JordanGreywolf

That seems inevitable with this group. A while back, we were hashing out an idea for a sci-fi/cyberpunk campaign, and the idea came up that the PCs would all be essentially "space marines" for a megacorporate task force, sent on a shuttle out to an asteroid mining facility. This was the group decision, or so I thought. Then, they came back with their PC concepts.

1) One was a corporate exec who was a "Career Transition Counselor" or "Corporate Downsizer" with a Japanese megacorporation.
2) Another was a bioroid (essentially a replicant) who was his secretary ... and, oh, by the way, also a hacker.
3) Another was a physician who looked like a pepper-haired Sean Connery.
4) Another was a street samurai bodyguard armed with a monomolecular blade.

There were a few others of players who either didn't actually show up, or only played briefly, but the common thread was that NOBODY was playing a "space marine" type per the original concept. I had to do a major rewrite of the whole scenario, which originally was going to be more of a "bug hunt" type short-run adventure as a change of pace before we moved on to something else. It ended up turning into a bunch of investigation and (attempts at) "intrigue" on the ice-ball of Ceres, which in my setting was serving as a base of operations for a number of competing asteroid-mining firms, but was also home to a secret research facility that had been infiltrated by some AI fanatics/cultists who wanted to bring about "the singularity" and an eventual "upload" of all human consciousness into cyberspace -- whether or not said humanity was inclined to cooperate -- and they were experimenting upon "expendable" asteroid miners and passing off their disappearances as due to various accidents. (It's a hazardous profession, after all....)

It ended up being a fun campaign, with its moments, but I had to throw a lot of stuff out the window right away. Sometimes I think I just need to propose a concept, expect the players to largely ignore it, and then write up my adventure only AFTER I find out what characters the players want to bring to the table. (I mean, a lot of the time I effectively end up having to do that anyway, in order to make things the least bit relevant, since whatever the primary goal of the campaign is, it's not going to work if it doesn't align with the PCs' varied motivations.)

I'm imagining some alchemist coming up with a potion and then going, 'Mmmm, this is actually pretty tasty!' and then it becomes a popular cocktail. The fact that it's glowing in bright colors, sparkling, perpetually smoking, etc., is just a visual perk. Of course, there are bound to be "side effects," especially if you go mixing up different potions....

Sorry, I should add context (and I apologize that some of this is repeating myself from other threads). If I were picking an RPG system that I would commit to running -- with the freedom to provide my own adventures within the system, and not house-ruling the thing beyond all recognition -- as I currently understand it, I would choose any edition of Call of Cthulhu over D&D (or Pathfinder or Starfinder ... or DEFINITELY Dungeon Crawl Classics). I think I could work with it to have a series of investigations, the first few seemingly stand-alone, but then introduce a common thread, and try to build toward a bigger confrontation in which the survival of the PCs might not be guaranteed by any means, but there would certainly be stakes.

I wouldn't technically be obliged to make the ultimate threat straight out of Lovecraft's novels, though I would certainly try for something genuinely creepy. I could make a level of threat whereby if the players get too comfortable and careless, yes, a PC could actually die. Setting-wise, I start with something presumably familiar in the Real World -- with some flexibility regarding the time period, and what sort of backgrounds the players are interested in playing with (whether 1920s investigators, or heavily-armed special ops a la Delta Green, or modern-day college students or whatever) -- and ultimately I've got a lot of freedom when it comes to what "mythos" I reveal to be behind the scenes threatening reality as we know it.

It's not a place for me to "tell a story." Players will be players, and if I plan on just telling a story and dragging the players along to play-act it (or worse, watch a bunch of too-cool NPCs do all the important stuff), I might as well just write a story. However, the model that has worked well for me is to have a backstory that the players are welcome to put together -- a mystery, with gaps that they'll have to fill in on their own to see what pieces fit -- which presumably will give them the tools they need to figure out how to save the day (or at least put on a good show of trying). Along the way, some ruined temples to explore, some curios to play around with to figure out what they're about, a few fights for the fighty types to prove their worth, maybe a few puzzles for the puzzle-solvers who like that sort of thing, and some NPCs to interact with, if I've got players who care for that sort of thing and not just shooting everything and everyone in the face.

