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Can you just narratively start the adventure with them having been captured? If not, maybe an insider NPC tips them off that someone is making moves to capture them - the best thing to do is fake acquiescence or they could lose the villain forever. They'll have the upper hand since their double agent is there to release / arm them. But then oops their inside guy got found out and murdered.
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Aug 4, 2022 16:42
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Honestly you may want to broach the topic with your players if you want to go for that kind of loss of helplessness. You don't have to give them the context of what's going to happen or why, just be like "this is kind of a specific idea I have that I think would be cool for narrative purposes and we can all have like a moment where you all recount what happened in brief and how you got snatched' give them some agency and also explicitly tell them so they can work off your ideas and have fun with it 'cuz there's nothing worse than "this is a dream sequence but I didn't tell you and nothing makes sense and you don't act like it's a dream". Alternately lean into the pulp and make the kidnapping a spectacle setpiece of your session where suddenly everything gets turned on its head because the dude pushes a button and all of the radio-activated security snaps shut.
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Aug 4, 2022 23:08
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This came up on the Pelgrane blog a while back. According to the GUMSHOE devs, in order to get the players to surrender instead of fighting to the death you have to offer
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Aug 4, 2022 23:53
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Generally speaking, there are three things that TRPG players won't forgive you and/or the NPCs: their poo poo being stolen, an NPC betraying them and you railroading them into getting captured. Use either of these with greatest of care.
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Aug 5, 2022 00:32
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Thank you for all the suggestions. I don't usually comment ooc on the game events before they've actually happened in the game and I can't start with them already captured since we ended the previous session in the middle of things, on an unrelated cliffhanger, though this gave me an idea - since the villain could be considered a powerful magician, they can prepare a magical trap that once triggered, causes them to go into a zombie-like state, next thing they know they're chained up in a dinky basement, getting roughed up by a pair of cultist with no recollection of what happened in-between. There they can try and piece together memento-style what happened since their meeting and figure out a plan for their escape.
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Aug 5, 2022 14:35
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mellonbread posted:This came up on the Pelgrane blog a while back. According to the GUMSHOE devs, in order to get the players to surrender instead of fighting to the death you have to offer All of these require breaking the fourth wall of the game in some respect, too, either explicitly or to reassure your players that the reward is worth it. That's not a huge deal but is something to keep in mind and I agree that it may help to say, "Your characters will hate this, but it's a staple of the pulp genre and you will get a chance to escape in a cool or dramatically appropriate fashion." In general, I'd just support the idea that this is something to do sparingly and with care. I think the scene where the character(s) get black bagged and captured generally works better in film or books than in games. There's a few reasons for this. 1.) Players expect (reasonably) that their characters are proficient at their skills; if they made it to London and it's a pulp game, they're presumably pretty strong within their specialties. For an ambush, this means that for it to go off perfectly, none of the characters will notice that things seem suspicious or that the meeting site is ideal for an abduction. In my experience, it's unlikely that a whole group of investigators will fail their Spot Hidden or Idea or whatever rolls for that. 2.) I do think the black bag and abduction thing works better for one or two vulnerable characters. In movies, it's usually 2-4 people per main character grabbed. That's a lot of cultists to grab a group of four investigators and the scene - at least in my mind - strains suspension of disbelief, especially if happening in a public place like a world's fair. To me, the PCs being picked off one by one in the world's fair is definitely creepier and could make them much more paranoid in the future. This can also be sidestepped if the meeting is in a suitably weird or creepy corner of the world's fair - a particular strange exhibit, a suspicious as heck corner, and so on. After all, H.H. Holmes set up shop during a previous World's Fair in Chicago - people can certainly disappear at huge gatherings like that, but think about who else would likely be around. I think Hostile V's idea about being locked in with a cult leader is a cool way to do it, too. 3.) players do really hate fights/encounters that feel predetermined along with being captured and so points 1 and 2 will really stick out to them if they feel like they had no chance to avoid