#Cthulhu Saves the World

[videogamewhales]

[ID: An image of the Dolphin enemy, a dolphin standing upright on its tail fins holding rope and a harpoon, from Cthulhu Saves the World. End ID.]

Dolphin from Cthulhu Saves the World (2010)

[noi-dev]

CTHULHU SAVES THE LGBT

LISA: THE FEMBOYFUL

OMONONBINARY

SUPER LESBIAN ANIMAL RPG

indie rpgs if they were WOKE

TRANSGENDERTALE

GAY THE PRINCESS

WOKE SHOT

IN STARS AND TIME

[matovilka]

Cthulhu Saves The World

[mysteamgrids]

Cthulhu Saves the World

[pitagain]

#365DaysOfVGM Day 102:

Existence Collapses [Final Boss] (Cthulhu Saves the World [2010])

You know, many people would’ve posted at least more than 3 Final Boss themes by now, but I like to space these out nicely, to make a point:

Finales are overrated, in most cases they shouldn’t be all a work is known for. But good finales are still worth my attention, of course.

Here’s a good “traditional-sounding” Final Boss theme with all the intense Organs, “epic” Choirs, lingering Flutes, catchy electric Guitars, old-fashioned Drums, fast-paced Horns, among a few other instruments you’ve come to expect in this kind of music by now, to finish off the game’s absurdist titular premise! You can’t go wrong with the classics as long as you know what made them good in the first place, something this track demonstrates quite well!

(Length before loop: 3+ minutes)

[darkparablesthorst]

Inspired by the previous reblog, the idea of the fairytale detective being non-human would be fun to dive into since we don't have much of a backstory on her. The possibilities are endless.

She could be a cryptid.

Perhaps an eldritch construct sent by higher beings to restore the balance of magic.

She may even reveal herself to be a forgotten deity, far more ancient than the gods and goddesses she has helped in the past decades, awakened by the increasing irregularities of magic.

Maybe she's already dead and was replaced by a superhuman android built by the detective agency she worked at to keep a better hold on the volatile world of fairytales, because, I swear, the detective was not the same since Eipix took over lmao.

Perhaps she's the incarnation of humanity's collective yearning for the magical and fantastic, which is why she has such an affinity for the supernatural when those fantasies turn out to be real.

Maybe she's a changeling, an infant swapped at birth and grew up drawn to the songs of the brook, the whispers of the wind, and the calls of the forest in the middle of the night, all of which easily fly past the attention of others.

[charrednewt]

Some time ago, a person told me that playing only D&D is a bit like only watching blockbuster Marvel movies - it's fun to do sometimes but limits your perspective. I got a little bit skeptic at that, but then she and the people of that gaming group made me try a lot of those indie ttrpgs they were talking about.

I did not love all of them, but trying new systems has been very enriching. Sitting down at a table and starting something completely new for an afternoon is a lot of fun, especially because most of those systems are much lighter than D&D. Which, we can all agree, is actually a beast of a ruleset. The fact that it is considered "starter" material is kind of absurd all things considered.

I say a lot of stuff on this blog about "play another game" and I really want people to understand what I mean about that. monopolies are bad. DnD has, through marketing and business decisions and luck and capital, dominated the entire hobby in a way that no other creative genre has ever seen before.

[non-plutonian-druid]

So heres the thing about Dredge.

I think its a huge missed opportunity that the main character is the husband and not the wife.

the backstory doesnt come out fully until the end, but when it does, what you learn is this:

some amount of time ago, the player character was married. over the course of the game, you pick up notes from a woman, and at the end you learn that she was your wife.

*was*, because Cthulhu ate her.

you were a fisherman, and obsessed with the ocean, and she was not. you were superstitious, and she was not. And one day, she messed up and did something unlucky, and then she was lost at sea one night when she was on your boat.

it fucks you up so bad that you lose all your memory and end the world trying to save her.

so, obviously you're torn up about her, but also, it kinda didn't have anything to do with you. She fucked up and she got got. whoops! Oh well. It also didn't change very much about you: you're still a superstitious fisherman obsessed with the sea, except you're sad now.

But if you were the wife? If he died instead?

you were happily newlywed, but if you had one issue with your husband, it was that he was too married to the sea. He was too obsessed with fishing. He liked his boat too much, and he had all these sailor superstitions that you don't take seriously.

then one day, you ignore his superstitions. and a horrible eldritch force that you've never even dreamed of KILLS HIM.

your husband is DEAD and it is YOUR FAULT.

and it breaks you. So much that you take his boat, set sail, and spend your life at sea. Just like him. Embroiled in superstition and ocean magic. Just like him. Just like your least favorite parts about him. and you spend the rest of your life trying to undo the horrible thing you did, and only ever manage to end the world.

wouldn't that be so much fun?

