Chaosium Digest Volume 2, Number 4 Date: Sunday, April 25, 1993 Number: 1 of 1 Contents: Alternate Settings for CoC (Dakin Burdick) CALL OF CTHULHU Review: Grace Under Pressure (Alex Antunes) CALL OF CTHULHU Review: The Stars Are Right (Matt Grossman) CALL OF CTHULHU The Chaosium Survey (Sam Shirley) MISC Editor's Note: A lot of short responses and notes this time around. In reply to Anthony Ragan, back in V1.10, Liam Routt said that he had not got a chance to look at the ELRIC! demon creation rules in detail. However, in talking with Chaosium people, he was assured that the new rules are similar in spirit, and that the creation of demons is much the same. There are a number of powers to be combined in the creation of demons, and a number of samples are given at a variety of power levels. Sam Shirley had a few replies to Dave Hipple's questions from V2.1. He said the "mislead" skill in the CoC Fifth Edition rules isn't really a mistake. Chaosium has always personalized characters with unique skills (Sam gave the example of Robert Jatik in At your Door having the skill of "Forget to Give Credit"). About errata, Sam said that Chaosium doesn't commonly produce errata sheets for their games. However, they do try and fix errors in subsequent printings. CoC5 has been reprinted several times, for example, and the latest version is marked as 5.1 on the title page. There were also a few queries this week. Liam mentioned that he had just gotten a look at a copy of the newest Lovecraft Country scenerio book. He thought it looked good from a brief glance, but was hoping for a full review from someone who actually had a copy of it. Any takers? Sam Shirley also had a whole set of questions. They're at the bottom of the digest, labelled 'The Chaosium Survey.' I'd suggest that everyone out there fill out a copy and send it to Sam (chaosium@aol.com). Hopefully, it will provide Chaosium with valuable feedback which help them to produce even better supplements. Finally, Chris Crouch has uploaded a Pendragon character sheet to the FTP site on soda.berkeley.edu. It's available in the directory /pub/chaosium/character-sheets in postscript and xfig formats. It's pretty much the same as the sheet in the Pendragon book, though some spellings (honour, armour) have been changed. Recent Sightings: Actually, this week we have a couple of upcoming sightings. Sam Shirley pointed out a few articles which will see print in magazines in upcoming months. * Misc - A three-part article on Chaosium will be published in an upcoming Dragon magazine. * Pendragon - "The Treasure of Galilee", an adventure by Paul Cockburn will see print in an upcoming issue of White Wolf magazine. -------------------- From: Dakin Burdick Subject: Alternate Setting for CoC System: Call of Cthulhu In-Reply-To: V2.3 Setting Cthulhu in the Wild West I prefer role-playing medieval fantasies, but I started running CoC in an attempt to convince myself that roleplaying did not conflict with my academic pursuits (I'm working on my Ph.D. in U.S. History). I've already run a number of games in the Wild West. The first adventure involved the range wars in Montana in the 1880s. There wasn't much Cthulhu involved; it was more like a Boot Hill game using CoC rules, except there was little kid wandering around with an invisible monster as his friend (ala Pete's Dragon). My next attempt was using "The Statue of the Sorceror" and transferring it to 1890s California. This worked really well, except that one of the players insisted on taking a Chinese martial artist, and he kept getting thrown out of bars and insulted. Basically it just got him ticked off and ready for the final confrontation. I'm currently running a long-term campaign starting in 1783 in Albany, New York. I allow five years between each adventure (to allow people to improve), so the adventures have so far been: 1. 1783: Investigate a Serpent Mound ("Trail of Yig" from "Tales of the Miskatonic Valley"). The players did ok, but one of them died. Brown Bess Muskets are not much help against Cthulhu, so one player carries a heavy crossbow (not much better). The magicians control the play a lot (I use a different magic system), so some of the rangers were getting frustrated. 2. 1788: Hunt for a meteorite ("The Hills run Wild" from "Arkham Unveiled"). This one was an unmitigated disaster. The players had fun running around but in the end, the bad guys won and the players fled. Five towns were then destroyed by the bad guys, and this, combined with a very unlucky summoning roll in a local tavern, spurred renewed interest in witchcraft trials. Some of the local clergy started looking towards the party. 3. 