Epicly awesome CoC stories

[DeathBD]

Call of Cthulhu is the only table-top game I play, and I'm part of Lycan01's group. (Player 2 in his "Nyarlathotep comes, everyone dies" story.) I've been looking around and noticed that Lycan is mainly the only person around who posts these stories. Does anyone else have any good CoC tales?

[Lycan 01]

Shall I tell them what happened earlier?


Btw, typo in the title... I think its "Epicly," actually.



I forgot who all told them, but I heard a bunch of good ones on here awhile back, like one where a guy shot another PC and then framed the leader of cult for it. XD

[DeathBD]

Yeah. Do that. And thanks for the heads up.

I'd tell them myself, but I've proven myself a terrible storyteller in the past.

[Khosan]

There's a lot of room for innuendo here.

[Lycan 01]

Man, I had the acronym for Call of Cthulhu...


And I'd rather see some other people post (relevant information) before I start babbling about todays session...

[BobVosh]

aww, but i <3 your stories

[skywalker]

I'm pretty sure I already told this story here, but I think it's worth telling again.

The keeper for this tale(and all of mine, actually) soaks up nerd-culture from everywhere. So apologies if this story is from somewhere, I don't know what it is(spoilered for length)

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So we were playing a one-off game because one of the players moved to California and the other guy had brought his buddy to game with us. This guy had never played an RPG before. He spent a lot of time doing things that didn't involve rolling dice. Anyway, we went to investigate strange goings-on in a town, and got put up in a lovers' hotel for the night. We discovered that they were being brain-washed thru the food after one member of the party ate that food. We went to investigate the kitchen, where we were attacked by a brainwashed maid and that party member, simultaneously. My character knocked out the party member, who lay bleeding on the floor, beat her severely and tied her up, and then began investigating again. When I picked up some plates that had an occult symbol on the bottom, she twitched. When I dropped a plate on the floor, she was visibly in pain. I tried another plate, she shrieked.

At this point, the new guy said "I'm there, right? I take out my camera and start videotaping this. Can I use my phone to upload it to youtube?" The DM went Then said "Sure..."

The next story is from when the Californian came back and we gathered a ton of non-normal players over thanksgiving. This one actually is a spoiler for Nocturnum(The d20 Cthulhu campaign)

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We were taking a train(the orient express?) from Moscow(or somesuch Russian city) to Siberia. Along the way, we realized the big bad of the campaign was on the train with us. Now, a normal party would've at least semi-followed the rails(haha, get it?) and snuck around trying not to be seen on the train. My party's response? Disconnect the train car he was on from the rest of the train, since we were in the second car. The Keeper says:"Who has knowledge... anything that could help you do this? That's what I thought nobody. Anyway..."
"Wait!"
"What?"
"Elektra(I didn't name her character) has a smartphone! We can look up train couplers on wikipedia!"
"Ok, if you can figure out, using the actual wikipedia page, how to disconnect a train coupler, I'll let you do that."
So we brought him a laptop with this page open. Luckily, one of our party members fought with a katana(trust me, this is the only time I thought this was lucky) and it was being run as a katana. So they used that to disable the coupler. Then, the BBEG transformed into a monster, got into a fight with another guy who turned into a monster, and I tried desperately to keep the train moving. Once one monster landed on the engine and began dismantling. After about 4 rounds, the Keeper looked at me and gave a "duh" look, then said "Intelligence check." I rolled it, asked why, and he said, don't you remember that magic staff you've been... well, I have no idea where you've been carrying it, so don't you remember that magic staff in your pants?!"
My RL girlfriend: "Did he just say you have a magic staff in your pants? And how would he know?!"

[only1doug]

My Entire Party carry around soda-water dispensers.... No particular reason (whistles innocently) *cough*Fire Vampire*cough*.

