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Sorry for the doublepost but would anyone be willing to do a pbp of Trail of Cthulhu? I think I've got enough of the basics down to attempt running a trial run but if possible I'd love to see a game in action.
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Aug 13, 2015 02:59
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I would be interested. I've listened to a ton of Trail actual plays from RPPR.
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Aug 13, 2015 04:30
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I'd be interested in a PbP too.
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Aug 15, 2015 22:55
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Would anyone be interested in me attempting an online game of ToC? I still haven't gotten to play a game for real and I really want to. I don't know what would work best for it though.
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Sep 3, 2015 22:51
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Len posted:Would anyone be interested in me attempting an online game of ToC? I still haven't gotten to play a game for real and I really want to. I don't know what would work best for it though. If you run something, I'd be interested. On the other hand, getting ready to run a PbP ToC adventure from Stunning Eldritch Tales soon. I was going to run it for my weekly group, but it didn't pan out. Still I spent some time getting it ready, so I figure I might as well run as a PbP game.
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Sep 4, 2015 07:52
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DocBubonic posted:If you run something, I'd be interested. On the other hand, getting ready to run a PbP ToC adventure from Stunning Eldritch Tales soon. I was going to run it for my weekly group, but it didn't pan out. Still I spent some time getting it ready, so I figure I might as well run as a PbP game. In that case I might wait for you. I was also going to do one from Stunning Eldritch Tales but I've never run a PbP or ToC so mine would probably be awful.
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Sep 4, 2015 13:04
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BTW I got Dracula Unredacted, the most ambitious Gumshoe product yet. It's a free-form investigative campaign featuring the most bad-rear end campaign handout I've ever seen - an expanded version of the novel Dracula with annotations from 3 different prior agents who tried to stop Dracula and failed + a GM campaign book that lists possible outcomes for every goddamn thing mentioned in the book. It's probably the Holy Grail of Investigation Gaming. If you are a skilled GM (and I'm serious about that, your typical from-the-module guys need not apply) who is willing to study the hell out of this thing and knows the spy thriller genre inside and out you've got the tools to make a loving incredible narrative from this, as Dracula, Edom (Drac's former(?) British handlers) and the PCs tear Europe apart trying to destroy each other. Even if you don't, it's a great read, you get Dracula + cool mysterious notes and 3 separate histories of a Century of Dracula to read about. Steep price but I highly recommend it.
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Sep 4, 2015 16:03
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:BTW I got Dracula Unredacted, the most ambitious Gumshoe product yet. It's a free-form investigative campaign featuring the most bad-rear end campaign handout I've ever seen - an expanded version of the novel Dracula with annotations from 3 different prior agents who tried to stop Dracula and failed + a GM campaign book that lists possible outcomes for every goddamn thing mentioned in the book. It's probably the Holy Grail of Investigation Gaming. If you are a skilled GM (and I'm serious about that, your typical from-the-module guys need not apply) who is willing to study the hell out of this thing and knows the spy thriller genre inside and out you've got the tools to make a loving incredible narrative from this, as Dracula, Edom (Drac's former(?) British handlers) and the PCs tear Europe apart trying to destroy each other. Even if you don't, it's a great read, you get Dracula + cool mysterious notes and 3 separate histories of a Century of Dracula to read about. Steep price but I highly recommend it. I'm buying it and then I'm going to utterly fail at running it here, it's gonna be great.
