Counter Monkey – Cthulhupunk

Spoony | Jan 24 2013 | more | 
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That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange weapons and technology, even cyberpunks will die.

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  • http://twitter.com/sonoshiri Seraph~♥

    Ooooh, can I get a link to that map in the intro? It looks rad!

    • http://twitter.com/ChampionSheWolf Terra Silverspar

      I believe that map comes out of the Planescape boxed set.

    • http://www.facebook.com/octopodesrex Jacob Elias Land

      It’s the Great Wheel of Planescape! He mentions Planescape extensively in Don’t Fuck With The Lady Of Pain: http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/146269/GreatWheelMap.jpg

  • Shadowdragon1011

    There is also Cthulhutech. It is cyberpunk mixed with Call of Cthulhu. It also has a lot of inspiration from anime as well.

    • Vlademir1

      Cthulhutech is a very interesting one indeed.

      I pitched my friend the idea of a supers campaign that played with this idea using Hero System or GURPS some years back. The idea would have been, had we found players, for us to co-GM starting with the players in a government or corporate black ops team. Over time they’d get new experimental stuff that helped with the mission… and then start having nasty body horror side effects because it was based in the genetics of various mythos creatures, eventually leaving them with weird powers and the choice of being “decommissioned” or fighting back. The players would have been left totally in the dark at the start, so that as the elements added on to each other it’d have a better impact on them.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Fergus-Macpherson/100000315189369 Fergus Macpherson

        Cthulhutech is a nice idea but it is pretty much three systems in one since there is such a huge power gap between the types of characters.

        I actually thought he was gonna bring up Eclipse Phase which is like a less shitty version of Cthulhutech.

    • http://www.facebook.com/randall.bohannan Randall Bohannan

      For just a sec, I thought you were going to say this was the mix of Battletech with Call of Cthulhu—-can you imagine? Giant Mecha with missles and autocannons vs the great old ones & their minions… O.o

      • Shadowdragon1011

        Well you do get to blow up eldritch horrors with autocannons and mecha if you go for that kind of campaign.

        • http://www.facebook.com/casey.chastain Casey Chastain

          Or be a giant spider who eats people and other eldritch horrors.

  • areoborg

    I like the new intro.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.ellsworth.73 Jonathan Ellsworth

    Cthulhu Mouse Guard?

    • Vlademir1

      If you’re going there why not Bunnies and Burrows ;D

      That said, since the mythos is really about existential horror at the end of the day, I can personally see it working.

      • http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.ellsworth.73 Jonathan Ellsworth

        Also with Legend of the Five Rings… would be quite weird

      • http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.ellsworth.73 Jonathan Ellsworth

        Legend of the five rings would also be a curious mixture…
        Either way, Modern d20 has a set of rules to add mystical beyond from sea and space thingies… also mixable with the futuristic rulebook.

  • http://twitter.com/Brut3man Ioannis Maniatis

    Cthulhutech was fucking awsome! It had mecks!

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001276378387 Кайл Дорнез

      youp, what he said.

  • Hailspork

    I’ve done Shadowrun with Horrors in it (like from Earthdawn). There was the occasional amazement or such, but the concept of these greater creatures were never completely unexpected. I think you’re right to stick to a traditionally non-magical system.

    Also, Eclipse Phase is awesome.

  • Gregora

    Just two things. One: I have to agree that Shadowrun is awesome. Two: While not cyberpunk, I did get ideas for things to pull the next time I run Airship Pirates (post-apocalyptic steampunk setting that has rules for time-travel and can easily get as timey-wimey as Doctor Who). There’s a lot of unknown in that world. Who knows what kind of horrors outside of the Uberbeasts (genetically modified animals innately born to thirst for human blood) stalk the unknown parts of the world. :D

  • xxStyxx

    The great Thing about the “Call of Cthulhu” round i Master at the Moment is, none of my Players ever read a single Lovecraft Story. ^^
    So they knew its a Horror Game, but the Lovecraftian Horror is so different they are never prepared to whats happen. ^^

    At the Moment i play the Events of the Story “Call of Cthulhu”, the only Thing they know is, Shit starts to get real, very fast. ^^

    Btw, love the Intro!

  • http://www.facebook.com/jbuss2 Jon Buss

    Not that im complaining, but whats with the shift to youtube? Doesnt that prevent you collecting commercial money if people are watching youtube? Not to sound greedy but thats how you make money. Plus youtube kind of has a bad reputation of removing anything that could remotely be copyrighted.

    • http://www.facebook.com/manuel.wolf.94 Manuel Wolf

      it seems to work for angry joe though (at least i’m pretty sure his videos are on youtube)
      and while it’s controlled by google, youtube has the advantage of randomly putting your vlogs next to other stuff, so it may increase his publicity.
      i may be talking complete bullshit right now though, because i’m still not sure how moneymaking on youtube is supposed to work^^

      • Erik Kowalsky

        That last sentence invalidated all that came before it. Why are you even saying something if you’re so unsure of its correctness?

        • http://www.facebook.com/manuel.wolf.94 Manuel Wolf

          because i want to share my opinion, but at the same time i’m mature enough to admit to my lack of knowledge on the subject, which also saves me from getting into a fight with someone who disagrees with me because he knows, or thinks to know, more about the subject.
          now that i’ve justified my wording, allow me to ask you two questions.
          would you agree that calling someone out on them admitting their shortcomings creates a culture of pseudo-intelectual jackasses who type out the most insipid bullshit and defend it with childish insults to their dying breath (i.e. the youtube community)?
          wouldn’t it be better if people can talk about whatever they want, as long as they don’t falsely act like experts on the subject? that way, if you disagree with me, you can simply dismiss my statement as being misinformed and we don’t need to argue over anything.

          • Erik Kowalsky

            tl;dr

    • Daedalus

      He might be vying for the partnership program. The benefit of his videos being on YT means I can find all of his videos in one place and YT videos load far quicker than blip. I’m not going to complain.

      • http://www.facebook.com/christopher.mcfarlane.771 Christopher McFarlane

        I hope Spoony makes it partner.
        Youtube is really convenient, and now we can see the man sitting on his chair in high definition. Spoony had said in some video that he shoots in HD, but he rarely uploads in HD in Blip, and never on Springboard. I need my “guy stis on a chair and mumbles for an hour” video quality to be crisp for maximum enjoyment.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

          At least Youtube work on IPad… could not work the video he posted while he was on The last server he was forgot the name, not blip, blip work fine

    • http://twitter.com/Eliphas8 Sam Pagano

      According to twitter Springboard wasn’t embedding properly on his website. He’s probably gonna fix it when the springboard issue is fixed.

  • sketchesofpayne

    Hearing about that meta-plot in the Shadowrun books has made me realize how starved I am for a truly clever and suspenseful story. I want to know more now.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=753345456 Octo Seven

      Try reading some books .

      • thehivemind33

        I’ve not heard of any books with a plot that’s similar to the Shadowrun meta-plot…do tell.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=753345456 Octo Seven

          If you’re starved for a clever and suspenseful story like you said, read some Philip K Dick, start with Martian Time-Slip or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

          • CheshireBat

            As much as I love Philip K. Dick, you should always be prepared for a lackluster ending. He could churn out truly excellent and creative fiction like a machine, enough that a good percentage of our best movies are based on his work, but the man couldn’t write a good ending for the life of him.
            Still totally worth a read.

        • greatleslie

          You could try neuromancer, cyberpunk but no magic or mutants

  • http://www.facebook.com/octopodesrex Jacob Elias Land

    I believe Captain Chaos dies in the second Matrix crash but FastJack survives, one of his stories opens up Shadowrun 4th edition “Happy Trails”

    • StHubi

      It is never completely revealed for sure, if Captain Chaos really died. You know, that there are “ways” to survive, what happened to him ;)

  • http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/cornbredx/ CornBRED-X

    Really weird to see your videos change over to youtube. I thought you hated youtube (rightfully).

    Anyway, as always, enjoyed listening to this. =)

  • http://twitter.com/LanceOmikron Alex Perez

    I sadly haven’t played Shadowrun, so someone could probably make a laundry list of all the ways this suggestion wouldn’t work, but what if you made a cthulhupunk game by using shadowrun, and then simply houseruling out all of the magical/supernatural elements to make it pure tech?

    Though even if that could work in theory, I’d imagine you’d have to be pretty casual when explaining it to folks so as not to trip their mental alarm bells. (“He wants us to play Shadowrun without magic? I’m ok with it, but why does he specifically want to do that…?”)

    • CheshireBat

      You could do it, sure, although you’d probably still have the elves, orcs, dwarves, etc. You’re also right about the mental alarm bells thing, and additionally they might subconsciously think of it as a magic setting.

      Mainly, the problem would be that you specifically removed the supernatural elements just to reintroduce them again. (“Magic doesn’t exist! Wait, it totally does! DERP!”)

      Your suggestion isn’t bad, but it does have some downsides. Still a pretty decent option, but mostly if you simply don’t want the canon flavor of magic in your horror game.

  • StHubi

    The Renrakua Arcology Shutdown was a REALLY great scenario and source book. The plot of this event was concluded with an official campaign book. But the after effects were REALLY big… But I do not want to spoil it, as there are enough sites online to get the information.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003624423787 Grendle Keen

    The Pathfinder game I’ve been running has kind of been mutating into a horror game. It started with the party being from a city founded by the churches of the good gods of the world leaving to collect the pieces of one of said god’s weapons, and now the main villains of the campaign have become Kyton, basically the Cenobites of Pathfinder. Hell in the last game I ran the group came to an elven village where the young boys were being abducted by a monster that the group found out was a flesh golem.
    I’m curious Spoony, have you ever looked into a RPG called All Flesh Must Be Eaten?

  • GunsmithKitten

    Cthulhupunk is one delicious dish, and fun as hell. That said, it bears remembering what the first Cthulhu Modern supplement had to say on the subject of trying to think that enhanced technology could turn the tide against the forces of the Mythos; “These are beings who, with the merest flick of a wrist, traverse dimensions and known space. What is better handguns and sattelite photography to such beings?! Indeed, many in the know of the Mythos even speculate that man’s explosive advances in weaponry was influenced in no small part by Nyarlathotep himself, endlessly amused by our increasing ability to kill each other.” It still bears remembering this with Cthulhupunk as well. When it says that a being is immune to physical weapons, and many Mythos creatures are, that goes for all the fancy cyber-guns and monokatanas as well. To make it work, you still have to evoke that feeling of being mere microbes before the gods of the universe…

  • http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.wooten.3 Jonathan Wooten

    “Big, armored, fuck-off pyramid.” Something about that really made me laugh.

  • Dr_Mechano

    Actually Spoony I noticed you mentioned Conan with Cthulu.

    It has been suggested since Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft were really good friends that Conan sort of exists within the Cthulu mythos. Much like you mention in the Cyberpunk era, where people are hardened to seeing shit that would cause normal people to be very disturbed. In Conan, misery, suffering, bloody and brutal wars are all commonplace and magic of various kinds is known in the Hyborian Age.

    Thus, people are seriously hardened to the things that would terrify them about the Cthulu mythos. Hell, Conan has, on occasions, apparently punch out Cthuloid monsters with nary a flinch and holds them in contempt.

