There's plenty more work to be done, and I'm open to all ideas. How far in the future should it be? Have the End Times occurred on Earth? If not, why not? Is mankind en masse aware of extra-terrestrial life? It's less faithful to the creeping horror of the game if armies of humans battle it out with armies of Mi-Go or Shan like in Cthulhutech, but how can humanity have spread farther than the solar system if they haven't (what with Pluto being what it is)? How much control does the corporation, and others like it, hold over the interplanetary human government?

So many questions. What ideas can /tg/ offer?

I assume you've seen Event Horizon.

>>17379358
No, I have not.
But, looking at descriptions from Google, it looks like some 'research' that will be going on my Lovefilm rental list.

>>17379345
>I want to design a new far-future setting for CoC; something more in the vein of Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Jesus fucking Christ, YES.

>Is mankind en masse aware of extra-terrestrial life? It's less faithful to the creeping horror of the game if armies of humans battle it out with armies of Mi-Go or Shan like in Cthulhutech
If, like you say, you want to avoid the mass-scale conflict with alien races (I agree with you whole-heartedly), you're either going to have to make humanity really REALLY ignorant of how close aliens are, or you're going to have to start adding fluff as to why those species are hiding, or atleast left the solar system.

I would suggest that humanity holds control (in theory) of our own solar system, with colonies and terraforming projects further outside that scope. I love the magitech gate thing, but you'll need to find a way to make long spaceship journeys still necessary with such technology. The movies you've mentioned use cryogenics during long space trips, which I think sounds better than hopping from one planet to another- but it does mean that campaigns may spread over a long period of time.

I think corporations could be very interesting in this. I love the sound of L&K/SK. Give plenty of thought to the name.

Also, if Cthulhu still dreams, can he still reach humans in cryosleep?

A little rule-of-thumb I tend to use in my CoC games, is that it's impossible to make a true artificial intelligence. In my games, if anyone ever made a real AI, they would find that in every case it would be incurably insane. No exceptions.

It's just one of those creepy little things I thought of. Use it if you want. Or it can be any AI that reaches a certain amount of operating power, or exists a certain length of time, etc.

Space Station prisons/asylums?
Great Old Ones from other planets?
Abandoned civilisations on ruined planets?
Colours Out of Space drifting through deep space (that is supposedly where they come from)?

The gate idea is great, but a lot of sci-fi horror is based in long amounts of time spent in space. Gates would make trips too short. You need to figure out a downside or limitation. I could see cryogenics
being used, though.

Also, I had a kickass image of an avatar of Y'golonac with cybernetic parts, but I can't find it.

I think the greatest terror to be found in space, would be that we are totally alone within reasonable distance. (Assuming no FTL travel) Maybe that the universe is far, far older than we predicted, and is in fact, in its death throes. Great Civilizations have risen and fallen into the dust, and all mankind will find is the faint remnants of Galaxy-spanning empires on dead worlds.

>>17379647

>long amounts of time in space

Not only that. One of the reasons I think space horror would work really well with Lovecraft is that they have a common theme of what you might call "scale", specifically a scale that we are at the wrong end of. That is, it's all about blasting the protagonist (and reader) with the message "YOU ARE INSIGNIFICANT. THERE IS LITERALLY NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOU EXISITING AND YOU NOT-EXISITING."

To wit, you need to have your game focus on isolation (spaceships operate on skeleton crews) and are absolutely huge. Think Red Dwarf, but played deadly straight. Everything they come to is bizarre, incomprehensible and EVEN HUGER.

Bumping, because this has great potential.

I think the idea of the players being sent on a mission of discovery to the centre of the universe is brilliant. But it's worth stating that, of course, that will take a very VERY long time. There will obviously be no gate out there yet- perhaps one of their objectives is to establish a gate at the centre if possible? Maybe the expedition is funded by the gate corporation?

If you're looking to pull things from the We Won't Need Eyes thread, you can give the crew orders to discover the fates of the previous Artemis voyages, and salvage equipment. Those can be the haunted craft from that old thread.

If you wanted to use the Kill Team, then maybe after an extremely long amount of time in space, the human government (or what humans have now become) themselves send the team, fitted with disturbing new technology from Silver Key or some other corporation, to stop the expedition- after discovering that humans disturbing the centre of the universe could be extremely dangerous for the rest of the species' survival.
Then you have that incredible moment when the players finally kill one of the Kill Team, only to find that the unrecognisably alien (or completely human, if you think that would shock them more) assassin's suit was made by the human government. Or Silver Key, whatever.

>>17379791
>Think Red Dwarf
Or Alien. That had a massive spacecraft.

