Making less-terrible Cthulhutech-esque RPG

[name_here]

I would kind of like a game where Anime mechs can be used by characters who are old enough to drink legally.

As for A Color Out Of Space, there was no particular indication that contaminated land could be cleansed. Prompt action could probably destroy the meteorite before it dissolved, though.

[Avoraciopoctules]

How do people feel about a mecha game where they fill a light armor role, so tanks are really threatening if you can't use cover or uneven terrain to sneak up on them?

[Username17]

I would kind of like a game where Anime mechs can be used by characters who are old enough to drink legally.

That's a problem, because if people old enough to order a beer in a bar could even potentially drive mechs, then there is absolutely no way that the governments of the world would sanction the use of child soldiers on the front lines. Putting Shinji into combat roles isn't just grossly immoral, it's completely insane and no government body would ever fund it - if there was any other choice.

I mean, you could do some sort of "non-arcanotech mechs" thing, where there were also mecha that did not have AT fields and could not penetrate monstrous force fields (but could still hold their own against monsters that didn't have force fields). That could potentially explain how such a mech pilot could exist without invalidating all the teenage pilots and teenage magical girls and teenage pokemasters and teenage guyvers and so on. But it's a narrow line. If you present actual adults who can legally sign their own hazard waivers and whose deaths wouldn't get politicians in tremendous amounts of trouble as being capable of replacing the child soldier characters, then all of the child soldier characters become invalidated. Child soldiers literally must be irreplaceable, because otherwise the UN security forces would replace them immediately and never look back.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

One could make "Giant Mecha Pilot" require some special quality, biocompability or whatever, that rules out the vast majority of people as pilots and makes pilots so valuable that even teenagers who have that quality get pressed into service.

I honestly doubt that anyone sane would have issues with sending kids into war if it's that or the end of the world (at which point the kid dies anyway).

[Avoraciopoctules]

If some magic is kids only, then why aren't you transferring those operatives to Mi-Go brain canisters so they stop aging and then hooking them up to robot bodies better suited to the apocalyptic megawar?

[RadiantPhoenix]

If some magic is kids only, then why aren't you transferring those operatives to Mi-Go brain canisters so they stop aging and then hooking them up to robot bodies better suited to the apocalyptic megawar?

You do, but then you don't tell them about that fact.

This is revealed the first time one of the PCs "dies".

EDIT: Wait, you can tele-operate robot bodies from the brain canisters without actually putting the canister in harm's way, right?

[Silent Wayfarer]

The way I handled mecha in a Cthulhutech setting hack was:

1) Mechs are desirable because with DNI you can essentially have the pilots "wear" them. Tank pilots use a variant of this but they can't match the ease with which a human pilot can operate a mech. NEG developed a functional humanoid walker DNI interface before the Nazzadi invaded, but they couldn't crack the balance of mass vs protection vs speed.
1a) Being able to make a mech turn on a dime means fuck all unless it's maneuverability at 90+ km/h because the laser beam, hypervelocity projectile and guided missile give zero fucks about your ability to make a giant robot do St. Vitus' Dance.

Thus, Humanity ended up using giant hovertanks as mobile turrets which dug in to shoot at the Nazzadi/etc. invaders. Actual mecha were not practical by Earth tech alone.

2) Nazzadi used mecha because the Migo engineered them to have superhuman reflexes, which are actually able to keep up with their A-pod-boosted drive systems so they can literally dodge ranged attacks in their rice rocket mecha. The compatibility of humanoid brains with humanoid walkers pays off here, because with the magic of A-Pod mass negation you can literally have mecha doing backflips and somersaulting out of the path of missiles at Mach 3 (it;s assumed there's some form of G force cancellation at work here)

Ergo, Nazzadi used high speed mecha to overwhelm Earth defenses to the point where humanity was forced back into a few fortress-bastions*. After the alliance, the Naz and humanity shared their technology and now you can have human-operated mecha that can evade modern weaponry**.

