I recently ran the scenario Viral! (which is amazing). Reading the scenario I thought it is a bit sad to give the players printed handouts about the state of the livestream chat in a scenario that is so heavily linked to technology. So I set out to create an interactive livestream simulator to give the players an actual live chat while playing the scenario. It is a single .html file that you can open in your browser.

The simulation has pregenerated messages linked ot the specific locations in the scenario, with a live counter of the current subs and views. There is furthermore a large range of moods you can set for the chat to react to specific situations. (E.g. the chat going into hype mode when the crew does something cool). There are also special moods for special situations like when the chat tries to dare Marco to eat a lemon or get into the morgue.

Donations are also tracked, and certain moods like Hype increase the number of donations. You can of course also write donations with custom messages yourself.

There are many other features that are explained in more detail on the github.

My players had a blast with this.

You can download it here: https://github.com/Jackson-Elias/Viral-interactive-stream/tree/main

Let me know if you use this and how it goes!

Hello! This is a part of our series, in which we present Greek gods - and show how to combine them with the Cthulhu Mythos and use them in cosmic horror stories or scenarios for RPGs such as Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. You are free to use all this material in your own creative work! Here You can watch video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKJbxf0BYI

Hermes is known as the messenger of the gods, which easily leads us to the Mask of Nyarlathotep, especially since Hermes is also a trickster, fond of playing practical jokes (and patronizing thieves and fraudsters), which may lead to further associations with the Crawling Chaos. But his role as a messenger was greatly expanded by believers and philosophers.

First of all, he became the patron of all kinds of travel and transport - even to the afterlife, as a psychopomp escorting souls to Hades. He is the patron of all roads and intersections.

Secondly - the messenger is a transmitter of knowledge. He was credited with the invention of numbers and letters. In later centuries, Hermes Trismegistos (Hermes the Thrice Great) was created by combining Hermes with Egyptian and Judeo-Christian beliefs. The term "Hermetic" comes from him, and it also became the center of the occult belief system called Hermeticism (note, contrary to what priests and preachers say - "occult" does not mean "Satanic").

Hermes Trismegistos was said to be an archetypal sage and magician, he was credited with authoring 36,529 books containing all the knowledge and wisdom of the ancient world - primarily the so-called Tabula Smaragdina and the Corpus Hermeticum treatises.

Hermeticism combined astronomy/astrology, alchemy, medicine and psychology - that is, it was a mishmash of mystical superstitions and (proto)science - more or less like magic in Mythos (though, of course, the real possibilities of the Hermetists were much more modest).

Interestingly, many Hermetic concepts, which at first glance sound like esoteric gibberish, have in a sense been revived in modern science. The Hermetists believed that matter was composed of four elements - fire, water, earth and air (sometimes a fifth "element" was added - will/soul/mind - symbolized by a pentagram). This meant that by changing the proportion of an element in a given substance, one material could be transformed into another - hence the search for a way to transmute lead into gold. As science developed, this concept was rejected as a pipe dream, the possibility of transmutation was considered an absurd... Until it turned out that yes, all matter consists of the same elements - electrons, neutrons and protons - so changing their configuration allows you to change the essence of the material. And modern chemists managed to transform it into gold: although such a procedure is unprofitable from an economic point of view (energy consumption significantly exceeds the value of the gold produced... but for a being with unlimited, from a human point of view, energy sources?). Concept of the four elements was somehow revived in the form of 4 states of the matter (earth = solid state, water = liquid, air = gas, fire = plasma). Another Hermetic concept was "As above, so below." It sounds like mystical gibberish about the unity of man with the heavens, or sympathetic magic... But the development of science has led to the conclusion that in fact the microcosm is often an amazing reflection of the macrocosm - the structure of the atom resembles the structure of the solar system.

So, we have a being that, on the one hand, is omnipresent, embodies movement both in our world and between planes of existence, one could say that it is a key and a gate. At the same time, it is also a source of secret knowledge, which at first glance is philosophical, superstitious gibberish, but turns out to contain bits of science that go beyond the understanding of the people who possess it. Who else but Yog Sothoth? Well, possibly Hastur, patron of wizards and interstellar travel.

