Chaosium Digest Volume 3, Number 8 Date: Sunday, August 22, 1993 Number: 1 of 3 Contents: More Comments on Elric! (Tom Zunder) ELRIC! Meeting the Great Knights (Heidi Kaye) PENDRAGON Alone Against Cthulhu (Kimbo Beattie) CALL OF CTHULHU Editor's Notes: Many months ago, Jay Vosburgh passed copies of the old Mythos Delvers Digests on to me. I've finally uploaded them to soda.berkeley.edu where they are now available for FTP in the directory: /pub/chaosium/cthulhu/mythos-delvers There isn't a lot of discussion about Call of Cthulhu in the Mythos Delvers Digest. The article in V2.7 of the Chaosium Digest on books, and the notes on Archaeology, Antropology, Astronomy and Chemistry in V3.9 are all derived from it, but except for some discussions about spells in CoC, that was pretty much it for the role-playing game. The rest of the Mythos Delvers Digest was mostly about Lovecraft's writing, especially his earliest stories. If that sounds interesting, you might want to FTP the issues. There are 45 in all. New out from Chaosium this week is The Investigator's Companion, Volume 1: Equipment and Resources (Chaosium, 64pp, $10.95). This supplement for Call of Cthulhu provides lots of useful information on the 1920s. Shannon -------------------- From: Tom Zunder Subject: More Comments on Elric! System: Elric! I was very interested to read Adam Justin Thornton's review of Elric! As one who has no Stormbringer and little Chaosium experience, he was in many ways a good choice to review the product. What was particularly interesting was that all the suggestions he made for making the game a litle more complex (skills modified by stats, hit locations, etc) are all the bits of RuneQuest or Stormbringer which have been obviously cut from this game. I have no problem with this at all. If you want to spice up the rules, then just buy RQ and add in hit locations and skill modifiers. What I do object to, however, is the willy nilly renaming of skills in Elric! from the core in RQ. Hell, I don't want twelve different names for a similar skill when I put down RQ, pick up Elric!, play ElfQuest etc. Couldn't Chaosium keep some things roughly constant? Similarly, why are criticals and impales all over the place in this game relative to others? Now, maybe CoC has moved on a lot since I last played, but it seems to me that inconsistancy for inconsistancy's sake has crawled into this game. It won't stop me playing it, but it makes me wish it hadn't happened. Tom.Zunder@cyberhm.royle.org -------------------- From: Heidi Kaye [via ] Subject: Meeting the Great Knights System: Pendragon In chivalric romance, meeting and defeating one of the great knights is often the final challenge of a knight's adventure. The three great knights who most often present this challenge are Tristram, Gawain and Lancelot. The idea is that the knight, who has often started out as a fair unknown, has been through a series of adventures which have proved his mettle and earned him fame, even love. The culmination of his achievement is then to beat one of the three great knights in a joust. This may occur immediately before or after the knight has been admitted to the Round Table. Which of the three knights is the goal to be met depends on the date and temperament of the story; earlier romances make Gawain the greatest of all the knights, while later ones consider Lancelot the best knight, and Cornish knights and lovers may find Tristram to be the ideal knight. Often in the romances, the fairly unknown knight may have met the great knight near the start of his story and been defeated by him. His subsequent adventures help establish his worthiness to try again to beat the great knight. Sometimes the knight will eventually meet the great knight and the resulting combat will result in a draw; either both knights were unhorsed in a joust or they fought on and on until both were wounded and/or exhausted. Whether the knight wins or ties with the great knight, he has shown himself to be at least equal to, or better than, the greatest knight. He may now be worthy of a seat at the Round Table, if you are doing it in that order. This pattern makes a nice frame for a Pendragon adventure or, more probably, a series of adventures. Your party of player knights may come upon a knight at a crossroads bearing a white shield to disguise his identity while he practices his jousting on passersby. He easily knocks all the player knights down; whether he makes a scathing remark or compliments them on their bravery will depend on how they react to him in their defeat. One of the knights spots a banner tucked away in the unknown knight's pavilion (Awareness) and recognises it as Gawain's (Heraldry). This kind of encounter ought to inspire the player knights to have another go in the future, once they've improved a bit themselves. They may especially anticipate the chance to best Gawain in a more public place, like at a major tournament, before the king. Such an event should be played up with much excitement and tension and should lead to great festivities and congratulation of the knights. After all, this is what glory is all about! The initial encounter with a great knight does not necessarily need to be a combative one. There are several other possible scenerios which may inspire player knights to defeat the knights of legend. If your players