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Use less well known stories,like Pickman's Model,for inspiration.

I don't think that the Mythos-oriented stories match that well with BtS. In BtS, the humans are supposed to actually stand a chance against the monsters. In most Lovecraft stories, there is no chance. It's just a matter of when and how the monsters get you.

I did run a game based on "The Color out of Space," but that was a playtest of C.O.R.E., not BtS.

I never read "Necropolis" or "Pickman's Model." Are these recommended reads? Right now, I am reading through the complete prose of Edgar Allen Poe. I can see some gaming potential in Poe also, but you have to dig into some of the lesser known narratives to find usable materials.

I ran a game once that was "eerily" similar to the Dunwich Horror. I took out a Cthulhu monster for another of my own design and changed up a few story specific details and VIOLA! One town full of bizarre folks who hate outsiders and carry their own agenda, etc.

It practically ran itself and was a memorable game.

Herbert West: Reanimator and any other story with "Black Science" is great fodder in my opinion.

To me, there is something unsettling about the concept: Black Magic is what it is. Black Science though, especially of the Lovecraft variety, is something more - you can't explain its perverseness or its sins against the natural order by simply shrugging and noting that it is arcane. No, it's science, so it has been wrought not by the intrinsic energy of the Universe, but by the minds and hubris of human beings .

~ Josh

Actually, I downloaded the Raven Edition from Project Guttenburg and keep it on my Blackjack mobile. I am seriously thinking about developing the House of Usher as a sponsorship for paranormal researchers.

Lord Z wrote:I never read "Necropolis" or "Pickman's Model." Are these recommended reads?

"Pickman" is one of his finest stories and highly recommended!! creepy stuff and good for BTS!

"Call of Cthulhu" would actually make a pretty good BTS plot, if you leave out the part with the Johansen Narrative.

No joke, at least half of my game plots had some kind of influence, perspective, inspiration or blatent imitation of CoC.

If anyone is interested, that Cthulhu module I mentioned on the other side of this link. The actual adventure is entitled "Hainted Hollar." It begins half-way down the page if you want to skip to that.

In link-o-vision!

Pickmans' Model & The Color from Space are definitely good. Can't remember the name, but there were 2 others that really stand out. One had an old, crazy guy who had one of the interdimensional beings "become friends" with his daughter. The resulting grandson had to remain clothed in public, because his "legs" were apparently composed of hooves, fat cells & generic "tissue" (i.e. no muscles at all)... & he was the "pretty" one. His sister made the Blob look like a children's teddy bear. The other (which I think was made into a movie last year -- either Ghosthouse Extreme, 8 Films to Die For, or Masters of Horror handled it) involved a guy who was working on non-Euclidean geometry, & ended up facing off against a possessed witch & her rat-faced (& rat-sized) "little man" helper.

i think the story about the witch and her rat friend is "the dreams in the witch house" and the other might be the classic "the dunwich horror". But i could be wrong. But they are all excellent reads and cool gaming inspiration.

krate wrote:i think the story about the witch and her rat friend is "the dreams in the witch house" and the other might be the classic "the dunwich horror". But i could be wrong. But they are all excellent reads and cool gaming inspiration.

Give this man a see-gar. The Dunwich Horror was also made into a movie, as well. The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward also has some good BTS ideas.

If you can ever find them, read the works of Arthur Machen while your at it. A lot of his materials were inspirations to Lovecraft and its easy to see why. While Machen was more into the grotesque and adult subjects (in some cases at the same time) you can see the influences he had on Lovecraft.

Okay, this is not a conversion, just an observation.
Just about any adventure for the Call of Cthulhu game would work.
Even though a majority of them are set in the 1920's, they are so easy to update to modern day even I have done it.

On the subject of other authors I have to recommend two of my favorites.
Clark Ashton Smith wrote some really fantastic stuff.
Then of course there is Robert E. Howard who is probably best known as the creator of Conan. He corrosponded with Lovecraft quite a bit and also wrote his fair share of weird fiction, contributing greatly to the Cthulhu Mythos we know today.

I like "The Rats in the Walls".

But most of all I read his Dreamland stories.

I like the Astral and Dreamstream (must be obvious ) from Nightbane and our GM also translate the Twilight into BtS rules with twists to make one more dimension to die in.

vika wrote:I like "The Rats in the Walls".

But most of all I read his Dreamland stories.

I like the Astral and Dreamstream (must be obvious ) from Nightbane and our GM also translate the Twilight into BtS rules with twists to make one more dimension to die in.

I've read some of his Dreamland stories. I liked them more than Cthulu, I guess.

But in all honesty I'm pretty indifferent to Lovecraft's brand. Poe on the other hand....

Oh yes... Poe has his moments too

Poe crawls into the brain in some unique way.