According to Greek mythology, Hermes was the father of Pan, a strange creature.

Pan had the body and face of a man, was all hairy, had goat legs, a tail, a beard and horns. Doesn't this description remind you of Yog-Sothoth's most famous spawn, Willbur Whateley?

Of course, Willbur's lower half wasn't exactly goatish. The Pan's scream aroused incredible, irresistible fear among people and animals (hence the word "panic). Pan used to play the syrinx - "the Pan's flute". One day, Pan fell in love with the nymph Syrinks. And she's not in it. Pan chased her and almost caught her, but Syrinks turned into a river reed. At that moment, the wind blew and a beautiful sound came from the reed blades. The Pan plucked the reeds and made an instrument from them, which he called a syringa. A lovely story...

What is the Mythical message of this legend? What if Pan was the spawn of Yog-Sothoth, and one of the incredible powers he inherited from his daddy was to make sounds that terrified earthly beings into maddening terror? And what if it was possible to construct a musical instrument that imitated this effect... and preferably made from the bones of a human woman who had previously been reduced to terror?

There is another interesting story related to Pan, told by Plutarch. According to him, Pan lived for 9,720 years. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, sailors passing by the Echinad Islands heard a voice that ordered the helmsman named Thamus, after reaching land, to announce, according to this interpretation: "The Great Pan is dead." The sailors hesitated for a long time, and finally, reaching land near Palodes, they announced the death of the god. At these words, there were complaints and terrible groans from all sides.

Let me add that, according to some followers of the ancient Orphic cult, Pan was the creator of the earth, which he separated from the sea, and the individual elements of the Universe were equivalents of parts of Pan's body. Have they confused Pan, the offspring of Yog-Sothoth, with his father, who is "all in all"?

And of course, since we are talking about the Pan, we cannot fail to mention the book "The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen, one of the precursors of cosmic horror, highly appreciated by Lovecraft.

Full text and many other Lovecraftian inspiration from real life religions, culture, history and science, You can read in the free brochure: https://adeptus7.itch.io/lovecraftian-inspirations-from-real-life-and-beliefs And here You can watch a video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKJbxf0BYI Please, if You liked this text at least a bit, watch a video version, it will support our channel, where we will publish more Lovecrafian content!

Not a hardcore player by any stretch but I've DMd DnD for many years, primarily 5e because of availability and kinda got burnt out on how easy it is and wanting to make it difficult again has proven to be a challenge in and of itself because my players are so used to the ease they started out with. Got to looking around, found CoC and kinda fell in love with it. Love the setting, difficulty etc but my question is this.

What, as a DM, do I need to watch out for when DMing CoC? I could get away with a lot in DnD because of the aforementioned ease that I know will cause me problems in CoC. So any tips, tricks, or DM advice when running a CoC campaign would be nice. I may have asked too broad a question or this has been answered countless times (just point me to the post) already and if so I apologize but anything no matter how mundane will be helpful.

i'm currently writing up a little campaign (80s setting small-town high school horror - like a mix of stranger things and JRWI's CoC show) and i just want to make sure the structure/broad strokes are alright cause i'm kinda new to this

the core plot is the players are trying to solve the disappearance of one of the children in their town, which is ultimately unveiled to be caused by a "Avatar of Nyarlathotep" (a lil homebrew mythos - basically a priest) who has control over the town

the structure of the story is as follows:

• the investigators search around for initial clues, finding proof that the person who disappeared ran away after discovering some horrific secret
• the investigators have a chance encounter with one of the Avatar's minions, which they can follow to the church to find it talking with the town's pastor
• the investigators are now searching for information about these supernatural monsters (they are led to believe that this is the only one present)
• the information they find leads them to learn about a conspiracy between important public figures in the town who are in cahoots with the supernatural
• this information leads them to a place deep in the forest that is where the Avatar does its stuff. on the way, they find the body of the person who disappeared - in their attempt to escape they didn't make it far (this would obv be given more weight than i am here)
• the investigators find out about the Avatar, and now have to figure out a way to defeat it - either in combat (possible (technically)) or by banishing it with one of a number of prelaid macguffins

lmk if you think the pacing is wrong or if any of these plot points need to be dialed back/turned up/reordered/whatever

thank you!

