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Nessus posted:In addition to going to the gym, they might have some underlying issue that they get treatment for, possibly while there to get checked for the Innsmouth Look or squid-related injuries. Some kind of idiopathic anemia. Persistent Vitamin D shortage. Morgellons type 2. That kinda thing. I kind of like this idea. I'll see if he has any reason for his character's extreme lack of muscle mass and go from there. Something else I'm considering is going with a hard open for my scenario. The three investigators find themselves in a strange area, not sure how they got there. After some simple fumbling around (through dark, slimy corridors, maybe with a simple puzzle or two) they eventually enter into an enormous open area - a sandbar or something in the middle of a vast, black ocean... horizon in every direction, depth unmeasurably deep... and the stars bright above (which a successful astronomy roll would reveal to be slightly off...) eventually out of the depths comes Cthulhu itself, forcing the investigators to immediately make a 1D10/1D100 sanity roll and, assuming they make it past that in one piece, are very quickly are obliterated in fantastic fashion... only to wake up. They each roll for sanity upon waking (maybe with a bonus dice since it was just a dream) with the sanity loss being fairly mild but giving them agoraphobia - very large open spaces (like being on a ship in the middle of the ocean) becomes terrifying due to the dream they had. A psychologist could realize they all had this shared dream together and that's what initially brings them together as investigators. Has anybody done something like this? I think it'd be cool as hell to just throw an elder god at them right at the beginning, kind of like the opening to Lovecraft Country, showing them the sheer might and horror of the elder gods (OK you have 11HP, and they roll 22D6 for damage... and get two attacks in a turns... and that's assuming you're not immediately swept up in its claws...) Everybody that plays wants to see the big bad and I want to show them that no, no you really don't... and this will somehow lead into their first actual scenario, which will be much more survivable and might feature some weird cultists or something at worst. edit: so I'm new to DMing and I'm curious how you guys keep track of your scenarios? My early ones are going to be fairly rigid but I want to make sure I stay consistent for my players. Text file? Notes? A map? A laptop with a bunch of files? Just curious what works well. CornHolio fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 12, 2021 18:23
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CornHolio posted:Strength is easy to do - their character goes to the gym. Works out. Should be able to increase their strength to something reasonable. I'm a semi-pro distance athlete, depending how generous you're willing to be with your definitions (death to the NCAA) and stand 6 foot under 140lbs and have limbs like a waterbug. You can absolutely focus on CON over STR, cardio actually improves more quickly and dramatically than strength and you're less likely to sustain an injury that'll gently caress you up the rest of your life. I love in medias res. I have a module that involves a hospital getting all silent-hill-y with an immortality curse. I usually start with someone hanging from the edge of a tenement roof, and another member is nearby but being choked out by a zombie, and another can't get to them because a freaked out cop has a gun drawn on them in another part of the building, another is trapped in a closet as the now-insane tenants are battering on the door, and so on and so on. Basically the idea is to guarantee someone is hosed up enough to require a trip to the ER or morgue. People are generally wise to the fact you didn't spend hours rolling characters to get party-wiped in the first ten minutes, plus its a good way to live demo stuff like extreme/hard rolls and such in a low stakes way.
