Call of CthulBOOOOO

[Krytha]

So my friends are all into Call of Cthulhu d100 (ha... ha...) and yeah its neat and cool and interesting... but the characters just can't handle anything. Sure, nobody is supposed to be able to beat Cthulhu or any random elder god, but our characters can't handle ZOMBIES. The guns are more inaccurate than fists and do roughly the same damage on any given roll. Additionally, combat is inescapable in this game so towards the end of every mission, we end up getting slaughtered and our DMs are fighting tooth and nail to keep US alive. And failing.

Any similar stories on this ridiculous game?

[Call Me Siggy]

As far as I know about the game, that's exactly what's supposed to be happening. The players are instilled with a sense of fear and hopelessness. They can't fight because it's more important to run from the scary, scary, things that are chasing you.

[Krytha]

I know that's what supposed to happen, but then there's no point in ever playing. Why not just stare at the cover of the campaign and say... well, we could never take that thing, so let's stay home. Additionally, running from monsters in the campaigns tend to make the actual missions impossible.

For example: No cultist activity until night of summoning when Hastur comes into this world. Convinced police force to help set up an ambush at summoning location. Cultists begin ritual, stab people, PCs and police spring into action and fire with their fist-damage pea-shooters. Cultists summon 8 byakees and a large sized monstrosity. We run, police die, Hastur shows up, game over. There is no running. You have one shot to mess things up at a critical time and if you don't you don't get that chance again.

[Call Me Siggy]

It's Survival-Horror. The whole thrill of the thing is in attempting just to live, not killing everything. It's definitely roleplay-heavy...and that doesn't really seem your cup of tea.

[AngelSword]

So my friends are all into Call of Cthulhu d100 (ha... ha...) and yeah its neat and cool and interesting... but the characters just can't handle anything. Sure, nobody is supposed to be able to beat Cthulhu or any random elder god, but our characters can't handle ZOMBIES. The guns are more inaccurate than fists and do roughly the same damage on any given roll. Additionally, combat is inescapable in this game so towards the end of every mission, we end up getting slaughtered and our DMs are fighting tooth and nail to keep US alive. And failing.

Any similar stories on this ridiculous game?

Oh, I have many stories about Cthulhu. I love it.

I remember one game at D*Con '04, where we were on an island after a plane crash. The owner of the island was trying to summon shoggoths, and we were doing our best to prevent it. I managed to delay him pretty hard (getting a 10% roll with a shotgun, and blowing a giant hole in the semi real shoggoth), but it kept coming. Two of the other investigators had found something with the same sort of power output as a small nuclear device, and decided to force it to overheat, killing (among others) the cultist.

Combat is meant to be deadly. The characters are supposed to be normal people; not the same sorts of super people that D&D creates.

[Seraph]

CoC is about role playing. this may not be understandable if you're used to DnD or something, but beating a problem until it stops being one is never, ever an option.

[Belteshazzar]

Unfortunatly this does not seem to be limited to simply the pen and paper version of the game. While playing CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth I notice that apparently the sight of some guys who look like oversized frogs (the Cult of Dagon) can make a man go clear out of his mind. I can understand if they suddenly start chanting a foul rite or working world twisting magics but noOOOoo.

Apparently the average joe of the early 1900s would fall apart mentally if some guys in rubber fish suits jumped him. While they could make me jump if they stepped out of an alleyway the shock would wear off I think after the first few times one saw them. Especialy when you realize they can hardly see their hand in front of their face and a bullet to the brain kills 'em all the same.

I mean a zombie causing sanity loss for simply existing should not happen. If they were eating my friend alive while he screamed for me to make it stop maybe but Lovecraftian horror seems to take the effect of insanity so far that it looses all the 'newness' if you take my meaning. I don't mind loosing it if Cthulhu or Nartholoptep decide to sit down for a chat with me about 'how the universe really works' but a dead body of a stranger won't even destroy most children's insanity much less a hardened mythos investigator.

