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Lumbermouth posted:Can you link to Kevin Kulp’s thing? I’ve played pretty fast and loose with my investigative spends. It's the games Timewatch and the upcoming Swords of the Serpentine, so no handy link. Basically it's using investigative spends for +3 to a roll or something of equivalent value. So you spend a point of architecture to help you find the shortest route in a chase, or a point of engineering to bluff past the security guard with technobabble. Edit: here’s the explanation from the SotS draft on how you can use investigative spends: gain a +3 bonus on a related General ability test (this can be a suboptimal use of an Investigative point spend, but there will be times when your Hero is out of options and can’t risk failure; gaining +3 means you’ll auto-succeed at most tests. Adding 3 points to an attack also means the attack is likely to succeed, and will have a minimum damage of at least 3.) • completely eliminate the need for a Difficulty 4 General ability roll, such as spending a point of Skullduggery instead of making a Burglary roll • gain an advantage (such as +1 on every roll, or +2 on a handful of rolls) in a contest of General abilities, such as a chase or a fight • if you can rationalize it, do +1 die of damage on a successful attack • if you can rationalize it, gain Armor 4 (which reduces Health damage) or Grit 4 (which reduces Morale damage) for one round • if you can rationalize it, gain Armor 2 or Grit 2 for a scene • give supporting characters a favorable impression of you • stretch the definition of the ability you’re using, granting you a core lead that would ordinarily be gained with a different ability than the one you have (assuming you can rationalize the crossover) neaden fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 18, 2019 23:18
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Warthur posted:The problem is that this isn't quite how the system works, at least in some iterations of it - for instance, there's instances in Gumshoe where you have the option to pay points from your pool to get extra info and the only way to really implement that is to either: I always handled this in a narrative fashion to make it as integrated as possible. "You get the feeling the guy has stuff he wants to tell you if you want to take a little time to draw him out.. and spend a point..." In that particular case, they did so and then there was a relatively long conversation that ended with the guy handing them a list of three big NPCs they could then track down. But what the players got out of it was some completely inconsequential stuff about the lady of the house they were casing, most of which they'd already guessed. It was like three sessions later when they meet one of the NPCs again and "oh wait... the stuff that PMC guy told us... maybe we should have looked into it." None of this is perfect and you're completely right that it's a point where mechanics intrude, but if you have players willing to embrace it, it works pretty well. Having said all that, I vastly prefer the new idea of using points to use an investigative skill as a general or boost to a general. It also bridges the issue where some investigative skills very clearly have general applications. Though most of my irritation with Gumshoe is combat. I vastly prefer BRP based games for that. Spending to create interesting narrative, particularly with something like NBA, is ok the first time, but after a while it becomes very stale. Every combat has the technothriller monologue, the support move from athletics, and the big spend chest shot. I'm looking forward to Swords to see what they do with combat there.
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Oct 19, 2019 15:56
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numtini posted:I always handled this in a narrative fashion to make it as integrated as possible. "You get the feeling the guy has stuff he wants to tell you if you want to take a little time to draw him out.. and spend a point..." In that particular case, they did so and then there was a relatively long conversation that ended with the guy handing them a list of three big NPCs they could then track down. But what the players got out of it was some completely inconsequential stuff about the lady of the house they were casing, most of which they'd already guessed. It was like three sessions later when they meet one of the NPCs again and "oh wait... the stuff that PMC guy told us... maybe we should have looked into it." None of this is perfect and you're completely right that it's a point where mechanics intrude, but if you have players willing to embrace it, it works pretty well. It's acting as a general measure of social respectability in the game, but as an investigative skill, so long as you have a single point in it then it works on a binary basis - you either have social status and can get the clue or you don't have it and can't get the clue. (You can spend a point to get more of a clue, but that's specifically a bonus above and beyond the clue you needed to get.) The thing is, social status and the old-timey class system of the 1920s didn't work on a binary basis like that - the more high-status someone is, the harder it is to get access to them even if you have a basic level of social respect, because (say) a middle-class gent of decent social standing still is below the notice of a highly upper class Earl. What they should have done was made it a general skill and make it all about using social status to get access, and then you get your clue from your access to a high-class individual through your other investigative skills (general conversation, happening to have an interest in common with them, whatever). Having it as an investigative skill completely misunderstand the binary "you've either got them or you don't" nature of investigative skills. It sounds, frankly, like they are solving a lot of these problems by shifting away from the idea of investigative skills altogether, at which point they may as well give up the pretence that Gumshoe is about investigation and re-engineer it to be a general, all-purpose, spotlight-sharing-and-adventure-pacing system.
