trystero

7 hours ago, klecser said:

Before someone asks, I'm going to get ahead of it:

This is a classic product and has not been updated to 7th edition rules. I believe it is 2nd edition rules.

I'm only a little bit sad not to get a reprint of the first edition, but second is where I started in 1984, so that's hitting my nostalgia centres squarely on.

Is there any chance the piece was commissioned for the Dark Worlds game that was cancelled in favour of Sandy's Call of Cthulhu design?

Excellent news. Welcome to the fold.

Mine were different colours, but the same assortment and manufacturer. I don't know whether the sets varied by print run or whether they were more random than that.

I would love to see a complete PDF library of Call of Cthulhu releases. The classics are classics for a reason. :-)

"Edge of Darkness" is one of my very favourite Call of Cthulhu scenarios, and it sounds as though you (a) made it your own, and (b) ran a great game with your players. There's no higher achievement as a Keeper.

I dropped the "NPC skill adjusts PC skill" rule almost immediately; it's one of only two rules that I discarded for my table*. In its place, I just use opposed skill rolls for everything (as per Mike M's comment above), and couldn't be happier with that approach.

* The other is "ties go to the higher ability". Instead, I have "ties go to the contestant with the best (lowest) roll".

For Horror on the Orient Express, my biggest map issue was that the “Routes of the Orient Express” handout map shows red "campaign-relevant" stops for all of the campaign chapters, including several which are not mentioned in the clues the investigators find to trigger the train journey. I coloured these over with regular black city/town markings so I could hand it to my (clever and very suspicious) players without them saying, "Oh, so what happens when we get to <city>?"

Why forewarn them? 🙂

I had some of the same map issues (different keys for Keeper's and Players' versions of the same map, plot points needlessly signalled through inclusion on maps) when running Horror on the Orient Express. Like you, I ended up modifying the maps myself in order to run the game without "leaking" information and short-circuiting elements of the mystery.

1. Volume I, back cover: There should be no comma after "Here" in "Here shall you know the terrors of the void, the nightmare bringers, and the creeping unspeakable lurkers."
2. Volume II, back cover: There should be no hyphen in "painstaking", since it's a compound word; if it does need hyphenation at a line break, it's pains·tak·ing, not pain·stak·ing. (Taking pains, not staking pain.)

8 hours ago, Mike M said:

Dreamlands monsters go in the Dreamlands book.

Thank you for the clarification, Mike; I was assuming that MM was to be a complete bestiary. Looking forward to that Dreamlands book now… 🙂

Love, love, love this book. Beautiful art; I'm very much looking forward to the hardcover edition. Thanks to all of the fine folks who revised this and put it together.

I do have one question; what's become of the gugs? As Lovecraft's own creations, they surely should have a place in the complete Mythos bestiary.

And based on my initial glance, I'll offer two suggested corrections to the back-cover copy which I hope can be made before going to print, posted here since the errata thread doesn't exist yet:

1. Volume I: There should be no comma after "Here" in "Here shall you know the terrors of the void, the nightmare bringers, and the creeping unspeakable lurkers."
2. Volume II: There should be no hyphen in "painstaking", since it's not broken over two lines; if it does need hyphenation at a line break, it's pains·tak·ing, not pain·stak·ing. (Taking pains, not staking pain.)

I live just outside of Boston, and we play at my girlfriend's house on the North Shore, just about where Arkham lies on the Lovecraft Country map from CoC7e. The Danvers Asylum (from one of the Doors to Darkness scenarios) is on a hill right near a grocery store she shops at. So the East Coast is both my hometown region and Lovecraft's New England. 🙂

On 2/18/2020 at 3:23 PM, smithh65 said:

…I noticed a few things while looking over Servants of the Lake.

I second these, having just run the scenario last night and run into some of these issues, and will add two more:

1. While the scenario itself provides no dates beyond "the 1920s", the guestbook-page handout suggests that it takes place in mid-to-late January. It would be good to add this information to the introduction so that Keepers aren't caught out by this, as I was.
2. Further to the above, it doesn't seem credible to me or my players—playing in Beverly, Massachusetts, right about where Arkham is supposed to be—that anyone would have come to northern Massachusetts with the intention of fishing in the middle of winter; the lake (which is more of a pond) would most likely be frozen, for one thing. We collectively agreed that the scenario would be more plausibly set later in the spring.

One issue that @smithh65 raises, about Jacob Trent's vehicle, was a non-issue in my game; I assumed he'd hitchhiked, and that his lack of a vehicle was part of the reason he was still at the motel instead of off summoning the police to look into Abe's disappearance.