are anything like mine, they absolutely hate to lose. Even more than being defeated, however, they despise being helped! If they were in trouble in a fight and it looked like they were all going to die, and some great knight came up and rescued them, they would really sulk. This too could lead to them wanting to reclaim their lost honour by beating the great knight themselves. Worse than being defeated, even worse than being helped, comes being captured in the eyes of my group of players. They will go on to fight to the death rather than surrender. To capture them requires that the odds ranged against them look absolutely impossible. If I were ever to get them all captured by an evil knight and held prisoner and then rescued by a great knight, that would really get on their nerves. Not only would they have to show the evil imprisoning knight a thing or two, but they would see to it that they erased their debt to their rescuer as soon as possible by showing him up. An alternative to simply defeating the great knight would be to have the great knight come humbly to request their aid in a quest. He may not necessarily admit that this quest is just too tough for him, but he will have some reason why he needs the player knights to do it instead (having the great knight come along would probably be just too incendiary). If Lancelot were himself held prisoner by a witch and needed rescuing, or if Gawain had to fulfill a vow to find out what women really want and so could not kill a certain dragon right away that was ravaging his homeland, then they could get word to the player knights that they needed a favour. The player knight's role in the Adventure of the Grey Knight could be made into an example of this approach. All of this could also be applied to non-combatative tests of the player knights against the great knights. Are they truer lovers than Tristram or Lancelot? Can they be more holy than Percival or Galahad? Will they sleep with more women than Gawain? Are they more generous, better hunters, more loyal, more honest than all other knights? Perhaps a player knight is fated to be the only knight who can ride a certain faerie steed, which one of the great knights has quested after but failed to master. These tests need to be carefully set out, rather than done simply as a set of die rolls. Players tend to have a certain antipathy for any characters better than they are, and I don't mean this in a power-gamer sort of way. They want to be the heroes, so any greater heroes naturally seem like rivals. Using the great knights as goalposts of knightly achievment or instigators of competitive questing can be a way of harnessing this rivalrous energy to serve the game's purposes of attaining glory and demonstrating one's knightly qualities. -------------------- From: kimbo@netcom.com (Kimbo Beattie) Subject: Alone Against Cthulhu System: Call of Cthulhu I've always been a fan of solo adventures. They are great for when you can't get a group together and I also find them fun when there are only two people available to play. One of us will take the role of "moderator" and read the paragraphs and roll dice for the monsters and NPCs. The other person takes the part of the investigator and decides where the character goes and what he does. I actually prefer playing solos with two people than by myself. It helps in sharing the record keeping chores and it's fun to experience the adventure with another person. A number of solo adventures have been published for Call of Cthulhu. What follows is a list of the COC solos that I have found. If there are any others out there, I'd like to hear about them. THE THING IN THE DARKNESS By Matthew J. Costello Developed by Warren Spector & Steve Jackson Published in Fantasy Gamer #3, Dec/Jan 1984 I believe this was the first COC solo to be published. A journalist investigates the disappearance (and murder?) of a college co-ed. "The Thing in the Darkness" introduces a number of design features that will become almost standard in COC solo adventures: A Table (list) of Places to Investigate, which acts as sort of a central "switchboard" for the investigator as he goes about town (or wherever) investigating and researching mysterious events. There is a Time Chart, which eventually turns the solo into a "race against time." It's been so long since I played this one, I've forgotten most of the plot. I guess it's time to dust it off and try it again, hey? ALONE AGAINST THE WENDIGO: Solitaire Adventure in Canada's Wilds By Glenn Rahman Published by Chaosium, 1985 Out of Print WENDIGO is the first solo published by Chaosium. It's different from all of the other COC solos listed here in that it is a more "traditional" solo. The investigator starts at the beginning and goes from there. There is no Table of Places to Investigate and no Time Track. There is some use of dice to randomly determine the direction of the adventure, but in general its linearity is more obvious than in the other solos discussed here. There are a number of plot lines (hence the random determination mentioned above) all dealing with investigating strange events in the wilds of Canada. In general, WENDIGO was less satisfying than the other COC solos. WENDIGO does introduce a design feature that becomes standard in other COC solos: the concept of "victory points." In WENDIGO it's