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Oct 19, 2019 20:03
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The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse owns. My players took the poor journalist Joe Vitrelli hostage and tortured him, never explored the whole house, and murdered the sherrif. It was amazing.
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Oct 20, 2019 05:17
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Dr. Lunchables posted:The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse owns. My players took the poor journalist Joe Vitrelli hostage and tortured him, never explored the whole house, and murdered the sherrif. It was amazing. I ran it three times in a week with three groups, and it ended up different every time. That was a fun week.
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Oct 20, 2019 09:06
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I'm not keen about a lot of the red herrings the adventure includes (at least in the 1990 version). In particular, there's at least one point where the Keeper is told to tell the players directly that they have a bad feeling about something, which I'm not sure is fair play. VoC has a very specific mechanic - the Sanity system - for flagging to players that their characters feel something unusual, and when that's bypassed it feels a bit like cheating, especially when there's nothing behind it. Sure, make the location in question seem incredibly ominous from your description, but don't directly say "You are spooked out by this". Also, it bugs me that so much of the house's history is a red herring; in general it doesn't seem smart to punish PCs who do their due diligence like that. On the other hand people do say it works well in actual play so I'd be interested to hear how the above issues panned out in actual games.
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Oct 20, 2019 10:09
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Warthur posted:I'm not keen about a lot of the red herrings the adventure includes (at least in the 1990 version). My players just accepted that it was creepy and ominous, even by my saying they felt so. I sauced up the garden and the way everything seemed to be against them, made the whole thing sound terrible. But they weren't so scared as to act out of character, hence no SAN checks. The house's history may be a red herring (and I didn't use the ghost Fitzgerald kid), but the salt stuff is so telegraphed that my players knew the solution, haunted house or alien slime mold house, before they left town. Given they knew it didn't like salt, the material difference between a haunted house and an infested house is kinda moot. They just had to keep exploring before they knew what to do with it. Dr. Lunchables fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Oct 20, 2019 |
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Oct 20, 2019 10:34
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I was talking to my players about switching to Delta Green since it is more their style. One of them said it sounded a lot like SCP, and that an SCP campaign would be awesome. I kind of agree. Anybody have any resources for something like that? Also, I just ran Crimson Letters for my group. I was originally gonna have the culprit be the antique store owner, but my players smacked around Lucy Stone when they were "questioning" her, so I switched her to the culprit, and had her gain some powers from the papers. When they tracked her down, she was ready. Injured one, and killed the guy that smacked her around before she went down. It's funny, as DM, I thought the session went horribly. The players were half blind to most everything going on, and I kept having to change things around to give them hints. When I asked them how it went after it was over, they said they LOVED it. Go figure.
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Oct 20, 2019 16:40
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The Dregs posted:I was talking to my players about switching to Delta Green since it is more their style. One of them said it sounded a lot like SCP, and that an SCP campaign would be awesome. I kind of agree. Anybody have any resources for something like that? I don't know poo poo about SCP but I asked some folks and the responses were pretty negative. "SCP doesn't gamify well" "SCP has unlimited resources so it's not like DG" "CoC does it better." I hear that on the most recent Roleplaying Public Radio ep they talk about turning SCP into a game so check that out or one of them can chime in here. The Dregs posted:It's funny, as DM, I thought the session went horribly. The players were half blind to most everything going on, and I kept having to change things around to give them hints. I find this often true myself, I'll be most of the way through a session going "oh man they aren't finding all the clues, they aren't on the right track they're hating it" but turns out players were jiving the whole time and enjoying it.