In the version of "Edge of Darkness" included in the Call of Cthulhu edition 5.6 rulebook (the oldest version I have access to at the moment), the date of Marion Allen's death is given as August 1883 (no specific day) in both the journal and the newspaper-article handout.

11 hours ago, tendentious said:

In the Gate spell, the description reads "Creation of a Gate requires the permanent expenditure of POW in a sacrifice equal to the log to base 10 of the distance the Gate connects in miles multiplied by five."

Firstly, this seems ambiguously phrased. Do you take the distance in miles, multiply that figure by 5, then calculate the log of that number? From the table apparently not (but see below), but restating the sentence into something like "...POW in a sacrifice equal to five times the log to base 10 of the distance the Gate connects in miles." or even just adding a comma to the original sentence after the word "miles" would clarify the meaning.

Secondly, my knowledge of maths is limited, but a Gate connecting a distance of 100 miles (as per the table) should cost 10 POW, not 5 - the log of 100 is 2, multiplied by 5 is 10. Every distance entry on the table should be shifted down one, and the top line (POW 5) should be for a distance of 10 miles.

Apologies if this has been commented upon before; I couldn't find a previous posting addressing the issue. Also, please point out if I've made an obvious mathematical error.

Or correct the text to "Creation of a Gate requires the permanent expenditure of POW in a sacrifice equal to the log to base 10 of the distance the Gate connects in miles, minus one (to a minimum of one), multiplied by five." This keeps the table intact.

On 2/4/2020 at 5:53 AM, EricW said:

If say Deep ones turned up to a halloween party or fancy dress party, would everyone scream and take damage to their sanity, or would the other party guests compliment the Deep Ones on their awesome costumes?

I would be tempted to use the "Becoming a Believer" rules (Keeper Rulebook, p. 179) for this scenario; people might be able to put off the psychological impact by telling themselves it's just a costume, but the bill will fall due at some point or other.

p. 66, Dappled Light statblock, Language section: "Tradetalk" should be split between lines as "Trade-talk" rather than as "Tra-detalk".

Both the 5th-edition Stormbringer rulebook and Dragon Lords of Melniboné include this note on their respective copyright pages:

Quote

THIS BOOK IS A CELEBRATION of work done over the years by many people here in the U.S. and abroad. Much of the art was created for translated editions of Chaosium works—some of the overseas publishers no longer exist. Over the years we have lost track of some of the artists and are interested in finding them again. Please call us at 510-452-4658.

I take this as a sign of good intentions on Chaosium's part; they'd hardly ask artists to reach out if they were knowingly involved in unlicensed usage of their work.

There's a forum thread over at RPGGeek called "The Dark Side of Chaosium", in which a friend of the Finnish artist Petri Hiltunen reports that Chaosium's previous management used Hiltunen's art without permission in the 2001 fifth edition of Stormbringer. (I don't know whether the accusation also extends to the use of his art in Dragon Lords of Melniboné or not.)

I haven't any information either way except what's been offered up in that thread, but thought it worth linking here in hopes that someone from Chaosium management can contact Hiltunen to investigate and resolve the issue. (Obviously there's no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of the current management, but I do hope they're interested in addressing this concern.)

Welcome to the club! I was very resistant to the idea of the 7th-edition rules changes based on the early reports I'd heard, but am very glad that I checked out the ruleset anyway; it's ended up being my favourite iteration of the system, with some great new ideas that I wish were rolled out to other BRP games. My group and I are very happy with this edition.

Round 4:

Quote

Bodran will expend a Rune Point to cast Heal Wound. He will use 6 magic points to restore his leg and total hit points by the same amount. His spell will take effect on SR 7.

Per the rule on p. 314 of the rulebook, "Rune magic spells always take effect at strike rank 1." I don't see any rule which suggests that using MP as part of a Rune spell casting affects the SR, so I believe Bodran's Heal Wound spell should take effect on SR 1, not SR 7.

I'm also in the camp of "make the roll for the spell when you've completed its casting time, rather than when you start it."

I read it as making the Dodge skill roll before the attack, since the Dodge result determines whether the attacker suffers a penalty die on their Firearms roll or not.

I'd apply the penalty die (if achieved) to all attackers with firearms for the round, but that's purely a personal judgement and not anything supported by the rules.

I use the Major Wound rules for humans (cultists, etc.) and other real-world creatures, and tend to ignore them for otherworldly horrors.

18 hours ago, Fort said:

How about Genertela?

Hard "g", "ener" as in "energy", "tela" like "tailor" without the final "r". Gehn-uhr-TAY-luh.