Call of Cthulhu: Cthulhu Icarus - RPG Review 

Adventure idea: the player characters are on a spaceship studying a rogue star. Strange happenings start to occur, eerie dreams, some of the crew develops a cult-like reverence for the star they're studying, and all the other usual mythos goodness. It turns out that the star is actually the dormant form of the Great Old One Cthugha.

Lovecraft translates so well into so many genres. That simply highlights how well he hit it with cosmic horror.

This is Ground Control to Major Tom You've really found the cult And the papers want to know whose skin they wear Now it's time to leave the temple if you dare This is Major Tom to Ground Control I'm stepping through the portal And I'm floating in a most noneuclidian way And the stars look very alien today For here Am I sitting in a space pod Far above the beast Great Cthullu is through And there's nothing I can do Though I'm past one hundred thousand calls I'm feeling very mad And I think my insanity roll knows which way to go Tell my wife I love her very much she knows Ground Control to Major Tom Your pg is dead, there's something wrong Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you hear me, Major Tom? ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu, Major Tom?

Space Jack wears a speed-suit? Hopefully he remembers that not ALL space attire is equipped with a waste receptacle system. Go Team Venture!

"Speed suit" - Wild Venture Bros reference, yes!

Space, where no-one can hear you scream... At a player for using pen on their character sheet

Best of Luck getting that scenario! Future Sci-Fi is criminally unsupported in the current scenario and setting line up for CoC and hopefully they will listen to you so we can buy some of that sweet Alien/Event Horizon-esque horror.

Why Mr Skorkowsky only has 32k subs is a mystery to me. One of the very best out there.

The small d100 RPG titled "Mothership" (free/donate Beta on DTRPG) is scifi-horror themed. There are some nice generator tables in it's supplement "Dead Planet". Notably the Derelict Ship layout generator which is appropriately thematic for this end of space horror. Speaking of space horror & tables, has anyone mashed 'Stars Without Number' and 'Silent Legions' setting generation stuff together for their own sandbox Space Horror/Cthulhu campaign? And/or ported it over to CoC or Delta Green?

This makes me wonder why there's no Twilight Zone/Cthulu through the ages TV series.

This sounds baller as hell. I was actually writing a Star Trek fan series in which the Enterprise M was finally going to Andeomeda Galaxy with a contingent of ships, and, after a particularly boring several months of finding absolutely nothing remarkable, no planets with life, a number of comets that were exactly like comets that had already been discovered, and a sense of cabin fever setting in aboard ship, they accidentally discovered Carcosa, and were trapped in the gravitational pull of something within the Lake of Hali that wanted to feed on them. Sending away teams down found the city completely derelict, dead alien life forms all around it that seemed to have died in a Mardi Gras-like celebration that became violent, complete with graffiti that translated into poetry glorifying dying to sate the hunger of the Dark One. That would be pretty cool in this kind of setting.

Cthulhu in space... So, Event Horizon?

The "Heir to Carcosa" adventure from the "Ripples from Carcosa" micro campaign seems like a natural fit for this setting. Also, "The Derelict" seems like a pretty easy re-skin.

What is it about a fresh Skorkowski Cthulhu RU-vid vid that always brings a smile to my face?

You nailed it, Seth. I can't believe they don't have the character sheet up on the site! I love the setting too, and it is criminally under-supported. Stygian Fox you say? That would be interesting!

Seth might publish a CoC SciFi scenario? Um . . . yes, please! Do we need to do a Kickstarter because I would totally back that project!

Holy crap i literally asked about this the other night thanks for posting this up Seth. Fascinating to hear you actually looked into getting others to further this rich setting.

Just discovered your channel. You do the lord's work.

Yes! Nice to hear some love for "The Black Hole". Oh, the game review was ok too, I guess.

Cthulhu in space is an absolute natural, since many, if not most, of the mythos comes from space.

Surprised you didn't bring up the greatest future horror film ever. Leprechaun in Space.

The Traveller game might be useful for making equipment.

