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Cool stuff, though honestly, I have felt it's kind of weird how there's like this reverse completionist mentality around a lot of Call of Cthulhu stuff. 'We won, because we avoided half the stuff' -- most other games, that's not cause for celebration. Did the ghouls themselves tell you they only eat the rich?
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May 29, 2023 07:37
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Nessus posted:Cool stuff, though honestly, I have felt it's kind of weird how there's like this reverse completionist mentality around a lot of Call of Cthulhu stuff. 'We won, because we avoided half the stuff' -- most other games, that's not cause for celebration. OSR dungeon crawls often play the same way.
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May 29, 2023 10:12
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Doing stupid poo poo and getting killed is the salt of a long Cthulhu Campaign. Currently I'm on my 5th character in the 'The Masks of Nyarlathotep" campaign and we have just entered London. Most of the OG characters died in Peru and rest of the Peru survivors died in New York. (1) Aging Broadway Actor faking being an archeologist died, because we released something. (Note: don't use lot of dynamite on a mythos sites) (2) Old Catholic Priest / Cult leader ran away with a genuine mythos book. (Might be back) (3) Weird Tales Novelist died fighting against a cult leader in NY. (4) ex-Irish Freedom Fighter/Chicago Mob mechanic was detained and is in police custody in Liverpool (Probably will be back. Another player plays his Dreamlands-clone) (5) Current one is a retired ME Colonial Administrator / Archeologist from North England.
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May 29, 2023 10:20
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Nessus posted:Cool stuff, though honestly, I have felt it's kind of weird how there's like this reverse completionist mentality around a lot of Call of Cthulhu stuff. 'We won, because we avoided half the stuff' -- most other games, that's not cause for celebration. It was actually unintentional. We just never picked up on a lot of the things the GM was putting down, like secret doors and poo poo. When poo poo got real, we kind of just being goofballs and buckled ip. As for the ghouls, an old rich family had been using them for years as slaves. They all had collars on that controlled them. They were using them to dig up graves, but the grandson wanted to go abroad to the global south and use them to plunder tombs. They were feeding them poor people, iirc. So, we stole their necklaces to protect ourselves and watched the ghouls ate them. And then killed all the rich people. Then told the ghouls to sleep. They were kind of cool though and even helped save my friend when we were escaping
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May 29, 2023 13:36
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Covok posted:It was actually unintentional. We just never picked up on a lot of the things the GM was putting down, like secret doors and poo poo. When poo poo got real, we kind of just being goofballs and buckled ip.
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May 30, 2023 05:51
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Covok posted:It was actually unintentional. We just never picked up on a lot of the things the GM was putting down, like secret doors and poo poo. When poo poo got real, we kind of just being goofballs and buckled ip. Hah! You guys skipping/missing all the secret areas kinda reminds me of this scene from Ripping Yarns  Locked in a B&B and about to be killed, he stumbles upon various secret exits (as it's a smuggler's cottage) and just randomly picks one, rather than being thorough and potentially dealing with the threat
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May 30, 2023 06:30
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Elendil004 posted:Rivers of London stuff Any time anything interesting happens in the novel, the protagonist immediately phones his superior officer, or another police officer demands to speak with his boss. They have a conference and discuss their options before drafting and executing a plan of action. This is a completely reasonable thing for the characters to do, and a death sentence for an interactive game. If I was playing an RPG and every adventure had multiple lengthy planning discussions led by a powerful metaplot NPC, I'd quit. The RPG book specifically tells you to avoid sitting around the table developing lengthy plans of action, but it also repeatedly emphasizes that any mage in the British police force or state security apparatus must be trained and supervised by another licensed mage, either the big boss or the protagonist. I think what I'd do is create an NPC wizard who acts as middle management between the canon characters and acts as a Delta Green style handler for the players. This guy gives them briefings, and can help mobilize official resources, but leaves them alone to actually play the game. We can just say that any business regarding the other uber-powerful canon characters (Lady Ty, Big Daddy Thames, etc) will be left to the canon protagonists to deal with, and they won't appear in adventures at all. That way the players get some freedom of action back, rather than spending the entire game groveling for permission from metaplot NPCs to do anything fun.
