Mythos Role-Reversal

Originally posted on Mastodon at #TTRPGDesign

Saw someone asking about Mythos role reversal on Reddit. I don’t relish the idea of playing evil characters or Mythos monsters so most of the thread was meh.

But characters who are doomed are interesting.

1. Maybe the PC is trying to track down their long lost parents and discovers their address is Innsmouth. The Referee could handle this really well. A clock time to indicate their impending transformation. Deep Ones aren’t evil by nature – just culturally. But when you’re becoming one …you have choices.
2. Players are detectives who discover a mythos spell which enables you to relive the last moments of the murder victims. By of course consuming part of the body. They discover they get memories and then skills. But this is the Mythos way of transforming into ghouls – again not a malevolent race by nature.
3. People got so rapt by Vikings and similar. So get Hillfolk or similar games and some inspiration from The Village and Midsommar for a folk horror game that demands different cultural mores.
4. so, it’s Call of Cthulhu but you ignore the San track and give them decent Occult, Mythos and a rack of Spells. They can use Dreamlands to travel, they’re fighting incursions, they’re the good guys, right? They are effectively superheroes. But the reason they don’t have San is because it’s all gone.
5. And my favourite

   Start out as a fantasy game of lizard people. They have magic and culture. And then some people break in and kill your brethren. You track them to a cave where they entered into your haven. They have “guns” and a “car”. What you thought was a lizardperson fantasy game is actually a community of indigenous Snake People in danger of discovery by humankind at large.