Quote from: Omega;918102Even today, or especially today theres these towns all over the US that are isolated and more than a few hiding dirty little secrets and blood on their hands.

I can attest to that. Our state has two main urban hubs... but lots of little places scattered around with tiny populations and those people are there because they want to be. There's one place up state that's in a mountain valley you can only drive to during part of the year. Why do those folks want to isolate themselves that way unless they're up to something? Worshipping dark gods, guarding some forgotten secret, waiting for something...

I'm also not big on Cthulhu... I mean, it was a bid deal here locally, millions of years ago... but cosmically speaking it's just some dead-but-dreaming schlub on a backwater planet no one cares about. Sure, some kooks listen in on its dreams occasionally and end up eating babies in burned out shacks... but I really can't see an organized, high-level, international conspiracy forming up around the thing... unless, it's three times removed so that the vast majority of members have no clue what sort of crazy stuff their cult is really about, that there are layers and layers of secrets revealed only to the highest level zealots... much like some modern cults I've heard of in Utah and Hollywood.
I don't see the cult dying out... but I don't see it moving into the White House either.

Now the Mi-go... they seem organized, and have human agents to aide them in return for material rewards.

Quote from: Omega;918102You dont travel much do you? Even today, or especially today theres these towns all over the US that are isolated and more than a few hiding dirty little secrets and blood on their hands. Or just places that time forgot. Or any given place that looks like an Amish town. But isnt. And thats without some thing from beyond playing pick-up-sticks with your sanity.

Dude, I live in one of those places.  The statement is a near direct quote from the book concerning the cult of Cthulhu, not that there's not places that are off the map.  According to the original story, the Cult of Cthulhu is mainly disorganized into scattered groups in very isolated areas across the planet and amongst sailors.  The Cult of Cthulhu is as much a victim of roads and missionaries and telephones as it is the fact that sensitive members committed suicide after waves of nightmares in 192x.  At least according to DG.

Aside from the Starry Wisdom Cult its never been overly organized. Lots of little clusters of followers and the occasional bigger ones hidden away. Not counting the Mi-Go who seem disinterested in larger organizations and just do their thing out in the boonies.

Quote from: Omega;918140Not counting the Mi-Go who seem disinterested in larger organizations and just do their thing out in the boonies.

It seems like they'd have a harder time staying hidden nowadays though, forcing them to have agents infiltrate higher offices of government.

Well, before you drown yourself in a truckload of CoC books...

Dead Light : a quite good one-shot adventure. (and check other reviews on that blog. Not that I always agree with the guy, but he always give you good info imho).

Eternal Lies : "Hey! You are stupid! This one is not even for CoC, it's for Trail of Cthulhu!". Well, first, there is an official, free, conversion to CoC. AFAIC this is a very good campaign. Keeps the feel of "classic" campaigns but takes them to a new level in terms of presentation and ease of use for the GM.

Machine Tractor Station Kharkov-37 : an adventure to see how you can take  the "classic" CoC adventures in new directions.

Well, the Cthulhu cult is apparently so widespread that the protagonist and a bunch of random people across the globe get murdered by it. They also have an eye on everything which is done with their god even loosely.

Quote from: CTPhipps;918154Well, the Cthulhu cult is apparently so widespread that the protagonist and a bunch of random people across the globe get murdered by it. They also have an eye on everything which is done with their god even loosely.

I can see it as a sort of occult mafia... with lots of low level operatives not having much of the bigger picture. The way organized crime was depicted in The Sopranos... it was everywhere and nowhere, with most members caught up in their own little schemes. That, vs. some James Bond supervillain organization with strict hiearchies, uniforms, and secret bases inside of volcanoes.

Quote from: Omega;918102You dont travel much do you? Even today, or especially today theres these towns all over the US that are isolated and more than a few hiding dirty little secrets and blood on their hands. Or just places that time forgot. Or any given place that looks like an Amish town. But isnt. And thats without some thing from beyond playing pick-up-sticks with your sanity.

Travel?  I live there.  Mariposa County, California.  Population:18,000 for the entire county.  Zero incorporated areas.  Zero traffic lights.  We have 3G and a Subway now.  The opening of the Subway was a big local controversy by the way.  Proposals to put a traffic light at a highway junction in town have been consistently opposed by locals because traffic lights are too big city.  This is a very anti-growth rural area.  It's essentially a Shall issue county since it's so conservative and it can take up to half an hour for A sheriff's Deputy to respond to a call because it's so spread out and there are so many undivided or unpaved roads.