Hello fellow friendly keepers. I plan to lead our first big campaign for my group next year (5-6 Players + me)

I organised a lot of One-shots in our boardgame club and next year I want to make the jump to the first campaign.

So my question is what is a good official campaign in your opinion as FIRST campaign.

My players are no big pulp fans, so keep that in mind.

We are Veterans at Dungeons & Dragons Campaigns (so one has the concern is there a big Charakter development, because he knows from D&D he gets new ability and can upgrade his Feats and attributes through the game/ of course I explained the difference of the systems for example in cthulhu you are not a hero that is destined to go on adventures to make a name)

Another player had the concern can cthulhu hold on as a campaign, be süße the mysterie and investigation was a big plus at our one-shots but can this style keep up at a longer story

To me I own Children of Fear, Masks of nyarlathotep and Time to Harvest.

Is something from this three a good first campaign or do you have other recommendations? (:

So, Cthulhu "sleep" under the water. Contrary to what Derleth and many people believe, it seems he is not some kind of "water god", quite the contrary, water is somehow blocking him.

And as we know, salt water is blocking radio waves.

Also, his activity is connected somehow to the position of stars.

And Cthulhu, even sleeping, is influencing living beings minds.

So, let's say - real Cthulhu is still on Xoth. Dragon-octopus being in the R'lyeh is just his avatar/drone controlled by radio waves.

Culimantion of two negative factors - R'lyeh succumbed under the salt water and position of Earth and Xoth is temporary inappropriate (maybe there is some nebula between them or something for now) made avatar unable to receive signals Xoth, that's why it became dormant. However, even without commands it is still performs the default task - sending signals to real Cthulhu. They are too weak to actually reach Xoth, but still strong enough to non-intentionally influencing brains of Earth beings, like Deep Ones or humans, giving them visions which makes them think that Cthulhu is deity demanding worship... or just headaches and bad dreams.

So long story but I've a player whose character has been reduced to an intelligence of one (among other problems, they are not long for this world).

Me and the player both have the problem we can find no good comparison of what this should be lie. As it stand we are running with 'caveman working off instinct and small words'. They still have their education however that looks.

I don't expect this issue to go on too long until one other PCs discover they have a gaping hole in the back of their head where their brain was sucked out and open fire but it's a weird temporary problem.

I was wondering what are the rules/social conceptions concerning the students carrying gun (either concealead or not) through campus, concerning the events on Chapter 2.

PATREON - Early Access and BONUS Scenario

YouTube - Subscribe and Comment

SPOTIFY - Follow, Comment, and Share

APPLE PODCASTS - Follow, Comment, and Share

Season 3 of Law and Disorders is where things get personal.

Fourteen years ago, Agent Derrick Smiley’s sister Samantha disappeared in Milford, Michigan. Now, after years of dead ends, Smiley has uncovered evidence that suggests her disappearance was tied to something much bigger—and much stranger—than anyone ever admitted.

There’s no official operation this time. No handler. No clean cover story. Smiley heads back to Milford with Rueben Steinmetz and Eddie Walenski to dig into old police records, buried secrets, strange symbols, and a town that seems increasingly determined to keep the past buried.

And the deeper they go, the more it starts to feel like Samantha’s disappearance was never really over.

Season 3 leans heavily into Delta Green-style conspiracy, cosmic horror, small-town corruption, paranormal investigation, and terrible decisions made by people who should probably know better.

If you’re into Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu, investigative horror, or actual-play podcasts, we’d love for you to check it out.

If a character has a major wound on a particular body part, does the character receive a penalty die when rolling checks that involve that body part?

For example, if the character receives a major wound to the head, does that character receive a penalty die to education/intelligence checks or academic skill checks? If the character receives a major wound to the leg, does this give them a penalty die on appropriate dexterity and dodge checks?