1793: The party heads south to friendlier climes, New Orleans ("Tell Me, Have you Seen the Yellow Sign" from "The Great Old Ones"). There's one problem in converting this adventure tho'; the French still own the territory! The dead reporter got changed to a dead foreman on a small sugar plantation. He had been investigating a slave conspiracy and found threads that connected the slaves on several plantations to the free blacks of the city, as well as a couple important people in town. He was found dead after falling off of the Slave Market in the middle of town. Most of the stuff transferred over well, although I upped the number of cultists, scaring the players silly and making them unable to fight, even after one of them was kidnapped. I added in the information on Carcosa from Unspeakable Oath #1, and it went very well. When dealing with the kidnapped character, I used a different system for running the adventure. Instead of rolling, we played "rock, paper, scissors". If she won, her character did well. If she lost, her character did poorly. Three losses in a row meant her character died. This worked really well, added some tension, and didn't let the dice intrude on the roleplaying. Basically, playing in the antebellum period is easy as long as you don't emphasize combat. I try to give the Indian Scouts and Revolutionary War veterans something to shoot, but the magicians are usually left with the dirty job of getting rid of the creature. Really, the largest artillery the players can have is a Valley Gun (usually mounted on a crow's nest to sweep the deck of an enemy vessel), which I may let them mount on a bateau on the Albany River. Upcoming difficulties include the Masonic Temples, Sasquatch, and another Indian Burial mound. By the way, I've also run CoC with the "Flashing Blades" system. I ran a campaign of "Flashing Blades" (a Three Musketeers game for those who don't know) and inserted "Glozel est Authentique" (a CoC adventure) in the middle. The players were taken completely unawares. Perhaps the finest moment came when a musketeer was digging through the wine cellar looking for a fine Bordeaux when a gate opened behind him and tentacles sucked him through, no save. I let the musketeer's ghost continue to play, and he had a blast scaring the locals. He also made an excellent spy; the whole party would probably have died had he not been there. Back to the Wild West; you should probably rent an old film called "Valley of the Gwangi" if you haven't already. It was cowboys versus Harryhausen's dinosaurs. You might get some ideas (remember "Gate from the Past", one of the early modules?). One of the old Space Gamers or Fantasy Gamers had a Boot Hill version of that adventure, I think. Other ideas might be an examination of the Pawnee "Morning Star" legend, which bears great similarity to certain Aztec legends. Or how about a Peyote cult? Or an ancient terror unleashed by the building of a railroad? You could have an early version of the Ghost Dance and rule that Ghost Shirts actually did fend off bullets. If you're playing earlier, how about a confederate band that tries to use the Old Ones to punish the North? Or a Cthulhu connectino with the assassination of Lincoln? And what about those Mormons? If you want to risk getting in trouble with the Church, you could change the nature of the golden tablets that Joseph Smith found. There's a lot of good material there, but I imagine the reason my characters will be happy to get there eventually will be REVOLVERS. "Oh boy, I get SIX times as many shots! Those critters are dead meat!" Tommy guns are for sissies! Dakin burdickd@silver.ucs.indiana.edu -------------------- From: Alex ANTUNES Subject: Review: Grace Under Pressure System: Call of Cthulhu The last Chaosium Digest mentioned a reprint of the scenario "Grace Under Pressure", from The Unspeakable Oath. I thought I'd give a mini-review of this, since we played it two weeks ago. Summary: It is fun to read, and is extremely well written. The Fuggly Flee-O-Meter is a classic prop. But, as it stands, the adventure is not very fun to play. Spoilers: The plot is similar to the movie "Deep Star Six", an evil version of "The Abyss", or maybe "Leviathan". The players are the experienced crew of a deep-sea mission who come across Something That Should Not Be Investigated. Good Points: It is fun to read, especially if you've seen any of the movies above. It is easy to visualize the setting. Bad Points: As mentioned before, it is unplayable as it stands. First, the characters are for the most part forced to react, never to act. Since the characters are professional undersea people with no Cthulhu or Occult skills, they can't really react properly until they find out a little of what they face. And, the adventure peaks so quickly that once they get a minor clue, they are pretty much doomed. The idea that the characters should leap into the situation prematurely, or avoid basic repairs so they can investigate something, is too much at odds with the basic code of survival for underwater work, which is "take no chances". As a result, a lot of the adventure was boring ship maintainance since that was a priority, from the character's point of view. Also, the adventure usually splits up the party, and no matter how well written, this ended up reducing play time as the GM had to switch back and forth. Since both halves were not able to communicate with each other, any suspense value was reduced. Suggestions: The scenario is so cool it'd be a shame to ignore it. I would recommend putting one "Investigator"-type on the crew-- perhaps an eccentric marine biologist who has encountered weirdness before. That way, at least the players can Play instead of being forced along. Also, said character wouldn't be indispensible to the crew and hence able to explore, add a little paranoia, etc. More Flaws: The number of skill rolls required is, to my taste, a bit excessive. Given that the crew are six highly specialized professionals, having to make a roll for mundane