[CoC] running d20 Call of Cthulhu for the first time--help!

[Geoffrey]

This Saturday night I'm having four gamers come to my house to play d20 Call of Cthulhu. The campaign's setting is unusual. It's set 200,000 years ago on the lost continent of Mu. The technology level is medieval. I'm also using the massive damage rule from D&D instead of from CoC so the characters won't die as often. Here's where I need some advice:

1. I've never played (much less GMed) d20 before, though I have 22 years experience playing and DMing 1st edition AD&D. The four gamers coming over, however, have been playing 3rd Edition since it was first released.

2. I've never gamed with these guys before, and I know only one of them.

I'm just a bit nervous about GMing a system I've never played with gamers I've never gamed with before. I was frank with them and told them that I've only read the rules, but I've never actually used them, so they'll need to help me out a bit with the mechanics (especially combat). Despite my inexperience, they seem eager to play.

Any tips for Saturday night?

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Umm, I hate to say it, but you might be better off running D&D, maybe D&D with the Cthulhu Mythos. One of the major points of Call of Cthulhu is use your head, not your thews, changing the massive damage pretty much cripples that. If the PCs are fragile they are more likely to stop and think.

I have run the old CoC in the late middle ages, it works fine. Tweaking the HP and massive damage is not going to help the game.

As for suggestions.

1.) Prepare handouts ahead of time, clues that you can actually hand the players to reward investigation. In the case of written clues keeping the fonts consistent so that a given NPC always uses a single font, this gives the PCs something to go on, even if the clue isn't signed. If any of the players are good with cyphers use one. Invisible ink is another quick and easy way to do clues. (Milk or lemon juice will turn dark if heated over a candle. The smell can give them away, which is a good thing.)

2.) Have a timeline for what the villains are up to, nothing fancy - a flowchart works fine too. Make sure that failure on the part of the investigators means something BAD happens.

3.) Don't be afraid to kill PCs, this is a horror game, pulling punches waters it down. If you want to warn the investigators kill an NPC first, prefferably one who is important to the PCs.

4.) Isolation, seperate the PCs from help, make them feel that they are on their own.

5.) Props and music - atmosphere is very important, props help this. If you can tie the props into what is going on all the better. One of the best CoC games I ever ran had a set of candles on the table, both in game and in real life. As PCs died I extinguished the candles, one by one. One PC tried blowing out one of the candles - he died. As the candles burn down the players will get more and more desperate.

6.) Set up what the villains will do if they are interfered with, they won't wait in their dungeon for the heroes to come to them.

7.) Set up mysteries, its a game of thinking, let the PCs think. Reward their thinking, penalize stupidity.

And of course read the section on running the game in the rulebook itself, there is a fair amount of advice in there.

Check the web, there is a lot of the old CoC stuff out there that you can convert. A nifty place to visit on the web is WWW.TCCorp.com, run by one of the two main authors of the d20 version of the game, in particular check out The Annotated Unspeakable Oath. Also good is WWW.Chaosium.com, which has a lot of really nifty links for CoC.

I would also recommend running one of the sample adventures for a first game rather than go overboard on 'new and exciting', or at least take a look how they are organized.

Oh, and believe it or not watching 'The Blair Witch Project' and 'Secret of the Blair Witch' can help, if ever there was a movie that felt like a game of CoC that was it.

The Auld Grump, who started playing CoC around 1981 or so...

 

[Kenpo Wolf]

7 Words;

Don't worry about it and have fun, which is what the games are all about. Let the players know that this will be your first D20 game and all critiques will be accepted with good grace. That's how you learn in any thing you do. I agree that you should have started with something easier, like D&D, but thats just opinion so don't let it get you down

BTW, let us know how you did

 

[Shapermc]

I am going to have to go with the others and say that it sounds like D&D mght have been a better choice. But if you do want to run a good CoC game then follow the TheAuldGrump's advice that he lists out. I have been playing CoC for a little while and if you can manage to incopereate 5 out of 7 things in your game it will be good. Just don't expect to have your game go the way you want and plan for that.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

As an odd thought, you could try something I did once. Alternate between a modern Call of Cthulhu archaeological dig team and a 'dream sequence ' of the characters where they share a dream flashing them back to the ancient times.

If you are using pre-generated characters or have their characters handy you can convert the modern characters to their ancient equivalent (or from what you described vice-versa).

Damage taken in the dream is halved when waking in the modern world, but still present. Changing 'Massive Damage' for the dream might work okay, its just an ancestral memory, not completely accurate to what happened after all - but dead is still dead, if you die in the dream you never wake up (cue ominous thunder) Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

Massive damage in the modern part is kept at 10, just make sure that the modern half of the adventure also has plenty to do. (If one of the dream PCs die the modern PCs can find his tomb, suffering San loss as theyrecognize the wounds and realize that they have been there before...)

Hope this helps.

The Auld Grump

 

[haiiro]

Don't change the massive damage threshold. PC death (and avoiding it through clever and resourceful play) is an integral part of CoC, IMO. If CoC combat isn't deadly, much of the atmosphere of the game, the setting and the source material is lost.

Your setting sounds interesting. Best of luck on the game.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I was trying to find a way that he could at least try his proposed changes without locking him into it for the length of a campaign. (Though I do think that 10 points for massive is better for CoC, it makes getting hurt DANGEROUS!) When the 'dream sequence' is finished he can switch to the 10 pt. version by simply saying 'this time it's not a dream...')

The Auld Grump, who thinks that PCs should fear the Mythos...

 

[Geoffrey]

Unfortunately, sickness and work obligations have postponed tomorrow's game until next weekend. In the meantime, thanks for the tips!

Regarding the massive damage rule: Though this might be blasphemous to Lovecraft purists, I'm aiming more at dark fantasy than at horror with this campaign (though horror certainly plays a big part!). Also, I'm hoping to eventually have the players reach 20th level. If I were to be true to Lovecraft, there's no way any PCs would ever make it past third level...

Also, consider that in d20 Call of Cthulhu even high-level PCs will have little to no magic, whether spells or items. And the bit they might have is perilous to use! If all you have are medieval weapons and lots of hit points, you have a very uphill battle against shoggoths and the like!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

As I said, I have run CoC in the middle ages, tweaking the massive damage as a long term ruling is a bad idea. If you can't hurt the Shuggoth then run! If you want sword and sorcery stick with D&D, adding the creatures of the mythos. As for shooting a Shuggoth in modern CoC, that is a really good way to die, the best answer is still to run, but because you think you have a chance... Sometimes being armed is more dangerous than being unarmed.

Also don't forget that armor is a LOT more common, at least for the nobility - making it harder for the monsters to damage the party in return. Ghouls, Deep Ones and other low level monsters will suffer the same penalties as the players in regards to weapons, and be less likely to have armor.

The Auld Grump

 

[Geoffrey]

d20 CoC has everything I want, but D&D is lacking:

1. I want all my monsters to be Lovecraftian critters. The CoC book is full of them, but the MM is sorely lacking.

2. I want a dark and dangerous magic system. The CoC book has precisely that, but D&D magic is anything but.

3. I want dark and alien "magic items". CoC has that, but the DMG just has the standard fantasy stuff.

4. I don't want dwarves, elves, halflings, etc. running around. In CoC, all PCs are human. In D&D, humans are just one of many races.

5. I don't want classes. I want characters defined by skills. In CoC, there are no classes. In D&D, classes abound.

In short, D&D doesn't have what I want. d20 Call of Cthulhu does. The only thing it lacks is medieval weapons, but I simply printed those out from the SRD.