[probablybadrpgideas]

THINGS I AM UNREASONABLY ANNOYED ABOUT BY GAME SYSTEM

D&D: Please put a disclaimer that you are not a universal system. Every time I see someone try to do a political mystery game in D&D, I take 3d10 psychic damage and have to make a death saving throw.

Pathfinder: Look. If i wanted to play a game about fighting Cthulhu there is an extremely famous game specifically designed around doing that. Literally no-one is ever going to say "Wow, I want to play a Cthulhu themed game! Time to stat up a musical halfling from a magical fantasy land!".

Chronicles Of Darkness: Just admit no-one uses any of your rules. You have Social Door Rules and Integrity Conditions and Corruption Levels and I bet at most 50% of COD players could tell me which of those I made up. Just admit people aren't dressing up as Alucard The Bringer Of Shadows because they want to sit down and do calculus.

World Of Darkness: You know that old guy who's still doing his job even though he is way too old to do it any more, but he's now an institution so you can't get rid of him? Like that. The 90s called and they want literally everything about this back.

Call Of Cthulhu: I appreciate the commitment to authenticity, but maybe stop hiring actual disgraced mental asylum directors from the 1920s to design your sanity system?

GURPS: Look. Look. Listen. We both know that you just want to write history textbooks. These are history textbooks with a few stat blocks begrudgingly put in. If you just give me a book on early Chinese history I will read it and go "ah, very interesting!". You don't need to put in a list of character choices. We're all nerds. We'll read them. Live your best life.

Powered By The Apocalypse: I actually can't think of anything wrong with PBTA. That's not a bit, this is literally the perfect system. Take notes everyone else.

Mutants and Masterminds/Heroes System: Your systems have probably the most customizable character creation in the world and you both just make reskins of the Justice League over and over again. Maybe we only need one "thinly veiled copyrighted characters" setting? You can fight over it once you decipher your combat mechanics.

FATE: Ok I won't lie, I have no idea how the fuck FATE works. I have read the rules repeatedly and played three games and I still have no idea what invoking an aspect means. I don't know why. I grasped the rules of fucking Nobilis but this one just psychologically eludes me. This is more a problem with me I guess, but I'm still annoyed.

Warhammer 40k: Have you considered spending less on avocado toast? Then you might be able to afford to charge less for things?

Exalted: Apart from the lore, the setting, the mechanics, the metaplot, the character creation and the dodgy narrative implications, I can't think of anything to improve here.

[theguywithaplan]

List of Games Turning Twenty (20) Years Old in 2025

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Advent Rising (they started planning the trilogy before the first game was out lmao)

Age of Empires III

Animal Crossing: Wild World (the DS one)

Arc the Lad: End of Darkness

Area 51 (the FPS that was low-key kinda creepy)

Banjo Pilot (the Banjo-Kazooie racing game on GBA).

Battalion Wars (the spin-off of Advance Wars).

Battlefield 2

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood (yep, they released two mainline games in one year).

Burnout Revenge (this cleared Burnout 3, and I will fight you on that).

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Call of Duty 2

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (go play the Castlevania Dominus collection. It has this game and a few others and it's GREAT).

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

Civilization IV

Cold Fear (answering the age old question: what if Resident Evil 4 was on a boat and not as good?)

Condemned: Criminal Origins (a launch title for the Xbox 360 and a pretty solid horror game).

Conker: Live & Reloaded (maybe a controversial opinion, but this is WAY better than the original).

Crash Tag Team Racing

Dead or Alive 4 (aka, the one with not Master Chief in it).

Destroy All Humans!

Devil Kings (all the sequels would be under it's non-translated title: Sengoku Basara).

Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening (let's rock, baybeeeeee)

Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat

Dragon Ball Z: Sagas (I saw a stream of this game a few months back, and oh my god, this looks so shitty/funny).

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

Dynasty Warriors 5 (who's excited for Origins???)

Far Cry Instincts (a console version of the PC exclusive original game)

Fatal Frame III: The Tormented

F.E.A.R. (if you haven't played this before, change that. it's fantastic)

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (the one with Ike the Bisexual in it).

Forza Motorsport (the very first one).

Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows

Geist (the rare M-rated Nintendo game).

The Getaway: Black Monday

God of War (the very first one).

Gran Turismo 4 (one of the few PS2 games that could be played in HD, along with... Jackass: The Game...)

Guild Wars

Guitar Hero (the very first one).

Haunting Ground (a very rare PS2 horror game from Capcom).

Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer (since the second movie came out, this game is now considered non-canon).

Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit (the second game from known hack/fraud David Cage).

Jade Empire (the last game that BioWare made before they got acquired by EA).

Jak X: Combat Racing

Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death (there was a for real-ass Judge Dredd game on the GameCube).

Kameo: Elements of Power (another Xbox 360 launch title, this one made by a post-acquisition Rare. It's pretty fun).

Killer7 (from the greatest to ever do it, Suda51)

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (you guys think it's based on the movie or what...?)

Kirby: Canvas Curse (a really fun DS game that only used the stylus)

Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament (i think klonoa would get along really well with sonic)

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (the one where Link gets really small)

Lego Star Wars: The Video Game

Lunar: Dragon Song (one of the worst RPGs I've ever played. Don't play it).

Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (the one with the Baby Mario Bros.)

Mario Kart DS (the first one with online play).

Mario Party Advance

Mario Party 7 (my personal favorite)

Mario Superstar Baseball (we didn't get a Mario Baseball game on the Switch. Because they're saving it for the Switch 2).

Mario Tennis: Power Tour (so many Mario games...)

Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix

Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects

The Matrix Online (an official continuation from the movies)

The Matrix: Path of Neo

Medal of Honor: European Assault

MediEvil: Resurrection

Mega Man Battle Network 5 (the only one in the series to have a DS version)

Mega Man Zero 4

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction

Metal Gear Acid (a launch title for the PSP, and a card game set in the Metal Gear universe. It works better than you might think).

Meteos (a puzzle game made by Masahiro Sakurai, the Smash Bros. guy)

Metroid Prime Pinball

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks

Myst V: End of Ages (the final Myst game)

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (did you know that this game outsold the entire Halo series?)

Neopets: The Darkest Faerie (is Neopets still a thing?)

Nicktoons Unite! (a crossover between Spongebob, Fairly Oddparents, Jimmy Neutron, and Danny Phantom).

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge (an honest to god sequel to the movie that plays like Devil May Cry).

Ninja Gaiden Black

Nintendogs

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath

Pac-Man World 3

Perfect Dark Zero (yet another Xbox 360 launch title, also made by Rare, and a sequel to one of the best FPS games ever made. It was fine).

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (it had been out in Japan for a few years, but us Yankees got this four years after it came out).

Pokemon Dash (a Pokemon racing game. It was not very good).

Pokemon Emerald Version (I sunk like 500 hours into this game).

Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness (a sequel to Pokemon Colosseum where you could capture other people's Pokemon).

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

Psychonauts

The Punisher

Quake 4

Ratchet: Deadlocked

Resident Evil 4

Serious Sam 2

Shadow of the Colossus (one of the best games ever made. Play it if you haven't yet).

Shadow the Hedgehog (pretty good to be a sonic fan right now).

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga (parts 1 and 2).

Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves

Sonic Rush

SoulCalibur III (RIP, SoulCalibur. Tekken is just too powerful.)

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (RIP, Splinter Cell. Ubisoft just sucks too much to make you anymore).

Spyro: Shadow Legacy

Star Fox Assault

Star Wars: Republic Commando

Star Wars: Battlefront II (this game's story mode is permanently etched into my brain).

Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse" (presenting it to you with no context. Look it up. It's hilarious).

Super Mario Strikers

Super Monkey Ball Deluxe

Tak: The Great Juju Challenge

Tekken 5

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (RIP, TimeSplitters. Embracer Group killed you before you could come back).

Trace Memory (got remade in 2024 as Another Code)

Twisted Metal: Head-On (another PSP launch title)

Ultimate Spider-Man (you could play as Venom in this one)

WarioWare: Touched!

WarioWare: Twisted!

We Love Katamari

Wild Arms: Alter Code F (a remake of the first game)

Xenosaga Episode II

X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse

[videogamewhales]

[ID: An image of the Fire Whale from Cthulhu Saves the World. End ID.]

Fire Whale from Cthulhu Saves the World (2010)

[open-sketchbook]

my girlfriend is asking for where she can find your written works, she really likes the one post you made about your mindstate wandering w/r/t making porn stories and she'd love to support you & read your stories

Sure!

I write my (public) fiction on the website Sufficient Velocity, a sci-fi forum. Most of them are in the form of 'quests', interactive stories; my day job is an independent tabletop roleplaying game designer, so the two things go hand in hand.

I unfortunately am both very busy and kind of a mess mentally, so fiction gets picked up and dropped a lot, and I write less than ever these days due to the shambles that my life has become.

For my quests, the stuff I'm proudest of is...

