I just want to say Cultist Simulator is cool as shit and they should make it into a tabletop game.

>>76133325
The atmosphere might be tough to nail as a gm especially the lore exploration as gameplay. Maybe Gumshoe would fit?

I think the lore is nice, but it is quite minimalist, as a design choice. I don't think developer put that much thought into bigger questions about the setting either.

>>76133325
>>76133344
you don't need to rpgfy every vidya/movie/anime you like, some vidya can stay as vidya etc. But if you are curious to play horror/mystery Call of Cthulhu is always there

>>76133355
Call of Cthulhu is investigator-oriented and drawing inspiration from the "feel" of a property can only enrich tabletop even if only by working out what's best suited to each medium.

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>>76133303
>ywn dance to the beat eternal
>ywn summon the percussigant to lead a conga line into an abandoned hospital
>ywn sway a federal investigator via song and dance
Why even live?

>>76133378
Wasn't there an "other side" sourcebook in coc? You know playing the cultists rather than the investigators, maybe my memory fails me on this.

I absolutely disagree with inspiration, I think too many people get their inspiration from wrong sources, vidya/anime/movies should be the last place of taking inspiration. I had far too many homebrew sci-fi settings which was an amalgamation of 40k-mass effect and star wars. Because these were the only things the creator knew.
I think inspiration should come from reading first and foremost. People don't read nowadays, I know this is a boomer rant but it is true. So everyone takes inspiration from the same 2-3 sources which makes things dull.
There is nothing wrong with looking into Cultist simulator but I think one should read Lovecraft or better Robert Chambers rather than the few paragraphs the developer had written in as game lore.

>>76133303
The emperor could never reconcile the reality of the fact that should I heat a frying pan up to a very high heat and sit on it I would be able to burn both my anus and balls, shit on the pan and make the poo very hot also.
He seemed to question the validity of multi burning for it's own sake, rather than accept the practicality and time saving made by burning so many things at once.

>>76133442
Not him, but I think inspiration can come from mainstream media or from popular properties, but it would benefit someone to follow the thread back into the media that inspired that property - the books, movies, etc. that brings us the Mass Effects and 40Ks of the world.

>>76133442
I'm not going to argue against more inspiration always being preferable but saying that excludes non-book media is absurd. The more the merrier and video games in particular can provide a model for interaction which text alone simply can't.

If you're not familiar

https://cultistsimulator.gamepedia.com/Principle
https://cultistsimulator.gamepedia.com/Hours
https://cultistsimulator.gamepedia.com/Mansus

Cultist Simulator has a kind of eldritch/occult Cosmic Horror setting where the universe is ruled over by godlike beings called Hours, some of which used to be human but most of which never were, who themselves embody cosmic archetypal forces called Principles that one can use to ascend beyond the mundane world. The Mansus is the literalized metaphor through which you do such ascension and also dwelling place of the Hours and their servants. Obviously the whole thing bears fair resemblance to Chaos and the Warp, but more nuanced and more alien in a lot of ways. It's also more obvious how a person can start down the path of obsession with one of the Principles since the horror and inhumanity of them tends to come later, either after you've failed or after you're well beyond the point of caring.

>>76133303
I mean, the Hours aren't actively malignant like the Chaos Gods are. Becoming a Long fundamentally changes you sure, but it doesn't necessarily require you becoming literally baby-eating levels of evil unless you fall to say, the Moth or an God-From-Nowhere. You can even become a new Hour if you try hard enough, like the Gods-From-Flesh did.

>>76133303
Magnus would probably fall to Lantern or Secret Histories and would worship the Door In The Eye, Angron is clearly Edge and Grail and worships the Red Grail and Wolf Divided, Vulkan is Heart and Knock and is a shoe-in for serving the Horned Axe, Fulgrim is Heart and is a Thunderskin servant. And Mortarion falls to the Crowned Growth.

Not sure about the rest.

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>>76133442
Alexis Kennedy-the writer of Sunless Sea and Cultist Simulator- has provided a list of books which influenced his writing
http://weatherfactory.biz/influences/

>>76133572
That's what I thought would make it a neat change. The Hours are still very much alien in many ways, but even the worst among them lack the cartoonish malevolence of Chaos. A 40k where the world-behind-the-world will still enthrall and seduce and eventually transform or destroy you but where it's much more likely to be subtle and insidious, and where even at your peak you're not necessarily going to be a monster, or suffering because of your attainment. A Daemon Primarch is horrible for the universe and themselves and will always be the bitch of their patron, but a Long Primarch not only could be a positive (for certain values of positive) force in the galaxy but could one day become godlike themselves. Shit, now that I think about it that meshes nicely with the Emperor's desire to turn humanity into a transcendental psychic race. The Emps as a Long or a Name or even an Hour, and the Primarchs as his cult. Maybe the Heresy as something similar to the Extirpation? Or maybe the War in Heaven would be that, a 3way battle between the gods-from-stone, the gods-from-(slaan)flesh, and the Ctan

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>>76133325
>>76133344

I made one. It was meant for a Fallout crossover, but you can use the system without doing Fallout stuff.

>>76133395

Because the best principles are Knock and Moth. Find any path and open any door.

>>76134160
>Fallout crossover
Somehow that's weirder than combining it with 40k

>>76134505

It actually worked really well. The PCs all started in a Vault that was taken over by the Seekers, because hot damn it's easy to predict the end of the world when you've got magic. Except they didn't predict that the day the bombs fell was the day they'd try to piece the Sun-in-Splendour back again via the Execration.

Anyway. The players explored the Manhattan Project, saw civilization rebuilding itself, fought a bunch of mermaids and fish people (instead of super mutants) helped an entity to ascend to an Hour, all achieved Long-hood, destroyed Deus Vault, and stopped the Green H(e)art from making fertile Super Mutants.

It was very weird, and gonzo, and my players had a blast. I'm actually going to be running a spin-off, set in 1933, with the players starting out as a pack of wolves given human form and intelligence by The Wolf Divided. For obvious reasons, but the question will be whether they'll be able to avoid their grim fate.

What if Chaos is a good thing and not evil but happy?

>>76134988
What?

>>76133303
Honestly, folks who ply the mansus, and even Long, arnt going to stand up to fucking Space Marines lol. Even at your height, you can get taken down by the local PD.

>>76134988
Are you drunk?

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>>76136149
You never play as a Long, though. In fact, aside from the Baldomerian, you only interact with them in two scenarios: on a Port Noon expedition, where you have to negotiate your way past them (Edge is useless), or in an Apostle run, where they're utterly murderous motherfuckers.

I'd say they're easily on par with something like a Bloodletter or Daemonette, and those can easily cream a space marine 1v1.

>>76136638
I think it depends on their aspects. Like yeah, a long well schooled in Edge and Knock is going to fuck any living thing right up, but Grail or Heart, or even Winter...? Its up in the air. Really depends if they a Name, and if so, who they're a Name of. Especially regarding Winter.

>>76136149
I mean, it might require a bit of a change of scale to make sense for the crossover, but that's the nature of crossovers. Especially 40k ones.

>>76136149
>>76137130
Aren't Winter Long literally invincible unless certain caveats are fulfilled?

All this lore sounds very fascinating, but its dampened by the fact that the gameplay for Cultist Simulator is the most skull-bludgeoningly tedious thing I've ever subjected myself to.
It's less of a 'slow burn' and more of a 'waiting for sunlight to melt a candle'.

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>>76137278
Like everything else in Cultist Simulator

>>76137489
Recent updates have sped things up, but I agree

>>76137489
Well it is made by Aleksis. That fucker made Seeking, and by God, what a fucking slog it was.

>>76133303
Nothing changes because no one has the patience to sit throw their shitty card management game to learn about the lore. Looking forward to Book of Hours tho

>>76138301
It's not that bad. The process of experimentation does actually feel kind of occult, sussing out the truth from the baffling nonsense

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I've not quite managed to beat the game yet, but I've been grinding away as The Ghoul for so long. I-it's not like I'm stuck or anything b-baka.

The cultists in Cultist Simulator actually make sense as opposed to the cultists in 40k. They don't go off the deep end all at once, for the most part, they just notice something weird, explore it, and little by little find themselves tumbling down the rabbit hole to a strange underworld with strange rules. The fact that 90% of the initial supernatural shit takes place in dreams until you find the right bits of lore and power needed for rituals is just the loveliest touch because it's the kind of thing that could be happening anywhere to anyone.

>>76136149
Long wouldn't stand up to Space Marines because they wouldn't have to. The Space Marines wouldn't ever get close enough for it to matter.