activities does not make sense. In CoC, having a 75% skill at Driving a Car doesn't mean you crash 3/4 of the time you go to the store! Instead, it means you have a 3/4 chance of succeeding when you try something unusual. Likewise, for driving the sub, for example, requiring three skills rolls to actually get anywhere gets tedious after a while. The adventure seems based too much on "how many die rolls does it take to get a critical failure". Okay, so that's the review-- good idea, excellent materials and presentation, but falls short in playability. Adding a character with a reason to be suspicious would improve things greatly, otherwise you have six trained professionals who follow standard procedure until suddenly they are swarmed upon and eaten (well, we did escape, actually, when we played it). Cheers, Sandy antunes@rosserv.gsfc.nasa.gov alex@astro.isas.ac.jp -------------------- From: Matt Grossman Subject: Review: The Stars are Right! System: Call of Cthulhu I know that this supplement has been out for a while, but I only got it a couple weeks ago (isn't it great when your players buy you things?) so here are my observations on this product. "The Stars are Right!" is a collection of seven modern day CoC adventures and an essay on the position of the stars at the time of the rising of Rlyeh in 1925. The essay is fun but rather useless in game terms. The first adventure "Love's Lonely Children" is one of the best CoC short scenarios I have seen. It is as brilliant as it is twisted, and promises some really nasty shocks for the characters and players. The second scenario "Nemo Solis Sapit" is the scenario best suited to be placed in a campaign. It also seems that it could be translated successfully to other time periods, unlike the other scenarios in TSaR!. The third scenario "This Fire shall Kill" has a good beginning and a dramatic climax, but a rather weak middle. However, this scenario is worth playing for the scene with the little girl alone--my players almost killed me. Overall a fun adventure. "The Professionals" is fairly good, with an extremely convoluted plot, lots of techno-babble, and some nice SAN-draining scenes (especially the snuff film--yuck!). This scenario would probably translate well to a cyberpunk genre or rather, the modern day as shown in this scenario is disturbingly close to a cyberpunk future. Disturbing, and probably intentional on the authors part. "Fractal Gods" struck me as being the weakest scenario in the book. It has an interesting premise, and should appeal to all the computer geeks out there. However, the plot is almost incomprehensible, and I found it difficult to see what the characters were supposed to do. Still, I might end up using some of the ideas in this scenario in a campaign of my own. "The Gates of Delirium" is a nicely plotted adventure, with a fairly conventional villain and situation. This is (IMHO) the most "typical" CoC scenario in the book, and could probably be translated fairly well to the 1920s. However, it looks like a lot of fun to play, and has some nice scares. "The Music of the Spheres" is the biggest scenario in the book, and one of the best. The premise is ambitious (the return of the Great Old Ones) but it is well handled. I felt that science was integrated into the plot much better than in "The Professionals", and this has a positive effect on the story. This scenario would work well as the conclusion of a modern-day campaign; it has that epic scope. Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who might be interested in running modern-day CoC. Even if you don't use the scenarios, there are enough ideas to use for your own game to make it worthwhile. Also, the authors have succeeded in capturing a modern feel for these scenarios, one that any Keeper running a modern game should try to emulate. Finally, the book is very well presented and illustrated, quite the best thing that I've seen from Chaosium in this respect. Matt Grossman Hampshire College mgrossman@hamp.hampshire.edu -------------------- From: Sam Shirley Subject: The Chaosium Survey System: Misc I've made up a survey concerning people's roleplaying interests. You can fill it out and send it back to me at chaosium@aol.com. All responses are appreciated. Here's the survey: 1. What is your prefered mix of scenarios to background material? 2. What kind of background material do you like (place maps, NPC stats, gadgets & guns, group write-ups, etc)? 3. Do you play scenarios as written, or do you pull out the interesting bits and use them in your own plots? 4. Do you run a continuing campaign? Or do you run an episodic game? Or something else. 5. Do you tend to play one game system, or alternate between game systems? What is your main system? Where do our games fall in this pattern? 6. In Call of Cthulhu, which time period do you prefer (modern day, 1920's, 1890's Dreamland)? 7. How useful do you find items such as character sheets or CoC's Dire Documents? 8. Are you interested in more items like the Miskatonic U. Kit and the Cthulhu or President Kit? Got any cool ideas in this vein? Send your response to chaosium@aol.com. Thanks, Sam Shirley -------------------- The Chaosium Digest is a Discussion Forum for Chaosium Games which do not have another specific area for discussion. To submit an article, mail to: appel@erzo.berkeley.edu