the ambush once they showed up. When playing, I once had my character get drugged and captured by ~ fantasy ninjas ~ with absolutely no way to anticipate it or respond to it. It sucked and was stupid, especially since the character was a tactics minded warlord. Avoid that. 4.) You could do the "enemy offers them food, it's drugged, so they wake up captured" bit - which I think also fits a pulp tone - but be ready for what happens if players get suspicious and one or more declines to eat or drink. But if that works, you could go with moths' idea about them waking up captured or start a session that way. 5.) In my experience, with the suspension of disbelief, it can be hard to see how competent antagonists would make it easy to escape. So that's something else to think about ahead of time - are they really competent? Is there a guard that can be bribed or bluffed? A poorly maintained makeshift cell? A sudden attack by a splinter cult group or an undercover member of a rival sect also in the cell? Concealing robes that can be stolen? NPCs could also mention that someone got kidnapped or snatched lately, to help establish that the local cult does stuff like that. It serves as both foreshadowing and a warning. I ma not too familiar with that part of Masks, so you may need to adjust to fit the story. Weyd posted:Thank you for all the suggestions. I don't usually comment ooc on the game events before they've actually happened in the game and I can't start with them already captured since we ended the previous session in the middle of things, on an unrelated cliffhanger, though this gave me an idea - since the villain could be considered a powerful magician, they can prepare a magical trap that once triggered, causes them to go into a zombie-like state, next thing they know they're chained up in a dinky basement, getting roughed up by a pair of cultist with no recollection of what happened in-between. edit: in response to your post I think that's fairly pulpy, but you may want to consider using an X-Card for that kind of loss of agency and helplessness for the characters. That can push buttons that the threat of madness or death doesn't and thus I'd recommend having the safety tools handy. Sionak fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Aug 5, 2022 |
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Aug 5, 2022 15:46
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I agree that this trope should be used sparingly, if at all, funnily enough, just this chapter of the book describes not one, but two scenes involving the party getting captured as a way to progress the story. I've only ever tried it once before over the three years that we've been playing together and it devolved into a 2 hour long D&D fight as the players slowly exhausted themselves, not something that I'd want to repeat. I really like the idea of them getting captured in a bizarre world-fair attraction, the campaign book itself doesn't really go into the details about the world's fair, gonna have to do some research. Our group is very much on the light-hearted pulpy low-RP side, old friends having beer and some laughs, it's usually a good start if they manage to recall what happened in our last session, but I certainly understand how this could be a heavy subject matter in some groups.
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Aug 5, 2022 17:17
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If you're in need of "pulp era" miniatures, PulpFigures.com is running a Kickstarter deal for their upcoming "Arcane Academics" figures: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1066miniatures/arcane-academics/ My group and I move back and forth pretty regularly between miniatures and theater-of-the-mind, so I'm not here for that debate, but I'd love to hear/see if anyone else here is using miniatures.
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Aug 5, 2022 20:04
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I never have, but I wouldn’t be opposed. When we’ve used tokens on maps in the rare instance, my players tend to forget to move their corresponding pieces, instead just declaring “I am also in that room.” The only CoC adventures I’ve found it necessary for were the Saturnine Chalice and the Code, both of which are set in a single house, and can have different things happen based on who’s got what and when in relation to where they are.
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Aug 5, 2022 21:17
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Alehkhs posted:If you're in need of "pulp era" miniatures, PulpFigures.com is running a Kickstarter deal for their upcoming "Arcane Academics" figures: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1066miniatures/arcane-academics/ gently caress, that middle row is sick. The rest are fine too but that middle row might just make me drop an all-in pledge. Hhh.
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Aug 6, 2022 11:27
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Wait.  Is... is that... 
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Aug 6, 2022 15:11
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I think there's (at least) an Isaac Asimov and Alistair Crawley in there as well. Sweet figures but pricey.
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Aug 6, 2022 15:27
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moths posted:I think there's (at least) an Isaac Asimov and Alistair Crawley in there as well. They blew it by not giving Asimov a bolo tie.
