[D20 CoC] Beyond the Mountains of Madness Campaign - Recruiting Alternate Players

[jdeleski]

Initial Feedback on Father Rucker

Dallas,

I have read through your character sheet and also have read through all of the many postings and responses in this IC thread. I'm going to spend a few paragraphs tackling the question of your character's background, along with the mythos knowledge aspect of the game and this campaign. I may later (perhaps this weekend and after I hear back from you) dig into more detail about your actual character stats.

CHARACTER CONCEPT AND BACKGROUND
I actually like the idea of a scientist/priest character who has had some experiences with mythos-related items and events and is searching to find explanations through both his faith or through an expedition. I believe that this offers a LOT of roleplaying opportunities for our campaign! I would rather see this sort of a character included in our campaign as opposed to a straight priest/scientist who is proficient with a pistol.

Assuming that you're willing to continue to explore this sort of character (I really hope that you are, because I think that it would be VERY interesting), I would like to develop his background further and put some reasonable boundaries around his mythos abilities and knowledge.

Due to the nature of this sort of character, I would like to suggest that only you and the GM (me) would know a lot of this background at the start of this campaign. I am not suggesting that we hide your background so that our other players cannot comment, but rather because, as I see it, your character is unsure/fearful of what he has discovered and is reluctant to expose other individuals to this knowledge; this would add to the roleplaying aspect of the game. Over the past couple of months of developing our campaign, I think that my players have now developed some trust in my thoroughness and adherence to a strong logical game/storyline that they'd be willing to suspend their skepicism and allow me a little leeway in this regard.

As you've already mentioned in one of your responses, your character would share his knowledge with other team members as he became comfortable with them and/or if he was confronted with a dire situation and had to act.

NEXT STEPS
So here's what I propose (provided that you would be OK with adding mythos aspects to your character):
1) In private (emails or IM's), you and I will need to come to an agreement as to exactly what your player has experienced in the past, identifying what items, what book(s), and what events he encountered. How did your character react to each event and item, what studies did he engage in, and how did that effect your sanity and personality and subsequent pursuits in life? This will set the stage for what feats or spells your character might have or not have.
2) From this, you finish your character sheet in all respects with the exception of any feats/spells so that the other players can get a more detailed picture of Father Rucker. At this early point in the campaign, you shouldn't need these feats and spells, so we have a bit of time to do step number 3, but step 3 may only take me a week or so, realtime.
3) I consider mythos artifacts and books and feats and spells in the game to be very rare, but nevertheless present. After we settle on an outline of your character's experiences and status, I would spend a some time studying the BMoM storyline and weaving your background and mythos information through this campaign, ensuring that it fits and is connected. At this point, we might find a need to change a few things that we agreed on in step 1. And finally, I would either approve your requested feats/spells or recommend ones that are more appropriate, and we'd discuss and agree on the final composition.
4) We're done. We each keep a copy of your character's full history and abilities and occasionally talk, in private, about how your character perceives the world and uses his special knowledge/abilities.

Are you Ok with this?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Job (the tortured one).

 

[Dallas4lr]

Jdelski,


I am definitely willing to pursue the mythos/spellcasting aspect of this character - this was how he was designed. This will definitely be intriguing rarely do I get to be a player, I'm generally stuck GM'ing sso this should be fun.


Contac info:

610-375-8811 - phone
TrilogysoundPA - AOL messenger
TrilogysoundPA@aol.com - email
Dallas4lr - IM

Dallas

 

[jdeleski]

Comment RE: Starkweather

Oh now, Morpheus, based on your recent comment in the IC thread, you surely misjudge James Starkweather! He does not treat everyone poorly. Look at how warmly he welcomed Paco, James Poole, Martin and Vittorio!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Job (the tortured one).

 

[Morpheus]

Oh now, Morpheus, based on your recent comment in the IC thread, you surely misjudge James Starkweather! He does not treat everyone poorly. Look at how warmly he welcomed Paco, James Poole, Martin and Vittorio!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Job (the tortured one).

I didn't misjudge him, I knew he was a male chauvinist. It just became more apparent with the rejection of the priest...

 

[Taokan]

Umm.

 

[jdeleski]

Request of Dallas

Hello Dallas,

I enjoyed reading through your opening post. It's well written and provided me with vivid images of how your character came to where he is in life, which is exactly what I was hoping for. You and I haven't yet had a chance to discuss your character's history and personality and abilities yet, so Im going to make a couple of comments and ask that you make 2 changes for me. When you and I talk this week about your character, we'll get a chance to iron out all of this so I won't expect a lot of requests for edits afterwards.

First, I thought a bit about exorcism, and references to it, in my game and decided that it would be OK. Individuals in my game could easily be seen as being taken over by demons, or evil sorcerers, or even mind-bending mythos creatures, and in such cases they might commonly turn to their church or a priest for assistance, perhaps requiring an exorcism (or something like it).

But there is an aspect of this that I must ask you to edit out of your post, specifically your reference to Christ. I am a Christian, and a Catholic, and although I am not personally offended at your post and might find it an interesting exercise to maintain a logical, religiously-correct and spritually-correct campaign, I believe that it would be too taxing on our story and is likely to offend some readers. The question then becomes, how does one roleplay a priest in the 1920's without such references? I believe that as long as you are generic in your descriptions, for example using the term "God" rather than "Christ", I'd be more comfortable. And you'll need to be careful in your other references to the church or to aspects of the church so that noone takes it literally as a reference to their specific real life faith. If you'd like to play a priest, that's really the only way that I can accept it in-game. Otherwise, we'd end up with a campaign that might become a negative lightning-rod for some gamers who might seek to end our game very quickly. I'm sorry to ask this of you, but I can't risk that kind of negativity.