3) Engels are special for the same reason EVAs are special; they have some kind of sorcerous effect that cannot be duplicated by technology (Create Portal to Solar Photosphere, Gridfire Blast, Guard of Yog-Sothoth, etc.). No extant adult mecha pilot can interface with an Engel, so they had to grow their pilots to match the (bio)machine.=. Even with growth acceleration, the first usable Engel pilots (the Children) are barely 14.

Conclusion 3) NEG needs weapons to use against the Migo and they will use biological CPUs (genetically engineered Children) to fuckstart the faces of Pluto fungus insects.

Or something like that. My friend and I pretty much reworked Cthulhutech from first principles so it made sense to us while still incorporating pastiches from all its various sources. With significantly less rape.

* Orbital bombardment is out of the question because even the Migo don't want to risk waking up Cthulhu, who will not only devour Earth, but the entire Solar System, then go to work on the Migo for waking him up.

** Nobody dodges the projectiles or beams themselves; what you can do is dodge an aimpoint; moving erratically and forcing the operator on the other side to mistime his weapons discharge so it misses you. You can, however, dodge inside the turning radius of missiles coming in at Mach 3 so it overshoots you and detonates before it can turn back to track you; combat pilots have been known to do this.

[Grek]

I object to how Archmage wants to do sanity. Sanity wound boxes, percentile sanity scores, anything where your sanity is a number that ticks down and then at 0 you go insane is not how it works in the source material. Seriously, I cannot stress that enough. In the source material, people go crazy in one of three ways: A] they see a cosmic horror and escape from it with their life, but are traumatized by the experience and develop an acute but highly specific phobia of stuff that reminds them of it, B] they discover some hidden truth about their personal origins, the origins of life on Earth and/or the relative significance of Earth in the cosmos and start to suffer from depression and maybe try to kill themselves, or C] they discover a mythos thing, try to tell others and get committed to a mental asylum because nobody believes them about what they saw. At no point does anyone go catatonic in terror, develop OCD or start masturbating over coma victims (side note: WTF, Koumei?).

Obviously #3 is not going to happen in this game - Everyone knows that Deep Ones exist, so if you show up and start talking about frogmen people are going to think you're racist, not crazy. So we're left wanting two different sanity tracks: a Terror track, which fills up whenever monsters do horrible things to the people around you and results in you being too terrified to confront that specific enemy if it gets full, but in the mean time gives you rage bonuses to fighting the enemy, and a Despair track which goes up for being an alien, casting magic and hearing the villain monologue and which makes you take morale penalties as it gets higher and cease to be a PC if it gets full because you gave up the fight, killed yourself or joined Team Monster.

[Fuchs]

I never liked the whole sanity rules. Should be optional at best.

[Username17]

I object to how Archmage wants to do sanity. Sanity wound boxes, percentile sanity scores, anything where your sanity is a number that ticks down and then at 0 you go insane is not how it works in the source material.

/Agreed.

At no point does anyone go catatonic in terror, develop OCD or start masturbating over coma victims (side note: WTF, Koumei?).

Different Source Material [NSFW]

Obviously #3 is not going to happen in this game - Everyone knows that Deep Ones exist, so if you show up and start talking about frogmen people are going to think you're racist, not crazy.

It could. I mean, you could simulate that by having the UN have a number of Big Lies that they tell people in order to get people on board with various things the government wants to do. And then they could put everyone who discovers The Truth™ and won't shut up about it into mental wards. Anything from "The Earth Government commits human sacrifice to power certain stuff" to "Some of the allies of Earth totally ate a bunch of people before the alliance" to "Certain enemy groups have about a thousand times as many ships as the government claims".

That said, it really would have to be more like "no one believes you because of government conspiracy and propaganda" rather than "the truth is so crazy that no one believes you". Which might be an acceptable replacement, but is admittedly not the same thing.

So we're left wanting two different sanity tracks: a Terror track, which fills up whenever monsters do horrible things to the people around you and results in you being too terrified to confront that specific enemy if it gets full, but in the mean time gives you rage bonuses to fighting the enemy, and a Despair track which goes up for being an alien, casting magic and hearing the villain monologue and which makes you take morale penalties as it gets higher and cease to be a PC if it gets full because you gave up the fight, killed yourself or joined Team Monster.

