Lovecraft by way of Dungeon World? I was listening to an actual play podcast of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu system and was struck by the Gygaxian adversarial dynamic struck by the GM toward the PCs. In retrospect it’s something that may be baked in to the Chaosium system that goes about the business of horror by making life cheap and characters disposable and replaceable. For me it always did the opposite, preventing identification with the character and shunting me out of what I think Lovecraft did best- explore the interior landscapes of his wonderfully eccentric and damaged protagonists. It’s not so much that I need to see PCs in a Cthulhu game ‘win’, as to make space for them to descend into madness in the most satisfying way (one in which the players are complicit in the horror). So I thought about running Call of Cthulhu with some of the skills I’ve gathered from Dungeon World and new games like it, but then I got to wondering if Lovecraft could just be brought into DW. Defying Danger with WIS could be a simple sanity check, and there are lots of satisfying random neuroses tables out there. And building really horrible monsters and artifacts is facilitated by the system. Has anyone tried this? Any suggestions or cautions? Cheers.
Yes, it has been tried at least once with Tremulus
Kickstarter video – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1227949612/tremulus-a-storytelling-game-of-lovecraftian-horro. Buy it at https://realityblurs.com/shop/product/tremulus-softcover-print-pdf/.
I would add that Marshall Miller’s The Warren has a very Lovecraftian vibe to me. Yes, you are playing rabbits. But you are rabbits that are threatened by, and often nearly powerless in the face of a very cold world.
Buy it at http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/the-warren/
P.S. That should not stop you from trying it your own way. I think there is room for someone to really do it well. I would, frankly, lean on the Charisma stat to mean composure under pressure (keeping cool/calm) as well as exuding composure and grace. If that doesn’t work for you, then invent a 7th stat and call it what you like. Defy Danger would be the perfect reaction and any Lovecraftian monster would have a “Terrify!” move. Then you could move on to looking at how to build a Lovecraftian front, which is really where the trick lies. I would use Bolster to cover research and Spout Lore to cover mythos knowledge. Discern Reality is fantastic once you think of it in a Lovecraftian way. Player: “Who is really in control here?” GM: “There is a cold otherworldly presence in control here. A sort of shadowy form that you can almost see if you concentrate. Do you? Concentrate on it, that is?” Player: “Yeah, my character wants to know.” Other players: “No. What are you doing you fucker. You are going to get us killed!”
Magic. Thank you Ray Otus
I found tremulus to be a massive disappointment. I would recommend Black Stars Rise (http://www.latorra.org/2013/09/09/black-stars-rise/) instead.
I quite liked tremulus when I read it, but haven’t had a chance to play it. It’s definitely different, that’s for sure. I think the ideas about creating the mystery in the fly is interesting, but likely does need some polishing.
Thanks Chris Stone-Bush. I knew there was another one but couldn’t think of it!
I’ve played tremulus. The campaign was very short because our characters seemed to lack sufficient reasons to work together, or endanger ourselves (ordinary folks, mostly) to investigate a horrific mystery. These problems could be fixed with a second edition, and I hope we get to see one.
For bringing a Mythos into Dungeon World, I would start with Grim World and introduce some cosmic horror – themed fronts.
More to Joshua Faller’s main point, I think you could bring Mythos elements into a “normal” DW game through fiction alone. That’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t bring in bits from other games, but I feel you wouldn’t necessarily need to.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Conan audio books recently and there is a fair bit of cosmic horror in some of those stories. I think that narrating your game more like a Sword & Sorcery story, which sometimes contain Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, would be a way to do it.
Absolutely Chris Stone-Bush. Most of my suggestions above don’t change the DW rules at all. And Conan (also Kane and Kull) is definitely chock-full of weird horror. I remember one Kull where he literally fights Silence – an overpowering force of nothingness trapped by ancient wizards in a cave. I think one could easily push Lovecraftian themes in DW, but you would want to figure out how to illustrate mental/emotional stress. Debilities are a good start, but maybe it needs more. You might even want a stress/hit point track for keeping your composure. You could give each playbook SP (sanity points for lack of a more original idea) equal to X + Wisdom (or Intelligence, or Charisma) just like HP works, but in favor of more mental characters in the same way more physical characters have higher HP.