Castles of Steel, a longrunning (though currently on hiatus) story set in an alternate world much like our own, but with radically different gender politics. It's about the first woman in the navy of a country a lot like 1910s Imperial Japan, and more generally about how state power and imperialism entangles itself with and recoups social progress.

A Splinter in your Mind, a retelling of the Matrix with new characters and reimagined twists and worldbuilding. It makes the trans subtext into trans dommetext, and I feel its some of my cleverest writing.

Suffer Not, and especially its sequel The Witch Lives. Suffer Not is a Warhammer 40,000 fic about an Inquisitor who abuses her powers to actually make people's lives better, and is the story of her slowly realizing it is not enough. The Witch Lives takes place ten years later, following the grown up psyker the Inquisitor adopted, and focuses much more on faith, history, and the little people.

The Spider-Liv Trilogy started as a silly and honestly kind of bad extreme-divergence spiderman AU, but its sequel The Amazing Arachne is, I think, genuinely really good, because it's about what happens when a superhero gets hurt and then doesn't get better.

I've managed to properly publish two pieces of writing, as in you can get them in book form, and I'm still really proud of both.

Whispers from the Deep is an adaptation of the quest that defined the setting of my roleplaying game Flying Circus. It's about a young woman who steals a plane and runs away from her abuser with her boyfriend, and then has to take up life as an aerial mercenary in a 1920s-themed post-apocalyptic fantasy world. Also, she's a fish person and her village is a Cthulhu cult!

Lieutenant Fusilier in the Farthest Reaches is a pastiche of the Richard Sharpe books by Bernard Cornwell, moving the setting from the Napoleonic Wars to a bizarre future world where sentient, cheerfully productive robots were invented in the early 19th century and promptly took all the jobs, elevating all of humanity to the gentry and then to the stars. It's about a redcoated robot soldier who uses her immortality to save up and buy a commission in the Army of Great Britain and Beyond, a position normally occupied exclusively by humans, and then facing the fallout of her decision and the life choices leading to it as her first deployment spirals out of control. It's also, sorta, a parody of Star Trek; the Galactic Concert is a mechanized, Regency-themed Federation, and the back half of the book is basically about how the problems of a world cannot be solved by an away team of well-meaning people with stun pistols.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello!

I've always wanted to do a stealth game/campaign, but all my attempts to hack it into DnD have failed. Do you have any suggestions for a stealthy system? Not something as abstract as Knives in the Dark (tbh, I just have never been able to get into it) but something that hits the Assassin's Creed feeling of watching the target, making a plan, and then sneaking through the base taking out guards and hiding their bodies and such. Preferably on a grid map or similar, s we're terrible at theatre of the mind.

Thanks!

THEME: Stealthy Games.

Hello there, so I did some digging and I found plenty of stealth games, although none of them seem to really require a map in order to play. That being said, I don’t think that should stop you from providing maps to your players, even if they’re abstract! Some of these games might ask you to sketch out a rough map of the town or building that you’re in, which may help you provide your players with some visual references as they sneak around, trying not to get caught. When it comes to stealth, I think of three things: horror, heists, and spies.

Delta Green, by Arc Dream Publishing.

Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green opposes the forces of darkness with honor but without glory. Delta Green agents fight to save humanity from unnatural horrors—often at a shattering personal cost.

Delta Green comes highly recommended as a great way to play an X-Files type rpg, mixed in with the Cthulhu mythos. It uses a d100 system and is based in the modern day, casting your characters as former members of government agencies, recruited into a super-secret bureau that investigates supernatural things - and keeps those things hidden from the common public. The stealth of this game is mostly about covering up the eldritch and unnatural, even if it means framing someone else or condemning a beloved building.

Your characters in this game have some familiar pieces to them, such as six stats with the same titles as you’ll see in games like D&D. However, you’ll also have pieces like Bonds, which represent relationships that keep your character grounded, and a Sanity system that I’m personally not crazy about (I do not recommend this game for a group that doesn’t like trite mechanization of mental health disorders), but that gives you a way to incur penalties that aren’t just physical damage.

This looks to be the closest to a traditional rpg on this list, and with all the elements to keep track of, I can see how a physical map would be helpful. However, keep in mind that there isn’t a pace or speed stat attached to these characters, so things like line of sight or distance probably won’t be super granular - if you are shooting things you may have broad range bands to determine how difficult something is, but the final decision will be a GM decision, not something necessarily determined in the rulebook. Because the setting is a modern one, I think finding visual references for locations in this game would be very very easy.

If you want a taste of the game before you put your money down, you can check out the Free Starter Rulebook!

