Eldritch Horror in Star Wars

[CRMcNeill]

I know some of the EU novels have touched on this, in the form of entities like Waru and Abeloth, but have any of you ever tried to port over any Lovecraftian creatures or entities? It'd require a pretty massive shift in the setting to incorporate things like the Great Old Ones or the Elder Gods, but it might be possible on a smaller scale, with cross-dimensional entities so bizarre that the mere sight of them can damage the viewer's sanity.

Thoughts? Considered it? Actually tried it?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Whill]

[MrNexx]

There's some shades of that in the Drengir, from the High Republic.
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"I've Seen Your Daily Routine. You Are Not Busy!"
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[Ning Leihrec]

Yes I find Lovecraft mixes beautifully with Star Wars. I usually keep it to one darkside demon per campaign, and the PC’s face his minions not him directly so stats aren’t usually an issue. Defeating them usually requires learning their history/lore and finding their weakness. You can think of the death star as a Cthulhu type monster and the secret plans as an ancient scroll that might reveal his vulnerability. One such vulnerability was the location of the monster’s origin world where its living flesh slumbers while it’s deadly doppelgänger form is astral projected wherever it chooses. Another darkside demon I came up with had been captured by the ancient Jedi and encased in a mountain of crystal. Only another Jedi could free him so he appeared to the PC’s as the force ghost of a Jedi master and trained them in the light side of the force until they were strong enough to set him free.

[Ning Leihrec]

[CRMcNeill]

[MrNexx]

What I might go with, instead of degradation of attributes, is damage that is resisted by Willpower. You could even use the standard damage tables, just adjusted to represent psychological damage.

0-3 Stunned: Momentary shock that your brain will get over

4-8 Wounded (and Wounded Twice): Severe psychological damage that will require some time to recover from.

9-12 Incapacitated: Deep psychological trauma. Rendered senseless (not necessarily unconscious).

13-15 Mortally Wounded: Profound psychological damage.

16+ Killed: Not necessarily "dead", but "so fragged in the head cannot function anymore".

You might also adapt starship damage tables to develop the long-term trauma someone might develop from such things. Perception skills to treat psychological trauma (equivalent of First Aid for the mind). Impact of Force Powers (Emptiness is a favorite of mine to reduce psychological damage... just let the force wash it away).
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"I've Seen Your Daily Routine. You Are Not Busy!"
“We're going to win this war, not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.”
http://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/

[Ray]

Wasn't there something in Solo around Kessel that was pretty Old Godsy?

[Whill]

[KageRyu]

The closest I cam to any kind of Horror in SW was a scenario based on the idea of the Flying Dutchman in space. The notes for the adventure are long, long lost... Basically it was a lost and abandoned ship, stumbled on in deep space (as the result of a Hyperdrive mishap) that was of ancient design (old republic...maybe even Sith, it was hard to tell as there were no records of the design in any computer). The hull showed signs of battle wear, and scaring from long drifting in the void...pitted by micro-meteors, etc... The players vessel was damaged from the malfunction so they needed to board this vessel for parts. Long story short, it's haunted, build tensions slowly, shadows out the corner of your eye, cold spots, eerie noises... then it all gets real. ANY Jedi or force sensitive character got "a bad feeling" the minute they saw it, which intensifies once on it. A Jedi actively using sense (was a 1E adventure) felt the strong presence of the dark side in a very ambiguous way (it was everywhere).
What was ultimately was revealed was that the ship hosted a number of Dark Side Wraiths. These were kind of like the anti-thesis to the whole force spirit idea that Obi Wan and Yoda became. Where as a Force Spirit attains a higher plane of knowledge and understanding, a Dark Side Wraith degenerates into a mere shadow of it's former self - a formless black spirit of rage and hate and only the vaguest sense of what it once was... Yes they had force abilities, yes they could use them, yes they could affect the physical world, no blaster could not hurt them = a Jedi Lightsaber had no affect but a Jedi could roll his Control dice as damage against their "STR" to weaken or dispel them. As I recall there was an artifact on the ship, hidden, that was what was binding these ancient priests to the vessel... something of similar construction to a Holocron, that the players had to solve clues to find and destroy to to free these wraith and let them pass on... otherwise they had to try to just survive long enough to get the parts they needed to fix the hyperdrive of their own vessel and flee...


As to eldritch horror and the mythos - I was toying with rules for such in general D6 way back. I had based much of what I designed on repurposed DSP rules actually. I created a system of sanity that would result in characters gaining points in Madness. Generally this happened when exposed to certain things, creatures, beings, knowledge. The triggering event would have Madness rating (working title) and the exposed character would resist with Willpower. A failed roll would garner a point of Madness, a fumble would yield 2. At the end of every session in which a point of Madness was earned the player would roll Willpower versus the current number of points of Madness, failure indicating the character had slipped into some form of madness or delusion, or was at least perceived that way, and would become unplayable as a PC. I had also adopted rules for actual acquired personality quirks and disorders that would manifest as your madness points climbed, inspired by some of the things in Tales of the Jedi and various Fan Supplements for Dark Side Point manifestations. These rules were very heavily influenced by the Call of Cthulhu RPG by Chaosium, which I have played many times and am a huge fan of still. The rules were far more detailed than what is posted here, and would cover at least a 6-8 page PDF. I never did finish refining them...though someday would like to.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[garhkal]

I've occasionally used force wraith like beings, and created stats for a SW version of Illithids.. Other than that, no i've not touched on "Eldrich" monsters..
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