D&D + CoC

[BronzeDragon]

I guess the question I would pose to you is "which part of the Cthulhu paradigm do you want to emphasize?".

D&D has one big problem when trying to portray horror, and that is the fact that adventurers in D&D are tough mofos. In most horror games the general idea is having adventurers that are inherently susceptible to even low-powered monsters in a way that I find very contrary to D&D.

I hear CoC D20 did solve some of that by instituting something like the WP/VP system used in SW D20 (I'm not sure because I never got interested in CoC D20...BRP is fine by me).

 

[Desdichado]

D&D has one big problem when trying to portray horror, and that is the fact that adventurers in D&D are tough mofos. In most horror games the general idea is having adventurers that are inherently susceptible to even low-powered monsters in a way that I find very contrary to D&D.

Well, I already answered that too. E6. D&D heroes under an E6 houserule tophat only get tough compared to other joe blow peasants. Monsters still blow them away, in general. Heck; most dangerous animals still remain dangerous to E6 characters. E6 characters against a handful of female elephants protecting their calves or a pride of hungry lions? Easily a potential TPK.

I hear CoC D20 did solve some of that by instituting something like the WP/VP system used in SW D20 (I'm not sure because I never got interested in CoC D20...BRP is fine by me).

No, that's not true. And we've talked already about d20 CoC quite a bit in this thread already. But no, it doesn't have VP/WP. It just has a very low massive damage threshold and PCs that are the equivalents of NPC classes. Plus Sanity, of course.

That does remind me, though... I read your houserule document, obryn, and found it very interesting. It reminded me once that I ran a very unusual D&D game where I disallowed any class with a spellcasting progression, encouraged a few alternate classes so players had some variety to choose from, and then had magic be CoC magic... including Sanity.

That actually worked really well, and we had a lot of fun with it. Of course the guy with the lowest starting sanity was the one who was interested in learning magic... well, you can probably guess how that went. I think he started the game with Sanity in the mid-thirties.

The only issue I had was that it was kinda a bigger deal than I liked to keep all the houserules straight and collected in one easy to go to place (I ended up creating a website for most of them... I wonder if that's still up somewhere? Oh, hey... it is!) and I was hoping to simplify. Which is one of the main reasons I was considering just plain straight D&D (with the E6 tophat and a Sanity system bolted on top) for the next time I went through it.

 

[Obryn]

No, that's not true. And we've talked already about d20 CoC quite a bit in this thread already. But no, it doesn't have VP/WP. It just has a very low massive damage threshold and PCs that are the equivalents of NPC classes. Plus Sanity, of course.

Yep. I incorporated VP/WP in my house-rules so that I could involve shock due to injury, keep a small possibility of sudden and horrible death, and because I felt that setting the Massive Damage Threshhold all the way down to 10 made the PCs way too fragile. It also works for the kind of pulp feel I'm going for - the minor injuries can be shrugged off, but the major ones stick with you for a while.

That does remind me, though... I read your houserule document, obryn, and found it very interesting.

Thanks!

The only issue I had was that it was kinda a bigger deal than I liked to keep all the houserules straight and collected in one easy to go to place (I ended up creating a website for most of them... I wonder if that's still up somewhere? Oh, hey... it is!) and I was hoping to simplify. Which is one of the main reasons I was considering just plain straight D&D (with the E6 tophat and a Sanity system bolted on top) for the next time I went through it.

I don't blame you. I find it pretty easy in this case, because CoC d20 is rules-light enough that my house rules document more or less supplants most of the rules entirely. I can see where it would get to be irritating, especially when adding some D&D rules to the mix, too. I wish I had a great solution.

-O

 

[Desdichado]

Now that I've started this discussion, I'm finding myself a little on the fence with regards to two competing design goals: 1) getting exactly the tone and feel I want via more specific and tailored house rules, and 2) keeping the game simple and as much out of the book as possible rather than giving so many houserules that it's a challenge to keep them all straight.

 

[Thanael]

I know it's been mentioned before, but have you checked out Ravenloft yet? The 3.0 Core book url=http://product.half.ebay.com/_W0QQprZ2280127QQcpidZ1124375646]is available for $10 at half.com[/url] and contains great general DM advice for horror/gothic campaigns. (Checkout this blazing 10/10 review of it)

Ruleswise it contains a Madness/Fear/Horror system though you might prefer more detailed Sanity rules. The Powers Check rules model the taint which evil leaves behind and it is an alternative to the Taint rules form WotC. (Though i personally recommend the Unified Theory of Powers Checks for a streamlined version of the rules.)

Settingwise Ravenloft itself is not to be overlooked. It is essentially D&D plus a little horror plus much gothic. The Ravenloft: Fraternity of Shadows: Home of Ravenloft on the Net website is a great resource and home to the Ravenloft forums. The PBP forums show some excellent examples of Horror D&D campaigns as does IVV's Paridon campaign here on ENWorld.

