SuperDaveI’ve recently read UA2, and for some reason it grabbed me a lot harder than when I read the first edition, what, a couple years back? ANd it grabbed me pretty good then. Anyway, I got thinking about UA/CoC/DG too.
It seems to me that the first thing you gotta do is resolve the Big Cosmic Dilemma, which is that UA treats humanity as the pinnacle of existence, whereas a Lovecraftian universe is predicated on humanity being a tiny little flyspeck on the Great Old Ones’ fried eggs. Once you do that, everything else falls into place readily enough.
There’s a lot of ways to go about it, but what I’m planning on, for the moment, is merging the Dreamlands with the Statosphere. The Celestial Chorus are the gods of the collective unconscious, after all, so they fit just fine in the DLs. But when the Chorus is full, the result is not a total makeover of the universe–it’s much more local. What you get is the birth of the Human Godhead, something that can compete with and defend us from critters like Cthulhu (who happens to be the Star-Spawn Godhead).
And since the Chorus is almost full (naturally), not only is it crucial for the players to influence the nature of that Godhead by trying to get the right Ascensions up there (who wants an evil Godhead? plenty of people, unfortunately), it’s also a very dangerous time, as the movers and shakers of the cosmos are starting to notice these little hairless-monkey things. We’re accumulating just enough power to attract attention, without having enough to defend ourselves.
The rest of it–game system, ritual magic (all CoC magic can be turned into UA rituals–the most powerful spells can be major rituals), adepts and avatars, madness, monsters, and so on all slot together without a lot of trouble.
DonatoIf you go with a more Lumleyian cosmos than the Celestial Chorus could be a construct by the Elder Gods to give humanity some kind of fighting chance against the Great Old Ones and influence its own future in a small way.
Or you can say that the whole Stratosphere/Celestia Chorus concept is a big lie perpetrated by Nyarlathotep and that Avatars, Adepts and Godwalkers ascend straight to the throne of Azathoth.
The Naked Goddess? Now a love-slave to some nameless tentacled Outer God.
Comte the St. Germain? Well, he is Nyarlathotep of course.
The Adepts in the OU are just competing in a race towards madness, insanity and destruction.
SuperDaveI like that too, Donato. And I was figuring on leaving the St. Germain/Nyarlathotep question open–is he helping us just so that when he steps up as #333, he’ll infect our Godhead with his Nyarlathoteppy self? Which would make humans into the latest Minor Servitor Race.
I like to use Lumley-esque/Derlethian ideas as smokescreens, since they’re so obvious and essentially hopeful that they’re the kind of thing humans who don’t really understand the nature of the universe would come up with.
But then so is the idea of Godhead, too–although a new, weak Godhead would probably be no match for the likes of Cthulhu. Unless ours got powered up by, say, the sacrifice of a billion souls first. Or five billion. Or, what the heck, all six billion–who needs ’em anyway?
DonatoI think we have the seeds for a cool campaign SuperDave…….
The PC’s come to the realization that the Celestial Chorus want to destroy the whole of humanity as soon as #333 ascends. There are no “good” or “evil” ascensions as the Celestial Chorus exists for the single purpose to sacrifice the whole of humanity to create a Godhead powerful enough to oppose the Great Old Ones.
So, what will the PC’s do? Stop people from ascending and thereby help the Great Old Ones, or don’t stop people ascending and thereby destroy humanity.
How will they react when they learn that there are no “good” or “bad” guys in the OU. What will they do now that they know that there exists ultimate evil on a cosmic scale that dwarves the Stratosphere.
Will they join Delta Green?
Meanwhile, Nyarlathotep watches and laughs as they all play right in his hands.
SuperDaveSweet.
I think, though, that I’d give them the chance to try to influence the ascensions so that they’d end up with a Godhead that just might have enough humanity in it so that it decides not to devour large chunks of the population. Hope can be a great motivator, even if the chances are very slim. I know some may say that hope is anti-Lovecraftian, and I agree, but we’re talking about merging the CoC and UA settings, and UA has a lot of room for hope. I don’t think it would be UA if there weren’t a chance of making things better.
I’ve also come across this site–not sure who it belongs to, but I bet it’s somebody well-known around these parts: http://www.angelfire.com/ma/starrywisdom/ To whoever made it, kudos!
Now to play with ideas about merging the House of Renunciation with Carcosa. Mwahahahahahaa!
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.