Eldritch Geriatrics or How Can I Stay Alive in Call of Cthulhu?

[Trekkin]

I just played my first Call of Cthulhu one-shot, and I absolutely love the system. Naturally, this makes me want to defy its norms, especially the one in which investigators die or go insane with impressive regularity. Thus I ask: from character generation to general activity, what steps, skills, stats, etc. can I take to make myself stay alive and sane as long as possible? Any tips of any type would be appreciated.

[Engine]

I just played my first Call of Cthulhu one-shot, and I absolutely love the system. Naturally, this makes me want to defy its norms, especially the one in which investigators die or go insane with impressive regularity. Thus I ask: from character generation to general activity, what steps, skills, stats, etc. can I take to make myself stay alive and sane as long as possible? Any tips of any type would be appreciated.

What edition you're playing? I'm not experienced with the D20 CoC.

Problem is, you couldn't investigate the Myths and remain sane. This is why in CoC investigators go insane: they investigate, they know horrible secrets about how uncaring the Universe really is and their minds break. If you want your investigator to remain sane longer, you should probably avoid investigating too much.

[Trekkin]

I know it's not D20. I think it's classic.

I get that insanity is inevitable. I guess I'm asking how to avoid as much needless damage of any type as possible.

[Mikeavelli]

I've never played classic Call of Cthulhu, but here are some general pointers:

1. You are already insane. The Diagnosis is "Paranoia," and it's entirely justified.

2. Every time you encounter a book, it is to be burned immediately. There are no exceptions. Avoid libraries.

3. Magic is not to be used. Ever. Not even witnessed. Any situation where someone is casting a spell is best resolved by you shooting them before they finish.

[RaggedAngel]

4. Carry a gun. Even if your character has no reason to have a gun, max out your skill with guns.

5. Eventually you'll encounter things that a gun can't kill. Max out your ability to run, for when you encounter things a gun can't kill.

6. Everyone who tries to help you is secretly evil. Even if they aren't, its safest to assume they are.

7. Sometimes, you have to leave a party member to die. If that's the case, see #5.

[kaomera]

I get that insanity is inevitable. I guess I'm asking how to avoid as much needless damage of any type as possible.
As Engine has already pointed out, the only winning move is not to play the game, more or less. Certainly don't do anything stupid. Where-ever and when-ever possible stop the cultists before they can do or summon anything. Lot less SAN loss for witnessing a few botched sacrifices than for seeing what would have crawled it's way out of the flaws in reality if they had pulled it off...

But IMO it's much better to just be aware than nothing works 100% and try to play along. A good CoC game is like a mystery, only one of the questions that's up in the air is "do I really want to know"? Make a decision that you think is good and stick with it.

Be aware than most of the "power-gaming" (such as it is) advice you will get still ends in a coinflip. Playing paranoid leads to real paranoia leads to all sorts of other lovely mental aberrations. Burning books is all well and good until you realize that you need the info in one of them to stop / reverse that dang ritual. OK, stopping / avoiding all spell-casting is generally hard to argue against, but I did once see a trigger-happy investigator gun down a priest making a futile attempt at an exorcism (guy in robe speaking dead language and waving some sort of implement around), which did not make the mob of villagers very happy. Keepers love letting the Investigators have guns - not only is there the long tradition of "arming the cultists" to consider (do not, under any circumstances, have your investigator drive a station-wagon), but they're also a great way to allow the local authorities to hold the party while the big ritual goes down. Running away from something means that you aren't stopping it from getting bigger / worse, plus you're always running towards something else...

Basically if you're playing old-school CoC and you're seriously trying to survive as a player, you're being a bit of a jerk, and it's not going to work anyway. Let your Investigator worry about surviving - your job is merely to enjoy the show, as long or as short as it lasts.

[dsmiles]

Kaomera's right. What's going to happen is going to happen, regardless of how much you try to avoid it. Just let it happen, and don't be a jerk about surviving.

[TroubleBrewing]

I tried many ways to avoid death for many years before learning the One True Way: Survival is for suckers.

-The game is way, way, way more fun if you plunge headlong into everything, shotgun in hand and cigar clamped firmly between teeth.

-Read everything now, you'll have plenty of time to burn it all when everything is dead.

-Carry as much dynamite as you can strap to your chest and still be capable of firing a Thompson Machine Gun.

-Always, always interrupt the big bad's speech with shotgun blasts.

-Remember: there is no mechanical penalty for firing two pistols in the same round if your skill is over 65%.

-Spells are always more fun if cast as a party.

-SAN loss is temporary, but telling that "remember-that-time-we-jumped-out-of-the-moving-train-onto-the-cultists-raft-and-killed-them-all-with-axes-before-getting-eaten-by-a-Shoggoth" story will last forever.

