Help me understand Call of Cthulhu

[500 Toads]

One could argue that most Call of Cthulhu scenarios are more heroic than most traditional fantasy adventures given the general lack of personal rewards in addition to the extreme risk. Succeed, and... well, the survivors can mourn the fallen, deal with massive traumas, and pick up whatever is left of their lives. By that measure, the classic campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep is incredibly heroic; the characters start out motivated not by fame, fortune or power, but at first personal ties to somebody who gets the investigative ball rolling, soon followed by realization or at least suspicion of what might happen if they fail.

That said, for those that do want more than "normal person" investigators, that's what the Pulp rules are for.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Spoiler: Spoiler for Beyond the Mountains of Madness

When playing mountains of madness, my character was the only one surviving, ahm kind of, his head did survive integrated into some biological matrix. Rest of the group as well as all npcs did perish in the end one after another, in pretty horrible ways.

I ran Beyond the Mountains of Madness and my players ended up creating an organization in New York to kidnap homeless people and send their heads to a certain location via Byakhee. Welcome to the wonderful world of being a cultist, players! But they did keep the world safe, at a cost ...

 

[Brewhammer]

Spoiler:















When playing mountains of madness, my character was the only one surviving, ahm kind of, his head did survive integrated into some biological matrix. Rest of the group as well as all npcs did perish in the end one after another, in pretty horrible ways.

Yeah a lot of times in CoC the lucky ones are the dead ones. Pepperidge Farm remembers.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

The exact consequences of a failed roll are explicitly left up to the Keeper, and it is also specified that it is entirely permissible for the player to fully succeed with their goal (but with a consequence) on a failed roll.

(pg 84)

(pg 194)

(pg 195)

Very interesting - I had not read that deep into the keepers book (again, working off of having read the quickstart, the first couple chapters, and other d100 games). This is VERY different than I've seen in say, BRP or Runequest - where failure means just that: you fail, and what you were trying to do doesn't happen.

The advice/rules here suggest to play the game very similar to how PBTA games work! That is, "success-at-a-cost" or "partial success" should be a very common result of a roll, regardless of whether the specific task has an intrinsic consequence for failure.

I'm curious if that is better utilized in adventures beyond the quickstart one - the quickstart has a lot of rolls which failure = nothing happens, unless of course the players choose to push and fail again.

"Player succeeds = player narrates success" and "player fails = GM narrates the outcome/consequence of their choice" matches pretty well to how a lot of modern storygames work, rather than the very traditional binary pass/fail that is the standard in other BRP games. Is this a change they made with 7th edition or did previous editions also work that way?

 

[Doctor Futurity]

In some instances in D&D this isnt true. Like a magical door that cant be picked and needs an exact key in whatever form to pass it. Its essentially railroading for story purposes. The have been a number of CoC modules ive seen that have a similar "find the clue or TPK" and its just as unsatisfying.

Yes but that's an example of bad module design as opposed to a system issue.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

That's a great point and something I do as well. Clues need not be tied to a specific location or even media. The same clue could be found word-of-mouth or in a tome, or in an old newspaper archive, or on a tombstone.

I also leave an open ended approach to solutions when I run. I might have an idea of a known solution, but if they players come up with something better then I will go with that.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

Very interesting - I had not read that deep into the keepers book (again, working off of having read the quickstart, the first couple chapters, and other d100 games). This is VERY different than I've seen in say, BRP or Runequest - where failure means just that: you fail, and what you were trying to do doesn't happen.

The advice/rules here suggest to play the game very similar to how PBTA games work! That is, "success-at-a-cost" or "partial success" should be a very common result of a roll, regardless of whether the specific task has an intrinsic consequence for failure.

I'm curious if that is better utilized in adventures beyond the quickstart one - the quickstart has a lot of rolls which failure = nothing happens, unless of course the players choose to push and fail again.

"Player succeeds = player narrates success" and "player fails = GM narrates the outcome/consequence of their choice" matches pretty well to how a lot of modern storygames work, rather than the very traditional binary pass/fail that is the standard in other BRP games. Is this a change they made with 7th edition or did previous editions also work that way?

I think this approach has been the norm in CoC and BRP for the most recent editions (and probably RQ I am sure). I can't recall if it was that way in CoC 6th and 5th or just how I ran it, though. But the most recent editions explicitly included this approach as a design feature.

 

[payn]

Yes but that's an example of bad module design as opposed to a system issue.

It comes up often enough, an entirely new system was made to avoid it.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

It comes up often enough, an entirely new system was made to avoid it.

Yes but you have to go back many years to older editions and design styles to find those modules. Are we judging Cthulhu now or CoC 20 years ago? This feels like me criticizing D&D 5E as being too rules laden having only referenced 3rd edition.

 

[Desdichado]

Yes but you have to go back many years to older editions and design styles to find those modules. Are we judging Cthulhu now or CoC 20 years ago? This feels like me criticizing D&D 5E as being too rules laden having only referenced 3rd edition.

Not to feed the tangent, and I know pagecount doesn't necessarily equal more rules, but

• 1e: 480 pages
• 2e: 831 pages
• 3e: 722 pages
• 3.5: 960 pages
• 4e: 832 pages
• 5e: 992 pages
• 5.5: 1,152 pages