The Vampire sandbox

I listened to a podcast that discussed the first scenario for Vampire, in the back of the 2nd ed rulebook. I remember when Vampire was the hottest thing, and how I bought that book and pored over it. I tried to figure out how to make a "personal horror" game out of it, and even though we played it a bit it never really fulfilled its potential. Looking at that example scenario do provide some fairly good hints on how the creator, Mark Rein Hagen, really envisioned his game.

The scenario is very limited in its geographical location. There are no extensive secondary world to explore, there are no obvious fights and no obvious treasure. But, there are a crowd of NPCs.

While I never really came to appreciate the "super heroes with fangs" aspects of Vampire, I did find the idea of a NPC based scenario to be intriguing. I've found that it is a challenge to make them flow well, though. If the NPCs one after one come up to the PCs and talk, then walk away to make way to the next in line, it will feel like the players really are standing there with a line of people. To make it still feel like a place, like something is happening, was always a challenge to me.

If we take a look at some scenarios that look like that, which I've had more success with, I at once think of Call of Cthulhu. Many CoC scenarios have many people to talk to, but they also almost always have a strong plot element. Sometimes even so strong it can be considered railroaded. But, I've found that is one of the best ways to make the "crowd of people" scenario work. If you have some plot going on, with things happening no matter what, all that talk doesn't feel as much like it's happening in a vacuum.

Now, you know what I first thought when I listened to how the podcasters (I wish I remembered which podcast it was, but my mp3 player have crashed and I have no copy of the file anywhere and no recollection of how I found it) described the scenario? I thought, "this sounds like a sandbox"! But, often sandboxes are described as a setting, a place, where the players are free to create their own plot and explore freely. This is another kind of sandbox, that is almost not a place and not about exploration. It's a sandbox of people.

I've never thought about that before, and naturally it makes me wonder if anyone have thought of doing a sandbox like that for their game, their old school game of D&D and similar games? Has it been done, or have we not yet left the dungeon?

Rules found by re-reading

As some of you know, Initiative is something many D&D refs have house rules for. Ordering the chaos of real life combat, or just the monomanical urge to add structure to all facets of life is something that all kinds of roleplaying games are pretty wont to do. Today I found some new little nugget of Initiative related rule.

Since I have not had a regular game for a while, the inspirations for posts on the blog have shrunk, and the posting frequency almost crawled to a stop. But, hope lives eternal and I have started to re-read the Call of Cthulhu rulesbook in the hopes of starting a CoC game.

Today I read the skills chapter. Usually lists of skills and their use is something I find as yawn inducing as spell descriptions. I prefer lists of skills and spell just to be the names, and those to be descriptive enough. But, I had promised myself to give the rule book a full read through so I kept slogging at it. So, now I found a nugget I had missed before!

When you are in a fight, you can either attack, dodge or parry. The latter you can do once a combat turn, dodging you can do more than once. Since Parry is a bit special, you actually have to declare in the beginning of the round that you will parry, and which antagonist you expect an attack from! Should that NPC not attack, you have "wasted" your round.

Interesting.

I wonder how well that would work transplanted to another game, or for that matter, how well would it work in CoC? I have played with BRP derived games for many years, but never have I encountered Parry like that.

Interesting.

Vistiting Kingsport

I just recently found out that you can actually visit Kingsport! Well, it's called Marblehead, MA, but it is the town that inspired Lovecraft to invent Kingsport. Now I really would like to go there. Look at that picture. It sure looks like a place to inspire stories.

When not playing, listen!

I have not posted much lately, but it comes down to me not being able to involve myself much in gaming. Long hours at work and I still haven't been able to get a regular game going since before Christmas! From a gaming point of view, holidays suck!

What I have done while not playing anything is listening to other people playing. A while ago I bought a fine copy of Chaosium's marvellous campaign Horror on the Orient Express (HotOE). I wanted to play it, and almost got the chance last year before that attempt to find a new group fizzled. So, I decided to buy it, and to listen to the Bradford Players playing it.

Listening to other people play sounds strange, but it can actually be quite fun. It can also teach you a thing or two about table manners, how to handle troublesome players or just neat GM tricks.