Poe has been in the public domain since there was such a term. It's amazing to me that no RPG publisher has ever taken advantage of that fact. One of my pet projects is developing a game based upon Poe's literature.

Poe never truly developed some single universe. He has a wide style actually.

Although he created the Detective Story I cannot think how to create some setting from the writings.

Maybe a Masque of the Red Death and Hop Frog type of setting?

vika wrote:Poe never truly developed some single universe. He has a wide style actually.

Although he created the Detective Story I cannot think how to create some setting from the writings.

Maybe a Masque of the Red Death and Hop Frog type of setting?

The wide style is part of the chart... add all of them into one universe and build it from there. Like Lord Z was saying, I'd given thought to something like this myself, but Ive got too many other children I'm trying to raise right now (two sourcebooks for BTS-2 at the same time when inspiration and muses find me amongst others) and wouldnt even dare try to start this baby... I say run with it Z MAN!

Would be a strange, not linear (temporally speaking) setting. I like it though. A lot.

Sorry for hijacking the thread like this. Anyway, I'm slowly reading through the complete prose of Edgar Allen Poe. I'm certain that there is something in there that can serve as the basis of a game. Some of the reoccurring themes could make for interesting rules, but not as concepts for an actual product. The House of Usher makes a great setting, for example, but not a good story on which to base a campaign. I'll let you all know if I have any breakthroughs.

Usher is the perfect example of the gothic horror story.

Poe and Lovecraft both are great fuel for the BTS fire. I'm a long time devotee of Call of Cthulhu, but have gotten burnt out on the game's limitations.

Cthulhoid beasties and terrors of the mind both can serve a BTS GM quite well.

The great thing about those so called terrors of the mind is that nobody else can see them...screwing with characters heads with hallucinations and paranoia can be highly effective and a nice change of pace from Kolchakian monster of the week beatdowns.

The Lovecraftian concept of humanities total insignificance in the cosmic scheme can be plumbed for cosmic horror inspiration on all sorts of levels. There is already more than some Lovecraftianism in all of Palladiums mythoses (sp?) (Palladium Fantasy big time) anyway.

The burbling, bloated Old Ones are just waiting to shatter all of us little monkey minds....just roaches scurrying under the refrigerator soon to meet our doom in some gigantic Roach Motel from beyond time and space.

I wonder how public domain Lovecraft's works are?
I'd love to see the Lazlo Society set up shop in Arkham and Miskatonic U. Go Pods!!

MurderCityDisciple wrote:Poe and Lovecraft both are great fuel for the BTS fire. I'm a long time devotee of Call of Cthulhu, but have gotten burnt out on the game's limitations.

Cthulhoid beasties and terrors of the mind both can serve a BTS GM quite well.

The great thing about those so called terrors of the mind is that nobody else can see them...screwing with characters heads with hallucinations and paranoia can be highly effective and a nice change of pace from Kolchakian monster of the week beatdowns.

The Lovecraftian concept of humanities total insignificance in the cosmic scheme can be plumbed for cosmic horror inspiration on all sorts of levels. There is already more than some Lovecraftianism in all of Palladiums mythoses (sp?) (Palladium Fantasy big time) anyway.

The burbling, bloated Old Ones are just waiting to shatter all of us little monkey minds....just roaches scurrying under the refrigerator soon to meet our doom in some gigantic Roach Motel from beyond time and space.

I wonder how public domain Lovecraft's works are?
I'd love to see the Lazlo Society set up shop in Arkham and Miskatonic U. Go Pods!!

His public domain works are on Wikisource.

having recently picked up the complete collected works of lovecraft for my kindle, i now feel like i can give an opinion.

Lord Z wrote:I don't think that the Mythos-oriented stories match that well with BtS. In BtS, the humans are supposed to actually stand a chance against the monsters. In most Lovecraft stories, there is no chance. It's just a matter of when and how the monsters get you.

a very good point, but there is a way to preserve the lovecraftian elements while also keeping the BTS feel.
an approach similar to that used by The Real ghostbusters episode, The Collect Call of Cathulhu. have the mythos elements be present, but the lovecraft and related stories exist in universe as fiction written by people who studied the necronomicon and other such documents as a basis for creating their settings.
thus you can fight deepones, spawn of cthulu, and Shaggoth's, even Cthulu himself...but you as the GM can control how 'accurate' those stories turn out to be, and can let the characters still win.
it also would open up more roleplay and in character research options. like having to speed read through Lovecraft's works to find the one dealing with the thing your investigating, in hopes of finding some weakness described in the text. or taking the latitude and longitude co-ordinates from one of the stories (such as from "the Temple") and going to see if anything is actually there.. which might makea great plothook to draw the players into the adventure if sone right.

Ninjabunny wrote:Hoping that this stays as Lovecraft falls to public domain, What stories would you turn into a BtS adventure, why and how?

