Fulfilling Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder

[Toasty]

I rather like the idea of adding on insanity rules and alien tech for Pathfinder. That being said, I'm not so hot about some of the minis. Not that they're badly done, but some just don't match my preconceptions is all.

 

That being said... has ANYONE ever done Zoogs before?

Yes in the Cthulhu Wars kickstarter, which these are rereleases of. :D

[YronimosW]

I'm disappointed to see nothing about the game mechanics they will introduce, beside it is based on Pathfinder.

 

What does make their stuff special, beside using the name Cthulhu?

High fantasy Sword and Sorcery? Wow, that a combination. How does the High Fantasy elements look like?

Will there be a new world or a modified known RPG world?

How do they give the creatures more character and cultural backround so they are not just a bundle of combat statistics? Or descriptions like it is evil(/unspeakable horrific) and the next is more evil(/unspeakable horrific) and, and this one is even more evil(/unspeakable horrific)...

How will magic work? Are there Special spells?

Any special character classes?

New Skills?

 

I really hope there will be no statistics for the elders, beside how they can be exorcised or their conjuration be stopped.

 

According to the Kickstarter page:  "Some Cthulhu Mythos has already been introduced in Pathfinder, but we plan to bring an authoritative expertise of Lovecraftian Horror to the game...."

 

Pathfinder is essentially 3rd/3.5 edition D&D with some heavy-duty house-ruling, and its own high fantasy setting (Golarion) that was built from the ground up around a Cosmic Horror aesthetic with explicit references to the Cthulhu Mythos, so this would only be an expansion of existing Mythos Horror references in a setting that's been around for quite a while now.

 

Those Lovecraft monsters that have been appearing in Reaper Bones?  They've almost certainly been released just as much for Pathfinder (alongside the official Pathfinder Bones miniatures) as for Call of Cthulhu. 

 

Pathfinder has also been licensing a pre-painted collectible miniatures line to Wizkids for several years, which has included more than a few Lovecraftian monsters alongside traditional high fantasy monsters:  Hound of Tindalos, Nightgaunt, Gug, and Denizen of Leng were among the first Pathfinder Battles miniatures released several years ago.

 

The Pathfinder setting has a history of adding depth and color to monsters so that they become more than just a collection of stats - for example, the "fluff"-heavy Pathfinder "Classic Monsters Revisited" supplement got rave reviews for breathing a great deal of life and character into basic monsters like goblins, orcs, bugbears, and so on, with descriptions of the cultures and societies the creatures live in, their differing psychologies, their ecologies, and so on.  Similarly, the supplements "Misfit Monsters Revisited", "Classic Horrors Revisited", and "Into the Darklands" did something similar to a variety of other standard and exotic D&D monsters, placing an explicitly Lovecraftian spin on many of them.  If those supplements are any indication of what we'd get from Sandy's project, I would expect to see a lot more than just a bunch of dry statistics.

 

As a modified D20 system built off of D&D and more or less compatible with 3rd/3.5 Edition D&D and all the products published for it, Pathfinder managed to pick up a big following from gamers who weren't interested in dropping everything and moving to 4th Edition D&D so soon after 3rd Edition was introduced.

 

There are existing modifications to the 3rd Edition D&D (i.e. D20) game system for sanity mechanics - the D20 version of Call of Cthulhu actually used a sanity mechanic that was more or less identical to the one used in standard Call of Cthulhu rules; this mechanic could be easily added as an optional rule to Pathfinder's rule set and I believe it might have turned up elsewhere in D20 rules sets, so I'd be mildly surprised if I didn't see some form of these rules reappear in this project.  (The Kickstarter page does say that one of the early stretch goals is "Never seen before rules for Insanity", though, so maybe Sandy Petersen plans to use something completely different.)

 

The Kickstarter page mentions nothing yet about classes or skills, but it does mention "key Mythos races are Player Character races", and Pathfinder itself has a tremendous number of core classes, many of which already have some Lovecraftian flavor to them or a few that explicitly wouldn't look far out of place in a Call of Cthulhu game (such as Witches, Investigators, and Gunslingers), so I wouldn't be surprised to see some additional flavor added to existing classes, if not a couple new Lovecraftian classes added.

 

The Kickstarter page also says something about guidance on "How to run horror in a heroic sword and sorcery setting by Sandy Petersen."

