Gamemastering Call of Cthullhu - pacing

Today I was once again behind the screen as Keeper of Arcane Lore. I'm collecting experience, and this was my sixth time as a Keeper! While running this session I experienced something I wanted to talk about.

I have been running games now for almost 25 years, and I think I have a pretty good grasp on how to behave in many different situations. Are the players looking excited? Are they laughing? Do that guy over there look like he is getting bored? I think I have those things nailed down when I stomp around in my familiar fantasy grounds. Especially the problem of pacing is something I usually know how to handle.

Today they players sat down trying to continue from having explored a warehouse of a suspected cult and having had to retreat with one member of the party K.O.'d. What now? From my point of view it was pretty obvious what to do in a Call of Cthulhu game. You visit every named NPC and talk to them to track down ever scrap of knowledge, since knowledge is the most important thing in this game. Right?

Naturally, my players did not do that.

After some very intelligent and smart use of backstory, connections and leveraging Credit Rating, one of my players found a masonic brother and started to talk. Since he was the D.A. I thought that this was a guy who knew stuff, and had resources. I had him mention a few things and be friendly. That and some interest from the players in one of the named NPC and they had finally gotten the idea that talking to people was good, and digging around for people in the know was fruitful. Finally.

Now the P.I. in the party decided to go sneak into the posh mansion of one of the key NPCS. In broad daylight. In an area where I specifically mentioned police patrols being regular and observant. Guess who got to spend a night in jail?

So. What would I have done? Well. I don't understand why they didn't start to talk to all the people on the list they had gotten from their main contact? I would have visited each and every NPC, in alphabetical order! After the session some of the players even voiced the opinion that it felt like it was a bit hard to find the clues. I even play with GUMSHOE inspired rules, so they will find core clues, and they know it. At least I have mentioned it. Interesting.

You do know about the three clue rule, right? Go read that essay if you haven't.

Now, if this had been a fantasy game I would have rolled for a random encounter. I love the idea of a random encounter. The random encounter could provide a conveniently dropped clue, to make it an even three, or just something to do so that after the encounter someone had a new idea.

What do you do when there's a lull in the action in an investigative game? You can't really push the players toward the next clue. It would be bad form, and boring. Also, in order to entertain them while waiting for the penny to drop, do you let wandering kobolds show up and pick a fight? I guess not. I think there are, after more than 20 years, still some things this old dog has to learn.

ToC - Drives. Free will, again?

I just thought of something.

You know that Dirve your character has in Trail of Cthulhu? It's there to give the Keeper something to point to and prod you with to go head first into danger. Right? According to the rules you take a penalty to enforce your free will as a player, and not act in line with the character psychology you have on your sheet.

That sounds a lot like things I was pondering in my posts about free will. Sure, it does not involve NPCs or other PCs influencing your PC, but the Keeper. Interesting territory, indeed.

I don't think I have seen anyone comment upon them in that light. In my CoC games I have not yet remembered to use them! Interesting.

Call of Cthulhu on rails

So, we played another session on CoC last weekend. It was the second of two sessions covering the scenario Blood on the Tracks by J. Todd Kingrea from the Pagan Publishing scenario collection Out of the Vault.

The scenario is basically a train ride on a train hijacked by a monster. The intent is to have a feeling of being locked in, of having someone around hunting you for mysterious reasons. I think it is an interesting set up. I'll do a short summary of events and then talk about what went well and what didn't.

So, our investigators left Boston for New Orleans, following the letter our intrepid reported had gotten from her old friend there. Everyone settled in and talked to the other travellers and had dinner on the train. After dinner and cigars most people retired to their rooms, some for "medical tonics for better sleep". Suddenly the peace was shattered when the priest yelled at the top of his lungs that he had seen the conductor run out from Ms Browns compartment, all bloody. The brave investigators broke down the door to the washroom and found the dead conductor.