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May 30, 2023 19:46
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If anyone was interested in FFG's Arkham Horror co-op card game, it's $12 on Miniature Market today.
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May 31, 2023 17:02
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More on Rivers of London. The skill system not only simplifies the skill list, it also simplifies skill assignment and ratings. Every character has every basic skill at 30%. You also get to tag a certain number of skills, raising them to 60%. There are also expert skills, which start at 0% but can be tagged to raise them to 60%. Hard difficulty rolls are done at half the skill, there aren't any other gradations like one-fifth. I dislike that the system has both fractional skills AND penalty dice to reflect task difficulty, but that's also a beef I have with base CoC. I'm in favor of skill simplification, both in the size of the list and its use, so overall I see the changes as positive. In place of a SAN system, Rivers of London has a generic "impairment" mechanic. If something hosed up happens to your character, you have to make a POW save. Fail the save and you get an impairment debuff, which increases your critical failure range tenfold (from 00 to 90-00) and provokes an "involuntary action" from your character. There are a number of suggested actions but they all fall into the classic fight/freeze/flee paradigm that veterans of the genre are familiar with. Rivers of London is not a horror series or a horror game where characters experience long term decline of their mental state, but the devs clearly wanted to reflect the moments from the books where the characters have an involuntary negative reaction to something bad that happens. When you need to make the save is entirely up to the Keeper. There are a suggested list of circumstances, like seeing a friend get killed, finding a mutilated corpse, or being chased by a scary monster. The text admonishes the Keeper to account for differences in character backgrounds and experiences - a police officer doesn't need to save when they find a normal dead body, and an experienced mage doesn't need to save when they get a fireball thrown at them. Handling it purely with handwaving has the advantage of avoiding a complex psychological hardening system like the ones in Delta Green or Unknown Armies. The obvious disadvantage is things without strong mechanical hooks are commonly ignored in actual play. In an actual combat where the Keeper is managing a round robin of half a dozen characters, my prediction is the impairment system is going to be forgotten about, rather than remembering that certain characters are supposed to be reacting differently to danger according to GM fiat. I did something similar when I ran Resident Evil in Delta Green. A basic POW save to avoid freaking out at something truly horrifying, rather than a full SAN system that wouldn't really fit the setting. In retrospect I don't think it was necessary. Characters in the Resident Evil world don't panic and flee danger, they run away because the player identifies a threat as too dangerous to fight. Which is something the players don't need mechanical compulsion to do.
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Jun 1, 2023 20:39
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Out of curiosity, have any of your players brought a (non scooby) dog in DG/CoC games? One of my players has a dog as one of her bonds (a Dalmatian) and wants to bring it along to watch the car etc., while they're investigating. I have the stat block from the handler's guide (below, in case anyone wants it) but I just wanted to check if anyone has had any experience including a dog and whether they found they needed to handle things any differently, when having a friendly NPC dog on the scene. Like... I guess if anything is going on outside, do an occasional alertness check and have it bark if it senses anything unnatural nearby?quote:STR 12 CON 13 DEX 13 POW 10 EDIT: Oh also, now that the 'prologue' is out of the way, the team for our campaign has been finalized. The group has a SWAT officer, a detective, a USPIS agent and a mystery author (who was kinda roped into it, but is happy to help - and is also under some strict NDAs to not contain operational data in their books  )
Major Isoor fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jun 5, 2023 |
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Jun 5, 2023 01:37
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Sorry for the DP - just wondering though, has anyone played or looked at From the Dust and/or Presence for Delta Green? Since they came out fairly recently and seem to be quite similar. Are they linked (or able to be easily linked, anyway) scenarios? Since it seems like they both take place right nearby and have the same themes. Speaking of themes, I was also wondering about - is anyone able to drop any spoiler-tagged details on the nature of the unnatural entities in the scenario? From what little I've been able to glean it seems like it's typical Cthulhu, which is perfectly fine - I'm just trying to avoid Mi-Go stuff for the group at present, is all.
