Call of Cthulhu advice

[Mr. Friendly]

Ok, so getting back into CoC after having been away from it for some time. I think I last used 2nd and or 3rd edition CoC.

Of the current editions, which ones are highest recommended? I assume the system itself has changed very little.

More important, what are some good modules/campaigns?

I was thinking of taking 2 or 3 or possibly more campaigns and adventures and weaving them all together for a huge campaign to last a few years. I have heard good things about Shadow of Yog-Sothoth and Masks of Nyarlohotep. Other recommendations?

[SpikeFightwicky]

You can't go wrong with 'Horror on the Orient Express', but that campaign is almost impossible to get a hold of... (the rare copy shows up on e-Bay ever so often, but they usually end up at a few hundred dollards...)

Mansions of Madness has 6 different plot hooks, each involving a different type of domicile, from hauntings to cultings.

I played through Spawn of Azathoth and it was pretty fun. I'd recommend that one as well.

[banjo1985]

I loves Call of Cthulhu

4th edition is a fine choce, as you say the rules have hardly changed at all so it doesn't really make any difference.

As far as campaigns go I can recommend Delta Green that's very interesting and complete as far as the setting goes.

[Brauron]

Any of the last three editions should serve you fine. I'm partial to 6th edition, as it's the prettiest

I recently ran Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, and while it needs modifications, it runs fine. Just make sure you let the players know that the R'lyeh Disk can stop the awakening of Cthulhu earlier then the campaign suggests. My group melted it down and sold it.

Masks is great, but LETHAL. Expect every player to be on their fourth or fifth character by the end.

Spawn of Azathoth I'm less fond of, as the center three chapters have no relation to the plot laid out by the first and last chapters, and needlessly derail the players into the Dreamlands.

[ahriman]

Personally I love Beyond the Mountains of Madness.

I still use 5th, just because that's the one I have, and the rules don't seem to very much among editions.

[tarbrush]

I too love Delta Green. And the followup, Countdown is just as good. Particularly if you want to head**** your players even more than the average CoC game.

[Kantur]

Masks is great, but LETHAL. Expect every player to be on their fourth or fifth character by the end.

I agree, it's a fun campaign, my gaming group's just finishing it up next week. Though we must be lucky, having the Keeper hold some things back or just good survivors as we've had one character last from New York until just before the very end, and we can all count out deaths on half a hand. Well, apart from one player, but he's done lots of silly things that weren't leading to anything else but death...Going through portals to places he shouldn't be, throwing away his shotgun when blind to try grappling instead, dying of radiation poisoning....

And if you can, I recommend the 5th(?) Ed book, for the comics at the back if nothing else...

[Creeps]

You have another vote for Delta Green. X-Files before X-Files was X-Files, baby.

Monstrous cults, mysterious strangers, sinister aliens, and! And! ...you get to beat up on Nazis. There is no such thing as a bad game that features beating up Nazis.

[Tsotha-lanti]

I recommend CoC d20 (if it's still in print; not available at my local game store). The DC system etc. are much better for tasks than the BRP percentile skill system (with the abysmal stat VS stat resistances, etc.), and with the default massive damage cap at 10 points for PCs (and I think the usual 50 for monsters?), it's just as deadly as it should be.

It's got everything CoC needs, and improves so many game mechanics bits.

[allonym]

Another vote for BRP 6th edition, it's pretty complete, only a handful of areas that needed looking into, and very minor ones at that. As most CoC players, I vehemently recommend against D20 cthulhu. Not only does it not 'feel' right, but it bogs you down in mechanics instead of storyline, and feels like a shoehorn effort. As for campaigns, I have yet to run Shadows of Yog Sothoth but it looks pretty solid. I like homebrewing my own stuff (I came up with a very fun campaign in 1905 Scotland). I like the lovecraft county sourcebooks - Dunwich, Arkham and Kingsport. If you can get hold of it, also look for Innsmouth - it has its pros and cons, but it is still awesome.
If you like modern setting, Unseen Masters looks pretty solid, though I don't really like the first of the three adventures. If you're looking to spend more on 1920s, Miskatonic University is a cool, if mechanic-heavy book, and Secrets of Kenya has some very neat ideas and is very different.
Avoid Ramsey Campbell's Goatswood, it's pointlessly adult in the wrong ways, badly written (oh look, the big bad is here! Use an elder sign.) and generally a waste of money. I was hugely unimpressed by Last Rites as well, again, poorly written adventures. Malleus Monstrorum has some very cool stuff, as long as you take it as it's meant to be - a guide to every possible bit of horror fiction and lots of stats and ideas for your own monsters. Using it all as canon would be ridiculous (H.G. Wells' martians sharing space with the peaceful Mythos beings, so many random monsters in the solar system...)