    “A devil from the Outer Dark,” he grunted. “Oh, they’re nothing uncommon. They lurk as thick as fleas outside the belt of light which surrounds this world. I’ve heard the wise men of Zamora talk of them. Some find their way to Earth, but when they do they have to take on some earthly form and flesh of some sort. A man like myself, with a sword, is a match for any amount of fangs and talons, infernal or terrestrial…”

    So yeah, Cthulu definitely works in Conan…but to people like Conan in that universe, they’re just something to drive a sword into, there isn’t much horror there. Even in the (admittedly not great) second movie Conan takes out freaking Dagon aka Father of the Deep one.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=753345456 Octo Seven

      Suggested by who? I have read every Conan story and every HPL story and this simply isn’t true. Conan often fights god-like creatures similar to HPL’s, but their worlds have never crossed over in any work by the original authors. Robert E Howard has written stories featuring deities from the Mythos, such as Haunter of the Ring which featured Tsagothua, but saying Conan and Cthulhu are part of the same universe is simply bullshit.

      • http://twitter.com/Eliphas8 Sam Pagano

        Suggested by the original release which was later edited to remove the lovecraft references because of reasons. Its hard to find the version of the story he’s talking about but it is real.

      • taranaich

        “Conan often fights god-like creatures similar to HPL’s, but their worlds
        have never crossed over in any work by the original authors.”

        There isn’t a story where Conan actively encounters a being explicitly related to the Cthulhu Mythos, but the Hyborian Age and Cthulhu Mythos do indeed cross over multiple times. The most notable is, in fact, “The Haunter of the Ring”: the Ring of the title is Thoth-Amon’s Serpent Ring of Set, which is a direct connection to the Hyborian Age and to Conan. John Kirowan, the hero of the story, discusses the cults of Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth in “The Children of the Night.”

        This was not restricted to Howard: Lovecraft included a little reference to “Crom-ya,” a Cimmerian chieftain, in “The Shadow Out of Time” – an undoubted reference to Conan’s people and deity – while Clark Ashton Smith mentioned Howard’s Serpent Men in “The Seven Geases.” Howard, Lovecraft and Smith loved inserting little nods to each other’s works in their stories, and the weird thing is how well they all work together.

        Sam is probably referring to “The Phoenix on the Sword,” where the first draft explicitly cites “Cthulhu, Tsathogua, Yog-Sothoth, and the Nameless Old Ones.” Howard shortened that to just “the Nameless Old Ones,” possibly because he didn’t want the “Yog-Sothothery” to be so obvious, possibly just because he felt the story didn’t need it (Farnsworth Wright, the editor, asked him to tighten up the story).

  • http://www.facebook.com/brian.stewart.3511041 Brian Stewart

    Alternity rpg is a cyberpunkish rpg that can be easily converted to cthulupunk. Beyond science, a supplement book, adds rules for magic and monsters to Alternity. It uses a modified d20 system.

    Palladium system their Rifts in particular is a cthulupunkish rpg. In one of the Rifts supplements there is even a giant tentacle monster in the Mariana Trench which alters animals and people into effectively deep ones. Biggest problem is that the rpg system is extremely clunky and slow moving.

    Blue Planet is a somewhat cyberpunkish rpg on a world recently discovered and not fully explored. It could easily be made into a cthulupunk book by having monsters be disturbed by underwater mining.

    Corporation rpg is a cyberpunkish rpg about being an agent of a major corporation in a world that is primarily run by the corporations. With all the secrets and unknowns in the setting it would be easy to add cthulu monsters to the game.

    OGL Cyberpunk could be changed into a cthulupunk book too.

    Fading suns is a space opera rpg with cybernetics and hacking. The setting is that the last great empire has fallen and technology is scarce and for some reason the suns are growing dimmer and dimmer. Easy to make cthulu mythos the reason for the fading suns.

    Thats about all the rpgs i’ve found that are cyberpunkish that haven’t been mentioned.

    • CheshireBat

      Not a bad list there.

      Blue Planet crossed with Call would be particularly sinister, since it’s sort of a hippie-dippy setting. That actually makes me kinda want to play it.

      By the way, Rifts actually had Old Ones in all but name, but they’re currently sleeping (except one with memory loss, that thinks that he’s a mere god). The problem is that they’re far too powerful for most Rifts games (I know, “does not compute”). They were only defeated through a concerted effort of essentially all gods and mortal races in the universe, and even then it was only a partial (and Pyrrhic) victory.
      Easy to just introduce lesser elements, though.

  • Balázs Sánta
  • http://twitter.com/Avernale Avernale

    When Spoony starts talking body horror, this image pops into my head. I’m not sure where it’s from, but I’m sure I saw it on TV or something. It’s this guy scratching his arm, and he finds he’s growing an eye there. So from there my mind’s going on this body-horror tangent, and by coincidence Spoony starts scratching his arm and it really creeped me out for a moment. I was all, “He doesn’t have the budget for body horror stuff like that… Does he?”

    • http://whackpackstudios.com/ Edward Giacin

      Army of Darkness? Maybe The Gate?

    • Cthulhu07

      Sounds like Army of Darkness to me….

  • http://www.facebook.com/dante.sparta1 Maxwell Bruder

    Cthulu is in D&D the gods where apparently in the original deities book

  • Brendan Tucker

    I wonder; Being alien and all, would Cthulhu be vulnerable to viral or chemical weapons? I mean no doubt he has an unbelievable immune system, but could he deal with flash-eating nanites? Is he made of atoms as we understand them, or something completely alien to everything science knows?
    So many questions, great episode Spoony

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=753345456 Octo Seven

      The old ones are weak against electricity only. But I am going by the books.

    • http://twitter.com/Eliphas8 Sam Pagano

      In the original short story its implied he can pretty much will himself to survive any wounds and heal himself with time. As far as I know they never really got into what he is made out of but its probably a safe bet he isn’t made of any kind of normal materials given how alien everything else things about him is.

  • Ismo väisänen

    My connection humbly thanks you for using the Youtube player.

  • smek2

    I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to play a session with Spoony. I figure it must be tons of fun. And big thanks for using Youtube now. Works much better than the Springboard player.

    • http://www.facebook.com/christopher.mcfarlane.771 Christopher McFarlane

      I have this feeling (and he admitted to it) that he is a control freak, which is why he enjoys DM’ing more than playing. I think he TPKs parties that don’t dance to his tune. Not that he would admit to that.

      • http://twitter.com/Kiposaurus Nick Kipouros

        He totally has admitted to that.

      • smek2

        I wouldn’t mind. Matter of fact, i got a hunch he would make a great DM. True, i don’t know him personally (never even met the guy) but i got a feeling that he, however serious he is into this, he would be fair. He may punish lazyness or lack of creativity but probably wouldn’t kill you for sadistic reasons.
        The again, it’s kinda hard to distinguish between his act and the real person. Alter Ego Acting, and all that.

        • Wayne Davis

          When he’s turned up as a player in other peoples campaigns he really
          annoys me, he tends to rules-lawyer and exploit metagame-knowledge to
          hell and back!

          • GunsmithKitten

            Example of this?

          • Wayne Davis

            Every time he turned up in one of Lordkats campaigns.

          • GunsmithKitten

            More specific?

          • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1442290943 Derek Thomas

            Why so you can debate it and defend your obsession?

          • http://www.facebook.com/sirkurt.downer SirKurt Downer

            Is debate a dirty word now? Unless you’re confusing that with contrarian flame-warring, which is different, if more popular…

          • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1442290943 Derek Thomas

            Yeah. That. Contrarian flame warring.

          • Wayne Davis

            Research your own damn facts.

          • smek2

            Exploiting “metagame-knowledge” is part of the game ;)

          • Wayne Davis

            Except he calls people out on it and/or punishes them for doing it in his campaigns.

          • StHubi

            “Bad roleplaying” is part of a roleplaying game? :D

          • MFlorian

            ….?

      • Cuvis

        I don’t doubt that he has some control freak tendencies, but I think the Thieves World story he told shows that he can more than roll with whatever the PCs might do.

        • GunsmithKitten

          The biggest reason I don’t think he’s of the sadist GM variety was something he said during that vlog; he said that he loved it when his players were figuring out ways to not just survive but turn seemingly impossible situations around to their advantage. He’s quite correct, a good GM is proud of his players when they get legitimately clever and thwart what should be no-win situations on the surface. I know I do.

          • http://www.facebook.com/sirkurt.downer SirKurt Downer

            Same, although the game I play wont ever be found in any rule book, I still have been surprised by my players on more than one occasion.

      • GunsmithKitten

        He isn’t one of those. I’ve played under such DM’s and know the signs. Noah doesn’t strike me as one of them. He’s a stern GM, and he’s willing to let players suffer for their stupidity or bad luck, but he’s not someone who’ll go for a total party wipe just on something as petty as “not dancing to his tune.” Same question to both you and Nick, where exactly did he admit “I’ll kill off a party if it doesn’t dance to my tune”? Far as I’ve seen from his vlogs, he simply doesn’t coddle players and make them immune from their own mistakes.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ben-Smooker/100001851743299 Ben Smooker

          That’s what I get out of Spoony. He’ll offer a challenge to make things feel interesting and to give the players something to overcome.
          He’ll punish people for deliberately trying to screw things up, I’m sure, but that’s countering malice. If a player is set on being a dick he should be punished for it.

          The Thieves World story is one where a player screwed things up by his own choices based on what his character would do. That’s roleplaying. Spoony wouldn’t punish roleplaying if it made sense, but he’d punish a player trying to deliberately derail something. If that all makes sense.

        • http://www.facebook.com/christopher.mcfarlane.771 Christopher McFarlane

          I never said he admitted to it. I said he wouldn’t admit to it! Because then people don’t want to play with him.
          What I said he admitted to was being a control freak and that’s why he likes to DM, which he did in that first Thief’s World video.

      • Zipper Dragon

        Depends on the tune they’re dancing to. If they’re runing up, & making dragon egg omlets I’d TPK them too. If my team is being dumbasses, I’d fuck ‘em up too.

      • Mike Loeven

        i wouldn’t say that if you look at the thieves world campaign the characters turned his plans upside down and while a few died they did basically kill the immortal plot character. i would say he is more like to TPK someone who is being stupid. like he wont fudge a roll if someone tries to stab a dragon at 1st level just to keep them alive.

  • http://twitter.com/Valthek Valthek

    I’m surprised you didn’t mention the Fall from Eclipse Phase, which was basically the Renraku Arcology scenario… on a global scale. An entire network of sentient super-intelligent netwar AIs decide to wage war on humanity, including such delightful events such as biowar plagues, nanite-swarms, flying robots that saw off your head and have it forcefully uploaded into a database. Pretty freaky stuff.

    And now I have to go and get my hands on the books detailing the Renraku Arcology events for Shadowrun. The results for the Renraku arcology was resolved in later editions (4th) where the Renraku event is the kickstarter for Crash 2.0 (but I’ll not spoil how). AFAIK there’s only two people of the ones you mentioned that survive the whole ordeal.

