Making less-terrible Cthulhutech-esque RPG

[Username17]

If we rely too much on boats traveling through dreamspace to the Dreamlands versions of planets in our solar system, the setting becomes Spcae 1889. I would suggest that every major war front be through a different form of travel.

• The Underworld Front is them attacking through the Dreamlands. That is where Moon Beasts who do not accept Union control of the Moon have teamed up with Ghasts and Gugs to make trouble.
• The Yuggoth/Borea Front involves actual space ships flying through actual space coming to make trouble.
• The Abyssian Front is Shub Niggurath's forces attacking us through Yog Sothoth's probability travel - phasing in soldiers inaccurately but unstoppably around the world.
• The R'lyehan Front is Cthulhu's forces rising out of the sea.
• The Cthonian Front is Shudde M'ell's forces tunneling through the Earth.

As I see it, that leaves a potential Star Gate front, a "Just as Planned" front (where the enemy left stuff in the past that would inevitably turn into their attacks in the present), and a "traitors with dark incantations" front. Possibly there could be other things that aren't springing immediately to mind. Yig's Cobra Command probably fits the bill for the traitors front. The Great Race of Yith is a lock for "just as planned".

That would put Randolf Carter III's secessionists on the other end of a Star Gate. Possibly one of the old sunken Borean gates that Randolf Carter III reprogrammed using information from a secret source (possibly the giant troll Nyarlothotep).

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

If we rely too much on boats traveling through dreamspace to the Dreamlands versions of planets in our solar system, the setting becomes Spcae 1889. I would suggest that every major war front be through a different form of travel.

Boats traveling through dreamspace is just the human method, because once we know that we can do that we're not going to leave it alone. It's just too gosh-darn useful. (And, really, the politicians would throw most NASA-equivalent's budget into building better oars instead of better rockets.) This, incidentally, means that humanity's ability to fight actual spaceships is less than it should be and the Union has to play serious catch-up on that front.

I also don't think that the Separatists should be an outright villain faction so much as Avoraciopoctules's Human II faction. They can be allied with, at least for a time, when faced with a common threat.

Yith are more the Bodysnatchers Front, because that's literally what they are.

[JigokuBosatsu]

With multiple factions per race, of course- you could have old-school serpentmen in hiding allied with the Underground faction, but the latter-day snakes under Yig's purview.

Is this remake of Ctech intended to be more tactical than straight-up roleplay?

[RadiantPhoenix]

Given that there are multiple groups of enemies, it seems like only one of them needs to require child supersoldiers to beat in order to justify them.

Alternatively, the most powerful members of most of the factions can only be finished off by child supersoldiers (or equivalent), but other characters can help maneuver things into positions where the supertyke can deal that killing blow, e.g.:

• Decoys (fake evangelions, magical men/women without the secret childhood mojo)
• Disrupting attacks (see: Cthulhu vs Boat) that prevent the megabeast from attacking or make that more difficult
• Blocking attacks with powers
• Terrain manipulation
• Removing the enemy's cloud of mooks around the enemy's megabeast

Obviously the supertykes would be capable of the same things (except 'decoys', because they're actually the real deal), and having more on the team gives redundancy, but you can still play an adult on a team and not feel completely useless.

[Grek]

