|
For one-shots, you can't really go wrong with the Haunting, which comes with the quick start rules.
|
# ? Sep 23, 2021 00:40 |
|
|
# ? Jun 5, 2024 19:30 |
|
Awesome, thanks for all the advice! I have the quick start rules, so I'll start by checking out The Haunting.
|
# ? Sep 23, 2021 00:49 |
|
The Haunting is mostly good, but the handouts suck by 2021 Chaosium standards and both times I ran it the... final confrontation kinda sucked balls. Maybe I was doing it wrong somehow.
|
# ? Sep 23, 2021 00:53 |
|
DrSunshine posted:For one-shots, you can't really go wrong with the Haunting, which comes with the quick start rules. Keep a tally of how many investigators die because of the flying mattress and report back please.
|
# ? Sep 23, 2021 01:32 |
|
Run the Haunting, to add to the body count. Then run Edge or Darkness, because it’s much better and more complete. Google for handouts, there’s a million high quality ones. Finally, buy the Mansions of Madness book, because it’s amazing and run every adventure in there.
|
# ? Sep 23, 2021 18:01 |
|
Dr. Lunchables posted:Finally, buy the Mansions of Madness book, because it’s amazing and run every adventure in there. Seconding this. I ran Cracked and Crook’d Manse and Mansions Of Madness in my 30s Los Angeles game and The Sanitarium in my 80s pulp game and all of them were winners.
|
# ? Sep 23, 2021 18:53 |
|
Lumbermouth posted:Seconding this. I ran Cracked and Crook’d Manse and Mansions Of Madness in my 30s Los Angeles game and The Sanitarium in my 80s pulp game and all of them were winners. The current edition's version only has Manse out of these three. That said, the other scenarios are pretty solid.
|
# ? Sep 23, 2021 21:26 |
|
Lucas Archer posted:Awesome, thanks for all the advice! I have the quick start rules, so I'll start by checking out The Haunting. Besides echoing the suggestion for The Haunting, I wanted to recommend the Genius Loci scenario from the Doors to Darkness collection as a possible follow-up if your Haunting game goes at all similar. From the infamous bed in the The Haunting, I had one investigator die and another receive a major wound and a severe sanity hit. The hook for Genius Loci (don't think I'm spoiling anything, it's literally how it starts) is a NPC "friend" of the investigators reaching out for help from inside a mental hospital. Rather than the stock NPC, I used the investigator that survived (barely) the mattress encounter in the The Haunting. This replacement worked nicely to keep the group very motivated and moving along with some urgency that I don't think they would have had with the stock NPC. Potential spoilers for Genius Loci: In the climatic scene where the friend is about to be sacrificed to the lloigor, as luck would have it, the investigator that saved the friend at the last moment was the person that played them in The Haunting. Made for a fun resolution.
|
# ? Sep 23, 2021 21:45 |
|
Megazver posted:The current edition's version only has Manse out of these three. That said, the other scenarios are pretty solid. Both versions of the book are winners. Real solid scenarios all around. If I had to recommend a single adventure book, that’s the one I would.
|
# ? Sep 24, 2021 03:43 |
|
Lucas Archer posted:My group is taking a break from our current 5e campaign to do some spooky Halloween type one-shots for October. I've been wanting to run a CoC game for a while now and this is the perfect opportunity. I'm currently building a one-shot scenario, but since I've never run it before, I don't know how much is 'to much', so to speak. So I decided to look through some of the various scenarios I have and see if any of those would work as a potential one shot. "The Things we leave behind" has some great modern one-shots as well. "Forget me not" is great if you want your players to go in with blank characters and build upon them across the scenario.
|
# ? Sep 25, 2021 18:15 |
|
Lucas Archer posted:My group is taking a break from our current 5e campaign to do some spooky Halloween type one-shots for October. I've been wanting to run a CoC game for a while now and this is the perfect opportunity. I'm currently building a one-shot scenario, but since I've never run it before, I don't know how much is 'to much', so to speak. So I decided to look through some of the various scenarios I have and see if any of those would work as a potential one shot. Yes, you can absolutely run that as a one-shot. It depends on how long it takes the investigators to get the train set together and then think to run the train on the track. Once they get on the Doom Train itself, I think things will move along pretty fast. Watch out for the save-or-dies when someone gets dragged into the passenger carriage; ideally you want them to be saved just in the nick of time.
