Chaosium Digest Volume 18, Number 8 Date: Sunday, March 2, 1997 Number: 1 of 1 Contents: Adding Magical Flavor to CoC (Peter Devlin) CALL OF CTHULHU Announcement: Great Old Ones (Toren Atkinson) CALL OF CTHULHU Feinting! (Patricio Gonzalez) ELRIC! Review: Liber Ka (Doyle Ramos-Tavener) NEPHILIM Editor's Note: This issue, articles for a variety of Chaosium systems. Shannon NEW ELECTRONIC RESOURCES Reader's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos http://www.toddalan.com/~berglund/ Indexes of Mythos stories in electronic and paper publications, put together by the editor of _The Disciples of Cthulhu_. Also, interviews, and a bunch more. The King in Yellow Home Page http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/chambers/ A variety of info on Chambers and the King in Yellow. Mostly in French, but if you search down through the page, you'll find "The King in Yellow: An Introduction", a long discussion of the book in English. The Call of Computer http://www.muohio.edu/~marquajd/paracoc.html A Paranoia adventure centering around the Cthulhu mythos. Opifex Bi-Monthly Random Universes #6 http://user.aol.com/ontologist/web/opifex.obm.html The March-April issue of Opifex Bi-Monthly Random Universes has just been released. This issue features two CoC adventures ("A Most Awful Plant" and "The Exhibit") and one Dark Conspiracy adventure. Mike LaBossiere's Mac experienced a rather hideous failure taking with it his mailing list for OBMRU. His backup files on ZIP and floppy disks also were damaged and could not be recovered. If you wish to resubscribe, please send him email (ontologist@aol.com). He has bought some new ZIP cartridges and will be storing backups on a second computer, and apologizes the inconvenience. Tsathoggua Press Catalog http://www.creative.net/~alang/lit/horror/tsathoggua_press.sht A complete catalog of all of the items put out by Tsathoggua Press. I just picked up a complete collection of them, and they're pretty good, especially the Cannon and Smith related chapbooks. -------------------- From: "Peter Devlin" Subject: Adding Magical Flavor to CoC System: Call of Cthulhu Following are some suggestions on players beginning as sorcerers, and keepers adding side effects to magical usage. They are intended to add magical flavor to the Call of Cthulhu game. STARTUP SORCERERS It is common in CoC for PCs to begin as novices. Why shouldn't PCs be able to begin their careers with spells? This is not a naive question, but a serious one. Anyone who has played CoC for any length of time will soon come to know a bit more about Mythos workings than a fresh-faced new investigator character. The standard argument that good roleplayers will be able to suppress their own knowledge of the genre is still relevant, but there is also a flip side. Occasionally players will get hacked off playing naive investigators and may want something more. I personally believe that if an experienced player wants to run an hoary old scholar who is an expert in arcane lore then they should be able to do so. A GM-player talk should be used to establish limits of knowledge and character experience. Also, the player should be savvy enough to run the PC properly and not shaft the hardworking GM. Startup sorcerors are not common in my long-running campaign; in fact of a retinue of thirty or more PCs over a long (very long) period of gameplay there have only ever been two such PCs. Additionally, no other characters have bothered to take the time and effort to learn many spells during game time. MAGICAL SIDE EFFECTS If handled properly then magic should have serious side effects on PCs. It should be more than just a loss of a few SAN points. I would encourage GMs to inflict nasty skin diseases on characters who study mouldy old books; to suggest nervous habits and get these PCs constantly looking about to see if someone is watching them from behind; and to make components for spellcasting both difficult to find and nauseating to carry. For example: In my campaign, the spell Flesh Ward requires a mummified severed hand to be worn on a thong around the neck, close to the spellcaster's heart. When the spell is cast the hand twitches and clutches the caster's chest. A visible side effect of the spell is that the caster's skin solidifies to the consistency of aged leather, and his DEX falls to zero for purposes of DEX rankings. Keep the spell going too long and this nasty effect may become semi-permanent! The mummified hand has a bad habit of falling apart after a few uses, requiring replacement. Unfortunately the caster must prepare the hand himself; he cannot use a "tainted" hand. Therefore sorcerors who make frequent use of this spell get familiar with anatomy, embalming, and chemistry; carry surgically sharp knives; offer to help