Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 11-17-2008, 12:50 PM   #1
Strategos' Risk
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Default Merging GURPS Cthulhupunk with other games

Has anyone tried combining Cthulhupunk with other futuristic Mythos games like Cthulhutech, Cthulhu Rising, Yellow Times, Cthulhu Adventus, and/or End Times?

Personally I think it would be easiest to throw in technologies (minus stuff like FTL), weapons, and corporation-type organizations into the setting from other sources. I'm also interested if any ideas dealing with occult groups or Cthulhu-type entities could be adapted into Cthulhupunk. Events would probably not be that difficult to add in from the more covert settings, though something like Cthulhutech where the whole world is at war against the Mi-gou may be out of its scope. For reference, here's an attempt someone made of combining Cthulhupunk and Delta Green.[/quote]
Strategos' Risk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-17-2008, 04:06 PM   #2
LoneWolf23k
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Default Re: Merging GURPS Cthulhupunk with other games

This just screams combining Cthulhupunk with books like Ultra-Tech and Bio-Tech for starters... As for the Mecha rules... ...Has anyone worked out a decent mock-up of Mecha Rules for GURPS 4e, or should we just keep building Mecha and other Robots as characters?
LoneWolf23k is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-19-2008, 11:43 AM   #3
Strategos' Risk
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Default Re: Merging GURPS Cthulhupunk with other games

What investigator societies were there in Cthulhupunk again aside from the Miskatonic Society?
Strategos' Risk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-19-2008, 12:11 PM   #4
tantric
Banned
 
tantric's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Athens, GA
Default Re: Merging GURPS Cthulhupunk with other games

I sketched out a campaign for Cthulhupunk where ProvGov accidentally released Ithaqua, starting a new ice age.

"The N-Lab

Officially, the N-Lab is the Brunsen Exotic Particle Research Facility, but it is so buried in layers of deceptions and red tape that almost no one outside the lab knows it exists, and all those working there, scientist and military alike, call it by it's common name. It was established in 2031 to study the military application of Dr. Brunsen's discovery - namely, the x orbital (potential orbital paths for neutral electrons around ordinary atoms). Although Dr. Brunsen was award a Nobel prize, most of the world regarded his science as esoteric and useless. Deeply bitter and scorned by his colleges, the good doctor gladly accepted ProGov's funding and secrecy.

In 2034, Dr. Brusen apparently deliberately sabotaged an experiment. In one of the final scheduled tests with semichimps, following the FreakShow debacle, he managed to alter a progam so that all four flavors of neutrinon were being aimed at the subject, diverted massive amount of power into the lasers then stepped in the beams. The result was a total blackout and systems crash, followed by a burst of omega radiation that disoriented everyone in the lab for several hours. Dr. Brunsen himself simply vanished. He did not leave - the blackout activated emergency lock down, with no possible escape from the building. He was assumed to have been disentegrated, though no attempts to recreate the event have been allowed.

The N-Lab is in a very uncomfortable position - they have the tiger by the tail, and they know it. ProGov is radically opposed to anything even faintly occult, and everyone on the team knows that something Not Normal is going on. The General in charge, Gen. Chung, is desperately trying to save his career, if not his life. He suppresses and edits every bit of info leaving the lab, and has totally nixed and erased the entire Neutralizer project following the FreakShow. Dr. Brunsen's absense - well, it was an accident, regretable but unavoidable, and a properly charred corpse was produced....

The "FreakShow" is the local term for the experiments involving n-charging the brains of rats and semichimps. This was a favored line of development, showing great weapons potential, until the strawberry phase. One of the rats actually grew scales, followed by an insane growth spurt that showed no sign of ending. Another of the semichimps survived long enough to lay an egg, also utterly impossible. There is NO science, whatsoever, to explain the rapid and hideous devolution of the subjects. The whole thing smacked of Dr. Moreau, including an escaped "creature" that killed two technicians. The remaining subjects were viviscected, their bodies cremated and the entire line of research cancelled. The Neutralizers that were built, 10 prototypes, were locked in a vault along with all evidence of the experiments.

One of the problems with the N-Lab is that it is haunted, primarily by the souls of eight vivisceted semichimps, which turned into assorted varieties of monsters while retaining their near human intelligence. Semichimps are gengineered chimps which have been altered to make them more human, especially their brains, and much more resiliant. Production of such is outlawed by international treaty, but nevertheless continuing.

Current research centers around creating a neutrinon chain reaction, a kind of bomb that emits a withering blast of omega radiation. It seems that the noble gases have an extra x orbital, for a total of six, and there is thought that xenon plasma fully n-charged would set off a kind of wave collapse, where all the neutrinons would simultaneously convert to omega radiation. Results so far have been promising - with a new thrust using liquified pressurized xenon instead of plasma. The construction of a test contraption, involving a variable n-beam, a tube of liquid xenon and a gigawatt laser, are underway.

