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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ZSutherland" data-source="post: 2000094" data-attributes="member: 7638">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</blockquote>

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