I'm a fan of CoC, and have run several successful campaigns, mini-campaigns, and one-shots of the game, set both in the "20s" (1920s-1940s) and the "modern" (1990s-2011) eras.

I'm also an historian, and have run very successful historical campaigns of all kinds, including not one but two very long-term campaigns set in the Roman Empire, one of my areas of academic specialty.  

So you'd think something like Cthulhu Invictus would be a natural fit for me.  For my part, I like the concept, and yet, some of my players who are both rabid fans of CoC and happy veterans of one of my roman campaigns have expressed zero interest in playing in that era.

There are two general arguments why: the first is not so interesting, being simply that they think that it would just be too deadly, having to go up against mythos creatures without the benefit of modern (or at least 20th century) firepower.

But the second one is the one that got me thinking: at least one of my players made the point that "it wouldn't really be Cthulhu".  Because, he argued, the whole essence of the Mythos is that it drives men to madness because humanity has gotten to the point (by the 18th or 19th century onward) of believing in a basically rational world, and the Mythos throws that out the window, and that's the essence of what's maddening about it.
They argue that it wouldn't make sense to them, in a pre-modern world, for the same effects to take place.

What do people think about that?

RPGpundit

You'd need to adjust the sanity mechanic, sure.

I disagree about what makes the mythos so horrible. I think it has more to do with the relatively insignificant place mankind ends up with in the universe when viewed from the perspective of science; whereas with Christianity and some other religions, the Earth and, by extension, mankind are at the focus of god's attention. Evolution reduces humans to animals and from an astronomical viewpoint the earth is just a mote of dust floating in the void. It's the very rationality of the universe that is the source of the horror.  I mean, isn't that what young Earth Creationism is all about, more or less, returning humans to their rightful place at the center of things?
Whatever,  flame on; I don't know shit about shit.
Anyway, though, for me the reason CoC doesn't work the same* so much in past periods is that it kind of turns into sword and sorcery.



*I  think it works fine, just different; you get Conan instead of Inspector Legrasse.

I think he does have a point, though Aos also has a salient point here. The power of the Mythos has a sanity shattering device does not necessitate the idea of reason, or a scientific view of the world, in order to function. In fact, reason and science become dangerous for mankind because they uncover the nature of the cosmos around humanity, and its insignificance at the scale of the universe and beyond. Any alternate view of humankind in a given society that would give it illusions of truth could basically provide the same background opportunities. In a medieval world where society revolves around the Church and the feudal order of the world, the same sort of terror could be achieved when the Mythos threatens to reveal the Christian God and His promise as a fraud of cosmic proportions.

The Roman world suffers from the same type of hubris, where it represents the sophisticated, civilized force against the hordes of primitive barbarians, a bastion of everlasting order in an ever-shifting world. The height of this hubris, in direct correlation with the decadence of the Roman world, could offer a very interesting setting for Cthulhian horrors. You could even mix it up in the late stages of the Empire's disintegration, with feuds between Christian and Pagan Emperors, some of them, or maybe their aids, maybe aware of the existence of the Great Old Ones...

I am currently watching a terrible B movie called the Last Lovecraft so this is quite apt.

Personally I found when we moved to Dreamlands in a Cthulhu campaign it stopped working. We turned from people to fantasy heroes we armed up and carried swords which was for an actor, his valet, a player and a history professor pretty much out of character. I think Rome would have the same effect.

For me CoC works because you have ordinary people in a horror scenario. Once the PCs make up Romans they will be gladiators, generals, praetorian guards etc and rather than investigating and running awy they will be chopping through the Deep Ones like they were fighting orcs in a 4E game.

Leave 4e in the 4e threads, please.

I don;t thin you'd need to limit yourself as far as character types go in the Roman era any more than you would in a modern game. Sure the Romans didn't have IT guys and what not, but they has scribes and poets and scholars and engineers and merchants and slave and whores and all sorts of other other shit. You don't have to turn the game in to a Roman version of Delta Green, after all.

Quote from: Aos;443854Leave 4e in the 4e threads, please.

I don;t thin you'd need to limit yourself as far as character types go in the Roman era any more than you would in a modern game. Sure the Romans didn't have IT guys and what not, but they has scribes and poets and scholars and engineers and merchants and slave and whores and all sorts of other other shit. You don't have to turn the game in to a Roman version of Delta Green, after all.

Totally. If the basic game presented you with sample occupations like praetorian guards and senators, then it would fail to convey an accurate image of the Roman world in the first place, from an everyday, median perspective. If you've got occupations like artists, dilettantes and cops in 1920s Cthulhu, I'd expect stuff like artists, dilettantes, landowners, soldiers, slaves and the like, in occupations. After as a Keeper you can just say "no soldiers in my game" just like you can say "no cops in this game, please."

I am sure the Romans had a few basic assumptions of the world and their place in it that could be turned on its head with a little well applied Mythos horror.