>>76137489
I unfortunately have to agree, the earlygame is way too long even if you know exactly what you need to do. The priest DLC is especially painful because you essentially have to play the entire game seven times to beat it (which sucks because Knock is my favorite aspect)

>>76140867
Last I played the rituals were very underwhelming. The monsters you could summon were barely better than your cultists. Maybe the game has changed since then, but it soured the whole experience for me.

>>76141553

It was the opposite for me. The first time I was able to get the stuff for rituals I summoned an Edge 10 Winter 10 entity who made short work of any obstacle or investigator that got in my way.

>>76141977
By the time I got to summoning, I already had the weary detective.

>>76142135
I've killed too many detectives in succession and now I'm up against the female Sherlock Holmes lady and I want to try corrupting her instead of killing her.

>>76141471

Wait, what? No you don't. You don't even have to pass the Stag Gate in order to beat it. The Priest ending is... well, it's all about how wounds are doors and how different wounds are caused by different things which open up different doors.

>>76141553

The chief draw of the summons is that they are infinite, but your cultists are mortal, and once they're gone, they're gone. Plus, a bunch of them have other things they can do - protect your health, or empower you.

>>76140867

My favorite part is how Exile shows how ridiculously powerful cultists are. Like, the Exile just speccs in Edge, has no understanding of the higher mysteries, no understanding how to tap into the full power of their artifacts, and overall, would be considered a fucking chump by someone who is a Know. At the same time, he's able to kill people without working up a sweat, hobnobs with royalty as a matter of course, knows how to heal his wounds, and will have at least a couple of years of extra life. Plus fabulously wealthy.

>>76142248

I haven't played the Exile yet, but it seems like a fresh take on the game. I'm still trying to get through The Ghoul as my first win. I've had the opportunity to try making something called "The Palest Painting" but I don't have the necessary items to craft it.

>>76133442
I would disagree with cutting out segments of creative media from being sources of inspiration entirely. I find myself returning, time and again, to Dune and -its- partial source, Lawrence of Arabia. There is something immensely attractive about the Journey that reaches Apotheosis and then comes crashing down, commingling with the simultaneously grungy and "clean" desert aesthetic.

>>76142407
Dune is one of those big works of science fiction that has pollinated a lot of imaginations.

>>76142248
Is the exile just some highly deadly moron who happened to rob a Long or something?

>>76143878
He's a highly deadly moron who robbed the cultsim equivalent to the mafia.

>>76137278
>>76137600
Winter Long can't die until a fixed date, as is the case with Julian Coseley. Even wounds that would kill other Long won't kill them, they just give up and leave.

All Long have some immunity to attacks from Msnsus-spirits however, usually ones associated with their Principle.

>>76143988
This also fits with the very nature of the Elegiast. You literally won't die until that final fixed point he has signed for you. He'll drag you back from Nowhere himself if he has to.

>>76143988
As in you're only vulnerable on a certain day of the year, or at x day of x month on x year you die?

>>76143878

Kiiiiiinda. He's part of the Reckoners who are a type of mafia who buy/sell lifespan. He stole 77 years from Duffourte, the Reckoner Lord. If you don't play your cards right, it goes about as well as you'd expect.

>>76144225

The latter.

>>76145138
Huh.

Without Slaanesh in the setting what happened to the Eldar?

>>76133325
I concur.

>>76133325
I thought the concept of it was really cool and interesting but in actual practice it was really pretty boring.

My biggest gripe with it was having to constantly do your dayjob to make money despite apparently having a fucking cult of like 15 people who would literally die for you if given the order to do so. I know it's supposed to add to the challenge so there was a fail-state if you didn't keep up with micromanaging everything but the fact that research and working were tied into the same action box was really fucking annoying.

>>76145949
They fell to Temptation

>>76146109
The vast majority of the game felt like treading water instead of doing anything fun.

>>76146452
I can easily see why you'd think that. I'm inclined to agree for the most part. It's very difficult unless you minimize your risks and if you minimize risks you don't get to do anything fun

>>76146258
How would that work on a society wide scale?

>>76146109
If you have the artist job, are the doctor, or just build up a big bank of funds then keeping afloat isn't that hard. Plus if you're the detective then you get to perpetually jail your rivals as part of your job.

>>76145949

They fell to the Red Grail.

>To join with the Grail, our Delight must give life and take life and be not sated. So it is that I am the centrepiece of the Vitulation. A child of the Delight's body would fulfil the requirement, but one cannot enter the Mansus in triumph when one has committed the Crime of the Sky. So it is me, and I submit to the binding and to Marinette's marinations, and the Seven Graces and the Three Savours overwhelm me, and when the first mouthful is taken, almost I do not feel it; almost I do not feel it at all.

>>76146109

Your cult CAN in fact provide for you. They are quite skilled people, albeit in different ways.

>>76146705
Would their civilization have collapsed as dramatically though?

>>76146989

Worse, I think. The Red Grail, being all about Blood and Birth would actually encourage them to eat their own children. Considering how poorly the Eldar reproduce...

>>76147087
The crime of the sky is loathed by all principles. More likely they'd eat each other's offspring or ravenous children would chomp their way out of the womb (look up telescoping generations).

>>76147149

See, I don't think so. The Crime of the Sky only applies to Long. Now you could make the argument that the Eldar would all be Long, but I don't think that would be true. And the Red Grail would in fact encourage the consumption of children, specifically so that she doesn't create any rivals for herself - since you can't be a Long/Name if you eat your kid.

>>76147173
Might be because the Long are significant enough to attract the Principles' notice. While Grail lusts might make mothers more likely to indulge in filicide I figure that the second it's directed influence is the second they're punished. Plenty of other ways things can go wrong in that case anyway.

>>76147199

In the game I ran, we actually had someone who got pregnant with a Deathclaw hybrid, as part of the Red Grail's plan to create a new Echidna. It was excellent RP and really sad because when the player ascended to Longhood, she got the urge, so the party basically played keep-away with the Deathclaw hybrid, until the hybrid became a Long itself, and thus, no longer a valid "target" for the Crime.

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>>76133303
Fuck yeah, Cultsim thread!
I made one of these for every cult a while back, and I think I never had an opportunity to post all of them in the same place, so here's the whole set

>>76147339
The Exile can achieve the purity of an eternal dyad. Never forget the best blades are double edged.

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>>76147380
still haven't played the last DLC unfortunately, and I made them before it was released anyway
Is it as much of a game changer as people made it to be ? I heard both good & bath things

>>76147380
Wow, that sounds awfully Edgy

>>76147404

Oh yeah, it's much different. Fun, a bit more RNG, but also, in some ways less grindy.

You should have probably double-checked your memes for typos before posting.

Forge is best aspect. Why enter the dream world by dreaming like a coward, when you can find an tattered in the places the past comes together and combining magic plutonium with the ignition trigger of a dead piece of the sun to make a magical nuclear bomb to blow open a wound in reality, physically stride into the dream world, and demand to speak to the Manager.

>>76148467

Fucking up the spelling is part of the deal.

>>76140867
>trying to win as the ghoul on your first playthrough
Of course you're fucking stuck lol

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The real question: which lore has the best waifu/husbando?

>>76149529

I don't know them that well.

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>>76146109
Once you have a good enough collection of lore to reliably do commissions, you never have to do an honest day's work again. Just sell the spinitra at Oriflamme's, the best of them go for 12 funds.

>>76150488

Or, the Forge of Days can freely give something that is of much value to those seeking the higher mysteries of Forge - or to just sell for dosh. The same is true of the Red Veil, albeit she is harder to get to.

>>76133303
God I need to finish this game

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>>76150843
True, but that does carry a risk, if not a big one. Besides, at the stage where that sort of thing becomes reliable, I generally find that I have work hours to spare, while at the same time being quite busy with talk. Usually with Raw Prophets and Calligines. The Bureau can go suck on Watch-Worms.

>>76133303
>>76133634
Horus becomes a host for Worms.

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>>76151390
Oh god oh shit oh fucck

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>>76151496
WORMS

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>>76151713
FUCK YOU, WORMS. THE POWER OF THE THUNDERSKIN COMPELS YOU.

>>76149529
Edge 100%. Incestous threeways are the way to go.

>>76149529
Cat Caro is my waifu.
>Will only go on dates to places which don't exist.
>Is a goofy stage-psychic
>Is actually psychic

>>76133303
Can we talk for a sec about the Crime Of The Sky?

From what I can tell, The Crime of the Sky includes but is not limited to eating one's own children, however I get the sense that since many orders of Long forbid heterosexual sex, that Long who have children are compelled somehow to eat them.

