Baeraad
Delicate Snowflake
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2017
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What the hell. I have previously done a let's-read of Eldritch Skies, which annoyed me by being too bland and aggressively inoffensive. I've also run a a campaign of it, and concluded that it doesn't run very well (which is, in fairness, mostly because the port to Savage Worlds didn't work very well - the setting is at least salvagable). Let's try the polar opposite, and check out CthulhuTech. Is it really as bad as everyone says? Let's find out.
I mean, to give you an idea:
I think, having written it out and gone back to double-check a few things, I can kind of understand what's going on, but this is some really amateurish writing. This is not a good way to convey information, especially not when you're introducing a whole setting full of details (and whatever CthulhuTech's failings, it's certainly detailed).
Anyway, the mechas find a Migou "Dragonfly" mech sitting around for no apparent reason, and they blow it up. Then they get debriefed. And that's about it for them.
The story then switches to a pack of Tagers (good shapeshifters who fight weaker, more numerous and evil shapeshifters called Dhohanoids who work for the Chrysalis Corporation which in turn is run by Nyarlathotep; they're basically Garou from Werewolf: the Apocalypse, only slimy instead of furry) running around that city from the beginning and gathering up civilians, except the civilians turn out to be Dhohanoids and there's another confusing fight scene. It doesn't really help that there's very little difference in theme between Tagers and Dhohanoids, they're all your basic creepy-crawley eldritch abomination things, it's just that Tagers are slightly bigger and more powerful. What you end up with is a big tangle of tentacles and teeth and claws and it's hard to keep track of who's who, is what I'm saying.
The Tagers end up fleeing the city, there's more Dhohanoids, they get cornered in a building but another Tager (I... think?) turn up to save them and they all use their Cool Move That Wins Fights and they live to fight another day.
So we have human and alien mecha fighting each other across a burning city while humans who can turn into horrors and horrors who can turn into humans have desperate battles to the death in the shadows. How did they manage to make that boring?
We then have an account by a soldier who's been stationed at the front of the various wars that are being fought and been injured and gone slightly batty and war is hell and woe is me. No, wait, scratch that. To be specific:
Er, what does that mean, exactly? You've seen hell? When? In the war? But if the war is the hell, how is the war worse than hell? Aaargggghh.
We then finally get to the proper introduction.
Okay, that's cool, that's cool, but... are you, at some point, going to explain how to reconcile those two "paradigms," or are you just going to sort of mush them together and act like it makes perfect sense? I mean, you can do cosmic-horror anime, sure. NGE is pretty much exactly that. But NGE is also a very carefully balanced story where you constantly feel like the shiny machinery and slapstick humour is a thin coat of paint over something deep and dark and stomach-turning. Are you capable of that sort of precision, CthulhuTech? I have my doubts, but I guess we'll see...
We also have the famously snotty rant against digital piracy. I plead the fifth on how I came by this PDF, by the way. I will, however, state for the record that Eclipse Phase is available as PDF free of charge, and for that one I bought the hardback, whereas I do not foresee a day when CthulhuTech will be gracing my bookshelf with its presence. But, hey, I may be wrong and I may start to like it after reading it properly!
We then get a dictionary, explaining the various terms that get thrown around.
The Aeon War is something the human (united under the New Earth Government) and the Nazzadi (space-Drow created through Migou science; they were meant to go fight the humans, but they decided they liked the humans better than the Migou) are fighting against the Migou and the Old Ones. It's not going so good.
Arcanotech is technology derived from "non-Euclidian geometry" and can generate infinite power. It's developed exclusively by the Ashcroft Foundation. You can also use it to build mecha, for some reason. The best sort of mecha are Engels, half-biological mecha that kicks especially much ass.