Two questions about what scenarios to go with:
Pulp or Purist?  

Is the scale individual, local, or cosmic?  

If you go with Masks, look for the MON Companion.  Masks is thirty years old, and the Companion takes a look at what went wrong that players have found over the years.  It also expands the campaign a bit.

As far as modules to avoid, that is a matter of taste, but the two worst written ones are "Five Go Mad in Egypt" and "Mysteries of Hungary."  Oddly, both are set in Hungary.

Both are MULAs,  Which means that Chaosium abandoned editorial control over the product.  Five's author took advantage of the pay by page policy and produced a 150 page opus -

Using twenty point font

And Double spacing.

Yes, the font is to big to read.
But Our Heroes chase a necromancer from London to Budapest for the final showdown.  

"Mysteries of Hungary" was written by someone with English as a second language, and the babblefish really wasn't doing its job.

Hungarian is a funny language.  The phrase "Is my money with you?" (Von penzem magaVAL?)  and "Do you have my money?" (Von penzem magaNAK?) are only one syllable different.  A more literal translation of the second question is "Are you a my money having person?"  A good editor or grammarian could have fixed a lot of Yoda speak.

I used to be a huge fan of Call of Cthulhu, and all things Chaosium. Last fall I sold off all my stuff (which included probably 95%+ of everything Chaosium had ever published), having decided to trim all my RPGs collection down to something I could fit on a bookshelf or two.

So, that being said, my point is that now when I want to run a Lovecraftian/Mythos style game, all I use are Ken Hite's "Nightmare's of Mine" for general horror advice, and Graham Walmsley's "Stealing Cthulhu" for specific Cthulhu-related ideas.

Part of the problem I have with CoC as a game, is that -so much- is detailed out. Lovecraft created all these weird monsters because he wanted to write gothic horror and weird fiction without the use of ghosts, vampires, and the like. He thought they were all tired and played out. CoC, sadly, grinds the innovation of Lovecraft's weirdness into the dust, making them just as boring as any victorian ghoulie.

Skip all the officially-published stuff, and just make up your own. Who cares what Chaosium said San Francisco is like in the world of the Mythos? Make it your own.

Quote from: Herne's Son;918476Part of the problem I have with CoC as a game, is that -so much- is detailed out. Lovecraft created all these weird monsters because he wanted to write gothic horror and weird fiction without the use of ghosts, vampires, and the like. He thought they were all tired and played out. CoC, sadly, grinds the innovation of Lovecraft's weirdness into the dust, making them just as boring as any victorian ghoulie.

That's the nature of publishing though, making stuff and selling it, raising your cash cow and milking it dry... with people collecting far more than they play. Everything gets explained and codefied to the point where there is no mystery left. The big new monster book Chaosium put out is pretty, and boring as hell, but the fans love it.

I bought a lot of CoC stuff in the early days but I left off on it long ago... just the Lovecraft Country books, an occasional monograph or adventure book now and then. Most of the games I've run haven't had any big deal Mythos entities at all... I much favor cultists and the evils that men do.

I almost never run written adventures for any games I run. But when running Call of Cthulhu I use published material almost exclusively. Part of the reason for this is the general high quality of Chaosium's published material. Another part is that I find CoC does not tend to be a game that works well when run improvisationally. Also, stuff like newspaper clippings, mysterious maps, and excerpts from horrific tomes add a lot to the game, and I'm not big on making that stuff myself.

Quote from: Manzanaro;917589As far as campaigns go, Masks of Nyarlathotep has a great rep, but in practice can be very arbitrarily deadly,

You say this as though it's a bad thing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;918939You say this as though it's a bad thing.

Well, I do go on to say that that's not necessarily a point against it. But it is pretty damn easy to die without ever even leaving New York, if you run it purely as written. That Ju Ju cult is a real beast.

The basic few you really want are bestiaries, Dreamlands and Cthulhu by Gaslight if you want to run the 1890s scenarios, or Delta Green if you want to run the 90's X - Files Cthulhu style.

Once your wallet is done weeping for these purchases, check out Trail of Cthulhu publications - I highly recommend their adventures as good self - contained one shots. Bookhounds of London with the Guide are definitely a must, as are Dreamhounds of Paris for more atypical adventures in Lovecraft's realms.