Bringing Lovecraftian horor to a Rifts game...

[The ineffible GM]

First I'll deal with the last point of your post.

ANY large shift in focus in a game has the potential to throw a group off, and ruin their fun. There is a reason you don't walk into a Sports bar during playoffs and change the channel to X-Files. That being said, having a big change in a game's focus does not NECESSARILY throw off a game, and can in fact make things far better. Part of it is chance, but a lot of it is how you handle it. Generally, you need some lead up. It doesn't have to be a lot, but maybe in the earlier sessions of the game have the players experience some strange dreams where the players are gods among men, but are doing battle against a terrible foe. Then a few sessions later, have them stumble upon some cryptic prophecy from the cult that predicts the creation of immortal champions from mortal men. Try to lead up to it a bit, so the players don't come in one day and go "Wait, we're gods now?"

Now, as for a Cthulhu type game...
The book that you should definately DEFINATELY get your hands on is Rifts Underseas. Look up a little baddie in there by the name Lord of the Deep. Basically, the Lord of the Deep is Cthulhu, with Palladium stats. The Lord of the Deep resides at the bottom of the Marianas trench, in eternal slumber, with nightmarish dreams that reach out to sleeping mortals around the globe, often offering them great gifts in exchange for service. These worshipers have formed the Cult of the Deep, and the priests tend to develop strange mutations and mishapen bodies, not at all unlike the famed Innsmouth Look from H.P. Lovecraft's writings. Maybe you won't use the Lord of the Deep himself, maybe you'll make him just a minion of the elder gods you want to use, but read over everything in there, and read over the section on the Whale Singers too (a faction that is attempting to destroy the Lord of the Deep) in order to get a really good feel for how to use a cult in Rifts, and how to work with something built of pure terror and power that rests at the bottom of the sea. The Whale Singers section talks about a prophecy that was made which predicts the downfall of the Lord of the Deep, and that section will help you get a feel for how to use prophecies and dreams in mysterious and terrifying ways.

For the beginning of your campaign, the other advice you have received is good. Have a lot of perception checks sometimes for the smallest of things. If players don't know which perception checks are going to be important and which ones aren't, then the players aren't going to realize if they missed the sound of a monster burrowing up beneath them or if they failed to hear a bum mutter an insult under his breath. Fighting will not be as tracking and investigations. Don't have NPCs say "And then this tectonic entity came around the corner, possessing a pile of garbage, and it attacked the robinsons! Murdered them all!" have them say "I only saw it for a moment, there was a swirling cloud of...of...of things, like opened cans, and newspaper, there was a lot of newspaper. At first all I could hear was the alley cat screaming but then I heard the Robinsons *shudder* I can't get that sound out of my head, like some ghastly wailing, and the next thing I knew, there was blood spattering on the walls, all over the walls...It, it was...*sob* It was the Robinsons...it was all that was left of the Robinsons!"
Keep things mysterious. Avoid giving details. If they succeed on Lore checks, then give them several possibilities that all fit with what little information they have.
Another key element to Lovecraftian stories like Call of Cthulhu is insanity. Now, you might not be wanting to drive any of the characters insane, especially if you're going to be turning them into gods, but make sure that the elder gods leave a trail of insanity in their wake. The people that are having dreams of the sleeping evil? Make them go crazy. Maybe just a little at first. Maybe they don't like going near bodies of water, maybe they're overly afraid of things that are slimey. If the characters run into them later on again, make them crazier. Maybe even institutionalized.

You asked if the tidbits that you listed were 'bad' or 'misleading'. None of them are bad, and misleading is EXACTLY what you want to do. You want them to think that there is someone sneaking up behind them when there isn't. You want them to think that they are safe when they aren't. You want them to think that they managed to wake up from the nightmare they were just having, only to walk out the door to grab some breakfast and be swallowed whole by the monster they were dreaming of a moment ago and then wake up again to realize the attack was just another dream. You want to make the players/characters unsure of what is happening, and you want them to start wondering what is real and what isn't. Even if they aren't going crazy, you want them to think that maybe, just maybe, they are.

Beyond the Supernatural is based around giving the sort of feeling of a Call of Cthulhu game. Yes, it's low powered, but that's generally the point of a Call of Cthulhu game. It might still have some good ideas for helping you build atmosphere though.

You should definately read more of H.P. Lovecraft's writing to get more and more of a feel for the tone. Lovecraft was basically of the mind that there was no way for mankind to ever understand everything in the universe, and the farther we keep probing, the more likely we are to find things that are so far beyond our ability to comprehend that the very act of seeing it or even knowing it exists is enough to drive you mad.