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Aug 6, 2022 18:29
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mellonbread posted:This came up on the Pelgrane blog a while back. According to the GUMSHOE devs, in order to get the players to surrender instead of fighting to the death you have to offer Seconded. I once had my players get railroaded like that - forced to commit a crime. I made sure they were in a small room in a basement, surrounded by more NPCs than they could reasonably deal with, and the promise that once they'd blooded themselves in this organization would think of them as trustworthy and open a bunch of threads they'd explicitly been told to look into. And when they got squeamish I let the one player talk their way into doing something else, even though canonically they probably would have been killed and dumped in a river. At least for me, I would include a positively *ludicrous* amount of muscle popping out of nowhere when the bad guy says 'youre coming with me'. Even if they're smashy smashies, I think they'll cotton on that the plan is now for them to resume play in this guys hideout. E: Reading people's responses on players disliking railroading - the person in charge of the criminal organization was the MacGuffin they were explicitly out to find, and them getting trapped basically involved me describing this guy's reaction to being informed he's in danger at his home, then going 'someplace safe' and taking the party along that got increasingly bad and weird until they find themselves in Training Day. There were a lot of decisions they could have made otherwise along the way, but of course this was the Optimal GM Outcome. I think it's doable as long as the players feel like they are making the decision to put themselves in a trap, and it sounds like your players are consciously choosing to ignore everyone yelling Trap! Trap! at them so it should be ok. I also once split a party by giving them a time deadline and tasks spread across the city. And the secret killer asked for help in the library - the party having only one smart person and that person having no real combat skills, it was easy to kidnap them without having to do more than threaten violence. I still gave them a Spot Hidden check, and let them scribble a note for the party when they came looking for her. PipHelix fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Aug 7, 2022 |
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Aug 7, 2022 16:17
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One of the best phrases in GMing is "It's obvious to you that..." This lets you convey important game info in a way that might otherwise seem railroady, while leaving a gap for the players to fill in exactly why it's that way. In a way, you're communicating behind the scenes info directly to the players, and that blunts the sting of losing agency. To reframe PipHelix's example, consider: It's obvious to you that these guys won't take 'no' for an answer or It's obvious to your characters that the leads, and the investigation, will terminate here. This isn't to say forcing a point is always good, be open to alternate solutions! Maybe they could turn the tables on that crime gang by catching their bookie alone and making him talk. Maybe they work with a rival gang to bring down the plot-centric one. There's usually another way and it's a cool surprise to find out about it.
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Aug 7, 2022 16:37
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Are there any published modules that are similar to/inspired by Event Horizon? Like with the premise of a spooky ghost ship, the crew all gone or driven mad due to bizarre mind-warping hell shenanigans, etc.
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Aug 12, 2022 16:39
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Are the later scenarios in Horror On The Orient Express better than the earlier ones? I've read up through Milan and all four of the mainline scenarios are jam packed with railroaded PC actions and assumptions. I knew I was going to have to rewrite a lot of stuff in moving it into the 1960s but goddamn, Lausanne and Milan both suck real hard.
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Aug 16, 2022 16:18
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Are you saying that a scenario with a train-line's name in the title is too railroady?
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Aug 16, 2022 19:33
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Lumbermouth posted:Are the later scenarios in Horror On The Orient Express better than the earlier ones? I've read up through Milan and all four of the mainline scenarios are jam packed with railroaded PC actions and assumptions. I use the books for setting detail and to mine for ideas, not to actually run as-written.
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Aug 16, 2022 22:03
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Warthur posted:The campaign's a real mixed bag and I don't 100% understand why it's got the high reputation it has. Some of the scenarios are quite good, but they're generally the ones not connected to the main plot (and even then this varies). The actual climactic clutch of scenarios also have some really contrived poo poo (basically, the main villain's plan makes very little sense unless you assume they were formulating it specifically to allow for the exciting climax of the campaign). I'm already using the alternate ending and cutting Mehmet Makyrat out entirely. I'm going for a Hammer horror/giallo vibe and I'm planning on expanding Fenalik and the Jigsaw Prince's involvement throughout the campaign.