Masks of Nyarlathotep spoiler

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While exploring the pyramids in egypt:
One of the players had been mind swapped with the head cultist, the player in question has a twisted and backstabbing nature so i let him carry on as the evil dude. he came up with a list of what his cultists were to do to the party.

these instructions included the following:
Drop a camel on one,
capture some, then shove a stick of dynamite down their trousers
trap explorers in dead end and send in the scarab beetles.

the camel adventurer managed to dodge away from the falling dromedery, the PC's stuck in a cage i felt a bit sorry for, so i had my evil player roll an int check for his minions, he failed. they hadn't lit the dynamite (hey, he didn't specify it), some minutes later the players in the cage asked if they were still alive and why.
the others avoided the scarab trap.

Later the party discovered a hidden chamber at the top of the pyramid, there was a Ebon throne and the....
"i'll sit on the throne" says the camel dodger (CD)

Everyone looked at him in shocked silence,

....
some time passed
....


"you want to sit on the throne??"
....

....

"OK"

Insert description of event;


"and what happens to CD?

i know it has a bit here somewhere...

... Ah here it is: your charred corpse falls to the stone floor at the foot of the obsidian throne..."

[allonym]

So, in 1905 scotland, my players disrupt a Nyogtha witch-cult, enabling their enemy, a Cthulhu cult, to wipe them out. Downtime happens, the players do some research, one of them learns summon/bind Star Vampire, etc. For this session, I forgot my rulebook, so was less than canon about the spell's working - I ended up make it control for a certain length of time, but it did cost twice as much as the official version. This is more the build up. One session, only 4 can make it - two girls playing occultist type characters, one of which was the one with the spell, and two guys playing more straight laced characters - one a biologist, the other a kickass shotgun-using catholic priest. They go back to the Nygotha cult hideout, an old castle, and there, they go into the cellars and from there, into a tunnel underground to a nearby farm. From there, they find (using a map they looted from the drowned corpse of a 13-year-old girl...another long story) a secret passage, leading to a cave system, leading eventually to a gate. Cutting away all the faffing around and interlude, the party enters the gate.

The gate, quite predictably, leads to Nyogtha's underground crib and was used almost exclusively for sacrifices and summonings. The players see a dark, wide corridor with slime on the bottom, and in the distance, two thin passages, one on either side, with no slime. The initial idea was that the thin passages formed a circle, and the main passage went to Nyogtha. If the players saw the warning of the horrible slime and went around the circle passages, they'd find the dessicated remains of Nyogtha's victims...and a lot of stuff, including dynamite from someone with the same aim as them, but less luck. The idea was they get the explosives, leave through the gate and collapse the more vulnerable gate on the Scotland side.

Instead, they press on straight down the middle passage. Facepalm. Fair enough, cue 1d6/1d20 SAN loss. The scientist (who was very strong-willed and moral) promptly loses about 16 SAN and decides to shoot Nyogtha with a rifle. Nyogtha, for his part, is pissed off that his cult was wiped out, but also curious as the investigators are using rituals connected with him (the witch-cult's magic). A rifle round just serves to irritate the GOO, who lashes out at the scientist, toying with him, as well as cracking most of his ribs. One of the players finds his way to the corpses and finds the dynamite, but the rest of them are about to get taken apart by a great old one, and the star vampire they summoned who refused to attack the God it is bound to, when the same character who summoned the SV turns and says...

"I get down on my knees and pray to it."

Silence.

I think for a moment.

"What do you say?"

"Oh great...lord...we have come to pay you tribute for..." and so on.

More silence.

I roll some dice.

"Um...roll this, and tell me what you get. [wait] OK. Roll...luck."

"I succeed!"

"roll SAN"

"I succeed! (nominal loss)"

This goes on for a short while, with the upshot being that she was sort-of accepted (left alive anyway) and given Contact Nyogtha. Right in her brain. For even more insanity. Then they went to leave, set the dynamite once they'd gone through the gate, everything seems to have gone...just about alright...and then the scientist and the priest turn on the, uh, supplicant.

"Heathen! She's a cultist! A demon worshipper! I *ready* my rifle..."

"I *ready* my shotgun..."

