Quote from: J ArcaneEven then though, as the series progressed more towards an action vein, the Aliens became more and more wussified in order to make them decent opponents for a very different genre.

Not really buying it, J.

One lone alien takes out a crew of unsuspecting civilians. Seems reasonably badass.

Whole horde of aliens (we do get an exact, and fairly low, count of the colonists) take on battle hardened marines, and win up until the nuke drops. Never mind the Queen. Seems still pretty badass, only this time their opponents were more ready for them.

Lone Alien takes on, and pretty much toys with, the entire battle hardened mass of career criminals/miners and laughs at them. If anything, this alien was the baddest of the bunch. And third in line.  

Aliens, now fairly well understood and produced under supposedly controlled circumstances, cleverly escape and make mincemeat of every man and woman on an entire ship filled with armed people who knew EXACTLY what they were up against, and win again until someone blows up the ship.  Still badass, J. Still badass.

Then the Aliens go mano-a-mano with the Predators, humans aren't even a threat, and the Predators don't do too much better.  Yup, still badass, possibly more badass, since we KNOW the pred's got a thing about killing aliens for fun, have cool toys that the colonial Marines can only dream of, and are about twenty times tougher than humans... and they STILL get stomped in one on one fights half the time.



I'd say the Aliens never got wussified. Their opponents went through changes that may or may not have changed how tough the aliens appeared, but wussified? Did you even see the movies?

chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, if you've got 'em.

i will try a new flavor tho, if offered.

QuoteI'd say the Aliens never got wussified. Their opponents went through changes that may or may not have changed how tough the aliens appeared, but wussified? Did you even see the movies?

I recall seeing lots of aliens go down like chumps, and the mroe recent the movie the more likely it was to happen.  Especially once you get to A:R and AvP.  

But of course, A: R is a VERY different movie from previous ones in the series, and AvP is just a bad marketing ploy.

Quote from: beeberchocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, if you've got 'em.

i will try a new flavor tho, if offered.

I've been pondering the idea of a maple-bacon rice krispies treat.  Not quite a cookie though.

On the whole I hate clumsy mashups, of which the first I can recall is Shadowrun. (I hated the idea, not the game, because I never played the game and barely peeked inside any of the books.)

A minor caveat is that I really enjoy stuff like "Wild Wild West", the TV show, but there we have the rejuvination (at the time) of a well-worn and semi-historical genre, by the addition of fantastic spy/sci-fi elements. Which brings us to...

Isn't it possible that Cthulhutech is for exactly the same sort of audience as Shadowrun, who I imagine were folks that were so steeped in fantasy that it was more effective to convey the themes of cyberpunk by dressing them in fantasy tropes? In fact CT sounds very true to the mecha genre, which long ago really stopped being about "the mecha", and instead offer them largely as de rigueur window dressing for other themes.

Vaguely like how 19th-century operas in France were forced to include a ballet, it's just how a certain audience expects things to be, and the neat thing is that by giving them the comforting surface effects they expect, you can hold their attention for the themes you want to drive home.

Quote from: J ArcaneBecause it's pointless.  Divorced of it's horrific themes, Cthulhu is just a big stompy bat guy.  He may as well be Godzilla.

How do you know if CT divorces the mythos from it's horror themes? I've asked you to abck up all your assumptions and you haven't done so at all.

Quote from: J ArcaneBINGO!  Give that man a cookie.

why? explain for once.

Quote from: signoftheserpentwhy? explain for once.

If you can't be bothered to read the words on your screen, don't expect everyone else to re-explain them for you.

Now quiet.  The grownups are talking now.

Quote from: J ArcaneI'm saying that the kind of monsters that Lovecraft presented are ill-suited to anything but horror, and in fact, are downright mutually exclusive to an Aliens style action treatment, because of inherent qualities in them that make them what they are in the first place.

Divorcing them of those elements in order to force them into an action mold, is ultimately a silly gesture because you've removed the very thing that made them interesting in the first place.

The Alien was a ruthless killing machine, but seeing him alone didn't make you go shitfuck insane and start gouging your own eyes out while speaking in tongues long forgotten by sane men.  Even then though, as the series progressed more towards an action vein, the Aliens became more and more wussified in order to make them decent opponents for a very different genre.

What you're saying is more clear now, but I'm not sure I agree.

I think it's true that Cthulhu re-imagined as a kaiju is different from HPL's original vision, but that doesn't mean mixing the mythos and giant monster stories is totally infertile ground.

It just means Cthulhu-Tech is something that's neither of the original components.

I fail to see why that's a bad thing.

I *can* think of some points where the intersection would be an improvement:

1) I think kaiju movies largely lack any sense of horror or tragedy; I watched Godzilla (the original) when it was back out in the theaters. It wasn't a great movie, but the post apocalyptic city-scape and the scenes in the hospitals (burn wards?) had more pathos and terror than all the fake-buildings-falling-down in all the later movies (the one's I've seen; which is few) put together.

I think Cthulhu could bring some horror and tragedy back

2) I find giant monsters pretty... one dimensional -- their origin stories and humanity's relationship to them is fairly simplistic (caveat: I'm not real familiar with the genre... I might be way, way wrong; this is just my inexpert current-understanding). Adding some cultists and maybe some smaller monsters to the mix (from the HPL Pantheon) might improve things.

3) Gamable PC's. In most kaiju flicks the characters are the monsters and the human drama is distinctly secondary. That might not be so game-able -- but CoC gives humans things to do (stop the monsters from appearing... and maybe magic works better than technology at stopping them). From an RPG-standpoint, adding Cthulhu to your Kaiju game might make it better.

