First off, what is Cthulhutech? It's a Roleplaying Game made by WildFire. Currently they are signed with Sandstorm, last year they were signed with InMediaRes, and the year before they were trying to print and distribute their books on their own. They signed with IMR because it turns out they don't know how to get books bound properly, and they signed with Sandstorm because they had to drag IMR through a six month court case to get the money for the books that IMR sold on their behalf. So I'm predisposed to like Cthulhutech, because they are made by a plucky little company that has achieved some recognition and success in spite of some amazing obstacles. Keep that in mind while I rant about it.

Cthulhutech takes place in a Kitchensink Cthulhu Mythos / Near Future Giant Robot SciFi setting. Apparently this blows a lot of peoples' minds. I mean, Cthulhu and Science Fiction? Holy shit! But honestly the Cthulhu Mythos has always been science fiction. Yuggoth is Pluto, and it always was. So they really do get zero points for originality there. Still, it's a solid formula: madness inducing monsters and spaceships has been selling books since HP Lovecraft picked up a pen.

Nevertheless, there really is a lot of material from the original writings that don't translate well to modern audiences. Generations have passed and the ability to fly through space or destroy a city just isn't that impressive any more. We have rockets and nuclear weapons. And it isn't just the march of progress that has made a lot of the alien technology less scary, HP Lovecraft himself had some ideas that are... antiquated. The final revelation in The Medusa's Coil isn't even that she has snake parts, it's that "despite" being a sexy lady, she's part negro (I am not making that up). The whole "what if your pure White lineage got polluted with black blood?!" thing just isn't scary any more to the vast majority of people who aren't skinheads polishing their Gott Mitt Uns belt buckles, so if you want to retell those stories to people with modern sensibilities, you need to update things somehow.

So the Cthulhutech people decided that to update the whole lineage corruption thing they needed to replace it with institutional rape. Yes, really. Every time HP Lovecraft had some sort of inhuman (or non-White) people secretly interbreeding with humans to make secret hybrids, this has been replaced with rape camps. Cthulhutech has a lot of rape camps. The Deep Ones have Rape Camps, the Cult of Hastur converts every town they capture to a Rape Camp. The Horned Ones generate Rape with a magical field doohickey, and on and on and on. Lots of Rape. True story: if you dare to brave RPG.net to find the "Sell Me On" thread for Cthulhutech, three of words in the tags for the thread are the word "rape". That is not a joke. The tags are "cthulhutech, mythos, rape, rape rape, science fiction, sell me on". There is a lot of rape, is what I'm saying. It puts some people off the game.

Next we have the science fiction elements, because all this stuff happens in the future. Team Human has space ships and Evangelions. Yes, seriously. They have the giant robots from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Now I like Evangelion, but their inclusion here is rather corrosive to cooperative storytelling. We're not talking about the robots from Patlabor or Voltron here, the expectation really appears to be that there will be one mecha pilot and while he goes on a rampage the rest of the party will... play canasta? I'm not really sure, there's only so many times you can have the rest of the team running around shooting guards in the rape camp (all dungeon equivalents in this game are alien spaceships or rape camps, or in the case of Sub Niggurath ships: both at once) while the giant robot pilot keeps the defenses occupied before it starts to get old. The rest of the team really is incapable of doing very much that meaningfully interacts with what the giant robot does. Space Battleships have a similar problem, though it is possible for the party to do pirates vs. marines stuff while the ship is flying around.

But let's get to the basic mechanics. It's called the "Framewerk System" which probably tells you everything you needed to know about how well thought out it was going to be. Basically, you roll a pile of d10s and try to arrange the results to make the highest straight or pair you can. Then you take the best "feature" out of the pile and add the numbers on the dice together and then you add your static modifiers on top of that. It's incredibly random, and I invite you to play with A Dice Roller. Actually, I don't really see how to play the game without the dice roller, because figuring out what your roll was with real dice is a time consuming ordeal.

-Frank

Sounds like the copyright and/or trademark holders of "Cthulhu" are willing to license anything for cash.  The sign of nobody giving a damn anymore about a particular IP?