She turns to me. "Is that Star Vampire still bound?"

"Um, I guess so."

They shoot her, and it hits the (invisible) SV, who then is ordered to restrain them, while the women flee for their lives from the (justifiably) insane men. By the time the spell ends, the women are nowhere to be seen.

[Lycan 01]

Allonym, not only does that story rock, it also seems like something my group would end up doing. I also found myself laughing uncontrollably at one part of your story. The character I use whenver somebody else keeps is a Catholic Priest from Russia named Father Grigori, who weilds a shotgun and has no stat below 12, IIRC. It seems Clergymen are underestimated...


Now for a few stories of my own. I've posted all of them before, but I figured that a few people might like reading them again, or for the first time. Enjoy!


Story One

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We were playing Call of Cthulhu, and the players had just finished their mission. No casualties, very well done... I was just about to begin the epilogue when suddenly, one of the players whispered something in my ear. His character was a WWI vet with PTSD, and he wanted to have a flashback. I considered the situation... he'd just seen 4 aliens get machine gunned into paste... so I figured it was okay.

He then plants a knife into the architect of the previously described carnage. Everyone starts laughing, except for the player who gets attacked. He gets pissed and rips up his character sheet... (I was going to say it was all a hallucination, but that screwed up any chances of his character living...) Anyway... the tommy-gun weilding samurai (no, seriously. Bushido Joe... he worked for the Mafia... It was the only way my best friend would play... Which is why I didn't lament him tearing up the sheet. ) did not take this sitting down. Ignoring the blade in his shoulder, he emptied a 50-round drum at the attacker, who managed to get some luck and dodge rolls, and hid behind a tree.

Everyone ran for their friggin' lives at this point. The other four players all took off. The two male players ran back to their broken down car, fixed it up ASAP, and drove back to town. They left behind the two female players, who had to hoof it back to civilization by themselves. Meanwhile, Bushido Joe dodged a headshot - barely - and then attempted a Banzai Charge with his katana. The WWI vet did a dodge roll, ducked beneath the katana, and then did a shotgun roll. He got a crit, and the other player failed (or forgot to do) his dodge roll.

The WWI vet smashed the barrel into the samurai's stomach, lifted him up off the ground, and fired both barrels at point blank. The other player's face twisted with rage as I described how the trauma split his character in half... A few of the players actually got up and walked to other parts of the living room in order to get away from what was about to happen.


I spent the rest of the day consoling my best friend, and trying to patch things up between him and the other player. And sadly, the other player was a noobie, and my college roommate who'd wished to make a good impression on my friends, no less...



I have to admit though, it was friggin' awesome that Bushido Joe got blown in half by a psychotic WWI vet who was as much a joke character as he was. XD

Summary: Bushido Joe was cool... but so was his death.


Story Two

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As punishment for their trigger-happy and plot-holing attitudes during a previous session, I started this session quit simply with one goal in mind: Kill them all.

I told them that all their characters were sitting in the office of their Paranormal Detective Agency, doing various things - reading, fixing something, et cetra. Well, an old lady came in and asked for the demon trumpet that belonged to her nephew - the trumpet was able to raise the dead as zombies, and was a gift from Nyarlathotep. I'd hinted that Mr. Nyar might show up all week, so naturally they handed it over, no questions asked.

As the old lady opened the front door to leave, a hand reached through the doorway, grabbed her face, and blew her head apart. In strolled The Black Man, one of the 1000 Masks of Nyarlathotep. I decided to be cliche, too, just to prove who he was: Old black man wearing black sunglasses, a black fedora, a black suit, a black tie, black gloves, and black shoes.

They proceeded to freak out.

Now, my main targets were players 1 and 2. Player 3 was my GF, and she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Player 4 was an old player with a new character - I said he was late to their business meeting, so he was spared. Player 5 had been informed of what was to happen, and I had made him an extra character sheet in order to perform the following trick...

Players 1 and 2 both started freaking out IRL, so their characters did nothing. My GF said her character simply tried to hide behind her magazine, since she knew she was FUBAR and didn't want to fight fate.