Timeline:
1927: Deep Ones discovered in Innsmouth, Massachusetts and become public knowledge after the escape of one of the citizens from the interment camps.
1930: Y'ha-nthlei joins the League of Nations and by 1932 successfully petitions the US government to release the population of Innsmouth.
1937: France, Britain, and Canada enter World War II. Y'ha-nthlei remains neutral along with the US, but 30000 Deep Ones enter into the Canadian and French military forces.
1941: R'lyeh joins the Axis Powers along with Italy, Germany and Japan. Successful joint Japan-R'lyeh invasions of China, Australia, Thailand and Malaya are launched.
1945: George Marsh receives the Medal of Honor. Feature film is made detailing his life. Atomic bombing of Japan occurs.
1952: Major earthquakes felt throughout the United States. Not recognized as early Cthonian weapons testing until mid 1970s.
1963: Soviet Remote Viewers warn the American Secret Service of an assassination plan by a Communist Sympathizer named Oswald.
1967: The Supreme Court decides Loving v. Virginia, striking down Virginia's anti-miscegenation law and affirming a universal right to marriage.
1968: Civil Rights activists Tlka'nipri and Martin Luther King, Jr. are shot by James Earl Ray, with the former dying of his wounds.
1969: Apollo 11 Lands on the moon. Neil Armstrong makes first contact with the Moon Beasts.
1970: First nuclear attacks by Moon Beast forces arrive through the Dreamlands. DC, Moscow, London, Paris and, Beijing, etc, are all hit or captured by Lunar forces.
1971: Soviet forces attempt spavce invasion of the Moon. Landing attempts shot down by Lunar missile defense program.
1972: Edgar Cayce, employed by the US Army, descends the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber in hopes of locating a physical entrance into the Dreamlands.
1973: Physical entrance to the Dreamlands located in Nigeria. First United Nations expeditionary force into the Dreamlands is launched, successfully establishing the first Earth beachhead into the Dreamlands. Secondary bases are soon established in Kansas, Siberia, Brazil and beneath the North Sea.
1975: As the Earth-Moon War continues to rage on, Ghoul refugees from the Dreamlands apply for asylum from major earth governments.
1980: Failed invasion of Y'ha-nthlei by the Moon Beasts through the Dreamlands brings Y'ha-nthlei into the conflict.
1983: Operation Moonhammer is launched by the United Nations in December, marking the first Mecha-scale conflict by Earth forces. Dagon rises from the Pacific and flies to the Moon armed with state of the art nuclear weaponry.
1984: Unconditional surrender of last remaining Lunar forces after the atomic bombing of Tycho crater.
1988: Cthonian Earthshaker located in South America and fought using prototype "Gunboy" mecha. Battle is wildly successful.
1992: Phizer patents Re-Agent, a drug capable of restoring life to dead tissue.Cthonian War continues to heat up.
1994: Gunboy MkI mecha goes into full production.
1996: Victory in the First Cthonian War declared by the United Nations after two years of no apparent attacks by Cthon.
2000: Turn of the century sees the arrival of the first Goat Spawn on Earth. After discovering that the Moon Beasts have been defeated, the Goat Spawn announce their presence to the UN and reveal the existence of Shub Niggurath.

2001 to 2031: I have no idea what happens during this period. Maybe this is a good time for Cthulhu to show up. If a third type of mecha needs introduced, this would also be a good time for that.

2032: First Mi Go scouts arrive on Yuggoth using Borean Gate technology. Landings are made in the Arctic using Mi Go spacecraft.
2034: Shudde M'ell awakened by Ithaqua's arrival on Yuggoth, heralding the begining of the Second Cthonian War.
2035: Earth slowly losing the Second Cthonian War as Gunboy mecha prove unable to successfully combat Ithaqua.
2036: Elder Things discovered beneath the Antarctic and revived using a combination of Ghoul science and more advanced versions of the Re-Agent formula.
2038: Ubbo-Sathla captured in Greenland by Union forces along with tablets describing eldritch knowledge.
2040: First prototype of the shoggoth-based "Throne" mecha completed with Elder Thing cooperation. Significant advances made on the Borean Front as a result.
2045: Second Cthonian War ends.
2056: First Youma sightings made in Japan. Affliction is determined to be due to "Black Goat Energy"
2057: Youma agents opens a gate to the Abyss, allowing the second wave of Goat Spawn to begin arriving.
2060: After four years of unsuccessful attempts, the first Youmafication patient to be successfully treated is declared clean of BGE after the Mahou Shoujo Program defeats and captures her.
2065: Earliest members of the Mahou Shoujo Program begin suffering from "Magical Girl Shock Syndrome", resulting in a restructuring of the program toward the current Mentor-Protege relationship.
2076: Last of the second wave of Goat Spawn finally defeated, leading to a generation long respite while Shub Niggurath prepares a new generation of Dark Young.

