Cthulhu Dark is a rules-light system for Cthulhu Mythos RPGing. There was a Kickstarter last year for an expanded rulebook, but we were using the short, free rulebook that I'd downloaded years ago.
Designing the PCs took about five minutes, because a PC is just a name and an occupation: we had a reporter, a law firm secretary, and a longshoreman. It took another five or ten minutes for me to take the players through the rules, which are pretty straighforward: resolution is based on the highest result of the dice rolled as a pool. You get a die of what you're trying is within your occupational expertise, a die if its within human capabilities, and a die if you're prepared to risk your sanity. Sanity itself is measured on a "sanity die", that starts at 1 but goes up if a san check roll is higher than current sanity.
The game assumes that the GM is running a pre-written scenario, but the only one I had ready to hand and read was The Vanishing Conjuror that I'd looked over the morning before the game, and frankly it was pretty weak. So instead we made it up as we went along. I'd suggested an indeterminate "between the wars" era for our game, and the players decided on Boston as the city (not that any of us knows much about Boston in general, or in the interwar period). I began by asking the player of the reporter what he was investigating - his answer was financial scand and embezzlement by the Tea Party Shipping Co; and he was going to meet his lawyer contact to get the inside scoop. I had the lawyer offer him a ride down to the docks with one of the firm's secretaries, who had to pick up some documents. But they weren't there - the middle manager Stephen Campbell hadn't turned up to work! The secretary went off to Campbell's house, while the reporter stayed at the docks snooping around, and heard an argument between an angry longshoreman and another manager about a lack of pay.
That argument was the result of me asking the player of the longshoreman "What does he (the reporter) hear when he puts his ear to the door of the warehouse office?" The player elaborated this story of a ship that had arrived from Scotland only half-laden - with the result that the longshoreman were only getting half the pay they had expected.
It unfolded from there - some of the outcomes were determined by checks (a successful check let the secretary collect a dossier from Campbell's house, although he wasn't there - obviously there were papers in that file that triggered a san check!); others were fiat narration by me (when the longshoreman took the reporter onto the ship to show him the hold that had been half-empty, the door was jammed stuck, and when it was forced open they found the body of Campbell, the missing manager, apparently having hanged himself).
There were mysterious markings in photographic negatives that didn't show up in the developed photos; and then a theft of the negatives by something that came in through the dark room vent and left behind green and purple, slightly sticky, spooor. The same spoor was found in the hold of the ship, and later on in the pocket book of the secretary when she recovered it after losing it at the docks (following another failed san check).
There was arson - someone burned down the secretary's study while she was dreaming of strange, risen cyclopean oceans in the seas about Scotland, and then burned down the reporter's house, starting with his dark room. (In both cases successful checks allowed saving documents, and photographs, respectively.) And an old acetone store was found near the docks, with a hitherto-unnoticed entrance allowing drums of accelerant to be taken out for arsonistic purposes.
A conversation with sailors in a waterside bar revealed that they were all directed to stay in their quarters below deck while the ship docked and the hold was opened; and all they heard was the rushing of wind. (I was waiting for one of the players to have a PC check weather records so they could confirm it was a still night, but that didn't happen.) The only clues to the nature of the mysterious cargo came when something, seemingly invisble, tried to push the secretary onto the subway track while investigating the acetone store (no one saw anything, but they heard the rush of win); and towards the end of the session, when the longshoreman got a tug-owning friend to carry them out to the ship as it sailed for Newfoundland, and the PC boarded the ship and was shown into the hold by the (highly suspect) bosun - the PC couldn't see anything, but he could hear the whisper of the wind and feel something pushing and poking at him.
In the end the PCs took control of the bridge of the ship just after it had left the harbour and the tugs had disconnected from it, crashing it into the rocks so that it holed and started sinking. (They were able to rescue the crew onto their tug, except for the captain, bosun and a handful of others who escaped in a lifeboat.)
They never learned what the mysterious cargo was; and - as we wrapped up the session - the only news they heard of the captain and friends was some weeks later, when the wire services reported that a lifeboat had arrived in a port in Newfoundland, with only one survivor on board. . . .
And for the curious, all of the PCs ended up with 4 on the Insanity die - so more than a little bit perturbed, but not quite approaching the horrifying (and PC-ending) insights of a 6.
In the debrief after we finished playing I told the players that I wasn't sure why someone would ferry a shoggoth from Scotland to Boston to Newfoundland, but their was general agreement that that was because no human mind could comprehend the truth of such things!
The system itself worked pretty well - the way we approached it made GM decisions pretty central, but the resolution shaped outcomes at some key moments, and I was happy with the way that calling on the players to set things up worked out. I would recommend this system - I can't compare it to Trail of Cthulhu (which I own and have read but have never played), but I don't think there's anything that CoC does that Cthulhu Dark can't do with a much smaller character sheet (name, occupation, and a sanity die in front of you) and a more powerful and flexible system.