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Sep 5, 2015 16:31
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Question about GMing this system: How do you "budget" the point spends across a session? That is, do you need to plan mysteries and plots far enough in advance that the number of clues to be found will roughly match the number of investigative spends the players can make? Is it possible to GM these games by the seat of your pants using a combination of A. handing out clues as "0-point spends" if the players are all tapped out but there's still more material to be covered and B. handing out partial refreshes via GM fiat so that they have something to work with, especially if they want to and take steps to obtain a refresh? (if these are explained in the books, my apologies - I really enjoy RPPR's APs of Trail and NBA and have both of them on the strength of those, but I haven't actually read through them completely)
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Sep 5, 2015 18:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:Question about GMing this system: How do you "budget" the point spends across a session? The players don't have to spend points to find the clues, they spend points to get special benefits later or more information that will make their life easier down the line. To quote straight from Night's Black Agents: quote:Each benefit costs either 1 or 2 points from the relevant pool, depending on the difficulty of the additional action and the scope of the reward. When asking you if you want to purchase the benefit, the Director always tells you how much it will cost. Additional information gained provides flavor and options, but is never required to resolve the situation or move on to a new scene. Often it makes the agent seem clever, powerful, or heroic. It may grant you benefits useful later in the scenario, frequently by making a favorable impression on supporting characters. If you think of your GUMSHOE game as a TV series, an extra benefit gives the actor playing your character a juicy spotlight scene. So for example, in one adventure, a 0-point Criminology clue is that a dude has tattoos that identify him as part of the Russian mob. If the player spends points, there's a criminal organizational chart you can give them access to so they know exactly who the guy works for and who works for him. edit: I got The Dracula Dossier, and I think the index must've taken 6 months of work all by itself, holy poo poo. long-ass nips Diane fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Sep 5, 2015 |
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Sep 5, 2015 18:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:Question about GMing this system: How do you "budget" the point spends across a session? To expand on the previous post (because it's actually not super clearly stated in either Trail of Cthulhu or Night's Black Agents: 0-point: Move the plot along; provide a link to a future clue or avenue of investigation 1-point spend: Cool spotlight detail; recognize a red herring aspect immediately; "because of your expertise.." 2-point spend: something immediately useful This breakdown came from one of the Gumshoe panels at GenCon and I found it really useful. Also, there's nothing wrong with occasionally saying, "This clue doesn't have a 2 point benefit, svae your points" rather than wracking your brain for something that doesn't really fit. Greg Stolze has a great way of looking at it, too: your player characters are essentially doomed to a confrontation with the Thing that Should Not Be. Because that's what a Cthulhu story is about and they're living in a Lovecraftian universe. Failed rolls (or only zero-point spends in the case of Gumshoe) will get them to that climactic scene, but without the tools that would've made survival more likely.
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Sep 5, 2015 19:45
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Here's the PbP game recruitment I mentioned earlier: [Trail of Cthulhu] All Aboard the Empress Caledonia
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Sep 9, 2015 04:45
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Started reading through Trail. I really like it so far, and the book is nice, but jeez does it need a few editors. Even the 7th printing that I have is riddled with errors.
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Sep 20, 2015 19:33
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So is anyone running any Halloween mysteries? I missed my deadline (worked on my son's costume instead) and so didn't get done with prepping for my game and had to cancel. Let me live vicariously through you.
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Oct 27, 2015 16:37
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:So is anyone running any Halloween mysteries? I missed my deadline (worked on my son's costume instead) and so didn't get done with prepping for my game and had to cancel. Let me live vicariously through you. I was gonna run Murderer of Thomas Fell but people have been flaking 
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Oct 27, 2015 16:55
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:So is anyone running any Halloween mysteries? I missed my deadline (worked on my son's costume instead) and so didn't get done with prepping for my game and had to cancel. Let me live vicariously through you. I'll be running session 6 of my Dracula Dossier campaign for NBA this week. Handily they went to Whitby last week so rather than it being largely a red herring, they're likely to end up in the cellar of a solicitor's with some giant black rats to deal with.
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Oct 27, 2015 18:07
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EsoTerrorists is the Bundle of Holding for this month. For 20 bucks you get a bunch of EsoTerrorists stuff. It's surprisingly good (I know it shouldn't be surprising, it's a Robin D Laws joint) and what's nice is that it's pretty setting agnostic. You can filch a bunch of this stuff for any other horror game. I recommend it. https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Esoterrorists I need to update the OP now that I've actually read it.
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Nov 5, 2015 19:33
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Is there a handy breakdown of the Pulp / Purist rules for ToC anywhere? It's kind of a bear to have to track them down individually across the book one by one.
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Nov 13, 2015 13:27
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Any last minute advice for a nervous 1st time Esoterrorists GM? I'm running the Six Packed pregen adventure, but if there are any pitfalls I can avoid in the system as a whole, i'd love to know about 'em.
