The SUE Files III: Basically, Exercising Your Cheese-Forging Genes

[georgie_leech]

Just more evidence that there are hundreds of ways to approach the idea of Lovecraft + Mecha that are interesting and fun, yet CTech deftly navigates away from all of them.

Considering that took more time to type up than imagine (I imagine putting proper effort into it would get something good, but I'm lazy and have too many other campaign ideas), yeah, it's pretty incredible that Ctech thinks the most interesting way to deal with the Cthulhu Mythos is More Dakka.

[Cristo Meyers]

Well, that certainly gave me a better picture of everything wrong with CTech on a mechanical level. The other reviews I'd read just made it seem like a bad episode of Criminal Minds, just with pseudo-eldritch horrors.

So there's two games we can make here. One's Saint's Row of Cthulhu; put the players in the Good Guy military and have them kick the crap out of the Bad Guys, who we know are bad because they are ugly and weird. Make it goofy, make it funny, knock yourself out. That's a completely valid game; heck, I'd run a BESM 1-shot in it, giant sharks and arbitrary misfortune and all.

Oh dear sweet god in heaven yes!

Professor Genki vs. Cthulhu at Murderbrawl 37!

[Segev]

I tried to post this in reply to the blog post, but it was too long. So here it is here, as it's my reaction to the criticisms of CTech. Honestly, I haven't seen any of the rape, racism, etc. that people have claimed is there, and my experience with it was not nearly so restrictively unpleasant as advertised here. Now, it could have been the GM and the fact that I was just a player who only read the parts of the core and magic book that I needed to build my character.

I...think you're giving FATAL -way- too much credit, here, or are letting CC's run of CTech color your views on it even in your separate analysis.

Admittedly, my exposure to it has been limited to one game in which I was a player. I read only parts of the book. I didn't see the rape, racism, etc. that I've seen people claim exists, but maybe I didn't read the right parts.

So, I would like to relate my one experience with it, and see how it jives with your read on the setting and game as a whole. We had a couple normal humans, one psychic who wanted to be an actor, a tager, and my PC: Nicholas P Smythe.

Nick was an old man and a known sorcerer. He was also a go-to expert for the government and others when it came to the occult. His private library full of rather illegal tomes was. His security clearance and his usefulness as an expert, combined with his long history of almost frightening sanity, meant that it was not worth it to try to take it from him.

He was not a mean old man, but he was not particuarly kind, either. He had the trait that made him tainted by the otherworldly (and gave him more magic points in the process), because when he and his wife were much younger and were working on the earliest experiments in magical science, they were participating in a test to summon and bind something. That -something- (from his perspective) possessed his wife and slew the child with whom she was pregnant. She fooled everybody, though, and he had to divorce her because he couldn't get anybody to believe she was possessed. They wrote it off as grief and blame because the clever -thing- in her made the same claim about him.

He SEEMED frighteningly sane. In truth, his madness was managed by an iron will and twisted into a grim focus on trying to find where his wife's soul had gone.

(The "twist" here is that neither was truly taken over by the "thing," but both believed they were haunted by the spirit of their stillborn son and that the OTHER was possessed. Their "stillborn son" was actually the "thing, whispering in their heads for decades and twisting them into a dramatic rivalry as they build their own political - in the "connections" rather than "elections" sense - empires and navigated the lower eschelons of high-powered society as indispensible experts, dancing around each other to thwart the doubtless-nefarious goals the evil thing pretending to be the other must have.)

As the game progressed, Nicholas was crotchety and easily tired on the physical missions, but was dangerous to any supernatural threats that got close enough to harm him. He relied on the more human members of the party (not to mention the tager) to defend him from more mundane threats. We had a fair bit of intra-party strife, but it was due to PC personalities and, I think, not at all to do with the "enforced role-play" quirks. The tager was definitely his own character, not a cutout of a stereotype. At no point did the GM tell us how to play our characters (though he would warn us when we were being too obvious and would likely get the government on us).