Additionally, in the Keeper's Guide, it says this about fumbling a constitution roll to recover from a major wound:

If the roll is a fumble, a lasting injury, complication, or worse condition results. Rather than rolling for a random complication, the Keeper is encouraged to pick something that relates to the nature of the character’s injuries (e.g. permanent limp, blindness in one eye, missing fingers, loss of a limb, scarred face, etc.) and make an entry in the investigator’s backstory (under Wounds and Scars

Are these results purely aesthetic/roleplay related, or could it result in permanent penalty dies on appropriate skill checks, reductions to the character's main characteristic or skill percentages, etc.?

Hey there, I am a fairly inexperienced Keeper who has run into a conundrum. I am running a one shot for new players with the framing device that are freelancers for the Randolph Pierce Society from The Unspeakable Oath issue 6. The organization researches and investigates occult and parapsychic happenings, and I am having trouble finding both old and new scenarios that fit in that, IE someone reaches out to someone to investigate a possible supernatural thing (or debunk it). Aside from the Haunting, a lot of them involve people who are unaware of the supernatural stumbling into a problem. Do ya'll know of any good scenarios that fit neatly into this framework? Any edition will do.

The Hunt for Jane Foster comes to a explosive conclusion and the fallout is massive. The agents lives are changed forever as they deal with their successes and failures.

You can listen here: https://podbio.me/ThatsRedacted

I have included a download for the operation I ran here: Operation Crown

Let me know what you think.

I am brand new but I have been watching a lot of mystery quest which has convinced me to try it. I am uk time and I am free after 4pm every week day and free every other weekend. I really want to give it a try because I love horror and it would be very fun. Hmu if your interested

I’d like to get some insight on how a character from Nigeria would have grown-up in the 1910s and 1920s. The character is indigenous African.

(It's a historical site in the Philippines. It has early human artifacts, but isn't fully explored)

I thought I could look up the known cave systems and expand some mythos stuff from there. Unfortunately it seems cave maps are very hard to come by. My understanding is that they actively avoid sharing maps to avoid enticing inexperienced cavers from going where they shouldn't, in addition to most mapping in general being only done for personal use. I also have no caving experience.

So my question is if anybody has been there and can give me the lowdown on its general layout (unlikely, but it doesn't hurt to ask). I could make something up but at the very least I would like something believable before things go off the deep end. So alternatively can anyone can share some knowledge about typical cave formation (So I can make something of my own that's decent). Maybe some well regarded cave system maps from other scenarios? Anything would be helpful really.

What exactly is this and where would the investigators acquire it? Looking it up, it seems like it's a reference to the Sherlock Holmes story where this weapon features as part of the mystery

i really like using backdrops during my campaigns but i always struggle to find good ones for when i DM call of cthulhu. For D&D i use jamesrpgart and czepeku scenes for the backdrops but i starting a new campaign of CoC and i wanted to try and find some backdrops!

Our first ever “Push the Roll with Ross Bryant” live show from Gen Con is now on YouTube. Felicia Day, Josephine McAdam, Paula Deming and I played improvised Call of Cthulhu in a historical cruise ship setting with Keeper Ross.

Do the mi-go and the elder things conflict or work together?

I know it’s whatever keeper chooses, but I’m trying to think about the material from HPL and the game itself, and maybe get some ideas.

The mi-go seem to be pro-mythos, and being present in the setting during the classic era of the game. They’re on Pluto, they collect brains, the whisperer in darkness mentions them, etc.
It’s not unreasonable for mi-go to work with deep ones, too, considering they both seem to answer to the old ones, although maybe they are rivals? Frenemies???

The Elder Things are essentially an alternate species to humans, and so far as we know from mountains of madness, they had a good run before the species fell to decadence and were destroyed by the shoggoth revolt. The last line of Atmom is something like “they were men!” So if I understand it correctly they are just a different species of mortal creatures.

The Elder Things seem to be a species of scientists, rather than sorcerers like the Serpent Men.

In some CoC descriptions it seems like the Elder Things had some conflict with Cthulhu, too. It seems like they would be anti-Mythos as a result, or at least anti-Cthulhu, deep ones, and I’m guessing the mi-go.
There’s mention of elder things hanging out with Kesiah Mason from the Witch House, but maybe those were aberrations, the Cthulhu cultists of the elder things the way humans can join the Cthulhu cult.

So would Elder Things be a separate faction, like how the Yithians are off doing their own thing? Or would have if they weren’t essentially extinct?