They spent the night doing autopsies (good with a MD in the group, eh?), examining the blood trail and searching staterooms. Sooner or later the professor of anthropology they had talked to was missing and they started a search, finding him stuffed in a box in the baggage car. By now they all suspected some vampiric activity, considering the blood was missing. They did find, and open, the big crate in the baggage car. Interestingly enough, this lead to the conclusion that Sir Alexander's wife must be a vampire!

Now they had noticed that the radio was smashed and that communications with the engine was down. Our war hero decided it was time for more pulp hero antics and climbed over to the engine via the coal box! He had his big gun with him and managed to blow the two living corpses away. Then there was a fight in the railroad car with the vampire and his acolyte. They ran down the whole train and the fight ended in the baggage car with a stake through the heart of the vampire. Then they had managed to slow down the train and had a lot of explaining to do when the authorities arrived.

So, how was it? Well. I more than once used the guidelines from Unknown Armies about 30-50% being professional level and had everyone with that level automatically succeed at crucial checks like in Trail of Cthulhu. I never had anyone need to be pushed by their Drive into action. Also, I actually forgot to check if anyone's Pillar of Sanity was threatened when they rolled for SAN. The latter was a failing on my part.

Mood wise I think it worked ok. Having one after another being killed off did heighten the sense of being hunted somewhat. I think the fact that things were moving along a pace determined by the villain was a good thing. It meant that even though the investigation could inform the decisions of the players, nothing had to stop because they didn't figure it all out. In fact, I don't think they ever did. The fact that guns are so deadly in close quarters made any gunfight slightly lopsided. I rolled really bad on my part and every second (no, really!) shot fired was an impale! Maybe you need to have a mix of "gun fodder" and some nasty mythos critters to drive home how useless guns are against those.

One of my house rules that will come to matter is how I handle SAN recovery. The doctor who did the autopsies and with reckless abandon ran after the vampire with his hunting rifle did suffer. He gained a temporary insanity and how have this thing for cleanliness. It will affect his work, I gather. But, more importantly he lost 8 SAN which he will never get back. They ended up with a train filled with bloody murder, corpses and guns had been fired. No chance of plausible denial there, so no SAN recovery even though they defeated the monster. That rule will colour this campaign!

Now they will arrive in New Orleans and there are cults, murders and monsters up ahead. I can't wait.

2011 is behind me, 2012 is coming...

So, the year is nearly in the bag, and a new one looms ahead. Let's look back a moment.

What did 2011 bring to the table? For me one of the best moments was when I scored both The First Fantasy Campaign, and a British 1st ed. of Tunnels & Trolls. That one will be hard to beat!

Personal accomplishments must be that I finally sat down behind the screen (from Trail of Cthulhu) as the Keeper of Arcane Lore for a Call of Cthulhu game. For so many years, that has been one of my favourite games and now I finally got to run it! Also, being published in Fight On! together with so many creative individuals was definitely a personal highlight.

A true blessing have been my faithful readers. That's you! Many thanks for those who check in here more or less regularly, and post comments. My interest have flagged somewhat during the year, but having a readership is a marvellous ego boost. Thanks!!

Lost causes this year was my failure to run a game of T&T. I tried the Raggi method by plastering the city with notes, and got no reply what so ever. Damn, I miss Canada! Swedes are a sullen lot, who don't let you in easily. The same fate befell any attempts to play old D&D. I was a player in a play by forum game, but it died on the vine. I have posted my conclusions about play by forum in another post.

But! Time to look forward. What will happen in 2012? Will I finally become a google droid like so many else, and run a game on google+? Who knows. I like the idea, but spend so much time before a computer anyway, and when I am home I would like to either sleep or spend time with my books or my family.

I will try too run more CoC games. I loved it, and have so much good material to try out. Small but vicious dog reawakened in me the urge to do something with Warhammer. I still think that game would be so sweet as a Burning Wheel game. Burning Hammer, eh? Savage Worlds is another game that just begs to be played.

My attempts to create some original material always seen ti flounder. Most of my creativity comes on a tight deadline for my weekly game, which I have none at the moment. We'll see if I do something about those issues.

New games, then? You know, there are some cool things coming out, but I can't for the life of me post a very long list! The only thing I can say I really look forward to is the new edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight.