[Krytha]

Well I'm glad you have nuclear plants. There aren't any where we live. And combat is deadly, yes, and generally lethal. Practically all the time we don't get to dictate the terms of the encounter, get ambushed, get death-magicked, get kidnapped in a cutscene - I don't know how youre supposed to finish a campaign properly but my persuade rolls vs. cthonians haven't been so brilliant.

[AngelSword]

I mean a zombie causing sanity loss for simply existing should not happen. If they were eating my friend alive while he screamed for me to make it stop maybe but Lovecraftian horror seems to take the effect of insanity so far that it looses all the 'newness' if you take my meaning. I don't mind loosing it if Cthulhu or Nartholoptep decide to sit down for a chat with me about 'how the universe really works' but a dead body of a stranger won't even destroy most children's insanity much less a hardened mythos investigator.

I think you're missing something. Investigators are not hardened, and most are often just choosing the wrong day to follow their instincts. Think about it; how would you react if you found a corpse swinging from her neck in the far corner of the room? You're already on edge, as most of the people you've spoken to are strange, yet you can't figure out why. Their eyes are just…dead. Empty. And they dislike you on the sole fact that you're an outsider to their quaint town.

Essentially, you're playing you. You may say you can handle such horrors, but unless you actually have, you never really know.

[Krytha]

What I don't like is that we are expected to die. Rolling up new character sheets is not fun and is time consuming. For people telling me to RP, tell me HOW I should go about doing this?

Example: We see an article in the newspaper about how a painter makes extremely vivid and disturbing paintings that he claims to see in his dreams. Our mythos meter going ding and we decide to visit him and talk about his craft. He's pretty clearly insane and being taken care of by his mother. After getting nowhere in talking to him and getting ushered out, we figure we can sneak in at night and take a look around. We make it in, the place is dark, we have no problems unlocking a door and being generally undetected. We head down into the basement and succeed on a spot hidden check for a secret door. Yay! Clues! Our lead person creaks the door open quietly and suddenly turns around and shoots another investigator. Then my character is suddenly seized with the insatiable need to gibber and curl up into a foetal ball for the remainder of combat. I ask if I get a save or if I can do anything? Nope, my dm tells me, you need a magic score of 36 or higher... which is impossible to get by character standards. So yeah, there was a lizardmagus hiding in the painter's basement with unsaveable instant death magic.

What were we supposed to do? Not break in? Go tell the police that this guy is insane and that he should have his civil rights stripped of him because we think he's up to something like... oh... dragging a dead god into this world and destroying humanity? You need proof to get anywhere and wild stories don't work in real life, which I think is roleplaying. We barely survive combat (killed him with fists of fury...) and try to send one of our mortally wounded investigators to the hospital. Then we go back upstairs and look at a painting in a closet that sends us back in time to be lizard sacrifices. I don't understand. What should I have done in these situations? Walked around with my eyes closed? learned lizard speak from the nearby LSL tutor? Gone to my local library to research a baleful polymorph spell so that I can pretend to be a lizard man and invite this nice guy to tea? You say "ROLEPLAY!" but I don't know what you think that would entail since I feel that we are already roleplaying.

[Knight_Of_Twilight]

I loved Call of Cthulu. My hardboiled PI kicked down doors, always loosed a few shots at whatever came at him, and burned every old book the party ever found.

I think I killed one cultist with him, ever.

[Belteshazzar]

In DnD the plot never survive contact with the characters which is fine as long as one is a good DM but in CoC the Characters never survive contact with the plot which makes for a very dull game. I mean if the only way to survive in CoC is to burn every book, kill every stranger, and nuke towns of cultists from orbit then what is the point. The DM is out of a job because everything he was going to describe is either on fire, in small pieces, or not being intentionally ignored because everyone makes a point of not investigating the vaguely disturbing painting lest they feel a sudden urge to spill blood for the blood god. I can understand if it is playing it safe to toss a stick of dynamite into a room of cultist before entering 'just to be sure' but when that becomes the only 'safe' option for entering every ominous basement or crypt then the description "you see several chucks of unidentifiable flesh with a smooth pasting of blood coating the walls" is going to become rather overused very quickly.