I'd be down with something like that. Responsible adults tend to be hardened badasses who have a high Terror Threshold. Children freeze up all the time when people get killed.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

First Principle - No John, you are the mythos.

The true Horror of Cthulu's rising is not that humanity will be destroyed, but that it will be transformed both physically and morally into something distinctly inhuman. In our game, this transformation has already begun, irreversibly so. Mythos Humanity is still recognizable as human, but their aesthetics are disturbingly off. Non-euclidean angles predominate in human architecture. Art often makes use of colors that don't exist in the electromagnetic spectrum and music incorporates instruments that make sounds which aren't sounds.

The most obvious evidence of this change is the existence of Deep One supermodels.

The unattainable standard of beauty.

Timeline
1927 - The US Federal Government discovers Deep Ones and hybrids living in the Innsmouth, Massachusetts. They arrest the entire population of the small port town and attempt to cover it up. This attempt fails miserably when pictures of the interred Deep Ones make it into a newspaper. After five years of highly sensational litigation, the population of Innsmouth is released. Most fade into obscurity or return to the Ocean.

September 1937 - France, Britain, and Canada enter World War II.

October 1937 - Several thousand Deep Ones rise up upon the shores of Newfoundland. They immediately march upon the nearest recruiting station and enlist in the Canadian Forces. While Y'ha-nthlei remains officially neutral, over 30,000 Deep Ones serve in the militaries of various Allied powers.

1945 - George Marsh, a Hybrid born in Innsmouth, received the Medal of Honor for valorous service above and beyond the call of duty on the island of Iwo-Jima. He goes on to write a bestselling autobiography detailing his childhood experiences in the interment camps as well as his actions in the Pacific Theater. It's made into a popular motion picture which is eventually remade twice.

November 1963 - Fearing potential nuclear war, Soviet Remote Viewers warn the American Secret Service of an assassination plan by a Communist Sympathizer named Oswald. Oswald is arrested and convicted with little fanfare and spends the next twenty years in prison, where he becomes a Born Again Christian. By the 1990s he's a popular televangelist with a weekly show on CBN.

1967 - The Supreme Court decides Loving v. Virginia, striking down Virginia's anti-miscegenation law and affirming a universal right to marriage.

April 1968 - Outspoken Civil Rights Activist Tlka'nipri is shot by James Earl Ray. He dies of his wounds three days later. Martin Luthor King, Jr. is also hit in the attack, but eventually makes a full recovery.

July 1969 - Apollo 11 Lands on the moon. Neil Armstrong steps out of the lander first and says the immortal unforgettable words, "What the fuck is that thing?" The Moon Beasts feel that the Apolo landing is a violation of their sovereign territory and declare war upon the Earth.

2X97 - The Present.

[OgreBattle]

Hyzmarca, in your setting which minority group is more likely to be pulled over by te police, deepones or blacks?

[Archmage]

So we're left wanting two different sanity tracks: a Terror track...and a Despair track...

You'll get no argument from me, this is a much better idea and I wish I'd thought of it. Everything I posted I had actually already written several months ago in the span of an hour and was intended to be as little work as possible because my gaming group was kicking around the idea of playing a CTech game but making it less bad. So I drafted some shit.

[angelfromanotherpin]

So we're left wanting two different sanity tracks: a Terror track, which fills up whenever monsters do horrible things to the people around you and results in you being too terrified to confront that specific enemy if it gets full, but in the mean time gives you rage bonuses to fighting the enemy, and a Despair track which goes up for being an alien, casting magic and hearing the villain monologue and which makes you take morale penalties as it gets higher and cease to be a PC if it gets full because you gave up the fight, killed yourself or joined Team Monster.

I'd be down with something like that. Responsible adults tend to be hardened badasses who have a high Terror Threshold. Children freeze up all the time when people get killed.

Maybe children are resistant to Despair effects because their ability to think ahead isn't developed yet. So things which are a big threat to the Despair track basically demand the deployment of Shinjis.