|
# ? Sep 28, 2021 01:03 |
|
Just ran my DG crew through Music From A Darkened Room and one of the characters has decided to summon Nyarlathotep and sign the Black Book as soon as he can figure out a way to kill someone. Does he get a familiar right off the bat or how should I do this?
|
# ? Sep 29, 2021 09:13 |
|
Down With People posted:Just ran my DG crew through Music From A Darkened Room and one of the characters has decided to summon Nyarlathotep and sign the Black Book as soon as he can figure out a way to kill someone. Does he get a familiar right off the bat or how should I do this? The way I recommend you handle it is give him a familiar, because familiars are loving cool. Come up with a new creature, like a possum with human eyes, or a huge beetle with a human face.
|
# ? Sep 29, 2021 19:21 |
|
mellonbread posted:When the module was written back for the original Delta Green game, there was no assumption that doing the deconsecration ritual gave you a familiar. It was just a way to get rid of the Dark Man, at the cost of killing someone, temporarily summoning the baddie and letting him gently caress with you. So the way you "should" handle it according to the original intent is to not gently caress with familiars at all. Specifically, John Lennon's face.
|
# ? Sep 29, 2021 19:33 |
|
Give them a Bond to the familiar. Let them choose, within sensible limits, the strength of the Bond (no more than 15 to start out with, say). Make it clear that the stronger this Bond is, the more potent the benefits the familiar gives are. Once they have selected a number, siphon off points in their more wholesome Bonds to the number of points they put in. Every time their Bond to familiar goes up from here on in, their Bond to something less baleful goes down by a similar amount.
|
# ? Sep 29, 2021 23:42 |
|
PipHelix posted:.
|
# ? Sep 30, 2021 16:25 |
|
Hostile V posted:That's kind of the hook for BLACKSAT in Delta Green. You're a bunch of astronauts who have to take some dangerously unqualified (in the sense that there's a nonzero chance liftoff will cause one of them to just immediately have a heart attack from stress and blood pressure and the other is a chronic smoker) nerds to space to fix a government satellite, there's some grim comedy from having to try and get them up to snuff and then you go up there and everything goes to hell. I find it hard to believe there aren't astronauts who can fix whatever is wrong. These guys are ridiculous renaissance men. Like Jonny Kim is a navy seal sniper & combat medic who went on a hundred missions, has a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a medical degree from Harvard and was doing his residence as a surgeon when he got accepted to astronaut school. There has to be some astronauts who are mechanical/electrical/whatever engineers.
|
# ? Oct 4, 2021 02:03 |
|
Charlz Guybon posted:I find it hard to believe there aren't astronauts who can fix whatever is wrong. These guys are ridiculous renaissance men. Like Jonny Kim is a navy seal sniper & combat medic who went on a hundred missions, has a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a medical degree from Harvard and was doing his residence as a surgeon when he got accepted to astronaut school. There has to be some astronauts who are mechanical/electrical/whatever engineers. The satellite in the scenario is powered by forces beyond conventional engineering. Could you train an astronaut to wield eldrich blood sacrifice magic? Maybe. Or maybe the same traits that make them good, level-headed, lucid astronauts would make it hard for them to let their brain crack enough to let in that particular wavelength of sickly light. Also the scenario stronly suggests TPTB are incredibly reluctant to read the astronauts in fully to magic and elder Gods and poo poo. As I recall the head of the mission is incredibly tight lipped and just alludes to the technology being "exotic." Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Oct 4, 2021 |
# ? Oct 4, 2021 02:30 |
|
To even apply, let alone be selected, for NASA astronaut training you need at a minimum a masters in a STEM subject and a pilot's license. The majority of successful applicants are US military combat pilots who studied some kind of engineering, computer science or applied physics. The civilians who get chosen are all 'after my PhD in Marine Biology at Stanford, I got my EMT certification and volunteer as a paramedic, which I fit in between my hobbies of rock climbing, flying small planes and writing poetry'. In other words, they are perfect Delta Green PCs.
