What do I do with all this? (Ryan Dancey: D20 Call of Cthulhu)

[mmadsen]

Ryan Dancey, famed D&D "Brand Manager", has a column at GamingReport.com, and in it he recently discussed d20 Call of Cthulhu (and, by extension, d20, D&D, the history of the 1st-edition Deities & Demigods book, RPGs in general, etc.).

One interesting point he brings up is the game text assumes you know what to do with everything it gives you:

It also assumes that the reader understands the "investigator" framework developed by the original game system. This idea is not self-evident from the text and should have been better explained. Someone coming to the game without prior exposure to the Chaosium game will have a hard time figuring out how to structure the actual game sessions. This could have been the basis of a whole chapter itself, including information on how to run a "classic" game set in the '20s with "Investigators", or a "modern" game using concepts explored in Delta Green (John Tynes, Delta Green's creator is a co-author of D20 CoC), or any number of alternative frameworks (X-Files, Vampire$, etc.)

Mearls makes a similar point about a bunch of different games he bought but never really used (and contrasts them with Chaosium's version of CoC):

I and the other primary GM amongst my friends had no idea what the heck we were supposed to DO with those games.

I clearly remember spending a week poring over SR, learning the rules, making up characters, and then sitting back on a Thursday evening and trying hard as hell to come up with an idea for an adventure that weekend.

I couldn't think of one. I had no idea HOW I was supposed to use all this stuff.

Same thing happened with Ars Magica.

And Millenium's End.

And Warhammer.

When it came time to make up an adventure or plan a short campaign, I didn't have clue one about what I was supposed to do.

Except with Cthulhu. Reading the rules and devouring a paperback of HPL's stories didn't help me at all, but the adventures in the back of the book made it crystal clear what we were supposed to do with the game. The classic haunted house scenario laid the entire game down in 4 pages: characters hear about weird events, go to investigate, uncover bizarre horrors, possibly go insane, gain sanity if they "win".

I ran that adventure, along with the others in the book, a couple from White Wolf magazine, and then ran out and bought two more adventure collections while making up a bunch of my own. We were hooked.
...
The problem with RPGs, IMHO, is that they all have a stereotypical adventure structure buried within them, but precious few take the time to actually spell out that structure. The old red box D&D basic set from 1983 did a good job with that. It basically gave you a sample stocked dungeon and a second dungeon map and said "fill this with monsters." CoC did that, too, though more by example with the half-dozen example scenarios it includes.

I think this gets at the Genius of D&D that Monte Cook wrote about. Once you've seen a dungeon or two, you know how to make your own, and there's all sorts of variety within that structure.

 

[mmadsen]

Has anyone had this experience with a seemingly good game? You know, you buy the game, the rules seem sensible, you can think of cool charcters, but you're not quite sure how to set up an adventure.

I've heard some people discuss d20 CoC this way, but the sample adventures in the back should help out.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

d20 CofC had an excellent GameMastering chapter, but the sample adventures weren't so hot. The first one in the movie theatre was awful and silly. The sleep disorder clinic one was decent but ultimately forgettable (the FROM BEYOND movie was much better). There were no haunted houses, inbred mutant families with dark secrets, or any appearance (not even a cameo or dream sequence) from any of the more familiar deities or creatures of the Mythos. So that leaves me having to make up something from scratch, which means I may never get around to running CofC d20. Not a total loss, as the book is loaded with crunchy goodness I can use in other d20 games, but I'd still like to be able to run CofC "as intended" a few times without having to do a ton of work. The adventures section should have had adventures based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, Pickman's Model, or something else "classic." Also, it sucked that they left out stats for Y'Golonac and Star Spawn of Cthulhu, yet they make sure and include the ridiculous gnoph'keh. The game isn't called "Call of Gnoph'keh", so leaving out Great Cthulhu's "big guns" is criminal, LOL. Plus, Y'Golonac was one of the more interesting demigods mentioned that I was not familiar with and then I go to find stats and end up scratching my head. DOH!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I agreed with Mearls about Shadowrun. Simply reading the game, it was tough to get anything more than a vague impression that the PCs should do covert missions of some type. Sorta like a cross between a high-tech, magical Rockford Files and James Bond, but with more than one main character.