[hyzmarca]

Hyzmarca, in your setting which minority group is more likely to be pulled over by te police, deepones or blacks?

That depends on when and where. Coastal Regions are very concerned about Deep Ones "taking our jobs", especially those where the fishing industry predominates. Inland, Deep Ones are perceived as more of a curiosity than a threat.

Of course, the fact that Deep Ones and hybrids don't grow old means that they also don't retire. Those who have gone into business and politics have accumulated a lot of seniority and generally have a decent amount of pull.

So in New England, California, and Florida, Deep Ones. In the South and Midwest, blacks.

[Avoraciopoctules]

That timeline is pretty awesome, hyzmarca.

[Maxus]

There's actually a short story about Innsmouth and the public response to it. Opened up with an in-universe quote of JFK speaking at a law school graduation ceremony (not 100% sure and can't immediately lay hands on the book), how terrible it was that these people were persecuted solely for their religious beliefs. Told from the point of view of the grandson of one of the Innsmouth folks.

And another where some Deep One spawn try to hijack a plane and hold the passengers ransom because the US found a Deep One reef and sank a nuclear submarine by it, and it was fucking up the Deep Ones.

Interesting stuff.

[hyzmarca]

That timeline is pretty awesome, hyzmarca.

I figure that its easier to do a POD in the past than it is in the near future, that way we don't have to worry about extrapolating modern trends and can just make shit up after a point. Also, I love the idea of Deep Ones fighting Nazis.

Incomplete, though. I still have more than a century to fill in at least.

1970-1984: The Earth-Moon War.
The conflict starts off slowly since the Moon Beast space-launch capabilities aren't much better than Earth's. Indeed, Earth pretty much ignores the whole thing for a while. America attempts to negotiate the release of the Astronauts, but no one takes the threat seriously.
On the Moon Beast side of things, the Beasts and their allies, the Men of Leng, staged a major offensive in the Dreamlands, overrunning several Ghoul strongholds and obtaining access to several physical pathways between Earth and the Dreamlands, allowing them to stage assaults on Earth without traveling through intervening space.

Earth's defenders were not prepared to fight an enemy that could move troops through the land of dreams, and several world capitols fell in the initial blitzkrieg, which the Moon Beasts had designed as a decapitation attack. In just a few short weeks Lunar forces controlled DC, Moscow, London, Paris and, Beijing. Able to attack anywhere in the world with little warning, there was no effective defense against them.

Fortunately, though the Dreamland gave the Lunar forces an unmatchable mobility advantage, it was not sufficient to counter Earth's tremendous population and industrial output. Even the use of the Moon-beasts's small nuclear arsenal against major manufacturing centers was insufficient to blunt human industrial output.

A failed assault on Y'ha-nthlei is universally regarded as the worst strategic blunder in the history of interstellar warfare. It brings Dagon himself into the conflict on the side of the Allies. Meanwhile, Ghouls displaced from their dreamland homes by the Lunar army seek refuge amongst the UN forces and teach them how to shift physical matter to the Dreamlands and back again.

In the end the Moon-beast forces are driven back by the might of human industry and are forced to surrender in the face of nuclear annihilation.

A new, permanent, American-Soviet military alliance establishes bases in the Dreamlands and on the Moon.

1992 - Phizer patents Re-Agent, a drug capable of restoring life to dead tissue.

[CapnTthePirateG]

I'd play this.

[Grek]

Different Source Material [NSFW]

I stand corrected. WTF, Evangelion writers?

Which might be an acceptable replacement, but is admittedly not the same thing.

Yeah, it's a separate question. We could have there be Big Secrets the public doesn't know and refuses to believe, or we could not do that. Whichever works out better for the metaplot.