Cththonian Stars/The Void is a nice adaptation of Lovecraftian themes in space. It's by the Cthulhutech folks, but doesn't have most of those influences you were decrying earlier. It currently exists on the Traveler ruleset with a single book, but more will be published... well, I'm not holding my breath,

Wasn't there a CoC Space adaption released recently that wasnt Cthulhutech?

It was originally called 'Cthonian Stars' but they decided the name sucked, and renamed it 'The Void'. I have a prerelease .pdf of it here somewhere (From when it was still Cthonian Stars) if your interested.

>>17379840
>I have a prerelease .pdf of it here somewhere (From when it was still Cthonian Stars) if your interested.
I'd definately like to look at it.
Thanks for all the brilliant ideas by the way, guys.

>>17379858
Ok, give me a few minutes to upload it. Slow connection so could be ~10minutes

>>17379647
There are plenty of Great Old Ones from other planets. Also the Moon.
OP, you could find all of them on the Malleus Monstrorum for regular CoC.

Or I can simply put together a list for you and put it up here.

"Somewhere out there in the vast nothingness of space,
Somewhere far away in space and time,
Staring upward at the gleaming stars in the obsidian sky,
We're marooned on a small island, in an endless sea
Confined to a tiny spit of sand, unable to escape.."

Lyrics from some Pendulum song, but it makes me shiver to think about it. Really emphasize the abject terror of the fact there is nothing out there, at least not in this dimension of space. Everythings dead, Jim.

>>17379871
I have my own PDF, but thank you. I know Great Old Ones are spread out on a cosmic scale- although the books focus (quite naturally) on those on Earth. There's room to invent new entities which may or may not have larger roles in a spacefaring CoC game.

Or, they can exert influence in more subtle ways. Isolation sounds like it would be a key element in most of these ideas, and facing off against an alien threat or cosmic entity every session might break that.

>>17379858
Ok, heres The Void for those who want a look
>>http://db.tt/eEK5Heey
You could probably find a more up to date version somewhere, if you need to.

Also, since I keep trying to share this, but always end up late to a dead thread, here is a Lovecraftian Choose-your-own-adventure that I found a while back, and its definitely worth a play. Not too long, and some tricky puzzles. keep a notebook handy for remembering important words and such.

http://db.tt/SUD9PCh5

You should look into the Exsurgent Virus from Eclipse Phase.

>>17379347 (what with Pluto being what it is)?
Pluto giving you problems? Just remove the damn place. Before the first human probe ever got all that close, the whole bloody thing just vanished, without any trace whatsoever. A number of astronomers have supposedly gone insane trying to figure out what happened.

This both gets rid of the whole MiGo issue for you, and it also tells your players that they're (potentially) playing with some serious bad juju as mythos stuff appears.

>the players are the crew of a ship sent on a voyage of discovery to the centre of the universe.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the traveller in the dark.
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
How I wonder what you are.
How I wonder what you are.

Human curiosity should be prevalant, to the detriment of its safety.

The universe is really fucking big.

Use that.

>>17379945
I like this.

In Cthulhutech the Mi-Go were one of the factions actively preventing the return of the GOOs. Maybe one of them finally removed them from the gameboard.

You might want to look into "Knights of Sidonia" for inspiration. It's a manga by everyone's favourite guy Nihei and apparently it's about a millenium old seed ship flying through space after earth has been destroyed by space cthulhus. They have mechs to fight them off, but only very, very poorly.

OP, add this to your must-watch films list. its not lovecraftian horror, but you could easily tie it in with the idea of Elder Gods having easier access to the subconscious of humans due to the proliferation of cyrosleep.

>>wake up on space ship
>>Dont know why your there, or who you are
>>Everyone is insane, a lot of people have gone mad from the dreams, and feral

>>17380004
My head hurts.

>>17380016
Or maybe they left anticipating the End Times, like the Elder Things supposedly did in Delta Green. And the Mi-Go planned to do after the whole Gray thing.

Come to think of it, it's looking like we can't get away from SOMETHING going wrong with Earth sooner or later. Is there some way or reason to keep Earth habitable, or is humanity based in the solar system at large, with Earth becoming uninhabitable GOO territory?

Or maybe the End Times came and went? Some of humanity was evacuated and survived among the solar system/on space stations (think about this later), but when it died down, little remnents of human civilisation on Earth were left but ruins and buried secrets.

>>17380047
derp. Forgot link. Its called Pandorum.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188729/

>>17380055
Unless the cause of the end of the world was covered up as a meteorite, global warming, solar flare etc, that would lead to widespread knowledge of things like GOO existing. Although that could have been covered up, I could see that happening.

