Greetings everyone,
This thread is classified RED RIBBON. If you do not have clearance, further reading will damage your mind beyond repair. Apply for clearance at the Department of Internal Security, Security Management section.
Ahem.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Laundry Files RPG is a Call of Cthulhu-derived game, set in modern day England, where characters are members of a bureaucratic, beyond top secret organization called "The Laundry", bent on fighting and studying the arcane horrors from beyond, while filing proper paperwork and maintaining ISO9001 certification. There's more to it, but it's covered by CODE NIGHTMARE GREEN clearance (and it's a spoiler from the books).
The PCs are civil servants, and can fall under various categories, from Computational Demonology (in this setting magic is an advanced form of mathematics, therefore computers are incredibly powerful tools) to Archives, from R&D to good old Black Ops (here called the Plumbers).
I will be sincere. This would be my first PbP mastering (I am new to PbP gaming too, although I lurked for a while) and I don't know when I will be able to set up the adventures. However, I really like the setting, and if I see some interest I will study the system and do my best.
Also, the system is not Open Game Content, so you will have, if I understood the legal aspects, to find you own books or PDF.
I would run, as a start, Lost and Found, a freely-available adventure, to test whether I can run a decent game. If the result is positive, I will buy or write some more.
Oh, and as a rule, I don't care for flashy backgrounds or party balance as much as I do for personality and realism. Aside from dark magic and computer scripts written in blood, the Laundry is set in our universe and made up of people like you and me, not bigger than life heroes. I would be perfectly fine with having a group of five geeky CS majors, provided that they act believably. You may play as yourself of you want to, just play it as you are, the good and the bad.
I think that's it, I stand here for any questions.
GM Sappy
Anyone interested please compile a 7477 module in duplicate and send it at the Department of Human Resources, sections Personnel and Training. Be sure to account for any paper clip used for the module in your expense account.
|
I like the Laundry Files as the Fiction but my biggest issue with the game is that it uses the Call of Cthulhu system which is one of the crappiest RPG systems ever made. For a comedy game, they could have come up with a better system to use rather than use the most arbitrary BRP system. My biggest issues with it are:
1. Random Stat Rolling (You don't get to chose what to play, the dice force it on you. You could roll well and get a reasonable character or roll poorly and end up worse than a half-blind beggar)
2. Percentile Skill System (Overly complex to calculate and build characters and you have insanely low percentages in skills you require and the bell curve always points to failure on most things you do).
3. Extremely Lethal (Well not necessarily a bad thing but the combat methods and HP system is antiquated. There is no room for situational modifiers and you NEVER get bonuses to a roll, only penalties)
4. Too MANY skills: The skills in the BRP are far too specific. You never can get the right combination and often times you have to pick multiple skills which do close to the same thing to cover all your bases. And of course any skill you are not trained in you SUCK at.
5. The Sanity mechanic is complex and annoying and extremely unbalanced and relies too much on "Luck". You could see a Shoggoth and go batshit insane or roll low on the sanity loss and go "Meph".
If I were to do a Laundry Files game, I'ed use systems like the Gumshoe System, The Cypher System, Savage Worlds or the Fate Engine, which are fairer and also do humor games more easily. Heck even the D20 COC system did it better than the BRP version (And this is coming from someone who hated that system too).
Ah, well, that was not my feeling when I played it face-to-face, but I guess it's not everyone's cup of tea.
Rewriting half a system is beyond my abilities, though, so I'd say I won't run one anytime soon, better to fall back on good old Pathfinder adventures.