other PCs when their hand has been hurt in an accident; smell of embalming fluids; and act in such a way that they are generally looked upon as weird. Historically, witches and sorcerors were accused of numerous unsavoury practices. Why shouldn't those practices actually be necessary for spell-casting? It certainly adds color to the game, and it keeps the bad guys from being one-dimensional and disgusting when the odd PC is too. PCs have to start collecting odd items for spellcasting and their studies soon resemble Vincent Price's workroom from the movie _The Raven_. Take the case of one sorceror in the campaign, an M.D. and expert on blood disorders who has an aversion to being snuck up on or touched without warning. He sleeps poorly also has a rather blackly humourous bedside manner which many patients and peers find disturbing. This worthy also lectures in forensic science and biology, and his students and fellow lecturers are quite rightly rather wary of the mad doctor. Isn't that kind of result better than a straight SAN loss? Remember, role-playing is not about rolling dice and playing with numbers. That statement goes double for CoC games. You get out what you put in. Make the effort. Peter Devlin (c) 1997 pdevlin@scotsys.co.uk -------------------- From: "Toren G. Atkinson" Subject: Announcement: Great Old Ones System: Call of Cthulhu Toren McBoren Macbin, here. Some of you know me well and some not at all. My wee Cthulhu-punk band, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, known to the screaming void for our previous CD release, CTHULHU STRIKES BACK ("Goin' Down to Dunwich," "Shoggoths Away," "Cthulhu Dreams," etc) have something to confess. We've printed one thousand NEW little compact discs, under the name GREAT OLD ONES. This cd contains the songs from our two out of print demo tapes, HURTS LIKE HELL! and CTHULHURIFFOMANIA! plus a few brand new ne'er before heard tracks. GREAT OLD ONES FAQ: Q: How many songs are on the cd? A: 22. Q: Why to you have a FAQ list with only two questions? A: Because we're not entirely stable. Some of the songs on the CD of particular interest to Lovecraftiannes: "One-Gilled Girl" - A Deep One's life is saved by a Deep-One/Human hybrid, and they fall in love; "Chunk" - an oddly titled song singing the praises of Cthulhu, the Fungi From Yuggoth, and Azathoth; "Yog-Sothoth" - you tell me; "Please God No" - our tribute to HPL's "The Haunter of the Dark"; "Six-Gun Gorgon Dynamo" - Shub-Niggurath visits Sesqua Valley; and many more! Our website is currently being revamped to coincide with the Great Old Ones motif. -- GREAT OLD ONES is, like, totally available now, dudes. THE DARKEST OF THE HILLSIDE THICKETS http://www.holycow.com/thickets/ THE PEOPLE OF INNSMOUTH: for concert dates, news, song samples the most recent People of 100B-2575 SPRUCE ST, VANCOUVER, BC Innsmouth newsletter... V6H 2P8 CANADA. mailto:thickets@uniserve.com UPCOMING SHOWS: Tuesday, Mar 4 at Greg's Place in Chilliwack, BC Fri, Mar 21 Chase Suites Hotel, Fullerton, CA (GAMES UNIVERSITY CON) Around Apr 4-6 at Gamefest '97 in Calgary, Alberta DragonCon, 27, 28 or 29 of June in Atlanta! It looks like we'll be opening for Gwar. -------------------- From: Patricio Gonzalez Subject: Feinting! System: Elric! FEINTING IN ELRIC!/BRP I, as a player, always wanted to do something to decrease a foe's defense roll. After reading rules from other RPGs I got an idea. How to Feint? The attacker declares he will make a special Feint attack. Make the attacker and defender roll against DEXx5% to see who reacts faster and how. Unless only one of the two opponents criticals this role, nothing happened because either no one did anything remarkable, or the feint was canceled by an equally fast reaction. If just one of the opponents criticals: * The attacker rolls a critical: A successful feint. Halve defender's parry skill for this attack. * The defender rolls a critical: You may use the failed feint of your foe to strike him in a non-protected area. Make an immediate free attack, with the attacker parrying at half. (Note: this works like responses, which are free attacks) Whether the Feint is successful or not, the normal attack roll is then made. EXAMPLE: Markus from Vilmir tries to feint Dafgar of Dharijor. Markus rolls and succeeds normally, but Dafgar makes a critical roll. Dafgar makes his free attack, Marku failed the parry and marks off some hit points. The battle now continues regularly. NOTES: Feints can be done or tried only once per foe per battle (once he feints you learn his movements and you can not be feinted again). - Patricio Gonzalez - Sorry for my English! !:) -------------------- From: st670@Jetson.UH.EDU (Ramos-Tavener, Doyle Wayne) Subject: Review: Liber Ka System: Nephilim First off, please be aware