We had numerous successes, some failures, and managed to stop a cult from summoning one of the Great Old Ones (and, in the process, as it was the climax of the campaign, Nick and his wife had some really wonky supernatural stuff occur that resulted in them realizing the true nature of their "possession" AND, due to other-worldly shenanigans and physical death while inhabiting a dreamscape, regain their relative youth; ultimately, a HAPPY ending for them. Though how happy the NEG might be about two iron-willed sorcerers taking advantage of their apparent deaths to build new, unobserved lives with at least 50 more years ahead of them is an interesting question...)

Anyway, I believe the other PCs had similarly satisfying resolutions to personal arcs, and while the world is still at war, and we faced some party-scale as well as personal existential horror, it was overall a fun game with definite success on the scale of the immediate storyline.

[LordChaos13]

He was not a mean old man, but he was not particuarly kind, either. He had the trait that made him tainted by the otherworldly (and gave him more magic points in the process)

Sounds like a good GM.
Though you probably blocked it out the trait your talking about is a Flaw* and one of the stated examples for the flaw is literally hentai Richard. Seriously go reread it
*And the only way to increase Orgone meaning every Sorc takes it

"Those with an Outsider Taint also manifest some sort of physical trait that reveals their origin – they may have unnatural eyes, nictitating membranes, extra digits, unnatural cravings, vestigial claws, hentai genitalia, or the like."


Also: Hobby lists Coed naked twister as an example alongside model building and drinking

Also: Compulsive Behavior (1-3)
Your Character has some sort of behavior in which he engages compulsively – usually to fill some sort of psychological void or to quell deep anxiety or depression. This behavior can be anything from compulsively checking the outlets of his house before leaving to washing his hands to masturbation

Which at first level is 3-5 times a day. Yeah

[Malrone]

I'd expect you had a positive experience because Rule Zero was applied liberally to the stock setting. So, good show, and props to the person in charge at being a capable GM. Unfortunately, this doesn't reflect back positively to CTech itself, since the editing was required in the first place.

Really glad you had a good time. It's a nice thing to hear on a forum where so much complaining can happen wholesale.

EDIT

hentai genitalia

Hahawhat

[BRC]

I bought, and ran a brief "Lets find out the rules" game of Ctech. I was drawn to the absurdity of the central concept, but we had more fun making our characters and doing backstory stuff than we did actually playing.


Mechanically speaking the biggest draw of the setting, the Giant Robots, really only works if every one of your players is a pilot, and in that case you are largely limited to adventures about piloting Giant Robots, which can be fun but may get old fast. Plus there isn't much of a variety of Mechs to use within the same power level. In our small-game we had a fast-attack close-range Mech, a long-range rocket mech, and an Engel who, as it turned out, had just as many rocket pods as the rocket mech, and could deal just as much damage in melee as the close-range mech. There are no real guidelines for making sure everybody is contributing equally in mech combat unless you make everybody use the same mech type.


Personally my biggest dissapointment was how seriously the game seemed to take itself. I was attracted to the setting by the absurdity, "Unthinkable Eldritch Horrors from beyond space are here to destroy us, so we built giant robots to fight them off". But the game seems kind of ashamed of that, and retreats into GRIMDARKness. I wanted basically Saints Row of Cthulu, unspeakable eldritch horrors arrive, and we blow them into unspeakable bits.

I wanted to punch the face of madness itself with a giant robot fist.


Also, I actually LIKED the concept of the Nazzadi as a sort of tounge-in-cheek take on the "Proud Warrior Race". They look Human because they ARE humans, just gene-tweaked by spacewasps. Their whole "Proud Warrior Race" backstory was invented in-universe to make them better soldiers. In a more lighthearted take on Ctech they could be really fun.

That said, mechanically there was no reason to play them except for low-light vision. They got a +2 dexterity, which dosn't count for much when Humans got to apply +2 to any stat, including dexterity.

So if you were already planning to spend your +2 on dexterity, go ahead and pick Nazzadi.