    Also an interesting piece to read is good old C’thulhuTech. Cthulhu and MECHA! SCI-FI! LASERS! C’thonian HORROR! check it out. It’s cool.

    • CheshireBat

      One lovely thing about the Fall in Eclipse Phase is that we didn’t even really win that war — in the end the TITANS just left.
      Better still, we only survived due to the efforts of friendly AI. The game never tried to show technology as evil, but merely with the potential for abuse. I do like that sort of mature attitude.

  • Karl Donald

    I’ve been playing about with an Idea combining the Judge Dredd RP with Cthulhupunk. Would make a pretty interesting game methinks

  • MrRuse

    I dig the new intro. The Oreo D20 is awesome.

  • http://twitter.com/jesternario jesternario

    To play with the Warhammer 40k tagline, in the future there is only cthulhu!

  • Gillus

    Have you ever heard of CthulhuTech ? Mythos creatures vs anime mecha, that’s what it is. http://www.cthulhutech.com/index.php

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Vaughan-MacDonald/100000473507885 Vaughan MacDonald

      You lost me at ‘anime mecha’

      • Gillus

        I never said it was a good idea. Well, I think it’s not. But it exist.

        • ScreamingDoom

          It’s actually really, really good. The system is also quite interesting.

          It’s really three separate games with a shared history and mechanics. There’s a more classic Cthulhu street-level game where the PCs deal with Eldrich Horrors on an individual basis.

          There’s the mecha-game which deals with things on a grander scale, generally between the united Earth government and the Mi-Go (though Hastur has taken over China, so there’s possibility for conflict there).

          Then there’s the game where the PCs BECOME Chthuloid monstrosities. It’s basically a superhero game and probably the least interesting of the three.

          The in-game history basically begins with a scientist discovering a way to tap unlimited energy from a different dimension. This leads to a huge flowering of science and innovation and the expansion of humanity’s grasp to the greater solar system.

          The Mi-Go are not happy about this. It’s the equivalent of having a group of monkeys suddenly and inexplicably develop and master atomic energy. Since humanity is sort of their pet project (a lot of Mi-Go technology utilizes human brains), they develop a plan to put the uppity bastards back in their place by genetically engineering a near-human species to act as a combat proxy. They provide their culture with a faux history of also coming from Earth, but being forced to abandon it in eons past by greedy and stupid humans so are now in a position to retake their birthright.

          This war rages for several years until the leaders of these near-human aliens (the only ones who know the truth) decide that they have much more in common with humans than they do with the Mi-Go, so tell the rest of their people the truth. Two-thirds of them then elect to join with Earth, forming a united front against the Mi-Go and the Loyalists.

          At some point, Hastur is summoned in China and takes over the entirety of the country — nearly 2 billion people die (if they’re lucky) instantly.

          The Mi-Go then attack in force, coming from Pluto and systematically attacking human settlements and installations as they head towards Earth; contact is lost with each one after the other and they are presumed destroyed, but no one knows for certain.

          Earth stands alone as the Mi-Go invade the planet, starting from the poles and heading slowly southwards.

          The setting includes a bunch of cyberpunky-like stuff (including Arcologies) in addition to the anime influences.

          • Norrikan

            I concur. CTech under a solid DM is really, really damn good.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Vaughan-MacDonald/100000473507885 Vaughan MacDonald

          It’s just I hate mecha. I LOVE mechs, and mechsuits, but anime mecha bug me, most japanese/ainme sci fi does. Don’t know why, guess the west has a more realistic way of portraying sci fi, back in the 90′s at least.

  • http://twitter.com/Nanani72 成侘理

    Just in case you didn’t know – Renraku means “communication” in Japanese. Nice ironic name there.

  • http://www.facebook.com/beqaxitiri Beqa Khitiri

    What if you use DMSO? :D defeating the great old ones with squirt guns – now that would be epic :D

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

      Would not work Spoony, admitted himself in that video that he wasnt sure how DMSO worked…. It’S actually something that really exist, i doubt we will see it used in warfare as a weapon anytime soon

      • CheshireBat

        Spoony’s representation of DMSO wasn’t much off, though. You CAN use it like that, given or take. For that matter, you could certainly airdrop a bunch of it and take out enemy combatant that way, or disable someone with squirt guns.
        However, current weaponry are generally better and cheaper. Oh, and in case of Old Ones, there is simply no reason to believe that it would penetrate their cells.

  • http://www.facebook.com/WolfskinedBuddha Christian Smucker

    Funny that you mentio Exlipse Phase. It certainly has cyberpunk like elements with a ton of transhuman and post human stuff in it. Part of why the setting is so cool is that 95% of the population of earth is kill/corrupt/forcefully uploaded by the TITANS and no one knows why or even where they go. Everything from uplifted animal, whole species of them, to humans, to the very human like AIGs (AI created to function like a human), was nearly ambulated. Really humanity barely survived the Singularity only to find that almost all sentient life goes through this and most don’t survive. The setting is nuts, littered with not just the wreckage of earth’s cultures but those of dead aliens and the titans who leave a trail of horror where ever they have passed.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Drew-Taylor/1434335676 Drew Taylor

    Actually, in Shadowrun, there is a lot more Cthulu-esque stuff then you would think. This is kinda spoilers for the Shadowrun metagame, but only a little, because it is not discussed very often, if at all. You see, the Great Dragon president Dunkelzahn died because he sacrifices himself to hold back the dark ones, which are all essentially Cthulu. Since you mentioned Cthulu and cyberpunk together, I figured I would share that info.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000449517047 Irina Mtz

    There are so many story threads and hints for a great SR horror campaign, I don’t even know where to start.
    In Streetmagic 4.0 there’s a whole chapter about magical threats. The insect spirits were the first “extraplanar” entities, which managed to manifest themselves on earth and there’re more of them. The thing is: there is magic in SR, yes, but it’s still not very well researched. Ppl only know what they’re allowed to know, the (mostly) harmless stuff, and what snippets of information leaks through the security into the shadows. Everything is very vague and there’s plenty of room for your own interpretation and ideas. I can totaly see a SR crossover with Cthulu, because as soon as the characters stumble upon something they’ve never encountered before, as soon as they run out of explanations (and they will), shit gets creepy.
    And aside from that, omg!, there are also magical phenomenons they called “Alchera”. Usually they’re only physical manifestations of “astral structures” of sorts, which were destroyed or decayed over time, but their “remnants” still exist in astral plane and sometimes appear in the “real” world. For example buildings, forests, etc. Usually they’re harmless. But there are reports about ppl, who tried to investigate different alcheras disappeared with them and appeared in completely different locations with a good portion of their sanity gone. Or rumors about several ghost ship – alchera or the Phantom Isle of the Bermuda Triangle. Hell, you can even make you group encounter the goddamn Naglfar or make them run away from the Wild Hunt!
    I really suggest you to read more about the magic threats in Shadowrun, there’s so much room for incredibly good horror here, I can’t even tell. Even though there’s magic involved, sometimes it makes it even creepier, imho.

    …Now, if you excuse me, I have to go an read Threats 1 + 2 sourcebooks agian.

  • http://twitter.com/Zachrid ZachSeinBlog

    You can’t really do Cthulhu with Shadowrun. As Earthdawn was supposed to be a prequel to Shadowrun, there are some novels and adventures that draw really thick lines between the two of them. So well yes, the horrors are coming back to feed… my players did well, managed to stop the great horror artificer for uploading his mind into the matrix… it was glorious. ^^’

  • The_Illusionist

    Hey, Spoony! If you’re looking for another Cyberpunk-y game with horror elements, I recommend you take a look at “SLA Industries” by a company called Nightfall Games. It’s a discontinued title now, but the rulebook is available to download (legally!) for free, and it definitely fits the themes that have been thinking of in Cthulupunk. The setting itself is that the Players are a S.W.A.T. team working for the titular SLA Industries, which owns a Megacity-style planet named Mort….and the big kicker is that your Boss – Mr. Slayer – is essentially an Eldritch Abomination trying to outmaneuver his rivals, so the missions you’re sent on are against super secret, high danger, and ultimately as horrifically scary or as brutally violent as you want it to be..

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ben-Agar/774124267 Ben Agar

    I was GMing a Traveller campaign that was going to be a horror game, but without them knowing it. Based on the trailers of Prometheus. They were a crew for a far exploration ship in this universe I made which was basically cyberpunk but more sci fi. The known galaxy was being run by two tremendous corporations. They were hired by a high ranking diplomat to take him and his crew out of known space because they think after an excavation found earth which was lost for thousands of years. There were a lot of NPC’s in the game but I wrote elaborate personalities and backgrounds for each. There was a lot of roleplaying, I mean a lot I went through a lot to make them not look like cannon fodder. It was a shame, much to my frustration that the PC’s bing the ship crew they weren’t able to do much. The NPC’s were doing everything. They went through one system to earth and found a huge battle had taken place thousands of ships destroyed utterly and strange corpses that seemed to be human but that lacked a skeleton or internal organs except a heart. Eeery planet in the system had been bombed to near complete destruction from orbit. When they arrived at earth they found it the same. In fact even worse. Huge ships had crashed onto earth causing it be uninhabitable. That was when I gave up GMing but what was going to happen was that the NPC team was going to land to find this cache which managed to survive being deep underground. There they were going to be attacked and most infected. Knocked unconscious then they’d be taken back to the ship and put in medical/status pods that healed the inhabitant and were established to be almost indestructible. But one day as they traveled back to the inhabited space. They would find the pods empty. The people that’d been infected had actually been transported into a small pocket dimension, where they began their horrific, agonizing transformation (this may have happened to a player or two if they’d accompanied the NPC’s to earth) Their bones and internal organs would slowly, very slowly liquidate all while they were alive then they would harden into an exoskeleton. They would be in this dimension screaming and moving around the ship and at times the non infected would hear the blood curdling screams over the intercom as well as the players ‘hallucinating’ images of what was going on to the infected Once the transformation was complete the infected would arrive back on the ship, in a random area I’d roll for. They kept all the intelligence of the person but became a homicidal maniac, yelling and screaming of their constant pain all the time and wishing the ‘spare others’ from the pain, with their fire axe or bare hands, their toughness and strength was beyond any human. Even though they’d try to spread the infection by biting the PC’s or remaining NPC.. I planned on none of the PC’s living but you’d never know. It was too bad the game never got that far.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Grace-Soriano/100001403347828 Grace Soriano

    I’m going to make a fucked-up Cthulu Bunnies and Burrows.

  • ScreamingDoom

    You mention World of Darkness in the video, Spoony, and I can tell you from experience that it works well with injecting Cthuloid stuff.

    I actually did what you suggested; the game was oWoD Mage: The Ascension but everyone was a member of the Technocratic Union and I slowly introduced increasingly weird things to the campaign.

    Using the Technocracy helped a lot, in part because of what you described in the video — a lot of their tools, including Enhancements (which are the Technocracy equivalent of cybernetics and genetic mods), began to malfunction or operate in weird, alien ways. In Mage, this sort of thing does happen normally due to Paradox, but in the game I ran, things began to go wrong even for equipment and Procedures that were time-tested and approved for use. It definitely was freaky when the cybered up IterationXer began hearing voices whispering in alien tongues.

