For a campaign type game, I could see Supernatural, Scooby Doo, X-Files being models to follow.

Quote from: Vidgrip;1127248I think I get what you are showing with the art.  I too would favor something that actually looks frightening.  But any company large enough to out-market Chaosium will be similarly averse to being too edgy with either artwork or themes in general.

Older CoC books at times had artwork that was less videogamey/cartoony and "adventurous fun" than seems to be the norm for 7E.

Quote from: Lynn;1127245A twisted version of it is popularized and cliche'd, but I don't think HPL's work as source of gaming need be. Lovecraft in gaming needs to go through the 'demythologizing' it did in literary analysis.

RPGs tend to be grab-bags or kitchen sinks, where everything is mixed together. You might want to play a pure HPL game, but I don't think that's the majority.

No because coc has name recognigion.

Quote from: Trond;1127228Have you checked out Chill? I don't really know it myself but maybe it's cool.

Chill is cool. It's in the title! :eek:

For a good while Beyond the Supernatural was a nice alternative to CoC. I've actually GMed BTS far more than CoC. Its a pretty solid system and pre-Rifts so no mega-damage blues.

Other personal favourites are...
Masque of the Red Death for D&D. Gothic Earth done surprisingly well. I like this and BTS quite a bit.
TORG:Orrorsh: Victorian era with horror elements from gothic, lovecraftian, and movies. Not as well thought out as Masque. But still a fairly good setting.

Quote from: Omega;1127265Masque of the Red Death for D&D. Gothic Earth done surprisingly well.

I like the setting more than the rules, though since it's a variation on old school D&D, it's not hard to hack.

One other thing to consider.  BRP is a really fantastic system.  Simple and elegant, tight and flexible and infinitely tweakable.

Quote from: David Johansen;1127269One other thing to consider.  BRP is a really fantastic system.  Simple and elegant, tight and flexible and infinitely tweakable.

Well, there are plenty of games that use some variant of the BRP system. The game might use a D20 instead. First edition Kult was based on BRP with some slight changes.

As for the product having to speak to a modern crowd...well, first off the love of things retro isn't over yet. Tales from the loop will become a TV-series. And I think that more and more people are starting to look at older horror movies since the new ones are uninspired shit with jumpscares, silly dolls, nuns with hanging jaws, CGI and badly Photoshopped posters. People are starting to appreciate practical effects wizardry again and ambience. Older quality horror movies were full of ambience.

Older Chaosium had no problems putting out a cover like the one below:

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Now that's classic body horror. Lovecraft was all about body horror. The fear of having tainted family genes, monstrous cancerous growths, slowly turning into a ghoul, etc. It would never even cross Chaosium's pastel-cursed minds today. They are more worried about skin colour and gender today: "Are half of the pregens women? Good. You've got to have black characters too. So what if it the adventure takes place in inner Mongolia? You've got to have black characters, ok?? A black woman that has better stats than the obligatory white prunefaced professor pushing 90. And a black dude who's a boxing champion from Kenya. Because everybody knows that boxing is huge in Kenya. Chris Spivey suggested it and that's the stuff we want! Ok, whatabout monsters then? We need a friendly ghoul, because ghouls are, you know...friendly chaps with glasses. Yep. They eat dead rotting people? Nah, this one just read books, got that!? Just like Lynne Hardy and MOB. Ok, slap on some buzzing Mi-Go and their brain jars too. Brains in jars. That has to be horror, right? Roll for Sanity, ladies! And some Deep Ones. We need Deep Ones too. Setting? Wtf are you talking about? This is a globetrotting campaign. Professor Plum just needs a portable iron lung for all the field work in the Amazon basin, Iceland and Tibet. Oh, and we need a dozen cults too. Yep, people that are batshit insane and just hangs around in some cave worshipping serpent people and their cool high tech weaponry. Don't linger too much on the tech, because sooner or later someone will question how they can achieve anything so delicate with those velociraptor claws. Never mind that they have to tilt their heads to the side like birds to see anything they're soldering. Ok, last but not least...we need a trippy Dreamlands part too, with tons of talking cats, because talking cats are really cool."

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Now, why isn't the gif working?

Quote from: Dimitrios;1127227I think the challenge for a generic horror game is the "So what do you do with it?" question. CoC, and also WoD, the other successful horror RPG (if you agree that it's horror), both have a clear hook. It's pretty easy to explain what a standard CoC or WoD campaign looks like, just like it's easy to explain the standard dungeon crawl scenario of D&D.

The other thing is that the prospect of an open ended ongoing campaign is a draw for a lot of people. It's easy to envision a one off slasher movie based game, but harder to make that work as a campaign.

That said, I'm a huge fan of horror, particularly of the 70s/80s variety, so I would be interested to to see the sort of game you seem to be describing.

The question you should ask with a more open horror game is "what CAN'T you do with it?". Imagine creative people writing all kinds of different horror scenarios and putting it up in something similar to the Miskatonic Repository (that btw doesn't allow you to use all mythos creatures from 7th edition). Campaigns are quite ill-suited for real horror unless you are playing characters that belong to some secret society that fights evil forces, the Van Helsing, S.A.V.E. kind of game. Or more down to earth stuff, like trying to capture the Zodiac killer.

But is playing 70+ sessions of Horror on the Orient Express really experiencing a true horror game? Any campaign that long is so stretched out it's silly and filled with so much fat it couldn't make Beach 2070. The campaign also lacks some real horror fundamentals, like isolation for instance. The Investigators aren't even on the train all that much. A real horror scenario involving a train would be like Horror Express from 1972. Isolation is a powerful factor often utilized in horror. It might be a train, the Nevada desert, the Alaskan wilds, a snowed in and haunted hotel or a research camp in the Antarctic.