Really, "Saints Row of Cthullu" sounds a lot like what I wanted. A joyous subversion of the standard Eldritch Horror "You are inconsequential in the face of the universe". We may be inconsequential, but our giant robots powered by magical geometry are consequential enough to put a boot up your ass.
You can have your Giant Robots, or your Grimdark, but not Both. W40k only pulls it off because...well they barely pull it off.

So yeah, two ways to do Ctech properly.

Way 1: Saints Row Of Cthulu. Powered-armored soldiers cheerfully dismantling deep ones, giant robots punching out eldritch horrors. The universe is a big scary place but we're pretty big and scary ourselves. Plus we're just crazy enough to hold our own.

Way 2: Cyberpunk of Cthulu. Call of Cthulu + Sci-fi. No Giant Robots, no big war against the edlritch evils. The existance of the evils can be common knowledge, but it should be a creeping evil. the Coast Guard is equipped to battle deep ones coming out of the ocean, Police reguarly raid Cults while under the effects of amnesiacs that prevent them from remembering what they saw, ect. The World is slowly sliding into chaos due to a thousand different things. The PC's CAN wiin when it comes to solving these local issues. Maybe you can't save the world, but you CAN save the day.

[Eldan]

To be fair, Evangelion pulls off Dark+Lovecraft+Giant Robots pretty successfully for most of its run. And it was very clearly one of the main inspirations, down to the name "Engel".

[BRC]

To be fair, Evangelion pulls off Dark+Lovecraft+Giant Robots pretty successfully for most of its run. And it was very clearly one of the main inspirations, down to the name "Engel".

Yeah but there is a big difference between "Fun to watch" and "Fun to play".

"Fun to Play' with Giant Robots means power tripping. "Fun to Play" giant robots should be somewhere between Pacific Rim and Guerren Laggan. Giant Robots are already ridiculous, the only thing to do is EMBRACE that.

Either leave it out, or dive in wearing a clown nose and a funny hat.

[Segev]

Sounds like a good GM.

Certainly a factor.

Though you probably blocked it out the trait your talking about is a Flaw* and one of the stated examples for the flaw is literally hentai Richard. Seriously go reread it
*And the only way to increase Orgone meaning every Sorc takes it

"Those with an Outsider Taint also manifest some sort of physical trait that reveals their origin – they may have unnatural eyes, nictitating membranes, extra digits, unnatural cravings, vestigial claws, hentai genitalia, or the like."

I couldn't recall if it was a flaw or a merit, at this stage. Thanks for the reminder. I had an interesting physical manifestation, but I can't recall what it was, now. :( I think it manifested most obviously as a "heart condition." Complete with cancerous-looking growths over the left pectoral area of the chest. He had a very low physical endurance stat ("Body," I think it was? It's been a couple years since I played the system.)

Also: Hobby lists Coed naked twister as an example alongside model building and drinking

Also: Compulsive Behavior (1-3)
Your Character has some sort of behavior in which he engages compulsively – usually to fill some sort of psychological void or to quell deep anxiety or depression. This behavior can be anything from compulsively checking the outlets of his house before leaving to washing his hands to masturbation

Which at first level is 3-5 times a day. Yeah

Now that you mention it, I do recall those. I thought of them as attempts at being light-hearted in a slightly juvenile sort of way. They fall into the "rather inane example meant to evoke 'and the kitchen sink,'" and seem to me to be more of an effort to express just how broad one can go for these things.

But I've cultivated a rather thick skin, because otherwise I'd get my sensibilities offended too easily to play games at all, so I could be being too lenient in my take.

[Friv]

Now that you mention it, I do recall those. I thought of them as attempts at being light-hearted in a slightly juvenile sort of way. They fall into the "rather inane example meant to evoke 'and the kitchen sink,'" and seem to me to be more of an effort to express just how broad one can go for these things.

But I've cultivated a rather thick skin, because otherwise I'd get my sensibilities offended too easily to play games at all, so I could be being too lenient in my take.

From what I recall, the Cthulutech corebook is merely "bad"; it's hardly one of the worst offenders out there for sexism, racism, and terrible life choices. It's worse than a book should be, but if it was just that it would have been lost in the mire.