That leads me to suspect that the intercourse, or the birth of the child itself is the Crime Of The Sky, and the cannibalistic compulsion is the punishment, such as it is.

Furthermore, it may be that the reason for this is that there is some rational reason to eat the children of Long. as Sulochana Amavasya has joked about eating the children of other Long, iirc.

Thoughts?

>>76133325
this

>>76153182
Nah, we have in-game text specifically stating that procreation is not the Crime. It could be a lie, of course (like that one book about Worms), but most evidence points to the punishment being transformation into an Alukite. Sulochana should know, she is one.

The hunger definitely exists, but we don't really know why. Probably safe to blame it on the Red Grail, though.

>>76133303
How would replacing the warp with the mansus effect ftl?

>>76157247
It would likely involve movement between Histories, with a need to figure out how to 'navigate' the various thresholds of the archetypal not-place of the Mansus so as to not get lost in a history that is not your own. Or worse, one infested by Worms.

So how does edge lore really work? Is it some kind of esoteric martial arts training or what?

>>76158001
Its more about being consumed by violent, disruptive acts. Its basically Moth, but inflicted on others rather than yourself.

>>76148467
newfag

>>76158001
Ultimately it's about cutting. Cutting off, cutting into, just cutting. It would be martial arts, but also swordplay, cutting words, firing bullets that penetrate flesh, bruising uteri, etc.

>>76158434
Self-harm is also ultimately self-centered, Edge is about division and so multiplicity. When there's nobody left to oppose it falls on its own sword.

>>76158554
Yeah, that tracks with The Wolf Divided's Edge aspect. In that sense its like Moth backwards. Start with others, finish with yourself. Whereas moth you start by destroying yourself so that you can work your will on others.

>>76133572
>but it doesn't necessarily require you becoming literally baby-eating levels of evil unless you fall to say,
If you have the Grail and Lantern desires you fulfill your exotic cravings through murder.
>the Moth or an God-From-Nowhere
On that note, if you have the Winter desire you need to regularly eat corpse.

Additionally, the rite for the Gods-From-Stone and both rites for the Forge of Days are human sacrifices.
The rite for the Mother of Ants never kills a human in-game, but its description suggests it can happen.

>>76158835

I always found it kind of funny that the Knock aspects are generally "kindest" to humans, despite the whole wounding thing.

>>76140867
>I've not quite managed to beat the game yet,
I beat it, once, and uninstalled. Did not enjoy that the gameplay was mostly watching timers.
I couldn't figure out how expeditions worked and did not interact with them at all on my winning playthrough. That might have been why I didn't enjoy the game, but from what I had seen of expeditions in earlier playthroughs they still seemed like waiting through timers.

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>>76158554
>>76158710
Hard disagree. The Wolf-Divided as an hour represents the fury and injustice of the Intercalate. Its Edge aspect stems from its hunger for revenge, while its nihilism manifests as its Winter aspect.

I'd argue that although Edge is often self-harming, it is not self-destructive. Remember, the 14th lore teaches that:
>Cunning, Strength and Agony are the three roots of victory
Note Agony. Edge practitioners don't maim themselves because they're blind with bloodlust, they do it because those sacrifices are a key to power by themselves. The Colonel didn't gain his scars in battle, they were given to him by the still-mortal Mother of Ants as protection, before he battled and slew the Seven-Coiled. Similiarly, the Lionsmith gained the power needed to stand against the Colonel by deliberately breaking his sword.

I beat all 3 hard endings, the 2 first dlc and about half of the romance endings. Enjoyed most of it, love the lore, such a great game, forge is by far the most based principle.

>>76148467
topkek

>>76133325
They're planning to do it. They sent out a survey asking what people would like in terms of merch. A table-top RPG was one of the options.

>>76146109
Work your glimmers to upgrade your artist skill. With the help of visions or even summoned creatures you'll have more money than you never need. You can also instruct your cultists to go rob people, work a heist, or seduce victims. Failing that, you can sell artifacts from your expeditions at the auction. Most artifacts are only useful to your current Hour anyway, so it's not a big sacrifice. You could also kidnap your boss and feed his soul to not-Slaanesh so you get the promotion by default. At that point, you work half as long for four times as much.

>>76160371

You know, just giving away the answers is boring.

>>76149529
I like Sylvia, the one with the eyepatch, but I don't like her Ever After. Regardless of how you see yourself, even if you run a cult of Moth, they portray her as abusive and that you follow her around as a cuck while she visits others in the middle of the night.

There's no option for you two to become swingers and really get into the Moth lifestyle. You just have to accept that she'll leave you and come back and then do it again for the rest of your lives.

>>76159110
>couldn't figure out how expeditions worked and did not interact with them at all on my winning playthrough.

It literally tells you. Like, the door says "we need lantern or knock to guide the way."

>>76160401
All of that is just shit you can read from descriptions. The boss's has an attribute called thorn in your side or smth that describes how you can take care of him.

>>76160448
I mean she can only be romanced if you yourself are also a moth cultist right? Your mood swings literally contort reality, which is why your discontentment manifests itself as influence instead of normal emotions.

>>76160448
Hey, Moth is all about letting go.

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>>76160448
Given the nature and tone of the game, I don't think it should be THAT big a surprise that not all the romances have happy endings.

Mind you, just having an unfaithful lover is small potatoes compared to spending your Ever After with Saliba. Sheesh.

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>>76161130
Sunset Rite is the best rite so Sun-in-Rags is the best hour.

>>76161504
>literally can't raise undead with sunset rite

>>76162431
The dead should stay dead.

>>76133325
the aesthetic, mystique, and art were all good, but the gameplay amounted to experimenting around and waiting on timers. once you master the game and there's no more experimenting or secrets, it's not fun anymore. I wonder how a tabletop game would solve that problem

>>76153752
Isn't the hunger and the Crime of the Sky the way the Hours use to stop the reproduction of Immortals?

>>76133303
One of the things that I like in this setting is that the Principles are fundamentally more insidious than Chaos. Chaos amplifies emotions to its extremes until they carry power, while the Principles provide power to even the more mundane of jobs. The jobs of the Hirelings and the Principles they are empowered by hints at how more fundamental they are than Chaos Gods.

>Fortune-Teller - Lantern 5, Moth 3
>Bomb-Maker - Forge 5, Edge 3
>Hulking Fellow - Edge 3
>Professional Muscle - Edge 5
>Shifty Woman - Moth 3
>Experienced Swindler - Moth 5 Grail 1
>Entry Consultant - Knock 5

How the mundane world interacts with the Mansus is also extremely interesting. Rather than witch hunts or inquisitions you have detectives that have to investigate you and trial you, despite the facts that the laws being broken are secret.

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>>76133303
>worms invading
>whatever that weird forge-related shit was that infects you if you even look at it is expanding
>lionsmith's abominable intelligence constructs going apeshit
>long running rampant over the imperium
>hooded princes keep invading from a timeline that's somehow even worse
>yfw you need to deal with all of this as an imperial citizen on top of the mandatory anti-sleep drugs

>>76163884
I mean the dude behind it is the guy behind Fallen London, which is also an excellent setting with a really cool aesthetic wrapped in the biggest time waster of a game ever.

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>>76164438
HAHAHAHAHAHA, YES

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>>76164373
>, despite the facts that the laws being broken are secret.
Knock and Moth cult business are theft, arguably exploring Vaults is theft, Edge and Grail cult business are kidnapping, you can kidnap people yourself, Winter cult business is murder, Edge cultists can murder Hunters, you can murder Hunters, Moth cultists can destroy evidence, you can sacrifice people to the Hours or the Spider Door, proselytizing on the occult to attract followers is disorderly conduct, the Moth pawn and Hunters can be driven to suicide, etc.
The Suppression Bureau is trying to bury the occult but Douglas has no shortage of mundane crimes to hunt your ass over.

>>76163884
>once you master the game and there's no more experimenting or secrets, it's not fun anymore.
maybe irl mystic cults have this problem too

>>76133303
are the different locations of the Mansus actually real locations, or are they mental metaphors? Is the ascent of the Mansus a figurative journey or a literal one?

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Do you guys think people would be interested in writing taking place in a cultist simulator inspired setting?

>>76166501
The latter. The Mansus isn't actually a place.

>>76166501
it's a dream world, so of course you don't physically go there. but like a physical world, it has a landscape and paths and obstacles that require knowledge or tools to get through. instead of calling it a figurative journey I'd say it's more of a mental of spiritual journey

>>76166558
meant to say
>mental or spiritual journey.
I'm not even typing on a phone right now

>>76166558
but it has concrete geography. Every visitor to the Mansus encounters the same obstacles; they can't just "there is no spoon" their way around, they must physically cross them. Clearly the Mansus exists as something other than just a metaphor.

