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The Mana Brothers
Present
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It was two thirty in the morning, and raining. In the City it was always two thirty in the morning and raining.
Kim Newman, The Night
Mayor
A Word of Explanation
This is an unofficial, alternate setting for
Chaosium's
Call of Cthulhu
RPG.
It somehow strips off part of Lovecraft's supernatural horror from the proceedings and replaces it with the style and mood of film noir and hard-boiled stories. A liberal dash of weird-menace flavour was added to season the whole.
The actual work on niteside dreams (a title inspired
by Frank Bellknap Long's memoir of his friendship with lovecraft "HPL,
A Dreamer on the Nightside") started after a highly constructive
discussion (as usual)
on the Strange Aeons mailing list, about
the possibility of mixing game systems and setting one-shot games in the
universe portrayed
in the movie "Cast a Deadly Spell": fast, sharp, horrific and
yet tongue-in-cheek. One thing led to another
and we started
typing. Soon, matters such as the development of a sound set of alternate
rules gave way to extensive discussion on the background setting.
The overall results should not displease estimators
of the
Providence Gentleman's opus, as film noir sensibility was not far from his
overall worldview.
But sure, with the addition of a dry, hard-boiled
sense
of humour and the twists of a magically changed reality, it makes for
a different adventure atmosphere.
For starters, we decided to develop niteside
dreams as a quick-and-dirty
plug-in kind of thing,
so that anyone owning a copy of the Call of Cthulhu rulesbook
and a few other easy to get and inexpensive essentials can start and
play and have fun (hopefully). A lenghtier and more detailed version soon
surfaced through discussion, thanks to the many suggestions that were made
about the setting in particular.
For the time being, this pages will feature
the complete
set of Call of Cthulhu adaptations and background information
on the game
world we developed from the original core of notes.
Time permitting, we plan to add a full lenght, stand-alone version of this game and setting, using The Window, a high quality, freely distributed, free-form game system, as our engine of choice.
Most probably, many will find this setting ideal
for
non-canonical one-offs (and we strongly recommend it for the April Fool's
Night Game,
or for something different on Halloween's Night),
while we hope that a few others
might feel like giving a try to a longer, more articulate campaign play.
To one and all, we wish the best.
The Mana Brothers, October 1998
Contents
Mean Streets - Establishing the Background
Hard Boiled - Old and New Carreers for Investigators.
Shots in the Night - Notes on Violence
More Things That Are Dreamt Of - Mythos and Non-Mythos Magic
Headshots - a few NPCs
Filing Cabinet - some Adventure Ideas
Dealer's Choiche - Optional approaches and miscellaneous notes
Slang - a thorough Dictionary of Hard Boiled Slang
The Rap - Bibliography, Suggested Readings, Inspirational Movies and Music, On-Line Resources
The Chopper Squad - thanks and acknowledgements
Important Copyright Bit:
Call of Cthulhu is Registered Trademark of Chaosium Inc. and is used with their permission. Chaosium Inc. is the Registered Trademark of Chaosium Inc.
The Copyrights of the artwork as reproduced herein are of the respective authors and owners. The use of the artwork on these pages does not challenge the rights of the rightful owners.
Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction; all the persons, facts, products and items described are purely fictional, or used with satirical intent. It is not our intention to offend anybody's beliefs or convinctions.
Please don't hurt us.
November 1998
