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Graymayre
2008-09-03, 07:25 PM
I've heard of this system several times, mostly on its sanity cracking difficutly.

This humble DM would like the playgrounders opinions on it (and possibly a link to info on it)

kthx,

Lycan 01
2008-09-03, 09:01 PM
My personal favorite RPG system. Really simple character creation and playing system. I just started a game of it today in the PbP section. You can watch it and see how it works if you want. Actually, gimme a second, and I can link you the starter rules. (Legally too, since the company offers it.)


Edit: Here you go. :) http://catalog.chaosium.com/pages.php?CDpath=29&pID=37

Thrud
2008-09-03, 09:07 PM
Ahh, call of Cthulhu, what isn't to love. . .

Other than the tentacles, monsters from other dimensions, most critters being immune to most weapons you might reasonably be expected to have access to, and the long inevitable downward spiral into hopeless insanity as your SAN attribute is permanently lowered the higher your Cthluhu mythos skill becomes. . .

And I'm not just saying that because the nice Dr Smith of Arkham Asylum upped my meds today.

Graymayre
2008-09-03, 09:36 PM
Thanks Lycan, :smallsmile:

I've been interested ever since playing a fairly recent comp. game called Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.

Watching my main man Holmes investigating the Cthulhu-verse caused me to become fairly interested (my friends mentioned it sparingly as a comparison when trying to say that something is really hard).

Is it really impossible? or just very hard?

Thrud
2008-09-03, 09:44 PM
Thanks Lycan, :smallsmile:

I've been interested ever since playing a fairly recent comp. game called Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.

Watching my main man Holmes investigating the Cthulhu-verse caused me to become fairly interested (my friends mentioned it sparingly as a comparison when trying to say that something is really hard).

Is it really impossible? or just very hard?

It's a game where you don't often expect (let alone recieve) a happy ending. Very fun in a survival horror sort of way. Just don't expect to be the sort of badass hero you get to be in D&D. It is VERY hard to slay the monster in Call of Cthluhu, and if that is your intent you will probably end up very dead, very quickly.

Lycan 01
2008-09-03, 09:50 PM
You aren't fighting to win. You're fighting to live. Running from a fight is considered sissy in most games. Its considered smart in CoC. Rarely do you have a situation where the PCs can survive by shooting their way out.

Except for last Saturday, when one guy Tommy gunned 4 aliens into paste from behind a rock. He won the day, and stopped them from summoning Ithiqua.

But he also caused the WWI vet to have a flashback, which ended with the machine gun guy getting blown in half by a point blank shotgun blast.


Like I said, rarely do guns lead to good things. XD

Graymayre
2008-09-03, 09:55 PM
That sounds awesome!

What time setting is it in? Depression era?

LongVin
2008-09-03, 10:14 PM
That sounds awesome!

What time setting is it in? Depression era?

It ranges from the Roarin 20's into the depression.


Also make sure to say "Hastur, Hastur, Hastur!" in the first 5 minutes of the game.

Swordguy
2008-09-03, 10:17 PM
Thanks Lycan, :smallsmile:

I've been interested ever since playing a fairly recent comp. game called Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.

Watching my main man Holmes investigating the Cthulhu-verse caused me to become fairly interested (my friends mentioned it sparingly as a comparison when trying to say that something is really hard).

Is it really impossible? or just very hard?

It's not impossible at all - you just need to have a different definition of "victory" than the standard D&D "we killed the bad guy and looted the room".

It's entirely possible for the party of 5 people to have 3 dead people, 1 permanently crippled person with a tenuous grasp of his sanity , and the last guy locked away in the nuthouse for all time - and this is a victory, because you stopped the cultists from summoning unspeakable entities that would eat the souls of the world. Self-sacrifice for a larger good is an absolutely intrinsic aspect of CoC.

Lycan 01
2008-09-03, 10:20 PM
Also make sure to say "Hastur, Hastur, Hastur!" in the first 5 minutes of the game.


Something tells me thats a very, very bad idea...


Eras are 1890's, 1920's, and modern times.

Graymayre
2008-09-03, 10:22 PM
It's not impossible at all - you just need to have a different definition of "victory" than the standard D&D "we killed the bad guy and looted the room".

It's entirely possible for the party of 5 people to have 3 dead people, 1 permanently crippled person with a tenuous grasp of his sanity , and the last guy locked away in the nuthouse for all time - and this is a victory, because you stopped the cultists from summoning unspeakable entities that would eat the souls of the world. Self-sacrifice for a larger good is an absolutely intrinsic aspect of CoC.

The more I hear, the more I like this system. One of my dislikes in D&D is the sociopathic response of doing anything for loot. With this, our group may focus on more than just material reward (perhaps those feelings would transfer into our normal games).

Lycan 01
2008-09-03, 10:48 PM
Ma... material rewards? There... there are material rewards... in Call of Cthulhu? Since when? :smallconfused:



No really, the closest you get to material rewards are weapons you may find clutched in the hands a mutilated corpse, or a spellbook you steal from a psychotic cultist's house as you flee screaming into the night. There are no jewels, gold, of phatty l00tz or whatever its called these days. There are (in my games at least) slightly better weapons hidden in the mission area*, spellbooks and journals with special info in them hiddin in the mission area**, skill rewards which let you increase your stats at the end of every scenario, and the fact that you friggin survived!




*examples include: .38 revolver (unloaded) found under a sofa, .45 handgun (loaded) found in a nightstand, and a 20-gauge shotgun (loaded) which due to the investigators' stupidity ended up being clutched in hands of a really pissed off old man. (PM me for a summary of that little fiasco...)

**examples include: Old man's journal found in a locked wardrobe (contained a spell to summon a Dimensional Shambler), and a journal found locked in a safe (which contained 1 spell out of 3, as per the reader's choice).

Graymayre
2008-09-03, 10:51 PM
Ma... material rewards? There... there are material rewards... in Call of Cthulhu? Since when? :smallconfused:



No really, the closest you get to material rewards are weapons you may find clutched in the hands a mutilated corpse, or a spellbook you steal from a psychotic cultist's house as you flee screaming into the night. There are no jewels, gold, of phatty l00tz or whatever its called these days. There are (in my games at least) slightly better weapons hidden in the mission area*, spellbooks and journals with special info in them hiddin in the mission area**, skill rewards which let you increase your stats at the end of every scenario, and the fact that you friggin survived!

*examples include: .38 revolver (unloaded) found under a sofa, .45 handgun (loaded) found in a nightstand, and a 20-gauge shotgun (loaded) which due to the investigators' stupidity ended up being clutched in hands of a really pissed off old man. (PM me for a summary of that little fiasco...)

**examples include: Old man's journal found in a locked wardrobe (contained a spell to summon a Dimensional Shambler), and a journal found locked in a safe (which contained 1 spell out of 3, as per the reader's choice).

Heh, no. I said that this game may "break them" of only wanting material rewards. :smallsmile:

Doomsy
2008-09-04, 01:59 AM
CoC is pretty much the D&D anti-thesis. The PCs die often, easily, social forces can be a real factor ( You try explaining to the cops that the cult compound you set on fire was trying to summon an unimaginable being of pure cosmic horror to our plane of existence and see where that gets you ), and it is more focused on investigating then actual combat. Actual combat against normal human enemies is lethal by itself - in the modern day version a good roll with an assault rifle in burst mode can easily kill or maim half the party.

