Call of Cthulhu d20 Preservation Society

[ZSutherland]

Help!

I would love to join the d20 Cthulu Preservation Society, but I'll need help. Here's some background. I've read many mythos stories, including much of Lovecraft's work. I picked up the d20 version of the game after hearing about it here and chose that version because my players were already familiar with the d20 ruleset. I finally got a chance to run it one night when many of my players couldn't make it to the game. I made up some 1st lvl chars for the 3 players present and we ran the 1st level adventure presented in the book. Two of the players loved it, and I really enjoyed running it. The third player was less thrilled, citing the hopelessness and lack of heroics as reasons for his distaste. Unfortunately, that player's new work schedule and upcoming fatherhood prevents him from playing with us any longer. However, it does open up the possibility of playing Cthulu again. As Joshua Dyal said, Monte Cook's DMing advice is the best I've ever seen. I'll read it and get all worked up to play Cthulu; I'll even work out what I think is a really good scenario. But then, without fail, I'll sit down to write it out and get stuck. Here are the things that get me most often.

1) I can see any bunch of characters stumbling into mythos-land once by accident, but what basic human insticts (other than self-preservation) does your typical investigator lack that allows him to pursue it further? What strange drive exists in the typical investigator that urges him to continue down the road to madness? I know what Monte has to say about it, but I'm not sure how to convey that to the players during the game.

2) We typically play D&D, and though dungeon crawls are rare and I had to toss out the encounter system or risk the players leveling only once every 6-10 sessions due to lack of encounters, I'm able to run story heavy games w/o reams of notes. I figure out what's happened, what the NPCs involved are planning, where any clues are and such, and then let the players interact and move the story around. However, for some reason, I find that much harder to manage with Cthulu. I feel compelled to detail every NPC they might encounter, every location they might examine, etc so that I'm prepared and the game doesn't fall flat because I didn't expect them to do this particular thing. I know that behaviour is futile. I know that no matter how much you plan, the PCs will always do the one thing you didn't even think of, but I don't know how to react to it. Horror gaming seems more complicated and complex.

Anyway, I hope you guys can use your obviously considerable knowledge and experience at this to help me out. My current players all want to play it, and I'd love to run it.

Z

 

[Gomez]

Accually the Gamemaster secton was written by John Tynes of Delta Green fame. Monte wrote the rules section.

Well a big motivation behind any CoC investigator would be Knowledge! The persute of ancient lore, the thrill of discovery. Let's look at a example. The movie "The Creature from the Black Lagoon". You have a bunch of scientists looking for the fossils of a "missing link" in some backwater of the Amazon. They then encounter a living fossil that starts to kill of the crew. At first they don't know what they are dealing with but once they find out they are too deep in to escape. A "We cannot run it's got Mary!" sort of thing

A Call of Cthulhu game should or can go like that.

1. Some event or information peaks the Investigators interest.
2. They do research and/or some investigation.
3. They get into some sort of trouble because of the said research/investigation.
4. They get an inkling that they are up against something really nasty.
5. They finally find out what the nasty horror is all about but it's too late and they have to think fast or get eaten.

Throw in some red herrings and some memorable NPC's and let it stew!

That is just one formula though. You need to mix it up so you don't do the same old tired thing everytime.

 

[Turanil]

I would love to join the d20 Cthulu Preservation Society, but I'll need help.

Anyway, I hope you guys can use your obviously considerable knowledge and experience at this to help me out. My current players all want to play it, and I'd love to run it.

To begin with, you've got the right avatar pic! Otherwise, just try to convey an atmosphere of mystery, and half-said things most of the time. And be devious towards the players.

 

[mmadsen]

1) I can see any bunch of characters stumbling into mythos-land once by accident, but what basic human insticts (other than self-preservation) does your typical investigator lack that allows him to pursue it further? What strange drive exists in the typical investigator that urges him to continue down the road to madness? I know what Monte has to say about it, but I'm not sure how to convey that to the players during the game.

Imagine how insignificant everything else would seem, once you know what's out there.

 

[arwink]

1) I can see any bunch of characters stumbling into mythos-land once by accident, but what basic human insticts (other than self-preservation) does your typical investigator lack that allows him to pursue it further? What strange drive exists in the typical investigator that urges him to continue down the road to madness? I know what Monte has to say about it, but I'm not sure how to convey that to the players during the game.

Start small. Minor shocks, dead bodies, evil cutlits. If you're going to be running a game with an eye on the long term, starting with the big bads is generally not the way to go. As a good rule of thumb, don't hit the players with anything too weird in the first three to four sessions. Keep them sure that *something* is going wrong, but don't let them nail down the fact that it's decidedly supernatural. Suspiciouns are good, confirmation is bad.

Once you've got them embroiled in the plot, start bringing out the real weirdness. By now the players should know three things: 1) The alien and unknowable actually exists and is up to very bad things, 2) No-one else is going to believe them if they tell them about it and 3) If they don't stop it, no-one will and the earth is doomed. Essentially, you lure people into an overarching plot and mire them to the point that if they do the sensible thing and walk away things are only going to get much, much worse.