Can some who actually played the game spoon feed on the Winter lore?

>>76166593
I was just saying that the Mansus doesn't physically exist. it does seems to have a distinct and concrete structure, so I don't think it's metaphorical at all. I think that the player's character does actually walk around it and explore it, but all of that is abstracted by the game since cultist simulator is a resource management game and not a dungeon crawler.

>>76166671
I didn't look at Winter much during my playthroughs, but its functions are chiefly related to death, corpses, and spirits including the creation, control, and avoidance of undead. couldn't tell you what it all means though

>just started the exile
>he's jason bourne

>>76166501
You can show up in people's dreams by traveling through the Mansus and you can meet other Know while in the Mansus. You travel the Mansus in your sleep but can physically bring people and objects with you when you enter the Mansus. The names of locations are metaphorical, but the locations are at least somewhat real.

>>76166671
Winter is about endings and silence. Most of the Winter summons are Zombies.

Lantern leads to The Glory (immortality, being remembered, above the Mansus) which is why Lantern influences decay into Fascination (which kills you).
Winter leads to Nowhere (death, being forgotten, below the Mansus) which is why Winter influences decay into Dread (which kills you).
The are many options for managing Fascination and Dread, but it is significant to note that you are between Nowhere and The Glory and that Dread and Fascination cancel each other out.

Dead people live in Nowhere but dead Hours live in Nowhere too. Worms grow in the dead Hours and they try to bring the world and the Mansus closer to Nowhere.

Six Hours are known to have Winter aspect: the The Wolf Divided, Sun-in-Rags, The Madrugad, The Elegiast, The Colonel, and The Horned Axe.
The Wolf Divided is the death of the Sun-in-Splendor. The Wolf Divided is destructive and vengeful. Along with The Tide (a god-From-Stone killed and replaced by The Grail), The Wolf Divided assists Worms.
The Sun-in-Rags is the corpse of the Sun-in-Splendor. The Sun-in-Rags was one of the Sun-in-Splendor's names before it died. It is the noon Hour but you ask for its help with the Sunset Rite.
The Madrugad is the passage of souls to Nowhere or The Glory. The Madrugad was one of the Sun-in-Splendor's names before it died.
The Elegiast preserves knowledge of dead Hours to keep them from sinking farther into Nowhere (in Nowhere "it is always possible to be deader"). Longs that fear the Hours bargain with The Elegiast so that, after their death, Hours do not remember them.

>>76166671
The Colonel is mainly Edge. I think he's also Winter because he's deaf and hangs out in Nowhere beating the shit out of Worms? Not sure.
The Horned Axe is division and boundaries. For some reason The Horned Axe does not have Edge aspect? It is a God-from-Stone which are like the God-from-Flesh but, instead of rising from humanity, the Gods-from-Stone rose froma species of insects that predated humanity.

The are also Gods-from-Nowhere. The Gods-from-Nowhere do not enter the Mansus (are not an Hour of the day) and might be Worms.
The only Gods-from-Nowhere who matters in-game is The Crowned Growth. If you have the Winter desire, you admit The Crowned Growth into your body to become an undead.
The goal of Winter desire is to become a Long of the The Elegiast. If you don't receive The Elegiast's protection and you don't regularly feed corpse to The Crowned Growth, then you become a Long of The Crowned Growth after it eats you from within.

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>>76164373
I don't think it's intended that everything with an Aspect value is somehow "infected" with the Mansus. These are fundamental principles, after all, and sometimes that tag represents something completely mundane (like how everything physically dangerous has a bit of Edge to it, even spirits that are clearly aligned with non-Edge Hours).

I also suspect that the Aspect values you see in-game don't necessarily represent someone's abilities and nature, but what purposes YOU as an occultist can put them to. For one thing, people who aren't your followers don't have any Aspects even though they clearly have power, like your mentors and the detectives. Secondly, when you kidnap randoms off the street they always have Heart/Lantern/Grail values that put your basic pawns to shame, and I doubt your followers are lucky enough to "just happen" to kidnap closet occultists every time. Plus, your Health, Reason and Passion also have Aspects, even before you start culting around.

So, are there any Hours that are like, good? Or whose cultist might be decent people?

I think its possible to go from the Detective start to a Forge victory without sacrificing or murdering anyone, and the Witch-and-Sister's Heart/Moth/Grail aspect seems to resolve in "protection and compassion to exiles", as far as I can tell.

But most of the Hours are obviously beyond human standards of morality, but do all of their Names and Longs end up as monsters (more or less) wearing human skin, too?

>>76167756
>So, are there any Hours that are like, good? Or whose cultist might be decent people?
The Elegiast is the only Hour that is never cruel to those who serve it or anyone else. In fact, it outright HATES the other Hours for their part in having the Gods-From-Stone murdered.

The Horned Axe can be argued to be good since she's the only thing keeping the Crowned Growth from flooding reality.

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>>76167756
Most of the Heart Hours seem mostly alright on average, and the Thunderskin is pretty bro. I'm fairly certain that you don't need to kill anyone as a Dancer going down the Heart path (as opposed to the Moth path, where one of the later danceschas you ripping out someone's throat).

As for the Long, it seems to vary. Going by her books, the Baldomerian actually seems to have become MORE sane after ascending, and if you talk to her she confesses that she's not proud of the things she did to become what she is. She's also the only summon who will never try to harm you or your followers. Also, she's happy to autograph copies of her own books for you if you ask.

>>76167756
>The Barrowchild describes how the Grail drained the Hour called Tide, how the Moth 'usurped the Wheel from within', stealing its skin, and how the Forge first eclipsed then shattered Flint. 'Perhaps these are glories,' she observes, 'but then it cannot be that Glory is merciful.'

>>76167954
The Thunderskin used to be a Name, so they used to be Long, so even if he's cool now he used to be something of a monster.

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>>76168017
On the other hand, we know that the mortal Thunderskin was manipulated and then forced into ascending by the Red Grail. I'd say it's up in the air how much bad shit he actually did, or at least, how much he did of his own volition.

Also, I'm just gonna post some more of this guy's fanart, 'cause I think it's pretty rad. Last two were the Moth and the Well, this one is the Temple of the Wheel.

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The White Door, with the voiceless dead.

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The Spider's Door, ever THIRSTy.

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The Concursum, and the Sun-in-Rags. Seems that's the last one for now.

Man, reading through this, I forgot how much of a mindfuck Failbetter lore gets.

Still, the setting(s) are incredibly interesting and unusual, when I first read about them I was captivated immediately.

What are your thoughts on the Fallen London/Sunless Sea/Sunless Sky setting(s), anons?

>>76168382
I'd like to get into the other games but I don't have the time anymore

>>76168382
I absolutely love Fallen London and Sunless Sea. I just can't get into Skies though, because it's such a jarring leap ahead in the lore. It's like if you skipped from the first third of The Hobbit and straight into Return of the King, it's like a completely different setting.

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>>76164438
>whatever that weird forge-related shit was that infects you if you even look at it is expanding
How is Crowned Growth related to Forge?
He represents no aspect. Crowned Growth represents only Himself. His the power of lust and disease, his the will to infect and become. Do not permit him to touch you. Do not even look upon his face.

>>76168638
I'm like 90% certain the Growth is an Hour of Grail and Winter. Not that you'd ever actually want to invoke his name.

>>76167756
>So, are there any Hours that are like, good?
The idea of mortal human goodness is sorta fundamentally incompatible with what Hours are.

>>76166501
>are the different locations of the Mansus actually real locations, or are they mental metaphors?
The question is wrong because reality is not real in CS - it's just a pale, warped shadow of Mansus. Which is, in turn, a pale warped shadow of Glory.

>>76168669
Aspects are a notion of Mansus and Cancer Jesus is no being of Mansus. None of the Gods-from-Nowhere have Aspects, even Worms are not strictly Moth/Winter, it is something that is just a rough fit that can sometimes help learn their weakness but relying on that assumption is counterproductive on its own according to Tantra of Worms:
>The Tantra explains various less than practical countermeasures against the Worms, the 'Serpents Which Are Not Serpents'. Moth and Winter are closest to them, and so understand their weaknesses, but both have their own perils. The Lionsmith crushes them, but that's not recommended for mortals.
Nowhere and shit from there is just too fucking alien. I really doubt that Dead Hours, for example, retained same qualities as their "stolen" aspects and even when they were alive their aspects were kinda different.
So Growth is just that - growth. Maybe it is some hungry flesh of Flint given single-minded purpose, maybe its remnants of Tide - as it is said to flow like a river and is associated with lust, infection, becoming and consumption, fitting for a Proto-Grail Hour. Probably its neither, but I think what is for sure is that it doesn't adhere to any normal "rules" established in Mansus.