I love that you reference Jason X, it's a very underrated comedy. more people should know about it.

You can work in a hobo into a space setting. Heinlein did in 'The Green Hills of Earth'. A disabled grifter abusing the "Distressed Mariner" clause of space law to hitch free rides up and down the system.

Want a better way to say “rocks fall everyone dies?” Well this setting allows you to say “cthulhu in power armor”

Loved the shout-out to The Black Hole, it's an epic movie!!!

Seth, you forgot to mention scifi horror Sunshine. Great movie and the ship is named Icarus! Love your channel

Ooh I have to check this out! I love writing and GM space horror adventures! I ran a couple adventures in Cold & Dark that I based on the classics Aliens, Event Horizon and Pandorum and had a great time with them.

Thanks for the review! I rolled my eyes when I saw this in Through The Ages, but now I'm totally on board. OK, Seth...what are the odds that we'll ever get a Horror on the Orient Express review? I'd love to see your take on that.

I always wanred to play a scenario similar to Cthulhu Icarus where one of the players plays the ships AI. Because I think it would be super cool.

Interface magazine volume 2 issue 2, and Unspeakable Oath magazine 11. The 1st has a cyberpunk/Cthulhu crossover, and the second has a Cthulhu Now scenario where the players are Ithaqua cultists. I highly recommend both.

Nice. I agree on a nice,dark futuristic setting. I still love The Black Hole. I hope to run Horror Planet from Blood Brothers this summer. If you need an editor for your scenario let me know.

DriveThru RPG has a few future CoC books. Once Men has a few sci-fi settings based on futures mentioned in Lovecraft's works. Jovian Nightmares is a sourcebook for Cthulhu Rising. There is also community content like Anime-Punk and Moonglow.

As always, great material, but I still prefer to know with the Cthulhu Rising 6ed. + what gives us the series The Expanse. This is just what you can call Strange Eons

🎶IMMA DEEP SPACE HOBO🎶

Another good setting for aping Deep Rising, but in space!

Hey Seth. I love your videos and have been watching through them ( not in order sadly). When I saw this one I wondered if you had seen or had any comments on Eldritch Skies. A Savage Worlds setting I believe. It is a sci fi setting based around the idea of the mythos being more "alien" than Elditch or occult. I was just wondering if you'd heard of it and what you thought.

Definitely picturing a Dead Space inspired adventure now

Black Hole freaked me out as a kid too!

Personally, combining Icarus with The Reaping is workable. Essentially, have the apocalypse happen while your players are on the ship, returning to Earth. Starting with some events on the ship, but the main thing could be dealing with the aftermath of it with them dealing with something that ends their mission early and creates a problem, combine that with all contact with Earth ending, prompting a return, spend a while in Cryostasis on the way home only to find that all hell broke loose while they were gone. The ship, probably, should have a slightly higher tech level, and could work as a base for the party, at least early on, and add ground investigations to figure out just WTF!? happened while they were gone, along with dealing with the survivors and whatever else has been unleashed on the world since they left. You also have them trying to figure out what happened to friends and family, or even to the support teams that had been Earthside for their mission. What their original mission was can also be something that could be played with...might be something akin to the Godzilla: Earth thing where they may have been an unknowing lifeboat for humanity when those in the know about things realized they were failing, and the Delta Green or similar part of the crew might have died in transit or when whatever happened on the other end happened, meaning they're unraveling why they were sent as well as what happened.

From non-CoC releases, you can look into Mothership - sci fi survival horror. Fantastic Dimensions down here in the comments has a couple of actual play videos of that game :)

If you can get hold of the old White Dwarf no. 56 they had a great Cthulhu in Space adventure, "The Last Log".

Any time I hear about Cthulhu Icarus my mind go to the scenario "the Icarus project" included in the magazine Worlds of Cthulhu, issue nr 2. This is a 30-pages-long sci-fic / horror scenario that take place on a starship. It share era, mood, name of the ship (but not the ship itself) and is very lovecraftian. Worth any penny, if you can find it (it was printed in 2005 from Pegasus Press). There are other published scenarios, set in a sci-fic future (in Strange Aeons 2, Cthulhu Britannica and Blood Brothers) but they are designed to be self contained, not part of a campaign, and/or not set on a starship

Hey Seth is this the sci-if adventure you take about that was like event horizon?