[comicshorse]

I'd place another vote for 'Mountains of Madness'. A fantastic campaign that slow burns to some scenario's that will put your P.C.s through every possible wringer.
Though on a personal note you might want to miss out the very last bit by that time the P.C.s have suffered enough and it did seem like overkill. And yes I'm saying that as a long-term CofC palyer there are worse things than dying and this campaign will introduce you to most of 'em.
One friend one ran in this with me has the pictures of all the N.P.CS and P.C.s from this campaign on a board on her wall didvided into 3 groups. Dead, permanently insane abd alive. Guess which is by far the smallest group

[Matthew]

If you don't know about this site, you should definitely check it out: Yog-Sothoth

[hamlet]

I'll add the caution to stay away from the D20 version, even though I'm a fan of the author's. Cthulhu is something that should stay far away from d20 rolls and will saves.

The 6th edition is really the most recent and is almost identical to the three that came before. Definately good stuff, even the little short "adventures" in the back are pretty okay if you just want a one-off. You'll have to work with them though to get them in better shape.

For campaigns, you'll want to check out "Tatters of the King" and "Unseen Masters." Both good for what they are. "Shadow's of Yog-Sothoth" is also quite decent.

There are a few others out there that are well worth picking up, but really, the best campaign comes from just knowing what to do with what you've got.

[Baxbart]

Hmmm... I've been playing CoC with my local group for about 9 weeks now (once a week for about three hours) - So far we have achieved pretty much nothing at all. Our GM is a big fan of not railroading the players, or, y'know, using rulebooks... so we can go weeks at a time without actually doing anything useful or plot related.

In fact... I don't think we ever even managed to leave central london. We played for three hours last night trying to get to a hospital on the south bank to investigate some strange goings-on, but we even failed at that.

None of the players have died... though we've lost three to circumstance (written out of the story due to self-inflicted amnesia, fleeing the country for arson, and deciding not to join the party after introduction!)

Great roleplaying opportunity, but absolutely useless for getting anywhere. Reminds me more of a Pratchett novel than a traditional CoC game. Love it!

[Crowheart]

Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is pretty cool, wish I had finished it...

I have the d20 Cthulhu book and though I went out of my way to find it (it is no longer in print, btw) I will concur that it is a somewhat inferior version of the game.

If you like modern, I would recommend Nocturnum. Awesome story and very X-Files-ish. It's done using d20 Cthulhu (the only module written for d20 I believe) but you can very easily change over to the regular percentile system.

I ran Nocturnum to its conclusion and got a fairly well-received reaction from it. However, I was also running it using the new World Of Darkness system. I only had one player death in the campaign and I think the system was because of it... It was still hellishly fun though.

[Kurald Galain]

I think Masks is an excellent adventure, if very long and very lethal. Probably not recommended for beginners.

I wholeheartedly concur that the Chaosium rules (regardless of edition) are far better than d20 for playing with Ctulhu. The latter gives you the impression that you're supposed to fight and defeat the monsters, which is obviously completely false in this universe.

[Mr. Friendly]

Thanks for the info.

I read about Delta Green and it sounds good; though I am not sure that is what I want to do. I am dithering between doing modern or doing the '20s. I suppose the height of awesome would be to somehow do both.

So it sounds like, overall, I can't go wrong with most of the published adventures.