Minutes to Midnight, by Oliver S.

Minutes to Midnight is a game powered by Blades in the Dark about a crew of spies, trying to disrupt the balance of power in a modern cold war. They will have to stand strong in the face of their vicious opposition and handle a fragile web of untrustworthy informants, devious intrigues and deadly lies.

We play to find out if our agents can thrive in the cutthroat world of espionage. While the public may never know about their impact, their actions shape the political landscape and outcome of conflict. Will the players prevent the outbreak of a global disaster and use their influence to create a better future? Will they attempt to send the opposing bloc into a turmoil and establish a lasting hegemony? Or will their actions lead the world down a path of war and nuclear destruction?

The Forged in the Dark system uses a cycle in between missions and downtime, sinking your characters into the heart of the action as they pursue clandestine missions in locations built by the group in a session 0. Since the game takes place in the real world, using maps of real cities might be a great way to keep they players visually engaged, and using a city that the group has been to or is familiar with might also make it easier for the group to visualize the kinds of buildings and streets where their spies may be sneaking, scheming, and sleuthing.

Madstones, by xiombarg.

Those who know magic exists at all are the rich and teams of breakers like yourself that go into the jartowns for the Archons. Jartowns are created by burning folk alive in a wicker man, in a ritual known only to the oldest jet-setting Archons.

A jartown is an isolated area of spacetime that was cut out of our reality. Most jartowns consist of a small amount of space (enough for a suburb or town) and a loop of several years. Jartowns become more magickal and horrific with each loop, creating madstones. 

Madstones are small things, from actual stones to human organs, infused with concentrated, distilled magic. They're secretly coveted by the wealthy.

In this tiny 24XX-based tabletop RPG, players are breakers, desperate folk from the occult underground who find a way into the jartowns, hothouses for magick, to perform errands for the ultrarich Archons.

Play as a variety of roles, from sawbones to sinner to spook, and choose to hail from one of four origins, including jartown native.

24XX games are another toolbox that you can pick up and play around with to help you get started with creating your own experiences. Your character consists of a few skills and gear packaged together in a character class. In Madstones, these classes are various specialists, trained to deal with different elements that might pop up when you go delving into eldritch pockets of reality. There is both a stealth and a combat specialist in this game, but there’s also classes for things like a getaway driver, a hacker, and an occult specialist.

24XX games also exist because of their OSR predecessors, meaning that combat is risky, and often deadly - and therefore finding other ways to solve the problem is implicitly encouraged. However, the openness of the system means that your players don’t necessarily need to resort to stealth - they might prepare an elaborate ritual, create a unique piece of technology, or just decide to run away as fast as they can. In regards to maps, I think you could probably use a typical dungeon framework: leading the characters through various rooms or sections of the pocket dimension, and throwing horrors and weird environments their way.

Night’s Black Agents, by Pelgrane Press.

The Cold War is over. Bush’s War is winding down. You were a shadowy soldier in those fights, trained to move through the secret world: deniable and deadly.

Then you got out, or you got shut out, or you got burned out. You didn’t come in from the cold. Instead, you found your own entrances into Europe’s clandestine networks of power and crime. You did a few ops, and you asked even fewer questions. Who gave you that job in Prague? Who paid for your silence in that Swiss account? You told yourself it didn’t matter. It turned out to matter a lot. Because it turned out you were working for vampires.

Vampires exist. What can they do? Who do they own? Where is safe? You don’t know those answers yet. So you’d better start asking questions. You have to trace the bloodsuckers’ operations, penetrate their networks, follow their trail, and target their weak points. Because if you don’t hunt them, they will hunt you. And they will kill you.

A combination of modern spy fiction and vampire intrigue, Night’s Black Agents uses the GUMSHOE system, which is an investigative roleplaying system that provides your characters with resources they can spend to get into secret locations, compete against vampiric agents, and pick up information to help you put together the details of a conspiracy. In Night’s Black Agents, finding clues isn’t left up to chance - you will always get information as long as you tell the GM that you’re using a relevant skill. The obstacles in this game are more likely going to involve getting in and out of sticky situations - and if your opponents are vampires, well, stealth is likely going to be a more appealing than trying to slit their throats.

GUMSHOE games don’t need grid maps either, but a rough map of the city or country is probably very helpful, and it might be fun to draw the floor plans of various buildings that your players investigate in order to help them determine what areas may be the most interesting places to search for clues.

The Breathing, by Fistful of Crits.

You reside in The Archive, an unending and depthless structure spiralling deep into the dark and misty depths, devoid of life and presided over by a being known only to you as The Archivist.

