Call of Cthulhu

[EdwardForrester]

While on the subject,
I just got going in a Modern Cthulhu game (Old System) and love it so far. My Director for the game dislikes the new D20 for the following reasons.

You gain Hit Points every level, unlike my current 9 points in the old system.
No sanity points.
He feels as though with out these items you will be too tough and try and fight everything and there is no way of losing sanity.

I haven't looked at the game much but I thought I would post his thoughts and she what you all thought. Thanks for the info.

Forrester

 

[Bagpuss]

I didn't think you gained hit points in CoC D20. Never had my hands on a copy long enough to read it in detail however.

 

[yangnome]

No sanity points.
He feels as though with out these items you will be too tough and try and fight everything and there is no way of losing sanity.

Sure there is, there is a whole chpater dedicated to Sanity and how hte mechanic is used in the game. Your starting Sanity is based off of Wis and you lose sanity (either temp or perm) through various types of encounters.

I didn't think you gained hit points in CoC D20.

yes, you get 1d6 (+/- Con Bonus) every level. Of course, you could easily make some house rules for this if you want to keep characters fragile.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Does anybody know any good modules for the old CoC?

I'd try Secrets if you are looking for short, one night games.
Masks of Nyarlathotep is going to be recommended by many CoC players, but I know a few who hated it for many reasons. I've never played through it, but have read a good portion of it. I liked what I read.
If you can find Beyond the Mountains of Madness, it's incredible. And HUGE. It could literally take 1-2 years of playing to get through the whole thing.
I also really like Unseen Masters, H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham, H.P. Lovecraft's Dunwich, and H.P. Lovecraft's Kingsport.

 

[Henry]

I play both the d20 and the BRP versions of the game. I like them both a lot, but they have different flavors.

Ditto here. the Chaosium (the BRP or Basic Role Play) version is percentile skill-based, and characters rarely have over 10 or 12 hit points, with guns doing comparable damage to D&D weapons. You go nuts or die with alarming frequency, but that's actually part of the charm of a system. A person with a long-running CoC character (over 5 sessions) is either very cunning, or the GM is very lenient.

The d20 version works like d20 (levels, skill points per level, etc.) but the game is still very deadly, especially at levels below 8th or 10th. Characters gain d6's for hit dice, BUT there is a massive damage mechanic (take 10 hit points dmg. or more in one hit, and you must make a Fortitude Save DC 15 or DIE). People suck at combat, moreso than the original game since there's NO way to have a gun-toting prodigy at low-level. Monsters would give D&D characters a run for their money, so against the weenie feats and hit dice the CoC characters get, fighting a monster tougher than a deep one is sure to leave someone dead.


At higher levels (10th to 20th), the characters are almost like pulp-fiction heroes, though a lucky hit can still kill them off. But they can take a dozen cuts and scrapes without getting nailed, and the fort saves are beginning to get respectable enough such that you're more lucky than not with those 10-point hits. However, you will NEVER, if repeat, NEVER go off facing cthulhu, or a Gug, or a Dhole, or even a shoggoth or star vampire, no matter how high a level you get. So SLIGHTLY more adventurous, but not so much that the feel is lost.

 

[Stormborn]

I have the d20 CoC, but have never played a CoC game in either BRP or d20. instead I have played in both GURPS and the BUFFY system.
In GURPS my PCs hair turned white, got another PC pregnant, and developed a series of twitches.
on the other hand
In Buffy my half-demon Watcher fried a Shogoth. Drama points are wonderful things.
Course I went evil after that.
Depending on how you want to run a game, instead of a module, you might want to pick up one of the Chaosium City books, like Dunwich or something, and let the PCs do as they will.

 

[snarfoogle]

DM: Under the Innsmouth stars, you can see 3 dark shadows in the night. The middle one seems to be about a foot taller than the other ones, standing about 7 feet tall with a reptillian posture.

Investigator: Wait, the Deep One in the center looks bigger than the others?

DM: Yes, it looks bigger than the other TWO.

Investigator: I start running in a zig-zag pattern to the left.

Investigator 2: I take out my shotgun and attack, aiming at the middle one.

DM: Nope, you miss. The attack misses by about 3 feet and crashes into a tree. The creatures lope toward you. The middle one reachs you first, and it swings its claws at your face. You feel a searing pain cutting across your cheek. *rolls dice* Make a fort save.

Investigator 2: 13!

DM: You die.

Investigator: By now I'm about 50 feet away, right? I should be able to get into the car. I start it up.

That's the way I think CoC should be played. Guess which player is new.

Anyway, a CoC campaign that takes a year to play? Please give me more information on both of them. I'd love to try them.

 

[kipling]

I ran a shortish adventure (five or six sessions) for classic CoC involving Dunwich and the "truth" behind the Dunwich Horror (how that young Whately fellow was trying to stop the world from being destroyed) and it was a blast. Shame if you drop the shotgun when the byakhee picks you up....

The tension around the abandoned Whately farmhouse and the nearby ghouls from Sentinel Hill just.. Well. It was great.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Anyway, a CoC campaign that takes a year to play? Please give me more information on both of them. I'd love to try them.

Anyway, a CoC campaign that takes a year to play? Please give me more information on both of them. I'd love to try them.

Both The Complete Masks of Nyarlothotep and Beyond the Mountains of Madness are long campaigns for BRP CoC. Masks is 224 pages long, and Mountains is 438(!) pages long. I've read a good portion of Masks, and almost all of Mountains. Of the two, Mountains is the one I like best (but then again, At the Mountains of Madness is one of my favorite HPL stories).

Beyond the Mountains of Madness picks up where the story ended, and another expedition is headed to Antartica to find out what happened to the first expedition. Let me just say that this campaign is HUGE, and very complex. There is more material in this book than just about any other gaming supplement that I own. When I said in an earlier post that this adventure could literally take 1-2 years to finish, I was serious. A friend of mine was running it for his group, a session every 2 weeks, for over a year before I moved away (no, I wasn't in the group ), so I never found out how long it took them to finish.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Masks and Mountains are both quite big. Mountains is also close to going out of print, so it could be tough to find. Mountains would be pretty good for new people, since they just start off joining an expedition, and there aren't any horror elements until about halfway through. One drawback- it assumes that the PCs will immediately get involved in the mysterious happenings from the start, while some newer players might just gloss over them without doing the appropriate research.

Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is also getting reprinted next month (or so they say). It's another world-spanning campaign, but smaller and less complex than Mountains or Masks. I've used it to start campaigns numerous times; the PCs basically join a Golden Dawn type occult lodge, look into weird happenings there, and discover the Mythos that way. Good stuff, and hopefully much more coherent after the reprint.