|
# ? Oct 4, 2021 05:08 |
|
Chaosium bought The Dhole's House, the free online resource for character creation, handout generation, etc.
|
# ? Oct 4, 2021 14:19 |
|
Dhole house looks like a great resource. Here's something I came across that could serve as some inspiration. Some guy modded in a big freaky centaur monster that can go invisible into his GTA roleplay server. Would use a fancy soundboard to lure people into isolated area with creepy messages then kick their heads in. Then would use recordings of the things they said to troll the next folks, Predator style. Some really dedicated role players. When you finally see what the monster looks like from the players perspective it's creepy as hell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztHdyGQFOZM
|
# ? Oct 5, 2021 04:55 |
|
tanglewood1420 posted:To even apply, let alone be selected, for NASA astronaut training you need at a minimum a masters in a STEM subject and a pilot's license. The majority of successful applicants are US military combat pilots who studied some kind of engineering, computer science or applied physics. The civilians who get chosen are all 'after my PhD in Marine Biology at Stanford, I got my EMT certification and volunteer as a paramedic, which I fit in between my hobbies of rock climbing, flying small planes and writing poetry'. PhD haver in a science, lifelong endurance athlete, multiple applicant to NASA, zero time selected. There's two tracks. One is for the Hoorah Navy Flyboys, your chuck Yeager types, who were the original astronauts and until recently traditionally the ones in charge of flying and maneuvering the shuttle. In the age of just riding up on a Russian rocket, I can't imagine they have all that much to do. Their physical requirements are insane. Then you get the full-on science types. They need you to be in shape, but pilots license isn't a necessity. Physical requirements are much laxer, height, weight, eyesight can all be much further from optimal. We had one, a MechE, come to our university while I was in grad school. He was a big guy but I wouldn't call him in any kind of shape. 'Burly' is as kind as you could be to him. I've also taught at West Point, with Military masters' and PhD havers in science and as I've said in other threads... it's really actually not that hard to get one, especially if you bring your own funding which all military do. Dumbest guy I have ever met has a PhD in a nuclear physics related field. He was a civvie, but none of the military folks I taught with were a patch on the civilian instructors. Nice guys but no one who considers science a vocation pursues it through the US military. GI bill is one thing, these guys are lifers which is another. Basically, a civilian astronaut is top-of-their-field smart, and in very good shape for a non-athlete, a military astronaut is an absolute unit, and very well educated for a jarhead. Both flavors are apparently way more impressive across the board than I am, obviously never even got a callback, but yea, they're mortals. They would definitely make great PCs though. Anyway came here to post. I want to make a module with an Among Us flavor, called 'Who Do You Think You Are!? I Am!" And yes I thought of the title and worked backwards. Basic idea is... it's the Thing. It's exactly The Thing. A Shoggoth is for some reason weak and vulnerable enough to not just eat the party outright, gets caught impersonating a PC real early and decides to just bud off a clone for every member. Basically the only NPC characters are copies of the PCs, played by the DM. One of whom is the original human character. The PCs play themselves except one player gets told they are a Shoggoth clone. So like, one bad PC all the rest are good, all NPCs are bad except for one PC temporarily hostaged to the DM. One assumes that would keep them from just burning all characters voiced by me. Basically, there's still plenty of shoggoth plasm left to gently caress with stuff, so there'll be interlocking crises that the team will have to split to address. Which is obviously the bad guys plan. 2 Things I've got to think on: 1. This might not even be close to the best way to approach this, if anyone has a better way lemme know. 2. Human PCs will obviously yell at their comrades to roast any copy I play. I need the player running the shoggoth to be as enthusiastically murderous towards their own DM-run character so as to avoid suspicion. I don't see a way around this other than to have the players use newly-rolled characters, and treat it as a jumping off point for a new campaign. Otherwise there's too much invested to get a player to try honestly and enthusiastically to encourage the murder of a character they rolled and developed. I thought about promising the player the opportunity to play AS a shoggoth-fragment in future modules but that seems either OP, or artificially lame if I de-power them enough to make them just a tough PC. Also what's their motivation at that