Cities were pretty important to the Roman mind if I recall. Being the mother of all cities, perhaps like Punktown in Jeffrey Thomas's novel Monstrocity, Rome is more than she appears to be.

Family and ancestry were important. Perhaps Rome's catacombs are filled with ravenous ghouls, once former members of her most important families. Because of the custom of cremating the dead they relay on the copses of gladiatorial combatants surreptitiously brought to them by a cult of ancestor/ghoul worshipers that reaches into the highest levels of the empire à la Clive Barker's The Midnight Meat Train.

Imagine if Suetonius had met and interviewed Augustus in the middle of a repast of tomb carrion.

I am obviously not an expert and I have not really given a Cthulhu Invictus campaign much though. But using the Mythos to attack Roman concepts of Family, Identity, Honor, Nobility, The Roman passion for power, etc., seems a good place to start.

Quote from: Aos;443854Leave 4e in the 4e threads, please.

I don;t thin you'd need to limit yourself as far as character types go in the Roman era any more than you would in a modern game. Sure the Romans didn't have IT guys and what not, but they has scribes and poets and scholars and engineers and merchants and slave and whores and all sorts of other other shit. You don't have to turn the game in to a Roman version of Delta Green, after all.

No you wouldn't have to but I would be afraid that that woudl be what would happen

Quote from: Aos;443841...
*I  think it works fine, just different; you get Conan instead of Inspector Legrasse.

I wouldn't say Conan so much as Bran Mak Morn.  

But yeah, Cthulhu Invictus has a much stronger 'Howardian' feel to it than 'Lovecraftian'.  And that is perfectly fine (if that's what you want).  It can be just as creepy, etc., as CoC set during the 1920s.

I would very strongly recommend R. E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn story, "The Worms of the Earth," to anyone interested in running a CoC game set during the Roman era.  It is a Roman Cthulhu Mythos story.

The genre works best in an enlightened age, the more modern and rational the better. I see your friends point, and agree. If there are too many superstitions, horrors or other fantastic elements around, the Cthulhu mythos loses some of it's terror.

Quote from: Benoist;443845Aos also has a salient point

Those words!  Oh those words!  

My brain!  It hurts!

Quote from: GoOrange;443883If there are too many superstitions, horrors or other fantastic elements around, the Cthulhu mythos loses some of it's terror.

I agree.

I was thinking that what could more or less resolve this would be to switch from just having a straight sanity mechanic to having a "rationality/irrationality" mechanic in the style of the spanish game Aquelarre.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;443927I was thinking that what could more or less resolve this would be to switch from just having a straight sanity mechanic to having a "rationality/irrationality" mechanic in the style of the spanish game Aquelarre.

RPGPundit

How does that mechanic work?

Like others have said, I think you'd have to redirect the sanity blasting horror to a context that would horrify people of that era...

But I don't think that just because someone believes in gods and all sorts of supernatural creatures... is full of superstition... means they are ready and able to meet such horrors in the flesh. Maybe some folks believed there were gorgons and minotaurs out there... but no one ever saw one in the flesh.
I've got friends who believe in angels, but I'm guessing they'd shit themselves if they ever actually saw one... in fact believing in angels, and what they can do/have done... probably adds to the fear (where I might just think it's a space alien... with no particular context/powers/history. I'd probably still shit myself though).
It's similar to the argument I hear that modern people wouldn't be as frightened by Mythos critters because we've all seen myriad CGI horrors on movie screens... which I think is bullshit.
Watching a war movie doesn't prepare you for being in a firefight, seeing movie gore doesn't equate with seeing a real corpse or having the friend next to you eviscerated. Burning offerings at an effigy of Diana doesn't mean you're prepared when she shows up at the front door.

There's also a lot to be said for the horrors that men do... and while those were grittier times I'm sure there are ways to have cultists leave the common tenants of humanity behind and do outre stuff that is upsetting to the average PC man on the street... break the taboos of the time.
As long as the players were aware of those taboos... saw them as an active part of the setting... lived in that skin a bit before having it ripped off.
Maybe it would be as simple as importing some of our modern outlook into the ancient cultists. A modern man would be alienated, confused, disturbed by things he'd find in ancient Rome... he might never fully acclimate... just as an ancient roman in our world might be quite disturbed, at least for a while.

Also... it's not just the monsters, blood and guts... big chunks of the Mythos are from 'outside'... they don't belong... they deform our reality just by being here. Madness comes on just by being around them... having your mind stretched/twisted along odd dimensions. They are 'wrong', they places they inhabit become 'wrong'.
If you've ever read Thomas Ligotti, or the comic series Uzumaki (or seen the truncated movie version)... there's not a lot in the way of overt monsters... but the things people do... the way their minds are effected... they way reality bends and molds itself to those 'others'... is pretty damn weird and disturbing. (you can read Uzumaki online here)