I feel like cultist simulator is my ultimate game to play when high
There's something about the distorted reality you feel when high that has an effect on the game
My imagination becomes more vivid and I hungrily read all the flavour text I can
I also usally fall asleep still thinking of the game, my high mind creating some nice images as I sleep, sometimes of the game itself and the mental images it gives you.

I wonder if this is how the cultists in the game are, you get high one night, then you find yourself dreaming in the Mansus, in front of thr giant wooden wall, you seek to find answers about this dream. And the more you find and learn and dream the more you lose your mind.

Nice slow and gradual vs the instant insanity 40k or some lovecraft writers like to do

>>76168742
Does glory have its own Aspects within itself then?

>>76167408
Dread and Fascination doesn't kill the player too much of either just makes the player mad and society puts them in an Asylum.

>>76167756
>Or whose cultist might be decent people?
Cults are dedicated to and cultists follow Principles. Hours are bargained with, not followed.

>>76168786
It's impossible to make sense of Glory and Nowhere using concepts of the mortal reality or Mansus - such as Aspects. Shit like time, space, multiplicity and causality are dank memes within those. They are transcendent - you can only understand them by entering them and being changed by the experience.

>>76168793
At 3 Dread you lose your will to live and kill yourself.
At 3 Fascination you vanish without leaving a body behind, like Poor Lunatics do.

>CHANGE ME
>CHANGE ME
>CHANGE ME *HARDER*
>NOW, MY TURN.
Honestly my favourite microtext. What is yours?

>>76168762
>according to Tantra of Worms
I feel I should point out that the Tantra of Worms is a piece of deception written BY Worms, and almost everything in it should be considered suspect.

After double-checking the wiki, though, I will admit I was wrong about the Growth having aspects. Though I could have sworn that the Mare-in-the-Yew had some Grail about her. Oh well.

>>76168779
I remember the first time I played the game, I was so hooked that by the time I finally looked back at the clock I realized 8 hours had passed and it was already morning. Nothing's been able to capture me like that ever since

>>76168958
>After double-checking the wiki, though, I will admit I was wrong about the Growth having aspects. Though I could have sworn that the Mare-in-the-Yew had some Grail about her. Oh well.
Oh for sure they all do have something close to aspects about them, its just that they operate on quite different rules probably.

>>76168910
The Lethal Poison tag is pretty great.
>Under no circumstances should you put this in anyone you want to keep.

The Percussigant is up there too.

>>76168982
It's funny when I first played the game I didn't like it that much
But when I first played it when high I think I played for 12 hours non-stop
Not even stopping to eat, drink, or use the bathroom
I was just captivated

I guess that would make me a winter cultist?

>>76169716
Sounds like Heart to me, anon. You would not
would not
would not stop playing.

Alternately you just had a bad brush with Fascination.

>>76168910
>Oh, the world is flat; oh, but it's flat! I won't stay long. I shan't stay long. Tell me a secret.
Not as good as Ezeem but still a heady does of schizophrenia.

>>76168867
Maybe it's different if it happens early in the game? My first loss was due to one of those and my character was sent to the loony house. My 2nd character was a asylum doctor who followed the mad writings of my first character.

Posting ideas for a Call of Cthulu game set in the cultist simulator universe.

1- The Virgin Party: a party that knows nothing of Cultist simulator, but enjoys TTRPGs. if they don't even know about CS, all the better. This group could start as either Hunters (in the CS meaning of the word), seeking out the explanation for strange goings on, or they could themselves be virgin cultists, taking their first steps in the forests of sleep, seeking out the house with no walls after a mysterious benefactor gifts them with an occult curiosity.
If you know anyone who is a fan of TTRPGs, but hasn't given Cultist simulator a try, perhaps let them know that a Keeper is preparing a game, leaving any further details for them to find out for themselves.
Failing all else, my aim as a keeper for this party would be to give them a fun glimpse into the lore of CS, and perhaps get weather factory a few new fans.

2 - The Know: another group, played by those intimately familiar with CS. Examples could be a group of followers of The Thunderskin, based in a slaughterhouse where nothing will die - A gang of thieves in over their heads after they steal from an occult collection, and suddenly finding themselves under the penetrating gaze of a follower of the watchman, etc.
The group would come up with it's own backstory, but it will be imperative that they create it as a team; they will be a cult, after all.

3 - The Villain: There could be those that I as the Keeper play with more sporadically - A mysterious player that works alone - An antagonist of sorts, that understands that they are there to be a chess master - they will be told what resources they possess, and will be tasked with explaining how their character would plan going forward-
A mob boss under the sway of a being beyond his understanding, An old Hunter, with resources that allow them to harass those disturbing the peace through middle men and agents, etc.
Good for those that enjoy roleplaying through a play by post system.

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Hello guys, here is a blades in the dark hack I never finished for Cultist Simulator.

It's ridiculously imbalanced and never playtested but maybe you guys can make something more of it lol

>>76171336
addendum:

I intended this to be part of a two system game, one system (blades) for going on heists to steal artifacts or ancient knowledge, or killing enemies in the waking world, and another system for journeys within the mansus.

I never got to the point of figuring out a way to run that smoothly so I shelved it.

>>76162431
Raising the dead is useless though...

>>76166509
I think that an actual narrative with a throughline might be hard to follow.

The Worms did nothing wrong.

>>76171412
I haven't had a zombie turn on me as horrifyingly as I've had a Maid in the Mirror turn on me. I don't even know if zombies can turn on you.

>>76171412
But it's the only way to be with you're waifu/husbando forever

>>76168910
I already posted mine:

>To join with the Grail, our Delight must give life and take life and be not sated. So it is that I am the centrepiece of the Vitulation. A child of the Delight's body would fulfil the requirement, but one cannot enter the Mansus in triumph when one has committed the Crime of the Sky. So it is me, and I submit to the binding and to Marinette's marinations, and the Seven Graces and the Three Savours overwhelm me, and when the first mouthful is taken, almost I do not feel it; almost I do not feel it at all.

Just how much does the Suppression Bureau actually know? Based on their reaction in the violent endings to The Exile they know what a Reckoner Lord is and they know at least one of the big guys by name and are collecting information on them constantly.

>>76171336
>>76171378

We should collab. I'm the guy that made this: >>76134160

>>76170932
>was a asylum doctor
A Position at the Institute is a position at a medical institute not at a mental institute.
It can appear as a Legacy after almost any game but is guaranteed to appear if your lost from My Body Is Dead (losing all of your Health).

>>76173844
The zombies can't turn on you and neither can the Baldomerian. Every other spirit has either the Deceiver or Devourer Aspect, and so can.

>>76173844
The risk/reward of summoning literally anything else beats undead every fucking day.

You can literally ride easy street for half the midgame with just a Caligne and the Rite of The Crucible Soul to re-summon.

>>76174296
Hunters from the Suppression Bureau visit the Woods and the Bounds but not the Mansus itself. They only Know if you tempt them.

>>76174296
Their agents are sometimes actually factually mystics, so Id say they know quite a bit.

>>76174304
Add me on discord I’m down to talk about it

viro#8231

This thread proves I'm not really good at this game yet.

>>76146600
Yeah, this is what I found. I was stable, not in any danger but I'd done all the early game stuff and couldn't manage expeditions without more grinding.
I knew what I needed to do, just couldn't be bothered so sit there and grind out all the lore.

>>76178059
Easiest way to bypass the grind once you've got the early game done is to chain summons. Summon something, then use that to summon a more powerful thing. King Crucible can solo some expeditions, and usually doesn't need much help for those he can't. You don't need to collect all the lore.

I tried the Exile. Fuck. I was trying not to spend any of those stolen years but you basically have to in order to get anywhere.

Bump

>>76174850
I like how nice the Baldomerian is despite her history.

How do I recruit the right kind of follower to give to Poppy?

>>76183350
Sheer chance desu. I don't even trigger Poppy unless I have one of the obviously sacrificial pawn disciples.

>>76184408
At first I wasn't even talking about esoteric stuff so I wasn't getting any followers at all.

>>76183350
You can't give her a Spirit, a Hireling, a Prisoner, or an Acquaintance but you can give her any normal Follower.
The BEST choice is the Moth Pawn because if you promote it from [1 Edge] to [1 Edge, 2 Moth] it gets a decay timer, so the Moth Pawn is either useless or going to die eventually.
If you don't have the Moth Pawn just give her your worst Follower, it's probably one of your other Pawns.