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Apr 17, 2021 00:58
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Nessus posted:You're playing a dog? Posthumous update on Audax the Pusillanimous Pup. So the other PCs first decision was to declare a stray dog with no tags has no way to communicate it's own name for itself and was therefore named 'Spaghetti' for the rest of the module. He was actually a ton of fun and a surprising value add - though he almost never lost a SAN roll which given his low base SAN to start was highly unlikely, and since he had high INT SAN breaks were supposed to be as his main flaw. Having Track via smell was fun: "Does this person smell of the fresh woodland gravesite we investigated?" "Do I pick up the scent of any humans not currently accounted for at this murder scene?" "Does this supposed person even HAVE a smell?" etc. Helped a bunch during chases and escapes to get a leg up, investigations of caves and crypts to get a sense of what's coming, that sort of thing. Having Natural World was mostly fun for diversions where I'd talk poo poo at monsters - described by the DM as us barking and roaring our heads off - but every now and then it was useful to spot unnatural animals or animals behaving unnaturally. Psychoanalytics went exactly as expected; I could therapy-dog-snuggle people back to sanity. It was fun coming up with uses for skills that don't get a lot of use, though he had 60 in Jump and Swim, he somehow almost always failed. Only one with Jump above 20 and one of only two to biff bailing out of a 2 story window.  Which was another fun bit, the DM having to describe what the dog did on a failure. The generally settled on premise was that as a semi-feral stray he was about 50/50 interested in helping his friends an 50/50 interested in stealing food, licking his nuts, being rescued from ponds and humping dowagers legs. Grapple-based combat was actually fun, he got way more than his share of extreme successes and one meant he actually one-shotted the ancient crone witch baba yaga. Or, he knocked down an old woman and ripped her leg off at the knee. Got laidout in a dogfight with a wolf that was actually a vampire and got killed for certain when the PC who had the artifact lit a bundle of dynamite to keep the artifact from falling into his hands. Which, turns out if we'd escaped we'd have found out it could only be destroyed by yadda yadda yadda... Farewell to Spaghetti, One Good Dog. He was best in show, bestinshow, BESTINSHOW! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUNO0fuTKcU On a for real note I know there was some discussion about the decision, and it might not be everyone's cup of tea - if you're committed to a grimdark roleplay experience, having a puppo getting in a cursing match with a Kurenti from the other side of a chainlink fence would probably ruin it. But getting a PC with a bunch of dumpskills at 60 (brawl excepted) and figuring out what the hell to do with them is if nothing else good exercise. PipHelix fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Apr 17, 2021 |
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Apr 17, 2021 02:35
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Twelve Handmade Pregens for Delta Green Some explanatory text: I made these characters because I wasn't happy with the pregens available for Delta Green.
Language skills are all left unassigned, so that the pregens can be used in any setting and still be useful. I favor letting the players leave them blank, with the option to "lock in" what language(s) the character speaks in-game as needed, writing it permanently on the sheet. If you don't want to do this, remind them to assign languages at the beginning of the session, or write them in yourself before the game based on the scenario you're running. Each pregen comes with a full load of equipment suitable for their profession and role on the team. This cuts away the need for endless gear shopping, and gives the players confidence that they have what they need to do their jobs. The pregens all come with instructions in the notes section on the back of the sheet. This includes details about the character's personality, tips for playing them, and any special mechanics that the player should know about. These are helpful because even experienced players usually forget things like using a first aid kit to get +20% on a First Aid roll. Finally, some of the pregens (EASTER, RANDOLPH and ROBERT) know a single ritual. I added this after I noticed that the knowledge/academic based characters were barely getting picked compared to the ones with badges and guns. Knowing a magic spell is more fun than just having 10% in Unnatural, especially in a oneshot where that percentage is unlikely to increase to a useful level. If you don't want the characters to have spells, you can remove them from the "developments which affect home and family" section on the back side of the sheet.
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Apr 26, 2021 00:32
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Had my group's first scenario yesterday. It was just the first premade one in the beginner box (paper chase) though it was me plus three people, one more than what they suggest. It was their first time playing any kind of RPG and my first time DMming anything. It went very well. The highlight was when one of the PCs made a find hidden roll in the library (there was nothing hidden worth finding in the notes) and they got a critical success - well, I wanted them to find something, so they found a rolled up porno mag between a couple of the books. They asked if they could, uh, jerk it, so I had them make a slight of hand roll (heh) which they failed. Not only were they banned from the library but they spent the night in jail (all three of them). A few very successful charm rolls later got them out of jail and the guy that hired them was sympathetic to their, uh, needs and wasn't disgusted. Even offered his shed. But one of them tried to go back to the library and failed their disguise roll and almost ended up in the clinker again. It was funny because they were convinced there was more to learn in the library (there wasn't) and now they'd burned that bridge. I think they learned a very important lesson. They're also looking forward to the next premade scenario, which should have some combat and a bit more danger than this one.