Actual combat against Mythos enemies is pretty much mindshattering and the cheating extra dimensional SOBs have a tendency to take minimal damage from physical attacks, if any, and drop the kind of loot that leaves you chained to a cot in a cell in a mental institution. There is no real gain in fighting the Mythos forces besides possibly looting corpses, and then the police will put you in jail for killing people because there is no way in heck they will believe the real story. Moreover, there is a very good chance you'll end up a muttering transient with no real job and no real prospects at anything close to a normal life again. This is not a problem because your lifespan is probably counted in years, not decades, if you are exceptionally lucky and smart.

You are doing good because the other option is unbearable. There is no 'evil route' in CoC. Even if you wanted to play a cultist, you in all probability have less of a survival rate than your average investigator - Mythos beings have no sense of loyalty.

In the end your best hope is that you have merely delayed the inevitable onslaught of darkness and madness, fighting against overwhelming, timeless forces and vast conspiracies.

I damn well love the game, really.

P.S.: And if your Keeper is a sadist you might find out it was all an interlinked dream while you were locked in a Mi-go brain jar.

BobVosh
2008-09-04, 02:26 AM
I recommend playing someone who can't read. Preferably blind. Looking at/for things in CoC is BAD. Anything and everything can and will kill you or drive you insane.

Such a great game.

Kesnit
2008-09-04, 09:09 AM
I recommend playing someone who can't read. Preferably blind. Looking at/for things in CoC is BAD. Anything and everything can and will kill you or drive you insane.

Such a great game.


Being deaf helps as well. And wrapped in a cucoon so you can't touch anything. And wearing nose plugs.

only1doug
2008-09-04, 09:09 AM
CoC is a great game, minor bad guys have a good chance of badly injuring the PC's, and a Major Bad guy will drive them mad just from seeing him, and kill most of the rest before they can run away.

Great Cthulhu eats 1d6 investigators each turn.

(this isn't DnD, there's no escape from being eaten)

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 09:15 AM
Great Cthulhu also has the abilty to pluck flying objects, such as planes, bombs, or even nuclear missiles, out of the air just before they strike him, and then do as he wishes with them. Thus, the prospect of "nuke the SOB!" fails at this point. :smallamused:

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-04, 09:36 AM
CoC is a great game, minor bad guys have a good chance of badly injuring the PC's, and a Major Bad guy will drive them mad just from seeing him, and kill most of the rest before they can run away.

Great Cthulhu eats 1d6 investigators each turn.

(this isn't DnD, there's no escape from being eaten)


Great Cthulhu also has the abilty to pluck flying objects, such as planes, bombs, or even nuclear missiles, out of the air just before they strike him, and then do as he wishes with them. Thus, the prospect of "nuke the SOB!" fails at this point. :smallamused:

I see this stuff over and over, and I always wonder, "What the hell game are they talking about?"

Cthulhu's attack block is "Claw 100%, 1D6+21D6 | Tentacle 100%, 11D6". He "scoops up" 1D3 investigators per round (since he can't actually miss), and he can "try to grab a plane or similar object" from the air to stop it from hitting him, with automatic success. (Nuclear missiles? Where are you getting that?)

The above is 5th ed. The newest is, what, 5.5?


Edit: Never mind that a nuclear bomb would explode far outside of Cthulhu's reach. They are detonated above the target, and quite a ways at that. Nuking Cthulhu is a perfectly valid tactic, considering the "canon" way to destroy him is to run a steamboat into him. Nuclear weapons would, indeed, work on a good number of Mythos beasts, especially Great Old Ones, though things like the Son of Yog-Sothoth simply aren't "in phase" with the real world enough to really be hurt by most non-mystic things.

Storm Bringer
2008-09-04, 09:54 AM
Nuking Cthulhu is a perfectly valid tactic,

only if you can get him to stand still for long enough.

and have a nuke. since the players are mostly just Ordinary Citizens, this is rarely an option.

especially in the 1920s.

WalkingTarget
2008-09-04, 09:55 AM
Edit: Never mind that a nuclear bomb would explode far outside of Cthulhu's reach. They are detonated above the target, and quite a ways at that. Nuking Cthulhu is a perfectly valid tactic, considering the "canon" way to destroy him slow him down long enough to escape is to run a steamboat into him. Nuclear weapons would, indeed, work on a good number of Mythos beasts, especially Great Old Ones, though things like the Son of Yog-Sothoth simply aren't "in phase" with the real world enough to really be hurt by most non-mystic things.

Fixed that for you. :smallbiggrin:

The Big C took a boat through the head and in the time it took Johansen to turn around and look at the results he/it was already getting better.

Anyway, it's a fun game but, as others have mentioned, the kick-in-the-door/loot-the-room mentality isn't likely to get you very far. Note that you're not playing an "adventurer" or similar as in other games, you're playing an "investigator". I always instruct my players (when I run a game) that they should think about it in terms of having a Curiosity flaw (you simply must find out what made that noise in the basement, etc). The suggestions people make talking about playing blind/deaf characters who avoid the badness is antithetical to the nature of the game. Knowing when to run is good, but you have to be willing to get to that point in the first place.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-04, 09:57 AM
Well, yes, obviously the rule for returning isn't affected by whether it's killed by a steamship or a nuclear explosion. 1D10+10 minutes to recompose its body at full HP.

BobVosh
2008-09-04, 10:09 AM
Great Cthulhu also has the abilty to pluck flying objects, such as planes, bombs, or even nuclear missiles, out of the air just before they strike him, and then do as he wishes with them. Thus, the prospect of "nuke the SOB!" fails at this point. :smallamused:

One word: suppository.

Screw flying.

only1doug
2008-09-04, 10:45 AM
the Best thing about Cthulhu is that yes a Nuke will destroy his body:


Cthulhu reforms, and now he is glowing.

You Cannot destroy Cthulhu, just ruin his plans and slow him down for awhile.

to the elder gods nuclear weapons are like childrens playthings, you have as much (or more) chance of killing them by shouting "BANG, you are DEAD"

Swordguy
2008-09-04, 11:54 AM
Actually, from HPLs sources, all we know is that Great Cthulhu is immune to damage from steamships.

It'd be like if he was statted out in d20: DR 50 [steamship], Regeneration [from steamship damage only]

:smallbiggrin:

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-04, 12:15 PM
Actually, from HPLs sources, all we know is that Great Cthulhu is immune to damage from steamships.

It's not immune to damage, though. In CoC, it's got huge armor points (21; only heavy firearms can penetrate that reliably), but more importantly it regenerates damage and recomposes itself if destroyed (which, in game terms, is what the steamship did).


A ton of the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are actually vulnerable to various things, like magical weapons (which are pretty easy to create if you're willing to use magic), and definitely big explosions. Several, like Atlach-Nacha, are functionally invincible, because they aren't destroyed at 0 HP - it's just their treshold for making an unstoppable escape. (Atlach-Nacha, when reduced to 0 HP, scuttles off along its endless webs and goes hide away.) Outer Gods, like Nyarlathotep and Azathoth, tend to only send avatars into our dimension, and destroying those avatars just defeats that one manifestation. Some are legitimately immune to all attacks, like Daoloth, which is as much an entity as a warp in reality (and just sends anything that impacts with it into another dimension).

All this stuff gets exaggerated to stupid dimensions, though. The game is not as deadly as jokes make it out to be - it is meant for extended play and campaigns, and has many campaigns published for it. Great Old Ones and Outer Gods can be defeated, but - rather obviously, really - you don't do it with a shotgun or even TNT, but by finding the right spell in the right tome of forbidden lore.

