I'm planning to GM Carrion Crown but I'm having some reservations. In order to purge my mind, I'm trying to narrow down the general feel of the campaign. Namely how the horror elements play out. So I have a question to you who have played and / or GMd CC:
Which of these pieces of pop culture is - in your opinion - most closely tied thematically to the CC in general? You can choose one or several. Or suggest something else entirely, if none of these suit you.
- Works of H.P. Lovecraft - namely "The Dream Quest of an Unknown Kadath"
- Scream (movie series by Wes Craven)
- Hostel (the first movie only)
- Saw (the first movie only)
- True Blood (tv series)
- Dracula (the book by Bram Stoker)
- Friday the 13th (the tv-series, NOT the movies)
Please ask for clarifications if I'm being too shady here...
Dracula and Lovecraft, ie, classic gothic horror. Of course there are modern twists, but the main feel is gothic.
Having said that, you can of course paint your own tone with the colours provided...
Agreed. Most of the writers drew inspiration either from gothic horror literature, or from the films inspired by gothic writing, especially the Universal horror films of the 1930s. The exception is Book 4, which owes its content almost exclusively to Lovecraft's stories (particularly "The Shadow Over Innsmouth").
Read Dracula, and then steal liberally from its prose to give your flavour text the right tone. Other relevant reading includes:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore
The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
Enjoy!
See, I would immediately remove Scream, Hostel, Saw, True Blood, and Friday the Thirteenth. Then replace them with what these other fellows have given you. Oh, and a bit of Pan's Labyrinth, and definitely Something Wicked This Way Comes if you can distill the darkness from Bradbury's usual blend. But that's me. :P
Evil Paul, Gonturan, I bow to you!
This verifies CC as something I want to get my hands on. Initially, I was worried that the horror themes in CC would be something in lines of Scream's stupid teeny-weeny horror or Saw's torture "horror" (When did torture became synonym to horror anyway?), because I loathe both of the afore mentioned.
Why I got that initial impression, I don't know. Maybe I'm just an old dimwit, who got frightened by the art in CC's Player's Guide, afraid that it would more Twilight than Cthulhu..
But as it happens, it's a must! Now if you'll excuse me, I'll just don my cultist cloack and am off to the local gaming store to get me some AP! IÄ IÄ!
Actually isn't Rise of the Runelords and ogres the most disturbing AP? What with incest and torture going on...?
Actually isn't Rise of the Runelords and ogres the most disturbing AP? What with incest and torture going on...?
Naaaaaah, that's only Chapter 2 and a smidge of a different chapter. The rest is more normal.
If you're looking for some ideas on related media for Carrion Crown, check out the soundtrack suggestions I put in every foreword. In probably every case is a movie soundtrack that has at least passing relevance to that specific volume of the adventure and was definitely an inspiration on the Adventure Path as a whole. Some of the darker works suggested in the back of the GameMastery Guide would also be great places to find inspiration. Good luck!
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These are the movies I watched & recommended my players watch to get into each chapter as the themes of each dovetail nicely with the adventures.
HoH - 13 Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill
TotB - Mary Shelly's Frankenstein
BM - Brotherhood of the Wolf (ascanor), Silent Hill (feldgrau)
WotW - Cthulhu (2007), Dagon, In the Mouth of Madness
AaD - Underworld, Blade 2, Queen of the Damned (Talamaska are good parallels to Palatine eye), and the Countess (2009)
SoG - ...TBD
--Vrocky Horror
- Works of H.P. Lovecraft - namely "The Dream Quest of an Unknown Kadath"
- Scream (movie series by Wes Craven)
- Hostel (the first movie only)
- Saw (the first movie only)
- True Blood (tv series)
- Dracula (the book by Bram Stoker)
- Friday the 13th (the tv-series, NOT the movies)
In my opinion none of the above. But we are just in book 2 of CC, I guess, so it could change.
If anything CC seems somewhat like Buffy meets the dark age. It's always rather straight forward. Bad things happen, you read some book, come to comclusions and beat the crap out of bad monsters.
New bad stuff happens.