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Jun 16, 2023 04:16
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Major Isoor posted:Out of curiosity, have any of your players brought a (non scooby) dog in DG/CoC games? One of my players has a dog as one of her bonds (a Dalmatian) and wants to bring it along to watch the car etc., while they're investigating. I have the stat block from the handler's guide (below, in case anyone wants it) but I just wanted to check if anyone has had any experience including a dog and whether they found they needed to handle things any differently, when having a friendly NPC dog on the scene. Like... I guess if anything is going on outside, do an occasional alertness check and have it bark if it senses anything unnatural nearby? Looking at these stats, the dog seems like it'd be stronger and harder to kill than most humans! 
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Jun 16, 2023 04:52
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DrSunshine posted:Looking at these stats, the dog seems like it'd be stronger and harder to kill than most humans! Ruh roh! Now that you mention it, you have a point there... I was thinking about dropping the stats by a point across the board, just so it's not quite as good as a guard dog - but yeah, guard dogs are tough! Definitely needs a slight reduction there, I think
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Jun 16, 2023 05:24
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Given how Call of Cthulhu HP works, a hearty big dog probably would have as much HP as a human, and might even get a little damage reduction if they have a thick protective coat. I once statted up a tiger and the tiger had, just sort of incidentally, 28 HP.
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Jun 16, 2023 06:39
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Oh I don't doubt that a dog could be harder to kill than a human, depending on the size of the dog. I was picturing a normal dog, though, not a big pupper or like a German shepherd or something.
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Jun 16, 2023 14:55
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I don't have them handy at the moment but Mellonbread has some DG Canine handler rules which might help.
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Jun 16, 2023 15:32
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I'm looking for a big table of randomly rollable "mini-encounters" with the unnatural. The context is that a kind of rift or infinite Pandora's box-like tunnel of unnatural anomalies has suddenly appeared under my players' base. I want to use it as a downtime option in between missions for them to explore and possibly retrieve some useful items, gain Cthulhu Mythos, and so on. I want them to be not too dangerous that they're risking my investigators' lives, but enough to give the unsettled sense that they are not safe at their home base anymore.
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Jun 16, 2023 19:51
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I know there’s always the guy who says “buy this game for the random tables” but Esoteric Enterprises is chock full of useful urban horror tables. Silent Legions is also good, but the tables are more about structure than specific ideas.
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Jun 16, 2023 22:15
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DrSunshine posted:I'm looking for a big table of randomly rollable "mini-encounters" with the unnatural. The context is that a kind of rift or infinite Pandora's box-like tunnel of unnatural anomalies has suddenly appeared under my players' base. I want to use it as a downtime option in between missions for them to explore and possibly retrieve some useful items, gain Cthulhu Mythos, and so on. I want them to be not too dangerous that they're risking my investigators' lives, but enough to give the unsettled sense that they are not safe at their home base anymore. Is it the 1920s or the modern day?
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Jun 17, 2023 07:14
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Nessus posted:You could ask the SCP thread for some suggestions for minor/low-key anomalies. Are you trying to give people bizarre/risky magical items and indirect Mythos lore by osmosis, or are you going for more of a "finding the remnants of old tomes" situation? I didn't know there was an SCP thread! My intent is the former option, and the setting is the 1930s.
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Jun 17, 2023 15:22
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In the latest edition you can defer all your sanity loss for mythos lore gain until you either declare your PC believes now, or until a non-natural event makes you lose SAN. (So not war, ordinary bodies, etc.) Then you lose it all at once. Just letting you know.