2077 to 2096: Again, room for stuff to happen here. If Randolf Carter III is doing something, now is a great time.

2097: Today. Third wave of Goat Spawn and Dark Young are expected to arrive any year now, Cthonian sightings are on the increase and the Mi Go are preparing for a second invasion.

[Shatner]

The more I think about this hypothetical earth, the more I'm getting Half-Life 2 flashbacks. It sounds like the world is, at this point, full of all sorts of terrors, some of whom will kill you on sight (i.e. bullsquid, ant lions), others will subject you to a fate worse than death (i.e. headcrab), and still others are willing to play nice and help out despite looking horrific (i.e. vortigant). The world has suffered major infrastructure damage and most of the old lines on the map have been wiped away by a combination of big alien/monster blitzkriegs and massive environmental damage (nukes + occult nastiness + global warming = bad news, I'm sure). Civilization (which includes, but is not limited to, humanity) has withdrawn to centralized, possibly-walled cities for protection of valuable assets and people.

Now, maybe the "live in an armed city-state or be eaten by alien fauna" age has passed and people are starting to rebuild, but I kind of assume that the societies of today are still largely centralized, armed and wary of the under-patrolled wilderness. Furthermore, just how easy is international trade and travel? If nothing else, I assume getting a cargo boat or super-tanker from (what once was) China to (what once was) California requires a heavy escort and/or a lot of luck given that the ocean is full of enemy deep ones. Is the same true for overland travel? How about air travel?

Also, what sort of energy production is there? Is it all nuclear? Or has a global population dip brought about by multiple occult invasions forestalled peak oil such that the Middle East is still filling everyone's gas tanks? Do we have reliable satellite communications or have those all be eaten by byakhee? Undersea communication cables are, I'm sure, right out.

[hyzmarca]

The more I think about this hypothetical earth, the more I'm getting Half-Life 2 flashbacks. It sounds like the world is, at this point, full of all sorts of terrors, some of whom will kill you on sight (i.e. bullsquid, ant lions), others will subject you to a fate worse than death (i.e. headcrab), and still others are willing to play nice and help out despite looking horrific (i.e. vortigant). The world has suffered major infrastructure damage and most of the old lines on the map have been wiped away by a combination of big alien/monster blitzkriegs and massive environmental damage (nukes + occult nastiness + global warming = bad news, I'm sure). Civilization (which includes, but is not limited to, humanity) has withdrawn to centralized, possibly-walled cities for protection of valuable assets and people.

The opposite. One lesson that the Moon-beast war hammered home, centralization is death. Walls don't stop teleporters, they don't stop fliers, and they don't stop burrowers. Few people want to live in huge cities, because cities are targets. Cities still exist, of course, because that's where the jobs are, but The Union takes for granted that some people will be eaten, some people will be blown up, and some will suffer worse. Instead they focus on making it difficult to take out everyone in a single strike, and that means decentralizing and spreading out as much as is possible. You take more hits that way, but those hits are far less devastating.

[hyzmarca]

1972: Edgar Cayce, employed by the US Army, descends the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber in hopes of locating a physical entrance into the Dreamlands.

Edgar Cayce died in 1945 and would be 95 in 72. We can handwave that, but Timothy Leary makes a much better candidate. He never claimed to have psychic powers, but his iconic connection to the psychedelic counter-culture and development of the 8-circuit model of consciousness is close enough. In addition, using him as the basis for our military psychic program lets them make use of large amounts of LSD.

First Principle - PCs are Exceptional

When we say that no adult can pilot a Throne this is not a pronouncement from on high. This is worldbuilding. It is a justification for why the Union lets teenagers pilot giant combat robots.
The rules of the setting are not game mechanics. NPCs should adhere to them, but PCs are, by definition, exceptional. There is absolutely no rule preventing a player from writing both "30-year-old" and "Throne Pilot" on his character sheet and we will not break down his door if he does. We merely suggest that his backstory be both reasonable and low-key.

