I hear James Jacobs had a CoC campaign going. When I ran mine it fizzled out because the players too accustom to DnD did not like the going insane part or the high mortality rate. I was wondering how other campaigns deal with these issues?
Thanks
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I have it, haven't found victims (oops) players...
Usually use it for rich idea plunder.
What you say saddens me; I think (from Cyberpunk days) it's fun to play a system if only for a few sessions with an exponentially increased lethality factor. As player or dm, it's fun to cut loose; you're screwed anyway, so ham it up and have fun.
My only thought is maybe run it all as a Delta Green adventure; commandos with semiautomatics and the best explosives that man's inventive mind has to offer against the mythos' awesome power. At least they'd have some chance, like in Aliens; at least one or two people get out alive.
I've found that just killing players outright tends to make players mad, true. But worse it doesn't create dread or foreboding. The key I think is to prolong their suffering. Hurt them and leave them crawling through backalleys with the sound of mad tittering in their ears. Same could be said for insanity. I've never had much luck with "insanity points" because the natural response is: "naw it's just a green rubbery thing with tenticles...I could take seeing that, no problem." So I try to emulate the feel of going insane IN the game. Is the player just seeing things cause he's mad, or are the walls really rippling? Is that really breathing he feels on his skin when the lights start spazzing out, or is he just imagining it.
The other big problem with Call of Cthuhlu is the whole idea of "investigators". Not that investigating is a bad thing--it just makes the point of the game "winning" instead of the point being to experience some kick butt astral horror. If the players are in it to win they won't be interested in exploring the wierd fascination of it (particularly if exploring the best parts of it incur lots of death or insanity). I'd say pull back from the whole inability to kill anything, need to puzzle together clues thing. It should be about somewhat regular folks thrown together in a bizarre and reality shredding series of experiences that have weakened the border for them between the regular daylight world and the awfulness that spasms in the shadows just beyond it.
As for lethality, pretty much all of my games are one flavor of lethal or another. Certainly there's not much hope of magical resurrection if the characters can't do it themselves. I tend not to rescue players a lot either--they fight their own fights. I think the payoff when they win overwhelms any frustration when they don't.
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I own and ran CoC in various printings (2nd to 5th? edition?), and played in games run by others, all this being mid-80s to late 90s. I own CoC D20, but have yet to properly read it or play it.
I agree with Heathansson that it is good to take a break from your usual ruleset, for a change of mood, setting, or to see how other games mechanics cover problem situations.
Though I love the original fiction (though I prefer Clark Ashton Smith to HPL), enjoyed the settings and mood, and thought the game rules were innovative (skill-based characters, Insanity checks), I had a great deal of trouble keeping any sort of extended campaign going.
Any campaign requires all the players to be in the mood, and singing from the same sheet. Even though this was a period when D&D/AD&D had lost a lot of its market share, and players were keen to experiment, there were still serious obstacles that prevented the game being a long-term proposition.
One problem was the players who were used to hack'n'slash fantasy, not appreciating a game where they were no tougher than the average Joe in the street. As I was told, more than a few times "I push papers about for a living. I am a librarian; why would I want to pretend to be one in a game?". For many people, gaming is a way of letting off steam.
I understand that, and can sympathise. As such, any deviations used to be tolerated as long as they were just short, one-off experiments, ie "Let him get this out of his system, then we can go back to proper games...".
There were a few players, who, once they found they couldn't wade knee-deep in the monsters' blood, would get bored and start pissing about, blowing things up and terrorising innocent civilians. This is disruptive in any game, but it's death for any realistic, gritty, mood-driven game.
The high lethality rate worked against the game, too. In a fantasy game, you can run a low- or high-mortality game to suit your own tastes. It's assumed the general NPC population is fully aware of the dangers to be faced, and there is an 'adventuring' caste, who have few/no family ties, and who are tolerated/encouraged/forced/bribed/charmed to deal with trouble wherever it rears its head. Thus, a DM has ready-made PC backgrounds, motives, plot hooks, mentors, institutions, etc to slot any replacement PC straight into an adventure. Party fighting orcs?
"My parents were killed by these scum! I was brought up in the woods by wolves, waiting for my revenge! I feel such anger toward them, why one might even say they are my favoured enemy."
Party fighting an evil cult?
"My church has received word that the lost temple of evil has reared its ugly head. Please allow me to aid you in your quest. I see you have lost a comrade; a priest, by his attire. His faith is allied to mine; maybe I can fill the gap he has left...".