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Jun 22, 2023 20:08
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Nessus posted:In the latest edition you can defer all your sanity loss for mythos lore gain until you either declare your PC believes now, or until a non-natural event makes you lose SAN. (So not war, ordinary bodies, etc.) Ahaha, that's great.
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Jul 3, 2023 00:38
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mellonbread posted:Any time anything interesting happens in the novel, the protagonist immediately phones his superior officer, or another police officer demands to speak with his boss. They have a conference and discuss their options before drafting and executing a plan of action. This is a completely reasonable thing for the characters to do, and a death sentence for an interactive game. This often happens in games I play in - everyone decides to sit down with a map of the final show down and strategize fire zones and booby traps and this and that. Which, it can be fun, but eventually it gets to a point where we're like 'this is a made up place in a made up situation and hopefully we trust the DM to not TPK us because we didn't explicitly declare fallback zones after our initial emplacements get overrun'. I will say that when it's happened for me, as DM, I just generally say 'yes' to anything. Makes the players feel validated and creative and satisfied so we can all get the hell out of there. But the last time I did this, I was hoping for a big mad max level car chase in the desert, and they picked - with no idea what was coming - a meet in a parking lot they pulled off google maps; narrow, surrounded by high craggy hills, and put most of their guys in sniper positions. I like to think I made it work and I probably could have come up with a reason why for whatever reason that particular spot wouldn't work, but I feel like then we would have gone down that annoying 2-hour planning rabbit hole that only ends once 60% or more of the table has pointedly excused themselves for a bathroom break or to grab a new beer. Any general tips, rules of thumb to either recognize and head off the 'imaginary trafalgar pushing fake boats around on a map spread on a table' phase of a game, or to conclude it in a way that makes everyone feel like they weren't shut down or railroaded?
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Aug 4, 2023 14:12
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Don't use maps ever is my go-to solution.
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Aug 4, 2023 14:19
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Flakey posted:Don't use maps ever is my go-to solution. I don't generally, either. CoC does really well as theater of the mind, anyway.
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Aug 4, 2023 15:07
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3 Action Economist posted:I don't generally, either. CoC does really well as theater of the mind, anyway. Same! Although that being said I do like to use building plans/maps for reference, to help players know where rooms etc are. Especially since a couple of players find it much better that way. But we're flexible in combat - much more 'theatre of the mind' style than say, D&D, that's for sure
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Aug 4, 2023 15:14
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Maps are for miniature games or war games only (D&D included). I like to use photos for visual reference, but never ones that are laid out like maps, or aerial photos or the like.
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Aug 4, 2023 15:24
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I guess to some degree the "planning fugue" is unavoidable. In a world and game system where a single die roll can remove a group of player characters from existence, lengthy planning discussions to minimize risk are a reasonable response to danger. One thing you can do is let character skill sub for player skill, especially to break a deadlocked planning discussion or salve player anxiety about whether their idea is good enough. In Delta Green that's what the Military Science skill is for, I assume something similar exists in Call of Cthulhu. The players don't need to fuss over every detail of the V shaped ambush if they have a reasonably good idea and the characters have the requisite skills to pull off the technical elements. You're also right that best tactic in a given situation isn't necessarily the most fun. The obvious case is having someone cover the retreat. Sometimes the players think they need to leave someone in the car, to stop the vehicle being tampered with or prevent anyone setting up on the others while they explore a location. An entirely sensible tactic that means one guy sits quietly and does nothing while the rest of the group plays the game. I just promised them out-of-character that I would never ambush them on the way back to their vehicle, and the lone sentry was free to participate in the adventure with the rest of the table. After several years running and playing Delta Green primarily through theater of the mind, I'll caution against tossing out maps entirely. Maps save a lot of table time by removing the need to repeatedly clarify the state of the playing field. every combat ever posted:"I throw the grenade into the room!"