called Hanninah Mythos (HM) points. Most paragraphs award a number of HM points. At the end of the adventure (assuming survival) the total of HM points is used to determine the players "level of victory." ALONE AGAINST THE DARK: Defying the Triumph of the Ice By Matthew J. Costello Published by Chaosium, 1985 Out of Print Matthew Costello follows up with ALONE AGAINST THE DARK which, even today, eight years after its publishing, is still one of the best COC solos ever published. It is a world spanning adventure that takes a series of adventurers (it's also rather deadly) from Arkam, Mass to New York, Germany, Greece, Egypt and even the Antartic! It's a great adventure with lots of "interesting" events. The basic idea of the scenario would also make a great multi-player scenario if a GM were so inclined to modify it for such use. The Investigator's object in ALONE AGAINST THE DARK is nothing less than the saving of the world. The level of Victory is determined by how many investigators it takes to complete the adventure. This adventure includes a Table of Places to Investigate (that spans the world!), a Time Track (that is years in length!) and a handout of a pyramid in Eygpt that allows the player to explore the interior. (Sort of like a jigsaw puzzle, "map as you go" idea.) We lost quite a few investigators in that pyramid! :) After ALONE AGAINST THE DARK, it's seven long years before any other COC solos are published. At least it's that long before I see any other COC solo adventures. As much as I enjoyed ALONE AGAINST THE DARK, I guess COC solos didn't do all that well. If there are other COC solos published during this time, I'd like to hear about them. I'd also like to get my hands on them! ALONE ON HALLOWEEN By Scott David Aniolowski with John Tynes Published by Pagan Publishing, 1992 $8.95 HALLOWEEN is a "haunted house" type of adventure that pits the Investigator and his friend against a dark and forboding Mansion and its inhabitants on a stormy Halloween night. It includes all of the "standard" design features: A table of Places to Investigate (in this case, a floor plan of the Mansion), A Time Table (What terrible thing occur at Midnight?), and a way to track victory beyond just survival in the way of "Journalism Points." The adventure starts off with the Investigator having an "accident" while driving his car past the old mansion. It is a dark and stormy night and the only place to go is the mansion (of course!). Once inside, the Investigator is introduced to the owner and soon finds himself in a race against time to find his friend. There is a great dream sequence and searching the house for signs of your friend gets quite suspensful as you uncover clues about the inhabitants and time begins to run out. Your investigator should have a high Sanity rating as there are many chances to go temporarily insane which results in the investigator waking up in a hospital somewhere and losing the game. Also included with ALONE ON HALLOWEEN is a small adventure toolkit including a floorplan and descriptions for an English Manor House. A list of NPCs and scenario ideas round out the toolkit. Some nice scenario ideas in there. GRIMROCK ISLE By Michael Szymanski (?) Additional material by Scott Aniolwski Published August, 1992 by Triad Entertainments $18.95 (?) GRIMROCK ISLE could easily be classified as the "Mother of all COC solo adventures." This is one big package! It contains the "main" scenario booklet, DOVE'S BAY, which includes some 400 paragraph entries. Also included in the package are five (!) "sub-solos" (BLEAKMOORE CEMETERY, THOMPSON'S BRIDGE, PALMER'S ORCHID, McKIERNAN'S LIGHTHOUSE and HUTCHIN'S CAVE) of about 100 paragraph entries each. In addition there is a "Book of Terrible Knowledge" which contains a group version of the solo adventure. There are fourteen pages of handouts (mostly letters or newspaper clippings that turn up as a result of research) as well. I haven't actually had the chance to play GRIMROCK ISLE yet, so I can't say anything about the adventure or its quality. I'm impressed by the material contained in the package and a brief skimming of the introductory material gives me hope for this package. It looks like it will be a fun adventure. The premise of the story is that of a haunted house. The Investigator has been hired to get to the bottom of the mysteries surrounding the house so the owner can sell it. The standard design features are included: A Table of Places to Investigate (the Town of Dove's Bay and its environs), A Time Table, and "Research Points" used to determine the "level of victory." ALONE AGAINST CTHULHU And that's it for this survey of Call of Cthulhu solo adventures. I'd like to see more such adventures but I guess they appeal to only a limited subset of the RPG market. Nonetheless, solo adventures are great for when you don't have the time (or inclination) to organize a group game. They can be lots of fun, but I wouldn't suggest using your own characters (use the characters provided instead) unless you are willing to risk that character. Solo adventures, by their nature, tend to be deadly. As mentioned above I'd be very interested in hearing about other solo scenarios for Call of Cthulhu (heck, for any RPG!). My INET address is kimbo@netcom.com. -------------------- 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