields like Ruth Glacier



The environs around the megadungeon will be at the very edge of civilization. The land is bountiful in its resources, but also untamed. It is that very untamed nature that draws adventurers. Legends of ancient civilizations to the north have been a staple of myth for hundreds if not thousands of years. The barrier between this world and others seems to be thinner here, and correspondingly magic is at times more powerful, although not always as the caster would foresee. Recently gold has been found in the streams and rivers and more people have begun to head north.

There are outposts of civilization, with prospectors and fur traders doing brisk business to feed the ever present hunger of the decadent empire to the south. But this is also the end of the road, and one of the few places to escape the reach of imperial justice. You may run into someone in the wilderness, but are they merely making their living or are they trying to avoid a bounty that has been placed upon their head?

Thoughts on the System

I was discussing the idea of a megadungeon with a few friends and it was suggested that I try and make it as system agnostic as possible. What I mean by system agnostic is that the design and philosophy of the megadungeon should work equally well with more than just one system. If someone wants to run the system using Pathfinder it should work. Same goes for GURPS or Rifts or World of Darkness.

I will still be working on having my own home-brew system, but I will tag my thoughts on the system separately from the megadungeon itself. In trying to develop my own home-brew system I have been exposed many systems that I was not familiar with, and I can see the appeal of many of them, even though most of my experience with with the d20 and storyteller systems.

The one aspect that may not be system agnostic is the stress/sanity mechanic. That is still one of the key components from Darkest Dungeons that really sparked my imagination. Tied to that is the suggestion that I have for any GM that takes an interest in my setting: there is no darkvision, all characters must depend upon their light sources to fend off the darkness.