Numtini

I've always ruled that you get the point blank bonus even if someone is attacking you with a melee attack because you are dodging (not fighting back--you can't fight back by shooting) and part of dodging is getting the space for that shot. I don't consider someone in that position to be "in melee." In the example of gaining control of the weapon by grabbing the hand, that's a maneuver and if successful and not dodged, yeah shootings over. And that's probably the best play if you're trying to physically attack someone who's shooting at you. But with that +50 to initiative for a readied weapon, you're going to have to deal with them putting a shot or two into you before you get a chance to try that. If you choose to "fight back" by hitting them physically with a gun, I house rule that you are then in melee and don't have the ability to shoot until you've dodged for a round.

On 11/13/2023 at 12:47 PM, AJ The Ronin said:

Honestly, it does not take 2 years to get a Foundry system and modules out if that is Chaoisum interest. Paizo, Free League and Cubicle 7 get their Foundry modules out basically within weeks of their books coming out.  

I'd add that what's there is kind of a mess. Needing to add the skills to the character sheet may make adapting different versions of CoC easier, but it's really cumbersome.

It's hard to do combat without a full on "tactical" thing with the targeting and all that which is an odd choice for a game that is more of the investigative type. What I mean here is things like getting a popup if you try to roll an attack without selecting a target and it refusing to roll damage unless you have a targe specified. The people on the Discord channel are great, but I don't think I'd ever have figured out any of the combat without their help. I just went in and I know there's something I'm supposed to do to define how many shots I'm taking when I'm doing multiple shots from a handgun, but damned if I can remember where it is.

On 7/13/2023 at 10:30 PM, Vovina said:

Finally got my hands on the The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, and I'm mildly surprised that it — like the Lovecraft wiki — attributes the creator-ship of the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath to Robert Bloch in "Notebook Found in a Deserted House", though it notes that he called them "shoggoths". Meanwhile, Sandy Petersen's role is relegated to a citation for the 5th edition of the Call of Cthulhu Rulebook.

The "Shoggoths" from that story sure seem like the Dark Young from the game to me and are summoned by invoking "Shub Nigger Ath" OTOH I suspect trees coming alive far predates the mythos and is rather obvious. Now, in terms of not infringing on IP, Chaosium is where the term "Dark Young of Shub Niggurath" comes from AFAIK.

18 hours ago, Vovina said:

I checked with the person who first told me Yog-Sothoth is not in the public domain, and apparently there's been cases where Arkham House has stepped in and requested Yog-Sothoth not be used due to the story he first appears in not being out of copyright.

You can't go wrong by being overly cautious, but I'm extremely skeptical of a heresay report. There's dozens of full Lovecraft collected works published on the basis of his work being out of copyright. Not just ebooks cutting and pasting the material from Project Gutenberg, but real publishers with nice hardcover editions. There's also the plethora of games that reference Yog-Sothoth without license, again, not receiving any C&Ds from Arkham.

1 hour ago, Vovina said:

I was informed that Yog-Sothoth was not in the public domain due to having first appeared in a story Lovecraft wrote in 1927 but which was first published in 1941, which I suppose would technically make his first appearance being mentioned in a 1929 story, and assumed that the Mi-Go, Elder Things, Shoggoths, and Star-Spawn are also not yet in the public domain due to also having debuted in stories published after the current copyright cutoff date of January 1, 1928.

That current copyright cutoff date is for works that renewed their copyrights after the initial 28 year term. For many years Arkham House insisted that the copyrights had been renewed and were owned by Arkham House, but no evidence of this has ever been found, including third parties working with the US Copyright Office. Further, since Arkham House has more or less collapsed, people have gone ahead and published these stories directly, much less used them as inspiration, and no action has been taken. It is generally understood that Lovecraft's original works were never renewed and are therefore in the public domain. That is not the case with many of his collaborations, many of which had the copyrights renewed by the coauthor. I can't remember which one, but there's one family that holds onto them with an iron grip and requests a fortune for any reprint rights, making them effectively unavailable--I'm reminded of the advice "don't hold onto it so long that nobody wants it anymore."

I can find no reference to Star Spawn in Lovecraft's writings, at least by that term. 

For the existing Foundry implementation, I'd put forward my opinion that it's a little overly complicated and could use some trimming down. I'd like to see some toggles for things like the whole target and auto-remove damage stuff. Make it easier to use straight out of the box.

On 7/3/2023 at 5:11 PM, Vovina said:

However, I recently discovered that many of the more popular creatures of the Mythos — Yog-Sothoth, Mi-Go, Shoggoths, Elder Things, Star-Spawn, and Dark Young, to name a few — are still under copyright

Dark Young are a creation of Chaosium. Shug Niggurath has a Thousand Young, but not Dark Young, and the specific description is Chaosium.