of my biases. The day after Liber Ka was announced on the Nephilim mailing list, I posted to the same list a system intended to accomplish several of the same design goals as the Liber Ka system (hereafter LK). In all fairness, you should be aware of this fact as you evaluate what I say here. Secondly, I recently posted a review on RPG.NET, a webzine devoted to games. I reprint it here in its entirety: Liber Ka Author: John Snead Category: game Company/Publisher: Chaosium, Inc. Reviewed by Doyle Wayne Ramos-Tavener on 02/08/97. Like many others, I was intrigued by the both the premise and promise of Nephilim, Chaosium's newest RPG. However, there were certain elements that were, shall we say, problematic. Foremost among these was the element of spell casting, which should be paramount in a game that purports to be about the occult. Much though not all of the system seemed to be the standard whiz-bang approach to spell casting. None of it seemed to correspond to actual Western Occult principles or methods. However, with the arrival of Liber Ka, these concerns have evaporated. Magic in Nephilim now follows traditional Western Occult ideas, in both form (how spells are cast) and the effects (what they can do). Needless to say, magic in Nephilim is now far more subtle in its effects, but potentially more potent in its capabilities. Most importantly, magic is now a role playing catalyst, rather than a black-box problem solver. If you have been interested in Nephilim in the past, or already own it, this is a must-buy book. Even if you are merely interested in how the real world occult might be portrayed in an RPG context, you definitely want to check this book out. Style: 4 (on a scale of 1-5) Substance: 5 (on a scale of 1-5) This review can be found at Now on to a slightly more in-depth analysis. HISTORICAL FIDELITY AND THE NEPHILIM CAMPAIGN BACKGROUND The explicit reason for Liber Ka's existence is to present a historically based magic system for Nephilim. Since the game itself is more about the story of the Nephilim than about history and the real world occult (a 60/40 split?), whatever systems Mr. Snead came up with had to adhere to two criterion: some fidelity to the Current Nephilim Rules set (Ka, three ranks of magic); and fidelity to the basic truths of the Nephilim background (five essential elements, humans may not use magic, etc.). I believe that, under these conditions, the system is about as historical as could possibly be hoped for, without resorting to endless reams of detail. Western occult principles are adhered to, and the whole system seems to be very smooth in operation. That is, while the effects are very broad, the mechanics involved seem very easy to use. In particular, I very much like the stress placed on the magic circle, which is itself a metaphor for the central principle of Western Occultism: the Macrocosm and the Microcosm. The three levels of magic seem at first very ahistorical, but the history that Mr. Snead has provided for them dovetails into the history of Nephilim so well that I find myself unable to complain. This seems to be the general tone for the whole of Mr. Snead's work. Where deviations from real history were called for, he has made sure there are adequate "Nephilim" explanations to cover the gap, which I consider to be a rather adroit piece of work. POWER LEVELS AND TACTICS The effects of the spells seem to have been powered down, but have they? Closer examination of the effects of the new system, such as manipulations of Potentials, the causing of instant sickness and death, and the manipulations of emotions reveals that the system may be _more_ powerful than before, just not as flashy. Immediate damage-causing spells are not as prevalent, and that is certainly the most significant change. As a consequence, it seems much easier for me to suspend my disbelief in the campaign background. The world of the Nephilim now seems much more of a mirror of the Real World, rather than a funhouse distortion. Some have commented that the change seems too extreme. In _Chronicle of the Awakenings_, when one uses the Personality Trait/Metamorphosis system, there are powers that accrue for having a high Trait. This has been suggested as a stopgap measure for a balance between the two systems. I must say this I agree with this approach, with one caveat. There are usually only two traits out of five that grant powers, and them only at the higher levels of the Trait in question. If we could rework the system so that the powers are _activated_ by a successful Trait roll, or so that a power is gained for each trait, or some combination of the two, that would be more to my liking. In terms of the play of the campaign, it now is painfully obvious that physical confrontation with various secret societies