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Aug 4, 2023 17:09
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My only exposure to DG is with actual plays, but it seems like combat and tactics are more prevalent than the classic 1920s game so yeah, using maps there might make sense. And I likewise might show a map of a building or something to be like "here's what you know of the floorplan" I just don't use them for combat on CoC.
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Aug 4, 2023 20:37
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I will be dm-ing a DG one-off soon and have not used this system / setting before. Which book is best to read for understanding the organization? The handlers handbook or are other sourcebooks better?
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Aug 11, 2023 04:54
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uncertainty posted:I will be dm-ing a DG one-off soon and have not used this system / setting before. Which book is best to read for understanding the organization? The handlers handbook or are other sourcebooks better? If you want an entire decade's worth of metaplot in one dry book, handlerbook. If you need just enough to get you through a one-shot, the free quick start adventure and maybe an episode of X-Files.
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Aug 11, 2023 05:46
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Siivola posted:If you want an entire decade's worth of metaplot in one dry book, handlerbook. It's a one shot but with the hope to continue. I'm planning on doing last things last, but I want to flash out the DG background a bit more and maybe play it up at the end again. I'll check out the handlerbook and see if I can get through it!
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Aug 11, 2023 06:04
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You're much better off waiting with the Handler Guide until after running Last Things Last. There's really nothing in the HG that will help you. I'd suggest the quick start and the Agent's Handbook for useful advice on playing DG.
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Aug 11, 2023 12:38
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I'd second not drinking from the firehose till you run a scenario or two. Cliff notes version: Delta green is the "white hat" MIBs. Founded in 1927 after the Innsmouth raid made it clear fish people were real. Active in WWII against a rival Nazi occult group the Karotechia. A few members of that survived through mythos means and went to Brazil to do supervillain poo poo, but were eventually mopped up around Y2K. 1947 Roswell crash (highly staged) introduces the US to the migo, using the more humanoid classic greys as a front and staying behind the curtain. The US signs an Accord with them, MJ-12 is formed to exploit alien technology. Playing the long game the Migo (through the grays) make contact in the 80s and the government agrees to cover up some abductions and experiments in exchange for the Report (reputedly perfect intelligence on every other world power) and The Cookbook (comprehensive information on how to play with the human genome). This is of course a thorny gift and the boundaries are pushed and ignored by the fungi constantly. They are the "black hat" MIBs and foils to Delta Green. Broadly: DG wants to destroy unexplained poo poo and bury it to protect people. MJ-12 wants to harness it for national security. DG fucks up royally in Southeast Asia with a huge body count and gets shuttered in the 70s. People still read in keep it going, off the books, as an informal cell network without official sanction. After the turn of the millennium through a number of machinations MJ12 is officially shuttered and Delta Green (euphemistically called "The Program") once again has official sanction as a highly clandestine but officially authorized government aparatus, and tries to draw the "cowboys" back into its ranks with moderate success. However some elements of MJ12 are brought in, and their remit to keep and study vs. destroy dilutes the mission. Many MJ-12 dudes break off into a contractor called March Technologies to keep playing with Mythos fire. Some Delta Green dudes decide to stay out in the cold and work off the books rather than trust the state, even continuing to recruit into the parallel unofficial network. If your game turns into a running campaign that draws off the "official" setting, one of the big things to decide is if your agents are part of The Program or still part of the unnoficial Cowboy Network. The big difference is how much official cover they have vs. having to pull bureaucratic strings that can get them in trouble if uncovered, as well as whether or not they might be told to stop investigating something because it runs against March Tech's interests. It's worth noting that with the level of secrecy both The Program and The Conspiracy operate on, the players may not know themselves, up to and including that the "other Delta Green" even exists. Their handler, whether Cowboy or Official very likely only reads them in on the barest need to know stuff. Their first inkling might be when a spooky event causes operational conflict with another group of agents investigating it. Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Aug 11, 2023 |
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Aug 11, 2023 15:03
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Flakey posted:You're much better off waiting with the Handler Guide until after running Last Things Last. There's really nothing in the HG that will help you. I'd suggest the quick start and the Agent's Handbook for useful advice on playing DG. Ok I will do that! Owlbear Camus posted:I'd second not drinking from the firehose till you run a scenario or two. This is *extremely* helpful, thank you!