Howard’s stuff had a lot of the same “weird tales” type of horror, but his protagonists reacted in a fundamentally different way. They’d occasionally be seized by horror, but quickly rallied and dealt with the source of that horror because BOOYA. That’s very different from the Lovecraftian protagonist’s obsessive descent into the unknown that leaves them cripple wrecks of anxiety and pathos.
There’s been a lot talk about Darkest Dungeon hacks lately, and Stress or Steel tracks, and I think that’s a better way to go (IF you want to go mechanical) than bolting on a Sanity Check mechanic.
Good stuff Ray Otus. One thing tremulus did that was interesting, if I’m remembering correctly, was to give monsters a shock rating. That represented how much damage encountering them did to your character’s mental stability.
I very much like that “Wisdom + X = SP” idea. Characters would take damage to their sanity, subtracting it from their SP. You would need to create a Descent Into Madness move that would be like Last Breath though, I think. Something like roll +nothing, on a 10+ you’re sane but in bad shape; on a 7-9 you’re back but with some kind of issue from the horrors you’ve seen, and on a 6- you’re a raving lunatic.
One thing to consider though is how monsters and situations would deal sanity damage. I think that simply taking damage once when you encounter the thing and then being fine for the remainder of the encounter doesn’t feel right. Monsters can continue to attack you physically, threatening your well being until you deal with them somehow, so why not do the same thing with sanity as well?
You could also introduce “sanity armor”.
Oooh. Chris Stone-Bush, I didn’t even think about a correlating Last Breath move. That’s cool. One fix for the problem you noted with Sanity damage is to make healing SP harder. Like you get back 1 point per no/low-stress day, 0 if under real stress. And maybe add a new mind-healing move for Paladins and Clerics – or just give them the option of healing SP or HP (choose 1 when casting) with their same old moves.
Chris Stone-Bush, Ray Otus, I’ve taken a couple runs at adapting my hit point model changes (http://www.kjd-imc.org/blog/on-hit-points-and-healing/) to cover sanity, taint, and similar gradual breakdowns.
http://www.kjd-imc.org/blog/mythos-and-madness-becoming-a-cultist-for-fun-and-prophet/
http://www.kjd-imc.org/blog/hit-point-variations-mana-and-madness-and-taint-oh-my/
Something to consider if you’re going down that route: maybe use Weight, Load, and the Encumbrance move as the model rather than HP and damage.
That is a great idea too Jeremy Strandberg. I like the idea of making it more like a psychic load that you have to test if a creature exceeds your capacity!
Yeah, I like that idea too. It seems easier to track than decreasing points.
Also it prevents repeated “stress 2 monsters” from chipping away at your SP. If your load can handle stress 3, a stress 2 just doesn’t phase you. Though maybe a whole horde of them would (+1 for each like the +1 damage for multiples)? I dunno. Lots to think about here. All this spitballing is great but it has my brain spinning now! 🙂
A spinning brain is the best state for it to be in Ray Otus. 🙂
So… Putting some thoughts together on a base number for Sanity. Base HP ranges from 4 (wizard) to 10 (Fighter/Paladin). It tends to reflect the bookish vs. physical spectrum, as you would expect. Base load ranges from 6 (Druid) to 12 (Fighter/Paladin). This one is more interesting but let’s just say it reflects each classes’ likelihood to carry around a lot of stuff. It doesn’t reflect Strength (though it is modified by Strength). By way of illustration, the Bard (9) has a higher base Load than the Barbarian (8) The more I look at how to “logically” distribute Sanity I think it should just be an even number all the way across the board. It can’t be the inverse of HP, because a Paladin will likely have “seen some shit!” It’s hard to make an argument about which classes would be more resilient to terror.
Let’s start with SP as a correlate to HP; I would start with a SP equal to 6+Cha. (Or Wis or Int if you prefer. Whichever stat you think is better for sanity.) Cha would favor the Bard and Paladin classes, which I like. And I like the idea of Cha as a kind of cool, composure, personal magnetism. But to each his own. Read Cha as Wis or Int below, based on your preference.