Quote from: FrankTrollman;422356First off, what is Cthulhutech? It's a Roleplaying Game made by WildFire. Currently they are signed with Sandstorm, last year they were signed with InMediaRes, and the year before they were trying to print and distribute their books on their own. They signed with IMR because it turns out they don't know how to get books bound properly, and they signed with Sandstorm because they had to drag IMR through a six month court case to get the money for the books that IMR sold on their behalf. So I'm predisposed to like Cthulhutech, because they are made by a plucky little company that has achieved some recognition and success in spite of some amazing obstacles. Keep that in mind while I rant about it.

Cthulhutech takes place in a Kitchensink Cthulhu Mythos / Near Future Giant Robot SciFi setting. Apparently this blows a lot of peoples' minds. I mean, Cthulhu and Science Fiction? Holy shit! But honestly the Cthulhu Mythos has always been science fiction. Yuggoth is Pluto, and it always was. So they really do get zero points for originality there. Still, it's a solid formula: madness inducing monsters and spaceships has been selling books since HP Lovecraft picked up a pen.

Nevertheless, there really is a lot of material from the original writings that don't translate well to modern audiences. Generations have passed and the ability to fly through space or destroy a city just isn't that impressive any more. We have rockets and nuclear weapons. And it isn't just the march of progress that has made a lot of the alien technology less scary, HP Lovecraft himself had some ideas that are... antiquated. The final revelation in The Medusa's Coil isn't even that she has snake parts, it's that "despite" being a sexy lady, she's part negro (I am not making that up). The whole "what if your pure White lineage got polluted with black blood?!" thing just isn't scary any more to the vast majority of people who aren't skinheads polishing their Gott Mitt Uns belt buckles, so if you want to retell those stories to people with modern sensibilities, you need to update things somehow.

So the Cthulhutech people decided that to update the whole lineage corruption thing they needed to replace it with institutional rape. Yes, really. Every time HP Lovecraft had some sort of inhuman (or non-White) people secretly interbreeding with humans to make secret hybrids, this has been replaced with rape camps. Cthulhutech has a lot of rape camps. The Deep Ones have Rape Camps, the Cult of Hastur converts every town they capture to a Rape Camp. The Horned Ones generate Rape with a magical field doohickey, and on and on and on. Lots of Rape. True story: if you dare to brave RPG.net to find the "Sell Me On" thread for Cthulhutech, three of words in the tags for the thread are the word "rape". That is not a joke. The tags are "cthulhutech, mythos, rape, rape rape, science fiction, sell me on". There is a lot of rape, is what I'm saying. It puts some people off the game.

Next we have the science fiction elements, because all this stuff happens in the future. Team Human has space ships and Evangelions. Yes, seriously. They have the giant robots from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Now I like Evangelion, but their inclusion here is rather corrosive to cooperative storytelling. We're not talking about the robots from Patlabor or Voltron here, the expectation really appears to be that there will be one mecha pilot and while he goes on a rampage the rest of the party will... play canasta? I'm not really sure, there's only so many times you can have the rest of the team running around shooting guards in the rape camp (all dungeon equivalents in this game are alien spaceships or rape camps, or in the case of Sub Niggurath ships: both at once) while the giant robot pilot keeps the defenses occupied before it starts to get old. The rest of the team really is incapable of doing very much that meaningfully interacts with what the giant robot does. Space Battleships have a similar problem, though it is possible for the party to do pirates vs. marines stuff while the ship is flying around.

But let's get to the basic mechanics. It's called the "Framewerk System" which probably tells you everything you needed to know about how well thought out it was going to be. Basically, you roll a pile of d10s and try to arrange the results to make the highest straight or pair you can. Then you take the best "feature" out of the pile and add the numbers on the dice together and then you add your static modifiers on top of that. It's incredibly random, and I invite you to play with A Dice Roller. Actually, I don't really see how to play the game without the dice roller, because figuring out what your roll was with real dice is a time consuming ordeal.

-Frank

That almost makes World of Synnabar sound playable in comparison . . .

Help me, Nyarlathotep, help me.  That makes World of Synnabar[sp?] sound playable in comparison.

Based on human history, I don't see why you think rape camps wouldn't be common when humanity is run by people influenced by Cthulhu and his ilk.

Quote from: ggroy;422361Sounds like the copyright and/or trademark holders of "Cthulhu" are willing to license anything for cash.  The sign of nobody giving a damn anymore about a particular IP?