My basic plan is to take 2, 3 or more campaign arcs and run them semi-simultaniously. I think it may be messy, but I think it could work out well; the overall goal being to kind of confuse the players with multiple plot hooks and leads.

[SpikeFightwicky]

I'll agree that d20 Cthulhu doesn't have the same feel as the Chaosium ruleset.

BTW, has anyone played through 'The Stars are Right'? It looks like an interesting adventure.

[WalkingTarget]

As a player, I found Horror on the Orient Express to be fun. My first RPG ever.

The only campaign I've actually run was Masks (and it was a big success even with only 3 regular players). It's the classic campaign for a reason. I've read through Tatters of the King and it seems to be a quality product as well, but I haven't tried actually running it (I might also recommend the Delta Green interpretation of Hastur and the related concepts to get away from the Derleth-style tentacled monster vibe, too).

[game-specific digression]I had to pull a few punches due to the small group size (toned down a few encounters). Picking specific dates for things to occur (at least once the players arrive at a setting) and letting your investigators work out their own schedule can help with that (they managed to get to the nastiness in Kenya the day before the army of cultists started showing up, luckily for them). That and some crazy lucky sanity-loss roles. They all failed a big SAN check in Egypt. The linguist character who'd been reading all of the books they'd found was down to something like 23 sanity at the time of the roll, then rolled a 6 on the d100 loss, another guy only lost 15 out of his 60-something, the last guy rolled a 94 and had to roll up a new character though).[/digression]

If you're considering modern-setting games, Delta Green is almost required reading. Even if you don't necessarily want to use the organization for the PC group structure, its treatment of the Mythos is by far my favorite interpretation since Lovecraft himself.

Cthulhu Dark Ages is also excellent if that sort of thing strikes your fancy at all.

If your looking for non-BRP game systems, we've run a Cthulhu-flavored game using Pelgrane Press's GUMSHOE System and it seemed to work ok.

[Tsotha-lanti]

I'll add the caution to stay away from the D20 version, even though I'm a fan of the author's. Cthulhu is something that should stay far away from d20 rolls and will saves.

You might think differently if you read the rules. For example, Will saves are used to resist spells; the Sanity mechanic is the same as in BRP (because it's iconic of CoC).

BRP really just is an inferior system, in many ways. (STR 110 always beats 100? Great...)

[banjo1985]

You might think differently if you read the rules. For example, Will saves are used to resist spells; the Sanity mechanic is the same as in BRP (because it's iconic of CoC).

BRP really just is an inferior system, in many ways. (STR 110 always beats 100? Great...)

I have to put my vote into staying clear of the d20 system. Whie Nocturnum is a great campaign made especially for it, I'd rather convert it to the Chaosium rules than play the d20 version. It's the only games system I've ever sold on, it's just not right. d20 Cthulhu just doesn't feel right, and the mechanics make the prospect of combat much more likely and much less dangerous.

Having said that, Cthulhu isn't about the rules anyway, and you can create the right atmosphere and have a great game no matter what rules system you use. Our game group has on occasion played Cthulhu with no rules or rolls at all, and it was incrediblyt enjoyable. That's probably taking it a bit far though.

[Kurald Galain]

You might think differently if you read the rules.

Calm down, dude - just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they haven't read the rules.

[YPU]

Our game group has on occasion played Cthulhu with no rules or rolls at all, and it was incrediblyt enjoyable. That's probably taking it a bit far though.

if you can get it to that point, and have a fun and somewhat balanced game, you know that you have a almost perfect group on your hands.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Calm down, dude - just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they haven't read the rules.

But if they're suggesting that Will saves have anything to do with Sanity and horror in the system, it stands to reason that they haven't, doesn't it?

the mechanics make the prospect of combat much more likely and much less dangerous.

I don't see how. Can you elaborate?

The way I see it, combat is not something you'd want to do in CoC d20. Even a deep one or a ghoul can deal 10+ damage in one attack without a critical, which forces a massive damage save, and the saves are much lower than in D&D, what with no items to raise them. A rifle's average damage requires a save against massive damage, as do high handgun damages. Hit points just mean you can last multiple encounters if you're lucky enough not to get seriously hurt.