Oh, and as for the hook in Atlantis about something killing off the Atlanteans, you are aware that it is actually the Sunaj assassins, right? The rogue clan of Atlanteans that are out to kill all their brethren?

[Nekira Sudacne]

I'd suggest you get your hands on Palldiums Old Ones book.

They're ALREADY in the system!

Granted, to avoid copyright issues, Palladium has it's own cadre of named and discribed Old Ones that are different from Lovecrafts, but the actual basics Deity-Crushing universe-destroying omnipotence remains genearlly intact with Palladium's own twist.

[lather]

Should get that book anyway.

[The ineffible GM]

Nekira's right, the Old Ones are also rather Lovecraftian, and with them I'm going to suggest taking a look at Rifter #13, it has an article about The Thirteen Deadly Magics, which deal with spells that have the potential to raise the Old Ones, and I think these would be a great tool for the cult that you're talking about, especially since the spells get more and more powerful so as the players get closer to god-hood you can break out the bigger and badder spells.

[The ineffible GM]

On page 63 of Atlantis, under the heading that has the warning "For the GM's Eyes only" as part of the section about the Sunaj Assassins it talks about how the Sunaj are Atlanteans that are attacking and killing their own kind.

[Rallan]

I'd suggest you get your hands on Palldiums Old Ones book.

They're ALREADY in the system!

Granted, to avoid copyright issues, Palladium has it's own cadre of named and discribed Old Ones that are different from Lovecrafts, but the actual basics Deity-Crushing universe-destroying omnipotence remains genearlly intact with Palladium's own twist.

They don't really capture the Lovecraft vibe though. They're not eldritch, unknowable beings interacting with our universe for reasons we can't comprehend. They basically just acted like archetypal high fantasy villians who happen to look like formless blobs instead of demon lords or immortal sorceror-kings.

The Lord of the Deep is Lovecraftian as all heck (and his evil cult is hella Shadow Over Innsmouth). The Dark, from the Nightbane RPG, can sort of be considered Lovecraftian because it's an essentially unknowable force from outside reality as we know it working to destroy the universe for reasons we can't guess at, even though the straight-down-the-line Good vs Evil cosmology of Nightbane isn't very Lovecraftish. A couple of other alien intelligences here and there who act like mindless horrors sending their spawn out to devour everything can cut the mustard. But Palladium's Great Old Ones, and an awful lot of other alien intelligences throughout the megaverse, are supervillians in funny costumes.

[Nemo235]

6. Conversions
Posting the conversion (adaptation) of non-Palladium intellectual property to the Palladium Books game system will not be tolerated.

[Nemo235]

I know, I know.
And the Cthulhu Mythos may be in the public domain, I'm not sure.

But mention the name of any other fictional character from comics, movies or whatever, and the 'no conversions' flag gets thrown in quick, sometimes resulting in a thread lock.

[Nekira Sudacne]

I know, I know.
And the Cthulhu Mythos may be in the public domain, I'm not sure.

But mention the name of any other fictional character from comics, movies or whatever, and the 'no conversions' flag gets thrown in quick, sometimes resulting in a thread lock.

unfortunatly, that's a bit complicated.

All publications made before 1923 are public domain, including ones by Lovecraft.

Ones published between 1923-1957 are also public domain if there was no request for extention filed.

There are no records of any such requests.

Ergo, all of Lovecrafts works are offically public domain.

There are those who dispute that there were no extentions, but sinse no extentions have actually been found, they're mostly heming and hawing over loosing their cash cow.

However, a number of phrases and ideas, such as "The Cuthulu Mythos" and "Call of Cuthulu" itself, are Trademarked to Chaosism, the company that made the Call of Cuthulu games.

As these were never registered to Lovecraft himself, they are still valid.

Ergo, you can cite/copy anything from Lovecrafts own works.

But you cannot convert any Call of Cuthulu _game_ material itself.




Ain't copyright law grand?

[Rallan]

Another thing to remember with copyright is that while all of Lovecraft's stuff is well and truly in the public domain, not all the Cthulhu Mythos was made by him. Author pulp writers of the time (including Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith) collaborated with Lovecraft and they all swapped mythos stuff around to use in hints of a mysterious past that gave their works a sense of being part of something larger. Then after he kicked the bucket August Derleth came along and crapped everything up with his attempts to sort everything into one big formally connected mythos. Then after that even more was added by a new generation of horror writers who rediscovered Lovecraft's work after decades of obscurity, and after that there's the Lovecraft Mythos as reinterpreted by Chaosium.

So make sure y'all find out where stuff comes from rather than just assuming that it must be Lovecraft and therefore in the public domain.