Your references to exorcism and to Satan are OK since they do not lead a reader to think towards any particular religion.

The other aspect that you'll need to be watchful of is your reference to "the air seems to crackle when ever he prays in Latin". The use of spells in CoC is very costly in terms of Sanity, HP, Con, and/or other character abilities and stats. Literally, every time your character wishes to use a spell, he will irretrievably give up a piece of himself, therefore he is unlikely to use a spell except in the most dire of circumstances. I'm not sure what spell, if any, he was casting, but I inferred from your writing that he was casting something. Additionally, in a CoC game, at least in how I would view it, he would be unlikely to want to draw attention to his abilities since they would be outside of the norm for a priest or human beings in general. If these uses of his abilities drew the attention of his superiors in the church, he might be reprimanded or even kicked out. If these uses of his abilities drew the attention of the public at large, he might be shunned, incarcerated, or even killed. Initially, when Father Rucker casts a spell in the company of our team members, I'm expecting that they'll roleplay some surprise and shock at his abilities.

Those are just my own thoughts about this campaign and the world around it. You and I will get a better chance to discuss these things this week once I review your email in detail and we link up either via phone or IM.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks!
Job (the tortured one).

 

[jdeleski]

Taokan's Dupe Posts

No doubt some of you have noticed that Taokan seems to lately be posting a number of duplicate or nonsense posts. There is a very logical reason as to why this is happening: Taokan is my RL daughter and she neglects to sign out of her account when I jump in and post a GM response. When I notice that my GM response is listed under Taokan's account, I'm forced to delete it to avoid confusion. Taokan and I were hoping to keep this a secret between the two of us, but I've goofed up too many times. :\

For those of you who might be concerned that I might go a little easy on my daughter, I welcome you to review her current situation with Camille (it's not all that good and not all that easy...) and my responses to her posts. She actually thinks that I'm being a little HARD on her! Who me?

Anyway, the cat's out of the bag. Please ignore any future goofs on my part or Taokan's.

 

[Bobitron]

I don't see any issue with a couple RL relatives playing. Thanks for clearing that up, though. It was a bit confusing.

I have to confess, I was pretty disappointed when I read Dallas' well written post. I mean, a couple mentions of the supernatural already? The post is at least of the same level of quality as the others playing, and, I think, better than my own, but I fear for how player knowledge might be worked into the story as time goes on.

Just my two cents. I'm sure the game will go well; there is far too much talent here to be derailed by my personal preference of a complete lack of knowledge regarding the supernatural. You are doing a bang-up job, jdeleski, and I applaud the efforts of all the players so far. The writing so far has been very good, the best of any game I am involved in.

 

[Dallas4lr]

Greetings,


I thank everyone for the constructive criticism and postive comments concerning my first post. I will take these comments to heart and attempt to get the character more in line with the pulse of the game.

It will probably take a couple of post and a few more comments from everyone before I have a character that everyone simply feels okay about. Wack me when I get out of line .

1) Jdeleski, the comments concerning Christ will be changed to God.

2) After rereading the post, I am in agreement with everyone. That the use or implication of use of magic was over the top and that has been edited. And you are quite right magic in Cthulhu is quite costly so Father Rucker would refrain from its use for more reasons then one.

3)Bobitron, I thank you for your comments and I will attempt to make some changes so that you or other members are not put off by references to the supernatural.

I would point out that anyone who follows the genre would understand that during the timeframe there are a lot of weird goings on in the outlying regions surrounding Miskatonic University. So from my perspective if you play a priest in this region you have one of 3 choices: you either play a priest who is a coward who doesn't attempt to assist the people of this region; or you play a priest who totally dismisses all of the strangeness and brands anyone that repeats such things as weird; or you play a priest thats concerned, visits these afflicted folks, sees some weirdness firsthand and attributes it to Satan/demons, and attempts to assist them from a spiritual perspective and give sound advice like - 'I think you better move from this area". I have chosen the latter, which in most cases could be quite deadly.

I really don't find references to Satan, Demons or casting out devils so very supernatural, maybe its because I have attended a number of charismatic churches in my past and they use these terms more loosely then other churches. And in real life there is an African Cardinal who now works from the vatican that has drawn quite a bit of acclaim due to his exorcisms. Actually this may be the last time you see a post of this nature; because Father Rucker will refrain discussssing his background with the player characters. Either way I will be more careful in the future.

4) It will probably take me a couple of post to fit in comfortably, but I'm trying.


Thanks
Dallas

 

[jdeleski]

Follow-up to Dallas

Hey Dallas, you're fitting in just fine. Roleplaying a priest on a public bulletin board with demanding audience (and a ruthless DM ) is a tall order!

From all of your descriptions and writings so far, here's a twist on your third priest alternative, and it's actually where I thought you were headed with Father Rucker: a priest who has been disturbed by his experiences and has had his faith shaken after finding actual evidence of the mythos. Your character's faith might still be strong, as is your resolve to do something about it such as persuing additional knowledge, but as you discover more evidence, your character will be confronted with additional uncertainties. Not only will your character be finding that the worldview of the cosmos is terribly wrong, but you'll be struggling to maintain your faith in your God.

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Job (the tortured one).