I'm pretty sure Cthulhu et al is public domain by now; even in his lifetime Lovecraft encouraged other authors to incorporate his ideas and concepts (and specific names) into their works.  Copyrighting this is probably as likely as the TSR copyright on the term "Nazi."

My "cthulhu in the now or immediate future" I outlined is way better than this.

For once Frank and I are in total agreement. I found that the setting of the game stripped out the cosmic horror of Lovecraft and replaced it with gore, rape, and other slasher movie tropes.

There's also a really uncomfortable racism-through-obliviousness element that's very obvious to this non-American.

For example, the future world government's headquarters are in New York, then when they get bombed, they move them to... Chicago (for no good reason). China, India and the entire continent of Africa are basically ignored in the setting except as exotic backgrounds where your white soldiers can storm rape camps despite containing about 1/2 of mankind between them IRL.

The Nazzadi, who are this clone race, are explicitly stated to look like either (and only) like whites or Asians (in the sense of Chinese / Japanese, not Indians, I'm pretty sure from the art). The art is pretty uniformly honky too.

It's not any one thing that pushes it over the edge, and I doubt it's intentional, but it's another strike against the game for me.

I didn't know about the "rape camps" thing. I am officially unsold. Thanks, Frank Trollman.

I've run Cthulutech, so I'm a fully credentialed expert.

I won't dispute that there are rape camps in the game, but the overt rapey sexualization of the game really doesn't come into focus until you add the later books.  Off the top of my head the only rape camps mentioned are the deep ones on the coast and pretty much all of china is one big rape/cannibalism fest to show just how bad things get when the great old ones are winning.

The Fun Guys from Yuggoth don't, to my recollection, have any rape camps, but they do mind rape people into being on their side... or maybe replace them with exact clones, I can't recall which.

There are four tiers of play that are not well seperated or balanced. You do have the Evangelion pilots, which are slightly better than regular mecha pilots, but they can and do go crazy... I think there was a real effort there to make the concept of trading humanity/sanity for power/survival here.  You can play with mecha and evangelions in the same party without much difficulty, as they are on the same general scale, and if the eva pilot is in a lighter 'mech' it probably won't feel too unbalanced.

Then you have the 'taggers', which are Guyver rip offs.  They are human sized but are much more powerful than humans, and much more flexible/powerful than humans with access to power armor.  At least you can mix them into a human party if some people don't mind not being as cool as others. Taggers, officially, have some sort of extradimensional symbiot attached to their soul that HATES the Elder Gods or whatever, but it still drives the people bonded to them crazy.

And lastly you have humans.  Given that none of the enemies you are likely to face are anywhere near as weak as humans this, I suppose, allows you to play an old school 'we all gunna die!' game of Cthulu, with tech.  

I ran a mixed tagger/human party. As long as the Taggers were scrapping with the human sized enemies, the normal humans could try to cast spells or fire bullets into the fray and feel like they were contributing.  

Spells: Seem to be fairly trad Cthulu in scope. Mostly weak and or goofy shit with the occasional OMG WTF BBQ!!!! spell thrown in for good measure, but all of them are bad ideas to cast, take days etc and so forth.  

Psychic stuff is very heavily referenced in the main book, but actual RULES for being a psychic don't appear until the supplements... as I recall.

Insanity: Does not seem to be nearly as big a threat as it could be... and its offset by therapy rules.

Framewerk System:  Frank is basically right, its ass. Predicting odds is nigh on to impossible, resolving anything quickly  either means a truly abominable roll or ignoring the rules.  The game/system looks very quick in the book, very streamlined.  You don't have a lot of numbers to mess with, characters could be easily expressed on a 3x5 card if you wanted (Not mentioned in the game, just sayin'...), and the rules chapter is the thinnest part of the book.

But when you actually start trying to roll the dice?! Dear GOD!!  Chunky mess.

I mean: I taught it to very casual gamers very quickly, and ran it easily enough, but it never ran SMOOTHLY thanks to those damn dice conventions.  

I am thinking, however, that stealing a note from L5R/7th Sea and just assigning a 'kept dice' convention might work without having to massively rebalance the Difficulty ratings in the game.


Regarding the Cthulu Mythos itself: Even moving into expansions, the Cthulutech world seems to be streamlined fairly well.  Rather than referencing characters and events in near centennial books, you have a small handful of bad guys who are not at all on the same side, with one or two cults apeice.