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Apr 26, 2021 13:23
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So my CoC players rolled new characters and one of them fought in the Great War and has PTSD (er, shell shock in the parlance of the time). I've been throwing around some ideas in my head on how to treat this: - a simple roll against the character's POW, which is only 40 - seems like he wouldn't have much of a good time in combat failing 60% of the time (or more) - an extreme success against POW - succeeding on a POW roll doesn't feel right - a fumble (96+) against POW - what I'm leaning towards, though I feel it may never even come up - a simple penalty dice against all rolls in combat - feels too mean - Just rolling 1d100 and on a roll of 90+ it triggers - I feel like it should be tied to their POW somehow though If triggered he'd be useless for 1D6 rounds (he runs off and hides). Thoughts? CornHolio fucked around with this message at 17:02 on May 6, 2021 |
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May 6, 2021 16:58
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I'd steer clear of trying to model actual psychological damage with this (or any other) game's sanity system. Leave the PTSD up to the player to roleplay as they see fit, and limit the SAN system to the mind-searing effects of extra-dimensional horror and reality-bending revelations from beyond.
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May 6, 2021 17:16
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moths posted:I'd steer clear of trying to model actual psychological damage with this (or any other) game's sanity system. oh I wasn't going to touch the SAN, but I figured if they're in combat using guns and since PTSD isn't something they can really 'control' I'd have a little fun with it. Bad idea?
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May 6, 2021 17:35
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Rather than offering a mechanical hinderance, offer a mechanical advantage after. In a game I'm playtesting, whenever you roleplay something against your party's interest (such as a gambling vice, spending your crews money and losing it) you can gain the ability to reroll a check later.
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May 6, 2021 17:43
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CornHolio posted:Bad idea? Yeah, I think so - I see what you're going for and it makes sense how you got there but it's a real can of worms. The risk outweighs the reward, and PTSD is almost certainly a thing that someone in your play group (or someone they love) has or has had to deal with. Elendil004 posted:Rather than offering a mechanical hinderance, offer a mechanical advantage after. In a game I'm playtesting, whenever you roleplay something against your party's interest (such as a gambling vice, spending your crews money and losing it) you can gain the ability to reroll a check later. I know players who derail / screw the party just for the spotlight - rewarding that behavior seems insane to me! How is it turning out in your games?
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May 6, 2021 17:57
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I ran it by the player and they love it, with one caveat - it isn't 'any loud noise' that triggers it, it's when they're being fired at. So them firing a gun, or their allies firing a gun, won't impact them. But if somebody is shooting at them they have to roll. They're very happy with that. We'll see if it ever even gets triggered but it'll be fun to roll against it - in the thick of combat, he's not a hundred percent reliable.
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May 6, 2021 19:22
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This is probably not very balanced for CoC in the long run, but fortunately in CoC there is often no long run. I would structure it so that either: Roleplaying out aversion to or bad reactions to receiving enemy fire, or parallel situations (say, a passing truck going 40mph on a gravel road kicks up a couple of rocks towards them) will earn a skill check on a relevant skill such as Dodge, or possibly on whatever they were doing at that time. OR, present it as a kind of permanent modifier, something like "Paul's shell shock makes him take (significant firearms penalties) if there is gunfire headed his way, representing the shakes and struggling against the impulse to hide. However, this hypersensitivity also adds +5% to Dodge rolls against firearms attacks not at close range." This kind of wraps up the effect into something Paul MUST deal with. In addition to what moths and Cornholio raised I would add an additional factor: if this is something that will happen on a 96-00, it may, in fact, never happen at all. At that point it just becomes another thing you have to keep track of, especially since this is not some sort of 'slim chance for INSANE results,' it is 'slim chance for leaving the scene for 1-6 rounds.'
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May 6, 2021 20:32
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moths posted:Yeah, I think so - I see what you're going for and it makes sense how you got there but it's a real can of worms. The risk outweighs the reward, and PTSD is almost certainly a thing that someone in your play group (or someone they love) has or has had to deal with. I would not play with players who do that very long. So far it's been really good because everyone has been roleplaying it. You should not play with assholes.
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May 6, 2021 23:46
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Elendil004 posted:You should not play with assholes. Really just good advice regardless of the game.
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May 7, 2021 04:10
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moths posted:Yeah, I think so - I see what you're going for and it makes sense how you got there but it's a real can of worms. The risk outweighs the reward, and PTSD is almost certainly a thing that someone in your play group (or someone they love) has or has had to deal with. The FATE system basically makes this a core mechanic and it works really well -- but FATE is much more a focus on "see where the story goes" not "the players must OC collaborate to overcome a challenge". Though one way of stopping this becoming a reward for the player, if you're concerned about that, would be to make it so that the bonus that they get can only be applied to another player's roll and not their own.