[AngelSword]

You say "ROLEPLAY!" but I don't know what you think that would entail since I feel that we are already roleplaying.

There's your problem. You're looking at it as though it's identical to playing a D&D game. That's the problem; you're expecting a great wyrm, and getting a pseudodragon. Notice how you created the character; you have actual skills and abilities. No magic, no special attacks, nothing.

[Krytha]

You ALSO don't survive encounters with the law. If you go around dynamiting everything, your campaign will end prematurely. Every time we run into someone who is a bit creepy everyone's like... CULTIST! KILL HIM! but we stop ourselves because we know that if we do without any proof we get the old "you kill him and are arrested by the police for murder. you're executed in jail."

I also don't like the way sanity plays an enormous role in the game but cannot be increased over time. You'd think that after seeing visions of nyarlothep for the 50th time you'd stop losing 1d20 sanity, but no. You're also pretty hard-pressed to get that sanity back too. In many ways, sanity is even more important than hitpoints (scant as they are) and people with 5 power basically need to never look at anything ever, lest they be driven instantly insane and attack their own teammates.

There's your problem. You're looking at it as though it's identical to playing a D&D game. That's the problem; you're expecting a great wyrm, and getting a pseudodragon. Notice how you created the character; you have actual skills and abilities. No magic, no special attacks, nothing.

And you'll look at the gaming stories and realize that's not the case at all. If I were expecting a greatwyrm, what I got was an army of balors. Again, you haven't suggested HOW to deal with this problem other than die.

Of course, the lack of special attacks and anything useful is painfully clear to me. The so-called actual skills and abilities? Useless 90% of the time. There are a set of main skills which are absolutely mandatory to get anywhere at all, but those 30 points you put into mechanical repair will surface maybe once every three campaigns (which you won't survive to get to) and even then, you might not even be the person in the situation that requires help. And as you said, now that our characters have NOTHING, what do you expect them to do when conflict is foisted upon them - as it always does in these missions?

[Xuincherguixe]

My thought is that it's all well and good to make the game fairly lethal, there should at least be some options until the climax where you either get eaten, commit suicide, or turn into a Deep One.

Things could build up a bit. Rather than finding a Lizardmagus, maybe there was just some kind of 'strange green sphere'. There might be some more paintings in that room, or maybe it's just completely empty. It would be slightly unsettling to look at. If a character stared at it long enough though, things might start to happen.

Furthermore, I think reasonable to expect your players to be able to kill Deep Ones. Their real danger comes when they're in groups.

It seems to me that the best way to play the game, is that the players gradually uncover all manner of horrible, terrible secrets. A few characters here and there maybe can die along the way, but the team getting massacred in the first encounter is just stupid.

[AngelSword]

Of course, the lack of special attacks and anything useful is painfully clear to me. The so-called actual skills and abilities? Useless 90% of the time. There are a set of main skills which are absolutely mandatory to get anywhere at all, but those 30 points you put into mechanical repair will surface maybe once every three campaigns (which you won't survive to get to) and even then, you might not even be the person in the situation that requires help. And as you said, now that our characters have NOTHING, what do you expect them to do when conflict is foisted upon them - as it always does in these missions?

Then the problem lies with the person running the game. Long Cthulhu campaigns hinge on a keeper who knows how to incorporate your abilities, and slowly drive you mad. If your keeper is forcing you into situations where he doesn't provide you with a valid escape route - even if that route is simply turning tail and running away - then something's wrong.

[Krytha]

Are you creating your own campaigns? My friends just bought a ton of stock campaigns and are DMing straight out of a book.

[AngelSword]

Perhaps that's it. I've never been in a stock Cthulhu game.

Though, I give you a bit of a reprieve. I would figure that, if I didn't start playing with people who were already well-versed in the game, the games I made would've needed some serious work.