It's this kind of exaggeration that completely ruined all of my group's first attempts to play the game. Instead of getting into the game and the incredibly fragile horror mood, they were shooting shotguns at cabinets and anything else that moved, and running away from anything scary or dangerous.

Someone just posted a thread about Trail of Cthulhu, and after checking it out, I would actually recommend it over Call of Cthulhu (including the d20 version, which I actually far prefer to the BRP version; contrary to popular belief, PCs are not any more capable of killing Mythos monsters, and because the massive damage cap is at 10, they are actually more vulnerable than CoC characters). It puts the emphasis on the right thing - the mystery and investigation aspect of Lovecraftian horror, de-emphasizing combat (which is almost unnecessary in CoC, in my experience; the best "combat" in any of our CoC games was resolved with two attack rolls, and I think it was too much rolling for the scene). There's also a cool Drive system that gives mechanical encouragement for players to keep digging at the mystery (your Stability pool is refreshed when you follow your Drive into dangerous situations, and depleted when you ignore your Drive).

Comet
2008-09-04, 12:40 PM
You guys know what I find completely ridiculous? Giving Cthulhu goddamned stats, thats what. I mean, just look at him! How are you supposed to go about statting something that cannot even be realised properly with a human set of thinking? The tentacle-face is something more than a big monster, it's a cosmic force.
Dagon? Yeah, you can define him and his stats. He's practically just a giant anyway. Cthulhu? No way, friend.

And I'm done. Terribly sorry about that, just had to get it out of my system :smalltongue:

DrizztFan24
2008-09-04, 12:49 PM
This sounds like a demented I am Legend game. Similar time period.

skywalker
2008-09-04, 12:55 PM
You guys know what I find completely ridiculous? Giving Cthulhu goddamned stats, thats what. I mean, just look at him! How are you supposed to go about statting something that cannot even be realised properly with a human set of thinking? The tentacle-face is something more than a big monster, it's a cosmic force.
Dagon? Yeah, you can define him and his stats. He's practically just a giant anyway. Cthulhu? No way, friend.

And I'm done. Terribly sorry about that, just had to get it out of my system :smalltongue:

They gave him stats to see how many level 20 D&D characters it would take to kill him. I think the number was 20.

The blind investigator who shoots everything he doesn't recognize the sound of was my idea first.

I have to say that running them through CofC will probably not change your players all that much. I know several people whose first gaming experience period was CofC, and we still play D&D like normal people. In fact, we may kick in the door and loot the bodies even more, because one thing CofC teaches you is that when you can, you should. Our CofC game ran like a bunch of craziness, with expletives, racism, and other assorted libertine-ism. An example: We have three prisoners but two sets of handcuffs? I simply shot the third prisoner.

chiasaur11
2008-09-04, 12:55 PM
Actually, from HPLs sources, all we know is that Great Cthulhu is immune to damage from steamships.

It'd be like if he was statted out in d20: DR 50 [steamship], Regeneration [from steamship damage only]

:smallbiggrin:

So now we know how to kill him.

Don't use steamships.

A black hole is a workable backup plan.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-04, 04:32 PM
They gave him stats to see how many level 20 D&D characters it would take to kill him. I think the number was 20.

Huh?

Cthulhu has stats in the actual Call of Cthulhu - the BRP version. He doesn't have stats in the d20 Call of Cthulhu, actually. None of the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods (all of whom are statted in BRP CoC) have stats in d20 CoC. The d20 CoC book does include D&D stats for many of them (they're all demigods), but D&D stats and d20 CoC stats have some significant differences.

Doomsy
2008-09-04, 04:55 PM
They give the Old Ones stats in CoC just to let you know how hopeless it is. If you have failed so bad one is unleashed to walk the earth you are freaking doomed. They are not 'end bosses', they are The End.

Voshkod
2008-09-04, 04:59 PM
I second the recommendation of "Trail of Cthulhu" over "Call of Cthulhu." It's just a better system.

And if you want to run a modern day Cthulhu campaign, beg, borrow, steal, or kill for a copy of "Delta Green." Best supplement ever.

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 04:59 PM
I dunno. I think they coulda stood a chance against Ithiqua... His/her armor wouldn't stop all the damage from each attack, and most of my players have bought/collected/stolen some pretty high powered weapons. I think they could have put a little dent in Ithiqua before they got attacked. But at that point, they'd be royaly screwed over. :smalltongue:

Project_Mayhem
2008-09-04, 05:04 PM
And that Y'Golonac chap is reasonably easy to mow down with basic weapons. I had a character lay the fatal blow with a pistol whip once. Of course, he gets the slink off at 0 hp clause ...

Doomsy
2008-09-04, 05:11 PM
I dunno. I think they coulda stood a chance against Ithiqua... His/her armor wouldn't stop all the damage from each attack, and most of my players have bought/collected/stolen some pretty high powered weapons. I think they could have put a little dent in Ithiqua before they got attacked. But at that point, they'd be royaly screwed over. :smalltongue:


Huh. Forgot about Ithiqua. He is somewhat weak for Old God standards, but you might have a chance there on an alpha strike with severely heavy ordinance. Like an artillery barrage or Delta Green modern anti-armor/bunker weapons used by a large group of investigators simultaneously. Or a crapload of dynamite.

Once he reforms you are so screwed, though. And if you do not kill him right off, you're really screwed. I'd move to Taihiti or the Sahara right after that, myself. And hope he does not have contacts in the Sand Dweller/Deep One mafia.

I don't count the 'minor gods' for The End stuff. If it is not 1d10/1d100 Sanity lose for seeing it, you may have a shot.

chiasaur11
2008-09-04, 05:13 PM
And that Y'Golonac chap is reasonably easy to mow down with basic weapons. I had a character lay the fatal blow with a pistol whip once. Of course, he gets the slink off at 0 hp clause ...

Isn't that the guy whose name lets him possess you if read?

The guy who embodies atrocity?

Thanks heaps. You've doomed us all.

Project_Mayhem
2008-09-04, 05:18 PM
Isn't that the guy whose name lets him possess you if read?

The guy who embodies atrocity?

Thanks heaps. You've doomed us all.

Close - He only turns up if a real pervert says or reads his name, so we're sa ... oh crap, this is the internet.

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 05:19 PM
And who's hands are slobbering maws that chew off your face and eat your head?

Yeah, I think that's the guy...



Dude, there's one Great Old One who kills you just from you looking at a picture of him. Seeing him in person, or a very accurate depiction, causes your skin and muscles to slowly lock up, until after a few days you're a human statue, forever trapped inside your own body...

Doomsy
2008-09-04, 05:27 PM
And who's hands are slobbering maws that chew off your face and eat your head?

Yeah, I think that's the guy...



Dude, there's one Great Old One who kills you just from you looking at a picture of him. Seeing him in person, or a very accurate depiction, causes your skin and muscles to slowly lock up, until after a few days you're a human statue, forever trapped inside your own body...

Whoa. I don't think I've heard of that one and I've collected a lot of the CoC books. Got a name for him?

Voshkod
2008-09-04, 05:30 PM
Whoa. I don't think I've heard of that one and I've collected a lot of the CoC books. Got a name for him?

