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Your ideal Call of Cthulhu 7th edition


p_clapham

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So what is your ideal vision for Call of Cthulhu 7th edition.  I'd like to put together list of what everyone wants and sees what we get.

 

 

 

Here is what I would have liked to have seen.

 

- Legend/ Runequest 6 style skill setup.  Skill defaults based on attributes, smaller list of skills.

- Hero Points as a optional rule for pulpier games.

- Combat Actions

- Character feats/ edges as a optional rule for pulpier games.

- Psychic powers as a optional rule.

-  Minion rules as a optional rule for pulpier games.

- A separate attribute for sanity points, aka the Stability attribute 

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I've been a fan of Lovecraft since I was ten. I knew Lin Carter and we talked about the Mythos. My father was such a big Lovecraft fan that, as a schoolboy in Boston many years ago, he addressed a letter of inquiry to the Admissions Office at Miskatonic.

 

I've been playing Call of Cthulhu since the 1st edition. I really, really like the game. In all honesty, Mr Fnord, I didn't want to see my game change at all. I downloaded the quickstart because it was free, but I haven't looked at it yet. I don't want to see any of the changes you've suggested.

 

I don't want:

  • a different skill system
  • "hero" points
  • actions/feats/edges
  • changes to the sanity system

I have no problem with optional rules for minions or psychic powers.

 

I find "pulp" to be a style of play, an atmosphere, irrespective of the rules system.

 

I feel that the cycle of edition changes has led to the decline and fragmentation of our hobby.

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I totally agree Baron that edition changes have fragmented many great games, and it is testimony to Call of Cthulhu that scenarios from 1st ed can be played by troupes using 6th ed rules. Yes, that is certainly one of the great strengths of Call of Cthulhu. I have played RuneQuest since the mid '80s, and Call of Cthulhu since the early '90s, and I like it just it as it is, and in many ways the simplicity of the earlier editions is sometimes better. 

 

However, the changes suggested by p_clapham are all good suggestions for BRP in general. I would like to see very little changes to the actual Call of Cthulhu rules themselves, although a more hefty set of Pulp rules would be a great option to the next edition of the BRP BGB.

 

I think Astounding Adventures has alot of flavour, yet does not offer enough dials and switches for those wanting to pulp up the BRP rules (although the Mook rules are quite good).

 

Many of the above suggestions would be great for optional Pulp Adventure rules, but I think core Call of Cthulhu is gold as it is. Perhaps we'll see some of these concepts in Pulp Cthulhu perhaps?

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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I don't really want any changes. I certainly DO NOT want more complex details to combat or more 'player agency' stuff that dials down the consequences of violence. I want it to remain primarily a Horror game, not action-adventure 'guns against Cthulhu'.

I don't want it to be more like Savage Worlds or Fate or whatever other RPG Darling is trending popular at the moment (there are Lovecraft spins for those systems already).

I'm not feeling any need to buy 7th at all. I'll spend my cash with Chaosium on other materials I DO want... which might include CoC adventures and setting material. I wouldn't mind some more non-mythos (Clive Barker? Thomas Ligotti?) horror or stuff aimed at doing CoC 'sandbox' style campaigns.

As OPTIONS all the suggestions in the OP are fine for the core BGB... or a book aimed specifically at action-adventure style play.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think you'll find the page numbers aren't quite right. Paul said, IIRC, that the Investigator's book was more like 250 pages and the GM's book 450 pages.

 

I'd also point out that the Investigators books duplicates a lot of the GM's book such as occupations, skills and chargen so I'm not necessarily sure that most gamers will need both unless they run the game rather than play.

 

POC also suggested that the changes from 6e were mostly cosmetic and optional (Pushing a roll and the Luck mechanism) rather than mandatory but the advice added made the whole thing much more helpful.

 

Other points I've seen mentioned are the references to both the Call of Cthulhu story (not included in this edition) and to The Haunting adventure (again not included) in the text of the GM's book. I suspect another couple of editing passes after the KS backers send in all the typos and errors that have crept into the pre-print proof copies.

 

With HotOE coming in at USD120 I expect retail for the 7e rulebook to be maybe USD40-50 and the Investigators book running about USD25-30.

Nigel

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seneschal & nclarke -

I haven't followed 7th ed. developments since the initial discussions. I have to admit that I didn't like the route it seemed to be taking. Does it still have the crazy stat blocks (example 70/35/14)? I think there were also some new dice mechanics - maybe that is the "pushing" one described above.

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While many of the changes do not seem to impact game play or compatibility, I do have some issues with some additions. 

