Going to church? Don't forget your sawed-off shotgun!

[Byrons_Ghost]

I would like take a moment and quote from an on-line comic starring the robots from MST3k.

Crow: You know, I once had a Call of Cthulhu character that lived three days.
Tom Servo: That's only because Gypsy was running the game and you hid the dice.
Crow: It was still three days!

I now return you to your regularly scheduled CoC debate, already in progress.

MST did a Call of Cthulhu joke?

I can now die a happy man!

Which is a fortunate coincidence, given my love for all things Cthulhu.

 

[Odhanan]

Some people have already said it, but I'll say it nonetheless: I see nothing wrong with optimizing character traits during character creation, so long as it makes sense in the game. If a choice makes sense on both metagaming and immersion standpoints, all the better. One is not the reverse of the other, IMO.

 

[phindar]

MST did a Call of Cthulhu joke?

I can now die a happy man!

Which is a fortunate coincidence, given my love for all things Cthulhu.

It was actually a web comic of Jack Chick's Dark Dungeons with the MST3K robots pasted on the bottom. Though I have to say, the guy really nailed the robots' dialogue. Beyond that, I wouldn't be surprised if the SoL had managed its fair share of Mythos references, but I'm at a loss as to the specifics.

 

[Jim Hague]

Jim: Out of curiosity I am wondering if you can elaborate 1920's law enforcement. I'm sure some CoC players will find it usefull and I would be interested. I am familiar with modern stuff but anything before the Miami Shootout I know very little about.

Shootouts, when they occurred, were a hell of a lot more dangerous, honestly - there was no effective body armor, and the Thompson submachinegun ruled the day. It wasn't just a favorite of gangsters, either:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_submachine_gun

While expensive (over $200 in Jazz Age America), the Thompson was commercially available, along with weapons like the Ithaca Autoburglar:

http://www.securityarms.com/20010315/galleryfiles/2800/2885.htm

That's a nasty piece of work.

As for a view of 1920s attitudes, here's a collection of useful links, though the Call of Cthulhu books provide far more information than I can provide here:

http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/nypd/html/3100/retro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_issues_of_the_1920s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Twenties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_Age

Also if anyone can chime in on 'weapons designed soley to kill a human being' thing and CoC rules. I am wondering if there is a game rule in the game ruling that such weapons make you make some sort of sanity check or if it is a personal opinion type thing? If it is personal opinion mine is a tool is just a tool. You can use anything from your hand, a hammer or anything else to kill a person. The real weapon to quote one of my Sifu's is the human mind. Anything else is just an extention to apply kinetic force to a target. I'm curious if there are game rules for this? Would help to be on the same page as game is NOT real life. For instance I hate D&D alignements but play with them as a game construct even when I DM them because I like D&D.

I'm also curious if CoC is just set in the 20's era or if it is a modern type version too? Might be fun to look at.

CoC has several versions - the 'classic' game is set in the Roaring '20s, but there's also a Victorian variant (Cthulhu by Gaslight) and the modern era Cthulhu Now and the immensely popular Delta Green (www.delta-green.com ).

Generally speaking - and due to board rules concerning politics I won't touch on people's opinions on certain firearms, beyond saying there's a difference between a tool (such as a firearm) and something solely intended as a weapon (such as a thermonuclear bomb) - 'antisocial' acts in the Call of Cthulhu universe carry real consequences. Damage to social standing, arrest and imprisonment, incarceration in an asylum, and damage to the Sanity score of PCs are all possible. I won't pretend that the Sanity system is realistic (it isn't), but it's in keeping with the setting.

The real kicker in CoC is that you can gain insight into the true workings of the non-anthrocentric, hostile universe through insanity...and each shattering insight leads you further into madness. The world of CoC is not our own - science only threatens to open up terrifying and maddening new vistas we'd be better off knowing, and the societies and morality of man are an utter sham.

 

[Odhanan]

Generally speaking - and due to board rules concerning politics I won't touch on people's opinions on certain firearms, beyond saying there's a difference between a tool (such as a firearm) and something solely intended as a weapon (such as a thermonuclear bomb) - 'antisocial' acts in the Call of Cthulhu universe carry real consequences. Damage to social standing, arrest and imprisonment, incarceration in an asylum, and damage to the Sanity score of PCs are all possible. I won't pretend that the Sanity system is realistic (it isn't), but it's in keeping with the setting.