Anything other than humans, deep ones, ghouls, star vampires, and other lesser races is far too powerful to ever physically fight in the system (very appropriately). There's no way PCs could survive combat with cthonians, star-spawn, or other big horrors.

It's not "D&D with Cthulhu" - it's a different game, and the PCs are pretty much equivalent to D&D single-class commoners, experts, and aristocrats with no equipment at all and more skill points.

Meanwhile, you get the simply superior task resolution system (with, for example, working opposed tests).

Our game group has on occasion played Cthulhu with no rules or rolls at all, and it was incrediblyt enjoyable. That's probably taking it a bit far though.

I don't see why. Our CoC games involve hardly any rolling, outside of the few-round frantic melees that serve as release for the tension built up. In a horror game, dice and numbers do get in the way, but you still need them to resolve life-and-death situations in an impartial and essentially random way.

[SilverSheriff]

Other recommendations?

Don't pick up anything, just burn it.
Don't look behind you, just run.

[hamlet]

You might think differently if you read the rules. For example, Will saves are used to resist spells; the Sanity mechanic is the same as in BRP (because it's iconic of CoC).

BRP really just is an inferior system, in many ways. (STR 110 always beats 100? Great...)

I've read the D20 rules and simply do not think they work as well as the BRP rules.

And you'll note that I never said anything about Will saves, nor have I said that D20 was inferior. I merely stated that, as far as Call of Cthulhu is concerned, the BRP system is a better option.

[Tsotha-lanti]

And you'll note that I never said anything about Will saves, nor have I said that D20 was inferior.

Huh?

Cthulhu is something that should stay far away from d20 rolls and will saves.

BRP is just mechanically inferior. The mechanics aren't that important in a horror game, but that's no reason to choose the worse system.

[Crowheart]

While I can see d20 system being a better system mechanically, it does feel different than the BRP system. d20 Cthulhu does feel somehow less scary, but unfortunately I can't find a way to properly express how it does.

Be that as it may, I also felt the BRP system was somewhat lacking and a little strange.

I guess thats why I just used nWOD. Only downside there is that sanity is a lot harder to lose in that system (about as difficult as losing morality) which can remove the fear of madness from the game. In the end, my players didn't mind so much. It just meant that their same characters got to stick around for the whole story, which is a generally positive thing in my opinion, but certainly less cthulhu in nature.

[hamlet]

Huh?




BRP is just mechanically inferior. The mechanics aren't that important in a horror game, but that's no reason to choose the worse system.

Yeah, it's when people make flat statements about how one system is inherently inferior that drives me nuttier than a rat in a tin outhouse.

My statement was of my opinion that, in the case of Call of Cthulhu, that the BRP system was better suited to the game and the atmosphere of the mythos.

Your statement was that "BRP is just mechanically inferior" which is, frankly, obnoxious.

[Pandabear]

I agree with not trying d20, although I must say I've never played d20 Chtulhu before.. It's just that when it comes to rolls in DnD, I rarely roll better than 6 on a d20, and that's usually even below that.. Rolling percentile dice gives me the exact situation with the added bonus that except for skill checks you have to roll under a certain percentage. Besides that, d20 gives you 5 percent chance of rolling a certain value, and d100 only one with exactly the same amount of sides.. I dunno, feels more random to me..

Third party scenario's are nice if you just start out or don't feel like assembling your own for the evening, but I recommend making your own campaigns as much as possible. Nothing wrong with borrowing heavily from something you remember as having the desired effect on you for your players though. My first testing scenario I made was based loosely on old dos game classics like The Colonel's bequest and the first Alone in the Dark..
Aside from that, read HPL's original stories. They tell more than the source books after all.. My current group currently consists of 4 players and me, and each of the players have their own reoccuring theme so they'll always have something else to do when you notice one of them gets stuck.. Try getting used to winging as much as possible, since that helps when investigators starting to do unexpected things..

Besides that, I currently use version six, and haven't required anything other than the main sourcebook yet.