The Archive is made up of windowless rooms and halls that vary greatly in their height, size and danger. All these spaces house numerous shelves containing the collected knowledge of the world outside of The Archive; a place you have been told you must earn your access to. The price of your freedom comes from the discovery of new or forgotten knowledge that can be found in the deepest parts of the structure. 

You, and a few others, are known as The Breathing, in a place full of creatures who were once like you but ultimately failed in their bid for freedom; now known as The Breathless. 

The Breathing is just an example of a broader style of game, using a system called Breathless. Breathless games use a series of polyhedral dice that deteriorate as you use them, with different dice attached to different skills. Throughout the game you pause to “take a breath”, and re-set your skills, bringing your dice back to their threshold. However, pausing to take a breath also gives the GM a chance to introduce a new trouble or complication, creating a cycle of mission, rest, mission, rest, etc.

As a game system, Breathless is pretty light and is fairly easy to hack. But the lightness of the rules also allows for creativity and add-ons, which could include rules for movement or placement. Since the game rewards finding ways to solve problems without having to resort to direct conflict, I can see games like this encouraging characters to think carefully about when to use their resources and when to just… sneak around the problem. If you want to include maps and a grid, you could provide a blueprint of a room inside The Archive and watch the players try to navigate it using their limited resources, with designated “rest areas” that they would have to get to in order to take a Breath.

This certainly isn’t a solution in a box, but it might provide some interesting tools to help you build the experience you’re looking for.

Night Reign, by Sinister Beard Games.

Night Reign is a roleplaying game of stealth, guile, violence and devilry for a GM and one or more players, set in a quasi-Edwardian metropolis perched on an inhospitable peninsula beset by toxic black rain and ruled by a corrupt cabal of Noble Houses.

You take the role of members of The Red Right Hand, a conspiracy loyal to the recently deposed royal family, using your talents in assassination, infiltration and dark sorcery to strike out at your oppressors.

A game all about the things you do in the shadows, Night Reign uses cards to resolve conflict, rather than dice. It also uses a token system to help you overcome obstacles without having to resort to violence - loud, messy, dangerous violence. The Ruled by Night system (which has an SRD that you can download for free) is about balancing the suspicion you’ve already raised against an increasing cost to being stealthy. You spend Shadow tokens in order to be able to attempt to do something, and try to get a hand as close as possible to 21, or at least higher than whatever the GM draws. Your characters will also have powers that can be very effective, but are likely to draw a lot of attention, so using them is risky.

Because of how this game runs, things like movement and speed are not likely to be tracked. However, I don’t think mapping out a location so that the players can understand where things are or what kind of space they’re in is going to hurt the experience. The SRD describes something called City Conditions, which appear to be elements of the fiction that might result from the characters’ choices, or provide obstacles to the players. If you have a map of the city in front of you, you could draw symbols on the map to indicate what’s happening as the story progresses, and even cross out places that have been destroyed.

Heist, by Hark Forsooth Games.

HEIST: Get the Crew Together is a cooperative RPG where you and a group of suave, savvy and slick fellow crooks plan and execute capers, grabbing the fanciest loot from the world's wealthy elite.

Heist is great for fans of shows like Leverage or movies like Ocean’s 11: you’re going to steal something shiny from someone who certainly doesn’t deserve it, and you’re going to do it with style. While combat is an option, your characters will also have to deal with suspicious marks, security systems, laser grids and bank vaults. The characters are composed of special talents and personal flaws, and the GM has the task of designing something the game calls Murphy’s Gun - a major twist that will reveal itself midway through the heist.

It can be tricky to determine what to prep for a game like this, but one thing that you can for sure prep is the location. Design the building, draw the floor plan, and come up with obstacles for the different areas - there’s not really movement tracking in this game but having the layout will certainly help your players come up with ideas about how to get in, get out, and get rich.

Another thing to consider…

Mothership doesn’t have any stealth skills, but what it does have is the incentive to be sneaky. If an alien horror is moving through the ship, you’re more likely to try and stay out of it’s way - and having no stealth skills means that the players have to describe what they’re doing to stay hidden; climb into vents, squeeze yourself into cupboards, and try to wriggle into the space suit. However, this doesn’t mean that you’re not rolling - you might roll to clamber over something or to fit yourself into something, or you might roll to scope out a location to find an exit or suitable hiding place. It’s also excellent in terms of maps - plenty of adventures will provide at least a blueprint of the space station or ship that you’re exploring, which you can use to spook your players with fresh horrors.