[Josh_Kablack]

1972: Edgar Cayce, employed by the US Army, descends the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber in hopes of locating a physical entrance into the Dreamlands.

While I'm always happy to see game designers getting shout outs, the real world Edgar Cayce was born in 1877, which would make him 95 years old for this expedition.

Were you intending to imply that he's a hybrid, or should that point be moved to an earlier point on the timeline? Maybe he discovered it decades earlier, but his "prophecy" was only understood/declassified in 1972?

[Grek]

Timothy Leary is fine. I picked Cayce essentially at random off a list of 20th century American psychics. E: It is cool that he designed a board game though. Maybe have him be in the timeline doing something else.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Cayce, I noticed that. I assumed it was one of those "Hitler died in '63/Von Neumann at Montauk" type things. The Cayce Institute would be cool to work in, though. That place is hilariously weird.

[hyzmarca]

[*] 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.

Looking at the new timeline, I really don't think we should have Cthulhu rise in 2035.

The problem there is that if the Union beats Cthulhu with the tech that they have available then, he just isn't a credible threat in 2097.

Fighting Cthulhu is something that you must be able to do, but it also has to be a big deal. That means that other people with worse technology can't have beaten-up Cthulhu before.

I propose the R'lyeh faction only had a few Star Spawn during the war of 2035, and even those few were a big deal. In 2097 the Stars are Right, Cthulhu rises, and the shit really hits the fan. That way the PCs have a chance to beat up Cthulhu first and doing so is a really huge and important thing.

Dagon remains a wildcard in the conflict, being an inscrutable million-year-old giant fish-man. On one hand, Cthulhu personally uplifted him, along with Hydra and their long-dead contemporaries, the first Deep Ones, from Homo antecessor. Cthulhu was his god, his father, and his friend. On the other hand, that was literally a million years ago and people change, even giant fish people. Dagon has officially thrown his lot in with the Union and Hydra with him. Some of their children, those of the R'leyh faction, think them traitors because of this, but with Cthulhu awake once again it isn't certain which way they'll swing. He hasn't personally fought in any conflict since the Moon-beast war and has shown extreme reluctance to field his armies against R'leyh's.

[DrPraetor]

So ghouls = cat girls?

Meaning I can channel Piers Anthony, and write one of the character vignettes from the POV of an underage catgirl prostitute who occasionally kills and eats her johns?

Warning: NSFA (Not Safe for Anywhere/Anyone)

You are a terrible person, live the rest of your life in shame.

[OgreBattle]

Meaning I can channel Piers Anthony, and write one of the character vignettes from the POV of an underage catgirl prostitute who occasionally kills and eats her johns?

check out Kemonozume

The series deals with beastmen that don't know they're beastmen until around they reach puberty, where they will spontaneously transform when in a state of high emotion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eFzJge-2vU

It's a sad and gruesome story.

[erik]

Looking at the new timeline, I really don't think we should have Cthulhu rise in 2035.

The problem there is that if the Union beats Cthulhu with the tech that they have available then, he just isn't a credible threat in 2097.

How bout if Cthulhu was only awake briefly. While awake tore shit up and was unstoppable until he went back to take a nap for 62 years? Now the stars will align and foretell that he won't be awake for just a weekend bender this time.

[hyzmarca]

Looking at the new timeline, I really don't think we should have Cthulhu rise in 2035.

The problem there is that if the Union beats Cthulhu with the tech that they have available then, he just isn't a credible threat in 2097.

How bout if Cthulhu was only awake briefly. While awake tore shit up and was unstoppable until he went back to take a nap for 62 years? Now the stars will align and foretell that he won't be awake for just a weekend bender this time.

That works, too.



Macroniozation

Deep Ones never stop growing over the course of their potentially infinite lifespans. The older they are the bigger they are and the oldest ones are very big.