It was at this point that player 5's character walked in - and had his face backhanded off by Nyarlathotep. He acted very convincingly - he sat there in shock, then started to "get mad at me" about it. He then held up his character sheet to rip it - only to have it plucked from his hands by player 4. Player 4 was, naturally, the owner of the late Bushido Joe, who had died at the hands of player 5's character. Player 4 then proceeded to not only shred player 5's character sheet... but he also tried to eat it.

That wasn't part of the plan...


Anyway, now we get to the good part...



Upon seeing player 4's face get removed from his body without the rolling of any dice, player 2 simply said: "I quit... I just ****ing quit... This isn't right..." while player 1 actually said "Now you're just being a b******... Thats it, I'm leaving..." and got up to put his shoes on.

Now, my feelings were hurt at this point. Not only were my closest friends insulting me, but they were showing an obvious lack of trust in me and my Keeping skills. Luckily, me and the other players talked them down, and the game continued...

Player 2 had his heart ripped from his own chest, and then was kept alive by Nyarlathotep's dark magic so he could see his own beating heart dangling in front of his face. Massive sanity loss, of course... He was left catatonic on the floor.

Player 1 went insane when said heart was thrown at his face, and was sent screaming to the floor by the impact. Nyarlathotep then calmly walked over, pressed his head down onto the ground with the tip of his shoe, and then proceeded to curb stomp his head in.

And then, in a truely Lovecraftian twist, players 1 and 2 then woke up screaming in their beds.

Upon discovering the truth, the two players apologized for their behavior, and agreed that they had learned their lesson. Of course, the trumpet was discovered missing the next morning, and they didn't recover the sanity they lost in the dream... But they didn't care. They said the whole thing was awesomely done in retrospect.

Player 4, however, was extremely pissed to learn that player 5 was still alive.

Summary: Nyalathotep equals pwnage.

[allonym]

I hope for more of the same, once I finally gather the motivation to run more Cthulhu... I have THE epic Cthulhu story, revolving around a Cthulhu Live game which was constructed out of epic, but this isn't the place for live action...and it was about 9 hours long, so I don't have the room either!

I'm tempted by PbP though...

Clergymen are THE awesome. Perfect CoC characters really, especially if you have less of the meekness and more of the wrath going on...I'd personally be very irritated if people got as annoyed at their characters getting killed as your players seem to, Lycan, although the character gen process can be a bit fiddly...!

I was a bit irritated that campaign got cut short actually, although it was about to end bloodily anyway. The aforementioned insane scientist and the priest went into town to talk to the local vicar and ranted at him about the monsters, which he took seriously enough to tell them to wait while he assembled a suitable group of townspeople, where the session ended.

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The vicar was the leader of the Cthulhu cult. There were deep ones in the loch. The scientist's one-sided love interest, an austere local librarian, was a cultist and a werewolf, who they'd unwittingly seen disembowel an old woman. It would mostly have resulted in massive SAN loss and the players dying.

[only1doug]

Major Spoilers for Beyond the mountains of madness

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Don't read this if you ever plan to play in this campaign

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Right at the end of the Mountains of madness campaign there comes a time when the damage to the barrier has to be repaired or the world will be destroyed.

These repairs need human Bodies.

The only Humans available are the Party + a few NPC's.

The Party used all the corpses and the barrier seemed to have stabilized.
were the party satisfied? Nope.

"Better safe than sorry" they said and sacrificed all their catatonic (failed SAN check) fellow PC's to ensure the barrier was truly better.

One PC gained an insanity due to the sacrifice of fellow PC's

Caution if you play or ever plan to play in Doug or Trev's CoC game at the Kingston Games Group don't read this next bit.

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The Prince (wealthiest character in the group, finances everything) gained the following Insanity: where people normally think Human sacrifice is a bad thing and should be a absolute last resort, your opinion is different: you believe that if there is any indication that Human sacrifice might solve a problem it should be tried as a first resort. That's what minions are for.

