Tranquillitas Ordinis

Dear ColoradoCthulhu, One thing that comes to mind is Lightless Beacon, free adventure to be found here: The Lightless Beacon (it is an excellent scenario for beginners, I do not know how it would work with more experienced players). There is also one scenario in "An Inner Darkness" by Golden Goblin Press, if I recall correctly: An Inner Darkness (I do not have this supplement, so cannot say anything). Finally, there are also scenarios from the Miskatonic Repository, which might be relevant: The Sudden Storm, Fogbound and Deep, Once. I have to agree, it is not easy to find anything about Deep Ones for the 7th edition. You can still try older supplements, which are great. I would be glad to see "Escape from Innsmouth" revived, as well. I have heard people saying that it is problematic to run a game revolving around Deep Ones, since they are probably the most iconic and well recognized entities from Lovecraft's works, but I do not care, I love them, and I enjoyed extremely every scenario that involved their presence. Simply, there is something special about them. EDIT: I almost forgot, there is also The Saltwater Inheritance by Mark Morrison.

Hello Dear Friends, I was recently running "Servants of the Lake" from "Doors to Darkness" supplement, for a group of five investigators: three MU students, an archeology professor, and a physician (Actually, the professor did not take part in this adventure.) This is a part of a longer campaign and investigators already have some knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos. I should probably mention that three of them are indefinitely insane as well. (IN THE FOLLOWING, THERE MIGHT APPEAR SPOILERS) Anyway, at the end of the scenario, one student was unconscious, hidden in the motel room by his friends, while two other and the physician were dragged by Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Brophy's to the clearing, to be turned into servants of Gla'aki. Long story short, I gave my players plenty of opportunities to run away, even turned Gla'aki's avatar against some of the "zombies" to give them even more time, but due to bad decisions and bad rolls, only one student (Rachela) fled, decided to carry the unconscious friend out of the motel to their car, and started the engine. Here I asked those two to leave the room for 5 minutes and continued the scene at the clearing with the physician and the last student. They both were dying, so I asked the players how would they feel if their characters were turned into undead slaves of Gla'aki, retaining their memories and personalities, and if they wanted to continue playing such characters. They both agreed gladly (poor fools!), so we rolled if the transition was successful, and it was. I described the scene how Gla'aki turns them into its servants, leaving large holes in their chests. I asked the rest of the players to join us in the room, and described how Rachela sees her two friends emerging from the woods, running and screaming to wait for them. So here is my question. How to incorporate into the game the fact that two of the investigators are now undead human-looking monsters without free will? This is a very broad question—I am looking for ideas regarding the plot, roleplaying, mechanics etc. Normally I would not allow anything like that to happen, decreasing their Sanity to zero and making them NPCs, however we wanted to try something different. I have several thoughts on my own, see below, but would be interested to hear any suggestions from you. Some of my loose ideas are: Now the group has two "agents" of Gla'aki, who will try to follow its agenda; pretending that they are "normal" humans, I want to let players to do whatever they want, but from time to time they will be getting orders from their god, that they can not oppose, To make my players understand, that becoming undead monsters was not a gift of immortality, but rather an unforgivable profanity, these orders will be disgusting beyond any measure, The rest of the group will be given small hints that there is something wrong with the physician and the student, I wanted to increase max HP of the servants, because they are undead now; I am still thinking about other stats, The backstory entries on the back of their character sheets will be changed accordingly,

Yes, why not? I am not a YouTube person, but I was considering writing scenarios for the Miskatonic Repository. Even tough CoC is almost 40 years old, I see there is still a huge gap of unexplored ideas on the market. But I could start doing anything earliest after the summer.

Dear Deathstrok9, I do not claim that you stole my idea, I am happy that it was used by you, and more people can learn from it. I just like when the sources are provided (especially when I am the source 😄). Either solution (reference in the description/ pinned comment) works, I do not have any preference. I would argue on that, I think the resemblance is still striking. If you took a poem and added your commentary after each line, because "it seemed vague" it would still require a citation. But I do not want to make more fuss about that than required, so let me stop here. I hope your channel will grow. Thank you for understanding, and have a good day.