Ghatanothoa. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghatanothoa

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-04, 05:30 PM
I dunno. I think they coulda stood a chance against Ithiqua... His/her armor wouldn't stop all the damage from each attack, and most of my players have bought/collected/stolen some pretty high powered weapons. I think they could have put a little dent in Ithiqua before they got attacked. But at that point, they'd be royaly screwed over. :smalltongue:

Ithaqua is pathetically easy to kill. You just need some dynamite or a couple of machineguns. 10 points of armor, no regeneration, and no reincarnation/resurrection? Several others are similarly killable, and a bunch just have higher HP and armor but likewise aren't immortal.

'course if your PCs are armed with even Tommy Guns, you're kinda running the game wrong - or creating the wrong mood, in any case. The PCs should not, ideally, even carry handguns or revolvers around everywhere. (Although that's kind of an inevitable development after they've had a few actual adventures.) A fairly small part of even the more adventurous protagonists in Lovecraft's novels had actual weapons. When weapons are carried, they're supposed to be handguns and rifles, none of which are sufficient to take on even Greater Servitors or Independents, really.

I still prefer d20's method of not giving stats to GOOs and OGs. You just need to ad-hoc some save DCs now and then to put the fear of death in the players. (Or, if someone lingers, exposes themselves, or acts foolishly, you just describe a gruesome death - although I'm still of the opinion the game benefits a ton from not killing off PCs.)

Project_Mayhem
2008-09-04, 05:35 PM
Dude, there's one Great Old One who kills you just from you looking at a picture of him. Seeing him in person, or a very accurate depiction, causes your skin and muscles to slowly lock up, until after a few days you're a human statue, forever trapped inside your own body...

Oh yeah, I forgot that one. Ghatanothoa, upon checking my CoC rulebook.

My proplem is I read that before the stories. So, I skim read the deities section, and just get quick impressions with no horror attached.

''OK, so we've got a kind of puddle that smells, a cat girl, a blue lizard with a beard, a little elephant thing that doesn't move much, a big eye, a AWWW, isn't Glaaki cute, a ... why the hell is Hastur depicted as rubbery dead guy, a kind of cuddly furby thing that pretends to be asleep, and a guy with many breasts''

Basically. And don't get me started on the picture of the ghast.

Project_Mayhem
2008-09-04, 05:37 PM
Ghatanothoa. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghatanothoa

Don't. It's a trap. Think about it.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-04, 05:48 PM
My proplem is I read that before the stories. So, I skim read the deities section, and just get quick impressions with no horror attached.

Very few of the stories are actually horrible or scary. Rats in the Walls, Dreams in the Witch House, Pickman's Model, etc. can touch off specific fears (they do in me), and The Shadow Over Innsmouth is very tense (although the half-assed over-exposition from the bum almost ruins it), but most of Lovecraft's stuff was trite, repetitive, knocking off Poe, or just badly written (he did too much exposure - although August Derleth was even worse, as evidenced by the last third of The Lurker at the Treshold).

I haven't, admittedly, read Lovecraftian authors other than H.P. himself, Robert E. Howard, and the delightful Clark Ashton Smith, but I can't imagine other works blatantly derivative of Lovecraft can be better than his own stuff. About 90% of the GOOs and OGs are from other Lovecraftian authors, like Ramsey Campbell.

But yeah, the idea of representing any of the creatures - most described, canonically, as indescribable - in a visual medium is kind of silly. (Although one of the older editions of CoC did have a "portfolio" of absolutely terrifying full color pictures / portraits around the middle of the book. That shoggoth lord... uugh.)

Brauron
2008-09-04, 06:07 PM
Darnit, my original post got eaten. Oh well, here goes again.

I run CofC almost exclusively. My most recent campaign lasted seven months and had seven casualties.

The way I see it, the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods should not appear at all. Let them exist as a sort of brooding presence that hovers over everything the players do. Even smaller monsters I use infrequently. In my last campaign, the PCs encountered a Dimensional Shambler (summoned by cultists), horrible creatures that physically resembled the Gray Children from Silent Hill (I modified Zombie stats for them) who formed a fourth faction in a massive mexican standoff between the PCs, two opposed cults, and these Gray Children who were guarding the artifact both cults were trying to get for themselves, and a handful of Deep Ones (allied with the main cult). That's it. Almost all the enemies they fought were cultists.

I actually managed to do a pretty good job, I think, of keeping the players themselves a little spooked, especially when they had some knowledge of the milieu. A ten foot wide hole in the wall of a condemned building, the edges smeared with an oily, foul-smelling slime suddenly, in their minds, became an entrance - or exit - created by a Shoggoth.

I would become very frustrated if one of my players tried to play a blind, deaf, quadriplegic character, in an attempt to make them more survivable. That's just a big loogie in the eye of the spirit of the game. I actually threw a player out of the game for making a non-investigative Investigator. I did my best to work with them and respect that their character had reasons in their background that made them less likely to investigate, but every concession or compromise I tried to engineer blew up in my face and frustrated the other players.

The key to Call of Cthulhu, I think, is in having mature players who understand that this is an entirely different beast from Dungeons and Dragons. I was generally pretty fortunate with my group -- I had one player who decided to spend a couple days just studying the rulebook, memorizing creature stats and finding loopholes to exploit, plus he cheated on dice rolls. Funnily enough, he ended up in the thrall of Y'golonac, and stopped coming to sessions soon after. Humorously, it was a Library Use roll that he cheated on that screwed him -- I didn't know he'd cheated at the time, and rolled a d4 to see what of four books I'd decided were in the library he'd found, and he ended up with Volume 12 of the Revelations of Glaaki -- the book that Y'golonac uses to find new bodies. Another player commented to me after the session that when said player declared he'd rolled an "8" for Library Use, he'd in fact rolled an 80. That's incidentally when I became a firm believer in karma.

I had a few good tricks that worked really well with my group.

The classic, "glance at a player, roll some dice meaninglessly, and smirk ever-so-slightly" worked wonders for me. When I did it (and I used it extremely sparingly, sometimes coupled with actually rolling for something) the room would get so silent you could hear a mosquito sneeze.

I rolled all their Listen and Spot checks, and if they failed, told them they thought they heard a floorboard creak under a heavy step, or saw something move through the shadows. And sometimes I told them that if they passed as well, but there wasn't anything to see.

My favorite though, involved the fact that one of my players was my roommate and had a horrible habit of using out of game knowledge in game. So I would sketch out horrible monsters, or leave the rulebook open to a particular monster's stats, maybe with a post-it note pressed against the margin, and then leave them where I knew he'd be sure to see them. Let him draw his on conclusions.

Voshkod
2008-09-04, 06:15 PM
Don't. It's a trap. Think about it.

Ha! You've been Ghatanothoa-rolled!

Which actually wouldn't make a bad scenario for a modern CoC campaign. Someone - or something - is sending photos of Ghat in a virus, or linking to it, or whatever. Internet users are turning to mummies across the world.

BlueWizard
2008-09-04, 06:22 PM
Spooky, and ultimately it'll kill all the PCs at some point.

chiasaur11
2008-09-04, 06:23 PM
Don't. It's a trap. Think about it.

Sadly, that is not the case.

Stupid ban on non public images.

Doomsy
2008-09-04, 06:28 PM
I can't believe I forgot him. Especially since I'm a big fan of the No Man's Land module and the Iloigor in general. The fact that the brain remains alive for pretty much forever just adds to the fun.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-09-04, 06:30 PM
Man, I need to get some Call on some day.