Traveller was another game we tried everything with, since it was hard to tell what the "average" Traveller character would be doing to make a living. I swear, it seemed like all the published Traveller adventures started out with the PCs down and out, flat broke and hanging around a starport, and getting work as mercenaries, couriers, or assassins. It got tiring, since we wanted to do so much more than that, like maybe actually fly around the galaxy and fight evil.

 

[coyote6]

We never had any problems with Shadowrun.

I don't recall when the original edition of Into the Shadows came out -- I might've read that before. I certainly recall reading the prerelease flyer, which had a bit of flavor fiction that pointed towards the style of a SR adventure, though I'm not sure I ran the game until the GM screen (and the included Silver Angel adventure) had come out.

Of course, I guess having previously read Neuromancer and Hardwired was proabably at least as useful as anything else in getting the archetypal SR adventure: "Hired by someone to do something mostly illegal; complications, betrayal, and hijinks follow."

 

[Bagpuss]

"Underground" - A sort of Supers Soldiers returned from Nam setting. Very cool setting, books, systems but didn't lend itself to campaigning.

Fading Suns - Love the setting but its hard to write a decent adventure.

One of the "Genius of D&D" is that if you can't think up a decent plot a lot of players will be happy with just a series of rooms full of monsters and treasure for one night. Player motivation is easy, you kill the monsters you improve your character and you get treasure.

Other games, you remove that "greed and/or development" motivations and it becomes harder to motivate the players and the characters to do the adventure.

I know a lot of people just don't "get" CoC because they can't see what would motivate a character get involved in great personal risk without any reward at the end of it. And there is little to motivate the player since a character is just as likely (or move likey) to die as to be improved by going investigating.

I know one player I have doesn't like Vampire:tM because if you start the campaign as a Neonate you can't improve your position within the Camarilla unless the campaign goes on for 300 years so you can earn the status of Elder (and how many modern Vampire games go on 300 year into the future?). He can't motivate himself as a player without seeing some form of improvement in his character.

 

[mmadsen]

When I think back, we had a surprisingly hard time with Champions (after dropping AD&D). We were young, and though we knew the genre well enough, most of our early adventures were just excuses to fight. Take some cool villains, think up a cool locale (or a not-so-cool locale), and have the heroes passing through as the villains commit a crime. Our heroes dive for cover -- so they can change into their costumes -- and *BAM*POW*BIFF* the fight starts.

That's not too far from the source material, I guess. We eventually figured out how to have one fight (naturally) lead to another, but it took awhile.

 

[Black Omega]

That's not too far from the source material, I guess. We eventually figured out how to have one fight (naturally) lead to another, but it took awhile.

For some comics that's exactly right. Early Champions was very much into the "We provide a sample adventure. You learn from doing." Not the best way to go for a newb. One of the great,forgotten Champions Book called "The Protectors" (or something like that..I forget had all the campaign info for one of the very first Champions games by the guys who helped make it. Some great information. Was one the first printed sources I saw that classified types of gamers, with ideas on how to do something for all players.

 

[mmadsen]

One of the great,forgotten Champions Book called "The Protectors" (or something like that..I forget had all the campaign info for one of the very first Champions games by the guys who helped make it. Some great information. Was one the first printed sources I saw that classified types of gamers, with ideas on how to do something for all players.

That was Strike Force by Aaron Allston. Excellent, excellent book.

Here's the excellent, excellent news: Hero System 5th Edition just came out (as you may know), and Aaron Allston is writing Champions, the superhero genre book for the new system.

 

[mmadsen]

One of the "Genius of D&D" is that if you can't think up a decent plot a lot of players will be happy with just a series of rooms full of monsters and treasure for one night. Player motivation is easy, you kill the monsters you improve your character and you get treasure.

I think that's another reason fantasy is such a great genre. It's far enough removed from reality that those scenarios seem to make sense. In a more modern setting (Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Call of Cthulhu), it's hard to explain four guys stumbling across a fortified position they want to take -- and having it happen week after week too.

I know a lot of people just don't "get" CoC because they can't see what would motivate a character get involved in great personal risk without any reward at the end of it. And there is little to motivate the player since a character is just as likely (or move likey) to die as to be improved by going investigating.

Yeah, you really have to take the adventure to them. This becomes readily apparent if you try to run the standard adventures with the players playing themselves as characters. Spooky mansion? I go home. Why go in? And meta-gaming makes horror very hard to pull off with some players.