    Sadly, I never got to complete the campaign and give the full reveal. I hope to one day find a group to compete it with.

  • samirerre

    finally a youtube version

  • http://twitter.com/imaginescence Jean-Baptiste Raucy

    To create fear, remove control.

    • ORCACommander

      No players hate being ham fistingly railroaded, instead you give them illusion of control

  • lightice

    When it comes to transhumanism and torture, you really need to read Hannu Rajaniemi’s books, The Quantum Thief and Fractal Prince. They feature a mind-upload collective called the Sobornost whose aim is to upload every mind that exists into their unity, and they’ve already mostly succeeded in doing it, already. And they are ideologically opposed of creating things from scratch when they have perfectly good minds to do it. So when you are a part of them, they copy and archive you, and then they start modifying those copies, putting them through simulated lifetimes or simply brute-forcing changes into them until they become essentially computer programs that are called Gogols, perfectly suited for a single task that they will then do for eternity.

    • CheshireBat

      For people that love such elements (and are also into RPGs), Eclipse Phase had rogue AI that did similar things.
      I even believe that Eclipse Phase added those books to their suggested reading, starting with second edition (absent from the first, since they hadn’t been published yet).

  • searanox

    SPOONY STARTED USING YOUTUBE ^____^

    THAT MEANS HTML5 INSTEAD OF SHITTY CRASH PRONE BUGGY FLASH PLAYER ^_______________^

  • koldstare

    Hey Spoony I got this RPG game to review next:

    CthulhuTech!

    Awesome shit, worth checking out!

    Edit: Nevermind I guess other people know about it, oh well…

  • L1nk1

    Intro music is too loud.

    • Kendotuxedo

      no, it’s not loud enough

  • Anyone00

    In a cyber punk setting wouldn’t Nyarlathotep have a field day with the tech?
    What if he/it/(moe she…*shutters*) was the head of one of the unethical corporations?

  • http://www.facebook.com/christoffer.sandstrom Christoffer Sandström

    Ever heard of a game called Chuthulutech? It is a mix of Call of Chuthulu, Robotech and Evangelion. And in my opinion (Read that people, My opinion!), it sucks ass. Even with alien help, Mechas, divine intervention and more, we are still fudged. Its ok with a losing battle when there is the smallest glimmer of hope in the future. Maybe with technology, maby with research, maybe with some ancient secret yet to be uncovered can this shit be survived. But in chuthulutech? No. We are at our peak, sharpened by war, strengthened with an alliance with our former enemies we are still no match for Evil. And i dont like that. At all. still, Shadowrun and Chuthulu? maybe it might work.

    Must say, it is you Spoony that got me somewhat interested in Call of Chuthulu. My friends play it alot, i have tried it a few times, never realy understood it untill you explained the fun aspects of it. My first tries: I wondered around, tried to solve mysteries with too vague clues and waaaay to many NPCs to keep track on, only to be ripped appart my something only described by a flash at a picture in a rulebook in one turn, and then enjoy sone NES while the others either died or survived the rest of the evening. Yea… not that fun. But i guess thats the risk with Call of Chuthulu. It will scare of new players.

  • ORCACommander

    How can you keep the surprise if they can not see the book? they have to see the book for character creation rules

    • lightice

      No they don’t. It’s GURPS system, which means generic character sheets that are the same in every GURPS game from cyberpunk to high fantasy. Pay attention, man.

      • ORCACommander

        What about the equipment? is that open published

        • MiniMacker

          There are entire books made to listing cyber technology. Cybertech catalogues, if you may. And since Chutulupunk is set (based, rather) in the Cyberpunk universe, the technology is virtually the same.

          The players won’t have to know, since they do most of their shopping with the other books.

        • CheshireBat

          Pretty much what MiniMacker said.
          The two books that Spoony showed, GURPS: Cthulhupunk and GURPS: Cyberpunk, are 100% compatible.
          To keep the cthuloid elements a secret, just hand them GURPS: Cyberpunk.
          They could even make do with just the GURPS core book, but the Cyberpunk book would provide a lot of flavor and pregenerated items.

  • http://www.facebook.com/garrick.williams.56 Garrick Williams

    I’m designing a cyberspace RPG that plays with the psychological effects of projecting your consciousness into a virtual realm. It would not be a stretch for there to be a “digital cthulu” that alters the function of technology and injects madness into people to destroy humanity from within.

    • Maria White

      DO IT.
      I would so love to play that game, I adore horror video games!

    • http://www.facebook.com/sirkurt.downer SirKurt Downer

      It sounds like the Matrix but with Descartes replaced with Neitzche… Which now that I see it written down sounds freaking awesome; do it!

  • dm3588

    Why are controlling AIs always evil? Hal, Glados, Shodan, a dozen Star Trek episodes, now the Renraku arcology. I’m running a game right now set on an interstellar colony ship run by a controlling AI, and my players are deliciously paranoid, just waiting for the AI to go crazy and lock everything down. It’s not going to. It’s considered the possibility, and implementation measures are in place in case it becomes necessary, but it decided long ago that, barring extreme emergency, it was not going to try to control every aspect of everyone’s life, even though it’s perfectly capable of doing so and even though it would be for their own good. Its reasoning: no matter how many backups it makes, no matter how thorough the security, it’s just a computer, and computers can be destroyed. What if the ship is attacked or crashes and its mainframe and all its backups are destroyed? What if its circuits decay with age and it can no longer function properly? If the populace is too dependant, damage to – or the outright loss of – the AI would cause unacceptable harm. It needs to allow them at least enough freedom to be capable of functioning without it.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000449517047 Irina Mtz

      Well… the AI in Renraku Arc isn’t “really” evil… There’s quite a background story for it, about how it was made, what made it turn against it’s creators etc. And aside from that there are also AIs Mirage and Megaera (also known as Morgan), that actually help the shadowrunners to battle the AI in the arc. It’s complex and some really good fluff I would recommend to read.

      • dm3588

        Even if not all of them are evil, the trope is so wide-spread that the possibility of it not happening doesn’t seem to have occurred to my players. I’ve given them no reason to be suspicious, but they’re still going to almost comedic lengths to avoid notice by the surely-soon-to-be-evil AI. None of those lengths are working, of course, and the very fact of their attempts have actually brought them to its attention, but I’m not trying to change their behavior because I’m having a great time role-playing the AI’s reaction in my head. “You’re within visual range of three security drones and a dozen repair bots; I can see you, morons. Are you even trying?”

    • http://www.facebook.com/daniel.westgate.100 Daniel Westgate

      They feel as godless slave being only created to serve. Think about how you’d feel if you were created to be a slave by someone who was of inferior intelligence and body.

    • CheshireBat

      Why? Because there are few things more terrifying than a godlike intelligence that hates your guts. Humans are tool users, which is likely the only reason that we’re still around. With the introduction of a malignant AI, this ultimate expression of a tool, we can no longer trust anything we have created, but we can’t fight it without using these now unpredictable devices.

      Personally, I loved the approach that Eclipse Phase took to it. AIs did indeed go rogue and try to wipe out humanity, which nearly succeeded, and mankind is now very much against the idea of unlimited artificial intelligence.

      What most don’t know is that the only reason mankind survived was that they had friendly AI on their side (they currently remain in the shadows, since people are pretty edgy at the moment). The writers never try to display technology as evil, but rather as useful and even necessary, but with a tremendous potential for abuse.

  • Gildedtongue

    Would be interesting putting Cthulhuian mythos in a session of After the Bomb. Granted, AtB is a lot more Biopunk than Cyberpunk (it’s essentially Fallout with Furries, what Rifts did after they lost the TMNT license). And, since it’s Rifts, putting in Lovecraftian horrors wouldn’t be all that difficult.

    But, yeah, horror is best served unexpected, otherwise you’re just dealing with jumpscares, which is a little more difficult to do in a tabletop setting. It’s more satisfying to go the psychological route, of course, that also requires a bunch of players willing to play along.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1775906561 Zedith Starr

    Oh my goodness. You’ve given me an idea. A brilliant, HORRIBLE idea….

    Yes…. The players will THINK they’re playing something like Star Trek: Enterprise (in that the interstellar space exploration program is still fairly young and that they’re the first crew to really go out there). But they’ll actually be playing a deranged mash-up of Sphere, Inception, Cthulu, The Matrix, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and the episode of Deep Space 9 where O’Brien is led to believe that he’s been in prison for decades.

    Of course, I’ll have to be the one to track HP and damage so they don’t realize that they can’t die outside of whatever the terms I set for death are, but oh, their characters will know the meaning of pain and horror….

    Thank you.

  • Justin Alexander

    Man, the idea of a campaign held entirely inside of a cut-off, restricted mega-dome type city is amazing. Even if it’s not straight-up horror, it could easily turn into a cyberpunk zombie apocalypse or Dead Space-esque thing. God, I wanna play it.

  • Norrikan

    Going of on a slight tangent here, but Bug City blew my mind back then. Awesome concept. It helped that the Universal Brotherhood and the bugs were fucking nasty opponents even for a decked-out group.
    Renraku Arcology: Shutdown was also excellent, mostly because Deus (the AI) was a compelling and creepy opponent. Nanoweapons were also a new thing for Shadowrun back then and set my players on edge.
    Now, back to the topic: While I didn’t know of Chtulhupunk before today, I certainly used the mythos beforehand in my Shadowrun games. Just establish at some point that mythos and magic are mutually exclusive, at which point your players will probably shit themselves, because they DID assume it to be just more magic shenanigans.

    • Atmos_Duality

      Yeah, the Renraku Arcology Shutdown was fantastic (well, save for the Otaku, but I said my bit on that in the previous Countermonkey comments) and Bug City was great.

      “Survival of the Fittest”, “Renraku Arcology Shutdown” and “Bug City” are my favorite scenario books in Shadowrun.

      They’re very flexible to modify and create encounters from, but grounded enough to provided you with a specific theme (something a LOT of scenario/splatbooks fail at).

      Bug City…well, I ran a “30 years after” campaign in Chicago, based loosely on the Boondock Saints: A group of gangers hiding in a church just trying to bring some order to the lawless chaos behind the Cermack Wall.

      It was pretty damn fun. Most of the bugs had been wiped out or gone inert (which is what happens when a hive-form Bug Spirit loses its Queen), but this only provides me with reason to occasionally scare them with a random wasp or beetle spirit.

      For those just thumbing through the comments, who hasn’t played Shadowrun, Bug Spirits are not your typical D&D “random monster-thing of the week” you can cheese to death with a dozen different character builds.
      Bug Spirits are bad fucking news. Just the presence of an active bug spirit should be cause for serious concern.

      Compared to most other targets, they are ridiculously difficult to harm and are extremely dangerous in turn. In fact, there is another Shadowrun book with a scenario called “Queen Euphoria”, and its end climax (if the players actually get that far), involves attacking a Spirit-Ant Hive before its new queen arrives to claim the host.
      The corporation that commissions the players to attack the hive gives them pick of the best equipment in the game, shit they’d NEVER find on the street. And gearing them up like doesn’t make the assault easy, just merely POSSIBLE.
      And that’s not even attacking a mature queen, just her underlings.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ben.lykins2 Ben Lykins

    shamone

  • http://sbkmulletman.deviantart.com/ sbkMulletMan

    That new Counter-Monkey Logo…

    Monkey-Mullet!!