In actuality, the N-lab is already seeing results. The omega radiation discharges are slowly awakening Ithaqua, whose "tomb" is located slightly SE and about 10m down. Already the surrounding city is experiencing freakishly cold weather, including mini-Snaps - area of sudden temp drops that last only a few hours, but with often fatal results. Likewise, there seems to be a cult of cannibal serial killers on the loose, pursued secretly by NERCC. The original omega dose from Dr. Brunsen's exit psychically burned out everyone in the lab, leaving them mostly immune to Ithaqua siren song. "

AND

"The WeirdWar, which followed WWIII, began in 2037 with the Great Snap, which was a kind of very sudden Ice Age that completely froze Canada, Alaska and the northern USA. Millions died during the first six months from the cold alone, and millions more in the coming year from famine. In 2038, American scientists diagnosed the first case of Snap Syndrome, a bizarre kind of mental illness brought on by traumatic stress and famine. Six months later, the cause was traced to a prion contracted from eating human flesh, which affects the frontal lobes and slowly turns the victim into a kind a rabid predator, devoid of language but filled with cunning. In the winter of 2039, the Snap reached across the Pole to northern Eurasia, and it became clear that some agency was *causing* the freeze. Entire cities would vanish into a freezing fog and utter communications blackout, whereupon the citizen would riot and tear each other apart until they froze in place. Thermal imaging of the cloud showed a gigantic humanoid form at a totally impossible -500Centigrade (less than absolute zero, cold enough to freeze hydrogen solid), surrounded by waving tentacles of freezing cloud. The world media promptly dubbed it "wedigo", a name that was already on everyone's lips since the plague of cannibalism in North America. Conventional military assault had one noticable result: it proved that there was intent behind the Snaps. The assualts did zero damage to the Wendigo, but they DID annoy it, with the result of total loss of all attacking units. The first nuclear attack took it by surprise and apparently hurt it, but the attacking generals erred on the side of caution and used a single low yield device. It fled back to North America, only to return in 2040 - and this time, it simply froze any incoming missles and went about it's merry way. Over the next few years, while northern Eurasia froze and died, the surviving world governments orbited a ring of microwave beam station powerful enough to chase the invader back to the Arctic Circle. They did NOT actually kill it - the Arctic Circle is a permanent death zone, but the thing is apparently underneath the ice. The Ring of Fire was left on automatic detect and fire, and fitted with SOTA nanotech self-repairing systems. The WeirdWar represented humanity first brush with one of the Great Old Ones, just one of them, and resulted in the death of 2 billion people worldwide over five years and uncountable climatic damage to the entire globe. "
tantric is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-19-2008, 12:16 PM   #5
tantric
Banned
 
tantric's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Athens, GA
Default Re: Merging GURPS Cthulhupunk with other games

and, just for the bandwidth, and the fact that it sucks to create stuff that no-one else ever sees:

Omega Radiation

An ordinary atom consists of a nucleus of protons and neutrons surrounding by electrons orbiting it in stacked valence shells. Early in the 21st century it was discovered that many atoms have an empty "phantom" shell, christened the "x orbital". Rather than electrons, the x orbital potentially contains exotic neutrally charged particles with an electron sized mass (meaning very little). For convenience, these particles were renamed "neutrinons" - neutrino/electrons. The x orbital has two levels, each with room for two paired neutrinons.

Matter charged with neutrinons is unstable. The neutrinons disrupt regular strong and weak nuclear forces, making normal atoms subject to radioactive decay. "Neutrated" matter emits alpha, beta and gamma radiation, in addition to photons. If a lump of a single element is n-charged, after it normalizes it will be riddled with random elements as decay products. Only about .01% of the n-charged atoms undergo alpha decay and become different elements. On the other hand, n-charged matter exhibits it's own unique attractive force: a neutrated volume of gas will stay together rather than dispersing. In addition, n-charged matter is emits a unique form of radiation, dubbed "omega", which seems to exist on a purely quantum level.

Omega radiation is on the border of science and mystery. Machines that detect it are called "ambiobasometers", which measure fluxuations in local randomness and universal constants. Humans and other animals can detect omega radiation with varying degrees of sensitivity - it is often compared to a chill combined with dejas vu.

Neutrinons come in four spin types, officially called north, south, east and west. These names are totally ignored in favor of the ones given them by the scientist who discovered them: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and rockyroad. It is actually fairly simple to convert electrons to neutrinons, resulting in a portable neutrinon particle beam.

Neutrinons will not enter the x orbital unless engergistically excited. This is accomplished via focused coherent light of very specific wavelengths. Little energy is required, just great precision, and thus the lasers used are simple and mostly harmless - rather like pointer beams. Thus far three frequencies have been discovered: one on the edge of ultraviolet (uvlue), one in the x-ray spectrum ('zray), and one in green band of visible light (emreen).

Thus n-charging matter with neutrinons thus involves an intersection of a finely tuned laser and a neutrinon particle beam. The N-Lab has several prototype backpack sized Neutralizers. The back-unit is a particle decelerator, the front is a series of rechargable feul cells. The unit is connected to two gauntlets - the left is a particle beam, the right has three laser lights. The Neutralizer can produce all flavors of neutrinons, but has to be cleared and reset between each type.

The N-Lab has found several military applications for omega radiation. In particular, the 'zray laser can create pockets of n-charged matter inside of living being. On test subjects (gengineered rats and semichimps), this has rather spectacular effects. Chocolate n-charge in a mammalian brain produces powerful, long lasting delusions and violent behavior. Applied to noncerebral tissue, it produces muscle spasm and localized spastic paralysis. Vanilla n-charge produces a temporary coma, with no detectable brain function or localized flaccid paralysis and anesthesia. Strawberry n-charge seems to drastically increase the subject's ability to detect omega radiation, and perhaps other psychic phenomena. Rockyroad n-charge produces a kind of delayed metabolic chain reaction that produces weird nonharmful tumors and growths and something like bodily devolution - one of the semichimps actually became a kind of giant arboreal rodent and then layed an egg before dying. The egg is still in cold storage.

Needless to say, the Neutralizer is HIGHLY classified. Some of the results are just too frightening to reveal. Likewise, the army has much more effective means of making people dead. Nevertheless, research continues.
tantric is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-06-2009, 01:28 AM   #6
Strategos' Risk
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Default Re: Merging GURPS Cthulhupunk with other games

Didn't you used to have a Cpunk site? Whatever happened to it?
Strategos' Risk is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
cthulhupunk

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 10:58 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.