Loving the timeline, but I think hyzmarca's comments on art go a bit too far. Deep One supermodels, sure. Colours and sounds that humans don't normally see are common, but it's because the cone cells in Deep Ones eyes are attuned to blue teal and yellow instead of red blue and green and because Deep One ears can hear in the 40-50 kHz range in addition to the 0 to 20 kHz that normal humans can hear. Not because of a fundamental wrongness in the laws of physics. And we should probably specify whether Deep Ones are into hyperbolic or elliptical geometry. I personally vote hyperbolic:

I would also like to note that Lovecraft's ghouls are described as having muzzles, pointed ears and clawed fingers/toes. Which is to say a Ghoul-Human hybrid looks like a cat girl if you squint:

[Username17]

One thing I would say is that it's really important that Cthulhu be already awake, running around, and periodically going Godzilla on places. The entire point of having an anime giant-robots crossover with Mythos is so that you can have giant robots punch Cthulhu right in the face. Claiming that the world would be destroyed if Cthulhu woke up is terrible, because it means you can't punch Cthulhu in the face. Same for Shudde M'ell. Same for Ithaqua. And so on. These need to be giant monsters your giant robots can at least aspire to punch in the face.

I would suggest that the Deep Ones be divided into the Y'ha-nthlei faction (that is part of the UN), and the R'lyeh faction (that is one of the terrorist groups). The Esoteric Order of Dagon is thus an EarthGov faction, but being that it is the fucking Esoteric Order of Dagon it is naturally full of traitors who secretly work for various villain factions.

I really like the Moon Beast war. It sets the stage for having an EarthGov in a very believable way.

I would also like to note that Lovecraft's ghouls are described as having muzzles, pointed ears and clawed fingers/toes. Which is to say a Ghoul-Human hybrid looks like a cat girl if you squint

I could see that. That would be a really weird take on cat girls, but I have to say I approve. Ghouls not only "Meep", they "Meow". Having them show up like the German intellectuals who fled to the US and the Soviet Union in World War 2 is also a good way to integrate them into EarthGov.

Isn't she just the cutest little corpse eater? Yes she is!

-Username17

[Grek]

It also occurs to me that the Great Race of Yith make for a great backstory for Tager spirits. Their big thing is that they can astrally project themselves across time and space to body-swap with members of other species. Human mind goes into a Yith body and a Yith mind goes into a human body. So instead of Tagers being alien symbiotes that cover your in goo and make you into Venom from Spiderman, they're alien minds from beyond the stars that, in exchange for being able to mind-swap with the best and brightest minds on Earth, will use the genius's body to build and pilot a supersuit to fight Shoggoths for you.

[Orion]

I think it's worth mentioning that there is a fourth way Mythos Investigators can flip out, which is actually join team monster. Sometimes when you find out you're a deep one, the call of the deep is irresistibly strong and you go to R'lyeh. Sometimes a vampire gives in to the hunger for blood, etc. This generally doesn't happen to the protagonists of Mythos stories, but it does happen in the world. You don't really want this to happen to PCs, so you probably don't include it as a mechanic, but you definitely think about what EarthGov does to make sure this doesn't happen to the PCs.
---

In addition the ways Mythos people flip out, there are similar-but-distinct ways that Shounen people flip out. In most cases the major difference is that Shounen people are more violent. For instance, a Shounen person does not run in fear when a big monster jumps out. However, he might break down into a PTSD episode after he's done killing it. Typically Shounen heroes don't lose hope, no matter the odds against them. But they can lose motivation in a fit of self-loathing after a failure, a personality flaw, or the ways in which they are becoming monsters is revealed. Finally, sometimes they lose their shit and go on a rampage. I can't remember how many times Shinji's EVA started attacking the human side, but it happened more than once. You might not want to include this one because you don't want to play PC-on-PC violence, but maybe that's acceptable. If we made a separate mechanic for each notable way of losing your shit, you'd have something like this:

• Terror: Agents suffer Terror whenever they are exposed to negative stimulus suddenly and unwillingly. Being attacked by a big monster inflicts Terror, but so does traveling through the Warp, or using psychic powers to receive distubring images. During a Terror Breakdown, an agent flees the scene in a blind panic.
• Horror: Horror happens when an agent is exposed to negative stimulus suddenly but voluntarily. All kinds of ritual spells and surgeries are known to inflict Horror on the practitioner. However, the most common cause of Horror is committing violence. The more people you kill, the more "innocent" they are, and the more overkill you use, the more Horror you suffer. During a Horror Breakdown, agents are drawn to the source by morbid fascination. They may attempt self-harm, or simply fail to respond to outside stimuli
• Despair:Despair happens when you discover something unpleasant about the world. Finding out that the enemy fleet is way bigger than you though might be a cause for Despair. This is a lot like terror, except that there's nothing to run away from, so a Despair Breakdown looks like a whole lot of nothing.
• Loathing:Loathing happens when you discover something unpleasant about yourself, like secretly being a robot. Anything that reminds them of their inhumanity, or calls their humanity into question, contributes to a Loathing Breakdown.
• Corruption. Corruption happens when a character is exposed to an abnormal temptation. Vampires risk corruption when they get hungry, deep ones risk corruption when they visit the coast, and so on. However even humans can suffer Corruption if a nonhuman generates it. For instance, a wizard with a spell that creates otherworldly pleasure would inflict Corruption on his human cultists. A Corruption Breakdown involves giving in to the temptation, and repeated breakdowns turn a character into a Black Hat.
• Frenzy: Frenzy is a catch-all for the various ways superhumans overstimulate themselves. It's different from Horror because it's not the consequences of ultraviolence already committed that cause the problem, but the power-ups that facilitate the ultraviolence. Taking combat drugs, sustaining damage to your EVA, engaging in psionic combat with alien minds, and so on all inflict Frenzy. A Frenzy Breakdown is a short-term rampage of senseless destruction.

Now, six kinds of emotional distress is probably too many, at least if e're also using conventional HP. (You could take out HP and just make a punch in the go to Terror, Despair, or Frenzy) It's certainly too much to have a separate health track for each. So in this model, you'd have one "Mental Health" score, and when it hit 0 you would flip out in a way determined by the trigger that pushed you over. You'd turn the 6 emotions into damage types, and let people customize their resistances by shifting points around. Assassin conditioning might resist Horror and fall prey to Despair. Getting an adrenaline implant might prevent Terror but contribute to Frenzy. However, if you feel 6 is a little much, you can certainly consolidate. That will be my next post.

[Orion]

Alternative Systems

If you wanted to stick with 2 tracks --Terror and Despair, you could do that. Just fold Horror into Terror and Loathing into Despair. Corruption and Frenzy can be left out entirely. You could also get fancy and do something kind of like Vampire Paths, where you customize your character's vulnerabilities. For instance, you could make each PC vulnerable to either Terror or Horror depending on how hardened they are. You could even call the base mechanic the "Shock" track and have Terror be one possible way of responding to Shock. But basically, you have a mechanic for "gory shit" and a mechanic for "depressing shit."bAlternatively, you could group things by effect rather than cause. Fold Loathing into Terror because they both make you run away, and fold Horror into Despair because they both make you sit down and cry.

My preferred model would be to bring in a third track, so we can fit all 6 in. Your triggers are Ultraviolence, Revelation, and Temptation. Ultraviolence leads to Terror or Horror, revelations inspire Loathing and Despair, and weird stimuli cause Corruption and Frenzy.

[Username17]

Speaking of villain factions, we want to go a bit reductionist on the various planets and worlds and cults and stuff, but still have a fair number of them. Enough that we have monsters we can punch right in the face with our giant robots.