HotOE is, since it's for CoC, a horror adventure. So, how would you expect it to play then? Grim and dark? Well, I have listened to a few different people running Call of Cthulhu, and I can say that American gun nuts are the most boring ones to listen to. Sound tactics and "effective" play. They might have fun, but it sure isn't fun to listen to. The thing is, the game must be engaging in some way, and one of the best way to make that happen is for it to be fun!

I'd really recommend anyone to listen to the recorded sessions of HotOE by the Bradford gang. Some of these sessions I laughed so hard it hurt when listening! The contrast between the grisly and quite horrific event the characters suffer and the jolly interaction between the players are excellent for contrast and effect. Also, listen to Paul when running the game. He is a Keeper (GM in CoC speak) of some skill indeed.

A friend of mine in the local game club ran his AD&D campaign a few days back, and summarized the event as "the players did what they should, entertained their DM". It made me think of Paul and his friends in Bradford. We do this for fun, right?

15 games - the list

"So, just name me 15 games you've played. The first ones that pop into your mind"
"Like, any kind of game?"
"Yeah, any kind. You don't even have to have liked them."
"I could probably mention 50 rpgs, just like that."
"But, would it be the first ones to pop into your mind?"
"Well, I don't know. My mind just wanders, sometimes."
"So, just name 15 games, any games. It could be interesting to see how many of those 50 you really could think of, eh?"
"What he heck!"

1. Tunnels & Trolls
2. Dungeons & Dragons
3. Stormbringer
4. World of Synnibarr
5. WHFRP
6. Advanced Squad Leader
7. Diplomacy
8. DBA
9. Call of Cthulhu
10. Zork
11. nethack
12. Grand Prix Legends
13. Junta
14. Hacker
15. Battletech

"That was just a mess!"
"Yeah, not the first ones you would have thought would be on the list, would you?"
"Well, some of them. Why on earth was I thinking of *bleep!* just now?"

The dread curse of cthulhu

Very recently I got my copy of Horror on the Orient Express in the mail, after finding a complete copy on . This is the first time I've spent a three digit sum on a game. Am I crazy? I call this the Dread Curse of Cthulhu.

CoC was for a long time my favourite rpg. Now, I had never played it outside of a convention context, and had never played in any of the well regarded campaigns from Chaosium. The only thing I'd played were the "let's do something special since it is a convention"-scenarios. It's surely more fun to do something different than the regular kind of play, but I had never tried that "regular play". I still have very little experience.

Now when I have some money and are entrenched in not only the playing, but also collecting part of the hobby, I have been focusing on buying some of those great and well regarded campaigns. The bizarre thing is, that I have bought them with the express purpose of not reading them! I would love to have played in a regular, long term, Call of Cthulhu campaign. Instead I buy some of the best, and expensive stuff there is because I have the money, but not the group to play! That is the Dread Curse.

I'm very thankful to have gotten the opportunity to play in the Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign last year. Without that I would feel very odd today, looking at yet another procurement. One of my goals for this year is to maybe finally play some CoC, but I have realized it's time to bite the bullet. I will take my place behind the screen, as the Keeper of Arcane Lore.

Maybe that will beat the Curse. Maybe.

Collecting games, or playing them?

A few days ago I got a package in the mail. It was my second copy of DragonQuest. Yes, I have bought a second copy of a game I have not yet played!

This even got me thinking. You could imagine that if you were playing some games fairly frequently, you would like to have another copy for the collection. Sadly, that's not the case. These are the games I have multiple copies of.

• AD&D1 PHB
• Menzter Basic D&D
• B/X D&D
• Rolemaster 2nd ed. Character Law/Campaign Law
• Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition
• DragonQuest 2nd ed.

So how many of these games have I played?

Well, one session of AD&D, two or three of B/X D&D. Yes. That's it.

There are some games which I have played and for which I have multiple copies. Oddly enough they are all just different editions. Looking at that list you find games like Stormbringer, Fading Suns, Call of Cthulhu, Mage: The Ascension, Tunnels & Trolls and Traveller.

From that list I have played FS once, CoC multiple times, Mage a few sessions and T&T I've played a lot and still do. Stormbringer even used to be my main frpg. But, the games I have multiple copies of the same book are games I would like to play, but haven't. This realization made me sad.