[DeathBD]

One of the players finds his way to the corpses and finds the dynamite, but the rest of them are about to get taken apart by a great old one, and the star vampire they summoned who refused to attack the God it is bound to, when the same character who summoned the SV turns and says...

"I get down on my knees and pray to it."

Silence.

I think for a moment.

"What do you say?"

"Oh great...lord...we have come to pay you tribute for..." and so on.

More silence.

I roll some dice.

"Um...roll this, and tell me what you get. [wait] OK. Roll...luck."

"I succeed!"

"roll SAN"

"I succeed! (nominal loss)"

This goes on for a short while, with the upshot being that she was sort-of accepted (left alive anyway) and given Contact Nyogtha. Right in her brain. For even more insanity. Then they went to leave, set the dynamite once they'd gone through the gate, everything seems to have gone...just about alright...and then the scientist and the priest turn on the, uh, supplicant.

"Heathen! She's a cultist! A demon worshipper! I *ready* my rifle..."

"I *ready* my shotgun..."

She turns to me. "Is that Star Vampire still bound?"

"Um, I guess so."

They shoot her, and it hits the (invisible) SV, who then is ordered to restrain them, while the women flee for their lives from the (justifiably) insane men. By the time the spell ends, the women are nowhere to be seen.

That was a great idea on the girl's part (praying and protecting herself with the vampire), and great roleplaying on the part of the men. I need to start writing notes to DM for stuff like that. A lot of our group would probably change their minds on their actions if some things I want to do were said out loud.

I would brag about not having lost a character yet, but on more than one account, I believe Lycan was just being nice. Not to mention I've only had two anyway. I think I should start rolling up a replacement character at this point.

[Doomsy]

This one is about the night that one of my players investigators earned the nickname 'Death' from the local ghoul population. They had tracked down some recent murders to a good sized (about forty, all together) ghoul population that used old bootlegger tunnels and other hideaways as a pretty good sized web to move about the town in. Most of them were reclusive and preferred to eat only the dead. Unfortunately, they had also allied with the Tcho-Tcho (they were eating the 'scraps' from the Tcho-Tcho meals.)

The Tcho-Tcho died pretty quickly when the players and a few Triad NPCs hit their hideout in a fairly well planned strike. Things went screwy when the PC in question, a former cop, saw what had happened to his partner who had been poking around too close to the Tcho-Tcho gang - he was literally nearly skinned alive and had died from trauma in the basement where the Tcho-Tcho left their future meals hanging from meathooks. Then he saw the ghouls who were essentially grabbing what they could and ducking into an old tunnel system that connected to the warehouse.

He pulled all of his san rolls but the character essentially went berserk. The rest of the team knew chasing ghouls down into their holes was usually a very bad idea. This guy grabbed a shotgun, one of the Tcho-Tchos machine pistols, and essentially went on a killing rampage almost by himself with a pair of night vision goggles in the ghouls own home. He got insanely good rolls. It culminated in him using a gas line they had exposed to rig an explosion that destroyed one of their shrines. He had killed around twenty of them by the time he was done, essentially solo as the other teammembers were keeping back and playing it safe - half of them never even entered the tunnels and thought he had just snapped. The other two just guarded the exit and hoped.

It only ended when the less wounded survivors of his rampage fled and the ones incapable begged him to stop. He only stopped killing because they stopped fighting back. The deal they made was simple - they don't kill humans or he finishes them all. They are actually good mythos sources and hooks, since they also ran to tell him when a local sorcerer tried to use summon/bind ghoul to get rid of inconvenient corpses/people and the elder ghouls had no desire to have him come back to the tunnels and finish the job. He came out of there with about half his HP gone, some major bites and claw marks, and covered in blood. Probably the most holy crap epic moment of that whole run was when he went hand to hand in close quarters with three ghouls who all missed on their original attacks. Killed one with a combat knife off the bat (impale, stabbed it from beneath the chin up into the brain), hit one with the shotgun for an instant kill next round, then beat the others brains in with the butt in an extended, insane grapple.