Union scientists have developed a treatments to accelerate Deep One tissue growth. Deep Ones, Hybrids, and Transgenics with the Ageless trait can undergo a macronoziation treatment to rapidly grow to Kaiju size.

A follow-up treatment, consisting of a bath in artificial bacteria designed to eat the extraneous tissue, can return a Macronized individual to normal size.

[OgreBattle]

I think you can fit in Gurren Lagann type heroes in the same way that Conan fits into the mythos. Lovecraft and Howard were buddies so you did have Conan fighting horrors from beyond the stars every once in a while, by touching the untouchable, breaking the unbreakable, and stabbing it in the face after a hearty wrestling session.


Guts and Hot Bloodedness responds to cosmic horror by drawing from primal fury.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well if Timothy Leary is in, then The Naica crystal caves should be too.

[Username17]

I like the idea of R'lyeh being able to wake Cthulhu up for longer and longer periods that are closer and closer together. That way it isn't a "trust me dude, it's going to be really bad!" like in CthulhuTech. Heck, he could have been awakened long enough to do a number on Sydney or Santiago or something during World War 2.

R'lyeh, by the way, is at the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. The other Poles of Inaccessibility should also contain crazy Mythos stuff. The Antarctic one is the place where Soviet researchers found the lost city of the Elder Things, the Eurasian one is where the Tcho-Tcho had their dark monolith, and so on.

One lesson that the Moon-beast war hammered home, centralization is death. Walls don't stop teleporters, they don't stop fliers, and they don't stop burrowers. Few people want to live in huge cities, because cities are targets. Cities still exist, of course, because that's where the jobs are, but The Union takes for granted that some people will be eaten, some people will be blown up, and some will suffer worse. Instead they focus on making it difficult to take out everyone in a single strike, and that means decentralizing and spreading out as much as is possible. You take more hits that way, but those hits are far less devastating.

The Union probably wants to set up at least one city as a flame to draw moths. So like in Evangelion where they set up the GeoFront under NeoTokyo, and then Angels attacked there over and over again. Or how in Power Rangers the monsters are constantly attacking Angel Grove. But yeah, other than that The Union would try to keep cities small and segregated from each other. I suggest that this strategy would be called "Agenda 21".

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

2001: Prominent Human Survival Movement leader Randolf Carter III purchases a luxury cruise ship which he rechristens the Mayflower and promises to lead thousands of his followers to the "promised land." The ship vanishes somewhere in the Pacific.

2003: The Mayflower is discovered floating empty and unmanned near the Indian Ocean. There is no sign of a struggle, but all useful supplies had been stripped out of it before it was abandoned. Theories abound as the the fate of the crew, some more plausible than others. The official report suggests that they committed mass suicide, or were killed by R'lyehian pirates.

2082: The Cult of Yig recovers the remains of Toth-Amon from an ancient Egyptian tomb. The Tome of Xaltoun, the Death Mask of Tulsa Doom, and the Serpent Ring of Set are already in their possession, and they use these artifacts to resurrect the Stygian Sorcerer.

Toth-Amon quickly marginalizes and replaces the cult's leadership. With a competent leader in charge for once, the Yigites become much more dangerous and effective, but lingering loyalties to the old guard undermine Toth-Amon's authority.

2086: Under Toth-Amon's leadership the Cult of Yig consolidates control over Mexico and Central America. Toth Amon declares the Yig Nation and formally succeeds from the Union. The Yig Nation and the Union maintain a cordial yet tense relationship.

2996 I: Frustrated by the lack of insane world-domination attempts, Serpent Command attempts to stage a coup against Toth-Amon. The Yig Nation erupts into full-scale civil war, which quickly spills out into neighboring zones.

2096 II: Pilotless, AI-controlled mecha pour through a previously dormant Stargate on the sunken continent of Lemuria in the Indian Ocean. These machines first attack the Mountains of Madness Research Facility in Antarctica, capturing it and cutting off the Union's access to the Elder Thing ruins. They swiftly follow up by attacking R'lyteh's holdings in Australia and New Zealand.