 

And, as others have noted, sword-and-sorcery in various flavors and the "Cthulhu Mythos" have been close to each other pretty much since the beginning back in Lovecraft's day, with Lovecraft praising the Conan the Barbarian stories highly, happily sharing ideas with Robert E. Howard , Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Lieber, and other fantasy authors, and Lovecraft himself being a long-time hardcore fan of Dunsany's brand of sword-and-sorcery fiction.  Lovecraft even dabbled in writing some fantasy fiction of his own in the form of his various Dreamlands stories (with The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath in particular uncoincidentally bearing many similarities to a standard high fantasy Dungeons & Dragons campaign, since that story was one of the biggest influences over modern high fantasy role-playing games starting with D&D).

 

In the end, I think that Sandy's project looks like a natural fit with Pathfinder.   Too bad I can't afford the time, money, or space to devote to even more miniatures and game books, at a time when I really can't spare time, money, or space.

[SamuraiJack]

They just announced a Cthulhu AP for Pathfinder.. i would guess that Sanity is making its way in..

 

[Toasty]

Nightgaunts in an adventure for 1st level characters, that is elfing brutal. I expect more deaths than that stupid imp in Runelords and the stupider air elemental in carrion crown.

[Beagle]

The Outer Gods are far too busy chewing on Pluto to be bothered by pesky adventurers

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3487975/What-s-eating-Pluto-Researchers-gigantic-370-mile-wide-BITE-MARK-dwarf-planet-s-surface.html

[Dr.Bedlam]

 

I rather like the idea of adding on insanity rules and alien tech for Pathfinder. That being said, I'm not so hot about some of the minis. Not that they're badly done, but some just don't match my preconceptions is all.

That being said... has ANYONE ever done Zoogs before?

 

Yes in the Cthulhu Wars kickstarter, which these are rereleases of. :D

And that's one of the reasons I'm in; Cthulhu Wars was a fine example of a game I might never play, but I'd buy for the minis.

 

...and I missed the kickstarter, and not even I'm crazy enough to drop $140 and more for a game I may well never play. Being able to cherrypick the miniatures, though...

[Mattnuke]

I'm in for the book - and hope the minis assortments are kept as options on Sandy's page.

[Olaf the Stout]

I'd consider this if they did a 5E option (we just switched over from 3.5E).  For now I've managed to hold off on backing, but I loves me some Cthulhu Mythos.

[Talae]

I'd consider this if they did a 5E option (we just switched over from 3.5E).  For now I've managed to hold off on backing, but I loves me some Cthulhu Mythos.

I would LOVE  a 5e version. That being said, as a 5e player and DM, I will be buying this anyway. I can convert things really easily.

[Olaf the Stout]

 

I'd consider this if they did a 5E option (we just switched over from 3.5E).  For now I've managed to hold off on backing, but I loves me some Cthulhu Mythos.

I would LOVE  a 5e version. That being said, as a 5e player and DM, I will be buying this anyway. I can convert things really easily.

 

Yeah, I could convert it to 5E, but I figure if I'm going to buy a brand new book, I probably should be getting one fit for purpose instead of one that I won't be able to use anything out of as-is (unless we go back to 3.5E, which I don't see happening).

 

Hopefully there will be enough interest for a 5E version.

[Orlando_the_Technicoloured]

I've been lax about posting stretches so here is a mega update compilation, basically lots of stuff unlocked for the book, extra minis added to several packs

“Pointing to a chair, table, and pile of books, the old man now left the room; and when I sat down to read I saw that the books were hoary and mouldy, and that they included old Morryster’s wild Marvells of Science, the terrible Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvill, published in 1681, the shocking Daemonolatreia of Remigius, printed in 1595 at Lyons, and worst of all, the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, in Olaus Wormius’ forbidden Latin translation; a book which I had never seen, but of which I had heard monstrous things whispered.†(The Festival; H.P. Lovecraft)  

. 

 

“Daily life had for him come to be a phantasmagoria of macabre shadow-studies; now glittering and leering with concealed rottenness as in Beardsley's best manner, now hinting terrors behind the commonest shapes and objects as in the subtler and less obvious work of Gustave Dore. He would often regard it as merciful that most persons of high Intelligence jeer at the inmost mysteries; for, he argued, if superior minds were ever placed in fullest contact with the secrets preserved by ancient and lowly cults, the resultant abnormalities would soon not only wreck the world, but threaten the very integrity of the universe.†(The Horror at Red Hook; H. P. Lovecraft)

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“The man who had brought me now squirmed to a point directly beside the hideous flame, and made stiff ceremonial motions to the semicircle he faced. At certain stages of the ritual they did grovelling obeisance, especially when he held above his head that abhorrent Necronomicon he had taken with him; and I shared all the obeisances because I had been summoned to this festival by the writings of my forefathers.†(The Festival; H.P. Lovecraft)    

 .