The campaign can even survive a TPK; the DM simply has another group go looking for the previous one, or if the stakes are high enough, states that their employers were scrying on their progress, and teleport the PCs replacements to their last known campsite to finish the job.
Yes, all the above are cheesy, over-used, and are obviously benefitting from player metagaming, but they keep the game moving. Even going back to town and finding a random bloke in a bar is still in keeping with most settings, which assume the existence of monsters is common knowledge, and certain lunatics (ie PCS) go looking for trouble.
All that flies out the window in CoC, where no-one knows the monsters exist, wouldn't believe you if you told them, and may have you locked in a rubber room if you push the issue.
There is no 'adventurer' caste, in the fantasy sense; though people exist at the fringes of civilised society (gangsters, explorers, archaeologists, spiritualists, etc), they are all unaware and unprepared for Mythos threats, which means every new PC needs some sort of solo adventure to bring them up to speed and give them a reason to seek out the other PCs, which is immensely draining and time-consuming work for a DM.
I like Call of Cthulu, though I don't have time to play it. I like to make use of the themes on occasion, and to good effect. I like the basic concepts of the game, and the harshness of the way the game is structured.
It is too bad that there are some players who care for the lethality and 'insanity' of the game. There are many players I've come across who want ridiculous, quasi-Shakespearean-theatre game sessions where they do 'Serious-roleplaying' and a lot of other such drivel. All these High-maintenance players wear me out with their constant whining for 1-on-1 time with the GM (Me or Turin the Mad) to 'explore' their character's _____, or their incessant need to have me give them the floor a disproportionate amount during the game to be the center of attention. I frequently find myself thinking of the good old days when characters died like flies and the players never even batted an eyelash. They just said some random expletive, and reached for another character sheet. Those were the days...
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Love CoC. I remeber playing in Escape from Innsmouth along long time ago. It was the first and last time that I asked my then future wife if she wanted to play with us. She reluctantly joined in and created the daughter of a mafia don and two tommy gun totting gangster chick....needless to say as we began investigating the town and the corupt sherif and his good ole boys began to ruff my character up (a photo journalist who never took any pics, and liked to complain about his constitutional rights) those tommy guns came out and we had the whole town on us like flys swarmin on fresh s$+&...good times!There were a ton of PC deaths and more lunatics than the Arkham asylum could handle.
Creative Director
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So far, we've had 4 sessions in our CoC campaign, and in those four sessions, we've had one character death, 2 very close calls (one of which took a PC out of the campaign for a session), and 1 case of insanity (which has yet to fully rear its ugly head). Pretty low death-rate for CoC, but then again, maybe I'm just lulling the players into a false sense of security before I start getting REALLY mean...
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Just curious if any of you have tried Nocturnum. It's an modern-day Call of Cthulhu campaign published by Fantasy Flight Games. I've ordered it and am awaiting its delivery. I'm hoping it will be a decent campaign. Lemme know if any of you have played/run this campaign and how it was.
Ive bought this and skimmed through it. Its a nice book and a huge campaign, seems well put together. However the premise seems a little low on the actual CoC mythos. Plus when I play CoC I think I prefer the original rules as opposed to d20. If I'm gonna go d20 I think I prefer d20 Modern as it provides more action and options for the players. Theres not alot of changes to PC's after chacter creation in the basic game and in CoC d20 I dont really see the point in "leveling up" seems more like a lesson in futilty to me. Juts my opinon though.
I’m an enormous D&D fan and an enormous CoC fan. But gamers who passionately adore both games are somewhat few and far between, andfor good reason. The games are fundamentally different, and lure in intrinsically different players.
BEGINNING OF RANT:
D&D is an uplifting triumph. CoC is an enthralling tragedy.
D&D is Camina Burana. CoC is all of the rest of the soundtrack from Glory not stolen from Carl Orff ( . . . with occasional Benny Hill chase music tossed in for good measure).
D&D is a combat system that supports a breathtaking fantasy setting of roleplaying. CoC is a roleplaying system, shrouded in the macabre setting, that includes combat of necessity (but if you have to pull out your gun, well, let's face it, you've run out of ideas, luck, and options, and your end is at hand).
D&D is a game in which PCs get to advance from promising folk to superheroes. CoC is a game in which PCs (under a different name) are destined to decline from ordinary folk into madmen or little piles of goo. D&D has a horizonless range of characters, from sorcerers to duelists to ninjas, that stand shoulder to shoulder and raise their spells, swords, and wits against epic foes. CoC has a horizonless range of characters, from plumbers to teachers to garbage-truck drivers, that run screaming one after another when confronted by a rocking chair that rocks on its own.