There's cults about. The main ones are the Rapine Storm and the Death Shadows, who both serve Hastur. The Rapine Storm is a huge army of lunatics and monsters that is currently stomping all over Asia. The Death Shadows, meanwhile, infiltrate the NEG in secret and sabotage it. Under the sea you get the Deep Ones of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, who wants to bring Cthulhu back, in which case we're all fucked.
There's also the Children of Chaos, who are led by Nyarlathotep, and who have taken over the Chrysalis Corporation and wreak havoc through monstrous shapeshifters called Dhohanoids. They're resisted by the Eldritch Society, who have much better monstrous shapeshifters called Tagers. Is it bad that so far, the best argument I can think of for playing CthulhuTech is that you'd get to say "Dhohanoid" a lot? What? It's a fun word! It sounds all squishy, like a rubber ball!
Also, magic is a thing that exists. Whether it costs you SAN points to use has yet to be revealed.
There follows a list of inspirations. They're about what you'd expect. All things Lovecraft, obviously. Also Neon Genesis Evangelion (for Engels) and The Guyver (for Tagers and Dhohanoids. Dhooooohanoioioioioids. Yeah, still fun. ). And something called Robotech, which I have never seen any of, but I assume the Nazzadi come from there because it seems like they don't exist for any reason other than to provide a playable version of something from somewhere.
And that was the first chapter. This might be a tough one, folks. It's just all so... dull. And I don't even understand why, because all the parts it's made of are big and colourful and exciting, but somehow, the way they're put together just makes me want to snooze.
Chapter one: Welcome
We start out with a long piece of fiction. First, there's a scene of an Engel (a bio-mech that's cooler than regular all-machine mecha, think Neon Genesis Evangelion) pilot scrambling to survive in a city that the Migou are stomping heavily on, except that turns out to be a nightmare she has later, and she wakes up and is sent on a mission with a bunch of other mech pilot, and they meet another mech pilot, and every pilot has a name and a call sign and a mech type and at least one of the mecha has a name of its own, and it's all very confusing and incoherent. The fact that the narration tries to be hardboiled and curt doesn't help, either.I mean, to give you an idea:
A phantom shape flew neatly through the trees. Landing, it shimmered as the Rapier's stealth system powered down. Sam hated the way stealth mecha just seemed to step out of thin air.
CC stepped up. The Rapier spoke. "You Feint?"
"That's me," replied CC.
Timana dropped the stealth on his Eclipse. He stood an arm's length behind the Rapier, with those acid-dripping claws waiting for trouble. The callsign Scalpel was stenciled on its shoulder. "Are you our man?" the Eclipse "whispered" into the mech's ear. "Uh... yeah."
I think, having written it out and gone back to double-check a few things, I can kind of understand what's going on, but this is some really amateurish writing. This is not a good way to convey information, especially not when you're introducing a whole setting full of details (and whatever CthulhuTech's failings, it's certainly detailed).
Anyway, the mechas find a Migou "Dragonfly" mech sitting around for no apparent reason, and they blow it up. Then they get debriefed. And that's about it for them.
The story then switches to a pack of Tagers (good shapeshifters who fight weaker, more numerous and evil shapeshifters called Dhohanoids who work for the Chrysalis Corporation which in turn is run by Nyarlathotep; they're basically Garou from Werewolf: the Apocalypse, only slimy instead of furry) running around that city from the beginning and gathering up civilians, except the civilians turn out to be Dhohanoids and there's another confusing fight scene. It doesn't really help that there's very little difference in theme between Tagers and Dhohanoids, they're all your basic creepy-crawley eldritch abomination things, it's just that Tagers are slightly bigger and more powerful. What you end up with is a big tangle of tentacles and teeth and claws and it's hard to keep track of who's who, is what I'm saying.
The Tagers end up fleeing the city, there's more Dhohanoids, they get cornered in a building but another Tager (I... think?) turn up to save them and they all use their Cool Move That Wins Fights and they live to fight another day.
So we have human and alien mecha fighting each other across a burning city while humans who can turn into horrors and horrors who can turn into humans have desperate battles to the death in the shadows. How did they manage to make that boring?