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Aug 16, 2022 23:21
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Lumbermouth posted:I'm already using the alternate ending and cutting Mehmet Makyrat out entirely. I'm going for a Hammer horror/giallo vibe and I'm planning on expanding Fenalik and the Jigsaw Prince's involvement throughout the campaign. FWIW, so far as I can tell the campaign is the way it is because it was written in a round-robin style - the co-ordinating designer laid out the basic framework and then got a whole lot of other people to pitch in individual chapters, then had to massage everything into shape. So my hunch is that Fenalik and the Jigsaw Prince were both contributions from those other authors which then had to be fleshed out more so that they didn't seem quite so incongruous; either way, the design-by-committee process is probably a big reason why the core plot isn't as strong as it could be, and why some of the optional adventures are stronger than the core chapters. Are you using the Reign of Terror scenario book? It strikes me as being particularly useful if you want Fenalik to have a big role, even though it is a fairly long detour and I'd ordinarily be mildly worried about players totally forgetting what was going on with their "present day" investigators by the end of running it.
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Aug 17, 2022 02:04
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Lumbermouth posted:Are the later scenarios in Horror On The Orient Express better than the earlier ones? I've read up through Milan and all four of the mainline scenarios are jam packed with railroaded PC actions and assumptions. I hated that book SO much. I recall at one point walking into a room with a bunch of clockwork monstrosities in a belltower. My character had a crowbar so I immediately declare that I set about smashing or jamming every gear I can find before we do ANYTHING. Then when we grab the MacGuffin the clockwork still springs to life, because that's how the book had it happening. (I had a bad GM but still). Anyway, after the dust settled I walked that character straight out of the belltower and re-rolled that ScoobyDoo dog character so that I could canonically be excused from trying to outthink the obvious trap in the book that are apparently so plot-critical you aren't allowed to escape them. "I'll be over here doggin around. Let me know if you need someone chewed on, or a trail sniffed out, or if I need to roll damage or SAN to progress the plot." Eventually another character killed the party with a lit bundle of dynamite cause they were like, 'would this kill the Vampire guy? Would this destroy the statue pieces? Ok cool, problem solved." E: I don't have Warthur's behind-the-screen perspective though, I just know from a player's perspective that it was a neverending slog where no task seemed to have any relation to any other one, except occasionally we'd get some chunk of a statue that badly hosed up whatever character had to carry it. Good GMing can probably save it but what can't be saved by good GMing? DrSunshine posted:Are there any published modules that are similar to/inspired by Event Horizon? Like with the premise of a spooky ghost ship, the crew all gone or driven mad due to bizarre mind-warping hell shenanigans, etc. All I can think of is the Venture Bros. Ep "Ghosts of the Sargasso" PipHelix fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 18:38
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PipHelix posted:E: I don't have Warthur's behind-the-screen perspective though, I just know from a player's perspective that it was a neverending slog where no task seemed to have any relation to any other one, except occasionally we'd get some chunk of a statue that badly hosed up whatever character had to carry it. Good GMing can probably save it but what can't be saved by good GMing?
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Aug 18, 2022 22:27
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I cant imagine running HotOE RAW. That said, Horror is one of the best campaigns I’ve ever run but we pulped the hell out of it and I let a lot of rule of cool stuff in I normally wouldn’t have. Basically became Indiana Jones vs the Mythos. That campaign eventually rolled into a massive mega campaign with Tatters of the King and Masks. I think that 4 year game convinced me that CoC is more fun when hard boiled investigators punch Shoggoths but it really isn’t your momma’s CoC.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:58
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Yeah, if I ever run any big CoC campaigns (I've been running short modules so far) I'd go Full Pulp.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:01
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They’re just not survivable otherwise. CoC as written nails the tone of HPL’s work but in turn that really thrives on the one shot nature of disposable investigators that are all going to hell tonight. If that campaign went any longer we would have wrapped up with Beyond the Mountains of Madness which is another one that would be absolutely impossible for RAW investigators to ever survive without stripping all the fun from the table.