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Oct 20, 2019 22:22
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SCP is kind of about looking at this in-universe document and drawing your own conclusions so unfortunately the best translation to a tabletop scenario in a classic CoC sense would be about playing a bunch of scientists who are prodding a contained substance and trying to figure out what it does and making SAN rolls when you realize it's a Keter-class object. But that's being kind of reductive (and kind of what RPPR did especially because they used Gumshoe which was pretty perfect for that kind of SCP adventure). The more player-facing adventures set in the SCP universe that still scratch the CoC or DG itch would either be being D-class fodder in an outbreak (like the video games)/poking an object or playing as a Mobile Task Force going into an unknown situation (which would be better for player-facing action and poking stuff until you make SAN checks) respectively.
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Oct 20, 2019 22:47
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i hate to be the "play another game" guy, but if i was gonna run an SCP game, I'd use Unknown Armies, just have people take a facility job as an identity skill and let the group pick a goal and run from there. Either make them drones in the massive compound who really never leave like a more serious Paranoia, or make them a roaming group tasked with tracking down anomalies and surviving/containing them until the compound can come and take them off your hands, sort f Supernatural meets Warehouse 13.
WaywardWoodwose fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Oct 21, 2019 |
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Oct 21, 2019 00:27
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That'd be pretty dope especially if they're the founders of such an organization and it's the halcyon days of "only half of us will live into our thirties to become bitter executors of the group's goals and management, the rest will either die or go mad or make their own group".
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Oct 21, 2019 01:26
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I ran an SCP game a while back where the players were mundanes who'd stumbled into the Foundation's orbit. I changed a bunch of assumptions about the setting to make it work: basically, made the Foundation considerably de-powered and underfunded, and with serious limits to how much official power they could call on: even having to squash a police investigation was considered a mission failure for them, so they had to be a lot more cloak and dagger, and that gave players a bit more wiggle room against them.
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Oct 21, 2019 13:23
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Hostile V posted:SCP is kind of about looking at this in-universe document and drawing your own conclusions so unfortunately the best translation to a tabletop scenario in a classic CoC sense would be about playing a bunch of scientists who are prodding a contained substance and trying to figure out what it does and making SAN rolls when you realize it's a Keter-class object. I should have said they want to be field agents for the SCP. So, basically the SCP sends them out to investigate strange happenings and then collect or contain what they find, so I guess that just about fits your MTF suggestion. You guys right about their unlimited resources, I'll have to figure that out somehow.
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Oct 21, 2019 14:40
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The Dregs posted:I should have said they want to be field agents for the SCP. So, basically the SCP sends them out to investigate strange happenings and then collect or contain what they find, so I guess that just about fits your MTF suggestion. You guys right about their unlimited resources, I'll have to figure that out somehow. In short have the players be moderately badass faceless goons but let the horrors grow from logistics, bureaucracy and depersonalization between field agents and command.
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Oct 21, 2019 19:02
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Hostile V posted:Lean into the horror of logistics and bureaucracy. Unless they're playing a MTF kill team or heavy containment squad out to get something solved by any means necessary, SCP has the resources to get things done...eventually. Have them be a regular scouting and report team that has access to logistics through the bureaucracy skill, let them send back samples and stuff or make supply requests, but only have X units of logistical power at a time. They're the scouts. They're meant to poke and do field studies and if they die, that's data for sending in the first heavy team that's in reserves. If they try to make a lot of requests at once, make them struggle to plan what and who goes where and what's more important in there here and now. The more their help is tied up, the harder it's going to be to get more help. That is all excellent stuff. Thanks so much Also, earlier in the thread, someone posted a (homegrown?) scenario idea about a crashed cosmonaut in the woods. I think he'd gone crazy from radiation poisoning and was scaring the locals into thinking he was bigfoot or something like that. I thought I saved a link, but I lost it. Anyone know what I am talking about? The Dregs fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Oct 21, 2019 |
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Oct 21, 2019 19:06
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ape!!! posted:First episode is written by Mike Mason and concept is him and Scott Dorward. I havent run it yet and certainly don't want to spoil it here, but it looks fun to me. That's hosed up. Why is Chaosium loving hiring a rapist? The fact they aren't getting any anger directed at them for it says something about the RPG community.