• Shudde M'ell and the Cthonians The Cthonians are terrestrial and lived far under ground. Once atom bombs got set off in 1945, they started to send smaller Cthonians to scout things and fuck up surface dwellers. This was pretty minor and dismissed as earth quakes until things heated up during the Earth-Moon War. When the Moon Beasts detonated a bunch of nukes on Earth, the Cthonians freaked out and cranked up their counterattacks (which ironically were directed at the surface dwellers, even though the nukes had come from the Moon). During this period, these attacks were thought to be some sort of Moon Beast weapon. Only after the Moon Beasts were defeated did anyone discover that they had a new enemy. Starting in the late 80s, the UN forces began to try methods of striking directly at the Cthonians. By 1996, they had succeeded in killing several Cthonian earthshakers, and the Cthonian attacks ceased. This turned out to merely be the Cthonians regrouping and waiting for the surface forces to be again distracted by another foe. And in 2034, the Cthonians began attacks again. And this time they were led by the largest and most powerful of the Cthonians: Shudde M'ell.
• Borea and Ithaqua Borea is an ice world spinning about a distant and sputtering star. Natives of Borea include the Gnophkehs, who are a race of shaggy and degenerate cannibals; and the Shantaks, who are dragons. The Boreans have a series of portals to places that are likewise frozen, throughout the galaxy. Of most import to our world is that they have portals in our own Arctic and also on Yuggoth (Pluto). Until the 2030s, the Borean portals were sealed off by glaciers in Canada and Russia, but with global warming they became traverseable again. And in 2033, the Boreans and Mi-Go began their invasion of Earth. The Boreans are led by the red eyed giant Ithaqua.
• The Key, The Gate, and Shub Niggurath The Abyss is a nightmare realm filled with darkness and foul smells. Somewhere in The Abyss is Shub Niggurath, and her never ending breeding program. Its location is presently unknown, but it has an alliance with Yog Sothoth that allows its people to be seeded throughout the galaxy. The numberless young of Shub Niggurath are sent to bide their time and rise up and conquer worlds for their dark mother when the opportunity presents itself. This "fifth column" strategy has apparently worked on many worlds, and hybrids of the Dark Young have seized the reigns of power in many places. On Earth, the system has somewhat backfired, as many of the human hybrids (the Goat Spawn) have decided to simply not do that. Instead, following the convincing defeat of the Moon Beasts, a group of Goat Spawn turned to the UN and gave information about The Abyss and the dreams of conquest it had. News of this betrayal reached Shub Niggurath, and she spent the next two generations breeding an army to punish her wayward descendants. In 2056, they attacked.
• R'lyeh - the Deep Ones of the Pacific Ocean used the cover of World War II to invade and commit piracy upon Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. As such, while not formally part of the Axis, they were essentially an Axis power. When World War II went badly for the Axis in '45, R'lyehan forces retreated back under the waves, abandoning their gains in Oceania before reprisals could fall. During the Earth-Moon War, R'lyeh stayed neutral, having apparently done something to convince the Moon Beasts to avoid attacking them. By 2035, that something was revealed to have been Cthulhu - a massive tentacled Kaiju. Between them and the Star Spawn, the R'lyehans made war on the Earth Government, regaining their conquests in World War 2 and then some.
  
  Cultic Forces
• The King in Yellow - Hastur's cultists are a criminal organization.
• The Esoteric Order of Dagon - Dagon's cultists are nominally supportive of EarthGov, but individual extremists are R'lyehan sympathizers.
• Yig - Yig's cultists revere man-serpent hybrids and are a criminal organization not unlike Cobra.

I think there is actually space for several, maybe even unspecified numbers of minor criminal cults.

Basically what I'm looking at is all hell breaking loose in the 2030s as Boreans (with Dragons!), Yuggothians (with Space Ships!), R'lyehans (with Star Spawn!), and Cthonians (who are god damn Graboids and are their own Kaiju) running amok. This war should probably wrap up around 2043, with an Earth Gov victory.

Then I'm looking at another war breaking out in 2056, as the war spawn that Shub Niggurath has bred begin their assault. Not sure what that war entails, other than of course this.

The important thing about all this is that with the playable races being:

• Humans
• Deep Ones (and Deep One Hybrids, who might or might not be classed separately)
• Ghouls (Cat Girls)
• Goat Spawn

That all of these races joined the Earth Government more than a hundred years ago if we set things in 2097. That means that no one has to play a character who by all rights was born and raised under a different planetary flag, who thus can be expected to have no real loyalty to Earth.

The big question is how to fit in the obnoxious aliens from Urusei Yatsura/Disgaea. If they are Underworlders, they could jolly well join the Union when the Ghouls do. If they are from another world conquered by the Dark Young, they could join when the Goat Spawn do.

Anyway, having just written that, it occurs to me that the Earth government, being formed from the ashes of the United States and the Soviet Union and the European Union should just be called "The Union".

-Username17