[Mastikator]

8. Never be alone.

9. Never be first or last.

10. Never be the slowest runner.

11. Never be the most outstanding target.


Basically, since death and/or is inevitable, one tactic that works is to make sure it's everyone else who's doing the dying.

[JoseB]

Ah, I have GM-ed "Call of Cthulhu" (classic) for years, and quite a few games left indelible, awesome memories. Some stories have attained the status of legend.

I still remember when Jeremiah decided to interrupt a human sacrifice by flinging dynamite and hand grenades (thus fragging the victim herself, but I digress)...

...or the time when the group ended up accidentally flung a few hundred million years back in time and had to (a) deal with being thrust in the middle of a battle between the Yithians and the Flying Polyps, and (b) try to get back to their own time (although they got a mascot out of the deal -- They brought back a trilobite and kept it in an aquarium)...

...or the time when Prof. Jones tried to use awesome magic to save his friends from some weird blue things that looked like 8-foot tall demon cats (no, that was before "Avatar") and only managed to gloriously fumble his 1d100 roll. Final result: A splotch of molten glass on the ground with a couple of teeth embedded in it. After the mess was over, the surviving members of the group took the chunk of glass along and buried it with full honours...

...or the time when the group decided to use their (basically) apocalyptic alien artifact to destroy a very dangerous evil cult that was using a small pyramid in the middle of the Egyptian desert to do their stuff (their stuff being, basically, "summon our evil incomprehensible god that will destroy Earth"). As one of the players said: "Listen -- We agreed that we were keeping the nuclear explosive for a really special occasion. I'd say that wiping out a cult, c**k-blocking their god *and* blowing up a pyramid *IS* a special occasion". They had trouble with the Egyptian authorities after that (not to mention the authorities of every other civilized country in the world). But, boy, was *THAT* fun...

...or the time when the investigators decided to hijack a train...

Ah, those were the days *sigh*

[Mono Vertigo]

... but dying a violent death or going mad is the best part of the game!

[Analytica]

Yes. You should treat permanent SAN loss like XP gain. Learn to semi-function while insane, perhaps by occasionally doing something completely random to warp other's prediction of your behaviour... and make your own counter-sacrifices. What one can summon, another can summon the foe of. Blood? What do you mean? Nothing is wrong with me... IA IA CTHULHU FTHAGN!

[Trekkin]

... but dying a violent death or going mad is the best part of the game!

Yes, and I actually martyred myself in the one-shot I played. I guess my question is less "living through to the end" and more "living until I can die doing something worth dying/going insane for", since it's easy enough in CoC to expire; I'm just trying to figure out a way to reliably stay healthy enough up to the point where insanity or death is the order of the day that I can make a meaningful contribution.

Ultimately, though, I guess trying to survive at all is detrimental to the story.

[Mono Vertigo]

Oh! In that case... yeah, sadly, the only real way to avoid being driven mad "too early" is to basically avoid most of interactions that drive the campaign. And be lucky. It's a bit like trying to avoid all interactions with all GM-controlled beings in D&D, or being trustworthy and doing teamwork in Paranoia: sure, you can play like this, but you're missing out on most of the plot and/or fun.:smallfrown:

[Engine]

Yes, and I actually martyred myself in the one-shot I played. I guess my question is less "living through to the end" and more "living until I can die doing something worth dying/going insane for", since it's easy enough in CoC to expire; I'm just trying to figure out a way to reliably stay healthy enough up to the point where insanity or death is the order of the day that I can make a meaningful contribution.

Ultimately, though, I guess trying to survive at all is detrimental to the story.

Well, trying to survive isn't that bad. It's just that you can't play CoC safely.
SAN loss is simply inevitable during investigations. A lot of CoC's adventures are a lose-lose situation.

E.g., your character has to read a book to know how to stop a Mythos' cult. But reading the book will undermine her SAN.

Anyway, dying\going insane doing something worthy is, for the most part, on your Keeper shoulders. If she fills her adventures with SAN checks, you could do little about your character not going insane (the same for remaining alive in a neverending shootout).

To endure a little longer try to:
- have SAN and HP as high as reasonably possible. But remember that CoC is about investigation, so don't neglect other attributes;
- avoid, whenever possible, physical confrontation. If you could do it with a couple of word and some money, absolutely do it;
- pump up your "coward" skills. When it's time to run, you'll be thankful for that;
- most of the times, don't be a hero;
- sometimes, be a hero;
- have a gun. Don't carry it unless you know you'll use it (or your profession let you carry freely a gun);
- have someone with first aid skills near;
- between adventures pay regular visits to a psychologist;
- avoid magic unless absolutely necessary;
- read every book you find, but don't read every book yourself. This is why you have a group;
- when you enter a place know how\where to escape;
- be prepared to retire your investigator if you see her SAN is too low. The Keeper could use her as a NPC to give hints for future adventures;
- accept that your character will probably die. Or go insane. Or both.

