Call of Cthulhu is so metal somtimes!

Today I once again was the Keeper for my CoC campaign. Now it was time to handle the scenario Tell me, have you seen the Yellow Sign? from the Great Old Ones book. As I was prepping the game, getting the mood, I was listening to some music.

So what kind of music do you listen to when you want to get in the mood for a slightly paranoid setting with sighting of a certain occult symbol all over time? I put on some Danzig and the song I Don't Mind the Pain.

So how did the scenario go?

Our brave investigators arrived in New Orleans after a close fight with a vampire. They talked to their local contact, agreed something was fishy and started digging. Soon they was convinced by a chatty physics professor that the stiff must have died some other way that was the police official story. He must have jumped from a hot air balloon, or something else flying fairly high up in the air. They also talked to some police men, including one guy who partook of the famous raid of 1907. When night fell, they started the real work, investigating a warehouse they had visited during the day.

sidebar:
How come so many rpg parties set something on fire, steal stuff or start breaking and entering? I was just earlier this week, or the week before (I don't remember) listening to a podcast where someone suggested it's always just a matter of time before the PC set something on fire. It didn't take long for one of my players to suggest it. But, instead they trespassed on private property doing some old school breaking and entering.

As a diversion, the party doctor decided to play drunk and act out some shenanigans on the fire escape ladder, involving the night patrol man. It ended with the rest of the party hastily retreating, dragging their bleeding companion to medical attention with a cracked skull. He will now be hospitalized for weeks.

I don't mind the pain.

Rough and Ready - an angry young man

I heard a song by what used to be my first metal favourites, Saxon, and this prompted me to invent this NPC. Stats for Tunnels & Trolls.

Peter
When taking a ride on one of the pick up rides from Korbo's Transport, you might ride with a young man called Peter. The story is that Korbo found him on the street, took him in and gave him a job. Now he is growing into a man, but is still just a kid. Peter is a dashingly handsome young man, with dark hair combed back. Should you find him out on his own after work, you'll probably recognize his swaggering gait and him constantly whistling some tune. Many have taunted him and called him "rubber legs", only to quickly regret it when they found out that young Peter is a pugilist of rank. He is also a womanizer with a nearly magical ability to charm. Many young girl have also found out another trait of his. He never beds the same woman twice.

Peter is not only a driver, he knows a thing or two. If something happened in Town, he knows it. If you want forbidden alchemical goods or a knife fight, he can take you there.

Name: Peter  
Kindred: Human   Type: Warrior Lvl: 2
STR: 17    IQ: 12       LK: 27
DEX: 24   CON: 10   CHR: 32
[SPD:  17   WIZ: 8]
Combat/Missile Adds: +30[+35]/+42
Weight Possible/Carried: 1700/-

Height: 5'11"
Weight: 170 lbs
Talents: The Voice +3/CHA, Puglism +3/DEX

Ideas
1 - Peter is actually the heir to a big fortune, but doesn't know it since he ran away from home when very young. The player characters get the jobs to try to find him.
2-3 - In one of the gambling joints there's one man who have lost one game to many. He couldn't pay when the crime boss asked him to, and came up with the lie that Peter had beaten him and taken the money. One other person who is owned money is a party member.
4 - Korbo allows Peter to sleep on the premises, but when the place get burglarized at night when Peter was out drinking all night he decide to kick him out. The next night the player characters are the ones burglarized.
5-6 - After a night out the player characters are jumped in an alley by some thugs. In the middle of the ruckus they hear a whistled tune familiar drawl.

Now listen to the soundtrack:



Tunnels & Trolls is a trademark of Flying Buffalo Inc. and used with kind permission

Outcast, me?

It seems like a lot of people have found my blog lately searching about whether metalheads are outcasts.

No need to feel marginalized my gamers friends. Others do fine.

What was that again? Me? In those earphones? Why, metal of course!

To play a game in somebody elses setting

Today I read an interesting post about published settings and canon. For those of us who have played in a game, like MERP, set in a "canned" world it talks about things we have all encountered. Also, some settings have heavy duty meta plot campaigns which have to be handled. That post got me thinking of my experiences.