Dear Dethstrok9, I really like your video, but I think it would be appropriate to give there a reference to my first post in this forum, where I have written all these ideas. I do not claim they are original, but I see you just repeat my points as yours, and add some comments based on the "Color out of space". In the video, you just say "someone" wrote a post on a forum, that "inspired" you. Maybe I am oversensitive, but working in the Natural Sciences field, I pay a big attention to the matter of authorship and intellectual property. The post I am referring to is in this thread: Where I have written:

Dear klecser, I have a slightly different perspective. I also do not like the "dice tell the story" attitude. I agree that dice do not tell the story, simply because they can not talk. Players make the story and dice are just tools. What are these tools for? I follow the philosophy that dice pick between different branches of history (or between the alternative game universes). Any time we roll a dice, several outcomes are possible: failure, success, hard success etc. Each outcome is a different history, different time-line. And here is where I probably disagree with you: all these branches can be interesting. You say: All these examples are examples of failure, suggesting that failure is inherently less interesting. Why? We could take all your three examples and build exciting stories on top of them. The fact that we remember one "branch" of the story (the one we found in the book/ movie) being interesting, does not imply that other "branches" would be boring. You have also written before: I agree, and I think this is the key. You have several alternative stories as outcomes of a roll, and it is up to the Keeper and players to make any of them interesting. The excitement from the randomness of the roll comes just from the fact that we do not know which alternative will be chosen. But all of them will be interesting and this makes the game much more fun. This is why I really dislike fudging rolls. If we can alter the result on the dice, why are we even using them? I have to accept the result I rolled, even if I do not like it, because it forces me to be creative, to think how to make any possible outcome interesting. If I wanted my players to succeed I would not require any rolls, or would not roll for their opponents. Or would just "rail-road" the players in a way that leads their characters to a desired point. Or would use mechanic similar to the "Trail of Cthulhu", were investigation-related tasks can be performed without any rolls. I feel much more honest, when I do not pretend that I follow rules, just to alter or violate them any time I find them uncomfortable. I could even say more, I love when uncomfortable, or just bad rolls ruin all my plans! Keeper is the only player that most of the time has no fun from discovering anything "new" in the story. Keeper knows all NPC, their motivations, knows the story, who killed who, which clue leads where etc. There is nothing left to discover for him. But when players do something unexpected, or have terrible rolls that could lead them to immediate damnation, this usually alters the story significantly. And suddenly I—as the Keeper—have something new to discover! I have to quickly rethink the plot, the NPCs behaviors etc. which opens a completely new universe of possibilities, and makes me feel like I am exploring the world together with my players. Of course any approach is "good", because any RPG group has their own definition of "good". For me, constant failure in CoC (especially when you play with new, inexperienced characters) is a natural outcome of the fact that CoC characters are not "heroes". They have no useful skills, they have no knowledge, they do not know how to use magic, and even though they still think that they can save the world. No, it is highly improbable. If you are a librarian whole life, and your Firearms is 10%, you can not probably win a shooting with cultists. So the characters will fail, they will go insane or die, but it will all happen in the most exciting ways. Because, believe me, you can enjoy a failure in CoC, if there was a good story behind it. And moreover, if the characters somehow succeed, players will remember that forever.

Dear davewire, once you are done with reading, could you please write here a short review of the book? There are so many great Call of Cthulhu books released recently (Harlem, Mansions, Malleus, and An Inner Darkness by Golden Goblin Press) and some older ones, that I also wanted to buy (like The Things We Leave Behind by Stygian Fox) that I have to make difficult choices, as I can not see myself affording all of them anytime soon. I am specifically interested if this campaign (or single scenarios) could fill the gap between Peru and America chapters of the new Masks? The sudden jump between Peru and the USA adventures in Masks leaves me slightly unsatisfied and I thought maybe I could let my players explore Southern America more, before they move 4 years ahead. I see that the time frame is slightly off, but this is probably not a big problem.