Ice Cold Horror is very popular!

I don't know about you, but I can be somewhat obsessive about collecting rpg's. One of the games where is can be expensive is Call of Cthulhu. I saw a copy of Pagan Publishing's Walker in the Wastes up on eBay a few days ago, and since we recently played through Beyond the Mountains of Madness, some more chilly horror would be right up my alley. Unfortunately Pagan are well known for quality products, and their stuff are almost all out of print, except the Delta Green stuff which I guess sells best. But, I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't be enough fans around to pay for a new printinng of Walker. POD maybe? Pre-oder POD, maybe? Guess what? I didn't get that book off eBay. It ended on $193 USD!! Even I am not that crazy. Good grief.

Looking forward to 2010

I have been keeping quiet for a while now, with the holidays taking all the time for me. For some people, this is the time to meet old friends and play games. I'm afraid most of my old friends I might meet if I go visit familiy, is stuck in the WoW swamp and wont play proper rpgs any more. I love to spend some time with family, but for my gaming needs the holidays really suck. But, now I'm looking forward to the whole of 2010.

This is my dreams and visions for 2010 of what I want to play

Play more T&T
The last year was the year when my T&T campaign really hit its stride. Sadly it was also the year when I had to bring it to a close, since I was leaving Canada. The gears are still turning, and I would like to keep the momentum. 2010 is the year when I will try to play T&T regularly again.

Start a Call of Cthulhu campaign
One of my old friends e-mailed me once a month, when the electronic mailing list for that gaming group sent out monthly reminders. I will try to make something of that this year. That friend have since been swamped by family issues, but his enthusiasm was contagious. 2010 is the year when I will try to start a Call of Cthulhu campaign.

Retroclones
While I have been a enthusiastic supporter of a lot of the retroclone efforts, I still haven't played any. Labyrinth Lord is not that interesting for me since I have more than one copy of B/X already, and the same is true of OSRIC and AD&D. I would like to play some S&W, though, and in a few days we have a session planned. Hopefully I will see more of that this year.

Looking wider I think we will see the OSR publication efforts continue. Today I pre-ordered the S&W white box from Brave Halfling, and I think we will see more interesting developments. With some luck I will at least try S&W WB out once.

Publishing
As everyone knows who reads this blog, I love Tunnels & Trolls. It's not as visible in the old school community as I would like, but since D&D have a huge mind share of everyone playing rpgs it's not that surprising. But, I plan to actually produce more material for T&T in the future, and make it more visible. I have gotten permission from Rick Loomis to post T&T support here and in the fanzines, so I need to get up to speed. I will have less time in the future so maybe I will have to scale back on my other online activity, or learn how to sleep less. We will see how that goes.

I also have a bunch of material I would like to publish in a more tangible form. That now takes up most of my time, and I have been thinking of how to go forward with it. Tax rules and that kind of crap is making my brain hurt, and it isn't very easy to start up a publishing company. It takes a lot of time to write, map, layout and also think about the business end.

To summarize 2010 from this vantage point I'd say, get in touch with me if you need a player! I want to play more games.

Playing a RPG with a famous literary person

I have the last few days been on a Sherlock Holmes high. Since I managed to score a mint copy of Sleuth Publications The Queen's Park Affair for only $15 I have been absorbed by the Victorian age and its famous sleuth. Now after reading about Holmes I start to wonder about a rpg in that setting.

As far as I know, the only Victorian mystery game there is must be Cthulhu by Gaslight, which never was big seller. I don't think it's been in print for ages. Maybe it's because it's hard to portray the era? But, we seem to think we can play elves, right? Maybe it's because Victorian London just isn't the same without Holmes himself, and then the players will be left out in the cold.

One game I have played a lot is Stormbringer and I never had any problem not including Elric in the game. While it might seem strange I never felt that game was very much about Elric at all, even if it was once published under the really bad title Elric!, including an exclamation mark. For some reason I don't have the same relaxed attitude to a Victorian mystery game. I just couldn't do it without including Holmes. I'd love to hear if somebody have done it, and how it worked. Also, are there really nothing more than Cthulhu by Gaslight out there?