Hastur is on the Plateau of Leng, its his cannibal hordes that have destroyed asia.  Cthulu sleeps, but the Deep Ones, who don't care about Hastur one way or the other (as far as I recall), are rising and raping, and have their own mecha and kaiju.

Then you have Nyarlythotep who appears to be on human's side, insamuch as he is the CEO of the big mega-corporation that makes a lot of this shit, though thats not to say he isn't evil and dastardly... I'm just saying what his main mask is doing.  The Fungi are invading earth to destroy humanity because they want to keep human pyschic/magic tech from awakening/empowering the elder gods.  Lastly there are the pleasure/rape/infiltration cults that worship... uh... I forgot.

And that is really it. Names are dropped, but really you just have three or four big bads fighting each other to be the one to finally fuck over humanity once and for all.

In game fiction appears to alternate between various military/commando operations, some doomed some not, and all either flavor of mecha or tagger, and 'investigations' inside the walled enclave cities, generally only involving humans or taggers.


EDIT::: You know your post is too long when you go from being the second poster to the ninth...

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;422380For once Frank and I are in total agreement. I found that the setting of the game stripped out the cosmic horror of Lovecraft and replaced it with gore, rape, and other slasher movie tropes.

There's also a really uncomfortable racism-through-obliviousness element that's very obvious to this non-American.

For example, the future world government's headquarters are in New York, then when they get bombed, they move them to... Chicago (for no good reason). China, India and the entire continent of Africa are basically ignored in the setting except as exotic backgrounds where your white soldiers can storm rape camps despite containing about 1/2 of mankind between them IRL.

The Nazzadi, who are this clone race, are explicitly stated to look like either (and only) like whites or Asians (in the sense of Chinese / Japanese, not Indians, I'm pretty sure from the art). The art is pretty uniformly honky too.

It's not any one thing that pushes it over the edge, and I doubt it's intentional, but it's another strike against the game for me.

If it was intentional it might at least be funny . . .

Quote from: danbuter;422370Based on human history, I don't see why you think rape camps wouldn't be common when humanity is run by people influenced by Cthulhu and his ilk.

It's got the same attitude towards rape as a 14 year old boy. Also, I personally would never play a female PC, or run it for a female PC because the sheer number of things that by the book have "save vs. rape" mind control powers and "auto pregnancy" abilities.

Quote from: Professort Zoot;422373I'm pretty sure Cthulhu et al is public domain by now; even in his lifetime Lovecraft encouraged other authors to incorporate his ideas and concepts (and specific names) into their works.  Copyrighting this is probably as likely as the TSR copyright on the term "Nazi."

American copyright law:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/302.html

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/304.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_length


The first publishing of "Cthulhu" was in 1928.

According to American copyright law, the copyright on something first published in 1928 will expire 95 years later in 2023.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft#Copyright

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;422380The Nazzadi, who are this clone race, are explicitly stated to look like either (and only) like whites or Asians (in the sense of Chinese / Japanese, not Indians, I'm pretty sure from the art). The art is pretty uniformly honky too.
.

I hate to say it, Bub, but this is very much looking like 'I want to be outraged against something'.

The Nazzadi are fucking Dark Blue.  They don't look like any human race whatsoever, and I strongly doubt you could find a single line of text anywhere in the entire line of books that suggests their facial features look like any particular ethnicity.  The art is cartoony enough, and in the character chapter at least all one artist, that trying to assign an ethnotype to Fucking Blue People is silly.

Also: China DOES get plenty of mention in the main book: Hastur's Cannibal/monster horde has over run it and eaten and or (in no particular order) raped everyone.

Seriously though, your complaint about the Nazzadi being white is like saying the Drow are racist because they are obviously the coolest race in the game and despite being black skinned have white facial features. Its a nonsense statement.

Re: PC professions/classes

I don't own the game, but I have read it, and I thought everyone was supposed to pick either the same or similar professions?  Eldritch folk run in secret societies, so you can't have a military grunt along for the ride.  Mecha pilots do their own thing, so you'd want a squad of them instead of ground troops/scouts as support.

Quote from: ggroyAccording to American copyright law, the copyright on something first published in 1928 will expire 95 years later in 2023.

I thought it was shakey for Cthulhu since there were disagreements over who exactly owned the copyright?