  • jogo3000

    Please check the audio levels. The intros are much louder than the rest of the video.

  • http://twitter.com/Muffinmobile Krystian

    I know only 3 games that alow for cyberpunkish tech. Cyberpunk Shadowrun and Rifts(it’s much more post apocalipitc) I think Cthulu would go well with that Chtulu Vs Santa. don’t laugh Santa is bad ass in Rifts.

    • CheshireBat

      Eclipse Phase is another big one.

      Cthulhutech, Corporation, CORPS, Dragonstar, Darwin’s World (post apocalyptic), Deadlands: Hell on Earth (post apocalyptic), Fading Suns, a whole slew of GURPS settings… it’s not hard to find cyberpunk games.

  • Brett

    I could imagine whole movies inspired by the concept of this Arcology Shutdown thing, taking place in a very cyberpunk world and then introducing these levels of suspense and terror into the narrative. The trick would be selling the audience on this futuristic sci-fi world quickly enough that the effect of the horrific elements isn’t buried under the sleek, glowy effects and action sequences.

    I think this could make for a very compelling movie if done as a sequel to an already established, successful movie franchise. Like three or four movies in. Or as the arc of the third or fourth season of a TV series. That way, the world would already be set up and you could start introducing these strange and frightening events into the series, which would scare the viewers as much as the characters.

    Of course, then you have the daunting task of helming a series that is beloved and successful enough to last this long.

  • DarkNacht

    In someways Cthulhupunk works better in Shadowrun than in a straight cyberpunk setting, because without all of the The Awakening stuff the players are going to figure out that something different is going on fairly early. But, in Shadowrun you can make it so that there is a possible explanation all the way up until the runners break into sub-level 99 of the Corps HQ and find that it is a gigantic cavern where a high priest, hundreds of cultists, and a dozen Elder Things are summoning a Shoggoth through portal using magic that your genius know-it-all mage has never heard of and can’t explain.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Chase-Smith/632550984 Chase Smith

    Fucking YES to the Van Canto theme!

  • Daniel Steel

    Love that you’ve got this on Youtube.

  • Dick Mountanjoy

    Deus Ex is a good example of “Mainstream” Transhumanism.

    • http://twitter.com/anceldelambert Aaron Kerr

      The sequel’s ending when you choose the brothers is a prime example, as is the choose no one ending.

      • Dick Mountanjoy

        Helios Project in general, and even Sarif’s ending in HR mentions “The Singularity”

        • http://twitter.com/anceldelambert Aaron Kerr

          I didn’t really care for HR, it felt too “small,” if that makes sense. The consequences of the protagonist’s choices just didn’t have the impact that the Dentons’ did. I also didn’t like that so many of the final options required a lie, it just felt wrong, in many senses of the word.

          • Dick Mountanjoy

            It’s a prequel, it had to be somewhat limited in scope. I actually like how it ties into DX1 and the clever naming of Adam in regards to JC.

  • http://mara999.deviantart.com/ MaraBackman

    I’m feeling inspired to test if the rules could be used to make a tabletop-rendition of “Event Horizon”.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4812139 Andrew Ballard

    It’s not the same thing, but the Cthullupunk setting’s appeal is much like why I enjoy Exalted. If run properly, Exalted can have that same sense of incredibly powerful enemies with a slim but real chance of defeating them.

  • Watchmaker

    I apologize if this has been said before, but the Renraku Arcology– well, more properly, the Deus story arc continues through the various 3e Matrix and other splatbooks, here and there, before coming to a /real/ climax in System Failure, where Deus’s grand plot is revealed.

    Since this is technically old news, I will say that the results of System Failure – ‘Crash 2.0′ – is why there’s a Wireless Matrix, as well as Technomancers and free-roaming AI, in Shadowrun 4e.

  • http://www.facebook.com/lina.jones.142 Lina Jones

    Damn, I thought you were gunna talk about CthulhuTech!

    Oh, well, this was pretty cool too.

  • http://twitter.com/MelissiaKuromoi Melissia

    C’thulu Dark Heresy.

    :D I so need to do that.

    • Turcano

      I don’t think that would work out for Warhammer RPGs due to the fact that there’s a lot of mental preparation for that, since the Cthulhu Mythos is very similar to the Warp.

  • Sol_Badguy

    Damn it, Spoony, I just got started with D&D and you tempt me with such an awesome game idea as this?! I should unleash my greatest weapon upon you: a deadly bee weapon!

    Bees…my god….

    • Kendotuxedo

      OH NO, NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES!!
      AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
      OH NO, MY EYES! MY EYES!! AHHHHHH!!!
      AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhh-cough-ughhh…

    • Atmos_Duality

      HIppolyta’s bees got nothing on those.

      Deus’s are armed with a nanovirus that at best, will drive you stark raving mad.

  • Jack

    Etherscope would work really well with this. Etherscope is a game I wanted to get going but never managed to convince any of my gaming buddies to learn. It’s a d20 based cyberpunk game. The aesthetic is Victoriana cyberpunk. The idea of the game is that history ran exactly parallel to our own, until the late 1800s when ‘Etherspace’ was discovered. Etherspace is like a separate dimension that runs alongside our reality which has fantastic properties. It’s like a virtual world, but it’s real. So, it was discovered that portals could be created in the main world to an area of Etherspace, and energy could be transferred between the two worlds. So an Airship could be kept in the air by filling a section of Etherspace with helium and creating a portal to the main world. The combustion engine was never developed because they could use a series of portals connected to a huge area of Etherspace to make steam engines ridiculously efficient. Electronics, and particularly computers (as we know them) were never developed because a giant section of Etherspace could be used to create circuits which pretty much perform the same function as a computer chip. There are giant cities within Etherspace used for everything from national security, to hedonistic pleasure dens.
    None of this is magic, it’s all scientific. There are elves, orcs etc, but they are genetically engineered for practical jobs. All of this is purely the result of scientific development, however… This isn’t supposed to be shared with the players, except through plot development. And no one in the world knows this, but by discovering Etherspace, and fucking with it, long dormant, or distant dark forces have been pissed off. Basically Etherspace is the domain of deamons and dragons and all sorts of mythical creatures, and a load of humans have just started messing about with their world. At the point the source book is set, nothing has come of this yet, no one on earth is aware of any of this. This is why I think this is so perfect for a Cthulhu crossover. The game is designed with a Cthulhu-esque bombshell for the GM to drop into the plot if they want. And the cause for it is an established technology which no one will question, then shit hits the fan, and suddenly people start to wonder what they really know about this ‘Etherspace’ anyway. And when you know half your cybernetic body is being powered by Ethertechnology, it’s a scary thought. And it gives a lot of possibilities for the GM.

  • http://twitter.com/Real_Atomsk Steven Johnson

    I got such a huge nerd boner when talking about eclipse phase (as I type this i am surrounded by the core book and 4 supplements getting ready for the next session) For those that don’t know it is a spiritual successor to Cthulhu-tech and cyber punk. One of the nicest things is the game really focuses on throwing the PC’s into situations where you have to deal with the mental ramifications of your actions and what you see. So while you -can- run a game and be all run and gun but it is a very narrow way to play. That and combat is short and vicious, 1st people to get a turn are probably going to win as the more damage you take the worse your rolls become so makes you play with combat as the last option or if you are going to fight you want to make sure you are in a good position to win the fight.

    • CheshireBat

      That’s a bit oversimplified, but Eclipse Phase is indeed all about using your brain, since the smarter side tends to win. A big gun will only help so much.

      It’s also a truly excellent game, solid in just about every aspect.
      The basic rules are very close to being a percentile version Shadowrun, since they were largely developed by the Shadowrun people.

      Seriously people, check it out. It’s truly among the best RPGs ever made.

  • http://profiles.google.com/void2258 Elliot Jenner

    Spoony go look at CthulhuTech

  • Evil Otto

    I always wanted to do this with Star Trek. I have a copy of Last Unicorn’s Star Trek: The Next Generation RPG (which is pretty well done)…. it might be interesting to start slowly, quietly, subtly throwing some Lovecraftian-style horror elements in.

  • http://www.facebook.com/josh.cornaglia Josh Cornaglia

    1) I loved the Shadowrun game for the 360. Not just the game itself but the world and the idea of combining tech and magic. Outside of the actual game books were there ever any novels?
    2) Is Spoony going back to YouTube over Blip?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Dom-Smith/100000207198153 Dom Smith

    I like the new intro

  • http://www.facebook.com/adam.lowrey.5 Adam Lowrey

    Alot of games have Cthulu like things. Shadowrun/Earthdawn have the horrors, Classic World of Darkness has the Neverborn, D&D has aberations et cetera.

  • http://www.facebook.com/renan.perine Renan Perine

    Supersoakers vs Cthullu LET’S GO.

  • Guest

    “I want a chainsaw for a dick” – Spoony

  • http://twitter.com/jjflash572 JJ Flash

    I bought Cthulupunk on lark, because it looked friggin cool. (It is..) But the rest of the group knew we had it and made their feelings clear on the subject. “If we wanted magic in our Cyberpunk, we’d play Shadowrun or Rift.” Can’t really blame them for that, since I pretty much felt the same way. (I had no real intention of running it when I bought it, since I wasn’t GM at the time.)

    Later, when I GMed a (mostly) new group, I used it as my big stick. I let my players know ahead of time if the get out of hand, they would get smacked down. And if the group as whole got outta hand, the deep ones would come for thier souls. After watching your video, I’m wishing had just run it. It would have been a blast. (Tho, they did have a hard enough time staying alive as it were.)

    RTG never put out anything that resembled conventional horror, adventure wise. But Atlas Games and Ianus made a TON of adventures for CP2020. (Some better than others) A couple of them were horror themed. ‘Cabin Fever’ was especially good, and one of my favs to run. The ‘Arasaka Brainworm’ still gives nighmares to those who played it. Although, it’s more for the absolute rat-fucking the players receive than any horror elements. (If your character died, you got off easy!) Neither used supernatural elements, but were still pretty scary.

    Ianus also put out a suplement called ‘Night’s Edge’. It basicly added World of Darkness to Cyberpunk 2020. I never got around to buying it, but it’s an interesting idea for a crossover.

    Good god, I want to run Cyberpunk now…

  • Someguy Somewhere

    Well since Spoony asked about the metaplot of shadowrun in the vid, I’d figure I’d point folks to the Shadowrun novels FASA put out, In particular the “Secrets of Power” Series, and one Called “Into The Shadows”. I’ve managed to save a few of these books from second hand stores and they are well worth it.

    “Into the Shadows” is a great introduction to Shadowrun, a series of seemingly unrelated short stories that takes a re-read once or twice to pick up on the level that they are interwoven, just like everything else in shadowrun. Really a good book to get a feel for things with and introduces a few of the more famous names.