It was later sourcebooks where the direction the designers were thinking was revealed, and that direction was REALLY, REALLY bad. Spoiled for squick.

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Like the published adventure where one player was just tortured in-character for four sessions while everyone else stumbled around failing to find them. Or the ever-popular story that had a nearly-guaranteed chance of guaranteed rape-and-then-murder-through-pregnancy for anyone foolish enough to play a female PC. Or the nazi rape-powered engine.

[Deophaun]

To be fair, Evangelion...

Needs to be shot out of a cannon and into the sun.

I'm sorry, you were saying?

[Segev]

Needs to be shot out of a cannon and into the sun.

I'm sorry, you were saying?

Pish-posh. Shinji would wimp out before getting to the cannon, and Gendo has already orchestrated you into launching yourself in Evangelion's place.

[Deophaun]

...and Gendo has already orchestrated you into launching yourself in Evangelion's place.

He can't. NERV wasted all their budget on a robot fight, and so he's stuck in an elevator.

[LordChaos13]

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From what I recall, the Cthulutech corebook is merely "bad"; it's hardly one of the worst offenders out there for sexism, racism, and terrible life choices. It's worse than a book should be, but if it was just that it would have been lost in the mire.

It was later sourcebooks where the direction the designers were thinking was revealed, and that direction was REALLY, REALLY bad. Like the published adventure where one player was just tortured in-character for four sessions while everyone else stumbled around failing to find them. Or the ever-popular story that had a nearly-guaranteed chance of guaranteed rape-and-then-murder-through-pregnancy for anyone foolish enough to play a female PC. Or the nazi rape-powered engine.

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To be fair the rape/preg/murder involved male PCs being raped too, they just impregnated rather than were impregnated
Also its more date-rape than actual-rape as its due to pheremone-mindcontrol
There is also a rape-to-death torture device for females only

[Trekkin]

And this is part of why I didn't want to mention all the really offensive stuff in Cthulhutech.

[Sith_Happens]

That said, mechanically there was no reason to play them except for low-light vision. They got a +2 dexterity, which dosn't count for much when Humans got to apply +2 to any stat, including dexterity.

So if you were already planning to spend your +2 on dexterity, go ahead and pick Nazzadi.

IIRC from another review, you can literally just take two points out of your base Dexterity score and put them into whatever stat you would have chosen for your Human bonus, making the distinction between "+2 DEX" and "+2 any" completely meaningless.

CTech designers, everyone!

[jindra34]

I think some of what happened (some) with later CTech books/adventures was the designers realizing they hadn't really built a horror setting, and trying to (very sloppiply, poorly and heavy handedly) incorporate horror into it. Without any real clue as to how to go about actual horror. But yes its mostly something that should be used for bits and bobs with the rest just tossed in the trash.

[The Fury]

Yes, you can't win in Call of Cthulhu -- but what the players do matters. Contrast to Cthulhutech's adventure design, where anything that matters is outside the scope of the adventure.

Y'know, I think this is why I made up my mind about not liking C-tech before I learned about the really dumb stuff about it. Of course, I've never said it quite so concisely. This is also what I love about Call of Cthulhu, you can stop some horrible cosmic threat for now but it'll be back! That's scary! C-tech you can blow up the Shoggoth but it don't matter 'cuz reasons.

[Friv]

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To be fair the rape/preg/murder involved male PCs being raped too, they just impregnated rather than were impregnated
Also its more date-rape than actual-rape as its due to pheremone-mindcontrol
There is also a rape-to-death torture device for females only

Well, the issue is as follows...

Actually, wait, I'm going to use spoiler tags because this is getting a little brutal and it's not fair to people who came into the thread expecting hilarious antics from Trekkin's terrible DM. I think I'm going to go back and edit them into my earlier post, as well. Could you do the same?

Ok. The issue is...

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If you play a male character, you get forced into sex (which is VERY BAD of the designers), and then if you check up on it later you find out you have creepy horse-babies or something.