Designing the PCs took about five minutes, because a PC is just a name and an occupation: we had a reporter, a law firm secretary, and a longshoreman. It took another five or ten minutes for me to take the players through the rules, which are pretty straighforward: resolution is based on the highest result of the dice rolled as a pool. You get a die of what you're trying is within your occupational expertise, a die if its within human capabilities, and a die if you're prepared to risk your sanity. Sanity itself is measured on a "sanity die", that starts at 1 but goes up if a san check roll is higher than current sanity.
The game assumes that the GM is running a pre-written scenario, but the only one I had ready to hand and read was The Vanishing Conjuror that I'd looked over the morning before the game, and frankly it was pretty weak. So instead we made it up as we went along. I'd suggested an indeterminate "between the wars" era for our game, and the players decided on Boston as the city (not that any of us knows much about Boston in general, or in the interwar period). I began by asking the player of the reporter what he was investigating - his answer was financial scand and embezzlement by the Tea Party Shipping Co; and he was going to meet his lawyer contact to get the inside scoop. I had the lawyer offer him a ride down to the docks with one of the firm's secretaries, who had to pick up some documents. But they weren't there - the middle manager Stephen Campbell hadn't turned up to work! The secretary went off to Campbell's house, while the reporter stayed at the docks snooping around, and heard an argument between an angry longshoreman and another manager about a lack of pay.
That argument was the result of me asking the player of the longshoreman "What does he (the reporter) hear when he puts his ear to the door of the warehouse office?" The player elaborated this story of a ship that had arrived from Scotland only half-laden - with the result that the longshoreman were only getting half the pay they had expected.
It unfolded from there - some of the outcomes were determined by checks (a successful check let the secretary collect a dossier from Campbell's house, although he wasn't there - obviously there were papers in that file that triggered a san check!); others were fiat narration by me (when the longshoreman took the reporter onto the ship to show him the hold that had been half-empty, the door was jammed stuck, and when it was forced open they found the body of Campbell, the missing manager, apparently having hanged himself).
There were mysterious markings in photographic negatives that didn't show up in the developed photos; and then a theft of the negatives by something that came in through the dark room vent and left behind green and purple, slightly sticky, spooor. The same spoor was found in the hold of the ship, and later on in the pocket book of the secretary when she recovered it after losing it at the docks (following another failed san check).
There was arson - someone burned down the secretary's study while she was dreaming of strange, risen cyclopean oceans in the seas about Scotland, and then burned down the reporter's house, starting with his dark room. (In both cases successful checks allowed saving documents, and photographs, respectively.) And an old acetone store was found near the docks, with a hitherto-unnoticed entrance allowing drums of accelerant to be taken out for arsonistic purposes.
A conversation with sailors in a waterside bar revealed that they were all directed to stay in their quarters below deck while the ship docked and the hold was opened; and all they heard was the rushing of wind. (I was waiting for one of the players to have a PC check weather records so they could confirm it was a still night, but that didn't happen.) The only clues to the nature of the mysterious cargo came when something, seemingly invisble, tried to push the secretary onto the subway track while investigating the acetone store (no one saw anything, but they heard the rush of win); and towards the end of the session, when the longshoreman got a tug-owning friend to carry them out to the ship as it sailed for Newfoundland, and the PC boarded the ship and was shown into the hold by the (highly suspect) bosun - the PC couldn't see anything, but he could hear the whisper of the wind and feel something pushing and poking at him.
In the end the PCs took control of the bridge of the ship just after it had left the harbour and the tugs had disconnected from it, crashing it into the rocks so that it holed and started sinking. (They were able to rescue the crew onto their tug, except for the captain, bosun and a handful of others who escaped in a lifeboat.)
They never learned what the mysterious cargo was; and - as we wrapped up the session - the only news they heard of the captain and friends was some weeks later, when the wire services reported that a lifeboat had arrived in a port in Newfoundland, with only one survivor on board. . . .
And for the curious, all of the PCs ended up with 4 on the Insanity die - so more than a little bit perturbed, but not quite approaching the horrifying (and PC-ending) insights of a 6.
In the debrief after we finished playing I told the players that I wasn't sure why someone would ferry a shoggoth from Scotland to Boston to Newfoundland, but their was general agreement that that was because no human mind could comprehend the truth of such things!
The system itself worked pretty well - the way we approached it made GM decisions pretty central, but the resolution shaped outcomes at some key moments, and I was happy with the way that calling on the players to set things up worked out. I would recommend this system - I can't compare it to Trail of Cthulhu (which I own and have read but have never played), but I don't think there's anything that CoC does that Cthulhu Dark can't do with a much smaller character sheet (name, occupation, and a sanity die in front of you) and a more powerful and flexible system.