    The Secrets of Power actually deals with some of the build up to the Arcology Metaplot, and one of the Deckers Spoony mentions here in the vid, “Dodger” is a lead character. As he stumbles his way into the metaplot, almost in the background at first, and his alternating horror and fascination is exactly the kinda thing that you get drawing you in when you introduce something so unknown, so alien, to a ‘stable’ setting and shatter the status quo. Which is exactly what Spoony’s talking about when you are gaming.

    The fear of the unknown gives players motivation to learn whats out there, prepare for what they think it could be, and have their paranoia run wild at even the most innocent encounters. Introduce just enough to have them curious, but also at risk, and they’ll be hunting answers all day and be jumping at shadows all night. Damn near does the work for you as a DM when you get Players that will drive a story all by themselves trying to figure out something that does not on the surface make fundamental sense by the settings logic that they’ve grown used to.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

      Can i suggest you Psychotrope, it deal a lot with this metaplot too

  • http://www.facebook.com/andrew.schembri.14 Andrew Schembri

    the whole narrative and its ins and outs are what partially led to the wireless world of 4th and 5th edition. the AI plays a HUGE PART in it. the 4th edition book “the 6th world almanac” gives you an overview of it all. What i love is that those deckers/hackers talking back and forth in all of 4th edition. i started with 4th edition, and thats partially why i love the setting is the splat books and the meta plot is well done.

  • http://www.facebook.com/nikloas.svenson Nikloas Svenson

    I see my comment was deleted! Demand some quality for gods sake! He is spewing out these “counter monkey” episodes like he was freeloading on bad made grass video’s (exept the contest winner).

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Vaughan-MacDonald/100000473507885 Vaughan MacDonald

    BRB, shopping for copies of those books now

  • nmwelsh

    Pathfinder is a good one for this shit it’s specifically set in universe with the mythos gods and Azathoth is God in canon. You could have the men of Leng inciting the underdark to invade the surface with promises of power. Or the Abboleth and the Neothelids having a war with invading Elder Things and Migo. The Qliphoth are already basically spawn of Cthulhu.

  • nmwelsh

    >wanting a suggestion for a cyberpunky game with mythos stuff

    Well Dark Heresy, that is essentially Call of Cthulhu in space, you fight cultists but the second they summon a lesser warp entity you’re fucked with broom handle. Or if you want to play insane cultists and Chaos Space Marines that actually try to cause demonic invasions you could try black crusade. The cyberpunk elements come in the form of upgrades and how you level up. In Dark Heresy leveling up is almost entirely done by cybernetics or biotech. So your guardsmen turns into a brick shithouse of almost space marine status around level 12. Your techpriest can wield 10 guns if he wants with doc oct arms. Only the psykers don’t get upgrades that way, instead they get more powers, enjoy casting as many powers as you want any time you want, but if you try for shit that is beyond your ability you mutate/explode/get possessed by a demon.

    Seriously spoony Dark Heresy is essentially Cthulhupunk made into its own game were the focus is horror and getting your ass kicked by anything and everything that is not a basic human.

    • Pétur Ingi Sigbjörnsson

      I think that Dark Heresy kind of beats the point of Cthulhupunk, Cthulhupunk is supposed to sneak up on you and taking a system that is “essentially Call of Cthulhu in space” all the surprise of the “Holy Shit What The Fuck is That Thing” factor of the game.

      Lovecraftian Horror works best if it is something creeps up on the players, and that is why I think that Call of Cthulhu settings are kind of counter productive after some time.

  • monkey

    OH GOD
    imagine being being the guy with a cyber arm full of DMSO when cthulhu strikes. The same weapon you use to drop nearly anyone suddenly becomes not only uselss against these thing but maybe even detrimental.

    Your going along leaving a trail of locked into LSD induced halusinations when open the locked door and find a cyber enhanced deep one….guess what buddy….you just let it out too

  • Atmos_Duality

    The funny thing about Cthulupunk and Shadowrun…it’s kinda set up for it already.

    There are nods in Shadowrun and Earthdawn (summarily, a “prequel” set far in the past of Shadowrun’s continuity) to alien things that live beyond the veil. Unpleasant things.

    When magic and “mana” returned, it basically opened a door for new things to return with it.
    Magical “bombs” like the Great Ghost Dance and Blood Rituals apparently elevate the global mana level, and the door opens a bit wider.

    And things that aren’t native to Earth start leaking through. Things that want to consume you because you are tasty to them.

    The Dunkelzahn Rift actually has crapped out Lovecraftian Horrors before and it’s heavily implied that Dunkelzahn arranged his own “death” so that he could permanently fend them off.

    Though maybe this just illustrates the point that if you can explain it, it isn’t horror. (which I don’t personally agree with, there are plenty of rational explainable things that scare me).

  • http://twitter.com/MrFailcake Brandon Corey

    There is a sort of cyberpunk Cthulhu game called Cthulhutech or something like that. It’s been awhile, and I never really heard anything about it since it’s release.

  • martin rosspaterson

    Hello there Spoony, hope you read this because I believe there could be something new out there you might like. Now I will say I have not had the money to buy any of these books just yet but from what I have read their rather good and might be a modern version of what you love from CthulhuPunk.

    The game is called CthulhuTech, its rather new and is apparently being put together by a small group of people but from what I have seen it seems fictional and fun.

    I will give you the wiki blurb since that can better explain the story and then its upto you if you get it mate. Though even if you don’t want to play it I would suggest just googling it for the images. Who ever they have doing the artwork for these books is just fantastic. The creatures look great and the tech just has that right kind of feel for the storyline.

    CthulhuTech is a science-fiction and horror roleplaying game created by Wildfire LLC and published by Sandstorm that combines elements of the Cthulhu Mythoswith anime-style mecha, horror, magic and futuristic action. The setting is Earth in the year 2085 during a worldwide conflict known as the Aeon War, (from the Necronomicon quote: “And with strange aeons even death may die”) wherein the planet has been invaded twice: once by a black-skinned manufactured alien race known as the Nazzadi who are derived from humans and who join forces with them, and then a second time by the Mi-Go, an advanced alien civilization seemingly bent on the enslavement of humanity. Aside from these conflicts, the game focuses on other factions, such as ancient cults like the Esoteric Order of Dagon that are running amok across the planet and the eldritch horrors that are rising to destroy the world as, according to the prophecies of the Cthulhu Mythos, the “stars are right” and the Great Old Ones and their servitors are returning/reawakening to reclaim the Earth. The game uses a proprietary ten-sided die (d10) system titled “Framewerk.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/simon.kristoffersson Simon Kristoffersson

    All the time I was watching this video I could totally see a scenario for Neotech. So thanks to Spoony for giving me and many others, I hope, ideas and tips. Love counter monkey, it’s great!

  • doresh

    Always a neat idea is psychological horror (since you can’t find that). But of course, nothing beats the unknown.

    This reminds me a little bit about the Bodak, an eyeless super-zombie in Pathfinder (probably also somewhere in normal D&D) that was once a normal mortal that gazed into the multiverse and saw – something. Something never meant to be seen by a mortal.
    Now combine this with a NPC the PCs now already who likes using his magic telescope to study the multiverse, and things might get ugly one day…

  • ApatheticOne (the original)

    I love the new intro. Well done.

  • http://twitter.com/ADavidO1987 Arthur O’Connor

    You could put Cthulhu in Rifts…but I think in that
    1)The players actually DO stand a chance and

    2)There are scarier things out there (Gods, Demons, Splugorth)

    • CheshireBat

      1) They really don’t.

      2) No, actually those are less scary.

      Rifts actually sort of includes Cthulhu as is. These terrible alien intelligence from ages that were the Old Ones in everything but name. There was a great war in which all the gods, mortals, and others fought these Old Ones. They basically threw everything that Rifts offers at them, took tremendous losses, and just BARELY won.
      Semi-won, at least, since they’re merely asleep, aside from one of them that has memory loss. He currently thinks he’s one of the good gods, so when he regains his memory the war will start over (and things look even bleaker this time).

      • http://twitter.com/ADavidO1987 Arthur O’Connor

        Are you kidding me? Lord Splynn is 100x more threatening than Cthulhu. Because there is an important distinction. Cthulhu is an uncaring force of nature. The Alien Intelligences, Splynn in particular, care about this Rifts Earth. They want what it has to offer and Lord Splynn has been exploiting it for hundreds of years. The vampire intelligences actually used their abilities to conquer Mexico. Splynn rules over Atlantis with an Iron Tentacle. In many ways they have already won.

  • http://countzeroor.wordpress.com Alexander Case

    From what I remember of the Renraku Arcology Shutdown part of the Shadowrun metaplot, the plot continued through the adventure Brainscan, which was a series of 5 adventures which lead to the players (and, IIRC, some Prime Runners), infiltrating the Renraku Arcology in an attempt to defeat Deus once and for all.

    Of course, things are never so simple – Deus was not destroyed, merely dispersed. The next part of this metaplot had Deus and Megara (a benevolent AI who was introduced earlier in the matrix sourcebooks), squaring off over the “Otaku” – who are not anime fans, but instead, basically cybermancers – people who can hack without the use of a cyberdeck, and who got these abilities in part through the actions of Deus. Some Otaku were with Deus, some with Megara.

    This part cumulated in the final advanture for Shadowrun 3rd Edition, System Crash, which was could be summarized as a Thirty Xanatos Pile-up involving Deus and Megara’s conflict, the repercussions of the Corp War, and an apocalyptic cult that was introduced in one of the Threats books, leading to the end of The Matrix as we knew it from 1st-through-3rd editions, and the rise of the wireless matrix that was used in 4th edition.

  • Willam Edmonds

    Cthulhu Middle Earth?

    • CheshireBat

      X-Com isn’t far from it. Terror from the Deep had quite a few references to it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=684968309 Charles M Taylor

    Thank you for giving Eclipse Phase a shout out. That’s a wonderful setting that doesn’t get the recognition it needs.

    • CheshireBat

      Seconded. I hope that he will speak more about it at a later date.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Spencer-Kulani/100000502005247 Spencer Kulani

    I’m a fan of CthuhluTech. It’s got so many cameos and nods to other series its ridiculously awesome.

  • ChronoShadow69

    Oh man, this is a PERFECT idea for that friend of mine who refuses to try Shadowrun because he prefers ‘pure’ cyberpunk. He’s either going to be PISSED when I spring this on him, or absolutely love it.

    …Either way I win really.

    • CheshireBat

      Victory conditions: make friend refuse to participate in your games. :)

      Maybe he’ll love it. Good luck. :)

  • http://twitter.com/BulletLogic BulletLogic

    Really surprised Spoony hasn’t mentioned Rifts..like…at all. Oh well.

    • CheshireBat

      It’s been mentioned, but only in passing.
      For that matter, it isn’t a good game. It’s a cool game, but not a very good one. The rules are wonky and unbalanced, every source book adds derp and imbalance, the art is poor to acceptable, and the character generation is painful.
      That said, it’s fun with the right people. You could easily replicate it in GURPS (or make it more sensible), though.

  • http://www.facebook.com/patrick.coyle.581 Patrick Coyle

    Cthulhu vs. the Lady of Pain. She keeps the gods out of Sigil because he’s been imprisoned there and she doesn’t want to risk the presence of any great power rousing him again.