How was your year? Can you help me get pumped up about some upcoming games that I have overlooked? Feel free to chip in!

A Happy New Year to all of you out there in blogging land!

What I don't like about Trail of Cthulhu

Since I just ran a game of Call of Cthulhu, including some rules and concepts from Trail of Cthulhu, I have spent some time pondering the qualities of the latter.

Why did I not just run a ToC game?

Basically, my main beef with ToC is that I don't really feel very comfortable about rolling one die. It might seem like a small thing, but I want more randomness in my games.

If you, like in ToC, rolls 1d6, may add in "spends" from your pools (all skills are pools of points) trying to beat difficulty of, say, 3-4, it goes without saying that most times randomness wont be a factor. Naturally, this is a design feature. Robin Laws who designed the game clearly states that his idea is to make the system drive a kind of narrative that behaves in a specified way.

Personally I like the quality of "new school" games, like the forge style games and others, to have rules that reinforce and drive toward a style of play the designer envision his or her game to be about. Many times, almost as many times that I have claimed Alignment leads to brain damage, I have elevated the rule of gold equals xp to sublime levels of design mastery, due to the effects it can have in enforcing a style of play. This is something I think is the great re-discovery stemming from Ron Edwards "system matters".

What kind of style is it then that ToC reinforce with its pools you can spend for basically guaranteed success? Well, it is a game where you can be sure, as a player, that the actions of your character will succeed. If you have a decent pool of at least 2, trying to beat 4 (a rough mean of a 2-8 scale) is an average chance of success of more than 80%. I think that makes it kind of pointless to have a randomizer with those odds. Before we delve too deep into math and probabilities, the main point of my argument is that on such a small scale a spend of one point, to say nothing of more than one, makes successes almost certain.

So, why is that bad? Isn't it good for the players to have say in when they get to shine? Well, no. Not when the object of the game is horror.

Horror demands giving up certainty and hope. Vagueness and isolation, and the strong possibility of failure and its following painful result is what drives the sense of horror. I think ToC is a fine game for CSI, but not for horror.

Some say the rules don't work that way in actual play, and they might be right. I have only played ToC once, but it did not falsify my principal objections to the rules. Feel free to disagree!

How did it work? Combining the Cthulhu game rules

So, now I have run to sessions of my Trail of Cthulhu infused Call of Cthulhu hack. How did it go?

To begin with, I think more sessions are needed to really expose the dark corners of the system. But, I think I some impressions would be fun to share.

How about the most talked about feature of ToC? Well, I have said before that I think having a scenario stall because somebody missed their Spot Hidden roll is just shoddy game mastering. Having rules that hinder that just feels like the wrong way to fix the problem. That being said, I always liked the way how Unknown Armies handled skill percentages. In that game you are really good with a skill of 50%. That doesn't mean that you fail every second time you try to do what you do to earn your living. If you have 50%, you can earn your living, without rolling! That way of handling skills is a way to fuse ToC with the regular BRP system. You don't roll your Spot Hidden to notice that clue, and fail. If you are a guy who needs to be perceptive to make a living, you just spot things. That's what that 50% means. It turned out quite well in real play. You roll your dice anyway and if you succeed I give some extra info or colour. I think that worked fine.

The part of ToC that I personally feel is most interesting is the Drive, Pillars of Sanity and Sources of Stability. I implemented the Drive and the Pillars. The former I actually turned to once, just checking if it was time for a soft driver. The player in fact used the Drive to justify the roleplay, and the Driver thus worked, without actually turning into a game mechanic. Would that roleplay have happened without the Drive? Maybe, but the signpost and guide for roleplay was there. I think that worked fine.

After the scenario I realized that I had totally failed to ask for SAN rolls at quite a few opportunities when it would have been applicable. Thus, the concept of the Pillars needs further play testing.

I will probably make a follow up post on this topic after some more sessions of play. Sadly, it seems like the great game killer season is upon us, and now people will be travelling to be with friends and family. Probably we will have to wait until January until the next session.