point? Anyway, I want the energy halfway between this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDwpwVylj8I and this https://twitter.com/bransonreese/status/856719449155657728 Thinking about Lost Highway has me thinking... If I tell the PC's that ONE of them is a Shoggoth, but do not tell the Shoggoth character, like write bad guys name on a slip of paper, fold it, put it in the center of the table, and that's that, that might keep all the players a little off balance. Odds are they're human but they don't know until they decide to kill one. Dole out clues, and the climax comes when they decide to burn the first NPC. All the remaining bad NPCs merge and attack, and if the player who was secretly a shoggoth had their PC killed, well, now there's nothing for them to protect, and they can play a monster and attack the party members who killed their guy. Where are the holes here? PipHelix fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Oct 5, 2021 |
# ? Oct 5, 2021 04:59 |
|
Ok here's what I've got so far: The investigators are tapped by a joint US/Norwegian firm. An Antarctic research station has gone dark under suspicious circumstances, and as land ownership on the continent is it's own special jurisdiction, whichever nation can send a team to spend one night in the haunted research station will inherit it. They meet with the two NPC team leaders/guides already on the ice, a day's journey out. There's a helicopter for fast travel/survey and an IceCat for supplies. Team has to split up for the travel out there, with the helicopter team touching down first and doing early reconnaissance and the Cat team doing some ice road trucker poo poo to get around crevasses and mountain passes and such. This is all so that I, as DM, can determine when a PC spends time with one of the guides without eyeline on the other team members. Once the team is assembled on site, just before sundown, the guides are explaining how they'll spend the night and what's in the facility, a doppelganger of one of the guides walks in. He pulls the Mystery Man bit, tells the one guide he's back at base with the second guide, both of whom speak on the radio confusedly, they thought the PCs never showed. Cut to screams and the radio shuts down. Around this time the SECOND Guide's doppelganger is discovered, half dead and freezing, locked in a closet. HE starts yelling about the original guides are some kind of beast, killed and ate everyone on the original station, and is going to eat everyone, the usual. "MacReady who? His name is Childs. If he told you his name is MacReady he's lying. And your names, what the gently caress are your names?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIvClGlWiz8 Team's first job is to decide what to do and who to kill, if anyone. Whoever and however many they decide to kill, they are rewarded with the Thing style transformation and meltdown. If the team starts exploring they'll discover - or if they stay put they'll be discovered by - a team of investigators identical to them, coming across the ice on foot, all frostbitten with different stories about how they ended up there, all claiming they were doublecrossed by the guides. It's at this point that I announce that one of the PCs - or maybe 2, I'm still not sure on how this would play with different numbers of 'bad' PCs - is a playing a replicant. Name is written and sealed away. I explain that the PC playing the replicant doesn't know they are one - they're basically this thing's fingers, and are therefore as self-aware as a finger. Which means one of my characters is an actual human, and if that human is killed, that PC character is gone for good. And that one of the PCs is some kind of infection they can't bring back to the world, so they have no tension between how the unkowning monster PC behaves and its motivation, every player GENUINELY wants to escape alive, whether they are real or fake. So ya know, be careful who you roast, there's a 25% chance it's someone you don't want to, also you can't just nope right out. Thing is, ALL of the guides were ALWAYS shoggoths, right from the jump. It just wants to lure nourishment back to its pit, the bit with the doubles is basically playing with its food. Along the journey, the shoggoth guides (canonically - PCs need to discover this) attack at least 1, maybe 2 PC characters, who escape, but are replaced with doubles before anyone notices. This is how I end up controlling that PC. They flee the the monster guide, they run out onto the ice, and are approached right before death by a team of doppelgangers all seemingly close to death who all tell the same story of being attacked and rescue him/her, and make for the base. And that is how a gang of doppelgangers with one PC who would have no reason to doubt the authenticity of its team end up controlled by me. Basically, I need to come up with alibis for the doppel members that do not hang together - the more I think about it the harder