How to do mysteries - the three clue rule

This is very short post. I'm just going to give you the link to Justin Alexander's great post about designing mysteries. He lays it out nice and tidy how to make a design with multiple paths. I found the link to it in the comments on Grognardia's discussion about railroady CoC campaigns. If I decide to sit down and write a CoC mystery it will be better now that I've read his essay! Go read it!

Is investigative roleplaying railroading by default? A CoC case study

Some of you might have followed along in the discussion on Grognardia's retrospective on Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. The question arose if it has to be the case that investigative roleplaying with a "trail of breadcrumbs" leads the players along a railroad. Since I have just posted about my experiences of Beyond the Mountain of Madness, and accused that campaign of being a railroad, I felt it could be an interesting theme to continue and comment on. I decided to take out some of the CoC greats from my shelves and do some case studies.

First out is a golden oldie, Trail of Tsathogghua by Keith Herber. It was published in 1984, roughly the same era as Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. It's a collection of two loosely tied scenarios and one unrelated. The first one. The Trail of Tsathogghua is an expedition to icy lands, where an artifact has been found. It looks a lot like Mountains with the expedition leaders being NPCs and there is a timeline with things that will happen regardless of player actions. Also, at certain points interactions with authorities will happen, and they all happen "off stage". Roll some dice and the Keeper reads you the next clue your expedition member have uncovered. Should you fail, then there are NPCs around to tell you what you need. While the list of NPCs looks like it could be great fun to interact with some of them, it's still a good example of a very railroaded adventure. The second part The Curse of Tsathogghua is tied to some of the facts that became unearthed in the first part, and that one survivor from that expedition acted upon those facts and now the investigators follow his, incidentally, tracks. The idea of having a NPC with this special role who must survive, is just bad adventure writing. Having an adventure hinge upon something to happen is bad. The last and final part is totally detached from the first two. Interestingly enough, this last adventure The Haunted House is very different in style. It describes the background of a big mansion and why it is haunted. The the adventure is just a description of the adventure site, with appropriate hauntings described in different rooms. Go where you like, experience what you like. A good example of an investigative adventure that's wide open.

The second piece I wanted to look closer at is another adventure written by Keith Herber. This time it's his The Sanatorium in the Chaosium volume Mansions of Madness. It happen to be considered his best adventure, so it's extra interesting as a comparison. In this adventure there is a site (a closed environment), and a bunch of NPCs. There's also a menace. Compared to Trail this is very different. Something have happened, and you will have to get the information from the NPCs at the site before the menace kills you. Both adventures present a situation and a "story" that you will piece together. That's the common thread in both, as investigative roleplaying. But, while what happens in one is only at the players initiative, in the other it's always at the instigation of an NPC. There are no things that will happen, only factions with intentions and private goals. If the players wont interact with the NPCs, they wont find the clues to stop the menace, but they have all the power in the world to decide what happens. No NPC will push the story forward without you as a player pushing him or her first.

Worth noting is that one of these adventures is site based, and the other is based on a journey. The Haunted House is also site based, and is more open in style. The campaign that started the discussion Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, is also based on a lot of travelling. The other classic I have on my shelf, The Fungi from Yoggoth, is also a campaign where you travel a lot. I guess there's a strong temptation to hide one clue at each location and make them depend upon each other in a linear fashion. The sin here is, in my view, to make that the "story" that's supposed to happen. Do it have to be that way, though? Thinking on the format, you would imagine that it would be possible to avoid the worst sin by removing the linear dependencies to some degree and write the campaign so that visiting a site is not dependant on a string of former events. I know DGP worked on that kind of "plotting", with their nugget system for the Traveller material they published.

To make a parallel to T&T and D&D, where the dungeon is the backbone of the "story", we have many good pieces of analysis written in the OSR about multiple entrances, and interconnectivity between levels. I think this is a way of thinking that could be used while designing for investigative roleplaying as well.

So, in order to wrap this up I think the golden oldies tend to fall into a tendency of railroading when a lot of travel is involved. My hypothesis is that it makes it too easy to confuse all that travelling with "story" and thus needlessly limiting the players. Investigative roleplaying is not this by default, but it sure has happened more than once. Should I win the lottery I will take a closer look at the other classic as well, since it's supposed to do it just right.