I read a fun article one time saying that the best character was the person that the other party members wanted to keep sane. Say, a heavily armed gangster who, if he flips out, will probably kill everyone :smallamused:

puppyavenger
2008-09-04, 06:39 PM
speaking of Call of Cthulhu, does anyone have a link to some free scenarios?

Swordguy
2008-09-04, 06:58 PM
Ha! You've been Ghatanothoa-rolled!

Which actually wouldn't make a bad scenario for a modern CoC campaign. Someone - or something - is sending photos of Ghat in a virus, or linking to it, or whatever. Internet users are turning to mummies across the world.

BAM. Stolen. Borrowed.



Oh, and

speaking of Call of Cthulhu, does anyone have a link to some free scenarios?

Enjoy. (http://www.yog-sothoth.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=2)

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 08:17 PM
Man, I need to get some Call on some day.

I read a fun article one time saying that the best character was the person that the other party members wanted to keep sane. Say, a heavily armed gangster who, if he flips out, will probably kill everyone :smallamused:


Let me tell you now, this character IS the last person you want to freak out. The quiet WWI vet in the corner didn't do a thing until one of the characters busted out his Tommy Gun, and the machine gun fire made him spazz out. End result? Half-dead WWI vet, and two halves of a shotgunned Investigator...


I don't like for my characters to rely on guns. But they do any way. It leads to great situations, though, like the car hitting a bump right when a guy fires a shotgun at the Mi-Go flying outside the window. XD Everyone freaked out, but I felt generous and just told them it blew a chunk out of the roof...

The Tommy Gun guy was my least favorite character. He totally broke the game. 99 points in submachine gun, plus 5 points per bullet fired in a burst. He had a 198 chance of hitting on a 50 round burst... which was actually aimed at the vet, who succeeded at two Dodge and two Luck rolls to survive. XD


After the shotgun thing, though, I think they've realized just how bad of an idea having so many guns around is...


I can't wait for somebody to roll a 100. ^_^



Edit: I also make them do Luck rolls if they're in somebody else's field of fire, too. I mean really, who walks in front of the guy with a .45 just as he's about to open fire?

Thrud
2008-09-04, 08:26 PM
Let me tell you now, this character IS the last person you want to freak out. The quiet WWI vet in the corner didn't do a thing until one of the characters busted out his Tommy Gun, and the machine gun fire made him spazz out. End result? Half-dead WWI vet, and two halves of a shotgunned Investigator...


I don't like for my characters to rely on guns. But they do any way. It leads to great situations, though, like the car hitting a bump right when a guy fires a shotgun at the Mi-Go flying outside the window. XD Everyone freaked out, but I felt generous and just told them it blew a chunk out of the roof...

The Tommy Gun guy was my least favorite character. He totally broke the game. 99 points in submachine gun, plus 5 points per bullet fired in a burst. He had a 198 chance of hitting on a 50 round burst... which was actually aimed at the vet, who succeeded at two Dodge and two Luck rolls to survive. XD


After the shotgun thing, though, I think they've realized just how bad of an idea having so many guns around is...


I can't wait for somebody to roll a 100. ^_^



Edit: I also make them do Luck rolls if they're in somebody else's field of fire, too. I mean really, who walks in front of the guy with a .45 just as he's about to open fire?

Ahh, you have the kind of evil mind I quite admire in a CoC Keeper.

Incidentally, has anyone read the League of Extroadinary Gentlemen Black Dossier? It has the most HILARIOUS Jeeves and Wooster Call of Cthulhu crossover story where Wooster is at a friend's house, and one of his friends winds up having his brain stolen and put into a Mi-Go brain Jar, and no one notices the difference. Naturally Jeeves saves the day by figuring out something odd is going on and calling in the League of Extroadinary Gentlemen.

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 08:48 PM
I'm running a CoC pbp game here on the forum. It just started, and you're welcomed to read it... The poor saps are going to Innsmouth to search for a missing Miskatonic U student. Heh heh... I told them not to take guns, but some of them did it anyway. Too bad this a stealth-heavy mission. :smallamused:

Thrud
2008-09-04, 08:56 PM
Heh. Fun.

Hmm, that reminds me. I wonder if the new Calls for Cthulhu is up yet. . .

Oh, and if you haven't seen it check out This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYrQRcy45RQ). Probably one of the best Cthulhu related animated shorts I have ever seen.

Those of you who were interested in Call of Cthulhu, you might want to check it out.

Brasswatchman
2008-09-04, 09:23 PM
Guess I'll take this opportunity for some shameless self-promotion. I wrote two CoC adventures set in the 1920's a few years ago; there should be a link to them in my sig. On a non-selfish note, I would also recommend this site (http://www.yog-sothoth.com) in general for Call of Cthulhu resources.

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 09:32 PM
*sigh* You know Chaosium accepts story ideas, right? And they pay you if they use them. Unfortunately, they can't have been previosly published or shown on the internet...

LongVin
2008-09-04, 10:03 PM
I recommend playing someone who can't read. Preferably blind. Looking at/for things in CoC is BAD. Anything and everything can and will kill you or drive you insane.

Such a great game.

I love how CoC is the only game where players will go out of their way to say their characters didn't see something, hear something or aren't around for something that happens.

In every other game when one players sees something everyone else will go out of their way to have an IC reason for them to see it also "Uh...I'm in the room with him so he would tell me," or "Come on, it seems like it's very noticable why would I need to make a spot check?"

Only in CoC will players after finding out that one of the characters saw something horrible and is possibly insane now go "I didn't see it! I am in the other room looking at the wall! I can't see the guy being ripped to tiny shreds by the cosmic horror! Don't make me roll for sanity loss! My character knows enough not to look!"

Lycan 01
2008-09-04, 10:13 PM
Heh. I actually take people into another room when they read a book or something. I tell them what they read, make them roll sanity loss, and then leave them to decide what they tell the others.

The party split in half to check out two houses. I actually made Group A go outside (as in, outside of my house...) just so they wouldn't hear Group 2 screaming and freaking out when the Mi-Go attacked them. Once that was all done, I let Group A back in and told them what all they heard.

Noises they heard from down the road included:

-Buzzing noise (Mi-Go flew over Group A's house...)
-Screaming
-.45 shot
-shotgun blast
-.45 shot
-grenade explosion
-bear's death roar (Do. Not. Ask.)
-.45 shot
-random Japanese battle cry


They quickly ran to Group B and discovered Bushido Joe (samurai mafia guy... long story...) standing over a twitching Mi-Go and trying to wipe its blood off his katana... The conversation that followed was, naturally, interesting...

LordMalrog
2008-09-04, 11:34 PM
A thing i like about call of cthulhu's magic system is that you have to suffer for every goddamn inch of progress. It really feels like your messing with something way ahead of you. Oh and it could beat WoD for creepiest game! problem is in my group some people have a differant definition of winning then i do. (they want to be the huge heros, saving the world and gettin teh l00tz!)

Project_Mayhem
2008-09-05, 05:17 AM
don't like for my characters to rely on guns. But they do any way. It leads to great situations, though, like the car hitting a bump right when a guy fires a shotgun at the Mi-Go flying outside the window. XD Everyone freaked out, but I felt generous and just told them it blew a chunk out of the roof...

I actually like it when the players have guns. There are so so so many was you can use them in your favour. Remember they're only really useful against humans and weak stuff.