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Oct 22, 2019 02:53
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TheNamedSavior posted:That's hosed up. Why is Chaosium loving hiring a rapist? The fact they aren't getting any anger directed at them for it says something about the RPG community. I’m not aware of any allegations against any of those three and a google search doesn’t turn up anything, who are you referring too?
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Oct 22, 2019 03:04
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neaden posted:I’m not aware of any allegations against any of those three and a google search doesn’t turn up anything, who are you referring too? This is the second time they've burst into the thread screaming and firing a gun wildly. Best ignore them, they're posting in super bad faith.
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Oct 22, 2019 03:19
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Addendum advice: make the bureaucracy/help juggling more meaningful by adding a ticking clock element. SCP stands for Secure, Contain, Protect. The first two are inevitable given enough time and manpower and you can downplay the losses on an after-action report, especially if you have to lie to the general public. But for god's sake you have to try to do the latter. It's important to try and solve the problem sooner than "inevitably through infinite resources".
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Oct 22, 2019 03:29
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:This is the second time they've burst into the thread screaming and firing a gun wildly. Best ignore them, they're posting in super bad faith. And maybe conflating Dawkins with Matt McFarland? But yeah, bad faith.
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Oct 22, 2019 04:11
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Lumbermouth posted:And maybe conflating Dawkins with Matt McFarland? But yeah, bad faith. I had no loving idea about any claims against Dawkins and less clue what TheNamedSavior was jabbering about, but this confusion sounds plausible since both Matthews do lots of Onyx Path work.
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Oct 22, 2019 15:47
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Someone else also recently accused Dawkins of pedophilia apologia and the only thing I can find for that is a recent-ish quote from _Richard_ Dawkins. so.
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Oct 22, 2019 17:47
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unseenlibrarian posted:Someone else also recently accused Dawkins of pedophilia apologia and the only thing I can find for that is a recent-ish quote from _Richard_ Dawkins. so. That was me - I'm not sure I'd term it specifically "apologia" as I would "a thing that's in his VtM actual play, a thing he talks about doing in his convention VtM games, and a VtM pregen character", so maybe he just associates draculas with touching kids.
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Oct 23, 2019 02:33
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I've got the core books for both CoC 6e and The Laundry but have never had a chance to play them. I'd like to try and rope in some friends for a game session running one of the included adventures, but I'm not a very good GM and need to get a feel for how it should run. Can anyone recommend a good, tight actual play recording for any of the included adventures in either game?
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Oct 23, 2019 18:18
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neaden posted:I’m not aware of any allegations against any of those three and a google search doesn’t turn up anything, who are you referring too? TK_Nyarlathotep posted:Anybody following the Flotsam & Jetsam campaign Chaosium is running for the Cult of Chaos program? I wanted to follow it but then I read it was being contributed to by Matthew Dawkins, so now I'm worried it's gonna be loaded with pedophile deep ones or some poo poo.
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Oct 25, 2019 02:00
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Will somebody please provide the actual receipts on what Matthew Dawkins is supposed to have done so we can actually progress the conversation? "Uses child abuse as a theme in VtM" is the closest thing anyone's come to an accusation yet and that can mean anything from "Grosses everyone out by discussing pedophilia in terms ranging from apologism to outright fantasising whilst rubbing his crotch" to "Carefully and thoughtfully addresses the subject matter, with suitable content warnings and X-card-like mechanics in place".
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Oct 25, 2019 02:18
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I will admit I was wrong on the rapist count as I was confusing his stupid rear end with that lovely rapist who wrote the crap beast game.