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This is a cover of an American-based scenario collection for CHOCK, the Swedish CHILL, that I'm working on, alongside other scenarios. It might seem simple in design but alot of time has been invested in the careful selection of 70s fonts. I didn't just slap it together and I actually try to put some effort into interior design too. Here are examples from another scenario with some pregens and other stuff:

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I agree with that there doesn't seem to be a true horror game. The problem is that horror is fundamentally at odds with how RPGs traditionally work.

RPGs are traditionally violent crime simulators where the PCs kill people, loot corpses, and gain levels for doing so. They're power fantasies. That's a shit format for horror.

By contrast, horror is the opposite of a power fantasy. Horror is about fear, terror, dread, etc. It's about taking away the protagonist's power and putting them into a state of extreme vulnerability. In a typical 70s/80s horror movie, the protagonist is often the sole survivor. In bleaker movies, everybody dies by the end or the protagonist suffers a fate worse than death.

That style lends itself best to short adventures rather than long-running campaigns.

For long running campaigns, you're better off looking at television shows. Those that aren't anthologies typically involve the protagonist(s) being an amateur or professional investigator/detective/etc.

The problem with the art style of the new Chaosium is that it is pulpy rather than horror.

In order to challenge Chaosium, then you need an aesthetic that accurately conveys horror. You need to convince potential players that total party kills are not a bad thing. You need to get them invested in the horror genre.

So I think you should try producing products compatible with GORE and/or Cryptworld to save time. Get writers and artists who understand the horror genre and produce stuff!

Quote from: Dimitrios;1127227I think the challenge for a generic horror game is the "So what do you do with it?" question. CoC, and also WoD, the other successful horror RPG (if you agree that it's horror), both have a clear hook. It's pretty easy to explain what a standard CoC or WoD campaign looks like, just like it's easy to explain the standard dungeon crawl scenario of D&D.

What the heck is the hook of WoD?

Macabre Tales. I bought it. And I absolutely love it.

Its main focus is hardcore Lovecraft investigative style games. Mostly without the PCs having any supernatural aspect to them. But that was also the point. That the game's primary basis is pure Lovecraft in style.

The game is played with two sets of dominos. And the player has to be strategic in how those dominos are spent. Meaning the later you are in that game, the more you want good high-value dominos. The more good dominos you save to the end, the more likely your character faces a positive outcome.

the most common outcomes for characters in Macabre Tales is either death or insanity. Actually surviving and continuing a character is very hard-fought. As the most common application of this game only has the character last just the single story.

The default for this game is one-on-one play. One player, one GM. Though rules for multiple players do exist. Multiple players are not the optimal expression for this game.

This game is really meant to be Lovecraft at its purest. No outside influences. Completely based on just Lovecraft's stories alone.

If that is something you would find appealing. Then I couldn't recommend this game any higher. It's one of the best horror games I own.

Quote from: Groom of the Stool;1127278... (tons of cool ideas and inspiring art) ...

1. Who cares about dethroning? There a TON of 70's/80's horror fans out there. I'm pretty sure Rob Zombie is one. Also, I heard the lead singer of Ice Nine Kills on Sirius today talking about his love of the genre. Instead, I feel like your passion is EXACTLY the ingredient to make a great RPG in the genre.

2. With Delta Green and Legend as foundations, you could easily retro-clone BRP. Toss in some flavor from other open content systems to tune to your heart's desire. It would be OGL of course. :-)

3. If you build it, they will come. THEY. Will come.

Also, you seem to do layout? Do you have a portfolio and/or a rate sheet?

(as an aside I'm working on my generic RPG "heartbreaker" that starts with Legend as a foundation, mixes in D6, True20, Action! System and Fantasy/Spy-craft and a dash of WOIN parts I like to hopefully create something familiar but new.... I retooled from a D6 system to d100 blackjack after seeing how nicely nuChaosium dropped the ball on their notOGL...)

Quote from: trechriron;11272901. Who cares about dethroning? There a TON of 70's/80's horror fans out there. I'm pretty sure Rob Zombie is one. Also, I heard the lead singer of Ice Nine Kills on Sirius today talking about his love of the genre. Instead, I feel like your passion is EXACTLY the ingredient to make a great RPG in the genre.

2. With Delta Green and Legend as foundations, you could easily retro-clone BRP. Toss in some flavor from other open content systems to tune to your heart's desire. It would be OGL of course. :-)

3. If you build it, they will come. THEY. Will come.

Also, you seem to do layout? Do you have a portfolio and/or a rate sheet?

(as an aside I'm working on my generic RPG "heartbreaker" that starts with Legend as a foundation, mixes in D6, True20, Action! System and Fantasy/Spy-craft and a dash of WOIN parts I like to hopefully create something familiar but new.... I retooled from a D6 system to d100 blackjack after seeing how nicely nuChaosium dropped the ball on their notOGL...)

I'm somewhat familiar with Delta Green from actual plays, but I have to check out Legend. And OGL is just fine. Sharing is caring.

As for a portfolio, no I don't have a proper one, but I have done quite a bit anyway. Is your planned Heartbreaker rpg a game in the vein of James Bond or am I way off here?

I can't charge people for layout work due to my life situation, me being manbearpig really places me outside any known tax tariffs, but if I like the idea of something maybe I could help out just for some creds. If my name pops up in an rpg, maybe someone will recognize it some day when I sell something on drivethrurpg? But I have to warn you, I'm a lazy sod and I have alot of projects going on.