Trail of Cthulhu - Impressions?

[Crothian]

If you're playing "[X] of Cthulhu" with a bad GM, nothing whatsoever can save it. Just pack up and head for a different game.

It was a problem though with enough DMs that got this book written though. So, while it might not have happened in everyones games it happened in enough of them.

 

[jdrakeh]

If you're playing "[X] of Cthulhu" with a bad GM, nothing whatsoever can save it.

There are degrees of 'bad' as anybody who has played RPGS can attest to. The pitfall of fiat-driven, single-minded, murder mysteries in CoC is one that has come up in numerous discussions of the game, time and time again, since the days of dial-up BBS. Bully for you if you haven't run into it, though post volume on the subject over the last decade seems to indicate that hundreds (if not thousands) of people have.

It's nice to see that somebody finally addresses it with some mechanics though, yes, it's conceivable that a bad GM may still make for a bad Trail of Cthulhu game. The good news is that it is far less likely to be bad in the "Oh, I'm sorry you can't move forward until you find this single, all-important, clue that I as the Keeper will not divulge and that you have a 10% chance of finding otherwise!" way.

ToC isn't a cure for all of CoC's commonly cited issues but it's a nice improvement that many hundreds of fans have been asking Chaosium to make for years. Honestly, I would have preferred to see Chaosium revise their game accordingly but I've come to accept that they'll never do that. They come from the Palldium school of "If anybody is willing to pay for it as-is, we dare not meddle!" school of game design. :\

 

[jdrakeh]

The problems it fixes are not ones a good GM has in his game. But they are problems I have seen from GMs in con games and from other players stories.

I was going to mention convention games, as this is where I have typically run into the issue, though the number of message board posts and mailing list entries pertaining to this particular pitfall indicate that it's a huge issue in living rooms, as well.

One other possible contributor to this pitfall is that, in addition to lacking mechanics directly support investigative game play, BRP CoC has never offered very much advice on running investigative scenarios, either. Both CoC d20 and ToC run circles around BRP CoC in this regard.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I see it as an attempt to solve problems that didn't actually exist. It seems to me that the 2 radical moves it makes are to make investigation 'nonrandom' and to remove the stats for the big baddies.

Let me take the second point first: removing stats for the big baddies. Let's recall first of all that in the central story of the so-called Cthulhu Mythos, "The Call of Cthulhu", Cthulhu is defeated by a mariner who rams his boat into Cthulhu's noggin.

I've heard that before, but my impression of the scene, as the island descends and the boat causes temporary discorporation. Assuming that it's even Cthulhu himself, there's still plenty of deaders.

You can (at least temporarily) stave off the end of the planet with the African Queen, and you don't even need Bogie to do it. But how does anyone know that if the squid doesn't have any stats? Then it's just pure fiat.

I'm all for stats on gods and old ones and everything, but seriously, if your game ever revolves around the damage Cthulhu will take from a boat, that can only end badly. I had a rigger in an SR game and ramming a guy with a drone caused quite a lot of discussion.

They're just giant, hungry aliens with psychic emanations strong enough to melt you.

As an aside, I had this same problem with Cloverfield: you're hitting this thing with 2,000lb bunker busters and you don't even scratch it? I call B.S. The monster already has enough advantages without the screenwriter having to cheat on its behalf.

You do have to keep in mind that many of the Mythos societies were highly technological too. "power shields" that stop nuclear blasts are a staple of sci-fi, and there are plenty of sci-fi reasons Cthulhu could be unstoppable.

But, I mean, I'm not really disagreeing with you, just saying that it can go whichever way the campaign requires, and that comes back to DM trust and such.

The other issue was with the investigations.
<snip>
So in my experience, the game doesn't really turn on a single Library Use roll, or even a series of such rolls, since you can generally just keep rolling. Also, if the party decides that it missed a clue at some point (like they find themselves lacking info) they can always send guys back to the library.

This was mostly addressed in other material I read about it, and I can see their point.
If a player misses an important clue because of a bad roll, you can;
1) arrange for another roll, or alternate clue, until they get the info needed or explode.
2) fudge things so they get the info anyway
3) the game stalls while players try to figure it out without the clue.

The simple idea is that in 1&2, the roll really doesn't matter, does it? If you succeed, you get the clue. If you fail, you get the clue?

For CoC/BRP, I think the problem was more the yes/no skill check. Other systems have a method by which you can get degree's of success, and I think those are better for investigation rolls.

 

[malladin]

*sigh*
Now I must hunt down and kill you!

Death by cultist, at least its fitting

 

[The Eternal GM]

I'm not really convinced that CoC needed 'solving', but a new take... A well done one with a specific design criteria in mind instead of a mythos heart-breaker is still of interest.

I think removing Chaosium's stats for the Great Old Ones is a dramatic positive, because they were always odd... When it comes to confronting/fighting/escaping a mythos god, I'm all for narrative/fiat whatever you want to call it. Cthulhu's ship-rammed-burst is oft' cited, but according to his stats there's no way to achieve such a disruption if his mass... The boat would just bounce off and all the crew'd get gobbled up. Y'golonac was the only Old One that could really take a beating off mundane weapons, I prefer ToC's approach whereby the Old Ones are what you want them to be, it returns some threat and mystery.

As for the rest of the system, it's a bold attempt. I don't know how well it will work yet, since I haven't played it, and I don't intend to run the Torso murders scenario from the back of the book, meaning I'll have to write up something myself or use an old CoC one.

As for the resource-based investigation, I see it as a good option to remove re-rolls, replacing needed clues elsewhere and so on. Sure, a good CoC keeper (and I'm not a bad one, I'll boast) can work around this kind of thing. But that comes down to experience and talent that might be missing from rookie keepers. ToC aims to keep the plot rolling along, and if that's somehow a bad thing... I don't wanna play no more!

 

[trancejeremy]

I personally think the resistance of Mythos to bullets is somewhat overstated by CoC, and this even sounds worse.

In "Horror in the Museum", it sure seems like the beastie in that ("Rhan-Tegoth") was dispatched with a pistol.

In "The Last Test", Surama (an Atlantean cultist) carries a pistol and says to another cultist (his pupil, actually) "We're in a material sphere now, and subject to material laws. You have your fever; I have my revolver."

In the Whisperer in Darkness, several Mi-go got shot up.

I think the thing is, despite its exclusion of a lot of August Derleth's stuff, CoC is very Derlethian in how it made the mythos more "magical" and less materialistic or scientific (which I think is more how HPL viewed it).

 

[MonsterMash]

I'm definitely interested in ToC as a game

If you're playing "[X] of Cthulhu" with a bad GM, nothing whatsoever can save it. Just pack up and head for a different game.

If you are playing "[X]&[X]" with a bad GM, you may as well head for a different game too...

 

[Korgoth]

If you are playing "[X]&[X]" with a bad GM, you may as well head for a different game too...

Too true!