Project Nemesis is a fan driven website for games that use the One-Roll Engine (like Nemesis, Wild Talents, Reign and Monsters) or Chaosium's Basic Roleplay System (BRP) (like Call of Cthulhu) and the Delta Green setting.
One of the major obstacles in translating HPL's works into modern media
(film, video games, or even RPGs) is identification with the
protagonists. With few exceptions (like Horror at Red Hook), the main
characters or narrators are white, male, educated (usually Ivory Tower
types), and at least middle class. This stands in contrast to, say,
Stephen King, who makes most of his protagonists blue collar or
"regular folks". Much easier to get a movie audience to sympathize with
Carrie or the mother in Cujo than Professor Rice or Charles Dexter
Ward.
Setting: The game is set in the Caribbean of 1709
right at the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. There exist supernatural
goings on, but the attitude toward them is the historical attitude in
1709 e.g. it is considered low class to believe that supernatural
happenings exist, the Church views them as the work of the Devil etc.
The players were encouraged to make fully fleshed out period characters
with a variety of supernatural powers.
Today is special. You didn't think you'd make it half this long. Today
is the aniversary. For no rhyme or reason, every single human being
was... empowered. Oh sure, you loved it at first. So did everyone. Even the people that
ended up with crappy powers could appreciate a police force made of
supermen. Doctors that could make new arms and legs out of thin air.
Juries that could read minds. The most beautiful music and the most
moving poetry. Things were wonderful, until the supermen realized that
they could do whatever they wanted.
Our society has developed into something so complex, with methods of
coercion so all-pervasive, that despite the fact that many people are
deeply frustrated and upset they feel that they cannot make any sort of
impact whatsoever. There's a sense of social determinism that lends an
air of inevitability: the End Times.
1995 was not meant to be a Year of Historic Infamy. It was a year of
relative peace and marginal prosperity (at least in the First World).
It was a decade that many in the US considered a rehash of the 1970's.
Music was grungy and drugged-out with metallic overtones, heroin was
making a comeback (and meth was starting to be a problem), and
everything seemed muted and depressed.
"The greatest fear of all is the fear of the Unknown". That's what
horror gaming and particularly Call of Cthulhu is all about. In that
light, pre-millenial DG's main meta-plot has definitely become dated,
because the horror is no longer unknown.
