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Lycan 01
2010-01-22, 11:30 PM
So, yesterday I was checking the Chaosium website to download and print out some Call of Cthulhu character sheets, and I noticed something. Apparently, a new suppliment for Call of Cthulhu called "Cthulhu Invictus," set during the time of the Roman Empire, was recently released. I'd heard of it before, but this time it caught my attention, and I took a look at the article.

For some reason, I found the idea of fighting the minions and machinations of the Great Old Ones in Ancient Rome quite fascinating. I mentioned it to a few of my friends, and their reactions were... interesting. My girlfriend loved the idea of exploring Ancient Egypt. One friend stared at me in shock when I told him what it was, and he promised me he'd play it if I picked it up, even if no one else would. And another friend... she physically grabbed me by the shoulders, leaned in, and shouted "I'M IN!!" in my face. :smalleek:

So I've got at least... 4 or so people interested. 5, if I include myself. That's more than enough for a decent group, but... I want to be sure about this before I actually order it.


Does anyone have any experience with Cthulhu Invictus? If so, what are your thoughts? What sort of professions are there? Monsters? Cults? Fun stories?

Please, any info on this would be greatly appreciated! :smallbiggrin:

THE_BIG_CHEESE
2010-01-22, 11:47 PM
I have never played this, however now that I see it combines literally two things in my top five favorite things in the world (ancient rome and hp lovecraft) I doubt much time will pass before I pay some of the unemployed to play this with me if I must. At any rate, I would personally suggest looking in depth into whatever time in Roman history that it occurs in, as that will affect a lot (things were very different under different emperors/leaders as I'm sure you know). If it allows you to choose, I would personally suggest the conflicts between Octavian (soon to be Augustus) and Mark Antony, as that most definitely involves Egypt, lots of chances for battles, and there is a very good historical record for that time period. Then I would suggest looking over some of the basic Lovecraft stories again, as if I remember correctly some of them had references to Rome or the Romans (I want to say Rats in the Walls mentioned something?) and it'd be cool to tie in some real lovecraft story content. I wish you luck on this endeavor, and hope that my post helped and wasn't just me trying to contain my excitement at the idea of this.

Lycan 01
2010-01-23, 12:01 AM
50 CE, according to a preview article...

Here's all I've got to go on...

http://www.chaosium.com/article.php?story_id=420

http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=3746

http://catalog.chaosium.com/pages.php?pID=60&CDpath=3

Satyr
2010-01-23, 02:56 AM
That really looks like fun.
By now, I usually prefer Trail to Call when it comes to Cthulhu, but that would be a nice reason to switch back.

As a scenario, I would probably take something vile in Sicily. And then using the two Servile Wars (slave uprisings) as a background for eldritch cults: First of all, slave uprisings were really rare (there are actually only four known major slave rebelions: Two on Sicily, one under Spartacus, and the last one in Haiti in the 19th century. That one was the only one that actually succeeded), so that two major insurrections involving slaves on a comparatively small island is suspicious by default. Then, Sicily was comparatively long under the control of Carthago, which are very well suited as the occult bad guys for any campaign in antiquity. And, as a tertiary note, both uprisals were prominently headed by priests of exotic eastern cults. And, as a nice sidenote, in the same time the Roman Republic lost control about vast parts of Sicily, there were slave rebelions all over the known place - even in Rome itself.
If you combine all this, you can probably have a powerful cult - Dagon would fit, because of the origin of most of the slaves in Greece and the Levante - or Shub-Nigurath, because she is probably the most blue-collar Great Old One. And if you have Dagon, you have the Deep Ones handy as well, even though the slave rebellion took mostly part in the hinterland of the island.

The other things that I would probably include is the Pan is Dionysus is Nodens story, and including a decadent but actually harmless Pan/Nodens cult in Rome itself, where blasé aristocrats go to have some exotic fun and ghouls in the catacombs of Rome. These catacombs are vast, at least for their time, and the ghouls would fit in there very well.

Dimers
2010-01-23, 11:59 PM
New World Of Darkness's "Requiem for Rome" -- its ancient vampire setting -- has excellent background material on the time period, and might be an interesting place to start looking for horror ideas. I dislike vampire RP, despise nWoD, and rather enjoyed this setting and book anyway.

Sorry, nothing to offer that actually helps with your questions. :smallfrown:

Matthew
2010-01-26, 05:22 PM
Got to admit, sounds like a lot of fun.

Thatguyoverther
2010-01-26, 05:42 PM
I'd play up the mystery cult (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries) aspect. Allot of the real life secret cults where pretty weird.

If the players are fine with it I'd set up at least part of the campaign in Jerusalem, and toy around a bit with that.