Cthulhu is also the type of game that relies a bit on DM fiat. Not quite to the same extent as Paranoia (which is essentially how much you're willing to kiss Computer ass), but fiat is required, and often in the players' favor (or not, if they're utterly twisted [they should, slightly, be twisted, in order to create the proper environ, but still])

[Yiel]

For me, the essence of a good Cthulhu game is the air of fear the room develops as the party traverses the world. If you faced and won every encounter you would be audacious, not trepidatious.

edit: I can't spell.

[skywalker]

Some understanding of Lovecraftian horror is in order, first of all. You have to realize that in most of Lovecraft's fiction, everyone except for the guy writing the story is already dead. On top of that, the last bit of the story is about how he is being either silenced by the powers that be, arrested, or has finally gone mad.

As far as sanity loss:
Specific Case: No, seeing Nyarlathotep for the 50th time is not any easier than seeing him the 1st time. Do you really think it would get easier? I think it would get harder. It's like, well it's not something I can describe on these forums.

General Case: Seeing corpses is one thing. Seeing corpses the way they are generally mangled and destroyed in CofC is quite another.

Again, going back to Lovecraft's fiction, problems are always solved by taking a very risky maneuver with a very low chance of success against the big monster. If you can't run, then you should think(fast, like Lovecraft's protagonists) and come up with a unique solution. Most of the time though, you can run. The CofC I play is mostly d20, and in the d20 CofC manual, the starter mission is one in which, once the BBEG is summoned, you can only run and hope to save as many innocent bystanders as possible.

I do understand where you're coming from, and have said for quite some time that the perfect CofC investigator is blind and shoots everything that makes a noise he doesn't recognize.

I also understand that the primary human instinct is to say, problem, let's solve it, scenario, let's beat it. But the point of Lovecraft and CofC is that that is why most humans die in that type of situation, and that curiosity often DOES kill the cat.

[Swordguy]

I do understand where you're coming from, and have said for quite some time that the perfect CofC investigator is blind and shoots everything that makes a noise he doesn't recognize.

Comedy Gold.

The rest of the post is correct as well. In D&D x.x the paradigm is to be presented with a problem or situation, and look through your group's combined abilities to find the one that best solves the problem at hand.

In Lovcraftian horror, the paradigm is simply to survive whatever's happening, because understanding it (or, heaven forbid, destroying it) is simply beyond human capability. As the quote says: "We live on and a placid island of ignorance in the black seas of infinity, and it is not meant that we should voyage far." Lovcraftian monsters are so alien that the simple sight of them drives the rational brain to insanity in an attempt to understand the how's and why's of the creature. Yet to survive and to temporarily defeat the encroaching remainder of the (insane) universe, you have to use your mind more than anything else. The paradigm of Cthulhlu is completely different than in D&D. If you can't make the mental shift, you'll never enjoy the game.

BTW, over time and with drug therapy, you CAN increase your SAN.

[AngelSword]

"We live on and a placid island of ignorance in the black seas of infinity, and it is not meant that we should voyage far."

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. - Howard Philips Lovecraft

[Swordguy]

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. - Howard Philips Lovecraft

Yes, yes...and "some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - Howard Philips Lovecraft

I mean, it's obvious, isn't it?

[OzymandiasVolt]

So basically everyone dies every time after failing in an especially pathetic fashion. Wow, what a great game. A game where it's really really HARD to win? Sure. A game where you CAN'T win? No thanks.

[skywalker]

Yes, yes...and "some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - Howard Philips Lovecraft

I mean, it's obvious, isn't it?

Haha, CofC is also damned depressing, now that I think about it.

Which is probably why I quit playing it as much.

So basically everyone dies every time after failing in an especially pathetic fashion. Wow, what a great game. A game where it's really really HARD to win? Sure. A game where you CAN'T win? No thanks.

No, no, not that everyone dies. Everyone but one person dies, almost every time. You CAN win CofC. It just takes a different mind-set from D&D, and most other RPGs. It also takes a much better GM, on average, and players who are much more willing to let their imaginations grasp the meaning of what the GM is describing. It can be quite the experience if you really let go and try to create a mental image of the horror being described to you.