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Nov 17, 2015 02:21
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Sir Mopalot posted:Any last minute advice for a nervous 1st time Esoterrorists GM? I'm running the Six Packed pregen adventure, but if there are any pitfalls I can avoid in the system as a whole, i'd love to know about 'em. I really struggled with how to get certain clues into the players' hands when they just go in a completely different direction. Also be prepared to have to re-explain how spending pool points works and how they refresh.
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Nov 17, 2015 18:07
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homullus posted:I really struggled with how to get certain clues into the players' hands when they just go in a completely different direction. Also be prepared to have to re-explain how spending pool points works and how they refresh. Yeah this is always fun. Honestly the best advice is to write out, or study out, the clue chain and adventure timeline so you know it backward and forward. Think of it like an actor learning his lines - you have to know it really well. You can completely improvise a mystery from scratch, and you can improvise a pre-written mystery if the players strike out into unknown territory and you know the mystery well. What you cannot do is improvise into a pre-written mystery if you don't know it very well. It just tends to fall apart - you say something off-the-cuff that conflicts with something else later, and now you're thinking "oh poo poo I've got to figure out a way to work that into the rest of the story" and before you know it the entire thing is riddled with inconsistencies and sorta flies apart into a weird pseudo-improv space. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I would rather just have used the written adventure for a seed idea and improv'd the rest. Things are a lot easier that way. Edit: When I say "improvising a mystery" I mean that you basically think up ambiguous situations with ambiguous clues and push the mystery forward based on which player deductions are the most entertaining to you. It's REALLY fun if the players don't know you're doing it but much like a magic trick you can't let them know that this is what's happening and you should occasionally run pre-made adventures so that your group doesn't get wise to what you're doing. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 18:26
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I was honestly amazed, two of my quieter players really came out of their shell. I'm going to start pushing the group to be more proactive in their clue-finding (More "Can I find anything with a Ballistics spend", less "There's something you can find with a ballistics spend"), but despite that it went very well. A little bit of a bump, I forgot about the fact that since that adventure is in the UK, guns are more rare, and all of them had specialized more in Shooting than Scuffling. Luckily they "secured" some extra weapons by the time they had to fight the torture dogs. I also forgot how dying works, but I made something up and it wouldn't have changed how things went anyway. The prewritten adventure was very X leads to Y leads to Z leads to horrific nightmare creatures, I'm working on my own that's more open-ended, but I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around writing a clue that's big enough to get them forward but not so big to jump them too far forward. Perhaps a scene diagram with some parallel tracks that they can cross over between? So you have x1, y1, z1, but x1 leads to x2 and y1, y2 leads to x3, y3, and z1, and so on? If they focus too strongly on one track it would feel similar, but at least there's some additional choice there.
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Nov 17, 2015 19:03
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Sir Mopalot posted:I was honestly amazed, two of my quieter players really came out of their shell. I'm going to start pushing the group to be more proactive in their clue-finding (More "Can I find anything with a Ballistics spend", less "There's something you can find with a ballistics spend"), but despite that it went very well. A little bit of a bump, I forgot about the fact that since that adventure is in the UK, guns are more rare, and all of them had specialized more in Shooting than Scuffling. Luckily they "secured" some extra weapons by the time they had to fight the torture dogs. I also forgot how dying works, but I made something up and it wouldn't have changed how things went anyway. If you want it plotted in advance somewhat, make sure you know very well 1) what happened prior to the PCs' appearance in the adventure, 2) what events could keep happening, when the players either need more clues or are stalling too much, and 3) what are some creepy things you can introduce (diaries, unfinished notes, unsettling dreams, phone calls or emails from the dead). Knowing what happened very well is essential to improvising good clues. Consider what kinds of things lead investigators to the killer IRL and in shows -- witness accounts, footprints, shell casings, tire prints, unusual stains and residues. The key is having those clues narrow the field, but not too much. Like, "The shell casings are an ordinary caliber, but appear to have been handmade." "Lab analysis shows that not all that blood was human -- some belonged to [animal not found on scene]." Et cetera.
