16 September 2024 Horror: CoC vs. DCC?

    I have become enamored of a podcast called The Old Gods of Appalachia. It is a horror podcast set in the Appalachian Mountains, and it is great. I have been thinking a lot about running a horror game when I am done with DCC, but I can't find the will to run Call of Cthulhu again. Don't misunderstand me: I love that game! I have been running it since I was 14 years old (forty-one freaking years), which is the problem: I can't think of any way to make the game fresh for my players, most of whom have been playing it as long as I have. There is no way to make the cosmic horror feel fresh, or threatening, when they have literally faced every kind of god, monster, cultist, and being in Lovecraft's canon. So...I think I am done running that game with my particular batch of players. 

    I have recently purchased the Old Gods of Appalachia RPG from Monte Cook Games. Having (briefly) gone through the PDF, it looks really good...but it's not on Roll20, so running a campaign using their Cipher System (which I don't know anything about) would be difficult. However, I am thinking that I could run an OGoA game using a different rules engine, so that the narrative frame was the same, but the actual mechanics were something else. The question is...what engine?

    I could use the Call of Cthulhu game engine, which is on Roll20, and is familiar to everyone. It is a very good horror system, but my fear is that it would just feel like Cthulhu with different monsters. Conversely, I could use the Dungeon Crawl Classics system, which is easier and very easy to hack apart by adding things, deleting things, etc. I'm not sure how that would go: DCC is a roll-high system where every check is based on attributes, whereas CoC is a roll-low skills-based system with point allocation as the main mechanic. Very different vibes. Concerning DCC, I was thinking about having my players roll up two characters--one for the 1930s Appalachia that I'm seeing in my mind, and another for the Shudder Mountains, which is DCC's fantasy Appalachia. I could come up with some way to move them from one world to another based on a common threat. This sounds good in my head, but I'm not sure how it would play in real life. 

I spend way, way too much time thinking about these things.     

11 September 2024 Summer's date hath all too short a lease...

     Well...I sort of forgot about this blog. Last spring was a difficult time for my family and me, so I was pretty distracted through May, June, and July. Things are much better now. Over the summer, my group and I continued to play Dungeon Crawl Classics, which has been more fun than I anticipated. We are on session 13 of my sword&sorcery campaign, and the lads are level three. I thought that we were going to play a quick and dirty campaign where we raced them through to level 5 just to get a better feel of how DCC works at higher levels, but everyone is enjoying the game, including me, so I've slowed it down. I wish I hadn't blasted through level two as quickly as I did, but level three feels pretty manageable. 

    I have been homebrewing a game set in a very bastardized version of Hyboria (i.e. Robert E. Howard's world of Conan). Just about everything we've played has been made up by me, with some help from The Palace of Unquiet Repose for a campaign framework. I also used the DCC module The Jeweler That Dealt in Stardust (which has vanished from the Goodman Game's store, for some reason). I've used a lot of random tables to make the world come to life a bit more organically than I have in the past, and it's all worked well: a few of the city encounters led to memorable role-playing experiences (including the death of a PC), and have added a bit of flavor to the desert city of Khanirya. I have been pleased.

    Now the group has headed into the desert, and into the actual module (Unquiet Repose). I set up one encounter at a well with one of the Nine (the Thousand-Faced Prince) and some raiders...and it's turned into an opportunity for a side quest. I have found that DCC stimulates my imagination in a way that D&D no longer does. The system is incredibly easy to use, and it has this truly unique weird vibe that I am digging. So, successful campaign so far! 

    I spent a good amount of time digging into Castles&Crusades, too, which I like. It has a very stable magic system, which--after running the DCC magic system--feels a bit stodgy, but I think C&C lends itself well to a more traditional fantasy game. I have yet to play it, so stay tuned. 

    I came to the realization a week or so ago that I am a collector: I may never play the stuff that I buy, but I still buy it because I love it and it makes me happy. Financially I am in a place where I can buy whatever I want to, and I will! I literally have one hobby. This stuff sparks joy in my heart. 

The Marmoreal Tomb: I may never play it, but we wants it, my precious....