Call of Cthulhu - what are the rules used for?

Having ended a campaign I tend to think back a bit not only on the regular war stories, but also on the mechanics of the game. I have written about CoC before, and this is another musing an a little point after some real play. YMMV. CoC is an interesting game, based as it is on the very old and classic Runequest from the seventies. Just like D&D you roll your stats with a couple of d6, and they even look a lot the same. You have a Profession and you have skills. Already this is diverging from OD&D, since even if you were fooled into thinking that the Profession was something like a Class, that Skills things is something new. Now, since skills is the basis of everything you do you might sometimes actually wonder what those stats you rolled was actually supposed to be used for, right? This is were I found something interesting in real play.

As you might now, a few of the stats in CoC are used, multiplied by five to make a percentage, as the Luck, Know and Idea rolls. Up until now I have never much considered those. They sit on the character sheet not looking conspicuous at all. I did find out though, that our Keeper used them repeatedly in play and I seem to remember from reading the rules a few years back that thy are supposed to be used just like that. Since almost everything is based on a skill roll I started to wonder if those couldn't be transformed into skills as well, and the rest of the stats be done away with? Considering the age of CoC, I guess this must have been considered before. Even though I am a fan of the game, I haven't been playing it much at home and when you mostly play at conventions the rules often tend to fade to the back. If there have been a discussion about such an elimination of stats, I've missed it. It is intriguing, though.

Beyond the Mountains of Madness - a few thoughts about a CoC campaign

So, after playing very intensively we managed to play through all of the campaign before the whole crazy mess of Worldcon and moving started. The way it played, and the way it is written got me thinking.

The very first thing we noticed when making characters, is that there are recommendations for suitable skills for the investigators. Also notable is the fact that the most important people in the Antarctic expedition are all NPCs. The latter is important, since it means it will almost certainly mean that the important decisions during the expedition will all be taken by the Keeper, as a NPC, not the players. Our Keeper decided that since this meant he would have to be talking to himself, it would be both silly and boring. Naturally that meant that some key personnel had to be Player Characters instead. Having taken care of that the reason for the first problem becomes obvious. This campaign have a story, a way it is supposed to unfold. Now, I'm not saying that has to be a bad thing. Most CoC scenarios are written so that it begins with a relative/friend/acquaintance of some sort call on the investigators to come and help out with something. That of course means that there is something going on, already defined, and the players are supposed to follow the trail to the end and confront the problem. I can hardly imagine investigative roleplaying being handled any other way. Still, we managed to both ride the rails and do some serious detours.

We had to go to Antarctica, and we had to investigate the mountains. Had we not done that it would not have been an adventure. While it might be fun to have a wide open space to explore once in a while, I've found that those campaigns tend to be quite meandering and without focus without the right kind of players. Having a clear set goal isn't always bad. What did make the campaign interesting was how we were all playing characters that knew nothing about the mythos. We came to the icy waste to make scientific discoveries, and while some terrible things happened, and having been slowly lulled into the feel of a scientific expedition with all the mundane tasks of such a journey, we still decided to look at it as a scientific mystery to be solved. Finally our characters could no longer deny that things were a foot of vast importance. But our first way to handle things was still to collect data and try to talk to the mysterious creatures we encountered! Having the expedition leaders out of the equation we all had our own plan for what we wanted to accomplish, and that became a new drive for our investigation. I think my conclusion is that if you make the personal goals of your character the main focus you can still play what is a very railroady campaign, and still feel like you do your own thing. Probably it will derail things and open it up into something potentially even more interesting. It was quite an experience, and my character went silently totally insane and had she survived she would have created the most elaborate mental cover up possibly denying the journey ever happened. Instead she blew herself and two traitors up with dynamite. What a way to go.

Travel Plans ahead - Worldcon in Montreal

I am in the midst of pulling up all the tent poles and moving across the pond. That takes a lot of time, and limits my energy for blogging. The last few days we have been pushing 10 hour game sessions to finish our Call of Cthulhu campaign, and last night we left the Mountains of Madness for the last time. I'll try to summarize some impressions later. A lot of things are about to end, but thankfully not the world.