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Oct 25, 2019 02:22
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Pham Nuwen posted:I've got the core books for both CoC 6e and The Laundry but have never had a chance to play them. I'd like to try and rope in some friends for a game session running one of the included adventures, but I'm not a very good GM and need to get a feel for how it should run. Can anyone recommend a good, tight actual play recording for any of the included adventures in either game? I can't find an Actual Play that fills your specific needs, but I can recommend a Delta Green (easily run in CoC 6e) intro adventure set in the modern day and an accompanying Actual Play. This adventure is by goon clockworkjoe who is Ross Payton on Roleplaying Public Radio. Delta Green -- Burner Text: http://fairfieldproject.wikidot.com/burner Actual Play: http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/category/systems/call-of-cthulhu/page/10/ If you wanted a slightly more "traditional" CoC scenario I'd recommend The Lightless Beacon which deals with Deep Ones and is free here: https://www.chaosium.com/blogweareallus-the-lightless-beacon-our-new-call-of-cthulhu-adventure-to-remember-greg-stafford/
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Oct 25, 2019 07:28
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Warthur posted:Will somebody please provide the actual receipts on what Matthew Dawkins is supposed to have done so we can actually progress the conversation? "Uses child abuse as a theme in VtM" is the closest thing anyone's come to an accusation yet and that can mean anything from "Grosses everyone out by discussing pedophilia in terms ranging from apologism to outright fantasising whilst rubbing his crotch" to "Carefully and thoughtfully addresses the subject matter, with suitable content warnings and X-card-like mechanics in place". Hint: it ain't quite either, but it SURE AIN'T the second one.
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Oct 25, 2019 09:25
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:Hint: it ain't quite either, but it SURE AIN'T the second one. Would you care to apply a little theory of mind to this thread and consider that possibly not everyone has read the same sources you have, and might need more information to meaningfully engage with what you're saying?
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Oct 25, 2019 11:52
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Playing keep-away with facts is never a sign that someone's acting in good faith. We have an industry discussion thread, which is ideally where this would go if there is anything substantial to the innuendo.
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Oct 25, 2019 14:28
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If you guys are looking for a fist-full of Cthulhu adventures, Drivethru is advertising the "Miskatonic Repository Halloween 2019 Collection [BUNDLE]." https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/291919/Miskatonic-Repository-Halloween-2019-Collection-BUNDLE?affiliate_id=300786 For $14.95 you get 9 adventures from Ancient Rome, 1930s, WWII in the Pacific, the modern day, and 2189 AD. quote:
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Oct 26, 2019 02:50
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FYI I posted about the Dawkins thing in TG As An Industry, I apologize for acting like a dick. I was, indeed, playing bad faith and not considering that other people might not know. Now to read Chapter 2 of Flotsam and Jetsam and see the damage.
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Oct 26, 2019 16:43
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What are the best single-session non-haunted house scenarios? So many of the best are about a creepy house, and while stuff like the Crack’d and Crook’d Manse does fun things with the concept, id like to throw some curveballs at experienced players.
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Nov 6, 2019 03:37
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Dr. Lunchables posted:What are the best single-session non-haunted house scenarios? So many of the best are about a creepy house, and while stuff like the Crack’d and Crook’d Manse does fun things with the concept, id like to throw some curveballs at experienced players.
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Nov 6, 2019 05:03
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I like Dead Light, it has a cabin but the actual threat is outside and the players need to find creative ways to survive. Seth Skorkowsky has a video on it. Forget me Not is also great and can be done in a single session with some tweaks.
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Nov 6, 2019 19:57
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A nice thing about Dead Light is it's survival horror about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can use it as a starting scenario for a group who just happen to get stuck in the same storm to begin a campaign, use it in the middle of a campaign where the PCs here about some disapearences, or grab some pregens and run it as a one shot. It's easy enough to change it to the modern day or any other rural area as well.
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Nov 6, 2019 20:42
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I have now DM'd three scenarios of CoC and one of Delta Green. I am beginning to wonder if it is possible for a scenario ending that doesn't involve the surviving PC's fleeing a huge conflagration of their own making.
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Nov 10, 2019 23:07
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The Dregs posted:I have now DM'd three scenarios of CoC and one of Delta Green. I am beginning to wonder if it is possible for a scenario ending that doesn't involve the surviving PC's fleeing a huge conflagration of their own making. Yeah, the PCs could be arrested or shot by law enforcement. In a Delta Green game I was in last Friday, we considered it a victory to have burned down half the town before being shot.
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Nov 10, 2019 23:26
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