A Sanity check would be Defy Danger roll+Cha
Checks would be triggered by monsters with the “Madness” tag. (Or pick one you like better — Mythos, Terrifying, whatever) could cause a check. The move would be like:
When you first encounter a creature with Madness, unless it is within your Mythos Knowledge, roll+Cha.
On a 10+ you are fine. List that creature in your Mythos Knowledge and you do not check against it again.
On a 7-9 the creature damages your sanity but unless your sanity hits 0, you are ok. List that creature in your Mythos Knowledge and you do not check against it again.
The presumption is that on a 6- you take the damage AND you don’t get to list it in your Mythos Knowledge. Though you do get the XP of course. Note that you do not test again during the encounter — only the next time you encounter this or another creature with Madness that isn’t in your Mythos Knowledge.
A creatures sanity damage is equal to its regular damage die (but of course it hits SP instead of HP in this case).
SP does not heal with normal rest, only with time. You get 1 SP back per week, or you can get special healing from a holy man (Paladin or Priest). They use their magical healing, but choose in this instance to heal SP rather than HP. (The Paladin can lose SP by healing SP, the same way he can lose HP by healing HP. He takes it on himself.)
You can bolster yourself against a specific type of sanity-damaging creature by researching it. In which case you get +1 on your Defy Danger Sanity Loss check for each Bolster.
If/each time your SP hits 0, roll “Final Straw.” (I can probably think of a better name later).
On a 10+ you keep it together. BARELY.
On a 7-9 you gain a phobia, delusion, or severe quirk of some kind that you agree on with the GM, but you keep it together otherwise.
On a 6- you lose your shit entirely, or will do so very soon (at a time you and the GM agree is fictionally appropriate). At that point your character is irrecoverable beyond some extremely heroic shit that would restore sanity. Like a favor from a benevolent god.
If, instead you want to go the Load route. (I liked this idea at first but now I don’t.) Each character’s Sanity Load is 6+Cha (or Wis or Int). Each Madness creature has a score between 15 and 30. When you encounter a creature with a score higher than your load, Defy Danger Sanity Loss (roll + chosen stat). On a 10+ you are fine. On a 7-9 the creature damages your sanity. (Is this a debility? If not, does it just reduce your S-Load by 1? If it does variable damage, might as well go back to SP.)
This looks simpler at first, but you have to rate a bunch of creatures, ones that could cause San loss at any rate. And there is the question of how to reflect the damage to your Load.
Whew. So, that’s a rough version. I thought this was going to be a short post. Ha ha!
Nice stuff. I’m nitpicking here, but I would word the sanity move like this:
When you encounter a creature with the Madness tag that is not on your Mythos Knowledge list, roll+Cha. On a 10+, you avoid the monster’s sanity damage and add it to you your Mythos Knowledge list. On a 7-9, choose one or the other. On a 6-, neither.
So on a 7-9 you either take damage but add the monster to your list (preventing further damage) or ignore the damage for now, but have to deal with it again.
Mixed thoughts on recovering a single SP per month. I agree SP recovery should be slower than HP, but once a month seems like a pain to track. Recover 1 SP each time you Make Camp maybe?
Yep. Those are good refinements. Note that I had edited the SP recovery to 1/week. But one per camp would be okay too. I like that it is a more fragile (but less often tested) stress track.
A final thought. If you don’t need/want the whole sanity loss death spiral, here’s a very simple version.
Some creatures have the Madness tag.
When you encounter a creature with the Madness tag, roll+Wis.
On a 10+, you hold it together.
On a 7-9, you “mostly” hold it together, choose one.
* You are Confused (-1 Wis Debility)
* You momentarily freeze in horror, opening yourself to an attack.
Ray Otus I completely agree with the assessment that The Warren has a very Lovecraftian feel. I don’t think I have been as legitimately scared in any other RPG.
For anyone looking at sanity systems to take inspiration from, I cannot recommend Unknown Armies highly enough. It has different stress tracks for Violence, Helplessness, Self, Unnatural, and Isolation. You can be at different points in either failure or being inured to each one separately. If you want to make madness a central pillar of the game, definitely mine that for inspiration.