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Aug 19, 2022 18:04
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weekly font posted:If that campaign went any longer we would have wrapped up with Beyond the Mountains of Madness which is another one that would be absolutely impossible for RAW investigators to ever survive without stripping all the fun from the table.
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Aug 19, 2022 19:10
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mellonbread posted:Why do you say this? I've read and played through the campaign, and it's not particularly lethal until you get to the very end.
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Aug 19, 2022 19:23
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mellonbread posted:Why do you say this? I've read and played through the campaign, and it's not particularly lethal until you get to the very end. It’s certainly the least pulpy or least likely to end in a TPK but yeah the entire ending is designed to be a death march especially THAT spoilery part. I really wonder how that railroad landed at the three tables in history who got to it.
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Aug 19, 2022 20:01
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weekly font posted:It’s certainly the least pulpy or least likely to end in a TPK but yeah the entire ending is designed to be a death march especially THAT spoilery part. I really wonder how that railroad landed at the three tables in history who got to it. I don't think there's a way to learn about fire ignoring the shoggoth's damage resistance from the clues in the module, but realistically the only people who played Mountains were CoC superfans who would already know about it and metagame. The expedition has flame weapons in the form of tools and those heatable ice knives that could damage a shoggoth. They could also improvise incendiary bombs using oxygen tanks and other materials - thermite was discovered several decades before the module begins, the tools and planes would provide ample iron and aluminum to fuel the reaction. Improvising weapons of this type is one of the primary reasons for players to take CoC's panoply of science, craft and mechanical skills. The elders themselves are tough but not invulnerable - a krag or springfield rifle deals enough damage to injure one, and experienced CoC players often equipped their characters with nitro rifles and elephant guns anyway. The elders don't actually have that much firepower either, the disintegration gun is short range and the rest are armed only with stone blades and their tentacles. The whole thing becomes more interesting if the players bring a group of veteran characters packing heavy weapons, spells and magic items. This was a common mode of play even before the release of the dedicated Pulp books. Mountains mentions this as a possibility several times but never digs into the full implications. I heard of one group that used summoned byhakees to fly around once they reached the city, rather than loving with the airplanes. mellonbread fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Aug 19, 2022 |
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Aug 19, 2022 20:21
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weekly font posted:I cant imagine running HotOE RAW. That said, Horror is one of the best campaigns I’ve ever run but we pulped the hell out of it and I let a lot of rule of cool stuff in I normally wouldn’t have. Basically became Indiana Jones vs the Mythos. That campaign eventually rolled into a massive mega campaign with Tatters of the King and Masks. This makes me feel better about committing to running this. I was gonna have to do some work anyway to adapt a linear campaign to a more Masks-like sandbox in the Jet Age, but now I'm trying to spread a lot of the investigative tissue out into different locations as opposed to frontloading so much of it. The thing I'm most looking forward to is adapting the Venice chapter to the Years of Lead.
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Aug 19, 2022 21:00
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mellonbread posted:We fled the city immediately after returning from the pharos, not staying long enough for the encounter with the shoggoths and elder thing with the disintegration gun. We had already fed most of the NPCs to the construct so there wasn't anyone around to challenge the decision or encourage us to stay.
