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Adapting Eternal Lies (or another big Cthulhu campaign) to EP

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Fri, 2016-01-15 09:11

Shambleau

Adapting Eternal Lies (or another big Cthulhu campaign) to EP

All right, I know I want to GM Eclipse Phase, I know I want to make my characters travel a lot and see various aspects of transhumanity, and I want my game to be more investigation-based than action-based. At first, I wanted to write something about Mars, colonization efforts and anarchy vs. X-risks, but I don't have much time for that. I started thinking about using prewritten campaign/adventures, and I instantly thought about Call/Trail of Cthulhu. These usually have the characters travel around the world to fight cosmic horrors (TITANs !) and their cultists (singularity trackers, exsurgents, exhumans, criminals !), which is a pretty good fit. I was thinking about Eternal Lies, but mostly because I'm currently GMing it for my wife. There's a lot of work (such as adapting the technology and all that entails, editing out the supernatural elements, finding alternatives for the mythos books, etc.) to do, sure, but I see a lot of potential in it.

Spoiler: Highlight to view

Winston and cie would be a sentinels team which failed their mission, Nectar could be a very powerful sexual drug laced with a dormant exsurgent virus to be unleashed at the climax of the story, the cult a band of singularity trackers who think they can use TITAN tech for their own advancement, the leader of the cult could be out to finish the TITANs' work... or a Jovian suicide agent planning to wipe out transhumanity to leave room for the real humans ?

So I was wondering... has anyone actually tried to adapt some of these adventures/campaigns to EP?

Fri, 2016-01-15 21:48

Mckma

Hmm....

I like this idea a lot. Not this campaign specifically per se, but just reading through a campaign or game and seeing the overall structure. I think the hardest part of telling a big story (particularly one with mystery and intrigue) is the pacing and how to drop in clues. So using the basic plot of a larger campaign and then just "reskinning" some things could be a neat way to get a structure. Of course you have to think through how to adapt with the technology. I've been looking to sketch out a campaign for fun and I might try this idea, will let people know my results.

Wed, 2016-02-03 08:32

Dweller on the ... Dweller on the Threshold's picture

Interesting thread...

Interesting thread... Actually, I have been recently thinking along the same lines. One obvious choice would be Chaosium's [i]Beyond The Mountains of Madness[/i].

Spoiler: Highlight to view

A few years after the Miskatonic expedition of 1931, another group braves the Ice to understand what happened to their predecessors and lift the heavy veil of silence surrounding the circumstances of the tragic death of more than ten people. Their second goal is to go beyond the incredible mountains discovered by Professor Lake and his ill-fated team and explored this uncharted land. There they discover the remnants of an antediluvian city built by a non-human civilization and will be confronted to unknown horrors only to discover the most terrible truth of all: there is no creator God at all, Mankind is just the evolutionary byproduct of alien experiments on life. The city hides one final secret: the Elder Ones trapped an extremely powerful entity in a "god trap" meant as a weapon of mass-destruction but could not harness its power. The trap barely managed to confine it in an extra dimensional pocket but after eons, it is slowly unraveling, threatening to free the Thing inside and bring the world to its end.

It is easy to hack the whole campaign and fit it into the EP setting:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

instead of a polar expedition, the Miskatonic expedition could easily become an Argonaut funded gatecrashing team discovering an alien city (built by the Iktomi or another yet-undiscovered alien civilization) The threat could be related to the Bracewell probe and the primal Exsurgent Virus, the Trapped God being replaced by an extremely advenced seed AI/TITANs or even ETI which has spelt the doom of so many advanced civilizations before. To stick to the original campaign, one of the final revelations could be about the origins of life on Earth. Similarly, the rival expeditions having to team up against the dangers of the city could be gatecrashers from rival hypercorps hoping to plunder the technological treasures hidden in the ruins.

After all, HP Lovecraft's original "[i]At The Moutains of Madness[/i]" has already been hacked by Ridley Scott in his disappointing blockbuster [i]Prometheus[/i]. My two credits...

Thu, 2016-02-04 07:36

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

"This drug has a weird effecEXSURGENT BURN IT BURN IT BURN..."

Cthulhu scenarios are good for providing the foundations for an EP campaign, but the limited timescale in EP and the fact that the existence of TITANS and Ex-humans is common knowledge, even if specifics aren't, makes conversion a pain in the [Redacted]. There's also the trap the OP falls into - it's way too tempting to make all the various cosmic horrors TITANspawn. Whilst I haven't completely read Eternal Lies (It's on The List), what I do know makes me balk at the idea of trying to plug it in: The whole "sacrifice" element, which is pretty core to the plot, makes very little sense in EP without heavy handwaving. Good Cthulhu plots for EP are those which center around the concept of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, Direct contact with Mythos Entities (The Insects from Shaggai or Gla'aki are prime examples), or plots centered around the creation of a Device or Artifact. Delta Green scenarios are easier to work with thanks to the thematic commonalities, and whilst the Mythos remains an unknown the focus is usually more on concealing the immediate presence of Mythos entities rather than depending on global ignorance. From what I've read (again... The List) Night Black Agents scenarios could also work surprisingly well thanks to the focus on conspiratorial elements and the lack of a standardized foe.

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