Transition from Hack & Slash to RP: Help

[mmadsen]

I agree that kind of thing shouldn't happen much -if at all- in CoC. However, in Andrew's defense, sometimes it's tricky to make the shift to CoC from games like D&D.

I have found that -many times- players coming from a Heroic/Epic kind of power level can easily run amok when they come to CoC-style games if the GM isn't ready for it.

What confuses me is that the characters in a typical Call of Cthulhu game don't wield epic power, and their players are quite familiar with real-world police, etc. The players know they can't easily get away with a power trip -- unlike in D&D -- so they wouldn't normally go down that path -- unless they're bored to tears and they've just stopped caring.

I assume they just didn't know what to do -- there were no obvious, fun options -- and they didn't feel "engaged".

 

[kengar]

I assume they just didn't know what to do -- there were no obvious, fun options -- and they didn't feel "engaged".

That is certainly a risk, but I know -in my experience- there are players who simply aren't interested in giving all the different facets of an RPG a chance. Often, they take the hack & slash route because that's what they know and that's what is fun about gaming to them. A lot of these players -if the get the right GM- find out that there's more than just combat to the games and end up enjoying it a lot more.

Some players never get past the H&S mindset -regardless of what game they're playing- and can make trying to run a "non-hacking" campaign more difficult. The GM has to be ready for that and the player has to be willing to give the campaign a chance. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

The whole COC thing, on reflection, was due to a couple factors.

a) My players had just come from DnD (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil), and that was part, as kengar suggested.

b) I had run COC Chaosium in the past, and I think since I was running COC d20 this time, the players didn't quite get the message d20 isn't necessarily DnD. Frex, they were still expecting random encounters (!).

c) Me personally. I have several weaknsses and need to toughen up as a DM (I've had only one character death, and that was from a critical on a balor's sword attack), I think I'm too "anything goes". Furthermore, I'm definitely too "by the book", running rules as-is rather than house ruling things and such.

d) I was in a high-stress period right then, and I was directing it at the players. So maybe I self-destructed the game, too.

Anyway, what I'm doing, I think, is this. I'll use my weaknesses to my advantage. I'm gonna take time off DnD - to make the H&S-RP transition, I'm gonna go with Shadowrun 3e. I used to run 2e back in the day, and if I go strictly "by the book" on this, hack & slash will swiftly lead to death. And the karma rewards examples don't really give any for combat, so there won't be as much emphasis on it hopefully.

Also, I'm playing rather than DMing, currently - and the DM's a more experienced one than me (I've really only been DMing since the release of 3e), having exclusively run his homebrew world for several years now. So I'll get tips from him (I've already got one, do away with random encounters). Those, combined with the ones in this thread, will help me become a better DM.

 

[mmadsen]

a) My players had just come from DnD (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil), and...didn't quite get the message d20 isn't necessarily DnD. Frex, they were still expecting random encounters (!).

It sounds like they expected D&D with guns. Resident Evil, maybe?

I have several weaknsses and need to toughen up as a DM (I've had only one character death, and that was from a critical on a balor's sword attack), I think I'm too "anything goes".

If you don't have plenty of character deaths in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and Call of Cthulhu, yeah, you need to toughen up.

I'm gonna take time off DnD - to make the H&S-RP transition, I'm gonna go with Shadowrun 3e. I used to run 2e back in the day, and if I go strictly "by the book" on this, hack & slash will swiftly lead to death. And the karma rewards examples don't really give any for combat, so there won't be as much emphasis on it hopefully.

I don't have any experience with Shadowrun, but that sounds good. Have you considered using the Shadowrun rules to run a D&D-style fantasy game?

 

[Agback]

Accursed campaign concept

I think that campaign idea is cursed - this is the third time I've tried running it, and I've failed miserably each time.

I think every GM has at least on of these: ideas for campaign that seem great, but that never work out no matter how you tinker with them. I've tried some of mine up to five times, and I still think they ought to work if they are done right.

For example, I have this idea for a campaign in which some adventurer/explorers from Britain and the USA travel to Mars using the technology of 1896. I've tried it three times, it just doesn't work.

Another of mine involves '20s pulp heroes who are accidentally transported to Venus (which is primitive and swampy) and work out that they have somehow to travel halfway around Venus to get to Mars (which is arid and post-decadent), then halfway around Mars to get back to Earth. Tried it twice with different players and game systems: it hasn't worked.

Then I have this idea for a campaign inspired by H Beam Piper's novel Gunpowder God, in which a small group of fairly ordinary guys is somehow transported into a parallel world in which Indo-Europeans invaded North America from the West about [what would have been] the time of Christ, and now have a pike-and-shot technology in New England. That's failed three times.

And I still think I ought to be able to run a successful campaign in which the PCs are personnel aboard a Survey frigate in my SF setting Flat Black. I've tried that five times, with one half-success and four failures.

And then there is the 'Rolex campaign', in which the PCs are the sort of people who advertise Rolex watches, and they get mixed up in some nasty intrigue with international intelligence organisations' dirty tricks divisions, which turn out to be right out of their depth against the PCs' extraordinary abilities. Three failures with that one.

Regards,


Agback