 

Luck, while an interesting mechanism, it introduces another nasty number matrix to the character sheet, and in the case of the current sheets, halves the space for the Sanity matrix. A cosmetic issue now really, but the two matrices are so close that I can see it causing bookkeeping issues, mistaking one matrix for the other. 

 

Bonus and Penalty dice are somewhat interesting, but feel somehow NOT BRP. Feels like some of the wonky mechanics that Fantasy Flight have introed into their games. Thankfully it uses a standard 10s die.

 

Pushing rolls also seems somewhat redundant with the Luck mechanism. 

 

All in all, while it seems like it will be compatible, it also seems like the rules were changed for the sake of changing when in reality all that was needed was tightening up and better description and advice in certain areas. 

 

Rules Additions? I would have like to see the Character Traits option from Gaslight make it in as an option. Not quite Advantages/Disadvantages, but integrates much better with BRP I think. 

 

Sanity COULD be changed a bit, again as an option. I'd like to see it incorporate some of the ideas from the GORE system, Nick's and Ben's system from Uncounted Worlds, or perhaps Unknown armies. Something that lengthens the fall into madness, making it a longer darker road than a simple snap, save in extraordinary circumstances. 

 

SDLeary

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seneschal & nclarke -

I haven't followed 7th ed. developments since the initial discussions. I have to admit that I didn't like the route it seemed to be taking. Does it still have the crazy stat blocks (example 70/35/14)? I think there were also some new dice mechanics - maybe that is the "pushing" one described above.

Some of the initial proposed rules changes were dropped.  The proposed Luck rules were ditched in favor of a more traditional BRP fate point system similar to the option in the Big Gold Book.  The new system still uses percentile stats (your 3D6 stat times 5 or something similar), and pushing is still there.  Most of the controversial stuff is optional.  The reviewer, who is used to 6th edition, said he is tentative about the new one.  He'll try it out gradually and see how it works out.  He said the differences aren't enough to cause CoC grognards to rush out and buy 7th edition but he recommended it to new players.

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I've been playing 7th since about this time last year and have even turned in a few manuscripts to Chaosium for 7e support material.

 

Since it's not out yet, I don't want to comment on too much, but, here are few things based on my experience with playing the game...

 

1. I could pick up a scenario written for an earlier edition and run it with the 7e rules with only a little mental math.

2. I could pick up a scenario written for 7e and run it with earlier rules with only a little mental math.

3. The Luck rules are optional. Unfortunately, the Luck matrix does take up a lot of real estate on the sheet. But, I'm sure there will be a char sheet cottage industry popping up soon.

4. In my opinion, combat is actually a little faster and leaner than it was under earlier editions. Most of the combats in my games now take about half as many rounds. And not because the characters are beefier. They still drop fast.

5. Traits (a la Gaslight) aren't in the book. But... they are in one of the books I wrote as supplemental material. They are very tied to the setting though.

6. SAN is pretty much unchanged.

7. Pushing the Roll is an optional rule. In my games, even with brand new players, it only came up a few times. But those times were pretty cool implementations. 

8. The 60/30/12 stat blocks are just for to streamline the math. You don't need. 60 is full value, 30 is half value, 12 is a fifth of the total. Rather than tossing -30% or -15% all over the place, it was codified to full/half/fifth.

 

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I've been playing 7th since about this time last year and have even turned in a few manuscripts to Chaosium for 7e support material.

 

Since it's not out yet, I don't want to comment on too much, but, here are few things based on my experience with playing the game...

 

1. I could pick up a scenario written for an earlier edition and run it with the 7e rules with only a little mental math.

2. I could pick up a scenario written for 7e and run it with earlier rules with only a little mental math.

3. The Luck rules are optional. Unfortunately, the Luck matrix does take up a lot of real estate on the sheet. But, I'm sure there will be a char sheet cottage industry popping up soon.

4. In my opinion, combat is actually a little faster and leaner than it was under earlier editions. Most of the combats in my games now take about half as many rounds. And not because the characters are beefier. They still drop fast.

5. Traits (a la Gaslight) aren't in the book. But... they are in one of the books I wrote as supplemental material. They are very tied to the setting though.

6. SAN is pretty much unchanged.

7. Pushing the Roll is an optional rule. In my games, even with brand new players, it only came up a few times. But those times were pretty cool implementations. 

8. The 60/30/12 stat blocks are just for to streamline the math. You don't need. 60 is full value, 30 is half value, 12 is a fifth of the total. Rather than tossing -30% or -15% all over the place, it was codified to full/half/fifth.

 

Sorry about the long quote, haven't figured out how to split it up yet in the new forum.