We should assume that Earth is either inhospitable, and therefore barely worth reclaiming, or that it's off-limits, for fear of the existance of GOOs being discovered. The government might claim it is extremely toxic and radioactive, even though it's not.

This is sounding pretty intense, actually.

>>17380113
>the cause of the end of the world was covered up as a meteorite, global warming, solar flare etc
Could you get away with that? I mean, could you evacuate millions, perhaps billions of people without them realising that the encroaching solar flare/whatever is actually a league of giant monsters from under the sea and beyond space?

Speaking of which, who would be evacuated? And who would be left behind? Presumably, not everyone can be saved.

>>17380055 Or maybe the End Times came and went? Some of humanity was evacuated and survived among the solar system/on space stations (think about this later), but when it died down, little remnents of human civilisation on Earth were left but ruins and buried secrets.

A Colder War anyone? Google if you don't know what I'm talking about.

>>17380160
Its more likely that the survivors are the people from other colonies, on mars and such, or in stations.

Earth being wiped out or overrun by Elder Things they would cover up as some freak disaster, and quarantine the whole area of space around it. Some explorers are reckless and venture into the quarantine zone, and go mad when they see whats on the planets surface.

If you're going to have some sort of government cover-up of GOO destruction, I'd strongly advise that the government not understand what they're covering up, i.e. Delta Green, where there's people who know that weird shit exists, but nothing like on the scale of GOOs.

As far as limiting the widespread use of the Silver Key transport system, perhaps, rather than true gates, the Weyland/Yutani founders (The Carters?) made some sort of pact with Yog-Sothoth/Tawil-at-U'mr, which adds significant complications to the use of the process, though obviously it would still be advantageous in certain situations. Perhaps it facilitates the all-important FTL communication, but has limited applications for travel?

I wouldn't make the PCs mission to head for the center of the universe, but rather either general exploration, or a (relatively) much more immediate goal.

>>17380194
>The Carter family founded the Silver Key Corporation with technology from a pact with Yog-Sothoth/Tawil-at-U'mr
This is gold. Pure gold.

So humanity spread through the solar system, but lost contact to Earth at some point. Some Delta Green personnel are involved in reestablishing contact and go down onto the planet. They go down, see what's happened. Delta Green knows it's the End Times, and imposes a quarantine, covering it up as a worldwide natural disaster.

If we want to avoid this becoming DG In Space rather than CoC In Space, should we have this be the extent of their influence? The few surviving members got their shit together, explained to Humanity's leaders why they really can't let anyone go to Earth, and that's where Delta Green ends.

>>17380302

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that DG orchestrates the cover-up. I can't imagine they'd survive long enough to be a factor in this. I meant that whatever group (government, military, what-have-you) orchestrates the cover-up should only have a minimal idea of what actually happened to Earth, only that it's something that should be kept secret.

>>17380302
>The few surviving members got their shit together, explained to Humanity's leaders why they really can't let anyone go to Earth, and that's where Delta Green ends.
That sounds fine, but may I suggest that it's the last few surviving members of Delta Green and Majestic 12 (seeing as M12 would inevitably be amongst the first people to set up colonies off-planet). In the end, they've set aside their differences to ensure humanity doesn't try to go back to Earth. They die having done their duties. Happy ending for them.

I like the thought of being able to get on the planet to explore the ruins and uncover the dark truths, but that doesn't make sense if titan GOO still walk around. How long should the End Times have lasted before dying down, and Earth still being off-limits regardless? To that effect, what year is it by default?

>>17380352
~3400s for year?

If Delta Green Operatives successfully located Earth (Assuming we spread so far and the return gates failed for some unknown reason (End Times) Cutting the colonies off from Sol entirely.

DG finds Earth, and finds out what happened, many of them die or go mad because of what they find, and a 'dead mans hand' scenario is triggered, destroying evidence of this mission, killing members of DG and other groups who might know too much, etc , giving you an overarching conspiracy about the whole deal. Someone out there has the files to show what happened when we made it back to Sol. And why we can never, ever, go back again.

>>17380400
By AD 3400 humanity has no excuse for not having an anti-azathoth missile.

>>17380400
>Cutting the colonies off from Sol entirely.
Should we assume that a large portion of the human population is still within the Solar sytem? The Moon, Space Station(s), Mars etc would logically be the first places colonies would be set up. I would see the 'centre' of Humanity's influence being the solar system, unless we decide that the End Times somehow damages the rest of the solar system. The moon, maybe.

>>17380489
This sounds more and more like "Eclipse Phase without transhumanism."

