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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9474222" data-attributes="member: 4937">My experience with Pulp Cthulhu is it more or less just accepts Cthulhu as it is actually played and tries to provide a framework in which the story conventions of HPL make more sense than in traditional play.  I've got threads on EnWorld where I discuss some of my frustrations with running long form CoC.As for whether CoC is combat focused, I'm realizing that the problem here is I'm employing a term of art with no accepted definition and everyone is injecting their own ideas as to what that means.  As such, with no shared definitions and no willinginess by anyone to work on that, probably because this argument has become a proxy argument in a number of larger ones about identity and worth of the participants, this conversation is meaningless.As evidence for that conclusion:"The Horror on the Orient Express" was cited by another poster as a CoC scenario where they conceded that it was combat focused.So just think about the two most famous introductory scenarios to CoC: 'The Haunting' and 'The Edge of Darkness''The Edge of Darkness' is not combat focused.  While there are some opportunities for combat, ultimately resolving the challenge does not focus on combat.  This focus on resolving the situation by non-combat means requires the intersection of three things - a monster that is immune to attack, a means by which the players are immune to attack, and a magic mcguffin that can defeat the monster without combat (or perhaps like Sauron or Voldemort, by the destruction of the McGuffin).  Very few scenarios have those three things IME.On the other hand, 'The Haunting' is combat focused in that ultimately there is a monster in the basement you have to defeat.  And I'd argue that most CoC scenarios play out like 'The Haunting' (which incidentally is the primary introductory module for 7e).  For example, one of my other favorites 'A Cracked and Crooked Manse' has a similar sort of Lovecraftian twist on a haunted house.  'The Lightless Beacon' yet another 7e introductory scenario is combat focused.  The most famous campaign for CoC, 'Masks of Nyarlathotep' is massively combat focused, to the point that the best team of investigators are a team of international assassins armed with state-of-the-art military equipment and one of the scenes is best resolved by getting a foreign navy to intervene using their 5-inch naval guns.  Combat can be very deadly in CoC, and sometimes investigation can give you an edge in it and you always want to engage in asymmetrical combat when possible, but most scenarios are still combat focused in my experience. Seth Skorkoysky has reviewed most of the more famous CoC adventures and most of them are combat focused.  I'm sure there are a few out there with pure McGuffin solutions where combat isn't the climax, but they don't come to mind.</blockquote>

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