We then have an account by a soldier who's been stationed at the front of the various wars that are being fought and been injured and gone slightly batty and war is hell and woe is me. No, wait, scratch that. To be specific:
They say war is hell. I've seen hell. This is worse.
Er, what does that mean, exactly? You've seen hell? When? In the war? But if the war is the hell, how is the war worse than hell? Aaargggghh.
We then finally get to the proper introduction.
CthulhuTech is a hybrid genre, fusing together two separate paradigms. On one hand, it is an anime world of mecha – giant piloted robot war-machines. It’s a world of high adventure, plucky resourcefulness, and the hope that a brighter day is on the horizon. On the other, it’s a world of eldritch horrors, where unknowable things dwell outside the world of man. A place where the gods are horrible creatures with malevolent agendas, unsympathetic to lesser beings such as man – a dark world of shattering revelations and insanity.
Okay, that's cool, that's cool, but... are you, at some point, going to explain how to reconcile those two "paradigms," or are you just going to sort of mush them together and act like it makes perfect sense? I mean, you can do cosmic-horror anime, sure. NGE is pretty much exactly that. But NGE is also a very carefully balanced story where you constantly feel like the shiny machinery and slapstick humour is a thin coat of paint over something deep and dark and stomach-turning. Are you capable of that sort of precision, CthulhuTech? I have my doubts, but I guess we'll see...
We also have the famously snotty rant against digital piracy. I plead the fifth on how I came by this PDF, by the way. I will, however, state for the record that Eclipse Phase is available as PDF free of charge, and for that one I bought the hardback, whereas I do not foresee a day when CthulhuTech will be gracing my bookshelf with its presence. But, hey, I may be wrong and I may start to like it after reading it properly!
We then get a dictionary, explaining the various terms that get thrown around.
The Aeon War is something the human (united under the New Earth Government) and the Nazzadi (space-Drow created through Migou science; they were meant to go fight the humans, but they decided they liked the humans better than the Migou) are fighting against the Migou and the Old Ones. It's not going so good.
Arcanotech is technology derived from "non-Euclidian geometry" and can generate infinite power. It's developed exclusively by the Ashcroft Foundation. You can also use it to build mecha, for some reason. The best sort of mecha are Engels, half-biological mecha that kicks especially much ass.
There's cults about. The main ones are the Rapine Storm and the Death Shadows, who both serve Hastur. The Rapine Storm is a huge army of lunatics and monsters that is currently stomping all over Asia. The Death Shadows, meanwhile, infiltrate the NEG in secret and sabotage it. Under the sea you get the Deep Ones of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, who wants to bring Cthulhu back, in which case we're all fucked.
There's also the Children of Chaos, who are led by Nyarlathotep, and who have taken over the Chrysalis Corporation and wreak havoc through monstrous shapeshifters called Dhohanoids. They're resisted by the Eldritch Society, who have much better monstrous shapeshifters called Tagers. Is it bad that so far, the best argument I can think of for playing CthulhuTech is that you'd get to say "Dhohanoid" a lot? What? It's a fun word! It sounds all squishy, like a rubber ball!
Also, magic is a thing that exists. Whether it costs you SAN points to use has yet to be revealed.
There follows a list of inspirations. They're about what you'd expect. All things Lovecraft, obviously. Also Neon Genesis Evangelion (for Engels) and The Guyver (for Tagers and Dhohanoids. Dhooooohanoioioioioids. Yeah, still fun. ). And something called Robotech, which I have never seen any of, but I assume the Nazzadi come from there because it seems like they don't exist for any reason other than to provide a playable version of something from somewhere.
And that was the first chapter. This might be a tough one, folks. It's just all so... dull. And I don't even understand why, because all the parts it's made of are big and colourful and exciting, but somehow, the way they're put together just makes me want to snooze.
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