I loved the story Necropolis, it gives you very little but alot to work with. I was thinking the grave yard could be on a site of power/nexus point, The graveyard has underground catacombs built by an old "forgotten" cult. Deep in the tomb is an evil force waiting to be released. I was thinking of picking the adventure up years after the story.

So how about you guy's?

i've only read about a quarter of the collected works (the guy is a good writer, but there is only so much i can take in one sitting)
for BTS, i'd say the following stories would make for interesting plot ideas:

The Tomb - a young boy finds an old tomb, and later, a way to enter it. he begins to sleep in one of the voffins, and as time goes on, begins showing knowledge of the past that is disturbingly accurate. this story narrative could be used as an intro/basis for any number of BTS type investigations.

The Statement of Randolph Carter - a narrative of how an investigator enters and ancient tomb and finds more than he expected. told from the viewpoint of the assistant, who sees none of it. great creepy ending. the basic premise of entering an old burial site and finding 'something' is a very BTS element...and this narrative could be the basis for an adventure itself, used as a prelude to the characters investigating the site themselves, or even used as an opening act for a rescue mission adventure.

Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family - hard to summarize this one without ruining the story. guy discovers a dark secret about his ancestry. has connections to africa and lost civilizations..

as i read through, i'll probably post other stories i think have something for BTS... though i can say now that "at the mountans of madness' is one i'm expecting to be very BTSish..

Since this topic is about Lovecraft has anyone here seen "THE LAST LOVECRAFT; The Relic of Cthulhu". I always thought that would make a nice BtS style camapign.

A few others that I liked were "DAGON", "THE UNNAMABLE", "The UNNAMABLE II", "Dreams in the Witch House", "From Beyond",
"The Reanimator", "The Dunwhich Horror", "Lurking Fear", and "Necronomicon" just to name my favorites. Any of these can be adapted for really good camapign ideas.

HPL: Go Miskatonic U!

Josh Sinsapaugh wrote:Herbert West: Reanimator and any other story with "Black Science" is great fodder in my opinion.

To me, there is something unsettling about the concept: Black Magic is what it is. Black Science though, especially of the Lovecraft variety, is something more - you can't explain its perverseness or its sins against the natural order by simply shrugging and noting that it is arcane. No, it's science, so it has been wrought not by the intrinsic energy of the Universe, but by the minds and hubris of human beings .

~ Josh

yep, it's "Mad Science!" at it's best/worst. though compared to some of the stuff we know now about quantum mechanics and string theory and so on, much of lovecraft's stuff comes across not only as somewhat arcane, but also fairly mundane by comparison...

MurderCityDisciple wrote:I wonder how public domain Lovecraft's works are?
I'd love to see the Lazlo Society set up shop in Arkham and Miskatonic U. Go Pods!!

i've often figured that todd Yoho's Last Street article in rifter 17 was an attempt to introduce an Arkham/Miskatonic U. type location into BTS. you have a parapsychology oriented university, in an area of chicago with lots of bizzare goings on and an exotic backstory.

vika wrote:I like "The Rats in the Walls".

I was about to suggest Rats myself...

Rats was the first thing I ever read by HPL, it blew me away and it actually features a paranormal investigation team.

From Beyond is a good example of arcane science gone horribly wrong. I've personally used that story on more than one occasion.

Holister wrote:From Beyond is a good example of arcane science gone horribly wrong. I've personally used that story on more than one occasion.

Too much nudity and BDSM...oh wait that's the movie.

From Beyond is quite good...too short in my opinion, though.

Pretty much any HPL story can be spun into putrid, terrifying gold with the right BTS tweaks.

I picked up a book which had a collection of Lovecraft books, I liked it so much I have decided to read Lovecrafts stories chronologically, Im about halfway through "Horror at Redhook". I see tons of stories which would be easily adapted to BtS:
The Cats of Ulthar - Several dead bodies are found, the players find that the evidence leads to cats, but who or what is controlling them?
Nyarlathotep - A powerful psychic is roaming the country converting people to follow him, those that dont go insane.
The Music of Erich Zann - Strange weather is coming from one end of town, the players hear a violin on the wind, and something lurking on the rooftops.
The Festival - A mental patient is yelling warnings about evil in a town.
The Call of Cthulhu - Can the player's stop the awakening of Cthulhu?
The Dunwich Horror - Dont change a thing, the story is a hook line and sinker
The Shadow Over Innsmouth - Same as Dunwich.
The Dreams in the Witch House - Children start to go missing again, the players find a dusty police report describing the events at the Witch House.
The Thing on the Doorstep - A ex-wife/ex-husband/sister/brother ect claims that their loved one is different after their recent marriage....

Of course there are the multitude of other stories written by Lovecraft fans, I suggest picking up "Future Lovecraft" some great stories in there.

I like your use of The Music of Erin Zahn as a hook.