There exist tons of excellent free netbooks, and the 3E line is quite excellent. Of course for many Ravenloft always struggled with the D&D ruleset but imo this doesn't have to be so.

I can also easily see an Al'Qadim campaign together with the Sahu -Isle of the Necromancer Kings mini-setting from the 2E Complete Necromancer Handbook taking a turn for D&D Horror similar to the Freeport campaign someone mentioned upthread. You just need to add some Fear/Sanity system and you're ready to go. (Al'Qadim was converted to 3E on several websites.)

 

[TheNovaLord]

pathfinder has some CoC influence in it

quite a few mods with such themes

 

[Psion]

The other type of Cthulhu game that I've seen is the long-term campaign. This plays quite differently, usually. In spite of the hype, characters die and go insane pretty infrequently here. This is the type of game made famous by the scenarios published by Chaosium (and others): Beyond the Mountains of Madness, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, etc. Fantasy Flight's Nocturnum. The entire concept of the Delta Green sub-setting.

In these types of games, it is easier to get a feeling of horror. Your characters aren't meant to be disposible, but they are still relatively weak and fragile. Ironically, this type of game provides an environment in which the lurking, brooding horror of the game can best be made manifest, and yet it doesn't do so by ramping up the count of PC death and insanity. It does it slowly, and by whittling away the uncautious, the reckless and the unlucky. It's a game that fosters a gradually growing sense of paranoia amongst the players. But they get to maintain continuity. It's a fun game. Much more fun that the flash-bang one-shots that blow through PCs like so much chaff.

As I mentioned earlier, the challenge is getting everybody on board with that paradigm. Making the mental leap into a Cthulhu-like playstyle, even though you're using rules that appear to resemble D&D. If you don't have that, your efforts to get that kind of game will most likely be frustrating and disappointing. If players don't ever adopt the cautious, paranoid feel of a good Cthulhu campaign, then likely they'll just go through PCs quickly and either play it off for laughs, or get frustrated. It's a case of managing expectations, and is (in my experience) a little bit tricky to pull off.

Anyone have any experience in doing something like this? If so, I'm curious to hear how it's worked out for you.

Well, you already know much of this from our Freeport thread at CM, but I run Freeport using Fantasy Craft*, which has a built-in stress mechanic. I throw in a few mechanics from a Spycraft supplement called Fragile Minds to give it a bit more of a CoC feel.

Now I see having some sort of mechanic to reflect dread and madness mechanically as something that facilitates horror play, but certainly not something that can create it. For me, good "entertainment horror" is all about fear of the unknown and shock of revelation of disturbing facts. That's all about adventure design and GMs pacing and handling of situations.

As you say, just having the mechanic kill or drive PCs insane is not going to create a good feeling of horror. What does, in a game like D&D, is stripping away PC potency. Though I've yet to have anyone go insane in my Freeport, I think I am having good results simply because by ramping up the use of stress damage, PCs accumulate penalties that soon undermine the players' sense of certainty that they can prevail. They lose that "dominant" feel that they have early in the game before the stress damage erodes the heroic dominance built into the system.

* - For those not aware, Fantasy Craft is a d20 spinoff game that is 2 generations removed from D&D by crafty games. For more details about Fantasy Craft and my use of it running freeport, see the link in my sig.

 

[Desdichado]

I like the idea of Sanity as a separate track that depletes like hit points, but which are perhaps a bit more difficult to recover, and which have a different feel.

From a gamist point of view, that's all Sanity is, of course, but from a flavor point of view, it goes a long way in my experience to evoking the hints of a sense of dread.

It's not enough by itself, of course. But it's a start.

 

[Crothian]

One thing I have a friend do with santity in his CoC games is define ahead of time what the characters will do when they mentally break. It is a little more work, but not too difficult with adding of rules. One just says that when this threshold is reached the character starts to act in this way. Usually for his games it is only for part of a scene as once the character removes himself from whatever broke him he gets a little better but not always.

 

[Barastrondo]

If it were me, I'd consider doing Sanity as something tracked sort of like a 4e disease: certain events may require players to make checks to avoid "worsening," and other events may allow players to make checks to see if they can "improve." The nature of the check? Tricky. Wisdom is tempting but that gives a certain edge to divine-type characters.

Player buy-in will be critical. Not only to avoid mangled expectations, but it's a major plus, as Zak explains here. If the players know ahead of time that the universe works like that, it opens up the basis for some more significant dialogue.

(Fair warning: leads to the "D&D With Pornstars" site, which is not entirely work-safe (unless you work where I do), but contains a lot of very clever game philosophy. There is no actual porn or nudity on most posts, including this one, but you know your "work safety" better than I do.)