>>76146109
Yeah, it was a real immersion breaker was that you could only have one cultist do anything at a time. A cult of 1 or a cult of 100, all those extra bodies were worthless since you personally only have one "talk to people" box. I was really expecting stuff to happen in parallel and to assign tasks to my cultists. Even to delegate cultist management to a lieutenant or something. But no.


>>76163884
The experimenting and specifically, the part of the game where you don't know the rules yet really adds to the whole "mystic" and "learning dark secrets" part of the game. And, once you learn it all, the game is over. You've won. Not all games have infinite replayability.

>>76166406
heh.

So many of the damn special rituals were crazy hard to pull off needing to time when certain things would yield high level cards and netted you ... a temporary follower with slightly higher stats? Meh.

You could baby-sit those monsters though. Their timer only counted down when not on a job. So stick them in the "chat box" and have a cultist talk to them. You can even have two monsters watch each other. It really should have had some requirement of.... say... a certain level of seduction needed to occupy a summon like that. Or if everyone but a summon dies on a mission, it starts a rampage.

>>76166509
Yeah. It really all depends on the writing style. But the setting lends itself to stories.

>>76167408
>The are many options for managing Fascination and Dread, but it is significant to note that you are between Nowhere and The Glory and that Dread and Fascination cancel each other out.
I always assumed it was a metaphor for managing your ego. As cult-leaders are apt to succumb to, one way or another.

>>76186293
>hard to pull off needing to time when certain things would yield high level cards and netted you
I don't know what you were doing, but
4-8 relevant Lore + a Knock Believer + Restlessness or Dread gets you 5 of the 6 lesser spirits.
Summon the Winter spirit and let it decay or Dream for Winter influence to summon the 6th lesser spirit.
6 Knock Lore + a relevant lesser Spirit + Restlessness gets you 2 of the 3 greater spirits.
The Baldomerian is the only spirit that takes effort to summon during the mid-game.

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So, this thread inspired me to pick up the game again and give it another try, after dropping it shortly after release. I started as the priest and have been grinding my stats. What the fuck do I do now?

>>76187544
Found a cult lmao

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>>76187544
Try telling your congregation about all this neat occult stuff you've learned about.

>>76133325
Cultist Simulator has abhorrent mechanics and loses all its atmosphere when you get a handle on the game and realise it's literally impossible to lose and all you can do is grind.

>>76188057
This, also the early game is super repetitive and boring. It's one of those games where you play for a week, the abandon it forever and instead move on to the juicy lore on wiki.

a tv serie about the Suppression bureau could be cool

>>76188057
>literally impossible to lose
>looks at my dozens of losses, even after I figured out how to play the game
Uhhhhhh

>>76188872
How? Did you get impatient or what

>>76187544
Is this everything you have? Not entirely sure how to proceed without a talk or explore verbs, try:
> Rest: Way to the Woods + Rationality or lore

>>76188880
Not him, but I got my ass whopped by the Long in in the 2nd playthough after my character ascended.

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Here's my mess.
Aspirant Legacy.
Plundered the auction house, bookstore, and a couple vaults.
Objective is to obtain higher Forge lore in order to fulfill my desire.
Been busying myself with scouring the Stag door for scraps of history then financing expeditions to the places that knowledge leads me to using my exorbitant wealth.
Any remarks or guidance?

>>76183350
You can give her literally any normal follower.

Holy shit how did I miss this thread? I just got back into another big CS binge, doing lots of playthroughs and also some modding. Really nice to see some discussion here.

I recommend to everybody who feels CS is too grindy, or has problems getting far into it, to try out the Exile DLC. It's a lot faster paced and a bit more clear what to do.
I'm considering printing out the Exile map and doing a one-shot with my group. Haven't fully ironed out the specifics yet. Something very rules-light anyway.

>>76189501
I suggest you stack lore vertically on the right side, with the lower ranks of a Principle directly to the left of them. This helps a lot with seeing which lores you need to upgrade.

>>76189501
You... definitely don't need that much money anon. Could have spent that time on getting 2 disciples of every aspect so you can easily do all expeditions. In fact I always try to have all verbs running 100% of the time. Get to work studying those books, recruiting followers, exploring the Mansus, doing commissions and all that.
Also, there are more doors in the Mansus to penetrate and they will give you greater rewards.

Good luck and may the Forge of Days sustain your efforts.

>>76133572
Pretty much ever Hour requires sacrificing your humanity in some fundamnetal way

>>76187544
The game itself is actually not that fun, it's better off as a choose your own adventure book

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>>76189878
I've just been sending pawns and throwing money at them until the problem disappears.
Been working out decently so far.
Also, I don't actually know how to improve my servant's principles outside of getting wounded on the job.
> In fact I always try to have all verbs running 100% of the time.
You assume I haven't been doing that? That's *how* I've accumulated so much dosh, spamming work at G&G in the background while experimenting with stuff.

>>76190419
Give some of your lads a promotion, it's time for them to be shown some of the deeper mysteries. Same process as how you initiated them.

>>76190419
Oof that poor sod is gonna eat dirt on one of your next expeditions my dude.

I'll give you a hint. You have been underutilising the Talk verb. Press the empty space and a ton of cards will light up which could enter there. One of them will help you upgrade your followers. It's not a lore card or the follower himself.
Again, Talk is probably the most useful verb and should be running 100% of the time.

>>76171336
>>76171378
It's a good start anon, I like it! BitD is a great fit for Cultist Simulator. Especially with all the rules for building your gang (cult) and the rival gangs (cults, Suppression Bureau, Reckoners, Underworld / Radical connections).
Needs more work to get the Doskvol stuff out and convert to the more grounded 1920's Europe setting of Cultist Simulator. I wouldn't worry too much about rules for adventures in the Mansus.

Did you make the sheets with InDesign? They look fantastic aside from the stuff falling off the pages.

>>76166509
Yeah man, there's some pretty cool stories set in the CS universe. If you want a broader audience you can easily make a self-contained story without mentioning the Hours or the Principles at all.

As an example, here is the text of the book which gives the 14th level Winter Lore, Wolf-Word:
> Each page of this book contains one word only, but as each page is turned, a knowledge creeps in.
> The final page is crowded. Each reader of the book records the same word. Now it is my turn.
I embellished the story a bit with some depression metaphors and some sentences of other Winter lore and told it as a ghost story over Halloween, to great effect. Never had to mention Cultist Simulator.

>>76149529
The game does a really good job of portraying all kinds of unhealthy relationships. Like that girl that screams the name of her brother when you have sex.

>>76190419
Promote followers by talking to them with enough of the aspect that matches your cult.
You can promote them again if the follower also matches the aspect of your cult and you talk to them about a shit ton of aspect.
You can also give followers tools to slightly improve their aspect in the tool, but this consumes the tool (most tools are irreplaceable) and can only be done once per follower.
>LiterallyTheBestGuyOnMyTeam.png
If a follower gets three of the same scar they die.

>>76191074
> If a follower gets three of the same scar they die.
Yeah, I'm aware, but that's acceptable given that pawns are the definition of expendable assets. I just find it funny how this generic grunt is almost four times as capable as my unique acolytes.

> Promote followers by talking to them with enough of the aspect that matches your cult.
It would appear that I require level seven Forge lore to advance them, I'm currently stuck at level six.

> You can also give followers tools to slightly improve their aspect in the tool, but this consumes the tool (most tools are irreplaceable) and can only be done once per follower.
Personally, I really dislike spending unique resources in this game, especially the followers since I heard that if they all die you softlock your game.

>>76191374
>It would appear that I require level seven Forge lore to advance them, I'm currently stuck at level six.
Do you have anything that can be used as ink?

>>76191374
>It would appear that I require level seven Forge lore to advance them, I'm currently stuck at level six.
Actually, fuck ink, do you have a copper spintrae? It has Forge. Check your artifacts, as well. Even Influences can be used IIRC.

>>76191374
>Personally, I really dislike spending unique resources in this game,
Lantern tools are not unique.

>>76191561
In fact, most of the loot from the Vaults aren't unique. I think there's a tooltip hint for unique nouns, but I'm not sure.

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>>76191414

>>76190712
They are actually made with a google sheets template I found on reddit. Converts to PDF pretty well

>>76191585
>three inks, none of them Forge
FUCK

There's a bucket icon on items you can use as ink. If you go hard artist, you use it as ink when prompted on a big roll and you get a painting unique to that Lore. It's very easy to get, and lets you upgrade followers very early if you're lucky! Otherwise, well, you have a high-aspect item, which has its uses.