it is, since it's all made up anyway. I know the 'truth' about which PC is the true one, I need equally plausible but disproveable alibis for everyone else. As far as gameplay I think certain things make sense - the guides would have been instructing the teams to break off and turn on the generators for power, check the labs for notes, repair the radio tower to establish residence. Assuming the party wants to just bug out, they'll still need to refuel the helicopter and Cat both. Neither can hold the entire party, (certainly not two parties) and both aren't fueled enough for the return trip. No matter what they do they'll need to split off and that leads to some chicken/fox type stuff. Like if all the players just leave all my characters, that means instadeath for the PC I've taken over, with the doppel group claiming they saw her transform and had to roast her. They don't want to leave the escape vehicles unattended, and if they only leave one person, is that opening themselves up to sabotage? Anyway, to make it a quick one-shot, the team decides to roasts either one of my guys or the PC they think is bad, they find out what they did, the remaining shoggoths merge and attack. If they killed an actual doppelganger I'll say that it's weakened enough they stand a chance and if they hosed up and are fighting it at full strength with one PC already down? They better have a fuelled escape vehicle. I think this could be fun! PipHelix fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Oct 5, 2021 |
# ? Oct 5, 2021 14:34 |
|
Seems more The Thing inspired
|
# ? Oct 7, 2021 23:26 |
|
Legitimate criticism? https://www.enworld.org/threads/cthulhu-guns-and-a-sanity-check.596522/ quote:Call of Cthulhu very famously declares that knowledge of archeology or the Dewey decimal system is at least as important for ensuring the survival of investigators as being well armed. This is supposedly because of the alien, inscrutable nature, of the foe and its nigh immunity to the weapons with which humanity might arm itself. But consider the following case taken directly from the 5e RAW:
|
# ? Oct 10, 2021 02:20 |
|
Honestly critters in the Mythos are often plenty vulnerable to bullets, heck sometimes even just some vicious dogs will do plenty against them
|
# ? Oct 10, 2021 02:37 |
|
Charlz Guybon posted:Legitimate criticism? There's some legitimate criticism to be made of how weapon lethality contra survivability is handled in Call (as with the rhino, which cannot be killed by good hits from the weapons that clearly should be able to kill it) but basically everything about "stopping power" and "energy" and otherwise non-lethal hits becoming lethal with big, powerful rounds is nonsense. There's an element of truth to it but the short version of the story is that we still don't actually know what makes one bullet kill and the other not. People survive hits from immensely powerful rounds in real life (as they do in Call) and die to squirrel guns (surprisingly difficult in Call). (The long version is that what kills is slightly better understood, but an incredibly complex process the statistical details of which classified state secrets because of their value to armies.) Also, you know, does realistic firearms lethality actually make for a good Call of Cthulhu experience?
|
# ? Oct 10, 2021 03:14 |
|
quote:Has anyone had experience with investigators that don't cower in horror and instead take this realistic and ruthless approach to scenarios? If so, what's it like?
|
# ? Oct 10, 2021 10:16 |
|
LatwPIAT posted:There's some legitimate criticism to be made of how weapon lethality contra survivability is handled in Call (as with the rhino, which cannot be killed by good hits from the weapons that clearly should be able to kill it) but basically everything about "stopping power" and "energy" and otherwise non-lethal hits becoming lethal with big, powerful rounds is nonsense. There's an element of truth to it but the short version of the story is that we still don't actually know what makes one bullet kill and the other not. People survive hits from immensely powerful rounds in real life (as they do in Call) and die to squirrel guns (surprisingly difficult in Call). (The long version is that what kills is slightly better understood, but an incredibly complex process the statistical details of which classified state secrets because of their value to armies.) My personal take is to just skip or obfuscate damage rolls so that if bullshit happens, you can just handwave it and maintain the tone.
|
# ? Oct 10, 2021 12:21 |
|
Anyway that inspired me to put together a playlist of old military combat training films I've run across on youtube. Mostly US stuff from the forties, oddly enough, but they might illustrate the kind of skills your investigators would have learned in boot camp. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyIShWdwyUtmLI504S34IFXZoIPfcvmtN As far as I can tell, a lot of this stuff sucks by modern standards.