On the scale of designing individual adventures, pay really close attention to the second step mentioned in the rulebook: Motivation to continue. If the players don't feel like they should be investigating the goings on, they wont. In a recent game I played in, the group went to an occult auction that was interupted by a murder and a theft. We made a half-hearted attempt to investigate, but our research had picked up nothing about the stolen item, the owner of the auction house was opposed to our investigation and asked us to leave it to the police, and we knew there were bigger things afoot due to the over-arching campaign plot. After a fruitless hour where we were essentially told "No-one wants you involved in this" we all shrugged and left. (Not that there's anything wrong with having NPC's telling your players that no-one wants them involved, but when you're told that repetitively by people who aren't all that suspicous or worried about their stolen property...)

2) I feel compelled to detail every NPC they might encounter, every location they might examine, etc so that I'm prepared and the game doesn't fall flat because I didn't expect them to do this particular thing. I know that behaviour is futile. I know that no matter how much you plan, the PCs will always do the one thing you didn't even think of, but I don't know how to react to it. Horror gaming seems more complicated and complex.

Once I've worked out the initial scenes and how the players get into the adventure, I find it easier to work in three stages.
List everything the players need to know.
List all the cool locations, NPC's and events I think are integral to the plot.
Create a general flowchart that links them all together with appropriate skill checks or investigation.

By pushing the focus on the things the players really need to know, I can quickly adapt the information to ensure it matches the PC's plans, and I can use the investigative elements they come up with to direct them towards the scenes I think are necessary. The Flowchart means I can give them guidance if they need it, but I'm ready to improvise if they want to talk to someone else.

After all, it doesn't really matter if they find Mad Kieth's diary beneath the floorboards of his asylum cell or a file contianing a rough transcript of his ravings on the psychiatrists computer, as long as the information eventually gets them to the delapidated old house he inhabited with his mother and fall through the floorboards into the pool of zombie kittens below.

Just remember to take notes

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

1) I can see any bunch of characters stumbling into mythos-land once by accident, but what basic human insticts (other than self-preservation) does your typical investigator lack that allows him to pursue it further? What strange drive exists in the typical investigator that urges him to continue down the road to madness? I know what Monte has to say about it, but I'm not sure how to convey that to the players during the game.

Well, the investigative questions have been mostly covered, so I thought I'd throw in on this, which can be tough. There's a couple of different options. The metagame option is to just work out with the players that they have the sort of characters that would do this sort of thing, and that no one wants to worry too much about the why's of things. This usually works pretty well with players used to horror gaming (CoC definately isn't the only horror game out there with motivational problems), or if the players are the type of good sports who will go along with the campaign premise because it means they get to play.

Of course, even if the players are like this, there's no reason not give them an in-game reason, which is option #2. In this case, you want a campaign framework just like in any other game- it could be a central villain, a central mystery, a conspiracy to halt, whatever. The Mythos actually gives you a pretty good way to tie things together, because if you want to play it "pure", then the Mythos is behind all supernatural events in one degree or another. Whereas PCs in a fantasy game might stop orcish incursions only to discover that the orcs weren't actually connected to the Dark Lord, in CoC anything odd is potentially the result of Mythos activity. So I guess what I'm saying here is that you need less in the way of hooks than you might in other games.

The most popular CoC framework out there, Delta Green, essentially began as a means of providing a framework for characters to have a reason to investigate the Mythos, and to continue to do so (as well as a good means of bringing in replacement PCs). The fact that DG accomplishes these metagame goals while providing a phenomenal setting and world is a large part of it's success.

Of course, if you don't have the DG books, you're going to have trouble finding them. Here's a couple of other ideas I've considered as a campaign framework:

1. The Real Mythos- the characters are Lovecraftian fans and scholars, academics, horror buffs, etc. After discovering that some of the things HPL hinted at were true, they begin investigating the events of the stories and trying to match them to what "really" happened, as well as events in the author's life. There is some sort of time limit on this- a reading of a story hints that the end of the world is near, for example. But because of the means in which they've gotten together (ie the shared supernatural experiences in the first session or two), and the outlandishness of the situation (horror writer's creations turn out to be real, and only the fanboys can save the world? Not going to be a popular theory with authorities...), the PCs are left on their own to solve things.

2. Magical Self Preservation- The first investigation is a typical one- searching for a missing person, examining a haunted house, etc. During the course of the investigation, the PCs are hit with some sort of curse that will destroy them under the proper circumstances (after a set amount of time, if they leave a certain geographical area, etc). The PCs would already have motivation to stick together and, being otherwise unfamilar with the supernatural, will have to go out and investigate strange events in the hopes of learning enough to discover how to reverse the condition.

Again, both of these can seem like railroading if the player's aren't willing to go along with the basic premise.

It might help to track down some Chaosium modules for the BRP game, if not to run than at least to see how they're generally organized. Many of the older books are now PDFs on DriveThruRPG, if you want a cheap & quick way to get some inspiration. There's also a ton of free adventures on the chaosium site, and probably some other sources on the web as well.