It seems that Yig, the snake-god of the central plains tribes—presumably the primal source of the more southerly Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan—was an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually quite well-disposed toward those who gave proper respect to him and his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally ravenous, and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. [The Curse of Yig, H.P Lovecraft)  

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“...only three human souls since time began had ever crossed and re-crossed the black impious gulfs to other dreamlands, and of that three, two had come back quite mad.†(The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath; H.P. Lovecraft) 

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There around a hideous fire fed by the obnoxious stems of lunar fungi, there squatted a stinking circle of the toadlike moonbeasts and their almost-human slaves. Some of these slaves were heating curious iron spears in the leaping flames, and at intervals applying their white-hot points to three tightly trussed prisoners that lay writhing before the leaders of the party. From the motions of their tentacles Carter could see that the blunt-snouted moonbeasts were enjoying the spectacle hugely, and vast was his horror when he suddenly recognised the frantic meeping and knew that the tortured ghouls were none other than the faithful trio which had guided him safely from the abyss, and had thereafter set out from the enchanted wood to find Sarkomand and the gate to their native deeps. (The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath; H. P. Lovecraft)  

The moonbeasts sail black galleys from the Dreamlands’ moon that they call home, using the men of Leng to trade rubies for both slaves and gold. Once we fund this goal, we’ll add four (4) more models to the Moonbeast Horde pack - it will grow from six (6) models to ten (10) in total - and you’ll have enough to man a black galley of your own!   

 

"The ghasts try to come out when the Gugs sleep and they attack ghouls as readily as Gugs, for they cannot discriminate. They are very primitive, and eat one another. The Gugs have a sentry at a narrow in the vaults of Zin, but he is often drowsy and is sometimes surprised by a party of ghasts. Though ghasts cannot live in real light, they can endure the grey twilight of the abyss for hours." (The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft)

 

Once this goal is Achieved, the book will include information on magical mythos items. Some of these magic items will have features unique to the Mythos, including items and artifacts from the cults of the Great Old Ones and those with both benefits and curses.

MONSTROUS MARCH MADNESS: Shantak vs Hunting Horror

Mythos monsters are battling to receive YOUR adoration and worship. Every few days, we will post a NEW MATCHUP between two Lovecraftian critters. The ultimate winner will be featured in the inner sleeve as a beautiful art piece inside the Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder book.  

Here is what you need to do: In the comments below, sound off with which creature you think deserves to win.

Today's Matchup?

Shantak vs Hunting Horror

 

 

 

 

The aklo language is older than any mortal tongue. Predating known history, it transcends worlds and space. Once this goal is achieved, we'll bring the aklo language to Pathfinder with a treatise on its origin and devastating potential, written by non other than Sandy Petersen himself.     

We'll also include a list of 70 aklo speaking creatures from the Pathfinder Bestiaries, adapted and revised by Sandy and his design team.

 

[Harrek]

Today's update says the book is completely finished and going to printing.  Those that supported it at a level that provides a PDF should be getting an email telling how to download it now.  Books are being printed and they expect to have it all done in 3 months and shipping to follow.

[Smokestack]

43 minutes ago, Harrek said:

Today's update says the book is completely finished and going to printing.  Those that supported it at a level that provides a PDF should be getting an email telling how to download it now.  Books are being printed and they expect to have it all done in 3 months and shipping to follow.

 

Admittedly I am very Salty about the delays on this kickstarter. per the update "our fulfillment warehouses will have the books in about 3 months, meaning in roughly 4 months you'll have the physical book in hand." another 4 months before shipping starts... which puts this at 16 months delayed... I will be happy when I do finally get the book, but this is the last time I support Sandy Petersen games.

[Smokestack]

Oh and when asked if Chinese NewYear will cause further delay, they stated "printing will be done before CNY, and so should ship before it as well (it's about a 45 day total process, and so will be on the water before Chinese New Year). That said, you never know."

 

Doesn't really instill me with confidence....

[Toasty]

I'm at least happy that I have the pdf on computer now.