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Nov 17, 2015 19:22
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Sir Mopalot posted:I was honestly amazed, two of my quieter players really came out of their shell. I'm going to start pushing the group to be more proactive in their clue-finding (More "Can I find anything with a Ballistics spend", less "There's something you can find with a ballistics spend"), but despite that it went very well. A little bit of a bump, I forgot about the fact that since that adventure is in the UK, guns are more rare, and all of them had specialized more in Shooting than Scuffling. Luckily they "secured" some extra weapons by the time they had to fight the torture dogs. I also forgot how dying works, but I made something up and it wouldn't have changed how things went anyway. I didn't have time to post before your game, but those actually would've been two of my bits of advice. For the future (if you want to go back to the rules from the book) make little cheat sheets for what happens at 0 Health and 0 Stability, then what happens once they get to -6. Those are pretty easy to forget. This is a pretty handy reference (though for Trail of Cthulhu rather than Esoterrorists; some things are different but not the fundamentals: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/35587/roleplaying-games/trail-of-cthulhu-cheat-sheet My other bit of advice is to err on the side of too much information. There's two reasons I say this: 1. The mystery is always way more opaque to your players. Since they don't understand your thinking or the scenario, they are going through lots and lots of possible explanations based on what clues they have. 2. About jumping too far forward: as long as one clue leads to another and not straight to the ending, it's not really a problem. There's a couple episodes of Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff (podcast) where they do Gumshoe Masterclasses talking about this, if you really want to research it. (http://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/index.php/tag/ken-and-robin-recycle-audio/) And in general it's worth getting them to the climactic scene or big reveal as it makes for a more satisfying game in general. Now, maybe if they don't spend points or make connections themselves, they're not really ready for the climactic scene, but that's a different problem entirely. I think it helps to draw out a flow chart (or at least sketch) of your clues and how they lead to the finale. Caleb Stokes has done this for some of his scenarios and it's tremendously helpful if you prefer visual references. Here are two of said adventures, which are PWYW: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/117192/Bryson-Springs and http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/117190/The-Red-Tower .
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Nov 17, 2015 19:31
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How feasible would it be to run a campaign that would be kind of like Eternal Darkness? There would be a framing story session between each past story session that culminates in the players fighting a bad guy. Is this a good idea or bad idea for Trail of Cthulhu?
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Nov 21, 2015 17:43
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Len posted:How feasible would it be to run a campaign that would be kind of like Eternal Darkness? There would be a framing story session between each past story session that culminates in the players fighting a bad guy. Is this a good idea or bad idea for Trail of Cthulhu? It's a fine idea. The Eternal Lies campaign Pelgrane put out has the events of a "past adventure" as one of its cornerstone mysteries.
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Nov 21, 2015 18:51
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That should work just fine. The four adventures in the Final Revelation by Pelgrane Press are basically tied together in an Eternal Darkness type way. Except there's a group of investigators finding evidence that causes the flashback adventures. Experiencing the flashbacks causes changes in the "main" investigators of the framing device, too. It's a pretty clever way to tie multiple scenarios together and keep them lethal while having a continuing story.
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Nov 21, 2015 23:57
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Hey y'all, I just got around to reading this month's See Page XX (that's the monthly Pelgrane newsletter) and I totally missed the fact that back in September, they announced that they would be releasing a line of "One-2-One" Gumshoe products, beginning with Cthulu Confidential. What's "One-2-One"? They are mysteries designed for exactly one GM and one player. This is a really interesting idea and I'm curious to see where it goes. Anywhere, here's their press release: http://pelgranepress.com/?p=18973
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Jan 8, 2016 18:27
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They've also been doing GUMSHOE X-Com in Ken Writes About Stuff, which I think is cool.
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Jan 8, 2016 19:01
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Hey y'all, I just got around to reading this month's See Page XX (that's the monthly Pelgrane newsletter) and I totally missed the fact that back in September, they announced that they would be releasing a line of "One-2-One" Gumshoe products, beginning with Cthulu Confidential. I got in on the open playtest and it's pretty cool. The spend system is completely different, there's a card system that gives you advantages/hindrances, death is off the table as an outcome. I don't think it's going to appeal to everyone but it's a substantially alternate take on Gumshoe. They specifically call out its suitability as a game to be run over skype or Roll20, which is cool.
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Jan 8, 2016 22:03
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So I'm finally getting around to picking up The Dracula Dossier for NBA, but I was wondering how necessary is The Hawkins Papers for it? Should I get it at the sane time as pick up the Directors Handbook and The Dracula Dossier itself or can it wait?
