The Shaman
First Post
jdeleski, thank you for taking the time to outline your position on the Father Rucker character. While you have addressed a couple of my concerns (such as ECL), I admit that I still have a number of reservations.
The idea of a priest-scientist joining the expedition offers no particular conceptual problems for me – however, all of the characters presented so far have offered impeccable credentials as potential explorers. I believe that Father Rucker should be similarly qualified before being included, which involves more than taking ranks in science skills – it’s developing a curriculum vitae consistent with the other characters that makes his participation plausible. In my opinion, such a character should be a Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Georges Lemaitre, or (nearest and dearest to my heart) Alberto María de Agostini – as it stands right now, we have Gabriel Van Helsing.
In the same vein, I believe a character’s Mythos knowledge should be similarly integrated into his raison d'être as a credentialed explorer. The news clippings our characters received hinted at a previous expedition that met a mysterious fate – mention of a “different taxonomy” in the extant records of the Miskatonic U. party seems like a good pathway for a Mythos-minded character to use as a nexus with the Starkweather-Moore expedition, for example. In this way it’s possible for a character with limited Mythos knowledge to make a plausible companion to the company of adventurers that Starkweather has assembled, if the character’s other credentials make the grade. So far there hasn’t been a connection between the character’s Mythos knowledge and the expedition offered to explain Father Rucker’s participation. So far everyone else has presented a character who is an explorer first – Dallas4lr has presented a character that is a Mythos investigator first.
I also have reservations about the player group dynamic. It is easy for me to see how the Father Rucker character could come to dominate the limelight through in-game and out-of-game knowledge if he’s not played with respect for the roles of the rest of the characters. In this I’m particularly concerned by Dallas4lr’s responses to the issues raised. So far Dallas4lr has demonstrated a “tin ear,” taking entirely the wrong message from the concerns me and others shared in the OoC thread. Challenged on the concept of a gun-totin’ spell-castin’ priest-scientist, Dallas4lr’s response was to attempt to pick apart the other characters’ mechanics – the fact that his character was not just “different” from the rest, but radically so, and that pieces of Father Rucker’s stats and abilities were not just inconsistent with the others characters, but with the character himself, didn’t seem to come through. For example, Poole’s experience with rifles is 100% consistent with his background of growing up in the West, while Paco’s skill with melee weapons reflects a life spent working with axes and hammers and knives – a scholar-turned-ecclesiastic with firearms skills is an anomaly at best, one not explained adequately by his background (and perhaps owing its origins to player knowledge and metagaming).
Repeated explanations by different players about their concerns with respect to the character elicited an exclamation-point laden response citing “the rules” as sufficient justification for playing the character the way that Dallas4lr feels is appropriate – the post even went so far as to suggest that the rest of us don’t know enough about CoC to play the game ‘correctly’. (Just to clear up that point, our characters will encounter the unknown, go crazy, and die on the ice – not necessarily in that order. Does that sum up CoC pretty well?) What I think Dallas4lr is missing was summed up very neatly by taitzu52 – this adventure is not about chasing an Arkham escapee through a fog-shrouded Massachusetts cemetery or encountering an Old One in the natural history museum at Miskatonic U. I believe this point should be emphasized.
I’m very concerned that this misapprehension of where the other players’ reservations lie will carry over into the game and result in intra-character conflict that isn’t an artifact of roleplaying, but rather a very different set of starting assumptions on the part of the players. I hope that you will consider this in the spirit in which it’s intended, as input to make what has already started off as a very good game that much better.
The idea of a priest-scientist joining the expedition offers no particular conceptual problems for me – however, all of the characters presented so far have offered impeccable credentials as potential explorers. I believe that Father Rucker should be similarly qualified before being included, which involves more than taking ranks in science skills – it’s developing a curriculum vitae consistent with the other characters that makes his participation plausible. In my opinion, such a character should be a Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Georges Lemaitre, or (nearest and dearest to my heart) Alberto María de Agostini – as it stands right now, we have Gabriel Van Helsing.
In the same vein, I believe a character’s Mythos knowledge should be similarly integrated into his raison d'être as a credentialed explorer. The news clippings our characters received hinted at a previous expedition that met a mysterious fate – mention of a “different taxonomy” in the extant records of the Miskatonic U. party seems like a good pathway for a Mythos-minded character to use as a nexus with the Starkweather-Moore expedition, for example. In this way it’s possible for a character with limited Mythos knowledge to make a plausible companion to the company of adventurers that Starkweather has assembled, if the character’s other credentials make the grade. So far there hasn’t been a connection between the character’s Mythos knowledge and the expedition offered to explain Father Rucker’s participation. So far everyone else has presented a character who is an explorer first – Dallas4lr has presented a character that is a Mythos investigator first.
I also have reservations about the player group dynamic. It is easy for me to see how the Father Rucker character could come to dominate the limelight through in-game and out-of-game knowledge if he’s not played with respect for the roles of the rest of the characters. In this I’m particularly concerned by Dallas4lr’s responses to the issues raised. So far Dallas4lr has demonstrated a “tin ear,” taking entirely the wrong message from the concerns me and others shared in the OoC thread. Challenged on the concept of a gun-totin’ spell-castin’ priest-scientist, Dallas4lr’s response was to attempt to pick apart the other characters’ mechanics – the fact that his character was not just “different” from the rest, but radically so, and that pieces of Father Rucker’s stats and abilities were not just inconsistent with the others characters, but with the character himself, didn’t seem to come through. For example, Poole’s experience with rifles is 100% consistent with his background of growing up in the West, while Paco’s skill with melee weapons reflects a life spent working with axes and hammers and knives – a scholar-turned-ecclesiastic with firearms skills is an anomaly at best, one not explained adequately by his background (and perhaps owing its origins to player knowledge and metagaming).
Repeated explanations by different players about their concerns with respect to the character elicited an exclamation-point laden response citing “the rules” as sufficient justification for playing the character the way that Dallas4lr feels is appropriate – the post even went so far as to suggest that the rest of us don’t know enough about CoC to play the game ‘correctly’. (Just to clear up that point, our characters will encounter the unknown, go crazy, and die on the ice – not necessarily in that order. Does that sum up CoC pretty well?) What I think Dallas4lr is missing was summed up very neatly by taitzu52 – this adventure is not about chasing an Arkham escapee through a fog-shrouded Massachusetts cemetery or encountering an Old One in the natural history museum at Miskatonic U. I believe this point should be emphasized.
I’m very concerned that this misapprehension of where the other players’ reservations lie will carry over into the game and result in intra-character conflict that isn’t an artifact of roleplaying, but rather a very different set of starting assumptions on the part of the players. I hope that you will consider this in the spirit in which it’s intended, as input to make what has already started off as a very good game that much better.