2097: The Stars are Right. R'lyeh rises. All hell breaks loose.

[DrPraetor]

R'lyeh, by the way, is at the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility. The other Poles of Inaccessibility should also contain crazy Mythos stuff. The Antarctic one is the place where Soviet researchers found the lost city of the Elder Things, the Eurasian one is where the Tcho-Tcho had their dark monolith, and so on.

I think R'lyeh should be just NORTH of there - http://goo.gl/maps/AOb3V

Built into the cliff face of... is that a fissure or a mountain range or both? It's pretty fucking steep, anyway - and nothing says Lovecraft like building cities into cliff faces, especially if you do it at the bottom of the sea.

[Username17]

The Cthonians real problem as regards to prosecuting a war is that they don't have surface dwelling humanoid allies. They can knock down buildings and murder people, but they can't hold territory. Ultimately the First and Second Cthonian War involved them running amok until The Union figured out a counter to them and shut them down. For the Third Cthonian War, they are going to want to take things to the next level: they are going to want to have their catspaws occupy the surface world.

For that, I suggest that they sponsor the Gorilla people of Central Africa. We don't have to go the full Arthur Jermyn, or even the weird Burroughsesque racism of Opar. But we could call them the "White Apes" or "Bolgani". Still, I think the primary source material should be Gorilla City from DC Comics. These guys are working directly with the Cthonians, so they attack the first responders right after earthquakes.

Oh, and the Mexico region has been renamed Valusia by the Yig cultists of Toth Amon.

---

Anyway, mechanics. The game wants to do battles against Bolgani soldiers among rubble, against Valusians in ancient Mayan temples, and against mad cultists of Azathoth in office buildings close to home. But it also wants to do tank fights. And mech fights. And tank vs. mech fights. And soldiers vs. tank fights. And this means that it has to have a damage system that scales well, and it also means that it wants to do hit locations and facing. Because mechs really cry out for hit locations and tanks really cry out for facing, and you want the game to be transparent mechanics-wise between the different size classes so that people can actually do things on cross-scale, and also so that the players don't have to learn an ass tonne of new systems.

Anyway, what this means is that the procedure for combat is:

• Determine facing of target.
• Roll to-hit.
• Roll hit location.
• Roll Soak.
• Determine Wound Effect.

Unfortunately, that's 3 rolls and 2 charts to determine the results of an attack. Not ideal. But on the plus side:

• You don't have to track hit points.
• You get crazy results on critical charts to spice up combat.
• You get to get all tactical about trying to hit the under-armor of tanks or focus fire on a mech's wounded leg.
• Called Shots are an emergent property of the system.
• You can easily represent shotguns and explosives and stuff by having it hit ranges of hit locations instead of single hit locations in appropriately sized targets.
• Piecemeal armor, shields, and helmets are emergent properties of the system.
• Shooting out the tires of vehicles is an emergent property of the system, allowing small arms and big cars to interact without special rules.
• Groin Shots. That is all.

The Hit Location chart is not only different for different facings (rear, flank, front, under, and above), but there's a different set for each different chassis. So the Starspawn have their chassis with their own hit locations (so you can hit them in the face tentacle or the wing), and Cthonians have their own hit locations (mostly tentacle and trunk I'm afraid). And the different gunboys and vehicle types have their own sets of hit locations too.

The big difference from a game like Shadowrun is that since the question of "where you hit them" is actually an answered question, that rolling better than you needed to hit doesn't do any extra damage. It lets you move the hit location roll around.

-Username17

[Grek]

Does Soak really need to exist? It seems perfectly viable (to me at least) for each character to derive a Hit Chart based off their outlay and have that be Soak.