[somepsychopomp]

Alright monster fuckers, come get ur food

This is a rough draft of the first part of my Nosferatu AU, it's sort of like a prequel for what's to come. (Short summary: this is an AU where Poseidon is an undead eldritch being that's been pursuing Odysseus all his life, haunting him with nightmares and whatnot)

Mainly I would really appreciate some feedback about how fucked up crazy nasty ugly to make Poseidon. Like if he's an otherworldly being risen from the depths, should he be super ugly like Orlok or should I betray the original source material by making him sexy?

I'm mostly conflicted because this is an AU where he's still kind of the god of the seas, but is more of a Cthulhu-esque entity that was slumbering at the bottom of the ocean before being awoken by Odysseus' prayers.

The bedroom was dark and silent, save for the unsteady breathing of a nervous child. With trembling hands, he stood before his open window and struck two stones together until enough sparks flew to light the wick of his candle. 

The wind coming off the sea at this hour was frigid and biting, raising pebbles across the boy’s skin as he watched the candle’s flame rise high before setting and giving off a small circle of orange light. 

He wasn’t supposed to be awake at this hour. If anyone caught him, surely his mother and father would reprimand him in the morning. 

Odysseus knelt on a woven wool mat before the lit candle and raised his palms to the moon in supplication. Keeping his head bowed, he closed his eyes and prayed to the gods. 

“Please,” he whispered, his voice shaking from the cold of winter’s night. “Please, hear my prayers. My father grows old, my sister is too young. Please, send me a companion, a guardian. Someone to keep me warm at night and to play with during the day…a friend.”

The boy continued his prayers to the gods, ignoring his knees growing cold and stiff and his fingertips numb. Even so, he continued to pray. 

“Send me someone to fill my days and nights,” he asked the gods, unsure of how much time had passed since he began his prayers. 

Odysseus sniffled in the dark and the cold. Beyond his desire for companionship, he was assailed by shame. Was the love of his mother and father not enough for him? 

What of Ctimene and the way his younger sister loved to follow on his heels? 

His father’s hunting dogs, his old nursemaid? 

Odysseus did not understand why the company he had was not enough for him. He only wanted someone who knew him deeply, someone who knew him as if they were one. 

Without warning, a harsh gust of wind swept through his room. Odysseus gasped. Through his sealed eyelids, he found himself plunged into an oppressive darkness and knew his candle had gone out. 

Then… a new sound. It was similar to the wind’s groan, but not quite. 

This was deeper, raspier, more like a draft flowing through an underground cavern. It reminded him of the sound of stone grinding against stone. 

Odysseus opened his eyes and raised his head. 

A dark figure obscured the moon and stars, engulfing the boy in its shadow. 

Odysseus fell backward, a scream tearing from his throat.

The figure uttered only one word. 

“Hush.”

And Odysseus fell silent. He did not climb to his feet so much as an invisible force lifted him from the floor. 

The thing in the window, whether it was man or beast, said nothing more as it turned away and vanished. Odysseus swayed on his feet, his mind lost to a dense fog. 

Slowly, his body began to move on its own. 

He found himself wandering through the halls of his parents’ home, seeing the world through half-lidded eyes as he undid the servant’s door leading to the courtyard. He stepped outside, barefoot and without a cloak. 

Odysseus thought he was dreaming as his feet carried him down the beaten path to the beach, where the ocean shone like obsidian. Dark clouds began to fill the sky, obscuring the moon and blinding Odysseus to the darkness. Even so, he continued walking. 

The sound of the lapping waves grew deafening as Odysseus stood at the very edge of the icy waters. The figure was waiting for him. It was impossible to determine if the being was submerged in the water or standing over it. They were large, so much bigger than Odysseus was. 

A voice said to him, “Do you swear to be mine ever-eternally?”

Odysseus’ lips parted, though he could not say if it was of his own volition. 

“I do.”

All the wind died at once as a monstrous wave swallowed the figure. It surged forward, looking to Odysseus’ young eyes as if it were large enough to take all of Ithaca with it. He did not even think to flee. 

The water fell upon him with such force that all the air was pressed out of his lungs. The relentless surf tumbled him, dragging his body across the coarse sand and pulling him into the ocean. 

Odysseus kicked and flailed, his body attempting to swim for the surface, but the current was too powerful. He felt no ground beneath his feet, was he already swept out far enough to drown?

Open your eyes.

A voice spoke within his mind as if it were his own, compelling him to do as it commanded. 

Odysseus found himself floating in the black water, his face inches from a set of glowing eyes. Unlike any creature he’d ever seen before, these eyes did not blink as they gazed upon him. They weighed Odysseus down with their piercing gaze, the pupils slitted like a snake’s. 

As Odysseus’ body began to relax, as he felt compelled to take a breath and allow the water into his lungs, he had only one thought. 

