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 06-18-2017, 07:57 AM   #1
jacobmuller
 
jacobmuller's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Not in your time zone:D
Default (Horror {Madness}) SciFi Cthulhu request

Has anyone done their own Madness Tables for Science Fiction or Cthulhu settings?
Can I have a copy please? Not for distribution or even player perusal, just wondering what sensible people might come up with:D
[s+ysf]=[a+ysr]
__________________
"Sanity is a bourgeois meme." Exegeek
PS sorry I'm a Parthian shootist: shiftwork + out of country = not here when you are:/
It's all in the reflexes
jacobmuller is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-18-2017, 10:12 AM   #2
ericbsmith
 
ericbsmith's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Binghamton, NY, USA. Near the river Styx in the 5th Circle.
Default Re: (Horror {Madness}) SciFi Cthulhu request

GURPS Cthulhu Punk had special rules for Mythos Fright Checks that boil down to "Halve the target number before making a Fright Check roll." That is, if you normally have IQ 12, Will +3, Combat Reflexes (+2) and Fearlessness +3 your normal Freight Check would be against a 20, but your Mythos Fright Check is against a 10 or less. It also suggests that no bonus from any source can be greater than +2 before the halving, so in reality the above roll would have been limited to 18/2=9 or less.

So there's no special tables for Mythos Fright Checks, but you are going to fail a whole lot more Mythos Fright Check rolls than normal Fright Check rolls.
__________________
Eric B. Smith GURPS Data File Coordinator
GURPSLand
I shall pull the pin from this healing grenade and...
Kaboom-baya.
ericbsmith is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-18-2017, 10:11 PM   #3
safisher
Gunnery Sergeant,
 Imperial Marines
Coauthor,
 GURPS High-Tech
 
safisher's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Default Re: (Horror {Madness}) SciFi Cthulhu request

Quote:
Originally Posted by jacobmuller View Post
Has anyone done their own Madness Tables for Science Fiction or Cthulhu settings?
Are you talking about the Madness table in GURPS Horror 4e?
__________________
Buy my stuff on E23.
My GURPS blog, Dark Journeys, is here.
Fav Blogs: Doug Cole here , C.R. Rice's here, & Hans Christian Vortisch here.
safisher is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 06-19-2017, 07:59 AM   #4
jacobmuller
 
jacobmuller's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Not in your time zone:D
Default Re: (Horror {Madness}) SciFi Cthulhu request

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
Are you talking about the Madness table in GURPS Horror 4e?
Yes indeedly. Should have specified.
As for Mythos, I'm tempted to use the basic stat/2+3 ala dodge etc but, I'll still need to put some work into madness tables - non euclidean of course.
__________________
"Sanity is a bourgeois meme." Exegeek
PS sorry I'm a Parthian shootist: shiftwork + out of country = not here when you are:/
It's all in the reflexes
jacobmuller is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-19-2017, 08:19 PM   #5
acrosome
 
acrosome's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: The Land of Enchantment
Default Re: (Horror {Madness}) SciFi Cthulhu request

Frankly GURPS Horror covers anything you might need for Cthuloid terrors.* It is absolutely vital for any horror-ish campaign, including Lovecraftian ones. Give the TMWNMTK however many levels of Terror (Cosmic) you need, and that will push the fright check tables into Really Bad Territory. (I'm one of many who have bashed out a system to convert Chaosium CoC products to GURPS terms.)

Or do you just mean a list of phobias and such, like in some of the Chaosium products?

EDIT- Ah, I see what you mean. Like the tables on Horror p.143-144. No, sorry, I haven't produced anything like that specifically for totally-not-GURPSified-CoC. Removing a few of the less-setting-appropriate results from the Gothic version and throwing Phobias in there, perhaps with a sub-table, would probably work well.

*And IMHO is the best GURPS product ever made.

Last edited by acrosome; 06-19-2017 at 08:31 PM.
acrosome is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-30-2017, 10:47 AM   #6
Adversary
 
Join Date: Apr 2010
Default Re: (Horror {Madness}) SciFi Cthulhu request

Years ago I designed a fright-check system for a modern Lovecraftian horror game. My main dissatisfaction with the fright-check systems in the game was that after a certain point in the results table the short-term effect was just a longer and longer period of unconsciousness. Also, I wanted to mimic CofC's feeling of progressing towards both temporary insanity and long-term instability and madness.

So my results chart did have results where the character lost consciousness, but also had results like running away, hysterical laughter, nausea, catatonia, self-harm, nonsensical action, etc. And the table wasn't entirely linear. If after missing your fright check you rolled a result of 10, you might faint for 1d6 rounds; 11--run away for 1d6 rounds; 12 sob for 2d6 rounds; 13 all-out attack for 1d3 rounds; 14 faint for 2d6 rounds; etc. I wanted it to feel like "if you roll on this chart you don't know what will happen," not "if you roll high on this chart you know you are going to be unconscious (and not playing)."

The second thing I did was that each result on the chart had both a short term and a permanent penalty on future fright checks.
11 -0/-1 run away 1d6 rounds
12 -0/-2 sob for 2d6 rounds
13 -1/-3 all-out attack

etc. So if you failed one mythos fright check with a 13, further checks in that encounter would be at -3, and further checks in the lifetime of the character would be at -1. This could get quite brutal if the character failed multiple checks in one encounter.

I only used my system on one campaign, it wasn't rigorously play-tested. But it did the job I wanted it to do. One encounter was memorably resolved when the only character who was in position to save his comrade from the horrible mind-worms missed his fright check, but then rolled "all-out attack" for his result. Mind-worms are terrifying but go squish quite nicely.
Adversary is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
cthulhu, horror, science fiction

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 01:40 PM.


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