But hey, copper spintrae! That has Forge aspect, you miiiight be able to ascend with that!

>>76191585
Oh, and if you have met mentors who know languages you don't, you can pay them spintrae to teach you.

>>76191578
I never bothered with the
>[You've found all the Expeditions in the Shires, although you can find and visit Kerisham several times.]
vaults. Good to know.

>>76191692
I'm also pretty sure being in a Verb freezes Noun timers, so you can use expiditions carefully to keep a summon around for a while.

>>76191578
>I think there's a tooltip hint for unique nouns, but I'm not sure.
There is a Unique aspect but what it actually means is the card cannot be drawn while there is another copy of it on the board.
How many copies of a card there are in the game is a matter of the card decks, which is not player-facing information.

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>>76187544
So, I died. I DID figure out how to make a cult, but I ended up getting jailed soon after. I had a couple dud restarts (including one where I died in like 5-10 minutes do to Despair piling up).

Started as The Physician this time. WAY better early game than any of the others, their unique job takes SO much of the tedium out of getting Funds. I've been progressing, got past the Riddle, and just managed to Exalt my first follower. Still haven't managed to figure out how to summon anything yet, but working on it.

>>76194525
Looking alright anon. Yeah the notiority can really fuck you up as the Priest. Happy to see dear Violet already exalted. An unusual choice perhaps, a Winter cult while going for a Grail ascension. You're on the right track though.

Let's all agree to keep spoilers to a minimum for those who have not yet climbed as high.

>>76147303
I like 'em anon, well done. May I humbly request an alternative version for the Winter one. Would love to see one complaining about those damn mischievous commentators

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Fuck.

Is there a worse feeling than loosing ya boi Vasil, the Five-goer, after dragging him across the whole of Europe, getting him up to Grail 14, utterly devastating Reckoners left and right? And after all that he just eats shit while the Foe is two fucking wounds from death.

I feel grief alright.

>>76188057
If the game had any difficulty players would lose too often to discover how things work.

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>>76194525
Well, here's where I'm stopping for the night. Pretty happy with myself. I was able to summon a Voiceless Dead, then later a Maid-in-the-Mirror (two actually, this is my second one).

It's getting really hard to organize everything though.

Is Cultist Simulator a good game?

>>76196909
As someone who's spent the past eight or so hours playing it, no.

That being said, the lore is incredible and completely different from basically anything in popular culture. And if you're the right type of neurotic (or high as balls, as some people have said), it's really interesting to dive in and experience the game.

As for the actual gameplay... it's a time management sim. Not an especially exciting one either.

>>76196909
For what it costs, you should play it. The game is ok, the writing is fantastic, and the devs deserve a little dosh to work on their next game.

>>76191717
If you're REALLY desperate to keep a card from expiring, there's one cheap trick (borderline exploit, really) that involves Talking to Sulochana about it. You can pick just about anything as a subject, and it'll freeze the expiration timer while it's there.

I once used that trick to juggle low-level influences long enough for me to upgrade them and protect myself from a curse. Felt kinda dirty... though not as dirty as getting my brains eaten because fffffucking Clovette couldn't stop herself from tripping over ancient curses while exploring why the fuck am I even keeping you in this cult you dozy cow so help me I'm going to feed you to the Rite Intercalate one of these days.

>>76196909
Pirate it. The dev is a complete cunt, and he deserves to make as little money from it as possible.

>>76198933
Alexis and lottie are pretty based dunno what you’re talking about

>>76195339
I've only managed to wound the foe once and I don't even fucking remember how. I think I shot him with a gun.

>>76196909
Cultist sim is a fantastically bewitching experience. 10 out of 10. Don't play it.
The game overall is abominable, disorientating nightmare with every facet of its mechanics seeming being fine-tuned to waste as much of your time as possible.

>>76196909
Either you're going to be way into it or you're going to be like "what the fuck is this shit".

>>76198986
Dude's a simp who promoted his gf secretly because she had a vagina and he thought he'd get more sex from her. He also threw literal tantrums when his previous gf, also someone he promoted secretly, broke up with him. I'm not giving a pathetic "man" like that my money lmao.

>>76203916
>nobody blames the bitches who fucked their way up the corporate ladder
>they just blame the guy who's weak for pussy

>>76203998
Ofc I blame them, but they didn't work on the game.

>>76203998
don't blame them for using their gifts to their advantage any more than you blame a tiger for using their claws or a dog for using its sense of smell

>>76198933
Quinn, what are you doing on 4chan? Did you decide to go anonymous after driving a man to kill himself?

I feel like there is some thematic overlap between the cutthroat and often inhuman competition of the Long and their cults, and the cutthroat and often inhuman competition of Xianxia Cultivators and their sects/harems. I don't really know what to do with that information, other than want to run an occultivation campaign

>>76204509
>hmmm, this anon hates a game dev for giving out favours in return for sex
>surely they are zoe quinn

>>76133395
Oh the bells are ringing

>>76201422
That's certainly possible anon. The Foe is human, after all, and can be hurt by most weapons - an ordinary gun will not do the trick though. Seven wounds will end him. It's also possible to leave him alive at six wounds and obtain some very satisfying victories.

Repeating what I said earlier: Exile is a lot more fun and faster paced than the base game. A Defiance victory takes maybe 3 - 5 hours. Obscurity probably a bit longer, especially if you get fucked by Traces RNG.
I'd definitely recommend to buy or pirate this DLC even if you didn't get into the main game.

>>76133572
I've never done Moth run. Moth is evil?

>>76149529
Lantern and Knock. And Ysabet.

>>76204940
Obviously I don't literally believe you're ZQ, you tremendous autist. But you know, when something looks like cancel culture and quacks like cancel culture, then it has no right to get all righteously offended when comparisons are made.

>>76205793
I wouldn't call the Moth outright evil, but it's definitely one of the most fey Hours. It ascended by eating one of the old Hours from the inside, and following it is one of the fastest ways to lose your sanity if you're careless.

>>76205793
Moth ain't evil, it's just a gigantic bug who has a fetish for scissors. It's harmful to humans that are aligned to it, of course, but they were probably already bonkers.

>>76166593
It's like walking somewhere in a dream. You're walking, but not really.

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Completed my first mod for the game. It's a more detailed map for the Exile DLC. The game is obviously very reliant on either keeping a notebook or using the wiki. The wiki is incomplete and at the same time too spoilery for my liking.

The new map is in the spoiler image. Don't open it unless you want to see the secrets. I'm not exactly an artist so it doesn't look amazing. Ah well.

I'll upload the mod to the Steam Workshop as soon as I've actually bought the damn game.

>>76204053
I don't blame them for that, I blame them for trying to #metoo about it later.

>>76205793
Moth is friend.

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>>76208669

>>76205874
>Obviously I don't literally believe you're ZQ, you tremendous autist.
That is indeed obvious. My point is that it makes zero sense to accuse someone of being ZQ because they're attacking someone for being like...ZQ.

>>76209802
It was more a reference towards actual ZQ having tried to raise a stink about Alexis, because he'd "acted inappropriately" towards subordinates (though actual testimonies were really tepid stuff like "he stood too close to me once", or "he raised his voice in a meeting").

It was part of last year's shitshow when she tried to force some kind of MeToo for indie gaming, that fell flat on its face once Holowka went and Holowka'd himself.

Anyway, since no laws are being broken and no people are being hurt, I really find it hard to give a shit. I spent money on CultSim because the writing is good, not because of the developer's dating history.

>>76210439
Based ignoring everything but the merit of the work. Turning everything into soap opera is one of modernity's worst cancers.
>>76208847
Missing the tattered flesh of their chrysalis but otherwise accurate.

>>76210439
Yeah, no, I'm not gonna give a nigga my money when he's a pathetic guy like that. It's not like he deserves my money just for making something I like.

>>76204622
>occultivation
Have you read Lord of the Mysteries?

>>76211290
Looks interesting. Always funny to see the uncanny takes easterners have on western culture.

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>>76205793
>I knew a man who captured moths in a bell-jar. On nights like this, he would release them one by one to die in the candle. [Moth is the wild and perilous principle of chaos and yearning.]

>>76205874
>following it is one of the fastest ways to lose your sanity if you're careless.
Until you get a ritual that eats influences, hold off on indoctrinating the many acquaintances you find. You can dispose of unwanted influences by using them in the recruitment.
Moth is one of the 5 aspects on Restlessness, so a Moth cult can also use Restlessness with 6 Moth Lore to promote Believers to Disciples.