 

With regards to 4: Combat does seem to have been streamlined a bit. Do you think the reduction in time is due to the simultaneous combats(the ability for either party to damage during a particular attack), or something else?

 

With regard to 8: Agreed. They could have handled its display a bit different though. Starting with the rolled characteristics and having the x5 and x5/2 in the smaller boxes would have made the in initial impression of compatibly stronger IMHO. As you noted though, there probably is a Cthulhu Character Sheet industry starting up as we speak. 

 

Something that seems a little vague though, or that I've simply missed in my first run-thru...

 

If required to make a Hard or Extreme roll due to difficulties, how do those work out (based on your experience) with the degrees of success. Are they Hard and Extreme victories? If not, how would those be figured with the required rolls?

 

SDLeary

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The 'Push' thing isn't anything new... as the idea of giving a Player a last ditch roll is something folks have been doing all along (at least the groups I played with did such)... but it was always up to the Keeper and was situational... not a given.

"Want to try to pick that lock again? OK, but it's fragile and if you try again you might break it to where it's jammed shut"... "Forced into the dirt during the car chase? Want try to keep up the speed? OK, but if you fail you might lose control of the car altogether."

The copy I saw had examples for Push/Failed Push for most every skill... which was at least good for dissuading that old saw about how failed skill rolls are always something catastrophic... though some examples had effects outside of the realm of the skill - such as failing a Pushed Accounting roll resulting in knocking over a cup of coffee onto the record book and ruining the ink (?).

It seems like something that could have just been side barred or mentioned in Keeper advice... vs. hard-wiring it into a mechanic. The 'Push' terminology is too cute and 'meta' for my taste so I'd just ignore it.

 

I  don't much care for the ad/disad dice (I agree, they don't 'feel BRP')... they're fine for D&D 5e though.

 

It does seem like Chaosium or Playtesters reigned in a good bit of what I'd heard rumored early on... some of the statements from the Designers had me thinking they wanted to turn it into some cross between Savage Worlds and Fate.
Still... the Keeper's book has a good bit of language that echoes the 'Just say 'Yes'' and 'Fail Forward' mindset... and there's this bit from the section on using Skills:
"If the player has rolled equal to or under the target set by the Keeper, their investigator has achieved the goal that was set and agreed before the roll. The player should be encouraged to participate in describing the outcome. This can include aspects of the story beyond his or her investigator, such as the actions of non-player characters and the environment."

I'd just kibosh the PCs dictating what NPCs do or how the environment reacts... but still, it's there in the text... pestering me. Keep your Fate out of my BRP!

Things I do like, so far:
Chases sound fun... something of a mini-game the way combat can be. It's reminiscent of Machina from Two Hour Wargames.
Getting rid of the taxonomy of Mythos races... Servitor and Independent races. That always felt to be overreaching... trying to impose some hierarchy that's seldom in the source material.

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Sorry about the long quote, haven't figured out how to split it up yet in the new forum.

 

With regards to 4: Combat does seem to have been streamlined a bit. Do you think the reduction in time is due to the simultaneous combats(the ability for either party to damage during a particular attack), or something else?

 

With regard to 8: Agreed. They could have handled its display a bit different though. Starting with the rolled characteristics and having the x5 and x5/2 in the smaller boxes would have made the in initial impression of compatibly stronger IMHO. As you noted though, there probably is a Cthulhu Character Sheet industry starting up as we speak. 

 

Something that seems a little vague though, or that I've simply missed in my first run-thru...

 

If required to make a Hard or Extreme roll due to difficulties, how do those work out (based on your experience) with the degrees of success. Are they Hard and Extreme victories? If not, how would those be figured with the required rolls?

 

SDLeary

 

 

Sorry for the late reply, I didn't get a notification. I'll need to check my preferences.

 

Anyway, I do think combat was sped up by the fact that its possible for a single combatant to damage a foe twice in one round. I'll be the first to admit that I was concerned about how the simultaneous combats played out, but once we got the hang of it, things moved much quicker and really added to the narrative. We found it easier to be more descriptive of what was going on in combat. It wasn't the same ol', same ol' "I swing. You hit" type of combat. I think that was because it was no longer broken up into such stratified turns, but instead players were invested in every round because they got to roll the dice every round.

 

I think I parsed your hard/extreme question, so I'll give it a go at answering. In my games, we didn't change the targets for Hard and Extreme rolls. So, if I, as Keeper, called for an extreme roll, the player was either going to succeed with flying colors or fail. I could see different Keepers making different calls in the same situation. I just didn't want to have to rework the math.  ;)

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These are my thoughts regarding 7E as it stands (as a play test draft before editing at least) i may end up posting this on the Chaosium site (as I’ve been invited to). 