I'm playing a Trail of Cthulhu campaign right now. And of course I'm not doing a lot of things I said to you (my character has the highest bodycount but lost few HP. Stabbing someone in the back works wonderfully, unless it's not human). Another character is really curious, so she read every book we find and she's trying to dabble in magic. And so on.
A too cautious character sometimes isn't an interesting character. Try to find a balance between caution and fun.

[Venerable]

12. Find a Keeper who's interested in character development.

I played under that variety of Keeper. Our characters' atypically slow loss of sanity and health gave us the chance for some great (and on a few occasions downright hilarious) character development. Most of the characters survived several adventures, and a couple retired mostly intact. Interestingly, discovering that our characters could survive an adventure made each death more dramatic.

Also, to this day our Keeper shakes his head in resigned disgust whenever he recalls the time our characters burned without reading some books of eldritch knowledge [Rule #2].

[kaomera]

reliably
That right there is the problem word. I'm assuming that you won't find suggestions like "roll well", "get good ratings in the skills you end up needing in the particular situations you find yourself in", etc. all that helpful. Hopefully if you have a decent Keeper your character won't just fall over clutching at his chest and foaming at the mouth as his introduction to the other Investigators. (But when you can pull this off, it's kind of awesome.)

However, having a Keeper who likes / is interested in your character (or, to put it another way: having a character your Keeper is interested in) is definitely a good idea. Honestly I've played in a number of (non-oneshot) CoC games that weren't really constant death and/or insanity, but where still good, tense fun. The key is keeping the threats of such things looming in the background...

I've also played (briefly) in a full-on "Scooby-thulhu" game, where no-one ever died or lost SAN and they literally revealed a monster to be just a guy in a mask... It was a good game and the other players where having a great time, but it really wasn't what I was expecting / wanted from a CoC game. A lot depends on your and the other players' expectations.

[Nerd-o-rama]

1) Dump everything you can into Dodge (and Pow if you have an option to select your base abilities at character creation)
2) Don't read anything
3) Stay home

Worked for a couple of my wife's characters.


I tried many ways to avoid death for many years before learning the One True Way: Survival is for suckers.

-The game is way, way, way more fun if you plunge headlong into everything, shotgun in hand and cigar clamped firmly between teeth.

-Read everything now, you'll have plenty of time to burn it all when everything is dead.

-Carry as much dynamite as you can strap to your chest and still be capable of firing a Thompson Machine Gun.

-Always, always interrupt the big bad's speech with shotgun blasts.

-Remember: there is no mechanical penalty for firing two pistols in the same round if your skill is over 65%.

-Spells are always more fun if cast as a party.

-SAN loss is temporary, but telling that "remember-that-time-we-jumped-out-of-the-moving-train-onto-the-cultists-raft-and-killed-them-all-with-axes-before-getting-eaten-by-a-Shoggoth" story will last forever.

This, however, is more my style.

"If you meet an Outer God on the road, kill him while he monologues."
-Proverb that usually ends with getting stepped on by the Bloody Tongue.

[TroubleBrewing]

"If you meet an Outer God on the road, kill him while he monologues."
-Proverb that usually ends with getting stepped on by the Bloody Tongue.

I love Complete Masks. It's number 2 on my list. (Number 1 obviously being "Beyond the Mountains of Madness".)

[Nerd-o-rama]

I love Complete Masks. It's number 2 on my list. (Number 1 obviously being "Beyond the Mountains of Madness".)

We ran Complete Masks with The Dreaming Stone in the middle as a sidequest (before you ask why, it's because the GM felt like it). It was at the end of The Dreaming Stone where Nyarly is giving his "HA HA YOU LET THE GM RAILROAD YOU" speech and takes the Stone back where I ran into this situation.

N: "Don't believe everything you re--"
Me: *4d6 Shotgun*
Me: *win initiative*
Me: *4d6 Shotgun*
N: *human avatar dies and turns into Bloody Tongue*
Me: *92 points of Sanity loss*

That remains my favorite character retirement. Especially since the bastard dropped the Stone when he transformed and the party got to keep it.


Come to think of it, the GM never did address the results of a 100-foot-tall Outer God avatar throwing a tantrum in the middle of Shanghai. Then again, we were in more or less city-block-destroying gang war with the local cultists by then anyway.

[EccentricCircle]

If your character is a completely incompetant cloudcookoolander who doesn't pay attention and is completely oblivious to the events going on around them then you might not go mad, but will probably have other, somewhat worse problems before long.

Otherwise, barracade yourself in your house and burn any books which happen to fall through the letter box, people might think you've gone mad but you will know that you havent!