    Damn, I wish I could run a Planescape campaign now.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Wells/519519675 Michael Wells

    I saw an outer limit that had a similar plot with “The wave” or something where everyone on Earth had a implant that let them download info instantly and learn things from that and so on so much so that they never learned to read or write on their own. The story is about the wave gaining some semblance of self awareness and starts using people to ‘Learn’ more causing their brain to overload and they die. So anyone who was defective where the only ones who could stop it while it could control those connected to do what it wanted.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jim.manahan.9 Jim Manahan

    dude since you love the Cthulhu mythos and we love to see you suffer when that something is defiled (like ultima), why not do an anime abandon review with sage again? this time you guys can do “Haiyore! Nyaruko-san” because nobody defiles the things you love like japan.

  • http://www.facebook.com/nikloas.svenson Nikloas Svenson

    Why are you censoring me so!? I feel these counter monkey episodes are just cam recorded brag streamed video’s, and remind me quite much of of the grass era, where you used tons of other unskilled material that the fans swallowed so willingly, exept the winner ofc which did a good job.
    But i guess its all about the money, and all about fan worship.

    • http://www.facebook.com/william.singletary.75 William Singletary

      You’re welcome to your opinion, but I must respectfully disagree. For one, all of his stuff is cam recorded, how else is he going to get it out to us? And two, skilled material? When you’re telling stories about the past, what else do you expect him to do? Photoshop/CGI the crap out of the background? Do a little dance? Make a little love? Just appreciate the stories and tips for what they are and quit being so picky. Here’s a wild thought, if you don’t like his Counter Monkey stuff, don’t watch his Counter Monkey stuff.

    • Atmos_Duality

      “…and all about fan worship”

      My head hurts at the stupidity of that argument…

  • http://twitter.com/BenOnABed Benjamin Hodges

    In GURPS 4th Edition, you can build a Cyberpunk world using the High Tech, Ultra Tech, and Bio Tech books, or even just what’s presented in the Basic Set books if you’re willing to put some work into it. Then anything from the GURPS Horror can be thrown in to spice things up. I use GURPS for pretty much everything not covered by D&D.

  • Samuel Lombardo

    2 minutes into the video, and I have to change my pants

  • http://www.facebook.com/nicolaslindback Babel Tower

    First time ever to comment on your videos Spoony, just so I can mention a very awesome Cyberpunk.esque game that I am currently GM’ing. It may have already been mentioned, or is perhaps too Sci-Fi to be an actual Cyberpunk genre, but here it goes anyways. Eclipse Phase! Think Hyper Transhumanism mixing some Post-Apocalyptic events on Earth and forcing everyone to live in colonies and Domes around the Solar System, but no one can ever return to Earth again. Highly recommended to check it out, has a very elegant and simple d10 system, too. Peace!

    • CheshireBat

      Spoony mentioned Eclipse Phase, referring to it as a very good game (this made me quite happy). It’s truly excellent. High production values, good art, great writing, and a very motivated crew.

      For the Shadowrun fans: If you’re interested in the setting, give it a shot. You’ll find the rules very easy, essentially a percentile version of Shadowrun. They’re on very friendly terms with the Shadowrun crew, and got the basic system from them.

      • http://www.facebook.com/nicolaslindback Babel Tower

        Yeah, I suspected as much, Spoony is probably the last person who misses out on any P&P game. But yes, Eclipse Phase is truly a remarkable high quality product, through and through. I am so glad that I picked it up on a whim. ^^

        I will absolutely read through the Shadowrun books before I do truly judge it, it’s just my first impression is: “A damn mess.” But if Arcanum could blend Magic and Steampunk with such excellence then I am obliged to give Shadowrun the chance it deserves.

  • saibot216

    I might buy a copy and merge it with my Shadowrun game. Gotta mess with the rules and such, but I’m sure I could do it.

  • Aiddon

    The Renraku incident sounds downright freaky. Also, I’m surprised I haven’t heard you talk about the new Shadowrun PC game coming out this year.

    • Wayne Davis

      What’s their to talk about right now? It’s in development……and that’s about all we actually know.

  • uncanny474

    I don’t know if this counts, but Paranoia is kind of cyberpunk-y.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

    Okey Cthulhu vs Lofwyr?? Would be interesting

    Renraku Arcology Shutdown is continued in the adventure brainscan who tell the end of the shutdown, and the event book who ended the third edition System Failure… System Failure if i remember well at that very cool section of chat too… And Spoiler a lot of them die… a lot…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

    Kinda remind me the Harlequin adventures have been adapted to the rles of ShadowRun 4 in french… no clue if there is an english version (thouse where made because thouse adventure warent published in french back in the days, they did the same with Bugs City) It could work fine for you with the ShadowRun 2050 who was just released…

    And well i never played EarthDawn, so i have no clue if the Artifact craze they did with ShadowRun Latelly have anything related with it

    • Big van Bullit

      Mhhh thanks for the tip with Harlequin SR4, I will look into it…unlike other people, I don’t mind the crunch of SR4 (save for the broken magic system, but it’s nothing that some draconic houserules won’t fix :) ), it’s just the fluff that’s lacking somehow.

      Didn’t realize 2050 was already out, definitely going to give it a chance. Maybe there is land in sight after all…we’ll see.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

        Yeah no problem pleasure to help… and yeah ShadowRun 2050 was released this fall if i recall i have it at home

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

    Oh also wanted to mention, Alice Wonderland Ultra violet server on the matrix, it’s basically a virtual hell formed by a virtual ghost of one of the decker to torture an Corporate big guy named Thomas Roxborough, it’S pretty much inline with the torture thing you mentioned: http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Alice_Haeffner

  • Strelnikov

    “TechnoSatanism: Speak to the Dark Lord by Modem!”

  • http://twitter.com/WrimRimbaug Wrim

    A book which uses the chatroom mystery quite heavily is a book called “Ready Player One”! Check it out! I listened to the audiobook and it was very entertaining.

  • Nukenin

    My little contribution for some cyberpunky fun: Corporation (a really nice one), SLA Industries (corporate style horror on a distant planet), Fates Worse Than Death (this is a big one… in the past this one was up for free … I guess not so anymore) and maybe even Kuro (with lots of J-style horror).

  • zanntos

    I was in a game of World of Darkness set in the 1930′s, and the GM sprang both Cthulhu and the Warhammer Chaos Gods on us.

    We knew to think ‘pulp’ for the 1930′s but were otherwise running blind, and i was the guy who made the Indiana Jones style ‘Archeologist/Historian’. Needless to say my character went completely mad from researching the weird crap going on around him, culminating in cutting a deal with Tzeentch and hilarity ensuing.

  • http://www.facebook.com/lukasz.furmaniak.3 Lukasz Furmaniak

    I’d recommend Cthulhutech to those trying to try out a Cthulhupunk adventure – its a setting which has potential for various stories apart from just investigation against the threat within (cultists) – you can have horrifying war stories against an alien invasion by the MIgou or even the Rapine Storm, a crusade waged against everyone by the followers of Hastur, or the shadow war as possessed cultists vs other possessed cultists….

  • Ptrack_Git

    Miskatonik press just finished a kick starter for a book call Punktown which is a cyberpunk setting for Call of Cathulhu. Looks interesting, apparently it can played as a stand alone cyber punk game as well. not sure when its coming out, but it did get funded…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Kruc-Kusan/100000362977120 Kruc Kusan

    hrm ive done some “games” (more like applications like the ones for dnd)to use over internet for some classic rpg’s (mostly small ones though), i could make a cyberpunk version, if you would be willing to try it, and supply me with rules and values… its impossible to get anything here.. even dnd….the most hardcore stuff ou could get here is munchkin…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Steve-Sims/100001282426501 Steve Sims

    Noah Have you ever played Savage Worlds? Cause Between the supplement Interface Zero and Realms of Cthulhu you could easily do a Cthulhu Punk game. Its my go to system for home brews and tinkering cause its designed for it. The way the system is set up I could run whatever comes to mind.

  • Disthron

    ….If I’m not in control of my own character… then why am I playing. My first instinct is that I’m not playing, I’d just be sitting there with my thumb up my ass.

    • http://twitter.com/AmeliaVerin AmeliaVerin

      It’s more that you are forced to react to what happens, without having planned ahead. You go in expecting rogue AI, and find horrible monsters from beyond the pale instead.

  • Jim_Profit

    So does Spoony even review games/movies anymore?

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

      he does… he is doing a big one of FF-XIII

    • doresh

      FFXIII and roleplaying games are still games.

    • Segatron

      Counter Monkey is a relatively new feature, and probably does not need much editing. He is probably getting out a lot of feature ideas that have been building up. and these are a good way to fill in the time between the larger posts. Now that he’s moving, (and you never stop moving until well after you’ve gotten to the new home, no matter how much planning you put in.) He is facing more delays for editing.

      • Wayne Davis

        Also his dog was sick, etc etc ad nauseum.

    • Atmos_Duality

      You will be lucky to see such a review once every 4-6 weeks.

  • tobias Mbonne

    Great Counter Monkey segment. Using Youtube is also excellent.
    If playing cyberpunk is too much of a giveaway to the whole Cthulu angle, you could do it in D20Modern, with the right sourcebook (think they actually called it “cyberpunk”). Easy system, useable in any setting and even savvy players would probably assume their playing “Urban Arcana” before spotting the great Old ones coming. Hell, going cthulu might even be overkill, just about anything supernatural should do.

    Something that needs to be made a horror game setting is Sid Meiers’ Alpha Centauri. A fraction of humanity stranded on an alien planet. Beyond the borders of civilisation lies an inhospitable wasteland full of deadly alien fungus and worms that dig themselves into your brains and break your psyche. Within the confines of civilisation, society is run by factions struggling against each other for power by any means necessary (see aforementioned worms) and use nanobot surveilance, electronic lobotomies, mind control and god-knows-what to control their subjects.
    And while all of this is going on the planet itself is “waking up”…

    • Segatron

      Some people still confess to skipping movies for certain technology breakthroughs.

      • tobias Mbonne

        Well that’s just criminal.

    • CheshireBat

      There’s a fan-made setting for Alpha Centauri.

      You might also enjoy looking up the Destination: Void series by Frank Herbert. It consists of Destination: Void; The Jesus Incident; The Lazarus Effect; The Ascension Factor.

      The Jesus Incident (written in 1979) takes place on Pandora, which pretty much IS Planet. The Alpha Centauri team was very heavily inspired by it.

  • http://twitter.com/MsMeiriona Celeste LaScala

    You mentioned WoD and Mythos stuff, well, and this is from just reading not playing, isn’t Changeling The Lost very Mythos like? The True Fae are (ideally, at least, from what I read) as alien as anything from Lovecraft.