There's no rule for "antisocial acts" (whatever that could mean from Keeper to Keeper) triggering any loss of SAN in Call of Cthulhu. Incarceration in an asylum depends on the precise events of the game and how lenient the Keeper is with losses of SAN. Sure, you can houserule stuff during the game and just come up with a psychiatrist NPC who wants to put someone in a asylum because he would be "antisocial", but that's stuff relevant to the Keeper's style and personal decisions concerning the game and how it ought to be run. That has nothing to do with the contents of the game book per se.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Shootouts, when they occurred, were a hell of a lot more dangerous, honestly - there was no effective body armor, and the Thompson submachinegun ruled the day. It wasn't just a favorite of gangsters, either:
<snip>
While expensive (over $200 in Jazz Age America), the Thompson was commercially available, along with weapons like the Ithaca Autoburglar.

The Tommy Gun was never very popular really, due to the costs. The BAR and shotguns were a lot more popular, plus handguns of course.

Damage to social standing, arrest and imprisonment, incarceration in an asylum, and damage to the Sanity score of PCs are all possible. I won't pretend that the Sanity system is realistic (it isn't), but it's in keeping with the setting.

None of this is anything to do with rulebook content. The game includes it, just as any game with any society includes things like this. There won't be damage to social standing because you have a concealed shotgun in church. Seeing a dead body is worth a point or two, seeing the zombie is worth a bit more. "Anti-social" behavior carries no such penalty. (Leaving aside the debate of whether or not it's anti-social.)

 

[takyris]

Some people have already said it, but I'll say it nonetheless: I see nothing wrong with optimizing character traits during character creation, so long as it makes sense in the game. If a choice makes sense on both metagaming and immersion standpoints, all the better. One is not the reverse of the other, IMO.

So long as it makes sense in the game, yes.

Here, it doesn't.

The explanation given for having the shotgun in the church, for a supposedly peaceful meeting, in a world that as far as the player knew was horror-free, is garbage. This wasn't the archaeologist on the dig site. This wasn't a PI on a job. This was a guy going to a meeting at a church and deciding to pack heat because the player knew that he was playing CoC, and that there might be nastiness. It's a garbage explanation by a player who didn't know any better, because he was used to playing D&D. It doesn't make him a horrible person, but it's a garbage explanation.

If you want to keep playing "But it COULD be a valid character", feel free to do so. That doesn't change what WAS the case in this particular instance. The player, due to ignorance as a first-time player, was metagaming in a munchkinish fashion.

 

[Moonstone Spider]

Again, the character is either insane (see the bit on paranoia above) and thus not suitable as an Investigator, or he's metagaming. Despite what yopu might think, most people other than police and gangsters didn't carry firearms in the 1920s - especially an academic like an archaeologist. There's no reason for it. And there were no 'Nazis' in the 1920s.

While I'm not a strong player of CoC there's a couple of problems with this post.

Firstly there were indeed Nazis in 1920. They didn't control Germany utterly quite yet but by 1921 they were already violently attacking enemies of their party, such as rival politicians. By 1925 it's quite possible an archeologist has had run-ins with Nazis on his digs. Along with crazed Arabs, irate jungle tribes, etc.

Which brings up a second point. While CoC isn't pulp, it also isn't really meant to emulate real-life much. While it's not particularly common, weapons do sometimes play a role in Lovecraft's work including the infamous ramming of Cthulhu with a steamship and germans using artillery against Herbert West's home to stop the undead he was creating. Thus while uncommon, it's not outside the scope of the mythos for a character to be toting a shotgun. Keep in mind that 1920 is only a decade or so removed from the wild west days of the US when 90% or more of the population went around armed at all times.

 

[Warren Okuma]

While not common, I've actually been to church when I knew I wasn't the only one with a loaded weapon there - and no one was law enforcement! Time and place really matter.

I went to a church with cops and NRA members. We went shooting afterwards... with the priest.

 

[IceFractal]

How is playing a character that's paranoid enough to pack heat any more metagaming than playing a character that routinely packs heat as part of their job? And yet, nobody complains if you play a PI, ex-cop, or the like in CoC. Heck, the player that complained was playing a PI!

Ultimately, the characters don't just "exist", they are chosen by the players. Therefore, playing a character that has X ability as a matter of course is really no different than playing a character that has X ability by an unusual coincidence.

Also, he didn't really have the choice to use a smaller weapon, as he wasn't proficient with them. Non-proficiency isn't just a game term, it has quantifiable results in the game world. For instance, if I had to go fight in an arena, I'd pick a bo or baseball bat over a sword - they may not be as inherently deadly, but I know how to use them without cutting my own arm off. And I believe the characters were pre-gen, in which case he didn't pick what to be proficient with.