 

My ideal Call of Cthulhu would have an unobtrusive system that was basically tidy in play, without drawing attention to itself. The core mechanic would be ‘roll high for success, below the skill score’ which would resolve contested rolls. Criticals would be based on matching dice (00, 11, 22, etc) below or above the skill score (with fumbles being over) and maybe having ’00’ being low rather than high to keep the maths balanced.

 

I’d have less, more consolidated skills and some sort of link between Characteristics and Skills, along with Characteristics being translated in % scores as necessary. The game would remain as backwards comparable in terms of character profile as possible however. I’d disassociate Sanity with Power, and provide a mechanism for spending Magic or Power points as some sort of luck/fate mechanic if necessary.  

 

I’m not dogmatic in these wishes, and would quite happily accommodate different approaches within the game. That said, I find much of the rules approach taken in this edition to be quite heavy handed.

 

‘Pushing the roll’ is fine by me, although the bonus/penalty dice is more clunky than the application used in D&D5e which bears some similarity. Having a ‘tri-stat’ notation for every skill and characteristic seems like an over proliferation of data to myself, and the provision of a table to help work these things out along with an automatic ‘x5%’ conversion for all these stats, tends to belie any notion that the game is simplified in any practical way. Indeed, it’s really just become a more complicated system overall.

 

I’m honestly not that interested in the new Chase rules (an entire chapter!) particularly, while the rational for the provision of this set of rules (along with a full combat chapter for the first time) tends to give away the perspective of the game that has driven all these changes: the game designers feel that CoC needs more support to be an action game. It’s an irritant to me, therefore, that this new material has been included at the expense of less ‘gamey’ content like Lovecraft’s original eponymous story and the ‘De Rerum Supernatura’ chapter. In short, less cerebral atmospherics and more action rules. 

 

I appreciate the art and the full colour presentation, and note that this is still the same game as previous editions (at a fundamental level). However, the rules revision itself is a bit mediocre, unfortunately, for me. 

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  • 2 months later...

To be fair to Chaosium i have little knowledge of the new system

 

I would like to see the following

 

(1)  A better system for move rates for humanoids, animals . I just don't like that everyone moves at the same rate. 

 

(2)  Actions per round, # of attacks,parry, or dodge etc.  I  have issues with everyone having the same

    # of hand to hand or melee weapon attacks. Please no strike ranks.

 

(3)  A full size comparison chart would be nice, with pounds, killograms, tons etc.

 

I am current working on rules mod that fixes #1 and #2  above, i would prefer an official rules fix though.

 

If  the COC 7E book addressed  those issues, that alone would make the purchase worth it to me.

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To be fair to Chaosium i have little knowledge of the new system

 

I would like to see the following

 

(1)  A better system for move rates for humanoids, animals . I just don't like that everyone moves at the same rate. 

 

(2)  Actions per round, # of attacks,parry, or dodge etc.  I  have issues with everyone having the same

    # of hand to hand or melee weapon attacks. Please no strike ranks.

 

(3)  A full size comparison chart would be nice, with pounds, killograms, tons etc.

 

I am current working on rules mod that fixes #1 and #2  above, i would prefer an official rules fix though.

 

If  the COC 7E book addressed  those issues, that alone would make the purchase worth it to me.

 

CoC 7e fixed number 1. MOV is now calculated.

 

You'll need to take a look at the combat rules to see if they'll meet your needs for #2. It's not too different from 6e, except now it's possible to damage a foe on their attack.

 

Three isn't in the core book.

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  • 1 month later...

Clean, clear layout (broken record: like Elric!)

 

Reduced skill list with the opportunity for specialisation/concentration (like Shadowrun not like MRQ) for those who actually care

 

Combat styles not individual weapon skills

 

Plotpoint adventures (like Savage Worlds) rather than haunted mansion dungeon crawls

 

Success chances reduced in granularity to 5% not 1%

 

Characteristics have an effect on skills

 

Skills go into categories rather than each getting their own calculation

 

Players make all the dice rolls

 

Remove stats for the biggest, nastiest critters

 

Magic on the originalmagicworld model rather than RQ battle/spirit magic model

 

Casting magic always costs some characteristic points

 

Removal of langauges as skills

 

Ruthless editing and pruning of the insanities section

 

Decent chase rules

 

Very explicit guidance in bold about what it means to make a Perception/Spot Hidden roll and how to make this exciting rather than blocking

 

Rule Zero: Don't be on fire

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