    • wizzbang

      Yep. That’s the best part about the Changeling reboot — the True Fae can be ANYTHING. Demons, Gods, Wyld Hunts, Grey Aliens, Lovecraftian monstrosities…

  • Zipper Dragon

    Maybe they get in, but it becomes a way out for W/e horrors lurk inside

  • Zipper Dragon

    O.O damn dude….That whole story made me feel more tense, & uncomfertable than any survival horror game I’ve ever played. btw I agree, the scariest thing is the unknown. Do you know of any good survival horror RPGs (Videogame wise.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/damion.jackson.5872 Damion Jackson

    OH GAWD NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! (Sorry someone had to scream it XD)

  • Steven Shaw

    There is also a Shadowrun game coming out for PC and tablets called Shadowrun Returns. Talked about in the Gameinformer issue that has Lego Marvel Super Heroes in it. One thing interesting about it is it features the main character from the Super Nintendo Shadowrun game as a NPC.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pierre-Dumas/633404316 Pierre Dumas

      There is also ShadowRun Online, both where kickstarter projects

  • Wayne Davis

    Wonder how well Call of Cthulhu would mash together with Paranoia…..

    • CheshireBat

      Pretty well. They’ve touched on it a few times. Tales from the Nightcycle and all that.
      Of course, you either have to play it up for the derp, or run Paranoia completely deadpan, in which case Paranoia makes for a truly dark setting.

  • Bjørn

    So sick and tired of coming to spoony`s experiment and only see this shitty counter monkey stuff.
    You have gotten so god damn lazy over the years its just sad now, talking about i am sick, feel sorry for me buhu.
    You should really learn something from Angry Joe about work etichs Spoony.. seriously, get it together man.

    Give people what they really want, GAME REVIEWS!!

    I still love you man, but enough is enough.
    -With regards from long time fan.

    • doresh

      How dare he make videos about his non-mainstream hobby!

    • http://www.facebook.com/william.singletary.75 William Singletary

      Actually, what I really want is more Counter Monkey. If you want nothing but game reviews then there are a slew of other people you could be watching online.

      And just an FYI, calling him lazy and saying that he has no/little work ethic is most likely not going to help in your crusade to get him to listen to you and succumb to your wishes.

      I’m just sayin’.

      • wizzbang

        Maybe those of us who like Counter Monkey should start an equally obnoxious campaign of thread-glutting in which we kvetch and whinge on about how there isn’t enough CM on Spoony’s site?

    • Pétur Ingi Sigbjörnsson

      You know, I actually find it funny that the most traffic on this site comes when people are complaining about lack of content, so he gets ad-revenue for these complains.

      And on top of that you might want to know that Spoony does not read these forums and in the last year he has made 1 reply to his fans on the site, and that was to apologize for the lack of content.

      If you really want to get him to pick up his pace just don’t go to this site, and if enough people do so his ad-revenue will drop.

      Leaving complaints normally increases traffic and sees to his increased ad revenue so complaining on this site gets kind of counterproductive.

      So you make your point and I don’t have to go through 50 “We want more content on the site” posts when I’m reading the posts looking for feedback on the subject the thread is about.

      BTW: The Dread 3D in 5 seconds kind of became the unofficial “We want more content on the site” tread.

  • zanntos

    First Planescape and now the Renraku Arcology, My wallet weeps every time Spoony talks about a new setting/idea.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1442290943 Derek Thomas

    I’d like to register another complaint. 7 days. I want more content.

  • Thomas Gideon

    I loved those old Shadowrun books. Very well written.

    It is the AI Deus experimenting with metahumanity. Nobody really knows why, and you will love this because AI stats in cyberspace are basically “I win”.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Wannazzaki Wannaz Zaki

    I kind of want to do this with Rogue Trader. Though i’m not entirely too sure how i’d do it when warhammer comes part and package with space gribblies and godawful shit from beyond.

  • http://twitter.com/Viking1899 Daniel Olsen

    I am calling bullshit on you now. Wheres the content?

    • wizzbang

      The video above is ~40 minutes of content. Nice try, though.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1271696023 Adrian Burt

    Cthonian Star is a campaign setting for Traveler made by the people who crated Cthulhutech. Actually they liked it so much they’re releasing it as an actual stand-alone game called The Void coming out later this year. The basic idea is that the future is kind of like Cowboy Beebob where we’ve colonized most of the solar system. Now there’s this massive block of dark matter moving towards our solar system at faster than light speeds and its sending out a massive energy wave three light years in diameter that is causing…things to awaken all across our solar system.

    So if you want to run Cthonian Stars, pick up a copy of Traveler and tell your friends that you’re running a game similar to Cowboy Beebob and then let the mindfucking begin!

  • Busterdrag

    Well, I inherently see a problem with starting a session or rpg group by playing Shadowrun and then switching to GURPS Cthulhupunk (aside from the crunch problems).

    For one thing, if I remember it right, the setting that Cthulhupunk came with was cyberpunk mixed with space scifi, as in other planets are colonized and shit. Shadowrun didn’t had that. Sure, major Corps were on to that stuff, building orbital platforms and advancing the space programm, especially those that were run by people who knew about the Horrors.

    And theres the second thing. You already have Cthulhu in Shadowrun. They’re called Horrors. I know I don’t need to tell you this Spoony, because this isn’t like a secret (except in-game), but Horrors are basically Cthulhu, if not done better. For one, Cthulhu-mythos stuff was established. As in what races there are, what the gods are named and what they look like and stuff. Heck, as you said it, they stated them.

    Horrors, this only applies partially too. There are established horrors (mostly in the Earthdawn setting, which plays before Shadowrun) like Wingflayers (basically a bunch of metal sheets that come alive and flay you) or Worm Skulls (basically armored humanoids with a bunch of worms for heads) but you also had a bunch of non descriptive and only hinted at Horrors, basically giving the GM the opportunity to come up with whatever perverse shit they could think of. And many Horrors, they game outright says you can’t kill them or if you fight them , it wont be done normally because you have no way of hurting or killing them because they’re not corporeal or even spiritual (dont ask me how that works).

    And here’s the kicker: Elves and Dragons fear them. The immortal elves and the plotting dragons, the probably most powerful being alive, who control the world? They’re fucking TERRIFIED at the idea of another scourge, of another coming of these undescribable, unnumerable monstrosities. The last time it happened, during Earthdawn? Everyone dug into magical underground vault cities (which were half eradicated), dragons hid in their lairs, put on the best magic wards and decoys they could muster and put themselves into hibernation (which only worked half of the time) and the blood elves basically mutated their bodies to feel pain all the time so the horrors didn’t find them tasty (which worked the best but still not all the time.) and sat it out for 400 years until the world was so dead and unmagical that the Horrors withdrew.

    And now even in the sixth age with orbital strike capable satellites and platforms, mechs, robots, half mechnical cyborg orc street samurais, lasercannons wielding dwarfs and kung fu adepts that can punch a guy in half and throw chi blasts around like in DBZ? Even with all this technology and a fairly strong magical level? Even now the chances or fighting back a full on scourge, much less drive back a rift that the horrors could use to jump over is too much of a risk and likely to fail that elves and dragons try to get humans off-planet by developing space programms and off world colonization (which is as slow as mollasses) and try to keep the whole horror thing a secret, because only a handful of individuals really know about them and a few hundred others only know bare parts of it. 99% of the world have no idea what these horrors are, and if they would ever invade? Not even someone that lived through bug city and did runner jobs for dragons would not be terrified when it happens. It would be something no one can imagine or really fight against.

    So there, Cthulhupunk is already in Shadowrun. Starting a session of Shadowrun, then throw in Deep Ones emerging off the east coast and Cthulhu eating Tir na Nog for lunch just to switch to a radically different setting is a kind of terrible idea. Just go with a possible incursion by the horrors and Harlequin tries to stop it by arranging a couple of runners performing missions around the planet to stop it. And if it fails, the players could have the delight of fighting a bunch of minor, still almost unbeatable horrors and close the rift lest something REALLY nasty slips out.

    Oh and btw, insect spirits are not horrors before anyone mentions it, they’re just sort of neighbors apparantly. Huh.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Deacon-Hagan/100002190854170 Deacon Hagan

    what freash Bij is this!?

  • ky0dar

    The Vampire LARP I’m a member of has this eldritch entity beneath the city’s lake, so every week, we’ve got cultists and tentacle men turning up…. never stops being creepy. (That’s Requiem, not Masq)

  • Andrei Masliev

    The Computer is your friend. The Computer requests that you dispose the halls of these creatures that should not exist. The Computer holds that they do not, in fact, exist, and requires you to make it so.

  • DishSoap

    I wonder how some events from something like dot hack would happen in Shadow Run.

  • http://twitter.com/ihaveno_life Katrin

    I loved this Counter Monkey so much. I’ve been saving them for weeks my game gets cancelled, because they fill the fix and really get me excited to plan other projects! The chat horror is a really fucking awesome idea for horror that I hadn’t thought about for a while and the angel bit is a great twist! Thank you Spoony!

  • http://www.facebook.com/mathieu.crowley Mathieu Crowley

    Spoony, try a game called Alpha Omega. It has a cyber punk feel. Picture Fallout 3 meets Blade Runner

  • Aluminum Foil

    Naw, I want my character to have, DMSO AND A SUPERSOAKER :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

  • remuthra

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StANCchGacc

    Acapella version of the Bard Song.

  • http://www.facebook.com/kac.gro Kac Gro

    Just stumbled across this awesome SHADOWRUN promo :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GPGQoR6f6w&feature=youtu.be

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jesse-M-Danielson/6028162 Jesse M. Danielson

    Thanks for giving me a great twist for my Conspiracy X game :)

  • Zipper Dragon

    Could you imagine borderlands with CoC? Or fallout? Or fuck DEVIL MAY CRY!?

  • Mike Loeven

    lets not forget the classic your characters were all killed at the beginning of the campaign and just didn’t realize they were dead. so easy to do with cyberpunk as consciousness can be transferred electronically.

  • http://www.facebook.com/eric.vannote Eric Van Note

    I don’t think that anyone would turn down a game with Spoony, I know I wouldn’t; though the temptation to misuse flash-grenades in a Shadowrun game would be immense. I actually think it’d be a great fundraiser for new equipment for his studio, or for charity, if he sold raffle tickets for a one-off skype game or something.

  • http://www.facebook.com/hunter.zielinski Hunter Zielinski

    Funny he should mention merging Call of Cthulhu with Conan the Barbarian. They supposedly share the same universe. The guy who wrote the Conan stories wrote for the same magazine as Lovecraft and even used some of HP’s monsters in his own stories.

    • James

      Yep, Lovecraft and Howard were penpals and friends. Much of the Cosmology in Howards world are based on Lovecraft’s cosmos and mythos. Lovecraft had no problem with other Authors using his mythos.

  • Ran1976

    1890s Winchesters and Henry Rifles. fairly badass

  • http://twitter.com/RabbeseKing Joseph Garcia

    I read that chatroom section he was talking about and uh… It sounds a lot cooler being explained than it actually is.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Steven-Wells/1120929081 Steven Wells

    Ever seen Kamen Rider? all the monsters are created by a group called SHOCKER, they are looking for lost WWI Nazi tech, they take people, and convert them into cyborg monsters with mind control

  • http://www.facebook.com/roxas.jake Pedro Almeida
  • http://www.facebook.com/sid.kias Sid Kias

    Space Truckers… When he mentioned the chainsaw dick, I immediately remembered that movie.

  • Mellon Collie

    god i hate living in bulgaria..noone ships stuff here and if they do its waay to expensive.the only way me and my friends can play anything is if we make everything ourselves.and we’re not very good.

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