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Aug 19, 2022 23:46
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Are you asking about Cthulhu D20? I haven't read it and I don't think anyone ever did a conversion for Mountains. There's a solid fan conversion to Trail hosted on the Pelgrane site, if you prefer GUMSHOE to d100.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:00
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Nah I had a joke misfire and then I couldn't edit it because I had a work call. It seems like carrying in an elephant gun into the Antarctic would be kind of metagaming. The thermite thing is clever, but also like, your goal didn't seem intrinsically to be 'kill the Elder Things and the Shoggoth' -- indeed in some ways that's the worse outcome
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Aug 20, 2022 02:08
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Nessus posted:It seems like carrying in an elephant gun into the Antarctic would be kind of metagaming. The player characters also know from the very beginning of the module that there's a Nazi German expedition headed for the same territory as them. While it might be anachronistic for the characters to automatically assume the Nazis were the "villains" of the piece, they would definitely know the Huns were agents of a heavily armed military dictatorship. Bringing some heavy ordnance in case of a violent confrontation is reasonable, especially since the scenario opens with a deep dive into the cargo manifest and invites the players to add whatever they think is necessary to the bill of goods. It's hypothetically possible for the characters to get a copy of the Pym text at the beginning of the adventure, if they're aggressive about pursuing the German agents. That would let them know they were up against nasty blob things and giant vegetable people, although they might not take it literally or assume it necessitated heavy firepower. Ultimately you're correct though, killing all the elders basically ends the world. The biggest omission of the module is that it offers no guidance if the players use their knowledge of the elder thing language to talk with the aliens. The authors set up a scenario where failure means total extinction, explain the scenario to the players, and provide a channel of communication to the elders, but don't address what happens if the players cooperate with them.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:17
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I recall that one does kind of come up at some point... it WOULD be entirely reasonable to bring a few rifles to shoot penguins and seals for food, after all. So perhaps throwing in one Big Gun in the mix might be logistically sensible. I had been thinking mostly with novices. But regarding what you said at the end assuming you could communicate with the Elder Things I imagine they would be delighted to work with you at least on a short-term basis until they can get the system up and running. I forget if they were capable of eventually repairing it without nervous systems if left unmolested, since they have that seed of the aged future adventurers still spreading out dead heads on the doomed tower... I would imagine, however, you'd have to kill at least a few more people.
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Aug 20, 2022 03:28
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Pulp for life To give one acutal play example. If you're not tommy gunning Lloigors in the Dreamlands while the ghost of the Great Fire of London is raging around you what are you even doing?
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Aug 20, 2022 15:31
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The reason why I don't normally incorporate a lot of combat is just because I don't like to run combat. I don't like how it takes the players immediately into the "count the HP numbers and damage rolls" mindset from videogames, and I don't like how it slows the pace down from progress in the actual investigation to round-by-round plays. Combat in CoC is so deadly that I find the tension is just "let's roll to see if I die" rather than the tension I'm going for, which comes from atmosphere and a sense of mounting desperation. I typically count my sessions as more successful based on the number of plot points and progress made in investigating the mystery, so if I spend half an hour or an hour or so negotiating a combat scene it's less actual progress from the plot perspective.
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Aug 20, 2022 16:07
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Yeah my experience has been that there will be maybe one or two fights when I have run con one shots. In one case the "last fight" turned out to be the one survivor on a horse leading the monster into a trap, which I thought was pretty sweet.
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Aug 20, 2022 19:50
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DrSunshine posted:The reason why I don't normally incorporate a lot of combat is just because I don't like to run combat. I don't like how it takes the players immediately into the "count the HP numbers and damage rolls" mindset from videogames, and I don't like how it slows the pace down from progress in the actual investigation to round-by-round plays. Combat in CoC is so deadly that I find the tension is just "let's roll to see if I die" rather than the tension I'm going for, which comes from atmosphere and a sense of mounting desperation. I typically count my sessions as more successful based on the number of plot points and progress made in investigating the mystery, so if I spend half an hour or an hour or so negotiating a combat scene it's less actual progress from the plot perspective. This and I don't understand why so many of the official adventures are so combat heavy. I feel like Escape From Innsmouth, for instance, could have been a lot more interesting as an investigation into the weird poo poo the deep ones were doing with the backdrop of the ongoing raid around it rather than "here are some Thompson submachine guns, go kill those bad guys."
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Aug 20, 2022 20:00
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