Let's say we start out with a Humanoid Gunboy Mecha who has the following unarmoured Hit Chart:

Roll	Front	Right	Left	Rear	Above	Below
1	Head A:__ S:__ E:_____	Chest A:__ S:__ E:_____	Chest A:__ S:__ E:_____	Chest A:__ S:__ E:_____	Head A:__ S:__ E:_____	Groin A:3 S:9 E:_____
2	Chest A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Shld A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Shld A:__ S:__ E:_____	Back A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Shld A:__ S:__ E:_____	Torso A:__ S:__ E:_____
3	Right Arm A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Arm A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Arm A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Arm A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Shld A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Leg A:__ S:__ E:_____
4	Left Arm A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Hand A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Hand A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Arm A:__ S:__ E:_____	Front A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Foot A:__ S:__ E:_____
5	Right Leg A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Leg A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Leg A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Leg A:__ S:__ E:_____	Rear A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Leg A:__ S:__ E:_____
6	Left Leg A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Foot A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Foot A:__ S:__ E:_____	Left Leg A:__ S:__ E:_____	Head A:__ S:__ E:_____	Right Foot A:__ S:__ E:_____

And fill in all those little blanks with numbers and big blanks with pieces of equipment based off of outlay, model and other character gen choices. To hit, you roll an Attack dicepool vs. a stat and outlay based Evasion TN. One net hit on the attack pool lets you move your roll up one or down one row per net hit spent. Two net hits lets you move to an adjacent facing (anything but Front to Rear, Left to Right or Above to Below). Three hits lets you move to the opposite facing (Front to Rear, Left to Right or Above to Below). And then you do damage, applying damage first to Armour at that location, then from Structure. Equipment for a location as a minimum structure to function and if you loose all your structure for a part, it breaks off. Armour = Structure - Equipment Requirements for any given part, before damage is applied.

I see no reason for soak to come into it. We've already got a random "Do I hit or not, and how well?" aspect and a random "Do I get hit on the armour or in the crotch?" aspect, so modelling how well a specific point on your armour holds up vs. a specific attack against it does not need to be a third random roll. It can just be a subtraction operation.

[Shatner]

One lesson that the Moon-beast war hammered home, centralization is death. Walls don't stop teleporters, they don't stop fliers, and they don't stop burrowers. Few people want to live in huge cities, because cities are targets. Cities still exist, of course, because that's where the jobs are, but The Union takes for granted that some people will be eaten, some people will be blown up, and some will suffer worse. Instead they focus on making it difficult to take out everyone in a single strike, and that means decentralizing and spreading out as much as is possible. You take more hits that way, but those hits are far less devastating.

The Union probably wants to set up at least one city as a flame to draw moths. So like in Evangelion where they set up the GeoFront under NeoTokyo, and then Angels attacked there over and over again. Or how in Power Rangers the monsters are constantly attacking Angel Grove. But yeah, other than that The Union would try to keep cities small and segregated from each other. I suggest that this strategy would be called "Agenda 21".

-Username17

I'm still unsure what civilization is like in this setting. We have armies capable of invading from space, under the ground, known as well as unknown star gates, phasing between dimensions, or just plain being summoned from wherever a pentacle, chanting, and enough virgin blood can meet. In addition to all this, you have lots of monsters, terrorist agencies, and supernatural fallout that can just sort of pop up anywhere and require a coordinated police force or PC-level magic girl to be stopped.

What I'm seeing is an Iron Age map where you have settlements that are basically armed camps with enough defenses to drive off lesser threats, while trying to be small enough to not attract the attention of larger threats. These scattered settlements coordinate with one another for trade and mutual defense but are largely self-sufficient and independent (both in terms of government and culture). The only reason large scale projects (such as globe-trodding armies and giant mechas) exist at all is because everyone has accepted that the entire world is under siege and there is a single military-industrial complex (The Union) organizing the requests for raw materials and man-power.

There are probably people who live beyond these encampments but they're like DnD peasants in that their survival is only accomplished through luck and obscurity, and it's unlikely that much anyone would notice an individual disappearing, let alone trying to rescue/avenge them.


1) For local defense, are we talking Wild West style gun slingers, Texas Rangers-esque patrols through trouble spots, city guards/militia, or a government-paid police force who can call in the national guard?