is now totally out of the question. It could be argued (with some success, I imagine) that this was never really the point anyway, but the absence of the flash-bang spells makes this option much less palatable to player characters than before. When I have run demos and one-shots for Nephilim, PCs intuitively understand what these spells (1st Ed.) were meant for, even if they were less flash-bang than, say, AD&D. They were meant to harm the bad guys, and that is exactly what they were willing to do with them. There are still spells which can help in combat, but the specter of the 2d6+DB Sword of Sun Tzu will never again darken _my_ campaign. This shifts the focus to more proper areas of the Campaign: the investigation of secret societies and magical mysteries, historical and otherwise. INTEGRATION INTO CURRENT CAMPAIGNS I have only run Nephilim as demos, one-shots, and two mini-campaigns, so I can only guess the effect on currently active long-running campaigns. My personal advice would be to scrap what you have got and start from scratch, but my players would lynch me if I suggested this to them. I frankly have thought all along that the wholesale revision of the three magic systems was going to be necessary, and this was part of the reason why I resisted commencing an active campaign. My personal advice: wait until second edition to run a campaign. Run demos and one-shots until then. EXPECTATIONS As good as Liber Ka is, I now expect the Alchemy and Summoning books to be just as good. John Snead's writing the Alchemy book, so I have few if any fears regarding the quality of that supplement. As for Summoning, I never thought of it as bad as the other two systems, so I am very curious as to what will be done with it. I recently tried to trace the idea of Summoning in Western Occultism, and found some very surprising (to me, anyway) facts. I hope to post these in the future, for the examination by all. IMPROVISATIONAL SORCERY FOR NEPHILIM In Nephilim Digest Vol 2 #002, I posted a system that would allow for the creation of sorcery according to Western Occult principles. I had been working on the system for some time before I first heard about Liber Ka. The system that I devised placed no stress on the magic circle, was complex and seemed to me to be time consuming. It was also designed to supplement rather than replace the current Sorcery system. I consider the LK system to be far superior to the system I posted. LK has more guidelines for what can be done and not done, is far bolder than the system that I posted, and the effects of the LK system seem far truer to Western occult ideas than the effects of my system. If you are currently using some form of the system I posted, I would strongly suggest that you abandon it and move to Liber Ka. WHY PUBLISH AN INCOMPLETE SYSTEM? So why did Chaosium publish Nephilim as it was? Any answer to this question remains the twin provinces of Hindsight and Speculation. Any answer that I might think I have should be clearly labeled as such. Caveat emptor. I think that Sam Shirley's main focus in his treatment of Nephilim could be termed Mystical, rather than Occult. Let me explain that further, if I may. (Shirley was the main editor of the US version, as well as contributing to most of the changes from the French version) In Philosophy and Religion there is a profound gulf between Mysticism and Magic. A magician seeks to compel God, the mystic tries to achieve union with God. (This is simplifying greatly, I might add.) I believe and assert that Shirley's main interest in Nephilim was the primary metaphor of the game: the Simulacrum. In gaming terms, in a way that anybody who played the game could experience, this provided the insight of slowly becoming aware of the spiritual world around us. Various quotes in the main rulebook, as well as Shirley's comments led me to this conclusion. It is my further assertion that to one so inclined the use of historically-based magic systems does not rate as much on the Big Scale of Priorities. Ironically, this approach is itself historically valid, as many historical magic systems begin as philosophies and schema of mysticism. CONCLUSIONS Buy Liber Ka because it is an excellent work. Buy _anything_ that Chaosium produces labeled Nephilim, regardless of content so that more material will be published. Propagandize Nephilim by posting reviews and discussion on UseNet and the Web in general. If you are in or about to begin a Nephilim Campaign, be prepared to use your own solutions to fill in the gaps. Then be prepared for when the published rules do arrive. Don't become overly frustrated at this. Use whatever set of rules pleases you most. Regards, Doyle Wayne Ramos-Tavener -------------------- 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.