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May 7, 2021 09:24
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So a question re: combat in CoC: if one of the PCs is in melee range but using a gun (ie point blank range) the book says they get a bonus die, but they may be targeted by melee attacks. The book says the target may not fight back or dodge it, so I'm assuming the target can only try to disarm? Is this the 'targeted by melee attacks' they're talking about? Or are they just saying that on the target's turn they can punch them since they're so close? If the player is shooting at somebody at point blank range and the target can't dodge or fight back (as it says), what is their opposed roll against? Or is it not an opposed roll, just a pass/fail? I'm assuming close combat fighting is going to come up soon and all of my PCs have guns.
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May 7, 2021 17:14
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CornHolio posted:So a question re: combat in CoC: Hopefully. I don't have 7E to hand (I can tell you're using 7E because of the mention of a bonus die) so I suspect this is not-very-efficient verbiage to say you can't make a contested weapons roll the way you might be able to if you're both using karate or swords. You can't parry a bullet under standard CoC assumptions. If everyone has their guns out, close combat will be exciting and fatal!
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May 7, 2021 20:10
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We played Friday evening and I think it went well. I started with the cold open I'd been working on, dropping them into a strange area and having them discover Cthulhu face to face. One of the three failed their sanity roll and went insane. Him and one other were swept up by Cthulhu to die. The last, the runt with a max HP of 7, took the brunt of Cthulhu's attack. I had 22D6 ready to go in a cool looking skull mug (hidden away until now) and when I rolled them all for damage he was freaking out, as were the other two. Then I revealed that they all wake in their beds in Boston on a bright sunny morning, on the day that they're supposed to begin their investigation in The Haunting scenario. Since the one player went insane in their dream I gave them permanent agoraphobia but other than that there were no long term effects - I had considered making them make a sanity roll on waking, but decided against it since it was just a dream. Playing through The Haunting though... I had to take it easy. The bed attack took their strongest guy out. He'd been hitting all of his rolls with ridiculous luck, then missed the dodge roll and took a major wound... then failed his CON roll and went unconscious. The other players took him to the hospital... and went back to the house, discovering the decaying wizard in the basement (but not before one of them fell down the stairs badly). Wizard casts dominate and I could have been mean but I just had him punch the other player for a couple of turns before he got put in a sleeper hold and neutralized. The wizard was then punched to death. It was all good fun, though I felt bad for the player in the hospital. He was very nearly the lone survivor, though. Probably moving on to Amongst the Ancient Trees next. I do have a question though - in The Haunting, there's a spell to be found - summon/bind dimensional shambler. Since this isn't like D&D where only certain characters can learn certain spells, do I let all of them read the notes and learn the spell? Or is it finders keepers? I don't want them to fight over mysterious tomes but at the same time it seems like having all of them learn together every spell they discover is... lame. Kinda thinking of having the adventures far enough apart that one player can learn a spell in between but not others - after the next adventure they can study that tome if they'd like, or another that they'd found, but not both. That way the person that finds it gets to learn it first, then later if somebody wants it they can get it (with the appropriate sanity loss of course!) Sorry I'm new to the whole DM thing CornHolio fucked around with this message at 02:10 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 01:47
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CornHolio posted:Playing through The Haunting though... I had to take it easy. The bed attack took their strongest guy out. He'd been hitting all of his rolls with ridiculous luck, then missed the dodge roll and took a major wound... then failed his CON roll and went unconscious. The other players took him to the hospital... and went back to the house, discovering the decaying wizard in the basement (but not before one of them fell down the stairs badly). Wizard casts dominate and I could have been mean but I just had him punch the other player for a couple of turns before he got put in a sleeper hold and neutralized. The wizard was then punched to death. Love stories of the Haunting. When I last ran it the hapless Private Eye had to be dragged up the basement stairs by the Occultist three times. Twice the Private Eye was malignantly pushed down the stairs by the spirit and the last time he was knocked unconscious by the Wizard during combat. The Occultist came out relatively unscathed (fortunately). CornHolio posted:I do have a question though - in The Haunting, there's a spell to be found - summon/bind dimensional shambler. Since this isn't like D&D where only certain characters can learn certain spells, do