Finally, for running any horror game in general, there's a book by Kenneth Hite called "Nightmares of Mine" that lays out pretty much everything you need to know. Much of the material also was used by the author when he was writing GURPS Horror 3rd ed, if that's more your speed.

 

[ZSutherland]

I really appreciate all the responses, guys. It says a lot about a game that people are so passionate about it. If anyone's still in the mood to help, I'll lay out the broad strokes of a storyline I came up with and see if anyone has anything fun to add or advice to give on it in particular. I'm down to 2 players atm due to work schedules and such. I'm thinking of having them both be FBI Agents (one using the actual agent template and the other using either the psychologist template or the technician template) who are assigned to investigate the disappearance of a woman in a small town (either west texas or northern georgia probably). I'm looking to combine and warp one of the plotlines from Neil Gaiman's American Gods and the movie "The Stepford Wives." The men of this small town are all part of a cult. Each year at a specified time, one of them sacrifices their wife or one of their children in a ritual to appease an alien being that they believe is a god. They're somewhat xenophobic about the outside world (the internet is the tool of the devil, rock'n'roll is the work of Lucifer, etc) and in return for their sacrifice, the alien being (mi-go perhaps) protect them from outside influence, keeping the world at bay. These people are basically still living in Ward and June Cleaver world. The alien replaces the sacrificed wife or child (heavily modified and controlled) with a clone or some such. These sacrifices have been going on for years. However, the town doctor finally kicked it last year, and they need a new family practicioner. The missing woman's husband, a fairly young man, is brought to the town with his family. He is quickly brought into the fold, but his wife is suspicious and tells her mother who lives out of town. When she's sacrificied, her mother's been in constant contact with her for a few weeks and doesn't buy her son in law's lame excuses about why she can't come to the phone. When her daughter returns, very different in personality and no longer worried, mom doesn't buy it. More to the point, she's already contacted law enforcement. Perhaps mom is important (wife of a senator or a senator herself), but the PCs are sent to investigate.

So:

1) Is Mi-go a good choice or would something else fit the bill better?
2) What kind of clues and such should I let the players find?
3) Other than the freaky people in town, what kind of scares can I pull on them, especially in the first few sessions?
4) What's a good way for the PCs to resolve this?

Fire away, feel free to tweak, modify, or scrap.

Z

 

[Committed Hero]

However, combat didn't happen that much, and could be a little wonky. I think if combat was more frequent, the more straight foward d20 system (and the one in CoC d20 is streamlined a little bit) would have the edge.

The "lack" of combat in BRP Call of Cthulhu is really only relative to other games. Combat has always been a part of Chaosium's own adventures and always will be.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Z-

Mi-go sound like a pretty good choice, running these sorts of experiments on humans is definately part of their MO. One thing to consider is their motivation; granted, they have alien minds, but they should be getting something out of this setup, even if it's more sacrifices for their diety (who I think is Azathoth, but I could be misremembering).

For clues to unravel the mystery, you could use letters written by the wife, or old journals from the time when the cult was originally begun. One of the standards in these local cult cases is also finding the insane or guilt-ridden member who's on the verge of snapping and getting the whole story from them. The young doctor might be a good choice in this case, or perhaps an older single parent who has lost multiple daughters to the cult.

It's good that you're thinking of the ultimate resolution of the mystery- a lot of CoC adventures get stuck on that point, they just present the situation, let the players figure things out, and then assume that the PCs will simply kill, blast, and destroy whatever seems Mythos related. In this case, I would say that driving off the mi-go (either with weapons or spells) will cause the collapse of the cult, removing the head as it were. There's likely to be some mortal leaders as well, of course. They could either be lumped in with the mi-go at the climax, or left in town for future plot development. Another option is to have the clones dissolve or otherwise disappear when the mi-go depart, leaving the town with a large number of disappearances on their hands. Regular law enforcement could then pick things up from their, prosecuting the remaining cult members for whatever they feel like.

Speaking of law enforcement, this doesn't really seem like an FBI type case. They're generally called in by local law enforcement, though of course there's exceptions. Most likely, anyone with a badge is just going to write the mother off as a nutty mother-in-law. Especially since there's no actual victim missing. All this makes for a great Mythos investigation, since the police won't be paying attention. But it's unlikely that the agent would be assigned to it, unless you're going with a more X-Files type of game. It is quite likely that the mother, being ignored by authorities, could call in some sort of private investigators.

Hope this helps- it sounds like a pretty good scenario! Hoping that you're players aren't familiar with Stepford, of course...

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Here's some conversions I've done. The first two files are bringing Gaslight into d20 (really, all that needed done was the addition of some new occupations) and the last is a conversion of the adventure "Eyes of a Stranger", from Sacraments of Evil.

The Perception thing is a houserule. I choose to take a page from Lone Wolf and bundle Listen, Spot, and Search into one skill. If you want to keep with the three skills, go ahead.