Chaosium Digest Volume 11, Number 7 Date: Sunday, August 27, 1995 Number: 1 of 1 Contents: CoC Skills Training (Adam Crossingham) CALL OF CTHULHU The Fedogan & Bremer Books (Shannon Appel) CALL OF CTHULHU Editor's Note: Welcome to another issue of the Chaosium Digest, this one centered on Call of Cthulhu and the Mythos. Shannon NEW RELEASES: * Misc - The Chaosium Twenty Years of Chaos T-Shirt (Wizard's Attic, $15.00) is a nice green and red t-shirt that displays the Twentieth Anniversary symbol which has been featured on Chaosium products this year. You can order products from Wizard's Attic by calling 1-800-213-1493. * Call of Cthulhu - _Made in Goatswood_ (Chaosium, 268 pg., $10.95) is the eighth book of fiction in the Cthulhu Cycle series. V10.2 of the digest contains a complete Table of Contents for the book. This book features 18 stories, including a new one by Ramsey Campbell himself, as well as a nice map of the Severn Valley region. -------------------- From: Subject: Call of Cthulhu Skills Training System: Call of Cthulhu The following are the house rules I use for skills training in my Call of Cthulhu campaign. The need for them arose when a player decided his character ought to advantage of the further education system and become educated. He took his character out of play for the three years of game time, and when the character came back into play he had gained a degree in Engineering. The suggestions are pretty much British-university based but I imagine American universities hadn't switched to credits in the 1920s. CALL OF CTHULHU SKILLS TRAINING by Adam Crossingham There are times in an Investigator's life when circumstances change. If he or she does not die or go mad, the survivor may want to change certain things in their life. Skills are one aspect that may be reviewed. The Investigator may want to do things that he or she is not qualified or able to do. It might involve a radical career change. It is time to go back to school. The fifth edition Call of Cthulhu rules have rules for training, but these only apply to one skill at a time and are time consuming. An investigator may want a shorter introduction to the subject, or may want to train several skills at once over a longer period. These training rules cover crash courses, night school and university training. SINGLE SKILL TRAINING The Call of Cthulhu 5th edition rule book has guidelines for training a single skill on page 40. Due to the benefit one might gain from the study, a Keeper may rule the study as intensive and that it precludes investigation during the six-month training period. If the study is interrupted, the skill gain can be downgraded to a lesser amount. A single skill may be studied less intensively, such as at night school, allowing a degree of investigation. Homework, library study, essay writing etc. must still be continued for the study to be worthwhile, so investigative activities cannot be full-time or lead to travel, etc. Every 6 months of moderate study will add 1d6% to the chosen skill being studied. CRASH COURSE TRAINING If a skill needs to be learned or improved quickly, existing rules for skills training cannot cope. A crash course gives intensive training in a single skill. The tuition is often full-time and one to one, but could be very expensive. There are finite limits to how much an individual can learn, as a crash course can only act as an introduction to a subject. A crash course may last between one to four weeks. Because of the very intensive tuition, no investigative activity should be possible without penalty. A crash course successfully completed should add 1d5% to 1d20% (depending on the length of the course) to the chosen skill. A finite limit should be set for the skill gain from crash courses, otherwise investigators will continually attend crash courses. The maximum benefit received for completing a crash course should not exceed a suitable characteristic multiplied by one (i.e. INT x 1 or DEX x 1). The skill categories on page 238 gives some indication of which skills might be influenced by a characteristic i.e. Locksmith is a manipulation skill and could be influenced by DEX. This caps the effectiveness of a crash course, yet still yields a useful gain to the skill. TRAINING MULTIPLE SKILLS Technical schools, polytechnics, universities, etc. are establishments which can offer courses to train multiple skills. They offer training to build or improve occupations and careers, as well as to broaden human knowledge. These establishments may well have entrance qualifications that will have to be satisfied by applicants before they gain access. In game terms these can be represented by minimum skill levels, such as 20 - 25% in the primary skill of the course. There