[Lycan 01]

Oh wow. That was the perfect counter-arguement to the "Using guns in CoC is a bad idea" concept. XD

I also just realized that I've never used Ghouls in a single scenario... They seem like good material, so I must wonder why I have failed to grasp at the concept of using them.

[allonym]

Ghouls are great. They can be minions or gribblies (which is how I used them, because of their connection to Nyogtha), they can be general bad guys, or they can be non-evil monsters, who can be safely let live. They can even help out in a scenario.

They can also do the most horrifying thing I've ever read in any Cthulhu book ever. If you own Secrets of Kenya, you know what I'm talking about.

[Calinero]

I'm a bit surprised you found this many good CoC stories. I thought people were too busy getting pwned by Cosmic Horrors to be epic in Call of Cthulhu.

[Brauron]

I run Call of Cthulhu quite a bit. One time, a little over a year ago now, I was challenged to design and run a CofC scenario centered around bunnies, puppies, kitties and flowers.

I'll give you all a second to parse that.

The scenario I eventually came up with was that the PCs (a pregenerated team of police officers and detectives) were sent to investigate a house. The owner had not been seen in quite a while, and the house emitted strange odors and noises.

Upon investigation, the floors are covered in animal waste. Diseased, dying cats and dogs, sluggish, weak, their fur falling out in clumps, drag themselves slowly through the filth.

In the bedroom they find a rambling, semi-incoherent journal detailing botanical experiments.

In the basement they find a large hutch containing six or eight rabbits who all seemed perfectly healthy and friendly.

The player who challenged me to write this scenario picked up a bunny and started petting it...and then the rabbit exploded in a shower of gore, as a Hell-Plant (Creature Companion and Malleus Monstrorum both have its stats) rips its way out of the creature.

The session ended with one character dead, another with 3rd degree burns over 80% of his body, and the other two fired and arrested for trying to tell their superior officer that they had to burn the house down to kill the deadly plant.

[Swordguy]

I'm a bit surprised you found this many good CoC stories. I thought people were too busy getting pwned by Cosmic Horrors to be epic in Call of Cthulhu.

The thing about CoC is that when you do cool stuff in the face of ULTIMATE COSMIC EVIL, it's even more awesome than when you do something similar in D&D. In D&D, you're heroes - you're hard to kill, you've got all sorts of crazy abilities, and you generally have some form of "plot immunity" in many games, allowing you to do crazy stuff and get away with it (Rule of Cool).

In CoC, you're just an ordinary person. You aren't a knight, trained from birth to fight and win. You aren't a wizard, with his own form of Ultimate Cosmic Power to draw upon. You're a doctor, or a secretary. If somebody stabs you, once, you're going to be seriously hurt. If you fall 30', you're probably going to die, rather than taking 3d6 damage and waltzing away. Oh, and the makeup of the universe is inherently dangerous to your sanity. Thus, great achievements in the face of all this stacked against you make the achievements even more impressive, simply because you're starting from a place much further down. (The downside of being epic in CoC is that there's a MUCH higher chance of your distinct lack of survival in the process.)

To make an analogy, what's more impressive? The guy who reaches the top of Mt. Everest from the very bottom, or the guy who gets dropped off by helicopter 10,000 feet up?

[DeathBD]

^ Preach, brotha! Preach!

I couldn't have said it better myself. Though, if you manage to survive long enough, your character can become quite powerful and out of the ordinary. That's just the reward, I suppose.

Chaosium's answer to being powerful is just perfect: "You wanna summon elder creatures and throw spells at everything? You wanna go crazy too? 'Cause it's a package deal."

[xPANCAKEx]

i have a passing knowledge of bit of CoC mechanics - but when you run out of San what happens? I know you go insane, but how does it go from there? Is the PC dead (well,... curled up in a ball on the floor quivering)? Or do you roll for effect and see just how mental they've gone?

