Quote from: J ArcaneWhoosh.

:rolleyes:

Oh, that's right, it's the internet.

Quote from: J ArcaneWrong answer.  You don't really understand horror at all, do you?

Here's a hint:  Alien is a horror movie.  Alien: Ressurection is an action movie.  

Now, think for a while, and see if you can figure out what the difference is.

Gotcha: action and horror are mutually exclusive genres. Right, next?

Quote from: signoftheserpentGotcha: action and horror are mutually exclusive genres. Right, next?

Now ask yourself in what way that is relevant to products based on a series of horror stories.  And why one might be displeased upon the acquisition of a product based on horror stories that was not, in fact, horror at all.

For extra credit, you could even ponder what the point of taking a horror property, and making an action product out of it.  I recommend asking some Hollywood executives.  They have a lot of experience with that sort of thing.

J, while you're pondering that, I'm still hoping for Pulp Cthulhu.

To be honest, the only real issue I have with Cthulhutech is that I'm not into mecha, and that's not an issue, it's just a reason why I probably personally won't pick it up.

Quote from: BalbinusJ, while you're pondering that, I'm still hoping for Pulp Cthulhu.

To be honest, the only real issue I have with Cthulhutech is that I'm not into mecha, and that's not an issue, it's just a reason why I probably personally won't pick it up.

I wouldn't say I have some great issue with it.  Just that I, unlike Mr. Snakeguy here, am capable of understanding any negative reactions to it.  

Personally, I've no more interest in it than I would in, say, a Hollywood movie that turns Pride and Prejudice into a buddy cop movie.  It just doesn't make any sense to me why someone would even make such a thing, because one looking for the one part of it isn't liable to be looking for the other part.

If you wanted to make a game about giant robots beating up giant monsters, there's whole genres of exactly that in Japanese film and TV, like the kaiju stuff, or Evangelion, or Ultraman, or sentai, and on and on and on.  It's not even terribly well covered in the roleplaying realm, except indirectly.  

All this game seems to me is that either someone was too lazy to come up with their own giant critters, or had one of those ideas that sounds good when your drunk but seems pointless in the morning but by then you're already half way through a first draft and don't wish to stop.  

Either that or it's nothing more than pandering to the very same pop culture version of Lovecraft's mythos, which basically makes you a tool, and certainly no better than the people whom SOS is so quick to judge.

J, I don't disagree, particularly in that it seems lazy to me, but hey, I return to my awesome power of not buying.

Alien was a great horror movie, Aliens I thought was a really fun action movie, it's not in the same genre as the original but it's still fun.  I have both in my DVD collection (actually, I have both in my outdated video collection and thus now have no way to watch them, which rather undermines my point, oh well).

People do get overly purist about the mythos though, there was a thread about reinventing in on rpg.net and I posted some ideas based purely on stuff taken directly from his writing.  One poster criticised me for not being faithful to the CoC concept, even though my entire idea was taken straight from an HPL story.

Some of these folk do need to get over themselves a little.

Quote from: BalbinusJ, I don't disagree, particularly in that it seems lazy to me, but hey, I return to my awesome power of not buying.

Alien was a great horror movie, Aliens I thought was a really fun action movie, it's not in the same genre as the original but it's still fun.  I have both in my DVD collection (actually, I have both in my outdated video collection and thus now have no way to watch them, which rather undermines my point, oh well).

People do get overly purist about the mythos though, there was a thread about reinventing in on rpg.net and I posted some ideas based purely on stuff taken directly from his writing.  One poster criticised me for not being faithful to the CoC concept, even though my entire idea was taken straight from an HPL story.

Some of these folk do need to get over themselves a little.

In a way, I think these days, thanks to the oversaturation of it all, the only way to really do justice to the spirit of HPL's style of story, you basically have to toss out everything but the barest themes and concepts.