will also be fees that will have to be paid. If the Student does not have a private income, finance for the duration of the course may become a problem. Scholarships or sponsors may have to be found, or an alternative course at a state funded institution found. The course of study that a student follows can be based on a selection of skills from an Occupation in the rule book (5th ed. page 22), or other skills may be chosen to simulate a subject course. A list of skills that might make up a course for some subjects follows at the end of the article. All courses must be agreed upon by the Keeper, before the training starts. The investigator will be virtually retired from play during his or her studies. Occasional 1 or 2 day forays are acceptable during term time, and the summer vacation offers opportunity to the thrill seeking Student. However, any insanity or injury received may well have a detrimental effect to study in the succeeding months. In the 1920s there were usually 3 terms per academic year; so, for every term of study completed successfully the Student can add 1d6% to each of the chosen skills in the course, resulting in 3d6% per skill, per academic year if study was maintained. But, if study was interrupted for any cause, the Student can only 1% to each skill for each interrupted term. In extreme circumstance, the Student may not receive any gain to his chosen skills. An interruption might be defined as a period of insanity, missing lectures for a prolonged period of several weeks, or failing to hand in project work. An interruption is also defined by the type of course studied, as some courses require greater attendance and commitment. A scientific subject requiring lots of practical experience will be easier to interrupt than a Humanities subject that involves only reading, seminars and the occasional lecture. At the end of the course, there are exams to be sat, and qualifications to be gained. This can represented in game mechanics by a successful test of the majority of the skills studied. These can be classified as follows: First class degree or equivalent: the test was successful, and the course's primary skill was a critical success Second class degree or equivalent: a successful test but the pprimary skill was not a critical success Pass or equivalent: the test was failed, but a minority of the skills were successfully tested Failure: none of the skills were successfully tested, the Student fails the course. EXAMPLES OF COURSES FOR TRAINING MULTIPLE SKILLS The following are some examples that may be used as a basis for a course of study. Some of them are related to existing occupations. The examples are limited to four skills so that the benefits are not overpowering in game terms, even though the Investigator may have been out of play for several game years. The skill are listed as Subject: Primary skill, Secondary skills (in order of relevance to the subject). * Law: Law, Library Use, Persuade & History * Engineering: Physics, Mathematics, Mechanical Repair, & Electrical Repair * Philosophy: Philosophy, Persuade, & Own Language * Astronomy: Astronomy, Physics * Archaeology: Archaeology, History, Foreign/Ancient Language & Anthropology * Geology: Geology, Chemistry, Biology & Psychics NOTES The key difference between my suggestions and the rule book, is that several skills can be improved at once. The average difference in skill points gained from either 6d10 or 9d6 is only 1.5, but if you opt for the 6d10 option you can only train one skill over three years (unless the Keeper agrees otherwise), rather than three or four skills. I specifically designed training to reflect a student's time at college, where the student's experiences are broadened by more than just his study, hence the improvement in multiple skills with the possibility of losing skill points. The crash course option is useful if an investigator needs to acquire a new skill quickly, or needs to refresh a skill in the light of technological improvements. The Keeper should strictly enforce the capping restriction, as this will prevent the crash course option from being exploited. Training will remove a possibly pivotal investigator from a group for a long period of game time, and may have an impact on the survivability of a group which a Keeper should point out before the decision is made. The decision to take training may have far reaching consequences for the group that is left behind or the student who is called to help his colleagues just as his or her finals start... -------------------- From: Shannon Appel Subject: The Fedogan & Bremer Books System: Call of Cthulhu In the past, I've provided notes on Chaosium's Cthulhu fiction (V5.3 and V10.2), and also written reviews on