[AngelSword]

So basically everyone dies every time after failing in an especially pathetic fashion. Wow, what a great game. A game where it's really really HARD to win? Sure. A game where you CAN'T win? No thanks.

I think your perspective is flawed if you're looking to win at a game that has no set win conditions, Cthulhu or otherwise.

[Tola]

...I've been reading through some of Lovecraft's works. Often, protagonists survive, but are eternally shaken by whatever experience. There's no 'insta-kills' or similar, and this, nor should there be in your role-play.

No encounter 'has' to be invariably fatal, or unstoppable.

The point of Lovecraft is 'educated sorts meet the Unknown/Mysterious'. No-where does it say 'and dies horribly'.

[skywalker]

...I've been reading through some of Lovecraft's works. Often, protagonists survive, but are eternally shaken by whatever experience. There's no 'insta-kills' or similar, and this, nor should there be in your role-play.

No encounter 'has' to be invariably fatal, or unstoppable.

The point of Lovecraft is 'educated sorts meet the Unknown/Mysterious'. No-where does it say 'and dies horribly'.

However, *most* if not all of the protagonist's companions die horribly, which is part of the reason why he is eternally shaken by the experience. Quite often, the encounter is unstoppable, and the protagonist survives by leaving as quickly as possible. Therefore, most of the PCs should die, and the one who survives should survive by either thinking fast and ballsy to defeat it, or simply running away. That is how a game based on Lovecraft mythos *should* work.

[Dervag]

It's Survival-Horror. The whole thrill of the thing is in attempting just to live, not killing everything.

Yes, but if you can't do that either, the game is miscalibrated. If the party is getting wiped out on every mission, and failing, something is very wrong.

Combat is meant to be deadly. The characters are supposed to be normal people; not the same sorts of super people that D&D creates.

Yes, I know, but there's "deadly" and then there's "we can't win because everything has us outgunned by orders of magnitude." The players have to have some chance of accomplishing whatever their goal should be, whether that goal is to survive or to stop the cultist from summoning something unspeakable or to kill the zombie (singular).

CoC is about role playing. this may not be understandable if you're used to DnD or something, but beating a problem until it stops being one is never, ever an option.

Don't sneer. It ill becomes you. The problem is not that the game is about roleplaying and this guy doesn't like roleplaying. That has absolutely nothing to do with his complaint. His complaint is that the PCs cannot succeed, as far as he can tell. It's no fun roleplaying an endless succession of defeats and rolling up new characters every time.

There's your problem. You're looking at it as though it's identical to playing a D&D game. That's the problem; you're expecting a great wyrm, and getting a pseudodragon. Notice how you created the character; you have actual skills and abilities. No magic, no special attacks, nothing.

No, that has nothing to do with what he actually said. The problem is not that he can't see how to win it like a D&D game. The problem is that he can't see how to win it at all. All the possible ways of winning the game lead to insurmountable challenges (getting disintegrated without warning by unstoppable instant-kill death magic, not having enough evidence to go to the police, et cetera). So there are no possible ways of achieving a given goal, because all the ways that exist are impossible. Which is a serious flaw in any RPG, because there's no point in creating a game with the sole purpose of making the PCs lose over and over.

If they almost succeed, that's cool. If they succeed at extreme cost, so that two thirds of the party is dead, that's frustrating but at least they accomplished something. But when every action they can take other than "we leave town now and never interact with anything you mentioned in this adventure ever again" leads to them getting taken out instantly by an enemy they never had any chance of resisting or avoiding, it's no fun for a lot of people. It's especially bad for real roleplayers, because roleplayers like to be able to, y'know, play a role. And if every character gets killed within ten seconds of entering their first challenging situation, there's not much of a role to play.

I also don't like the way sanity plays an enormous role in the game but cannot be increased over time. You'd think that after seeing visions of nyarlothep for the 50th time you'd stop losing 1d20 sanity, but no. You're also pretty hard-pressed to get that sanity back too.

Well, no, that is actually part of the point of the game. People who expose themselves to the Mythos enough go insane. They do things that, by the standards of normal people, are utterly bughouse nuts, like attacking their teammates.