Man, what a relief to read this post! I’ve always felt like a heretic for disagreeing with the feeling the protagonists in a Lovecraftian story HAD to perish somehow to validate the label.
Tremulus is ok, but falls deeply in this outlook, which disappointed me. So, more than details on sanity rules, I believe we should be discussing the DRIVE of the game… how to portrait the growth of a competent person into a veteran survivor / warrior for mankind against the dark forces of the universe.
Of course, Sanity is key! I loved the idea of keeping it similar to Load, and a Shattering Sanity move. Brilliant!
But there is more to it…
Tremulus made me think of Funnel World at times: the Salesman and the Author might help, but survive? win the day? That’s for the Doctor or the Detective. I ran one mystery for my players by the book, and learned some lessons:
1) The Playbook choice is key to improve the heroic feeling. Cull the helpless in your casting, instead of during fiction… give players “good” playbooks to chose from.
2) Tremulus setting & mystery preparation is precious, don’t waste it trying to run it on the fly. Send the questions the day before to your players, and give yourself some time to articulate your story.
3) Those who complete a mystery must gain advancements related to the story. Write down advancements, say a victim one and a savior one, and make it available for those who beat THAT mystery. Each story should mark and bend and be part of the characters lifepath in a clear cut way.
With these and the addition of the improved Sanity rules you have been tinkering with here and Tremulus COULD be the game we want. (Even if I would rewrite a few passages to remove the victimization neurosis).
You make good points Douglas Santana. However I wa so unimpressed with tremulus (and I was a KS backer at the hardback book level), that rather than trying to fix it, I would start completely from scratch.
Chris Stone-Bush
Their main contribution is definitely the Scenario & Mystery creation Tool. I’d keep it.
Besides that? I got all their Playbooks, and like 50% could become a cool round up.
I would change a few moves to become more narrative.
Change the text to encourage evolution.
Simplify Sanity rules with this Load take Shatter Sanity Move.
Clarify the uses of clues and lore.
… well, I think I have seen “new” games with less departure from their originals than this 😉
Being a big HPL fan, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to bring Lovecraftian style horror into my campaign. Everyone has covered important points about what needs to go in but I want to draw particular attention to Jim Jones’ and Douglas Santana’s points about how they felt while playing. The HPL experience, for me, is all about the personal horror and I think that would be facilitated by breaking one of the ideologies of DW by removing some of the player autonomy. Take Ray Otus’ move, for example. I feel that the 6- effect of that roll should be the GM (in the guise of an elder god or one of its followers) controlling the PC’s next action. This allows for the hypnotic/panic behaviour of some of the HPL protagonists and could instil real fear for the players.
Ari Black i strongly disagree.
Give players options. Let them pick the one they are least inclined to perform. Success they act as they want. Partial sucess, they have to do something else from the list. Miss, they do what they chose not to.
I always felt that surrendering your pc will to the narrator was lame. But it was John Harper in ghost lines where i first saw rules that gave an answer to that.
Douglas Santana How does that address a scenario when the players don’t have an intent? For example, an indescribable horror leaps out. They aren’t performing an action, it’s the HPL first reaction experience where a person’s mind reels from the alien reality that has broken into theirs.
/sub
Ray Otus regarding using the Load/Weight mechanics, that’s not quite what I had in mind.
I’m picturing more of a gradual accumulation of, oh, let’s call “Cracks.” Perhaps there’s a “san check” move, like:
When you first encounter a cosmic horror, roll +WIS. 10+, pick one:
– Lash out violently to destroy it
– Recoil in horror, making every effort to flee
– Freeze up until someone snaps you out of it
– Gain 1 Crack, but remain as calm and as rational as you wish
7-9, gain 1 Crack, and choose 1 from the 10+ list.
6-, mark XP, gain 1 Crack, and ask the GM what you end up doing
Now, Cracks accumulate (like Weight). And you’ve got a stat, let’s call in Stability (analogous to Load).
And you’ve got a move something like this, analogous to the Encumbrance move…
Descent Into Madness
When you make a move while bearing Cracks, you may be affected by madness. If your Cracks…
…do not exceed your Stability, you suffer no penalty.
…exceed your Stability but by no more than 2, take -1 ongoing until you have time to get a few hours of rest without having to think about the horrors you’ve seen.