The Tommy Gun guy was my least favorite character. He totally broke the game. 99 points in submachine gun, plus 5 points per bullet fired in a burst. He had a 198 chance of hitting on a 50 round burst... which was actually aimed at the vet, who succeeded at two Dodge and two Luck rolls to survive. XD

I personally would require heavy justification for having 99% in any skill. Remember, 80% means world class - i.e. in Tatters of the King, our Alienist character has 80% in psycho-analyisis, and she is known through Britain for her papers. 99% is literally the pinnacle of human achievement. Your Tommy Gun guy would have turned mowing people down to an art. He would be infamous. The FBI would investigate every time his shooting style was hinted at. Gunman would constantly be hunting him down to test his skill etc.

And the best thing is, that doesn't matter, as long as you remember that all he can do is muller anything vulnerable to bullets, that doesn't get the drop on him, that is at a reasonable range, in good lighting, without a longer range weapon etc ...

Or just sic a dark young on him.

And I appreciate hes already dead - this is just general advice for dealing with gun bunnies

only1doug
2008-09-05, 06:24 AM
when i ran Masks of Nyarlathotep my group had a whole bunch of soldiers with them for the climax, the soldiers had tommy guns and i let the players control them.

99-100 is always a Jam regardless of skill, i was amazed by how many Jam's they got... unfortunately i assigned a low (5%) additional chance of the jam being a misfire with a low (10%) chance of a misfire brewing up the remaining rounds in the magazine.

My Players would never touch a tommy gun, they saw 4 explode in one combat.

new1965
2008-09-05, 06:44 AM
We had gotten a bit shotgun happy and the GM cured that quickly when the campaign took us to Stonehenge (i think) and we had to deal with the UK's anti-gun laws and later had to go to the DreamLands

I was glad to have a bow as a backup weapon then

Kantur
2008-09-05, 06:44 AM
The Tommy Gun guy was my least favorite character. He totally broke the game. 99 points in submachine gun, plus 5 points per bullet fired in a burst. He had a 198 chance of hitting on a 50 round burst... which was actually aimed at the vet, who succeeded at two Dodge and two Luck rolls to survive. XD




As Project_Mayhem said, first off he'd need 99% in the skill, which'd take a lot of work/luck when skills improve or a lot of justification to start near it.

The 20 round burst is fine for doubling the skill is fine, but 50? I can only see 4 weapons with a belt/magazine/etc that're above 40, and they're all machine guns - namely the Model 1882 Gatling Gun, the belt fed .30 Browning M1917A1, the belt fed Maschinengewehr-42 7.92mm and the belt fed FN Minimi 5.56mm. The highest capacity for the Thompson I see listed is 33 rounds.

Please don't kill my character now :P

Swordguy
2008-09-05, 06:57 AM
As Project_Mayhem said, first off he'd need 99% in the skill, which'd take a lot of work/luck when skills improve or a lot of justification to start near it.

The 20 round burst is fine for doubling the skill is fine, but 50? I can only see 4 weapons with a belt/magazine/etc that're above 40, and they're all machine guns - namely the Model 1882 Gatling Gun, the belt fed .30 Browning M1917A1, the belt fed Maschinengewehr-42 7.92mm and the belt fed FN Minimi 5.56mm. The highest capacity for the Thompson I see listed is 33 rounds.

Please don't kill my character now :P

IIRC, what's statted out in the book is the M1 Thompson, which will only accept 20 or 33-round box magazines (Tom Hanks carries this in Saving Private Ryan). What he's talking about is the M1928 Thompson, which, for game purposes, is mechanically identical (weight is within a pound unloaded, same caliber round, so same damage), except it can accept 50 and 100-round drum magazines.

Kesnit
2008-09-05, 07:33 AM
The suggestions people make talking about playing blind/deaf characters who avoid the badness is antithetical to the nature of the game. Knowing when to run is good, but you have to be willing to get to that point in the first place.

I know, and was joking about the blind and deaf investigator with no sense of touch or smell. CoC kind of reminds me of the Laws of Thermodynamics...

Zeroth: You must play the game.
First: You can't win.
Second: You can't break even.
Third: You can't quit the game.

Project_Mayhem
2008-09-05, 07:33 AM
and we had to deal with the UK's anti-gun laws

Oh yeah, playing over here in GB is way more funny for keepers/ aggrovating for players.

Although, in Blighty there are far more of the single coolest horror genre weapon ever - the double barreled shotgun. Pretty much every big house in the country had one. In fact, many still do. Yay

Voshkod
2008-09-05, 08:23 AM
I know, and was joking about the blind and deaf investigator with no sense of touch or smell. CoC kind of reminds me of the Laws of Thermodynamics...

Zeroth: You must play the game.
First: You can't win.
Second: You can't break even.
Third: You can't quit the game.

Blind player? Easy to deal with. Every night, as he tries to sleep, he hears, just at the edge of perception, a distant mad piping. No one else can hear it, of course, only the blind guy, as his hearing is so sharp to compensate for his lack of eyesight. Every night, the piping, distant, but getting closer. Closer. Closer. Can't sleep. The piping! THE PIPING!

In the morning they found him, pencils jammed into his ears, dead, blind eyes opened wide, staring at something he could finally see.

Blind and deaf player? Something walks up and eats him.

Lycan 01
2008-09-05, 11:10 AM
During his character creation, he decided to put all his personal interest points into submachine gun, and I decided to allow it since... well... I was an idiot...


I only let him use more than 8 shot bursts against the Mi-Go, since I already knew each bullet did 3 damage to them. I just had to count his succeesses, multiply them by 3, and then decide who got hit with how many. Actually, when he fired a 38 shot burst, he rolled:

1 d20. (18...)
1 d12 (8...)
and 1 d6. (5...)

There were four enemies, so I divided the result of the d20 against two Mi-Go. The other two dice hit their respective Mi-Go.

So...

Mi-Go 1 with 11 HP was hit for 27 damage.
Mi-Go 2 with 15 HP was hit for 27 damage.
Mi-Go 3 with 12 HP was hit for 24 damage.
And Mi-Go 4 with 1 HP (he'd run from a previous fight) was hit for 15 damage.


You can see why I said they all got machine gunned into paste. I always describe death scenes in detail. The more points over its HP you damage it for, the more brutally it dies.



Like I said, I'm not too sad he's dead. XD

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-05, 01:56 PM
During his character creation, he decided to put all his personal interest points into submachine gun, and I decided to allow it since... well... I was an idiot...

That really should be a useless skill (although Machine Gun would be even less useful). Rifle and Shotgun are the best ones, since you can find those in countless homes in the 1920s, especially in rural areas. Getting your hands on a Thompson in the 20s? Not likely - the image of gangsters with Thompsons is mostly fictional. They used rifles and handguns, too.

Then again, even if the PCs have a Thompson, it shouldn't be much use. Fights aren't that important, and should happen at such close quarters that you won't get much of a chance to shoot things (especially without killing your friends).

Gamgee
2008-09-05, 02:14 PM
the Best thing about Cthulhu is that yes a Nuke will destroy his body:


Cthulhu reforms, and now he is glowing.

You Cannot destroy Cthulhu, just ruin his plans and slow him down for awhile.

to the elder gods nuclear weapons are like childrens playthings, you have as much (or more) chance of killing them by shouting "BANG, you are DEAD"

Ahh but even a child is capable of killing an adult, and those steel toy tonka trucks are pretty ****ing heavy, have one of those dropped on your head and you will be out for a while, if not dead from one of the sharp edges. So yes a child's toy is perfectly valid for killing someone ;) Then the child can finish you off muahahaha (secret DM plot, the child was working for the Big C all along)

I can't wait to get some time and read the rules, this system looks so fun.

only1doug
2008-09-05, 02:20 PM
and if a child were to shout "Bang, You're Dead" at an adult they might have a heart attack and die (or they may pretend to be dead for their own amusement).