In a wierd sort of way I think even the CoC RPG itself is part of the problem.  "The thing that shal not be named" is named just fine, with complete stats in D&D bestiary style in the back of the book.  

Of course, I still think the best story I've seen in a while that captures what I think of when I think CoC was actually Event Horizon, maybe sans actually calling the alternate dimension Hell.

The game looks quite interesting, although I'll join the chorus of non-Mecha fans.

To be honest I think yet another mythos horror game set in the early 20th/21st centuries wouldn't pique anywhere near as much interest. As has been said the idea is pretty much played out, particularly within gaming culture. It's also worth noting that the existence of Cthulutech in no way invalidates or dilutes CoC, Delta Green or any of the other fine books that have graced my shelf over the years.

And I can always exercise what will be known in years to come as 'Balbinus Choice,' which is a bit like 'Sophies Choice,' but with dice involved. A whole order of magnitude more significant, I think we can all agree.

Quote from: J ArcaneI wouldn't say I have some great issue with it.  Just that I, unlike Mr. Snakeguy here, am capable of understanding any negative reactions to it.  

So it's just the rod up your ass then?

You see,you have quite spectacularly missed my point. I didn't quote someone who simply said 'gee, i don't like the game', as many have here, I quoted someone who got bent out of shape as if someone were spitting on his dead  parent's grave! See the difference? Not liking something is fine; maligning something in the way quoted is just ignorance and I've seen more than enough ignorance amongst gamers already. Sadly this trait seems more prevalent among british gamers, of which I am one.

Quote from: J ArcaneIf you wanted to make a game about giant robots beating up giant monsters, there's whole genres of exactly that in Japanese film and TV, like the kaiju stuff, or Evangelion, or Ultraman, or sentai, and on and on and on.  It's not even terribly well covered in the roleplaying realm, except indirectly.  

That's. Not. What. It's. About.

:rolleyes:

Now this is where you are annoying me; I haven't read the full game, don't make that claim. What I have read (aside from the foolish art direction I've already copiously mentioned) is a setting that's a great deal more than what you are assuming it is- and despite being corrected (or at least challenged to prove otherwise) you still refuse to believe that CT is not a game about giant mechs beating up cthulhu. It annoys me that intelligent gamers cannot do anything other than judge a book by its cover. I woudl have expected better than that.

Quote from: J ArcaneAll this game seems to me is that either someone was too lazy to come up with their own giant critters, or had one of those ideas that sounds good when your drunk but seems pointless in the morning but by then you're already half way through a first draft and don't wish to stop.  

Either that or it's nothing more than pandering to the very same pop culture version of Lovecraft's mythos, which basically makes you a tool, and certainly no better than the people whom SOS is so quick to judge.

I don't think you know enough about it to make an informed judgement. So by all means don't by it, but don't slag off something based on lazy thinking. You're as bad as the people i quote.

Quote from: BalbinusJ, I don't disagree, particularly in that it seems lazy to me, but hey, I return to my awesome power of not buying.

Alien was a great horror movie, Aliens I thought was a really fun action movie, it's not in the same genre as the original but it's still fun.  I have both in my DVD collection (actually, I have both in my outdated video collection and thus now have no way to watch them, which rather undermines my point, oh well).

People do get overly purist about the mythos though, there was a thread about reinventing in on rpg.net and I posted some ideas based purely on stuff taken directly from his writing.  One poster criticised me for not being faithful to the CoC concept, even though my entire idea was taken straight from an HPL story.

Some of these folk do need to get over themselves a little.

Aliens has some scary moments; to deny that is just bollocks. It's a different type of movie from Alien no doubt and only a fool would argue otherwise, but to say action movies can't have scary bits is stupid. The scary bits (such as when the marines first encounter the aliens and the people all gooed up to the wall) work preceisly becaus ehtye play on our expectations; we're with Ripley whose sitting with Gorman in the APC watching the marines ignorantly walk into trouble. We know what's going to happen and that's what makes it scary. It's a different kind of horror.