That the eyes upon him were such a beautiful shade of bright blue. 

Then two arms grabbed him around the torso and hauled him to the surface. A hand patted his back, forcing him to cough up the saltwater that’d gotten in his mouth. 

“Oh, my poor boy! My Odysseus!” 

It was his father. Laertes clutched Odysseus to his chest, floating on his back as he used his other arm and his legs to swim them back to shore. Odysseus clung to his father, fear flooding his heart as he shivered in the terrible cold. 

He had very nearly drowned. 

Laertes pulled him out of the water and hauled Odysseus high up the shore before stopping to check on him. A few guards were waiting for them, bearing torches to light the darkness. They huddled around Odysseus, one of them shedding his cloak to wrap it around the boy’s shoulders. Laertes took his son’s hands and rubbed them between his own, blowing hot breath onto them to get Odysseus’ fingers to stop trembling. 

One man lowered his torch and Laertes instructed Odysseus to hold his hands near the fire. The king moved onto his son’s feet, rubbing and squeezing them to encourage circulation. 

He said, “My son, what happened to you? Why in the world would you go wandering out in the dark like this?”

Laertes found cuts on the bottom of his child’s feet. He couldn’t tell if they were from the rough stone path or the beach. 

Odysseus tried to answer his father, he really did. But his lower lip wouldn’t stop trembling. He sucked in a breath, then another, and began to cry. 

“I’m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry…”

Laertes decided enough was enough. It was too cold for any of them to be outside at this hour, especially his soaking wet son. The king took Odysseus into his arms, and though he was also dripping sea water, Laertes hardly felt even a chill in the air as he carried his son home. 

Odysseus buried his face in his father’s shoulder. He was cold and embarrassed to be crying when he thought of himself as a big boy by now. 

He just had his seventh birthday. 

Open your eyes. 

The voice compelled Odysseus to look up. Far away, a strange and tall shape floated in the water, a black shadow that slowly sank below the surface. Odysseus squeezed his eyes shut and didn’t open them again until he was back inside, where his mother’s arms awaited him.

[croik]

Croik's Yuletide 2024

ANNIVERSARY!! This was my 20th year doing Yuletide, and it was a fun one!

For my gift I got a flame through your fingers, a Darkest Dungeon Academic/Protégé fic! I've been asking for this for a while and finally a hit, and a great one! Perfectly dark and iddy. If only they'd fucked sooner they could have spared the world its apocalypse! ToT

Writing wise I did 3 this year:

A Single Grain of Rice, Akira (manga). This was a special assignment for me: the only Yuletide round I didn't contribute to was the very first, so this year I decided to challenge myself by writing in a fandom that was requested year one. And I got one as my main assignment! It was a lot of fun revisiting the canon, and I finally own all volumes of the manga.

A Game of Chess, Call of Cthulhu, Randolph Carter/Walter Gilman. This was written for a CoC mod that I got introduced to via the exchange, which was a lot of fun. Carter brings Walter's dreaming soul aboard a Dreamlands train in an attempt to save him Nyarlathotep.

The Title of this Fic has been Redacted for You Safety, Ghost Wax/Kane and Feels. Was very excited to spot a prompt encouraging this crossover - these canons really do fit together in such a fun way, both of them deserve a bigger audience.

Happy Yuletide!!

[oneknightstand-if]

Hi! I recently DM-ed a Call of Cthulhu oneshot and added Adrian as an NPC to help out my players, thought I'd share :3c <3 In this universe he was a freshly graduated archeologist following one of the PCs (also an archeologist) in the same way he would the MC. In three game days Adrian: — was kidnapped by the undead zombies — was rescued by the party after he spent almost a day in an enchanted stone coffin — provided the party with the letters that were vital in helping them solve the mystery (that he found while imprisoned! good job adrian) — was injured and imprisoned AGAIN the next day by the imposter in the party (hehe) — has put himself in grave danger to try and kill that imposter (almost successful, got them from full health to 2HP in two rounds) once given the chance and then provided first aid to his companion (the archeologist PC) to make sure they don't die — Managed To Stay Alive After All (and save the world) For the most part my party kept forgetting about him LOL but he was helpful when it counted. the imposter died but the archeologist PC didn't so i think as far as Adrian's concerned he managed to reach his goal for this oneshot :3

For the most part my party kept forgetting about him

For the most part my party kept forgetting about him

For the most part my party kept forgetting about him

For the most part my party kept forgetting about him

Adrian:

That sounds great and hilarious! Adrian's debut versus Cthulhu (that Harbinger MC was trying to summon in certain versions of One Knight Stand).