4) Counterpoint. In CoC humanity is insignificant -- ooooh! Scary! Existential, even... But that was 1920. Maybe in 2020, humanity's got the bad guys on run... They've sonar-mapped Rhy'le and depth-charged the title character while he was sleeping (That wasn't dead was forever lying, but with sufficient fire power...) They've got Nyralthotep on the run, hunting him like a dog in the Deep Sahara with Cosmic Lantern Guns and they're building a Stargate and a Strange-matter bomb to purify Azathoth at the source.  If that sounds like Heresy, it is -- and who knows? It might make a heck of a game.

Anyway, even if all of these sound like crap to you, my point's that using Cthulhu as a starting point might add significant value even if the final product, in fact, deviated quite seriously from HLP's vision.

I'm all for slaughtering sacred cows, though. YMMV.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote3) Gamable PC's. In most kaiju flicks the characters are the monsters and the human drama is distinctly secondary. That might not be so game-able -- but CoC gives humans things to do (stop the monsters from appearing... and maybe magic works better than technology at stopping them). From an RPG-standpoint, adding Cthulhu to your Kaiju game might make it better.

Except that, as Ctech's promotional materials make clear, the monsters are already here, now strap into the big 30-foot mecha and start beating them up.  If it resembles any kind of story, it's closer to your 4th point.

Quote4) Counterpoint. In CoC humanity is insignificant -- ooooh! Scary! Existential, even... But that was 1920. Maybe in 2020, humanity's got the bad guys on run... They've sonar-mapped Rhy'le and depth-charged the title character while he was sleeping (That wasn't dead was forever lying, but with sufficient fire power...) They've got Nyralthotep on the run, hunting him like a dog in the Deep Sahara with Cosmic Lantern Guns and they're building a Stargate and a Strange-matter bomb to purify Azathoth at the source.  If that sounds like Heresy, it is -- and who knows? It might make a heck of a game.

Eh.  I can see it being intersting as a one shot, as sort of a break from a long CoC campaign, but as an extended play option?  Not really.  As something one would go looking for if one was interested in CoC/Lovecraft?  Again, I doubt it.

QuoteAnyway, even if all of these sound like crap to you, my point's that using Cthulhu as a starting point might add significant value even if the final product, in fact, deviated quite seriously from HLP's vision.

I don't see what value there is in using a thing, if you've tossed out all the things that made it interesting and turned it into something else.  

It's just pandering to name recognition in the end, the same way Hollywood will by up the movie rights of a book or a game, then turn around and rewrite basically the entire story willy nilly to pander to a totally different audience.  The intent is to sucker in the fans of the original on name recognition, while pulling in a lot of random joes to try and pad out the seats in the theatre.

Problem is, 99 times out of 100, that approach fails utterly, because the original fans are pissed and skip your movie, and the rest of the viewing public skips the movie because they don't care about the original source material to begin with, so there's nothing to sell them.  Plus you've got an abortion of a script that's basically designed by marketers and executives instead of artists.

That is what I get from Cthulhutech.

Quote from: -E.4) Counterpoint. In CoC humanity is insignificant -- ooooh! Scary! Existential, even... But that was 1920. Maybe in 2020, humanity's got the bad guys on run... They've sonar-mapped Rhy'le and depth-charged the title character while he was sleeping (That wasn't dead was forever lying, but with sufficient fire power...) They've got Nyralthotep on the run, hunting him like a dog in the Deep Sahara with Cosmic Lantern Guns and they're building a Stargate and a Strange-matter bomb to purify Azathoth at the source.  If that sounds like Heresy, it is -- and who knows? It might make a heck of a game.

that would be a neat exercise.  toss in the element of higher-level physics needed to make this shit causes more insanity as you vainly try to comprehend eleventy-billion dimensional mechanics.  and the guys who program the gates end up like sam neill in event horizon.  then discover that yog-sothoth, master of the gate, can undo everything at the blink of an eye.  but hasn't done so, yet. . . .

"The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy."
-- H.P. Lovecraft

The Great Old Ones were fantastically powerful and all, seemingly representing natural forces which were greater then man and incomprehensible... but what happens when humankind's lore is great enough to master these cosmic forces? An individual humans might is worthless, but as a whole, they are as great as the Great Old Ones?

Somewhere up thread beeber had the right of it.

I ran and played CoC for a decade or so from the minute first edition came out. It was truly mind-blowing, especially if you came from D&D. The creepiness, the sense of powerlessness... if you ask me for my Top 3 Triumphs of roleplaying, one of them was sending R'lyeh back to the ocean floor at the end of SoYS.

But that's gone. Cthulhu has become plush. Not objectively (what with him not really existing... right? right??), but in the mind of virtually every gamer you will ever meet nowadays.

So, what's to be done? Turning back the wheel is futile. Only two options come to mind: a) play CoC with noobs. Seriously, it works very well with non-gamers. b) focus on that Cthulhu aspect which IME hasn't been plushified yet: the Dreamlands. That is still one weird and beautiful place. Hard to GM, of course.

Quote from: J ArcaneIf you can't be bothered to read the words on your screen, don't expect everyone else to re-explain them for you.

Now quiet.  The grownups are talking now.

Cute; time you dropped the chip on you shoulder I think, because you certainly ain't growed up wiht that attitude. All you've done is patronise, display the height of arrogance and evade the question. Where is your evidence that CT is anything like what you so vigorously claim?