I let all of them read the notes and learn the spell? Or is it finders keepers? I don't want them to fight over mysterious tomes but at the same time it seems like having all of them learn together every spell they discover is... lame. Kinda thinking of having the adventures far enough apart that one player can learn a spell in between but not others - after the next adventure they can study that tome if they'd like, or another that they'd found, but not both. That way the person that finds it gets to learn it first, then later if somebody wants it they can get it (with the appropriate sanity loss of course!) If I remember correctly with the CoC rules, learning a spell from a Mythos tome usually takes weeks; so I would rule that only one character could study from the tome per break period. Goon RedMarketsCaleb, creator of Delta Green adventures such as Lover in the Ice and the upcoming God's Teeth has started a Patreon for further Delta Green adventures, fiction, podcasts and other writings. It is called Delta Green Dead Channels and the minimum pledge is $5 a month. So far for this month you get access to fiction (Retired Asset), access to the entire 1-3 Sanguine Thorn podcast series and episodes 1-2 of it's sequel, Poison Thorn. https://www.patreon.com/m/6738257/posts Edit: The Sanguine Thorn podcasts 1-3 are free on RPPR's Actual Play page. http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2021/03/systems/call-of-cthulhu/delta-green/delta-green-sanguine-thorn-part-1/ http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2021/04/systems/call-of-cthulhu/delta-green/delta-green-sanguine-thorn-part-2/ Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 19:00 on May 11, 2021 |
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May 11, 2021 18:27
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Shout out to one of my players thinking it was incredibly funny and not frustrating that his statistician character fell through the floor in the Chapel of Contemplation and immediately broke his neck and died.
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May 14, 2021 13:06
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Lumbermouth posted:Shout out to one of my players thinking it was incredibly funny and not frustrating that his statistician character fell through the floor in the Chapel of Contemplation and immediately broke his neck and died. Call of Cthulhu: Where a d6 of damage is actually real bad for you! Did the bed get any of them, I love stories of the death-bed and its triumphs.
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May 14, 2021 13:48
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Night10194 posted:Call of Cthulhu: Where a d6 of damage is actually real bad for you! He was the one that survived the bed! Our bootlegger also got critted by the floating knife but I thankfully rolled very low on the additional damage. I've enjoyed letting the dice fall where they may.
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May 14, 2021 14:03
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Lumbermouth posted:He was the one that survived the bed! Our bootlegger also got critted by the floating knife but I thankfully rolled very low on the additional damage. I've enjoyed letting the dice fall where they may. Watching one of my players just go 'Oh god I don't know what to do!' when the knife showed up on them after they blew off the lock and rushed out of the bedroom (after their big, kinda dumb coast-guard lawyer went flying out the window and they didn't know if he was alive or dead) was one of the highlights of that session for me. The day was saved by the gay occultist novelist's excellent Dodge where he baited the knife into coming at him full speed and got it stuck in the wall, and then they all ran like hell. There really is something to 'physical damage is something you really need to worry about and take seriously' and how it makes players react to physical danger.
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May 14, 2021 14:09
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Lumbermouth posted:He was the one that survived the bed! Our bootlegger also got critted by the floating knife but I thankfully rolled very low on the additional damage. I've enjoyed letting the dice fall where they may. One of my players is a watch salesman that's in too deep, and he saw the knife and just hightailed it out, abandoning the rest of the investigators. He had fallen down the stairs, now he fell up the stairs. He would fall down the stairs later as well. His DEX isn't even bad, he was just failing every roll badly for awhile.
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May 18, 2021 12:32
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CornHolio posted:One of my players is a watch salesman that's in too deep, and he saw the knife and just hightailed it out, abandoning the rest of the investigators. He had fallen down the stairs, now he fell up the stairs. He would fall down the stairs later as well. His DEX isn't even bad, he was just failing every roll badly for awhile. I WARNED YOU ABOUT STAIRS BRO
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May 18, 2021 15:40
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I WARNED YOU ABOUT STAIRS BRO I felt kinda bad because here I have players expecting to be going up against Lovecraftian monstrosities or maybe some zombies or ghouls or maybe even angry cultists or something, and they're getting killed by archtitecture and furniture.