CoC character generation

So, this weekend we generated some character for CoC. I will be running The Hills Rise Wild when we next meet. It will be interesting.

I decided to include as much cool stuff from Trail as I had earlier been pondering. Drives, Pillars of Sanity and all core clues from Occupational Skills of 30% or above. I also added in a starting max of 85% and the Trigger Event from Unknown Armies. I think it will fit well.

We now have a lady reporter, a private eye and a businessman and gentleman scholar. It will be interesting...

Houseruling Call of Cthulhu - yet again! Incorporating Trail features

I have thought about suitable ways of incorporating the nice features from Trail of Cthulhu and think I have finally nailed it down.

• Pillars of Sanity - So, pillars are abstract principles your character believes in. Everyone get for each 20 pts of SAN. 

1. Advantage: When faced with a horror that invalidates your belief, you can have the Pillar crumble and avoid the SAN loss. When all your Pillars are gone, you will automatically fail your SAN rolls when nothing shields you from the horror.
2. Disadvantage: When faced with a horror that threatens your Pillar you will always roll the worst effect when failing a SAN roll.

• Drives - Drives are core desires of your character, which gives you a reason to go mad and die.

1. Hard driver: Following a hard driver will protect you from the effect of losing 5 SAN in one go for the next immediate experience related to the driver. Ignoring the driver, loose 1d6 SAN.
2. Soft driver: Following a soft driver and you will only loose the minimum amount at the next immediate experience related to the driver. Ignoring the driver, loose 1d3 SAN.

• Core Clues - While I don't expect to use it as a hard and fast rule, professional skills will always give the clues needed. Characters should shine when doing their thing. I'll always ask for a roll, but if it is a core clue check, failure will not stop the clue from being found but instead will take a significant amount of extra time, say all day instead of an hour.

Then there are one thing I am looking at importing from Unknown Armies, and a small tweak to the basic system.

• Trigger Events - In Unknown Armies your character have an event in their history when they encountered the supernatural. I think that is a good idea for thinking more about who your character is. It's probably also a nice way to tie into the Drive of a character.
• Skill improvement - In older editions of CoC you didn't gain 1d10 when rolling for improving a skill, but 1d6. I love my d6. I do like the idea of extra effect for crits, though, so crits will gain you 1d6+1.
• Regaining SAN - Sandy Petersen's original game didn't have the option of regaining SAN. I like the starkness of that rule. Taking a cue from ToC, I'd rule that if at the end of an adventure there are no physical evidence left for any unnatural event, you can regain SAN. Roll a d6 and be happy.

What Ron Edwards taught me about Call of Cthulhu

In the comments I got on my post from yesterday I could see that the idea of house ruling CoC might not be the most immediate idea for some, and also what you focus on to be worth focusing on. Basically, my interest in the idea of a Drive and Pillars of Sanity is to codify the System. Let me expand a bit upon that last point, it's important.

A while back I listened to an interview with Ron Edwards, on the Walking Eye podcast, I think. He talked about what constitutes a System. I remember thinking I should post something about it, but don't remember if I got around to it. Anyway, the idea is that one reason the early games look so sketchy is that there were a lot of common experiences which everyone could be counted upon knowing. Thus, there are procedures and "rules" which never end up in the book, since they are just "how you do things". Ron calls the whole of that the System. One of the great achievements of the Forge is to codify, and analyze how those invisible rules enhance and influence play, and then use that for deliberate effects.

So, why would a CoC Investigator go down into that crypt again? Why would that Investigator looks for clues to a disappearance just after getting a letter from a NPC relative? There are no System for it, yet everyone does it and expects it to be part of the game.

Now, the idea of having rules about Drives supplying reasons to go investigating, or Pillars of Sanity as reason to go on fighting, is just such a System - codified.

The conclusion is of course that even though I still think it shoddy game mastering to make a game falter because of a failed but vital die roll, I have changed my mind and think that the "autoclue" rule together with Drives and Pillars of Sanity would make a lot of sense in a Call of Cthulhu game. Finally, all of the System is written down.

