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

[Heathen72]

Lucky he wasn't playing in my group. I would have been ranting about why he wasn't calling it a sawn off shotgun.

As for whether it was appropriate to carry one into a church, that would depend on a) how far into the game had run - had the character's actually faced any monsters, lost any san yet, etc and b) how far back the shotgun was sawn.

 

[domino]

Yeah. In a Call of Cthulu game, if someone asked me why I carried a weapon into a church, my answer would be "Because it's a Call of Cthulu game." If I were living in a world with those kinds of monsters, I'd carry a grenade launcher to go grocery shopping. I'd bring nightvision goggles to the movie theatre.

 

[Starfox]

I live in a country (Sweden) where country churches have armories. You were supposed to leave your arms there before entering. Those churches are 800 years old now, but things used to be rowdy here back then.

 

[hopeless]

COC shotgun wedding

I find it more unrealistic that you survived a CoC game with 100% of your sanity than having a character with a loaded sawed-off in a church... Maybe I've played too much CoC, though.

No sounds like you got the gist of it!

By the way I'd have said he could either have an unloaded shotgun or been reported to the police as the last time I checked sawn off shotgun's ain't exactly legal!

Now the only surviving COC character I have is based on a Dr Watson from Sherlock Holmes but played by Sean Connery except he has his trusty revolver handy... now tht would make sense!

Would still run for it if there's more than 1 zombie present!!!

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The mob I might buy. There were no Nazis in the 1920s. It still doesn't strike me with a lot of verisimillitude. I can buy an academic knowing how to use a shotgun for hunting or sporting, but carrying a sawed-off? Not a chance. How does he know how far back to cut the barrel? Does he have Gunsmithing as a skill? If not, there's a good chance the gun'll blow up in his face when fired due to the barrel's integrity being compromised.

How about...tired of not being able to make a "big score" in his field, the character has let himself enter the criminal world of buying black market artifacts to keep his job. Forced to regularly deal with the criminal element, and having more than once lost a large wad of money due to double-crossing, the character contacted a few "friends" in the underworld to get him an easily concealed shotgun to use the next time a deal goes wrong.

In one paragraph I just designed a very realistic background to account for having a sawed-off shotgun AND toting it to a business meeting in a church.

Maybe the player new to RolePlaying isn't quite as good at coming up with something like this, but in my opinion the game would have been better served by putting time on pause and coming up with an interesting background WHY the character had a sawed-off shotgun in the church rather than telling someone else "Your character wouldn't do that!".

DS