Now I am going to go to Montreal and the Worldcon that's taking place there the next days. That means I will probably be a bit slow in posting stuff the next few days. If you see me, feel free to say hi.

The value of immersion - CoC At the Mountains of Madness

I have mentioned before that I am playing At the Mountains of Madness right now. This is the first time I have actually played CoC in one of Chaosiums big campaigns at home. Almost all my other experiences have been con games and one-shots. As everyone probably know, CoC is a game where mood is important. Our Keeper have managed to get us fairly involved by using a few steps which have been very effective, in their simpleness. First of all we start by moving to a different place in the room. We move the whole table, so we have a tangible clue that it's time to move our minds into a new place. Secondly we have had ambient sounds for the ship engines at sea, the storms at sea and the windswept plains of Antarctica. When we hit upon a storm at sea, with the noise of the engine and the wind loud in our ears it was impossible not to be there. I've read about this effect before, but now I have felt it. Effective and very simple.

Call of Cthulhu, rules analysis redux

Brian Gleichman over at Whitehall ParaIndustries (a very nice blog, go read it!) saw my post about Call of Cthulhu and posted a response in which he calls it an epic fail. I thought it was wonderful with some discussion, so I posted some short notes over there as a reply. He was totally right that I did fail! But, I consider my main failing to be that I was too unfocused in my post, and will try to remedy that a bit by this follow up.

Let's begin with this: If the simple rule that coins is the unit of experience and weight, reinforces the image of the characters as scoundrels our to make a buck, then the question is what is it that investigators in CoC get from the game system?

This was my main question. Later I talked about how the SAN mechanic actually discourage what is the main thrust of the game, investigating.

My next observation is this: For some reason "the correct way" to play, i.e. do the heroic thing and go forth and protect the world at your own peril, is transmitted by some other means.

So the idea here is that if you're analyzing the game from a pure game mechanic standpoint there is something missing. It's the Social Contract or the meta level (Brian have a very good essay about the different layers of design here) that make CoC work.

That being said, I think there are game mechanics which make CoC the game it is, and some of that was touched upon. Where my failings began to show is for example when I replied to some comments. I was a tired and unfocused and didn't made any of the points I had hope to make from the feedback I expected. So I'll try to put a few points to rest here.

I don't feel that the idea that rules define play needs to be defended. It does fine by itself from my experience. What I was aiming for was how this is still true, but that CoC tells us that there's more at work! In the Old School Renaissance it's popular to claim that old school rules drive old school play. Now, CoC shakes this up a bit, and we can doubt if it is indeed the whole story. Being less than clear on that point was probably the the failure of my first post.

Now there's a very interesting comment to Brian's post by the always eloquent Jeff Rients:

I honestly don't get people who don't get Call of Cthulhu. There are monsters threatening the world. Someone must stop them, even though stopping monsters is dangerous. If you aren't that someone, then there is no game.

Compare that with the result from the first Chaosium playest (quote from Greg Stafford):

We sat down and test played it. We knew the RQ system worked. We wanted to test this setting and is unique SAN. After the first game we all agreed, “OK, this works, but boy are we depressed!” We played it again, and thought, “It really does work, but why would anyone want to play this more than once?” So we changed one little thing: we made a way to regain Sanity. Then we edited the manuscript, got my friend Gene Day to do some art, Lynn laid it out and we got it into print.

Some game, eh?

So, what we have with CoC is a disconnect between how SAN discourage investigation, and how people play the game. It opens up interesting opportunities to talk about mix and match "cargo cult D&D" and the social aspects of play. All of which I find fascinating! Not only that, I also think that there are actually ways in which the game mechanic reinforces play in CoC. It's a useful starting point to study the rules and how they support a style, and sometimes prove it's irrelevant.

I hope that came across as clearer, and also as more developed. If you are interested in the theory of design and "old school" play, Call of Cthulhu will be very worthwhile to study.

Call of Cthulhu - the game where the rules tell you not to go on adventures

I have been thinking a bit about Call of Cthulhu lately. Fairly recently we started to play the gigantic campaign At the Mountains of Madness, and it switched on the part of my brain that pontificates upon design issues. I began to ponder what makes good old CoC tick.