Houseruling Call of Cthulhu

Like I recently posted about, I have been listening to the recorded sessions of Horror on the Orient Express campaign for Call of Cthulhu. It have kind of rekindled my old love for the game. I became a patron of Yog-Sothoth.com just the other day to show my support, and to get hold of the recordings of the latest recordings, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth - by gaslight.

So, naturally I have now gotten the urge to play CoC. The fact that I still haven't managed to get my other planned game off the ground don't stop me from dreaming.

Ever since the read Trail of Cthulhu I have been thinking that some of the inventions of that game would work excellently if brought over to CoC. I still think the BRP system superior to Gumshoe, but some aspects are interesting.

• Drives - frankly, having a specified reason to go peeking into things that make you go mad is a good idea. Having some mechanic that brings it out into play wouldn't hurt either. 
• Pillars of Sanity - I never really felt comfortable with the idea of gaining sanity after the adventure for defeating monsters. It works in Chill, but personally I think it feels cheap in CoC. Having some abstract beliefs and principles as the grounding of your world view opens up interesting possibilities. If something happens and the Investigator can somehow argue that he will stand it by seeking comfort in one of his beliefs, that is a cool idea. Also imagine someone having experienced something that shows his world view to be a noble lie. Instead of going insane, he could have the pillar "crumble" from within, and now have a more fragile hold on his sanity.

I'm pretty sure I could think of more. The idea of not having to roll if the clue is important is less of revolution for me. I never saw the big need for that Gumshoe invention. Letting the game grind to a halt because of a failed roll is shoddy game mastering, whatever the rules set.

Actual Play: Trail of Cthulhu - The Dying of St Margaret's

Back in September I played the first session of this adventure, and after 10 000 sorrows we finally got together again to finish this scenario. It has hard to remember who we were and what we were investigating. I'll tell you what we did below and everything that follows will be spoilers!

But, we went down to the village to talk to some Sara. None of us knew why, but we had taken notes about going to ask her about... something. It turned out that being friendly with the locals was not always easy, but being of a working class background my character managed to get them to loosen up a bit. Sara turned out to have some personal belongings to one of our friends, who had disappeared. Key was that her husband mentioned an old theatre which had been worked upon at the school. Back at the school we decided to take a look at that one.

Now things happened at a brisk pace. We broke into the theatre, found some papers and a strange machine. Being of sound mind and not very found of dusty old papers we avoided learning about strange horrors and instead started the strange machine. Since it turned out to be quite scary we took a lot of notes and decided to get back.

Decide to get back we all did, individually. In the middle of the nigh. So, Driven by Adventure my character decided to flick the switch again, lock the door and see what the machine really did. Driven by Moral Indignation another character sneaked out and decided to burn the whole building to the ground. Driven by Patriotism yet another character wanted to secure the find for the greater good of England.

So, we managed to die by infighting, burning kerosene and having all the oxygen being sucked out of our lungs by a miniature black hole! One character managed to be insane before that and survived, totally nuts. A fitting end.

Apparently this scenario would have been a Purist one where finding the Horror we should have realized the futility of fighting the Mythos and then resignated ourself to the fate which becomes us. Not us, we died fighting!

On the bus home I listened to My Dying Bride, and got a totally awesome overwhelming feeling of doom and futility. I loved it.

A fitting end.

Playing Trail of Cthulhu

So, after a bit of a hiatus, I have again played a rpg session. A friend had a vacancy in his ToC group and I jumped at the opportunity.

It's always interesting to play with pre-gens. You never know what you're getting, and you'll have to make the best of it. This time I got to be a journalist who wanted adventure. I must confess I don't understand why he went to a god forsaken piece of Scotland to find it! Anyhow, it was fun and interesting to try to fit into the strongly class based society, where how you're approached has everything to do with name and who you know. Damn is it annoying to be treated like dirt just because you're not an upper class snob! Historical role playing can be an eye opener sometimes.

I wonder if most of us don't let our players off the hook to easy in our fantasy games. In Judges Guild's Wilderlands, you had a value for social class. Maybe it could be used to good effect in more settings?