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May 18, 2021 18:41
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Every time I dig into the rules for tomes I find it a more maddening experience - and while I appreciate the ludonarrative synergy I'm find that there is a lot to be desired here. I'd be a lot more forgiving if 7th edition wasn't so new and improved in so many other places; this is the first time the rules feel downright frustrating and only barely more helpful than just making poo poo up on the fly.
Are there any good, crunchy solutions to these issues out there which are better thought through and playtested than winging it? I really feel let down by how little meat there is on this bone, given how much (non-mechanical) emphasis there is on these tomes of forbidden knowledge.
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May 24, 2021 19:04
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Yeah the study times have always been nonsense. Just replace weeks with days, or even hours, or whatever the hell feels appropriate.
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May 24, 2021 20:23
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Deptfordx posted:Yeah the study times have always been nonsense. They even say this much in the book (framed as 'many scenarios require the Investigators to be able to study The Book faster, so allow it in these cases') without thinking about what this means! If most of your published scenarios don't use anything like your ludicrous study times because they destroy the pacing, why do you have them.
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May 24, 2021 21:17
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Night10194 posted:They even say this much in the book (framed as 'many scenarios require the Investigators to be able to study The Book faster, so allow it in these cases') without thinking about what this means! If most of your published scenarios don't use anything like your ludicrous study times because they destroy the pacing, why do you have them. The same reason D&D spells have gigantic ranges that would never apply in a dungeon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V2lxFWBqfI&t=104s
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May 24, 2021 21:39
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Night10194 posted:They even say this much in the book (framed as 'many scenarios require the Investigators to be able to study The Book faster, so allow it in these cases') without thinking about what this means! If most of your published scenarios don't use anything like your ludicrous study times because they destroy the pacing, why do you have them. Heck, you don't even need to remove them altogether - giving something a study time of (one or two, maybe three) weeks sends a strong signal "this is a downtime action, not something investigators can do in the middle of case", which is perfectly fine as a way of structuring investigator development. And that leaves you room to build a potential-sorcerer who is such a savant that he actually can learn a spell that takes two weeks in a single all-nighter, which is another thing that players want to do all the time. How this survived in 7th edition which seemed so intelligent about refinements to the system boggles my mind.
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May 24, 2021 22:03
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I suspect Sandy Petersen and co. had their own equivalent of the Pathfinder/3.5 grognards and picked their battles, possibly over-conservatively. Mythos tomes are also apparently in a lot of cases a bunch of scrawled-down scripto continua bullshit on rickety rear end paper so you can't just flip to the index. Writing a unified index and transcription of the Necronomicon would truly be a great work of scholarship!
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May 24, 2021 22:21
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I doubt this works for everyone but my DM solved it in my group by giving the person who was primarily interested in learning spells a fast ritual spell that let them immediately absorb the contents of a tome at the cost of SAN/POW loss and the destruction of the book.
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May 25, 2021 00:05
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I would abstract it to "in a few hours/days/weeks". Anything less than that should be practical immediate, and anything longer is probably never going to be relevant for the game. You could also think of it as "resolved during an adventure/between adventures/ between campaigns".
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May 25, 2021 00:24
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thotsky posted:I would abstract it to "in a few hours/days/weeks". Anything less than that should be practical immediate, and anything longer is probably never going to be relevant for the game. You could also think of it as "resolved during an adventure/between adventures/ between campaigns". In the case of the Necronomicon itself you can say "Well, there's a lot of poo poo you SAW but didn't really GET, so you might get context clues or put things together when exposed to ye liveliest awfulness" (representing Mythos skill checks to analyze meteor poo poo and so forth) "but would have to go actually read that section again to learn the Against Meteor poo poo charm."