Kami2awa
2008-09-05, 02:22 PM
And that Y'Golonac chap is reasonably easy to mow down with basic weapons. I had a character lay the fatal blow with a pistol whip once. Of course, he gets the slink off at 0 hp clause ...

I'm not sure if the book stats for Y'Golonac are actually for the Great Old One or for a victim of his possession... Y'G is weaker than the other GOOs but I don't think there's any way in the rules to destroy him. Possibly he could be destroyed if freed from imprisonment, but thats probably a really bad plan...

Kami2awa
2008-09-05, 02:24 PM
That really should be a useless skill (although Machine Gun would be even less useful). Rifle and Shotgun are the best ones, since you can find those in countless homes in the 1920s, especially in rural areas. Getting your hands on a Thompson in the 20s? Not likely - the image of gangsters with Thompsons is mostly fictional. They used rifles and handguns, too.

Then again, even if the PCs have a Thompson, it shouldn't be much use. Fights aren't that important, and should happen at such close quarters that you won't get much of a chance to shoot things (especially without killing your friends).

Heavy weapons are quite useful in game, until a) the police and army turn up (especially in the UK) b) the investigator with them goes mad.

skywalker
2008-09-05, 02:51 PM
That really should be a useless skill (although Machine Gun would be even less useful). Rifle and Shotgun are the best ones, since you can find those in countless homes in the 1920s, especially in rural areas. Getting your hands on a Thompson in the 20s? Not likely - the image of gangsters with Thompsons is mostly fictional. They used rifles and handguns, too.

Then again, even if the PCs have a Thompson, it shouldn't be much use. Fights aren't that important, and should happen at such close quarters that you won't get much of a chance to shoot things (especially without killing your friends).

I'm under the impression that you could mail-order one back then... Which seems pretty easy...

I don't think they'd be that hard to get...

I also retract my earlier statement about d20 Cthulhu. This was actually a myth told to me by my Keeper. I have never been allowed to see that part of the book :smallfrown:

Our investigator crew always carried as many shotguns as we could find.

Voshkod
2008-09-05, 02:55 PM
The only weapons a true Call of Cthulhu investigator needs are his brain and a pistol with one bullet to blow out aforementioned brain.

only1doug
2008-09-05, 03:02 PM
funniest Insanity inflicted on a player:

well i've had a few of these, one of the best randomly generated insanities was at the start of a combat. The players had just seen a very frightening sight and one of them lost enough sanity to gain a temporary insanity, the random generated result was Copy nearest ally.
the nearest ally was firing his pistol (2x rnd) at the monster so that's what the character did... unfortunately he was a big-game hunter with a elephant gun.
firing one handed ala pistol style... twice... he did major damage to the monster at the tiny cost of a broken wrist.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-05, 03:33 PM
I'm under the impression that you could mail-order one back then... Which seems pretty easy...

Probably more a topic for the thread about real-world weapons, but I really, really doubt that. A brand-new highly lethal military weapon - a new paradigm in portable killing power - available by mail order? The 1920s sourcebooks for CoC actually go into a lot of historical detail on the invailability of the weapon. They were used by the Post Office (go figure what for!), the USMC, and the FBI. Portrayals of Depression era mobsters feature them so much because, well, they're much cooler than pistols and rifles and shotguns. The gun did gain fame in some crimes, like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Rifles and shotguns are usually enough to deal with cultists, ghouls, and deep ones, anyway. If you're facing so many a submachinegun would be necessary, you're not supposed to be fighting.

And yes, insanity and guns are a nasty combination. In a one-off Lovecraft Country MUSH stage (over at Skotos (http://www.skotos.net/games/)), my investigator lost his mind and shot off both of another character's ears. (Then killed her.)

Voshkod
2008-09-05, 03:41 PM
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Thompsonad1sm.jpg

skywalker
2008-09-05, 04:24 PM
Probably more a topic for the thread about real-world weapons, but I really, really doubt that. A brand-new highly lethal military weapon - a new paradigm in portable killing power - available by mail order? The 1920s sourcebooks for CoC actually go into a lot of historical detail on the invailability of the weapon. They were used by the Post Office (go figure what for!), the USMC, and the FBI. Portrayals of Depression era mobsters feature them so much because, well, they're much cooler than pistols and rifles and shotguns. The gun did gain fame in some crimes, like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.)
CofC sourcebooks have been known to be inaccurate before, especially about how weapons work.

"This sort of advertising may seem incredible today, but in 1925 anyone with $225 could purchase a Thompson Submachine gun either by mail order, or from the local hardware or sporting goods store." - from "The Unofficial Tommy Gun Page (http://www.nfatoys.com/tsmg/)"

I know, I know, you can't believe everything you hear on the internet, but I've actually read this several different places in legitimately researched firearms books.

As for the post-office, the mail used to be a huge deal. Postmaster General used to be a cabinet post(right up there with Secretary of State, Defense, etc.)

Swordguy
2008-09-05, 04:30 PM
Probably more a topic for the thread about real-world weapons, but I really, really doubt that. A brand-new highly lethal military weapon - a new paradigm in portable killing power - available by mail order? The 1920s sourcebooks for CoC actually go into a lot of historical detail on the invailability of the weapon. They were used by the Post Office (go figure what for!), the USMC, and the FBI. Portrayals of Depression era mobsters feature them so much because, well, they're much cooler than pistols and rifles and shotguns. The gun did gain fame in some crimes, like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

As Voshkod aptly proved, Thompson SMGs (as well as several other fully automatic military arms) were readily available by mail-order pre-1965. These arms included the Thompson, the BAR, captured German MP-40s, and even surplus M1919 tripod-mounted machineguns.

[Warning: Sarcasm ahead]

Yet...somehow with all these inherently evil instruments of death and destruction spread throughout society, spreading their black tendrils to corrupt innocent minds into violence...[/sarcasm]...the rate of shooting deaths (X per 100,000 people) was almost identical to what it is today. In 1924, the rate of shooting homicides was about 5.2 per 100,000. In 2006, it was 5.7 per 100,000 people. (1) Heck, the rate of gun ownership per 100 people was about 4 times the rate it is today, which means guns should be much more common in a 1920's game than a modern one. (2) Society did not have a reason to restrict gun ownership (the NFA) until the early 1930s, when some fairly well-known gun-related deaths of public figures occurred, due mainly to John Dillinger.

In fact, the reason that the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (and the Thompson) got so famous is because of a) who carried out the deed, and b) how unusual it was to have automatic weapons utilized in such a fashion. The vast, VAST majority of criminals preferred handguns or short shotguns, which were more concealable and much more disposable than fully-automatic arms.

While the majority of firearms in a 1920's CoC game should be rifles and shotguns (civilian "house guns"), it is not significantly out of the ordinary whatsoever to have a PI or ex-cop with handguns and, yes, even a Thompson. Heck, we had a PI with a BAR - several gangsters of the early 20's carried them around with shortened barrels to conceal under coats, so why couldn't I let him have one? He paid the money, and they were legal...

...he still got eaten, though.