If you play a female character, you get forced into sex, which has a 100% chance of resulting in pregnancy, which has a 100% chance of killing you with no abortion possible. So just choosing to play a woman in that scenario is a death sentence, a really squicky death sentence to boot, and the designers did not see this as an issue AT ALL.

[Arbane]

Or the nazi rape-powered engine.[/spoiler]

O_O

CTech is stealing plot elements from Urotsokidoji? (DO NOT GOOGLE THIS AT WORK.)

So... yeah. Bad game. But it does do an amazing job of letting the readers know what SAN loss due to unspeakable horrors feels like.

[Lord Torath]

I'm sorry, but I couldn't let this pass without at least commenting:

Also its more date-rape than actual-rape

This made me cringe. The only difference is that in one, you know your attacker. In the other, you most likely know your attacker. They are both"actual rape".
[/rant]

That being said, this is probably not the best place to discuss it.

[LordChaos13]

I'm not saying that date-tape isnt as bad as rape (it totally is), but they ARE different
In one you are generally in the position to state no or struggle
In the other you are drugged to the point where consent is unable to be freely given due to an altered state of mind

In the scenario in question Half-animal (well more anthro animals) of nature/lust emit pheromones designed to make a member of the opposite gender (I think regardless of sexual preference) attracted to them to the point of making saves or sleep with them
The PCs are expected to interact and talk with these creatures for an extended period, forcing at least 5 saves and Im fairly sure but dont have the book on-hand nor the effort to actually look it up, but the DM is told one or more should definitely succumb (bonus points if it's a fem character)

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btw, the plot they are trying to stop? Summoning an Elder Entity of some kind using the creatures and their kids
Which is not stopped
And this scenario is only achieved by playing through another one where PCs are expected to (without prompting though some mayWILL be necessary) sit and watch outside an abandoned warehouse where girls between the ages of 14 and 22 are in crates, still alive, and Im not going into further detail because I feel sick
Also the main villain from the scene lives and escapes because METAPLOT and the kidnapping ring still exists

[BRC]

I think some of what happened (some) with later CTech books/adventures was the designers realizing they hadn't really built a horror setting, and trying to (very sloppiply, poorly and heavy handedly) incorporate horror into it. Without any real clue as to how to go about actual horror. But yes its mostly something that should be used for bits and bobs with the rest just tossed in the trash.

That would make a lot of sense.

See, I never really saw it as a Horror setting. I saw it doing to Cosmic Horror what Buffy did to Vampires. The monsters are still there, but the would-be victims can fight back and win on equal terms, rather than getting lucky or using some built-in plot weakness.

And if that was the design Ctech is great. Take the ultimate Horror (Lovecraftian Cosmit Horror), and mix in enough Anime-inspired power so that humans can fight back.

But if they were trying to make an actual HORROR game, they failed.

Maybe the writers of the expansions mixed up "Horrifying" "Horrible" and "Horrific".

[Deffers]

Yeah, CTech's adventure modules are horrible. The one where one of the PC's is brutally tortured and is powerless to stop a small child from being similarly tortured also pretty much ends with a Scion ringing you up and telling you to cheer up-- and your reward is the ability to point buy an ability that lets you point buy psychic powers! Yaaaaay. SO worth unavoidable torture.

[ReaderAt2046]

I just found a Pacific Rim quote that I think really accurately shows why PR is sort of the anti-Lovecraft. From what I've read, a lot of the horror of CoC comes from the sheer impersonal overwhelmingness of the main abominations. They're not so much monsters as forces of nature. But, as Raleigh Becket says:

There are things you can't fight - acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you get out of the way. But when you're in a Jaeger, you can finally fight the hurricane. You can win!

[Delta]

I fully agree that the adventures for CTech are very, very bad in every sense of the word and would never argue to defend them.