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May 25, 2021 00:47
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Nessus posted:One other possibility here would be the 1980s-esque gamification thinking risk of, "OK, they want to read everything in the Necronomicon, and if you're not a total disaster cop you can probably actually manage that and recover from the SAN loss. Now they know everything in the Necronomicon... so NOW what?" I think that's sort of what they attempt to do with the skim/study distinction, although intuitive it is not. Books taking time to read is a simulationist aspect of the game, reflecting the effort needed to decipher the poorly translated semi-incomprehensible tomes of the source material. This could be sidestepped by giving the players the ability to simply absorb magical tomes, but that would constitute a departure from the source material, I think. Nothing wrong with that if your group is down. Time also functions as a cost. You invest time and sanity points, and in return you gain clues and spells. Would doing away with the time aspect unbalance the game? The books being destroyed did not sound like an added cost to me, rather a bonus. Being in possession of occult artifacts make you an ideal target for cultists after all. One could up the sanity cost, maybe introduce new villains sensitive to and capable of extracting spells from investigators. Personally, I would prefer to stick closer to the source material, and have time remain a factor, but there might not be a satisfying way of doing that.
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May 25, 2021 01:35
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Off the cuff, every cthulhu ritual I can think of takes multiple hours and has complex steps with precise components, with chants in foreign languages. I don’t feel like it’s too much to assume that it takes some amount of time to commit that all to memory. As mentioned above, time is a resource that CoC takes very seriously and should be taken seriously by players. It’s your game, after all, so do what feels right. Anecdotally, however, it does take me more than a few days study to learn how to do new chemistry methods from memory, and those are mostly written in English, using logic that makes sense to my brain.
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May 25, 2021 01:53
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I think the 'destructive scan/gain all Benefit' kind of spell is not really working with the game's intentions, although I can see how it would facilitate a particular table's style of play, and it might even produce an interesting sort of action/anime scenario if everyone uses it. Dr. Lunchables posted:Off the cuff, every cthulhu ritual I can think of takes multiple hours and has complex steps with precise components, with chants in foreign languages. I don’t feel like it’s too much to assume that it takes some amount of time to commit that all to memory. As mentioned above, time is a resource that CoC takes very seriously and should be taken seriously by players.
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May 25, 2021 10:34
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Nessus posted:I think the 'destructive scan/gain all Benefit' kind of spell is not really working with the game's intentions, although I can see how it would facilitate a particular table's style of play, and it might even produce an interesting sort of action/anime scenario if everyone uses it. Agreed that there is a really good premise in there for a investigation/research focused game, but it's probably not Call of Cthulhu. Part of the core premise is that as a human, you can't readily digest the terrible truths of the universe through your nerve studded jelly sacs you call eyes - it takes effort and time and cost. Wanting knowledge without cost is how you become a 0 SAN sorcerer. thotsky posted:Time also functions as a cost. You invest time and sanity points, and in return you gain clues and spells. Would doing away with the time aspect unbalance the game? The books being destroyed did not sound like an added cost to me, rather a bonus. Being in possession of occult artifacts make you an ideal target for cultists after all. One could up the sanity cost, maybe introduce new villains sensitive to and capable of extracting spells from investigators. This is pretty much where I've landed after running about 35 sessions of Masks. If you're not running an action focused game in Pulp Cthulhu or streamlining things heavily with Trail of Cthulhu, time management seems the most thematically appropriate way to add crunch. Much as in real life research/investigation, if you bang your head against a problem long enough you'll probably crack it (unless you're trying to catch the Zodiac killer), but this gives failed rolls an opportunity cost in terms of wasted hours/days that the opposition has probably been using to advance their goals. It's the same basic insight as clocks in a lot of PbtA games, but I think of it as less that something is counting down to zero and more that the bad guys have had that much more time to prepare. If you can use your time more effective than the other side, then it's worth making the investment as opposed to "welp there is only one tick left so we have to go for it no matter what".
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May 25, 2021 17:35
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| # ? May 29, 2024 10:23 |
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RE: discussion about how things work in the "source material" Worth noting that in the original stories there are characters who mainline mythos tomes with no adverse effects. The researchers in Beyond the Mountains of Madness had read the Necronomicon and were able to identify the Elder Things as a creature depicted in the text. To them, the book was a collection of interesting folklore and esoterica, restricted at the university library due to its rarity rather than the danger it posed to anyone's sanity. Though it might have been a SAN hazard after they found direct confirmation that its contents were fact rather than fiction. I don't have the book in front of me, but I think Call of Cthulhu has similar mechanics for delayed SAN loss if you consume mythos information, but dismiss it as harmless fiction until you have evidence that it's true.
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May 25, 2021 22:01
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