(1) [FBI website]
(2) [Kleck G, Patterson EB. The impact of gun control and gun ownership levels on violence rates.]

Oracle_Hunter
2008-09-05, 05:49 PM
And while we're here: Rare Guns (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RareGuns) in media.

Brasswatchman
2008-09-06, 02:37 AM
*sigh* You know Chaosium accepts story ideas, right? And they pay you if they use them. Unfortunately, they can't have been previosly published or shown on the internet...

::shrug:: A few years too late, then. Honestly, it's not for the money (or any profit at all). I just like my stuff being read.

horseboy
2008-09-06, 04:01 PM
Heh. Fun.

Hmm, that reminds me. I wonder if the new Calls for Cthulhu is up yet. . .

Oh, and if you haven't seen it check out This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYrQRcy45RQ). Probably one of the best Cthulhu related animated shorts I have ever seen.

Those of you who were interested in Call of Cthulhu, you might want to check it out.Anybody have a link to the KoDT short about it? Burn the book (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jbfIRh8kP8)!

Ah Cthulthu, love that game. It's one you've got to play smart to survive. Cult infiltrated the local factory where they're manufacturing requirements for a huge summoning? Sneak in, move the Cesium into another area, nearby where it's stored, but outside of it's safe area. "Somebody" started smoking there, cigarette started a fire in a waste paper basket, set off the sprinkler system...BOOM. The investigators? Why, they're just a paramedic and some concerned citizenry trying to help people out who were hurt by the riot going on outside the factory. Yes, we were there, helping people, no we have no idea what happened. Tragic, isn't it?

Saph
2008-09-06, 04:31 PM
I've heard a lot about it, but never had a chance to play.

I'm not sure I'd enjoy it, though. It sounds too hopeless. The idea of a game where you inevitably go insane doesn't appeal much - I'm not really a fan of being forced to roleplay a mental disorder unless it's my own choice.

To be honest, I've always been a bit dubious about the idea of a horror RPG, full stop. Fear only works if you've got something to lose. If I know that my character is going to die horribly sooner or later, and it's all hopeless, then it's not actually all that scary anymore. It's only when I have a character I really care about with a hope of a happy ending that I get frightened about her dying.

- Saph

only1doug
2008-09-06, 04:43 PM
you should try it Saph, Its a great system. Although characters do go insane more often than they die and they die more often permanently than DnD characters it isn't impossible for a character to survive and grow stronger.

If your character does gain a permanent insanity it would be discussed with your GM and agreed as appropriate to the character.

Having run two major campaigns I have seen characters drop like flies and yet some of them make it through and triumph.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-06, 04:52 PM
I'm not sure I'd enjoy it, though. It sounds too hopeless. The idea of a game where you inevitably go insane doesn't appeal much - I'm not really a fan of being forced to roleplay a mental disorder unless it's my own choice.

This is a matter of preference. Mostly, insane PCs should or could be retired; I'd consider SAN a "PC life left" counter. Mind, the BRP version has the worst insanity system of any game, ever. It's barely improved since the beginning, but it's still BS. You don't just suddenly develop schizophrenia because you see awful things - what total crap. You're best off if your Keeper ignores that junk and works with you to integrate your growing instability into the plot - obsessions, delusions, mania, depression, whatever works. Just looking at Lovecraft's novels, the characters don't "develop insanities" - the stories give much, much better ideas for how to handle low SAN scores.

It's not inevitable, either. Nothing forces you to keep delving into the Mythos - well, sort of. You can reach a point where you decide that you know enough and will take your chances fighting the Mythos with what you've got now. You'll probably slowly gain more knowledge and become less sane, but it's unlikely you'll be forced into insanity during any real campaign this way. And if you survive investigations, your current SANity goes up - the equivalent of experience points for accomplishing goals, basically.

(It's a bit remiscent of Warhammer FRP, actually, where a PC is at least as likely to be retired due to excessive mutation or insanity as to die from wounds, thanks to Fate Points.)

This is something Trail of Cthulhu does better. It's got Stability - which is your short-term mental fortitude - and Sanity - which is your long-term mental health. You can be perfectly stable and functional while your knowledge of Cthulhu Mythos threatens to push you deeper and deeper into nonfunctional insanity.


Like I've said, I prefer characters, even in CoC, to survive investigation after investigation. Horror works so much better when the players know their characters and are attached to them.

comicshorse
2008-09-07, 11:32 AM
Like I've said, I prefer characters, even in CoC, to survive investigation after investigation. Horror works so much better when the players know their characters and are attached to them.

Or as a G.M. friend of mine puts it " killing the P.C.s just means you can't mess with them anymore "

Lycan 01
2008-09-07, 03:03 PM
Unnnnnngh...... Saturday was a FIASCO!!!

We played 2 games. One of my friends Kept the 1st one, and I kept the 2nd one.


First game: Home-made trip to Innsmouth.
Players: 4 - priest (me), carjacker (GF), PI (friend), singer (Keeper's GF)
Plot: Miskatonic student took the wrong bus, hasn't been heard of since. We were hired or volunteered to go find him in Innsmouth.

Noteworthy events:
-carjacker swipped a car in Arkham, which we piled into to visit Innsmouth.
-we met the local priest, who was holed up in an abandoned church. I managed to give him some food from the local store, but the PI decided to inject him with morphine in order to cool his frazzled nerves. This resulted in a narrow miss between an offering plate and the PI's face...
-My bribing of the hotel manager netted me no info, but I got a room for 4 days... Woo?
-The PI got mugged in the town square - and the mugger lost his head to the singer's .45 handgun. None of the townspeople cared; death was nothing new to them.
-I sprinted to the carjacker's car as she was driving by looking for a place to park. We ended up visiting a grocery store. The owner was human, and I managed to bribe the student's location out of him. He also gave me a double-barreled shotgun and 10 shells, since he knew I was working for the greater good. I told him I'd come back for him... No matter what, I would come back for him...
-Brainstorming ideas on how to storm the Order of Dagon. I wanted to jack a car, drive it through the front doors, and shoot anything that wasn't a hostage. (I know, hypocritic... but I was determined to save that guy ASAP!) The PI wanted to climb onto the roof of the building and find a way in... The other 2 just sat in the car, which was parked in an alley.
-I ended up breaking down the back door and point-blanking a shell into a hybrid's gut. The PI found no other way in, so he climbed down and ran in behind me.
-The PI grabbed the student and ran. I ran for the door, onto to be met with a hail of gunfire. Turns out I didn't pay attention to the Keeper when he mentioned an open door at the opposite end of the room...
-Surviving the stray bullets, I turned to see a hybrid and a true Deep One. (San check passed, +5 CM) I then screamed a religeous exclaimation, and proceeded to score a crit against the Deep One. The Keeper said the shotgun blast reduced his face to powder, his torso to paste, and his arms to flying bits of debris.
-The hybrid fired, striking my shoulder. Floored and bleeding out with 1/4 my HP left, I expected to die. Without warning, the PI and singer bust in and blow off the hybrid's face with 2 .45 rounds.
-The singer First Aid's me, and helps me hobble back to the car. The PI swipes "Invocations of Dagon" from the temple.
-We flee the town, stopping at the store for the clerk. Thankfully, my semi-conscious priest was not told of the clerk's gruesome fate; they lied to me and said the clerk found another way out of town.
-We escaped, got 500 bucks each, and all had plenty of fun.


Now, the 2nd game... that was horrible... I'll explain that one later, after I decide how I want to tell it...