other assorted Cthulhian fiction (V7.7). Herein, I'd like to write some quick comments about another big publisher of Mythos Fiction, Fedogan & Bremer. Fedogan & Bremer has been in the publishing business for somewhere around five years. They've been publishing a variety of "weird" fiction, with a definite emphasis on the Lovecraftian genre. Their books are all nice hardcovers, with glossy covers. Their content reminds me a lot of the older Arkham House books. I've had some troubles getting ahold of the Fedogan & Bremer books, but I've found in general that they're well worth the trouble. Below I've given mini-reviews and content lists of three of Fedogan & Bremer's books. They've also published a number of books of pulp horror, by Robert Bloch, Carl Jacobi and others. At various times, Fedogan & Bremer has listed two additional Mythos books as forthcoming: Tales from Arkham, by Robert Bloch, and The New Lovecraft Circle, ed. by Robert M. Price. Hopefully, these are still planned. The House of the Toad by Richard L. Tierney ISBN 1-878252-03-8 published 1993 Richard L. Tierney is one of my favorites of the current batch of Mythos writers, primarily because of his historical stories, such as The Seed of the Star God, recently published in the Shub-Niggurath Cycle. His mythos writing can also be found in the novel, The Winds of Zarr, and in Crypt of Cthulhu #86. However, The House of the Toad isn't one of Tierney's historical stories, but rather a modern novel. It centers around spies, Mexico, the Mississippi, Ghatanothoa, and lots more. Tierney is very good at his craft, and a mythos novel by him is well worth picking up. Contents: The House of the Toad (a novel) Shadows Over Innsmouth edited by Stephen Jones ISBN 1-878252-18-6 published 1994 This book has a very interesting premise: it promises to tell a history of the town of Innsmouth, beginning with Lovecraft's original story, and moving on towards the current day. The book falls a little bit short of this goal, because the backgrounds of the various stories don't always mesh well. Still, the stories do present an interesting variety of views concerning Innsmouth, the Deep Ones that live there, and their goals of conquest. Contents: The Shadow Over Innsmouth, by HP Lovecraft Beyond the Reef, by Basil Copper The Big Fish, by Jack Yeovil Return to Innsmouth, by Guy N. Smith The Crossing, by Adrian Cole Down to the Boots, by DF Lewis The Church in High Street, by Ramsey Campbell Innsmouth Gold, by David Sutton Daoine Domhain, by Peter Tremayne A Quarter to Three, by Kim Newman The Tomb of Priscus, by Brian Mooney The Innsmouth Heritage, by Brian Stableford The Homecoming, by Nicholas Royle Deepnet, by David Langford To See the Sea, by Michael Marshall Smith Dagon's Bell, by Brian Lumley Only the End of the World Again, by Neil Gaiman Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos edited by Robert M. Price ISBN 1-878252-02-X published 1992 In this book, Robert M. Price, who also edits many of the Cthulhu Cycle collections, as well as Crypt of Cthulhu, has brought together a number of the stories from the pulp era of horror. The collection is tremendously useful, because many of the stories have been unavailable for 60 or more years. Also of note is the fact that a number of the stories listed below are actually alternate versions of more commonly available texts (for example, Lord of Illusion is an early draft of the story that eventually became Through the Gates of the Silver Key). Contents: The Thing on the Roof, by Robert E. Howard The Fire of Asshurbanipal, by Robert E. Howard (original version) The Seven Geases, by Clark Ashton Smith Fane of the Black Pharaoh, by Robert Bloch The Invaders, by Henry Kuttner Bells of Horror, by Henry Kuttner The Thing that Walked on the Wind, by August Derleth Ithaqua, by August Derleth The Lair of the Star-Spawn, by August Derleth & Mark Schorer The Lord of Illusion, by E. Hoffmann Price The Warder of Knowledge, by Richard F. Searight The Scourge of B'Moth, by Bertram Russell The House of the Worm, by Mearle Prout Spawn of the Green Abyss, by C. Hall Thompson The Guardian of the Book, by Henry Hasse The Abyss, by Robert A. W. Lowndes Music of the Stars, by Duane W. Rimel The Aquarium, by Carl Jacobi (original version) The Horror Out of Lovecraft, by Donald A. Wollheim To Arkham and the Stars, by Fritz Leiber -------------------- The Chaosium Digest is an unofficial electronic 'zine about Chaosium's Games. In no way should it be considered representative of the views or beliefs of Chaosium Inc. To submit an article, subscribe or unsubscribe, mail to: appel@erzo.org. The old digests are archived on ftp.csua.berkeley.edu in the directory /pub/chaosium, and may be retrieved via FTP.