D&D characters use courage, intelligence, and perseverance to engage, combat, and destroy terrible evils, becoming wealthy and powerful, and achieving heroic stature, in the process. CoC characters use courage, intelligence, and perseverance to avoid being killed by Victorian furniture, survive crossing the street (sometimes), and stop unearthly evil way too powerful EVER to combat directly from getting a foothold in this world, but lose health, sanity, respect, loved ones, and ultimately their lives in the process, with little or no thanks from anyone, and no guarantee that evil won’t just re-establish its foothold tomorrow after they’re gooey remains have been swept away.
True, in the end, both games involve player characters taking a stand when no one else would or could. But in D&D, the PCs get to win. In CoC, the investigators know they won’t, but go in anyway. It’s a different kind of courage. In D&D, sacrifice by a PC for someone other than another PC is poignant because it’s so rare. In CoC, sacrifice by the investigators for everyone but themselves is poignant because it’s all they have to give.
Neither game is better than the other. Their cathartic experiences are different. Their genres are different. CoC can never do high adventure like D&D because it lacks the glorious magic, the profound and diverse settings, the pagentry, the fabulous treasures, the cinematic daring-do, and, above all, the hope. D&D can never do horror like CoC because D&D characters always have hope, and can even bring it to others. CoC characters have no such illusions.
I probably can’t explain to a D&D fan what’s so cool, so engaging about playing a weak, awkward, foolish character who is nonetheless, through his own industry, possibly the only one capable (or foolish enough) to try to save a thankless world that probably can’t be saved anyway. But perhaps this helps: those of us who love CoC love the horror genre passionately, and want to experience it naked, without a chainsaw at hand to fight it, let alone a +5 vorpal chainsaw of zombie slaying. We love comedy, even phyical comedy, particularly at our own expense. And we find ourselves strangely stirred by tragic nobility, the kind at the end of A Tale of Two Cities.
END OF RANT.
I'm dying to play some CoC, but most of the folks I can get together to game want to do D&D. I wouldn't say that I'm really losing out, but I would like to see how well I could do a CoC game as a Keeper.
I like Call of Cthulu, though I don't have time to play it. I like to make use of the themes on occasion, and to good effect. I like the basic concepts of the game, and the harshness of the way the game is structured.
It is too bad that there are some players who care for the lethality and 'insanity' of the game. There are many players I've come across who want ridiculous, quasi-Shakespearean-theatre game sessions where they do 'Serious-roleplaying' and a lot of other such drivel. All these High-maintenance players wear me out with their constant whining for 1-on-1 time with the GM (Me or Turin the Mad) to 'explore' their character's _____, or their incessant need to have me give them the floor a disproportionate amount during the game to be the center of attention. I frequently find myself thinking of the good old days when characters died like flies and the players never even batted an eyelash. They just said some random expletive, and reached for another character sheet. Those were the days...
Well, there are a few game systems that generally ended in messy deaths, although I do not believe I've had any more of a mixed blessing of an experience (until the last 2 incarnations of D&D) that CoC provides.
Spend an hour or two hammering together an investigator, scrape together some decent clothes and gear, keep enough cash to pay for medical bills, various modes of transport and assorted bribes ... then find a kewl antique book that you " just gotta read to be sure it isn't kindergarden drivel " and watch the inevitable slide into mental pudding begin. Assuming you live long enough to play the same investigator more than 3 sessions, which is a minor miracle in its own right.
Paranoia had 6 clones - who could all die within the same session. Plenty of more "modern" game systems often feature "realistic" combat - but let's face it, almost nothing else matches Call of Cthulhu for the sheer concepts of losing one's Sanity in a desperate struggle to stay both alive AND sane while regularly confronting things that will generally whup yer a$$ all over heck's half-acre. Even the mooks.
Photographic evidence uncovered!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6063862.stm
The Winning photo is sooooo Chthulu.
Photographic evidence uncovered!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6063862.stm
The Winning photo is sooooo Chthulu.
Man, that certainly is! The eyes freak me out!
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I ran a successful and popular CoC campaign for four years. Nobody's character survived from beginning to end.
the key was not seeing a PC death as a defeat. My players laughed PC deaths off, and the 'older' PCs would often engage in tale-telling matches in which they tried to gross-out later PCs (and players) with gruesome death stories.
It's all a matter of approach.