>>17380489
Anyone within immediate contact with earth when the End Times begin would likely lose a healthy dose of sanity. Stations orbiting Earth would likely be gone feral. Mars and other colonies would escape the brunt of it, but be seriously affected. The moon? Blow that motherfucker up. Would make a great setpiece if players ever make it back. A fragmented moon, orbiting earth in chunks, falling into the atmosphere and adding to the destruction on the planets surface.

>>17380400
>>17380453
I agree. Two-thousand, something-hundred and something.

Let's try and put years to these events:

Colony on the moon
>First man on Mars
>Colony on Mars
Bunch of colonies on a bunch of planets, yada yada...
>First planet-independent space station
>The Carter Family-owned corporation Silver Key first begin to produce Gates after a pact with Yog Sothoth (possibly tied in with the End Times?)
>Pluto disappears from all sensory equipment as quickly as it was first discovered (see Whisperer in Darkness). Possible coverup/explanation? Very shortly followed by:...
>End times on Earth begin.
>DG/MJ investigate. Figure out what's up, get interplanetary government to declare quarantine.
>DG/MJ die out.
>End times on Earth end.

I love where this is going, but I've got to go. If this could please, PLEASE get archived then I can read it tomorrow.

Feel free to edit this loose timeline as more ideas arise. Again, thanks. I love where this is going.

Acquaint yourself with the video game Dead Space. It does Eldritch Horror in Space well.

>>17380585
Done.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/17379345/
Goodnight, OP. Good luck with your setting.

>>17380642
For the first hour. Not saying it's a bad game, but it stops being scary once you've figured out their tricks.

>>17380055
Humanity has survived because the greater powers didn't notice them or considered them not worth the effort.

That's changed. Cthulhu is waking, cults are moving, Nyarlathotep walks around freely doing whatever...

Not much Humanity can do. Maybe a generation ship or two to try to save the species, but that's all. The rest are left behind to fight to the death.

Oh wow, this thread is still here?

Bumping for new time zone. Unfortunately, I have to drive to Lowestoft for new years, but atleast this will be archived.

I scanned my notes during the night and realised one thing I forgot to mention- I intended the corporation's slogan to be "Opening the way". Just thought you'd like to know that.

Again, thanks for all the help and ideas.

>>17383117
This is really good stuff, OP. I hope your game goes well.

Nice work on the stylised Elder Sign logo. It took a few moments, but I see it.

You could take a look at Cthulhu Rising, I think it has a similar premise:

http://www.cthulhurising.co.uk/

>>17379464
>I love the magitech gate thing, but you'll need to find a way to make long spaceship journeys still necessary with such technology. The movies you've mentioned use cryogenics during long space trips, which I think sounds better than hopping from one planet to another- but it does mean that campaigns may spread over a long period of time.

You can't be awake when you cross the gate. You sign a waiver that the company takes no responsibility for what happens otherwise.

The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath his dangling feet. "You had no choice.''

"Yes I did! I didn't have to come here.'' He pauses. "I didn't have to do anything,'' he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of death. "It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.''

"-- Evitable,'' echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans whirring within its belly, the F117 hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. "Your family could still be alive, you know.''

He looks up. "They could?'' Andrea? Jason? "Alive?''

The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.''

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/8892669/
Maybe this could help a bit, haven't read your thread so I don't really know what kind of stuff you've got.

Bump for more, I love the idea of sci-fi Cthulhu without furries and rape factories.

>>17379647
How about this for a downside: To the outside world gate travel is instantaneous, but to the perspective of those on-board, the journey can take years, or even decades to complete. You get all the benefits of quick interstellar travel, and you can keep those lengthy periods in space.

>>17379498

That gives me an idea for a setting:

With the development of gate travel, it seemed that mankind could finally reach the stars. It seemed simple, trivial almost. One didn't even have to experience the long years in transit. You simply stepped into cryosleep and let the AIs do the rest.

That was, until someone actually tried it.

In spite of every safeguard, every backup, every single bit of planning, every AI on board manged to do something that all the scientists would have told you was impossible: go completely and murderously insane.

The 3,000 dead presented a problem, but man was not to be denied the stars. The solution was simple: teams, working in 3 year long shifts, would watch over the thousands who slept, protecting them from the dangers of interstellar travel. The successes were massive. Space travel became one of the safest methods of transportation.

