Call of Cthulhu General Thread [+]

[overgeeked]

The [+] is to keep things positive and prevent the same old, tired arguments about the style of play, genre, and time period. There are plenty of other threads to hate on games and play styles you don’t like. Also, this isn’t the place to argue about H. P. Lovecraft’s racism. He was a racist, end of. There’s no need to beat the long-dead horse.

There are a few people on here who play Call of Cthulhu and want to talk about it without the constant negativity of the other threads, so I thought we should have a general [+] thread about the game.

Okay, so, with that out of the way, let’s chat about the venerable old Call of Cthulhu.

Tips, tricks, advice, ideas, secrets, clues, reviews, links...whatever you’ve got.

Here’s a few useful links and resources…

Chaosium’s website.

Free QuickStart rules from Chaosium’s website.

Keeper Rulebook on Chaosium’s website. This is the core book and the only one you need.

The Investigator Handbook is optional.

Call of Cthulhu on Reddit.

100 Tips for Running Call of Cthulhu.

Yog-Sothoth forum. You have to sign up to view it. It’s free but takes a little time as it’s a manual add. Well worth the time as it’s a great resource for referees and players.

BRP Central forum. Official forum for Chaosium.

Seth Skorkowsky’s YouTube channel. Lots and lots of videos about Call of Cthulhu as well as reviews of scenarios and how to videos for running mystery, horror, and Call of Cthulhu.

Especially worth mentioning is Seth’s long review series of Call of Cthulhu 7E (the current edition). This link goes to the playlist of his videos reviewing the game. The first video is an introduction to the game and around the 11:40 mark he starts busting myths about Call of Cthulhu. It’s well worth the watch if you’re new to the game.

Alexandrian blogs on the Three-Clue Rule and Node-Based Design. These are a great help when designing your own scenarios for Call of Cthulhu.

 

[Committed Hero]

This thought linking Westerns and Call of Cthulhu is never far from my Keeper's heart.

 

[Reynard]

I have played in some very good CoC games, but I always feel liek the GMs were what made them good, not the system itself. I often feel like the system fights you -- rolls are often too difficult to feel competent in your so-called expertise, and a GM that calls for too many and/or does not work with your for partial successes or whatever can make the game frustrating in an old scholl D&D "search for traps" kind of way.

So acknowledging that COC can be great with the right GM, I am curious what folks who really like the game have to say about the system. How do you make it shine? What tools, including but not exclusively house rules, do you use to make it work for what is essentially a mystery game?

 

[Aldarc]

I have never played CoC, but it has definitely been on my list after watching a bunch of videos from Seth Skorkowsky and a few others. I have the CoC Starter Set. I also have the rules supplement for Pulp Cthulhu and The Two Head Serpent adventure. But I still need to get around to actually buying the core rules themselves. However, the main issue is just finding time to get around to playing the game. I mostly play with my partner nowadays, and there are higher games on our priority list.