"Today we are going into the dark future." My reaction: Wait, this isn't a Cyberpunk review!

When it comes to sci-fi horror, as much as I love Call of Cthulhu, I actually ended up investing in two other systems that really help jumpstart my creativity: Cold & Dark (by Modiphius) and the Void (by Wildfire), both available in DriveThruRPG. While I'd be more likely to run the Cold & Dark system over the Void because of its more robust options for character creation (reminds me very much of White Wolf/Onyx Path World of Darkness, except in space and with D8 dice pools), both products have a LOT of great material to steal from. The Void focuses on Humanity having colonized other planets in our own solar system, although a heavy level of Cthulhu Mythos mystery is thrown into the setting (complete with Mi-go keeping us away from Pluto), while Cold & Dark's default setting - heavily inspired by the inspirations mentioned in this video along with the Dead Space series of video games -is a completely different solar system that humanity migrated to after using up too much of Earth's resources. Both also do a good job of really immersing the reader in their respective settings with little short stories thrown into the core books. :) I missed the End Times monograph when I bought up a ton of those products from Chaosium back in the day, so I'm glad that it was mentioned in this vid. I'll have to pick both PDFs up soon. Nothing wrong with more inspiration for horror in the void. :) EDIT: Just to be clear: Call of Cthulhu and the Design Mechanism's Mythras line of rules are my favorite systems. It just sucks when you have to essentially work from the ground up to bring a setting like sci-fi horror to Call of Cthulhu when they lack helpful source material.

Just put some necromorphs and lazer cutters and you've got yourself a Dead Space campaign

Hi everyone! We are at 33K subscribers now - share and spread the love so we can get Seth up to 100K subscribers and get a full-length movie starring Seth and only Seth!

I'm with you there on 'The Black Hole' Jack!

I am very interested it playing this setting as I love CoC (currently running HotOE) and Mothership was a real letdown when we played it...

Sounds fairly similar to the UN Moonbase adventure from the Strange Aeons sourcebook released in the late 90's, which was a cool setting, however but was just one adventure rather than a full setting.

Hm. I know Chaosium has at least two other sci fi monographs; "Cthulhu Rising" (with it's "Jovian Nightmares" mini expansion) and "Once Men" (which covers some stuff regarding the future through comments from various mythos works). As for other systems, there's a few- Mothership's been mentioned, and I can personally recommend The Void (The pre-Ring era of The Expanse meets the Mythos, made by the folks behind CthulhuTech) and Cold & Dark (which borrows rather heavily from Dead Space and Aliens).

Hm... Glad I called the one crucial spaceship in my sci-fi RPG Daedalus (because it made the daring flight through the void between two star clusters and /arrived/) still....

Aww, it hurts me knowing that this is only a micro setting!

MAXIMILIAN!!

Seth you should really check out the Alien RPG by Free League. They send you the cinematic starter kit when you preorder the corebook, and it comes with an adventure called "Chariot of the Gods" by Andrew E.C. Gaska.

CthulhuTech (mecha-scifi Cthulhu) holds some ideas of how our spacefaring future might be warped by Old One interventions.

I really would like to see scenario homebrewed by you

I think they left out the occupation that would naturally fit me best here, that of Lord-Captain Commander of the Imperial Fleet!...err or of whatever navy the Icarus is a part of. On a side note I find this setting very interesting, although I think my preference of CoC would be Gaslight.

I'll pray to Cthulhu if I have to, but please review the Dragon Age RPG at some point, it would be so awesome

Any chance you will do a review of the dark age setting?

I second that on The Black Hole!

Seth, have you ever read or played Mothership by Tuesday Night Games? It's a neat OSR survival horror in space in the theme of Aliens. Definitely recommend giving it a shot!