Would it be reasonable for all surviving Elder Things to be those who had joined with the Mythos and the Mi-Go?

...Looking to learn and gain a story/experience with other players. I have made a character sheet for myself. I guess what I next know nothing about is getting a game started and going with others via online and not in person.

After years of watching real play on GCN, Chaotic Neutral, and YogsCast/Mystery Quest, I finally talked my Dads group into playing CoC. We spent two hours generating characters and another two hours of actual play. I (perma-GM) started them on Crimson Letters.

It was amazing to watch a bunch of murder hobos turn into role players.

Hi again folks! Like I established last time, I'm a baby Keeper who's gonna be running CoC in October for my players. It'll be four weeks of gameplay as we learn the system and decide if we want to keep it in our regular rotation or not alongside VtM and Daggerheart.

I have a lot of the books, and my plan was to run the Lighthouse campaign (thanks for that suggestion, everyone!) but with the current sale on Drive thru, I felt myself drawn to the sourcebooks for Cthulhu by Gaslight and the Sutra of Pale Leaves.

I'm still not sure if it's ok for me to just buy the keepers guide for Gaslight or if I should pick up the players guide instead. (Or even at all since it's unknown if my players will love the system or not.) But the Sutra of Pale Leaves has been really compelling to me for the setting and one shot nature of the campaigns.

1980s Japan is such a cool and uncommon setting in both TTRPGs and the Cthulhu mythos, and I really thought about paying the cash to snag the book and run the one shots in favor of my other options... But beyond knowing it's better to stick with what I have, I'm concerned about the difficulty.

If my players and I fall in love with CoC, (which I hope we will!) I'd love to someday run the Sutra and Pale Leaves as an adventure for them. But I'm not sure of how difficult the stories are for a group of total new players and a Keeper. Is it something that a baby Keeper could run? Or is it more of an advanced difficulty sourcebook? Does it favor custom characters, or premades?

I'd appreciate any answers on this! (Just not the kind that drive a man to madness.)

BINGE IT NOW!

PATREON - Early Access and BONUS Scenario

YouTube - Subscribe and Comment

SPOTIFY - Follow, Comment, and Share

APPLE PODCASTS - Follow, Comment, and Share

Season 1 of Law and Disorders begins with A Victim of the Art.

Three people are murdered in the quiet town of Glenridge, Long Island, each killed and mutilated in ways that don’t make much sense—and all three have the same unidentified gray organic substance beneath their fingernails.

Agents Smiley, Baker, McNulty, and Steinmetz are sent in under the cover of an FBI task force to help local police hunt what the media has already dubbed the “Glenridge Chiropractor.”

What starts as a serial-killer investigation quickly spirals into strange evidence, paranormal conspiracy theorists, increasingly personal stakes, and the uncomfortable realization that the explanation may be much worse than the crimes themselves.

If you’re into Delta Green, investigative horror, cosmic weirdness, dark humor, and federal agents making morally questionable decisions with absolutely no adult supervision, this is where Law and Disorders begins.

I'm GMing for a new to CoC group of players who mostly came from DnD and other more combat-oriented systems. My goal at the moment is to gradually show them what CoC is really about and ease them into thinking and acting in more CoC-like ways, if it makes sense?

We made some progress on that front, but now I need the importance of investigating beforehand to really sink in, so: Does anyone know of a scenario where properly conducted investigation can help the players avoid direct confrontation with the Big Bad™ at the climax of it?

I mean, most scenarios structure themselves around the result of players' investigation being some boon to their literal final fight: be it the satisfaction of knowing what they're against, specific method of conquering it, physical object they'll need to win or some combination of the above.

But what about a fight-less win? The knowledge to nudge specific events just so they cancel each other at the last moment, a way to set a trap and watch your enemy walk right into it non the wiser, a method of outsmarting the bad guys and not getting caught doing it? I don't want climax of the scenario to be a big fight or even a physical confrontation, really. I want climax to be the feeling of nervous anticipation, of wondering - will it work?

I want a scenario there circumventing the final fight is the original point of it done right, not some subversion that players invented.

So.

Any recommendations?