At least I was scared when i first watched it (mind you i was a bit wee back then )

Quote from: J ArcaneNow ask yourself in what way that is relevant to products based on a series of horror stories.  And why one might be displeased upon the acquisition of a product based on horror stories that was not, in fact, horror at all.

For extra credit, you could even ponder what the point of taking a horror property, and making an action product out of it.  I recommend asking some Hollywood executives.  They have a lot of experience with that sort of thing.

Um horror and action aren't mutually exclusive. Watch 28 Days Later and tell me there's neither.

Who says there is no horror in CT, or that it's like aliens, all about Da Big Gunz?

No doubt some people prefer their Cthulhu Mythos to be set in the 20's and that the inclusion of technology somehow contradicts the point of it all. Delta Green works as a more modern (though not futuristic) interpretation of the Mythos, so why should CT be any different? Because it has 'giant robots'?

Dear oh dear.

You're making a lot of assumptions here, perhaps you have read the game and are in a more informed position. I don't know. The game might well prove to be a suckfest. Again I don't know.


What I do know is that you are being, as the kids say, an asshat.

Quote from: J ArcaneIn a way, I think these days, thanks to the oversaturation of it all, the only way to really do justice to the spirit of HPL's style of story, you basically have to toss out everything but the barest themes and concepts.

Emphasis added.

I don't see HPL's work as being monolithic in tone or theme. He did adventure / exploration, pulp horror, and even some action -- often in the same story (Call of Cthulhu, itself, has several different min-stories).

I don't have any information about Cthulhu-tech, or an opinion one way or the other on that particular product, but I don't think it's right to say there's only one way to "do Cthulhu" -- there's clearly room for a spectrum of approaches.

I see a lot of people complaining about, forex, the level of violence investigators use during CoC games (that's not happening here, but it's common IME, in 'they're doing it wrong!' CoC discussions).

Some of the stories do, in fact, have no violence and no problems that could reasonably resolved with violence. Many of them hinge on or end with gunfire, in almost exactly the way a CoC scenario might.

HPL was clearly interested in science and technology -- he uses it in a lot of his stories (often to enhance the element of fear when science proves unable to master the mythos -- I'm thinking Color out of Space, specifically, but this is a common sub-theme in quite a few). Given the specific detail and the mention of scientific techniques, it looks to me like he took at least some effort to get it right.

If he were writing today, he might well include futuristic elements drawn from science fiction; thematically I don't think Cthulhu-tech or action/adventure elements are out of place at all.

Cheers,
-E.

QuoteI don't see HPL's work as being monolithic in tone or theme. He did adventure / exploration, pulp horror, and even some action -- often in the same story (Call of Cthulhu, itself, has several different min-stories).

And there remain certain themes and ideas and concepts that are by and large unique to, and originating from Lovecraft which, to me, are the whole goal in really capturing his work.  

Yes he did lots of other stuff that was this or that that many other authors have covered, but the core parts, the parts that make the Mythos different, that make it what it is, those are what I refer to when I talk about his style.

If those core unique elements didn't exist none of us would even be having this conversation at all, and he would've been as forgotten as a zillion other pulp writers of his day.

Quote from: signoftheserpentAliens has some scary moments; to deny that is just bollocks. It's a different type of movie from Alien no doubt and only a fool would argue otherwise, but to say action movies can't have scary bits is stupid.

Indeed, it's a good job I didn't say that then, I said it wasn't a horror movie.

Action movies can have scary bits, Aliens did, but it still isn't a horror movie.  It's an action movie.

I mean, it's a fine riposte and all, but it doesn't speak at all to my point which was that Alien and Aliens are in different genres.  That doesn't make one of them a better movie per se, I like Aliens, but a few scary scenes does not a horror movie make.

Is it possible that the game is designed to handle a variety of genre types? If so my interest in it has just risen a notch.