But still, I think you went WAY over the top with your FATAL comparison. CTech is still a workable, if very flawed, gaming system, and the setting isn't quite as bad as you want to make it sound, I have played it (only a one-shot, but still) and had a lot of fun, and I'm sure you could run a campaign in the setting having a lot of fun without having to edit everything quite as massively as some of you might make it sound. Yes, the Nazzadi are silly fanservice, but that doesn't make every game of CTech bad or unplayable, and neither do the rapey parts of the game because not every adventure needs to focus on every aspect of the setting, thankfully.

Unfortunately, after the core book, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse and the very douchy attitude the designers have shown doesn't help it one bit. And of course, it doesn't help that Eclipse Phase does indeed do all things regarding transhumanist cthulhoid horror better and is all in all a vastly superiour game.

So it comes down to this, in my experience, CTech is far, far from the cream of the crop, but it's also far from as bad as you make it look (FATAL, seriously?)

[The Grue]

Way 2: Cyberpunk of Cthulu. Call of Cthulu + Sci-fi. No Giant Robots, no big war against the edlritch evils. The existance of the evils can be common knowledge, but it should be a creeping evil. the Coast Guard is equipped to battle deep ones coming out of the ocean, Police reguarly raid Cults while under the effects of amnesiacs that prevent them from remembering what they saw, ect. The World is slowly sliding into chaos due to a thousand different things. The PC's CAN wiin when it comes to solving these local issues. Maybe you can't save the world, but you CAN save the day.

So basically a game of Eclipse Phase set during the Fall?

[llehctim]

Having watched pacific rim, that was what I was hoping we would be able to do (albeit on a smaller scale in the CT game). Sadly it wasn't. Another comparison for how CT could have been made more horrifying, with very little change, is to have it more like the anime Attack on Titan in which (spoilers ahead)

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Humans are fighting against an unknown enemy and are outmatched, but can accomplish things, but always at a cost, and they have secret weapons that turn the humans into monsters to fight them.

The favorable comparison to FATAL is I assume a hyperbole, and is seen as not as bad as it is, due to the fact that noone claims it is a good game (author excluded), and so it is only played as a parody. Whereas CT takes itself seriously, and seems like more of a betrayal, since having been promised an awesome thing, and fails to let us have them in the most annoying ways.

PS: Jin had mentioned that CT was a terrible choice and was only going to play if we all really wanted to, I thought that just the mechanics were bad in the system and that with the new set of mechanics it would be fine ... ah well hindsight is 20/20 (ish) and all that.

[Trekkin]

Maybe I'm giving the other too much credit, but in Ctech I see a game that tried to be something awful, missed, then "compensated" by blithely being something even more disgusting, all without ever being the game it's advertised as being. Somehow that's worse to me than trying to be the most horrifying game ever devised and being bang on the mark with it.

Besides, the sheer variety of nausea-inducing stuff here just stuns me. We've got police states, indefinite detention without trial, torture, every kind of human indecency I can recall, great and small... It's like if the sum of my worst nightmares were in the Mandelbrot set and someone wrote down the resulting fractal. And none of it's necessary, at all, for telling the story it purports to want to tell. Maybe that's it; it might be the worse for how irrelevant it is, like all this horrifying stuff was just the closest shortcut for making it "edgy" and no one saw anything wrong with that.

I don't know. I'm probably wrong. I don't really want to think about it more.

[One Step Two]

To me, FATAL is one of those unsinkables of generally horrendous ideas. It's not like a general kind of Fantasy Heartbreaker where it has one amazing core idea, and falls apart, or just being laughably unworkable. It's so reprehensible, that it goes so far off the spectrum of sanity that it parodys' itself, and then comes back full circle to be terrible again.

From what I have read of it, Ctech was just so casual about it, an attempt to make a shining Utopia with a seemy underside, but it forgot to make sure that the squickyness was only hinted at, and played at the edges to make it actually scary, instead it's just dropped off in the middle of a description, or tagged onto the end of a text block, thinking that direct confronting would make it either more horrifying, or dismissed as the norm, and that everyone should be okay.

In the context of their own works/source material, FATAL is an act of woeful ignorance of what gamers actually want, Ctech is naivety of a horror show.