DrSunshine posted:

If one's running CoC in a modern era, would it be alright to expand "Library Use" to include general web searching and research online? Or would it be better to split it into an entirely new "Internet Search" skill?

Dr. Lunchables posted:

I assume you’re using the modern sheet, not just updating every skill from the 1920s sheet, right? Because I’d just use “Computer Use” for internet searches.

DrSunshine posted:

I'd more sort of got the impression that Computer Use was more intended for, like, hackers and stuff, but I guess it could be expanded for that too. Thanks for the suggestions - I like the idea of renaming "Library Use" to "Research" as well.

EDIT: Has anyone had experience (as a Keeper or an investigator!) in a campaign set in the present day? How does everyone having a smart phone change the dynamics?

EDIT2: Though thinking about it, given how anxious people get when they lose their phones, run out of battery, or lose signal, it would be a great chance to lose some Sanity.

Lumbermouth posted:

Does anyone have any info on the kinds of scenarios that have been written for the Japanese version of Call of Cthulhu? I’ve always thought it was interesting that it’s the most popular RPG in Japan, but most of the books and zines I’ve seen are replays (basically a published actual play.)

long-rear end nips Diane posted:

Kind of an old question, sorry, but the streams I've seen of vtubers playing CoC had them using stuff from the Cthulhu 2010 book. I've never seen any translation of it though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr34PJhyYrg

Dr. Lunchables posted:

Nessus posted:

Imaginary Friend posted:

Cheers for the feedback! It turned into a freaking seven hour long(!) session so I am guessing that people had a good time haha. There will be no godzilla shoggoth since they managed to kill it with gas tubes from a kitchen and drive an exhibition car into it. On a ship. I skipped the taking half fire damage on the shoggoth since in the scenario it was a juvenile one created of cells from a real one which will hopefully kill some players in a later scenario 😈

mellonbread posted:

LatwPIAT posted:

I thought a little about the discussion in FATAL & Friends about the desire to have the stuff March Technologies, MAJESTIC, and various other groups get up to have some kind of appeal to explain why anyone would want to pursue it in the first place.

The answer often seems to be some abstract measure of “utility”, like Resuscitated Casualties thrown into combat to solve a manpower crisis, which led me to think that maybe an obvious inspiration should be real-life things that are extremely dangerous but pursued nonetheless. To which my mind immediately went to radioactive materials and the chemical industries in general. Radioactivity tends to be extremely dangerous to the people who practice it, so we can maybe imagine that sorcerers are like Louis Slotin, trademark jeans and snakeskin boots, dropping the Demon Core during an experiment. Radioactivity also tends to linger, making nuclear accidents pose long-term danger to other people (the rifts in space-time left open to the creatures of the Dungeon Dimension?) On the societal side, major industrial accidents like Bhopal show what happens when dangerous industries are criminally mismanaged, and Chernobyl (as depicted in the miniseries) how single figures’ arrogance can spell disaster for many. Then there’s that theory that holds that leadened gasoline was the cause of the crime wave...

I think perhaps the best way to make it obvious why someone would do something so dangerous would be to let the players have access to the horrors, and then set it up so there are mechanical reasons why someone would want to use it. Which would perhaps suggest shallow dipping into dark magic and blasphemous technologies should be relatively safe, to encourage getting used to it, and encourage taking further advantage of the possibilities offered.

Which is something CoC really fails to facilitate, because spells have a per-casting SAN cost, which would drive any habitual sorcerer stark raving mad in a matter of days. I think finding some other downside to magic would really help: I keep coming back to the radiation analogy: what if using, or using in desperate conditions, magic causes magical radiation poisoning, and the high end spells are all some form of Summon Demon Core. If you prepare your spells and ground the thaumic resonator circuits and wear protective clothing, you don’t accumulate any doses — but if you’re in the middle of a fight and you need to wither someone’s limb right now, you’re probably increasing your risk of magical brain cancer by a percent or so.

Maybe integrate it closely with spells for raising the dead or healing mortal wounds: useful spells players will want to cast sooner rather than later, making preparation difficult?

I don’t know, I’m kind of rambling because the design space excites me and my brain is a gently caress.

LeSquide posted:

This really reminds me of Charles Stross's Laundry series, especially the earlier stuff. If you try to do it the hard way for too long, you start to suffer literal brain damage, so modern computational sorcery does its best to avoid ever running spells through the naked human mind.

LatwPIAT posted:

Which is something CoC really fails to facilitate, because spells have a per-casting SAN cost, which would drive any habitual sorcerer stark raving mad in a matter of days.

Elfmaids and Octopi posted:

Part of this evolved from having run several extended Coc campaigns which left the party with high sanity scores, artifacts aplenty, money and self published spell books for dummies in their secret clubhouse. They ran bootleg hooch through a gate from Boston to England (using donkeys to pass through the gate to minimize sanity loss). They had a lethal arsenal of mausers, trench guns, browning automatic rifles and tommy guns. A gangster character had never read a mythos tome yet had his many teachers had mastered and passed onto him every binding and banishment spell before going themselves went mad. At one point on their voyage to Ralyeh, I had them battle the many characters who had become monsters and madmen over the years. This kind of resembled a superheroic battle scene. With star vampires, byakee and creatures which had once been investigators. With shotguns loaded with elder sign slugs and powder of ibn ghazi. Even a great race lightning gun. When enough investigators survive long enough they will often amass enough firepower, magic and worldly resources to terrify any state authorities.

Nessus posted:

because instead it creates a tainted zone that attempts to redress the distortion by sucking POW out of everything in the immediate area.

mellonbread posted:

IDK if you quoted me because there's a specific post of mine you're responding to.

LatwPIAT posted:

Just tagged you because I seemed to recall you were part of the original discussion in FATAL & Friends concerning the need/desire to have MAJESTIC/March Technologies not be completely out of their minds to even conceive of trying to use the mythos to their own ends.

barkbell posted:

Just bought masks of nyarlathotep. Going to run it on foundry. Anyone have any experience with that and must have modules?

Elendil004 posted:

https://sites.google.com/view/kevinhamdeltagreen/home

Put my 'done' stuff up in a better place than randomly in google docs. In case folks want to see.

Elendil004 posted:

https://sites.google.com/view/kevinhamdeltagreen/home

Put my 'done' stuff up in a better place than randomly in google docs. In case folks want to see.

mellonbread posted:

Missing Orne Library, Hound Ate My Homework, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting

barkbell posted:

So I finally got set up on Foundry VTT. I am running Masks of Nyarlathotep. I downloaded the free player handout pdf provided by Chaosium, and I'm wondering how to import those assets into Foundry? Do I need another program to basically "cut them out" of the pdf and then import those as images?

Also, how do people normally run VTT Cthulhu stuff? I'm familiar with DND normally showing some sort of map either a city map, regional map, or battle map as the centerpiece on the board. However, with Cthulhu that doesn't happen often. Should I display character portraits as the main thing? There aren't a ton of maps I feel like (I've only ran about 4 sessions of CoC across two scenarios)

Elendil004 posted:

Google maps is usually ok enough res for roll 20.

Kavak posted:

I 'd so hard I used Google Street View for parts of my Delta Green campaign because I needed everything to be set in a real town or city. "Okay, this storage place will be where the Green Box was, this house looks like it could be the suspect's place, I'll put the cult's old church in this empty lot..."