Personally I hate meta plots. They are a bad idea on many levels. They are more work for the GM, since you have to make sure you keep up with it, buy stuff, adapt players actions to it and so on and so forth.


There are ways a pre-fabricated setting can help, though. I started playing in Tolkien's Middle Earth. It was a great help to know that I had all the players on the same page as regards setting knowledge, and expectations of what worked and not. Basically, using literary background can be a great way to manage expectations.

That being said, there are some things you will have to handle. Will you "replay" what happens in the books, and are you going to interact with the great figures in the setting.

I know that the latter can be a problem. Who have not heard of the "Elminster problem"? One high level NPC who pops up and saves your bacon, or steals the show. Not fun. For me that wasn't that much of a problem in Middle Earth, since I set all our adventures before the War of the Ring, or the Fourth Age. Maybe it's cheating, moving the Big Issues out of the way, but it was practical. In Stormbringer on the other hand, I felt it totally ok to have to players hear of Elric. If they were stupid enough to meddle in his affairs they were just so much dead meat, and he cared nothing for their bacon or their petty affairs.

There is one way to approach this which I feel is cool. The Great Names of a setting are tied by fate. But, as a player character you have freedom of action. In Stormbringer that works just fine, since everyone is a plaything of the gods, so the hand of fate is everywhere and it wont feel odd to have fate intervene or twist things.

Frankly, Stormbringer is ideal! The Eternal Recurrence is not just some Nietzschean dream, it's real! There are endless realms and planes. There are so much room to have they players wreck the setting if they like! You can have them scuttle around the Multiverse and repeat themes and iconic characters and it will feel a lot like bing in an Elric story, and you don't even have to worry about canon or if they interfere with the big man or not.

This is probably why Stormbringer have long been my favourite "canned" setting. In fact having a determined end to the world help to bring the doom laden feeling on, and everyone knows it will end badly.

Heavy Metal. Game on.

R.I.P Ronnie James Dio

It has nothing to do with gaming, but I feel like expressing some of the sadness I feel. Ronnie James Dio is dead, and it so much feel like a part of my personal history have passed on. I think of the 1980-ies often these days.

A devious trap

Music is wonderful.

I managed to invent a trap today, for one of my projects I'm writing. Now when I have a mp3 player I can listen to music on the bus downtown, or when I'm waiting for a friend to meet me. As I was listening, absentmindedly, I suddenly heard a few words of the lyrics, and at once I knew it was an arcane and interesting thing I had to write about. Where do you get your ideas? Heavy metal lyrics, of course!

That old School metal gaming

I have found the game that must be perfect for us old school metal fans. The game have the totally unlikely, and o so fitting, name Umlaut. Check it out! I think it looks hilarious and am thinking of buying it, just because.

Metalheads, and old school gamers?

I have begun to see admissions and revelations from more than one blogger, last from Nerzenjäger's Take That You Fiend! and Scott Malthouse at Trollish Delver as being metalheads. I think you all know James Raggi likes metal, eh?

As I was sitting on the bus yesterday I was fooling around with my mp3 player. I'm not an early adopter and this is my first music playing gadget ever. I have loaded a bunch of stuff into the thing, since I still don't know much about my listening habits. After settling upon an album and starting to listen I almost burst into laughter when the observation above came to me like a flash of lightning. Need I tell you what kind of music I was listening to? Go take a peek at Sirenia's official web page if you like. There's more in that small piece of electronics. I need to get my Judas Priest converted to mp3 soon.



So, bringing this back to gaming, I wonder if we four bloggers with a interest in older styles of gaming perchance have a similar taste in music because of that. As soon as I write that somebody will probably tell me I'm talking out of my butt and say that they have been playing the white box since day one and only listens to jazz.


Whatever. I still think some games just feel energetic, powerful and plain out tastlessly over the top in a way that makes me think metal. I have some of those associations and feelings. My old love affair Chaosium's Stormbringer, is the game to play with Hawkwind on the turntable. Rock on, Elric!

Yeah, you noticed that this is not one of my brainy posts.


I just can imagine what kind of game would make me think of jazz. Sorry, jazz lovers...