2) How difficult is it to ship a load of wheat from Kansas to California?

3) How difficult is it to have a conversation with someone on another continent?

4) If someone wants to drive from small-town Texas to small-town Florida, are they likely to get eaten by monsters, shot by suspicious locals once they stop for gas, or required to negotiate their way through 10 different border check-points?

5) What lengths must The Union and/or regional governing bodies go to to see region-specific resources (oil, rare earth elements, uranium, etc.) shipped safely to the various places scattered across the globe that need them?


Questions like these need to be answered so that people will have a frame of reference to tell stories and do off-the-cuff actions, especially if the story in question ever strays beyond the city limits of Neo Tokyo.

[Username17]

Does Soak really need to exist?

I think so. You hit a dude in the face with your fist. Do you break his nose? Or do you just hurt him? You really want repeated blows to the head to be variant in how much real injury is caused. And that means you need some kind of damage roll or soak roll. And since both "to-hit" and "hit location" are attacker side rolls, I think it makes more sense to have a soak or damage save type roll on the defender side.

I mean, we could just have much bigger hit location tables that have cheek, nose, tooth, and eye as distinct locations and have facial damage vary by being determinant but among so many distinct locations that it would still be different every time. But I honestly think worrying about a chart that in-depth would be more work than making a damage/soak roll to liven things up.

I'm still unsure what civilization is like in this setting. We have armies capable of invading from space, under the ground, known as well as unknown star gates, phasing between dimensions, or just plain being summoned from wherever a pentacle, chanting, and enough virgin blood can meet. In addition to all this, you have lots of monsters, terrorist agencies, and supernatural fallout that can just sort of pop up anywhere and require a coordinated police force or PC-level magic girl to be stopped.

What I'm seeing is an Iron Age map where you have settlements that are basically armed camps with enough defenses to drive off lesser threats, while trying to be small enough to not attract the attention of larger threats. These scattered settlements coordinate with one another for trade and mutual defense but are largely self-sufficient and independent (both in terms of government and culture). The only reason large scale projects (such as globe-trodding armies and giant mechas) exist at all is because everyone has accepted that the entire world is under siege and there is a single military-industrial complex (The Union) organizing the requests for raw materials and man-power.

It's more like World War 2. All the time.

There's total war going on. Sometimes whole cities are destroyed. Various cultures and ethnic groups get genocided with various levels of success. But over the course of World War 2, global population still rose by almost two hundred million. And wars and destruction really aren't ending population growth. The destruction of Beijing, Washington, Paris, London, and Moscow is an act of brutality that humanity will never forgive. But it's like 15 million dead people, and in our own timeline the world's population increased by 74 million people that year.

The horrifying revelation of the Cthonians and Moon Beasts is precisely that they literally cannot tear down our cities as fast as we build them, cannot fill our graves as quickly as we fill our nurseries. There are just too many humans and they are building and breeding too fast for these wars to seriously threaten extinction or even regression. That's why for the Third Cthonian War, they are going to try a new strategy of literally emptying areas of humans - to try to take and hold ground until there's nowhere for humans to live. The "running amok and slaughtering as many humans as you can catch" plan was totally tried and it was simply Malthusianly incapable of doing the job. And that is what keeps Shudde M'ell from sleeping well. That is the true Lovecraftian horror for the Moon Beasts.

The big innovation for The Union is putting things that various factions want to take intact in the middle of cities, thereby preventing those factions from simply nuking those cities. Instead, they are forced to send giant monsters to try fight it out over the town, which can be met with Gunboys and Throne Defense. I don't know what they put in the middle of Angel Grove to cause it to be repeatedly attacked by Dark Young that get fought off by Zords, but I'm not sure we even have to say. It could be a Secret.

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Unrelated note: I think that "Rook" is a better name than "Throne" for the Shoggoth filled armors. Because having central command say "Commit the Rooks" and such makes for cool Chess allusions. Also you can show brooding commanders looking at a chessboard where a rook has been knocked over.

-Username17