Call of Cthulhu General Thread [+]

[overgeeked]

Yeah. Crafting props can be great fun. There's also lots of options for buying Call of Cthulhu props. I've added a ink to the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society to the OP. They have wonderfully done prop sets.

 

[RealAlHazred]

While not the thread for it, I would love to run either Vaesen or Cthulhu by Gaslight in 1840s Vienna. I wanted to get a map of how Vienna looked in the 1840s. The old city walls, which once surrounded the 1st District, were taken down after the Revolutions of 1848. Some of the current districts were towns that surrounded the city. It would be that lovely mix of the familiar and the foreign for us both.

My partner and I both lived in Vienna for eight years, but as a bit of a coincidence but we had actually both moved to Vienna in September 2015, though we didn't meet until about four years later.

I recommend the CoC scenario "The Auction," from the old The Asylum and Other Tales book. It takes place at an auction of occult items. Extremely extensible, no world-threatening plots, very atmospheric. And the auction booklet prop is great! The scenario really needs a Call of Cthulhu 7E makeover/reimplementation.

I'd love to hear from (former) Vienna residents how it can be made more immersive/atmospheric.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I wanted to get a map of how Vienna looked in the 1840s. The old city walls, which once surrounded the 1st District, were taken down after the Revolutions of 1848. Some of the current districts were towns that surrounded the city. It would be that lovely mix of the familiar and the foreign for us both.

I found a map in parts on the DavidRumsey.com archive for Vienna from 1773. A little too early.

 

[MGibster]

For Call of Cthulhu, I do very much recommend you have the players create their characters together, or at the very least, give them some parameters to work with. If you've got an antiquarian, a cab driver, a private detective, and a real estate lawyer investigating Cthulhu nonsense, it really helps if they have something in common driving them to investigate and work together.

 

[RealAlHazred]

For Call of Cthulhu, I do very much recommend you have the players create their characters together, or at the very least, give them some parameters to work with. If you've got an antiquarian, a cab driver, a private detective, and a real estate lawyer investigating Cthulhu nonsense, it really helps if they have something in common driving them to investigate and work together.

I like the idea of copying Flashbacks from Mongoose Traveller 2E. Don't let the players spend their Personal Interest Skill Points until you get the group together. During the first session, have players do a Flashback to come up with how they know each other, and they can allot their Personal Interest points right then, in a way related to the way they met. This also lets them spend points on something they may have forgotten during character generation but that came up during the first session.

It worked really well in my current Traveller Hero campaign, and I'm eager to try it again.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I wanted to get a map of how Vienna looked in the 1840s.

This one from Wikimedia Commons might be better. It seems to be from the 1820s?

 

[Celebrim]

The 1920s seem to be an especially odd time for this. So much is familiar but it's also so different.

It doesn't help that when Hollywood depicts the 1920s it almost invariably depicts the 1930s - and quite often the late 1930s - in terms of dress, cars, planes, and styles. There is a pretty dramatic cultural shift that goes on during the later 1920s and early 1930s that is the period we think of culturally as "the 1920s". There is a similar thing where when we think of the 1960s we are usually thinking of the period from 1968 to 1973.

That's why I tend to go with Cthulhu by Gaslight, London in the 1880s. There's a lot more general cultural osmosis about that particular time and place.

Another good reason to consider moving to Cthulhu by Gaslight is it forces the players to be more investigators than mercenaries. 1920s and 1930s era weaponry is powerful enough that PCs can start going toe to toe with mythos adversaries and my experience with it is the monsters are too often less of a problem than cultists with guns and zealous law enforcement agents who aren't likely to believe PC stories.

 

[overgeeked]

For Call of Cthulhu, I do very much recommend you have the players create their characters together, or at the very least, give them some parameters to work with. If you've got an antiquarian, a cab driver, a private detective, and a real estate lawyer investigating Cthulhu nonsense, it really helps if they have something in common driving them to investigate and work together.

Yeah. Having a grab-bag of investigators can work for one-shots but it requires more effort from the referee to make it work. It also kinda falls apart if you want to keep playing. The books are great at pushing the notion of investigator organizations the PCs can belong to as a means of keeping the group together, providing alternate PCs when someone’s in the hospital or sanitarium, and an easy excuse for plot hooks.

 

[Aldarc]

This one from Wikimedia Commons might be better. It seems to be from the 1820s?

On the original website you linked, I found one dated to 1810, which is uncanny. I searched for Stadt Wien. It's pretty remarkable because you can see how the outlying towns became the districts of the current city. Unfortunately though, the district where I spent most of my time in Vienna was partially cut off, so you don't see all of Währing (18th District).