|
# ? Oct 10, 2021 12:28 |
|
LatwPIAT posted:There's some legitimate criticism to be made of how weapon lethality contra survivability is handled in Call (as with the rhino, which cannot be killed by good hits from the weapons that clearly should be able to kill it) but basically everything about "stopping power" and "energy" and otherwise non-lethal hits becoming lethal with big, powerful rounds is nonsense. If that makes things a little too easier. Have more cultists with guns or make the swarms of monsters more numerous or use tougher monsters. Charlz Guybon fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Oct 11, 2021 |
# ? Oct 11, 2021 14:35 |
|
Charlz Guybon posted:It's seems an issue of simple mathematics. If a .303 or 30-06 hits with twice the energy of NATO 5.7mm and the later cause 2d8 of dame than the former should do 4d8. Why should damage scale linearly with energy? Is getting shot twice with 5.7 mm really as lethal as getting shot once with .303?
|
# ? Oct 11, 2021 14:39 |
|
Force equals mass times acceleration. It would seem axiomatic that the more force a person is hit with, the worse it will go for them. Also, for someone complaining about errors, I just noticed a huge one by that author. It should be 5.56mm NATO.
|
# ? Oct 11, 2021 15:06 |
On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of people playing these games have no idea what those different calibers even are, let alone why one should be more damage than another, let alone actually care about it.
|
|
# ? Oct 11, 2021 15:11 |
I'm glad to know ZARDOZ's thoughts about the Call of Cthulhu engine, but we only ever focus on one half of ZARDOZ's message. Did those big game guns work reliably on charging animals? Drone posted:On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of people playing these games have no idea what those different calibers even are, let alone why one should be more damage than another, let alone actually care about it. There is probably some room for looking at damage numbers that were originally put down in the Reagan administration if you are going for realism but I have thought CoC was always pretty clear on the idea being: A gun or two, or even a gat for every investigator, is potentially useful but will not actually solve the problem, and the game doesn't try to model it in a granular basis. Hell, I thought this might be part of the appeal of Delta Green, but I'm not sure how Delta Green engages with the Gun. Nessus fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Oct 11, 2021 |
|
# ? Oct 11, 2021 15:33 |
|
Charlz Guybon posted:Force equals mass times acceleration. It would seem axiomatic that the more force a person is hit with, the worse it will go for them. Trying to simulate gunshot wounds, stab wounds, the physical consequences of fell and eldritch magic, etc. with a single number is going to require some abstraction, okay.
|
# ? Oct 11, 2021 15:56 |
|
Nessus posted:I'm glad to know ZARDOZ's thoughts about the Call of Cthulhu engine, but we only ever focus on one half of ZARDOZ's message. He does mention this one encounter with a rhino: quote:Almost immediately the vicious old beast could be heard tearing through the grass straight towards us. I meant to fire my first shot into the movement as soon as it became visible, and to kill with my second as he swerved. At a very few paces’ distance the grass showed where he was and I fired into it, reloading almost instantaneously. At the shot he swerved across, almost within kicking range, showing a wonderful chance at his neck. I fired, but there was only a click. I opened the bolt and there was my empty case. Nessus posted:Hell, I thought this might be part of the appeal of Delta Green, but I'm not sure how Delta Green engages with the Gun. Siivola fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Oct 11, 2021 |
# ? Oct 11, 2021 16:04 |
|
Drone posted:On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of people playing these games have no idea what those different calibers even are, let alone why one should be more damage than another, let alone actually care about it. I'm something of a moderate gun nerd and for 99% of tabletop purposes you only really need to model small arms cartridges to the granularity of maybe "light/heavy pistol, light/heavy/antimateriel rifle." And with modern defense/duty loads making even the much debated .45 vs 9mm luger a horse a piece as far as putting down people/deep ones, you might not even need "light/heavy" for pistols.
|
# ? Oct 11, 2021 16:12 |
|
Thinking about this more, the actual weird oversight with the rules is that IRL, handguns are pretty difficult to aim compared to rifles.
|
# ? Oct 11, 2021 16:15 |
|
|
# ? Jun 5, 2024 19:30 |
|
That’s why they separated handguns from rifle/shotgun. Separate skills for separate tasks.
|
# ? Oct 11, 2021 16:23 |