…exceed your Stability by 3 or more, perform some irrational tick or behavior and roll at -1, or automatically fail.
Jeremy Strandberg NICE. I like it. That’s definitely another way to approach the problem. My only complaint might be that you are robbing players of a clear win on a 10+, but part of me thinks that is ENTIRELY appropriate for a Lovecraftian horror. How do you heal back Stability, BTW?
✫
I was toying with a CoC-like adaptation from AW, and had (along with one for “when you face an uncontrolled horror”) this move:
When you must respond with appropriate empathy to the pain of another, roll+SAN. On 10+ both; on 7–9 pick one:
• They are comforted
• No one becomes mistrustful or suspicious of you
If you miss, you might anger the room.
Untested at this point.
Ray Otus That addresses what I was asking while staying true to form in DW, thanks. Jeremy Strandberg There are no clear wins when dealing with the Elder Gods 😀
I think Lovecraft in Dungeon World should always be Pulp Cthulhu, Lovecraft via Bob Howard or Fritz Lieber.
Is that just your preference Mark Tygart, or are you saying it wouldn’t likely be successful if not done in a pulp style?
I just wouldn’t use Dungeon World, maybe Tremelus for a pure Lovecraft. I haven’t played Mythos, but Monster of Week could also be great Lovecraft Pulp goodness. Of course it is just my preference, I think you could do something successful like Darkest Dungeon, the new popular RPG that has a sanity as a HP stat like mechanic. Funnel World would also work as a pure Lovecraft horror, as newbies are rapidly converted to monster snacks.
I just think in Dungeon World players should be allowed to be “big damn heroes” to quote Serenity.
Eh. I think it’s not necessarily true that Dungeon World has to be pulpy, though it does put big effects in the hands of players. I can’t really say for sure though. I haven’t tried to do a tense, Lovecraftian thriller in DW, so maybe it would just get all yee-haw!
Ray Otus Thriller, yes. Pure horror inescapable doom, no.
Found a deep vein here, thank you for all of the amazing feedback! It can be hard to parse the source material from the conventions of traditional Lovecraftian gaming- I believe that hard choices and GM moves as written should allow the tension to ratchet up and let the players gleefully play out their undoing. I love the second last breath move! I’m itching to run this and see how it plays out. If anyone else gives a permutation of the above a playtest please let us know how it goes!
Mark Tygart You seem awfully sure, re: “Pure horror inescapable doom, no.” Have you tried it? I feel like I could do it. I’m not sure the system itself would kill the idea.
There are just better systems for that, and it subverts player expectations for Dungeon World. I love adding Lovecraft but pure Lovecraft would be playing a game where your characters are going to break down, get killed or go insane. It’s usually pure horror, you can’t win. Some people love that aspect of horror gaming but most horror games are really pulp horror.
Is there a pure Lovecraft though? Are we just getting hung up on Chaosium and convention (including myself here- I started gaming in ’89)? Lovecraft wrote a bunch of unsettling weird fiction leaning towards pulp himself- besides, I’m not in it to maintain the legacy of a weird old shut in xenophobe, I’m interested in a grittier dark fantasy experience. When we collaboratively built the setting we’re playing in (using Microscope- which is awesome) we decided to play in the ashes of a magical civil war where the wilderness was unknown and dangerous, and magic was perilous to both the subject and the user. I believe that they were asking to go dark and I want more tools in my toolbox to do so. No offense meant, but I don’t want to enshrine HPL, I want to shamelessly mine him for resources.
It’s true that HPL ranged from pulp (Herbert West Reanimator) to abstract, existential horror (Colour Out of Space). Some of his most well-known stuff leans a bit toward pulp, Shadow Over Innsmouth, for instance, or The Thing on the Doorstep. I wouldn’t call those pulp, exactly. But they aren’t too far from it.
Ray Otus Regarding how to deal with Sanity… I skipped the beat of the chat,but it doenst need to be intent based at all! It can be 100% reactive, but let them pick the consequences and build dread.
You’ll have to unpack that a little more. I’m not following you. “Skipped the beat of the chat?” And whose intent are you talking about? In reaction to what?