Some of my recent musings on how rules reinforce and support a certain style of play is especially relevant to an analysis of CoC. If the simple rule that coins is the unit of experience and weight, reinforces the image of the characters as scoundrels our to make a buck, then the question is what is it that investigators in CoC get from the game system?

Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying, is a very slick skill based system. Apart from the stats which are rolled with 3d6, everything else is based on percentile dice. Combat system and skills is all based on rolling a d100 under your rating. Even testing against stats is often done that way, with the relevant stat multiplied by five. Nothing of this reinforce the image of investigators unearthing cults and combating otherworldly beings trying to enter our reality, does it? The key thing, of course, is the Sanity mechanic.

As many of you know, the sanity rules are kind of like mental hit points, SAN. See or partake in too much mind numbing things and your mind fragments. So, what will this teach you? Oddly enough it reinforces the view that the only way to stay sane is to never read a book, partake in a ritual or cast a spell and to shut your eyes as soon as some entity appears. It teaches you to run away and stick your head in the sand!

A typical Call of Cthulhu scenario might look like this. You hear from an acquaintance that a childhood friend have disappeared. Naturally you travel to his last known residence, gathering clues. As thanks for your curiosity you will loose some sanity from what you discover. After some fraternization with the locals you might hear that odd occurrences, maybe cattle mutilations, have been notices around the time when your friend was last seen and about. Following that trail and you loose some more SAN. Perhaps it will tell you that your friend probably have gone out in the wilds, and that once it's midnight he will probably do something really bad. Armed with some unsound knowledge and maybe some guns, you confront your friend and sends the bloodsucking monster back to the void. If you are lucky you only loose some SAN doing it, and if you are unlucky you get to see your friend killed and drained of blood before the beast it dispelled. Your mind is now very fragile and you probably need psychological help.

Did you notice something in that tale? At every step, getting closer to the final confrontation and solving the mystery, you loose SAN! The lesson here is that if you want your character to stay sane and healthy, you'd better not read any books and not investigate anything! There's a disconnect here, since these things which the game system encourages you to stay away from, are the very things you have to do in order to play the game successfully. I guess sitting in your room and never travel when you receive letters about missing persons could be considered successful, but it sure isn't very fun.

Now, players of CoC have disregarded the hints from the rules and actually went out and investigated, ever since 1981. It is a very successful game and often listed as a favourite of a lot of gamers. It has even been described as the "adult" game (by Ken Hite, I think). Maybe it's one of the few games where the heroics come from the fact that to play it you will have to act contrary to all common sense and the prodding from the rules. I'm not sure that is a good definition of adult behaviour, but it sure is a sign of a different player mentality than seen in many other games. The difficult thing is to understand how that came to be.

I strongly believe that rules enforce play. If the are a list of combat actions on the character sheet like "Parry", "Feint", "Dodge" you can bet that those three actions are going to be the most common actions taken by the players. By the same token, a game where you gain most of your experience points from killing other beings, the players will try to kill everything they see. The odd thing about CoC is that in that game it's not true.

If someone just reads the rules for CoC or read any play reports, they would get the idea that not investigating is the way to go. For some reason "the correct way" to play, i.e. do the heroic thing and go forth and protect the world at your own peril, is transmitted by some other means. Have you been taught the "right" way to play CoC? How did you learn about playing CoC? Personally I since long totally forgotten when and how I first heard of the game, and how I learnt how to play it. I wonder if it is a social contract, a code of conduct when playing CoC, that makes people to what is actually not very healthy for their character? I find the question intriguing, since there are a few other games out there which are similar to Call of Cthulhu. Maybe I'm paying way to much attention to this idea of mine that the rules of a game should support and encourage a style of play, but I know from experience how that have helped me in the past to "get" a game. I will probably wrote about my thoughts about that at a later date.

To end on a positive tone, I'd like to say that CoC still is one of my favourite games. The fact that I got the opportunity to join in a group playing At the Mountains of Madness is something I am really happy about. It might be that the game really doesn't make sense, but boy am I enjoying it anyway!

Edit: A follow up post to this was posted later to clarify a few points.