I love blending Sci Fi and Lovecraft. What do you think of Eldrich Skies or the Monograph set on the moons of Jupiter?

Mmmm…The Black Hole. It still holds up.

I wonder if Seth's cthulhu icarus adventure is still a possibility, it would be awesome if it was.

Sadly, in the german version by Pegasus, there is a lot of stuff missing for the current 7th ed. lineup. I am hoping for more gaslight books and other alternatives to come up in the future.

I would pay top dollar for a full source book.

What's a "hobo" if not a stowaway in the cargo hold. Space hobo with a shotgun, there's a premise.

The Black Hole was a great movie!

Hey Seth you should really take a look at MOTHERSHIP, the player's survival guide has a PWYW PDF and I think it scratches this horror "itch".

Have you heard of a game called “The Void” by Wildfire? It’s available on DriveThru RPG and uses a d6 dice pool mechanic. I’m not involved with this game but it seems very Cthulhu and I thought you’d like what it’s about.

I had an idea for a Cthulhu high sci fi setting inspired by the movie and tv show stargate. any idea if should use traveller and add the horror to it or go straight up go with coc, pulp c?

Seth! Why did you remind us of Pinhead in space? Seth! No!

If you want try more sci fi horror, I recommend The void, as it is Cthulhu in space. The core rule book is free on DrivethruRPG. I have not run anything from it, but what I have read of it, its got a neat setup. Also keep up the good work! There is a Link to the The Void down below. www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/3225/WildFire/subcategory/19195/The-Void

Seth, are familiar with the TNG episode "Where Silence Has Lease"?

It may be easier to go with a existing RPG system and add call of Cthulhu into it. Have you tried out any of the Arkham files games from fantasy flight?

Is that Blender Guru's scifi corridor?

Awww... To bad it wasn't about the project Icarus adventure. Good video either way.

GOOD LUCK!

There are no CoC resources out there because NOBODY has lasted long enough without getting killed or going crazy to make them! The Icarus ruins the number one survival rule in CoC... run away (faster than at least one other crew member). Eventually, you'll hit a wall!

Hi did you ever release your Sci-fi adventure?

Space hobo ... classic

You briefly mentioned cowboy cthuhlu, do you have anywhere to start fo that? Also Mothership RPG has some great resources for your Icarus needs.

Space cape

Is it possible the items like suits are missing because it is based on older (HG Wells era) sci-fi where it was believed that air would exist on the moon and other planets?

well then. Looks like i know what im doing when i get a handle on running games.

There is a full module from---2005ish Icarus project www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/The_Icarus_Project

Seth, I may have missed it but what character sheets did your group end up using?

I’d consider running this using Mongoose Traveller 2ed rules and suddenly busting out SAN rules when you spring on them that this is a horror game. With MgT you have the equipment / character stuff that you mentioned is lacking.

Space Hobo, King of the (Space) Road!

The Black Hole is one creepy Disney movie.

Wait, there is a Mythic Icelandic CoC?!? Are you familiar with the Martian settler scenario written by a fellow whose email address was something like "deontologist"? I must have deleted the links to his webpage, but he was hosted a large number of short scenario ideas. I think in RL he was a philosophy professor in Florida. He was active from the late 1990s to at least the early 2010s. Also, The Black Hole by Disney _was_ amazing. I think I will watch that with my kid. It had a bit of a Captain Nemo / 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea vibe for me, but maybe that is because I saw them both as Disney flicks.

What about Cthulhu vs Cyberpunk 2022?

Hi Seth! I'm an indie tabletop rpg designer. I recently published a system, and I was wondering if I could send a complimentary copy to the channel?

How useful would this be for a Traveller game?

Did you played Mothership RPG?

Hope your sci-fi pitch strike a chord, for more Seth Skorkowsky awesome-sauce.

One Word: Mothership. Is there a possibility to get a review for this RPG on this channel? Greetings from Germany!

01:49 Stowaway Hobo/Hobo hired on as an extra hand because he's dirt cheap due to being desperate for food and shelter?