You never get over seeing a Mythos creature. The more times you see it, the more obsessed with it you become, or the more you hallucinate it when it isn't there. Eventually, you do something crazy, like blow your brains out to make the voices stop or join one of the cults. Where do you think all those cultists come from?

Are you creating your own campaigns? My friends just bought a ton of stock campaigns and are DMing straight out of a book.

Ok, now I see the problem. Your DM isn't giving you enough warning that the threats exist, and isn't giving you a chance to back up and figure out a different angle of attack. So you stumble into a fight with an invincible enemy because your DM isn't giving you any hints to work with.

I also understand that the primary human instinct is to say, problem, let's solve it, scenario, let's beat it. But the point of Lovecraft and CofC is that that is why most humans die in that type of situation, and that curiosity often DOES kill the cat.

OK, but the life expectancy of a character should be more than one mission. Otherwise, the game is no fun except for people who really really love rolling up characters as part of their gaming experience. There's no room for roleplaying because your character dies before you get the chance for character exposition, and there's no point in exploring different character concepts because they all get killed with equal frequency anyway.

I think your perspective is flawed if you're looking to win at a game that has no set win conditions, Cthulhu or otherwise.

But if the game has no way to achieve any positive goal, including "we get away and most of us are still alive," then there the game's perspective is flawed, because it's no fun except for a negligibly small percentage of people.

The point of Lovecraft is 'educated sorts meet the Unknown/Mysterious'. No-where does it say 'and dies horribly'.

Well, actually they do die horribly quite frequently, or other characters in the novel other than the viewpoint one die horribly (eaten by a Shoggoth, obliterated by a horrible entity from beyond the known dimensions, et cetera). But the point is that they don't always die horribly, and if they die horribly it's usually because they did something that they had some chance of figuring out not to do.

[AngelSword]

Yes, I know, but there's "deadly" and then there's "we can't win because everything has us outgunned by orders of magnitude." The players have to have some chance of accomplishing whatever their goal should be, whether that goal is to survive or to stop the cultist from summoning something unspeakable or to kill the zombie (singular).

No, that has nothing to do with what he actually said. The problem is not that he can't see how to win it like a D&D game. The problem is that he can't see how to win it at all. All the possible ways of winning the game lead to insurmountable challenges (getting disintegrated without warning by unstoppable instant-kill death magic, not having enough evidence to go to the police, et cetera). So there are no possible ways of achieving a given goal, because all the ways that exist are impossible. Which is a serious flaw in any RPG, because there's no point in creating a game with the sole purpose of making the PCs lose over and over.

If they almost succeed, that's cool. If they succeed at extreme cost, so that two thirds of the party is dead, that's frustrating but at least they accomplished something. But when every action they can take other than "we leave town now and never interact with anything you mentioned in this adventure ever again" leads to them getting taken out instantly by an enemy they never had any chance of resisting or avoiding, it's no fun for a lot of people. It's especially bad for real roleplayers, because roleplayers like to be able to, y'know, play a role. And if every character gets killed within ten seconds of entering their first challenging situation, there's not much of a role to play.

Ok, now I see the problem. Your DM isn't giving you enough warning that the threats exist, and isn't giving you a chance to back up and figure out a different angle of attack. So you stumble into a fight with an invincible enemy because your DM isn't giving you any hints to work with.

OK, but the life expectancy of a character should be more than one mission. Otherwise, the game is no fun except for people who really really love rolling up characters as part of their gaming experience. There's no room for roleplaying because your character dies before you get the chance for character exposition, and there's no point in exploring different character concepts because they all get killed with equal frequency anyway.

But if the game has no way to achieve any positive goal, including "we get away and most of us are still alive," then there the game's perspective is flawed, because it's no fun except for a negligibly small percentage of people.

It seems that all signs are pointing to the same problem; the keeper running the game is seeing it as a game of "GM Kills Players," instead of, "GM Challenges Normal People." Any game will suck when the person running it is vindictive like that.

And I'm going to take offense to that last bit. That was your intent, no?