>>76211553
Oh, I don't mean just mechanically, I mean that as an Hour it's... really goddamn weird. It's not a coincidence that the Moth-aligned generic pawn is the only one that self-destructs if promoted. It might not be as actively predatory as the Red Grail or the Wolf-Divided, but I'd still say it's the scariest Hour this side of Nowhere.

>>76211553
Funny thing is that irl moths aren't attracted to light but are instead experiencing a navigation error. They orient themselves according to the distant moon and are confused by the much nearer fixed light source. Imagine how we use our inner ear to balance but feeling yourself tugged "downhill" towards a certain point even though you can clearly see based on the objects around you that you're on flat ground.

>>76146109
>>76159110
Honestly, I just brought up the console and started cheating to get around the worst of the water-treading (money, upgrading influences, etc.).

There's a lot of cool shit to read, and it really does feel culty that a alrge part of the game is figuring out how to win in the first place.

I don't know that it would be as engaging without the constant drain of resources that necessitate the grind, but once you're sucked in I don't feel like there's much drawback in just bypassing the tedium once you've actually figured out how to accomplish whatever it is.

>>76136638
>you only interact with them in two scenarios:
Three. One of the patrons is a Long.
>aside from the Baldomerian,
She's a Name. So are the other 5 Knock spirits and the painting you talk to in the Medium? legacy.

>>76196909
Yes. One of the joys is figuring out the game and mastering it. Then you get the joy of uncovering all the lore. THEN you get the joy of roleplaying it out and self-challenging.

>>76198933
You're an SJW and should dilate and kill yourself.

Does the exile's cooldown on using his edge lore reduce as he upgrades it?

>>76216009

Yes.

>>76216216
Oh man. That's a big help. Fighting off reckoners right now is hard as fuck.

So, I've just killed the younger Glover and got myself promoted to boardmember of G&G.
However it seems that this was a terrible decision, because this position is worse than my previous one. I get paid a little more, sure, but if I have any notoriety while working there they get magnetized into the card. If three notoriety cards get absorbed in this manner I get fired permanently, meaning that I can never do any sort of Reason work for the rest of the playthrough.
This is the exact sort of backwards design that made me drop Cultist Sim on release.

>>76219039
That's part of why I never bother with glover, to be honest. Painting has huge benefits if you manage to get it going (glimmering/contentment generation, lots of $, make unique tools, manage notoriety), though it's admittedly a bit unreliable. Physical labor is not super profitable, but it pays the bills and protects you from sickness. Neither of them have a decay timer that limits your other work, and it's all mostly obsolete anyway when you have a full set of rank 6+ lores and can just get rich off commissions.

>>76219472
>when you have a full set of rank 6+ lores and can just get rich off commissions.
By the time you get there you'll have both copies of "Something something DEEP MYSTERIES something" and the only uses for funds will be Time Passes and offering to the Spider Door.

>>76220575
The purpose of getting rich off commissions as I see it is that it means you can dedicate your Work verb to other things for a long stretch without needing to be concerned about having funds for Time Passes/Season of Sickness/expedition supplies. It doesn't give you some huge edge in terms of letting you buy things, sure, but it effectively negates one of the plates you'd otherwise need to keep spinning.

>>76220684
>spinning plates
Startlingly accurate description of the gameplay.

>>76219039
You've got to think like a board member. You're not there for the long haul, you're there to extract as much value as possible in the short term and then live off your spoils. By the time they let you go you should have enough cash that you never need to work again.

>>76221487
I'm going to be honest, that's kind of... lame.
It's be cool if I could just kill off the other members of the board one by one and replace them with my underlings.
Or change my identity and start again with a fresh reputation.
Just anything to resolve this so I don't have to keep painting and cluttering up my board.
Whoops, looks like I picked up another fifth eye curse, guess I don't have to worry about painting anymore.

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>>76221834
Look, if you're at all doing what you ought be doing as a cultist, you're storming into that board office looking like a mountain of muscle and scars with unnatural light spilling out of your eyesockets or something equally unnatural. And the board was cool with it at first, because you got results, but then actual, no-shit, scandalous ties to dangerously illegal stuff started to get tied to your name. And the company PR machine can work to help with that, to a point, cause it might be lies or at worse true and reflect on them by association. But eventually they're going to realize "This guy's crucifying babies while having orgies atop broken glass, and he's not even trying to hide it at this point." and they'll cut you out like a malignant tumor that might bite their fingers off while they're disposing of it if they don't offer a golden parachute. And nobody's gonna let you anywhere near their business since they'll be able to see what happened with the last place you worked.

That's when you start publishing books about the eldritch things that haunt your dreams (or more commonly, that you make haunt the dreams of people you don't like. And sometimes kill them in those dreams.) for mad dosh because at this point you're one of the premier authorities on the eldritch and if your essays aren't the final word on those subjects it's only because sometimes history literally changes and makes things you say wrong retroactively (which the people buying the books will be aware of themselves.)

>>76222076
Hey now, you're only going to be scarred if you're a Dancer or a Priest. In which case you probably have better things to do with your time anyway.

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What's the point of Influences?
Are they just for rituals?

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>>76223918
Untrue.
I'm just an regular weirdo.

>>76223923
Using Sunset Rite they are the cheapest and easiest way to fix literally any problem. In the mid-game it is often trivial to find an Influence with higher power than any Lore you've got knocking around.

>>76219039
You're just doing G&G at the wrong pace. You can get to the G&G board SUPER early before you start generating Notoriety, at which point it becomes a money funnel until you're ready for lootin and scootin in the mid game. You always get the boot eventually, but if you get in early enough you can make it out of G&G with like a net of 25-50 wealth, which helps make the hectic shitshow that is the midgame more manageable, and in the meantime you've probably bought out the book store and the auction house.

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>>76224073
Look, I understand what you are saying, I really do.
But you also need to understand that I simply cannot bear the thought of not having an ever-expanding hoard of disposal wealth. The siren call of capitalism is too strong, more enticing than even the arcane power and whispered promises of the occult.
One day I shall pluck the Glory from aloft Mansus using the invisible hand of the free market and add it to my mountain of treasures.

>>76224283
Is this what it looks like to be driven mad by the Beach-Crow?

>>76224283
Honestly, past about 100 you've got more than you could ever spend.

Just finish you playthrough by dropping a Passion in that sucker every time then.

>>76223923
A temporary source of aspect. You can use them in rituals and for promoting cultists.
Curses are dispelled by using 10 or 15 Heart influences or, for some curses, only by 15 Heart influence.

Influences are mainly obtained by dreaming. Spirits decay into influences and some actions can produce some influences, but they don't produce strong influences.
You can also study 2 of an influence to produce the next size up, but given the short decay times of the strong influences it is rarely worth it.
The only worthwhile case that comes to mind is that 15 Heart influence can only be obtained through study.

Vitality, Erudition, and Glimmering are all influences with value 1 in an aspect. Their Lessons Learned have a value of 2.

The 5 mental state cards are also influences.
Dread and Restlessness are *fantastic* offerings to the Sunset Rite. Fascination is ehhh, but at least rituals can get rid of it.
Lantern, Winter, and Moth influences decay into Fascination, Dread, and Restlessness (respectively).

>>76224283
>>76225265
Looks to me like Anon the Based-Autist faced an enigmatic ordeal and chose to understand nothing.

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>>76227114
>You can also study 2 of an influence to produce the next size up, but given the short decay times of the strong influences it is rarely worth it.
Remember that you can reliably obtain specific low-level influences from your Hideout, which in combination with trips to the White Door can sometimes give you just enough emergency oomph to get a curse off your back.

>>76196899
There's a mod on reddit to create a grid that snaps all cards back to where they normally go. Quick google can find it.

I won my first victory. I was playing the Exile. I got Duffour to six wounds, said "why not" and used my temptation to get the Lionsmith ending. I found it strangely unsatisfying to be that close to finally killing the fucker and not just doing the job.

>>76229811
A victory's a victory, anon, and I guess this is as close to a canon ending as you can get. You are strong now, and growing stronger. Keep at it!

>>76231099
I almost killed him during a fight with him and an underling because this version of the foe was terrified of water and I kept drawing sea cards with explore. I probably could have taken him down but I chose to keep going onward. It's weird. The endgame location I wound up in kept giving me cats and freezing cold when I needed to draw heights, and I only had maybe two of those the entire last fight.

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We're at the stage where any new post is likely to hit the bump limit, so I just want to say, this was an enjoyable thread. Didn't follow the OP premise much, but it's a fun game to talk about.

>>76234816
Yup, the setting, lore, and mechanics are very flavorful so it's very inspiring but sadly difficult to translate to a real campaign. Good thread indeed though