[DeathBD]

If all of a character's SAN is lost, they go totally insane and can't be played any longer. The fits of insanity are reserved for when significant amounts of SAN are lost.

[Lycan 01]

With great power comes great responsibility. As well as the ever-growing chance that a Great Old One will show up and rape your brain or eat your Soul or something.


Anyway, time for the story of my last session.

Summary: Two of my players decided to steal the Necrinomicon. I decided to allow it... with a catch.

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So my two longest running players, one of whom is DeathBD, have been asking me for weeks if they could steal the Necrinomicon. Player A, who's name is Jasper, actually has a job at the Miskatonic U teaching Latin. Player B, DeathBD, is his business partner in paranormal investigations. Over the course of our inter-connected sessions, Dr. Armitage allowed Jasper to view a few "Evil" books in his little storage room of Mythos Tomes in the library. Jasper bespied the Necrinomicon... and immediately they began planning.

I decided to let them try it. Why? Well, I wanted to see if they can do it. And also... well... you'll see.

So I'd hoped they would take the easy route, and bribe the guard so he'd drug the dogs or something. Heck, I would have allowed them to distract the dogs with steaks. But nooooooo... They decide to drug Professor Armitage and steal his keys.

Ooookay...

Jasper lures the good doctor out to lunch, and then goes to pour a knock-out syrum into his coffee. Apparently, Player B brewed it up... but I told Jasper to do a Chemistry roll to avoid overdosing the Doctor. (A failure would have killed him, and a crit would have been... a 40% chance of a heart attack, if I recall my math correctly...) However, having a Chemistry of 1, he decides to abort the plan. Player B then just happens to enter the store, and tries to pickpocket Dr. Armitage. Failed Conceal roll, of course. He quickly Fast Talks his way out of it, and scurries off.

This is now an hour into the game, due to all their planning and stuff. I finally just snap - they'd wasted all this time, and they were actually about to steal his coat in order to get the keys and/or trick the dogs with his scent... so I decided to force them down the right path. I thrust a pair of dice in front of them and said: "IDEA ROLL. NOW." The rolled, and both succeeded. I then screamed out at the top of my lungs: "BRIBE THE STUPID GUARD!!!!" The both began to laugh hysterically, both at the fact that they'd broken my patience, and the fact that they were extremely stupid for not thinking of that.

One pursuade roll and 350 bucks later, they sneak their way into the Miskatonic University's library in order to break into the Mythos room. Equiped with rucksacks, a crowbar, two handguns, and some paperclips, they think they have it made in the shade. And they did. A few Locksmith rolls later, and they're standing in a room filled with Mythos Tomes. I handed them a list of every book in the room and how much it weighed... then I told them to have at it.

They loaded up on whatever they could grab. De Vermiss Mysteriis, the R'lyeh Text, the Latin Necrinomicon... as well as several homemade books and journals, such as "The Heathen Gods," "Records of the Salem Witch Trials," "Notes on Necromancy," and Armitage's own personal notes. However, during this race to steal everything, they failed a listen check and did not hear the sickening snap of the guard's neck breaking. A few moments later, they head back downstairs, and out the door. They take two steps...

And find themselves staring down the barrels of several large calibur weapons.

Five men in black robes are standing in a semi-circle around them. The man in the center has one hand outstretched. The two men beside him have handguns drawn. And the men at both ends have Tommy Guns pointed at both PC's torsos - with 0% chance of missing. "You know what we want..." the man in the middle calmly states, flexing his outstretched palm, which is also glowing from a Flesh Ward enchantment.

Player A and B promptly freak out.

A few minutes, several half-baked plans, and an idea roll later, Player A hands over the R'lyeh Text, hoping the cultist will mistake it for the Necrinomicon. "Hm..." he muses, studying the old Tome. "Thanks, we needed this one, too. Now then..." The cultist then grabs a gun from the man to his right, fires a shot into Jasper's leg, and then beats him into unconsciousness with the heavy book. He then shoves the gun into Player B's face and says, "Now be a good little boy and hand it over."