Until now...

bump

OP, there already exists a sci-fi Cthulhu setting and system. It's more CoC/Aliens than Cthulhutech, too.

http://www.cthulhurising.co.uk/

>>17386543
>How about this for a downside: To the outside world gate travel is instantaneous, but to the perspective of those on-board, the journey can take years, or even decades to complete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jaunt

Working from a slightly different premise
>>Why haven't the Mi-Go interefered?
Because space is fucking enormous. When boosting out-system costs more energy by a factor of 1500 than opening a stable gate for a few seconds, who's got any reason to leave orbit? Huge, stable, orbiting gate complexes serve the 99.99% of Humanity that has no idea with what they are fucking.Sure, latent Psi talents and AIs go ratshit insane when they take the Gates, and sure, you can't transport animals particularly safely (alive, anyway: fertilized ova and meat come through okay). But for your average schlub it's like a plane trip with stricter decon procedures before and after.

The Pact with Umr'At'Tawil, the Elder of Ways? It's a deal that sells out a certain percentage of Dreamers to make sure that the souls that come out are attached to the bodies they came in with. Anchoring their 4th through 9th dimensions, if you will.

>The Corporation
It's important to remember, even most Regional Managers will have no fucking idea who or what they work for - remember, Carter I was last seen in the body of an immortal Lizard-priest, he could still be running the place as far as anyone knows. They aren't evil, necessarily, but they take safety very seriously; you follow the directions of those "technicians" in the yellow jumpsuits, or your ass is grass inside the Company.

>>AIs
Meanwhile, Andies and AIs crew the Slowships, with a rigidly maintained human leash (all logs are >required< to be maintained in pen-and-ink by a human, to keep the bots from falsifying them easily, among other things..).

Journeys are planned very carefully around avoiding "Hot Zones" (first identified after a rigorous study of the Antarctic Ruins, and confirmed with the use of a few Slowships. Ones that didn't report back had found one..) where alien life has definitely lived or is living. Turns out people react.. badly when confronted with a truly alien being, even the (relatively) friendly ones like the Great Race or the Old Ones.

Plot ideas/nuggets
• One of Silver Key's top Technicians is a Whisperer converted by the Fungi.
• Randolph Carter is body-jacking to maintain his iron control of the Corporation, certain that the Aged of Ways will try to weasel out of the contract once Carter's not personally supervising everything. (He's probably wrong.)
• The "murderous" Andies that went through the gates? Most people don't know how focused - or obsessive - their rage is. No-one but the Technicians knows the time and place from which comes the language which they now speak...
• Happy the town where no Wizard is buried.

Who's space-faring in this setting? The Deep Ones are pure Earth. Scum evolved from shoggoth fingernail clippings. So are humans, but humans got to SPAAAAACE! Deep Ones might not have and are either dead or the attendants of Cthulu on Earth.

Mi-Go own space, but not where humans go. The Elder Things (who though strange were MEN! and thus potential allies) and the star-spawn of Cthulu both came from space. But we don't know if either species is extant off planet after tens of millions of years after the great war that broke apart Pangea.

You know, all this talk makes me realize something: The Culture is our 'win condition'.

Bear with me here, I don't mean the actual Culture, I mean their way of life. An entirely spacefaring race that does all it can to be as low-impacting as possible (so as to not draw 'attention') and as anarchistic as possible (so as to naturally contain dark knowledge and incidents of 'sublimation').

Makes sense, doesn't it?

Eclipse Phase would be a pretty good model to go for.

It's pretty easy to directly make it into a Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green future game as is. Just say the Factors are the latest stage of the Gray Deception for a humanity that's moved beyond the need to have aliens be little grey men. In order to keep themselves hidden, they've left Yuggoth/Pluto behind, leaving only the ruins that were there before they were. The TITANs either went insane because they advanced to such a stage of development that they, like many psychically sensitive humans before them, heard Cthulhu's dream-messages and decoded them and then decided they should do Cthulhu's work for him, or decided the best way they could protect humanity would be to force humanity off the Earth in a bloody total war and then stop them going back, so when the End Times happen, humanity is safe. Firewall are the international remnants of PISCES/DG/MAJESTIC/GRU-SV8 who got together and decided to organise themselves to fight the Mythos and their TITAN servants.

Cthonian Stars/The Void is also a pretty good example, as has already been mentioned.

>>17394787
Holy fuck, that's brilliant.

ITT: Casual faggots who have never heard of Cthulhu Rising.

>>17387295
Dammit, you caught me.

For those looking to get into the sci fi horror mood, I'd recommend the film Cargo -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381940/

Okay so It's not actually a horror film, more a thriller; but it totally nails the whole lonely atmosphere, with massive ships crewed by a handful of people taking months-long turns out of stasis.

Buckle up.
Prometheus is coming.

There's a reason why modern spaceships don't have direct viewing galleries into space. If you stare too long at the void... it will stare back. And sometimes they do more than just stare.