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Aug 11, 2023 16:04
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Glad I could help. General advice: One thing that really sets this apart from classic COC is the Bond mechanic, and how it (mechanically) encourages agents to damage their important human connections and commit themselves to "the work." An incredibly good touchstone IMO that I'm sure many will echo is True Detective Season 1. The work changes you and sets you apart, you compartmentalize but you can't connect the same way with the people you love. It doesn't have to be as hamfisted as "I saw a crazy monster and I go home and beat my wife about it," but play up the home scenes and how the Agent's connection to friends and family fray every time they damage a Bond to offset sanity loss.
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Aug 11, 2023 16:45
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Owlbear Camus posted:I'd second not drinking from the firehose till you run a scenario or two. This post rules, thanks for summarizing that so succinctly.
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Aug 11, 2023 16:48
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Question, I made a little one shot in never got around to submitting for DG a while back with some improvvy bits. Basically the players get assigned temporary control over some NPCs in the intro and discover/are murdered by various secrets that they describe to set off the action and gm has to roll with it and incorporate it. I think people had fun when I ran it. Anyway just read Naked Came the Manatee and the degree to which it's obvious one author is just lighting random sticks of dynamite for the next author in the chain, makes me wan to try a full on Exquisite Corpse of a module. Idea being: Some sort of Uber apocalypse is happening, think azathoth waking up and invalidating all physical law universe wide. GM runs the first module, ends with a PC getting involved with some ritual/mcguffin that sends them into Apotheosis. They shift the party into some alternate timeline/apocalypse, and the game ends. Next session they are the GM. They'd get a rough outline of what's going on in the setting, a few maybe random prompts they can use or not, and run the party through another cycle. Once everyone's had a go the last round goes back to the original GM who has to tie the whole.mess off somehow. Thoughts? E: Should specify I feel like this concept works equally well (badly?) For CoC as for DG so I'm not asking for game mechanic specific stuff beyond what might lend itself specifically to carrying off the concept. PipHelix fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Aug 15, 2023 |
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Aug 15, 2023 02:52
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3 Action Economist posted:I don't generally, either. CoC does really well as theater of the mind, anyway. Forgot I had even asked this question! Yea thanks for all the advice. Honestly mellonbreads advice to just ooc straight talk everyone - you have military tactics you wouldn't gently caress this up and would be able to improvise, also I'm trying to make sure you have fun not kill you so everyone can play - makes sense, but you probably want to do that up front, instead of after people go into the fugue cause then it seems like you're impatiently bigfooting them. I don't do maps generally cause I find theater of the mind is way better. In this case the module was specifically set in SLC (it was about an Eldritch MLM) so when the time came to ransom off the baddys buddy they hit Google maps for a remote but nearby spot in the area, which, totally reasonable, if you didn't know in advance the GM hadn't planned on this eventuality and was hoping to send you on rails to Bonneville.
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Aug 15, 2023 03:04
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I wrote and DM'd a Trail of Cthulhu one-shot for my group this last Saturday, and it went really well! It was their first time in that system, and they enjoyed the investigative approach and heavy RP elements. I'm thinking I want to introduce them to Delta Green next. It's a bit more combat-orientated, but still seems to maintain an investigative approach. I think they'd enjoy the Men In Black veneer, as well. Is the Quickstart scenario sufficient, or is there a better one-shot scenario for breaking in new players? They're familiar with the percentile dice of CoC, so mechanically there shouldn't be an issue.
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Aug 21, 2023 17:33
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