My experience with doing that sort of thing in D&D (and Pathfinder and Starfinder) is a lot spottier. I TRY to do much the same thing, but in an overtly fantastical setting -- yet it usually pays off far better at LOWER levels. The give-and-take varies greatly with edition, but in general there's an awful lot that dictates the setting that's baked into the game MECHANICS.

3rd edition gives spellcasters all sorts of "adventure-breaking" powers -- past a certain point, anything that might require some player problem-solving and a few skill checks can be solved by a spellcaster who has a day to stop, rest, and prepare the right spell. 4th edition tried way too hard to pretend to be an MMO, with so many differences between classes (whether warrior or wizard) reduced to mere trappings, and cringy division of labor into DPS/tank/healer models like it really wanted to be a video game simulator. I haven't played it, but 5th edition seems to be all about streamlining. From what I've heard at the very least it did away with the "requisite magic item purchases" factor of the difficulty level treadmill that bugged me about d20 D&D, Pathfinder, and Starfinder, and that, if true, is AWESOME. However, it also feels like it's filed off way too much in regards to functionally differentiating between character choices. Also, in general, I felt as if, from 3rd edition onward, so many adventures were about big sweeping plots (stories with predetermined outcomes that carried the players along with very little agency aside from the chance to fail spectacularly and die prematurely somewhere along the way).

I have this vague idea that I'd like to be able to recapture the feel of "old-school" dungeoneering, though it's really hard to pin down just what that means. I think the closest I got to it was with a bunch of crazy Advanced HeroQuest adventures I ran back in the day. I could expand on that, but it's kinda niche. It was basically meant to be a board game, but it had the bare-bones basics to be adapted to some rudimentary roleplay. It only really worked because I had some awesomely creative players, and most of the "story" was generated through their wacky intra-group interactions, and a few chance incidents (a few monsters that got away, a few relics that weren't SUPPOSED to be destroyed but were anyway...) that I expanded upon to imply that some of their crazier hijinks actually had repercussions beyond the dungeon. However, AHQ was definitely NOT intended for long-running campaigns.

Given only a choice between the two, I think I'd choose Call of Cthulhu. It CAN be run as a pointless meat-grinder, or else it can be run as a supernatural investigation/mystery game that merely has the *threat* of death around any corner. It doesn't necessarily deliver on those threats if the PCs are at all cautious and thoughtful, in taking those threats on seriously.

The first key would be in what adventures you run, and how diligent you are about giving the players ample warning when they're heading into truly dangerous territory. The second key would be that if you're actually going to run a campaign, you need to actually make use of the "downtime" rules to recover lost SANity.

Will the character choose to still deal with the everyday world, touch grass, etc., or will he shut himself away, poring through cursed tomes and cleaning his guns, constantly on high alert for the next threat? The latter might have a certain payoff when the threat does arise, but usually a Call of Cthulhu adventure doesn't start with a BOOM of instantly getting attacked by monsters, but rather an investigation and foreshadowing leading into such threats. Thus, even the character living a halfway-normal-life gets a cue that it's time to cancel a few appointments and get back to monster-hunting.

Although it wasn't done with Call of Cthulhu, I actually had a lot of fun running a Savage Ghostbusters campaign (using Savage Worlds rules, that is) that was sort of like "Call of Cthulhu Light" since obviously the mood was different, and it's different when you can take on the baddies with proton packs. Still, I was able to have a certain degree of investigation and to introduce threats that required more than just setting traps and blasting things into bits in order to properly put away. It takes the right mix of players to appreciate it, though -- some players just can't be bothered with handouts, backstory, and the like.

I also ran a zombie apocalypse campaign back circa 2012 that went reasonably well. Sanity was a factor in that game, but nobody actually went over the edge over the course of the campaign -- more, it was something that just encouraged the players to occasionally think of things their characters might be doing to raise morale among their fellow survivors. Some really memorable events for me in the campaign were when the player-characters would attempt to find ways to boost morale -- recognizing birthdays, holidays, etc., in suitably QUIET ways -- along the journey. (If it had been something scripted as part of the "plot point campaign," I doubt it would have hit as well. Plus, it probably would have featured an obligatory moment of an NPC doing something unbelievably stupid/suicidal, because OF COURSE it would.)