Dear klecser, My message was not intended to offend/ accuse anyone, and especially not to assign any wicked intentions to you. I apologize. I indeed took word "need" literally, assigned a negative logical value to the statement "You need those things..." and replied with a counter-suggestion. There are several reasons why I think this statement is false, but I suppose this is not a good place to discuss that. I think the word "need" should be replaced by something else. I think the claim: "Do not trust anyone who says that you need to spend money to start playing a game that requires just imagination" is true, also for several reasons, but now I also see that it could have been understood as an emanation of malice. I apologize again, I will send you a longer private message, and I wish you a good day.

Inspired by this message I propose a different approach, which I find more reasonable. Why? If you sum up the prices of just pdfs of the books mentioned by klecser in the first post (I ignore "After that?" paragraph and use current DriveThruRPG values) you get $88. If you constrain yourself just to pdfs of the Starter Set and the Rulebook you get around $38. Probably in the USA it is a fair price, but people in poorer countries might not be able to spend that much on their hobby. Especially, not knowing much about the game, not sure if they will like it after all, if they can find interested players, if the official adventures suit their style of playing etc. etc. So, to those who ask themself "Do I really have to spend so much, if I am just starting my adventure with CoC?" I tell: do not despair! There is a light of hope shining on the horizon! My approach requires $0 from you: Download and read Quick-Start Rules. There are all the rules you need for the start and one classic scenario. You can also watch an introduction by Don't Stop Thinking on YouTube. Download free solo adventure Alone Against the Flames. Play it through once, to get a flavour of the rules. Find one friend that wants to play with you. Before playing with larger group, try one-on-one sessions in more controllable conditions. Start with the scenario from the Quick-Start Rules booklet. If you like the mood, story, rules etc. and want to play more, try another one-on-one scenarios from this excellent free collection: Monophobia. If you are ready, gather a larger group of friends and run some of the free one-shot adventures by Chaosium: Scritch Scratch ot The Lightless Beacon. There is also a free adventure by students of the Taylor University: Refractions of Glasston. If have not already, read some of the Lovecraft's fiction stories, which can be found at The H.P. Lovecraft Archive. If you feel capable, adapt some of the stories to RPG scenarios, and play them with your friends.* I think this is what you need as a New Keeper. Going through this list will entertain you for several weeks, during which you can decide if you want more or not. Do not trust anyone who says that you need to spend money to start playing a game that requires just... imagination. However, if you enjoy it, I encourage you to buy the Rulebook and other supplements from Chaosium. *How to make a scenario out of Lovecraft's story? Here is an example algorithm for lazy folk (for free!): Read the story. Identify the mystery/ problem. Identify a set of information that was crucial to solve the problem. Identify a set information that served as a hint to solution, but was not crucial. Assign some skill rolls to the process of obtaining them. Identify who is the investigator (main character(s)). Your players will take his/ her/ their role. What pushed the investigator to solve the mystery? This will be a role-playing hook for your players. The rest of the characters are NPC. Copy their descriptions from the story. Divide information about the problem between them. Prepare handouts, put some information there as well. Was there some handout description in the story (of a book, journal, letter)? If yes, just copy it. Identify the locations, copy their descriptions from the book. They will serve as a stage for your scenario. Identify the main events of the story. Divide them into two groups: those that happen irrespectively from the investigators, and those that can be altered by the investigators. This will build a rough time frame of the scenario. Use stats for NPC and monsters from the free sources that I mentioned above.

Dear Phil, I have recently started a campaign from the Blackwater Creek scenario, that can be found in the Keeper's Screen. We are playing as a group of Miskatonic University students + janitor + one professor and it worked very well as a "not-too-simple" introduction to CoC. The adventure is very flexible: you can make it straightforward and easy for your players, or very complex/ hard, depending on what are your needs. It is very well written and has a lot of potential for linking it with other MU-related scenarios (e.g. from Doors to Darkness). 4Acrossisemu mentioned Crimson Letters and I also think it is a good starting point. If you need something for more experienced players, I would suggest an old but great supplement, The Great Old Ones. It has five scenarios that can be played as one campaign. It would probably need more work than 7th edition adventures, but seeing faces of your players when they reach the last one, Bad Moon Rising, is absolutely worth it.