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Jan 14, 2016 11:33
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KomradeX posted:So I'm finally getting around to picking up The Dracula Dossier for NBA, but I was wondering how necessary is The Hawkins Papers for it? Should I get it at the sane time as pick up the Directors Handbook and The Dracula Dossier itself or can it wait? From looking over it myself, it should be perfectly possible to run it without them.
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Jan 15, 2016 21:53
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I would agree with that. The Hawkins Papers give you a bunch of very nice additional handouts that tie into the plot hooks of Director's Handbook and Dracula Unredacted. But when the campaign already comes with all of Dracula + annotations as a potential handout, I wouldn't say that more are strictly required.
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Jan 15, 2016 23:03
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ProfessorProf posted:From looking over it myself, it should be perfectly possible to run it without them. Sionak posted:I would agree with that. The Hawkins Papers give you a bunch of very nice additional handouts that tie into the plot hooks of Director's Handbook and Dracula Unredacted. But when the campaign already comes with all of Dracula + annotations as a potential handout, I wouldn't say that more are strictly required. Yeah I decided to buy the print/PDF bundle and will pick up The Hawkins Papers some other time. I'm also excited for the the Edom stuff to come to out. A question, so I'm reading the Directors Handbook and the entry for Arthur Holmwood and Peter Hawkins doesn't have a 3rd possibility for him, just an Edom asset or minion of Dracula, did anyone else have this problem? KomradeX fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jan 17, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2016 05:49
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There's a good article up about using Bullshit Detector in your GUMSHOE campaign: http://pelgranepress.com/?p=18244
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Feb 1, 2016 18:22
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I recently ran a Fear Itself game set in Delta Green. I used Fear Itself because the PCs were clueless civs and I wanted to introduce gumshoe to a player. http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2016/01/genre/horror/fear-itself-burner-a-delta-green-shotgun-scenario/ There's a write up of the scenario in the show notes.
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Feb 2, 2016 02:50
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clockworkjoe posted:I recently ran a Fear Itself game set in Delta Green. I used Fear Itself because the PCs were clueless civs and I wanted to introduce gumshoe to a player. http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2016/01/genre/horror/fear-itself-burner-a-delta-green-shotgun-scenario/ This was a pretty good episode. I'm strongly considering running this scenario for a group to get them into Delta Green.
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Feb 2, 2016 13:14
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:This was a pretty good episode. I'm strongly considering running this scenario for a group to get them into Delta Green. Neat! Feel free to mod it - the monster itself was pretty basic so you might make it more intelligent or complex, just to make the scenario longer. On the other hand, a simple monster might be better for an intro scenario.
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Feb 3, 2016 01:06
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clockworkjoe posted:Neat! Feel free to mod it - the monster itself was pretty basic so you might make it more intelligent or complex, just to make the scenario longer. On the other hand, a simple monster might be better for an intro scenario. Thanks. My players aren't strangers to BRP CoC so they should be fine if I throw something crazy at them. Gumshoe is much more forgiving in a lot of ways so I'm sure they'll be fine. I'm thinking of doing Polybius scenario after it so they can get an idea of what it's like as an agent. I'm getting ready for a Fall of Delta Green campaign, for whenever Ken Hite comes down from the mountain, and I'm working on some generational missions involving nontraditional threats like the Yithians. I'm pretty much running the Yithians as the mythos equivalent of the KGB illegal resident program. The first one involves giant beetles in US Occupied Japan and the other one involves agents being unstuck from time, therefore an unknowable and unforeseeable variable the Yithians must eliminate, and the disastrous impact this event has on the space time continuum. I really want to do a mission for each decade and have it mesh with the general arc of Delta Green. I also want to do something with the Serpent Men, especially if Hillary is elected President.
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Feb 3, 2016 02:55
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Thanks. My players aren't strangers to BRP CoC so they should be fine if I throw something crazy at them. Gumshoe is much more forgiving in a lot of ways so I'm sure they'll be fine. I'm thinking of doing Polybius scenario after it so they can get an idea of what it's like as an agent. If you want to go overboard on ideas for that, I would recommend this novel http://www.amazon.com/Delta-Green-Denied-Cthulhu-Mythos/dp/1887797246
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Feb 3, 2016 03:17
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