Player B also noticed at this point the very-much dead guard (head twisted 180 degrees around while sleeping...) through a window, thus destroying any hope he had of outside help. He finally gave in and handed him the Necrinomicon. One pistol whip later (well, really it was a Tommy Gun whip...), the two Investigators wake up to find themselves sprawled out on the grass, alone. They then gather whatever books they still have, and book it (hah hah... unintended pun) back to their hideout.

They still had all their books except the Necrinomicon and the R'lyeh Text... as well as a note the cultists left them. "Thanks!" it read on one side, while the other said warned: "Now stay out of our way." They then set upon studying the books they stole, and that's where we ended the session... (Player A's gunshot wound was a flesh wound, so I guess it didn't need treating. Okay, to be honest, I forgot about it while trying to keep track of everything else. XD)

Oh, and after Player A left, I told player B that when his character went to sleep that night, all he could dream about was darkness... and whispers.

And now I must prepare what is next to come...

I felt so evil, dangling it in front of them only to yank it away at the last second.

And its also kinda funny that the existance of a cult wanting the Necrinomicon shocked them. I mean really... its Call of Cthulhu. There are like... 3 cults operating in Arkham, with their own backstories developing as the game progresses.

[Voshkod]

i have a passing knowledge of bit of CoC mechanics - but when you run out of San what happens? I know you go insane, but how does it go from there? Is the PC dead (well,... curled up in a ball on the floor quivering)? Or do you roll for effect and see just how mental they've gone?

In general, a character who's out of SAN falls into the sway of the Great Old Ones and becomes an NPC cultist. Or blows their brains out. Or eats their family. Or meets some other horrible end.

One of my favorite stories from a modern day Call of Cthulhu game was when the players (Federal agents) were trying to convince their (very) senior bosses that a threat was real. Creature(s?) that could become faces. They'd peel your real face off and flow over your skull, taking over. Very intelligent, very dangerous.

Well, the bosses weren't buying it. The players were getting frustrated. They also just happened to have a captured "face thing" in a steel tube with them. With a flourish (and without consulting her fellow party members), one of the PCs finally opened the tube and poured this living face out on the conference room table. SAN checks for the FBI Director and other senior Federal officers.

Things went downhill from there.

[DeathBD]

You know, I actually feel worse about trying to pickpocket Armitage more than anything in that entire story. It's so crammed in and out of no where. That's about the point when we ran out of ideas and got desperate.

I'd just like to point out, ever since I first suggested to you that we wanted to steal the Necronomicon, you made a big deal about how tough it would be. We expected to have to fight a security guard, not bribe one. Silly keeper.

[Lycan 01]

...

Be glad I changed my plans. The original plan I had before the cultists would have broken your mind.

[Calinero]

*grumbles*

Thanks, now I really want to play a Call of Cthulhu game. *sighs* You know, Lycan, you've probably spoiled me. I'll expect my first game to be as awesome as the ones you talk about, then I'll be disappointed when it isn't. lol

[Lycan 01]

Meh, practice makes perfect. The only reason I'm any good at Keeping is because I studied the rulebook for days on end, and I've learned from every mistake. For all you know, you're Keeper might be better.


Wish I could think of some more stories, guys... I'm thinking about starting a campaign diary in a few weeks when our real CoC campaign gets off the ground. Yay or nay?

[Voshkod]

*grumbles*

Thanks, now I really want to play a Call of Cthulhu game. *sighs* You know, Lycan, you've probably spoiled me. I'll expect my first game to be as awesome as the ones you talk about, then I'll be disappointed when it isn't. lol

This has been inspiring; perhaps I'll start one on board (diceless, of course - CoC is about atmosphere, not dice).

[Lycan 01]

Um, what? Dude, Cthulhu relies heavily on dice. You roll the D100 to see if you meet the percent chance of your skill success. You also roll to see if your mind can handle the stress of what you see.

Seriously. Cthulhu - dice = grossly unfair, as the DM can just say whatever he wants...