Yog Sothoth, Mi-Go, Elder Things, and Shoggoths all appear in Lovecraft's out-of-copyright writing. There's not much detail about Yog Sothoth though, so pulling up a description from elsewhere is problematic. The others are pretty well described in the text.

If someone really wants to see what is and isn't part of Lovecraft's original work, the best way is to get a kindle version of Lovecraft's complete works (99cents usually because they're out of copyright) and load it on the PC/Mac version of the kindle software which has an excellent search function. Use only what you find in the actual Lovecraft material. Just because it names a critter, doesn't mean you can then go back to a game book and use the full description from there.

I also highly recommend the Harms encyclopedia which covers all the various creatures and where their origins are. It will tell you, for example, that Elder Things and Old Ones are both terms for the same creatures in Lovecraft's At The Mountains Of Madness, but Chaosium uses Elder Things exclusively for that creature to differentiate them from Old Ones. Or that Byakhee the term is an invention of Derleth, but the creature described in the Chaosium books is from Lovecraft's The Festival.

Thanks for all this amazing work.

There's people on this board who could end the suspense on the skills 🙂

On 3/9/2023 at 12:31 PM, Dangermouse said:

This was a tricky one and this is the approach I've taken.  This is Chaosium' s game and so taking some core stuff from the rules isn't something I want to do.  I want RoL to succeed (I'm rubbish at writing scenarios so wont the game to do well and then see more products).   Therefore I don't want to release an implementation that would mean people don't need to buy the game - but I balanced that with wanting to make it easy to run a game and get people enthused.

Ok. I'm new to Foundry, but there's never been an issue with character sheets on roll20 at least to my knowledge.

This looks fantastic. Question: is there a reason not to have the skills included?

The current edition of MoN is dual-statted for regular and pulp. I've run it as a low pulp (1 talent and we added back in major wounds) and it's been fantastic. The material lends itself to Pulp in tone, but the big thing is with something this long, there's a real benefit it not having characters dropping like flies and getting replaced every couple of sessions. I played in a HotOE campaign recently and at one point, couldn't even remember my character because so many had been killed, mostly to not particularly memorable accidents. In contrast, my MoN players are very invested in their characters, who've developed long histories and personalities far beyond what was there at character creation. I'd never run a long campaign in regular again. I'd at least go for the double hit points. I don't think that means you have to abandon historical reality though, so even being an advocate for pulp, the plane wouldn't fly, so to speak, at my table.

While it's probably technically possible, in much the same way that flying to space is now, the idea of doing Masks by plane is simply not realistic. The trip would be an adventure unto itself. But also, in any sort of in-game logic, the idea is to stop this cult, and faffing about with a temperamental airplane to get across the Atlantic when you could get there faster and safely on a steamship just doesn't make sense. There are plenty of places in the game where you could toss an available plane at the group, so his skills don't go wanting.

In terms of weapons, we had a bootlegger and he had a tommy gun and that was fine in NYC because he was from NYC. But I was very upfront that there was no way they were going to get that past British customs, and they were wise enough not to try. Hunting rifles, shotguns, and pistols, sure. Get licenses. Possibly bribes. Maybe wait a few days. But not explosives or automatic weapons. He managed to pick a tommy gun up from a cultist in Australia and I'm pretty sure he'll find his way into having one in his possession by the time they go to Grey Dragon Island.

On 9/15/2022 at 3:44 PM, svensson said:

I DID back their Twilight 2000 K/S, and I'm very satisfied with the product I got, but they have released ZERO support for it since the original boxed set was delivered.

Very late to the party, and they've since released Urban Operations, but they were holding off on releases out of respect for the war.

Back to the topic, for me DoD feels like a d100 game in most ways other than not using a d100, and I feel like it hits a real sweet spot for non-Glorantha adventures. I suspect it will not hit that spot for most people as it's a little more mystical/legendary than most of the D&D-ish players are looking for. But after we finish Masks of Nyarlathotep, which we've been at for over two years, I need a palate cleanser and I'm planning to run Alien, T2k, Vaesen, and DoD one-shots.

Honestly, all you need for most investigative games is the character sheet. Personally, I don't need any VTT support past that. I put in a request on the roll20 forums for a volunteer to create a sheet. 

Exactly what I came here to ask. I was going to post a request on the roll20 boards, but if an official one is in the works, there's no need to beg people to build one.

3 minutes ago, Kloster said:

The comments on Veve are making me sure that in the (very) unlikely possibility that I will purchase NFT, it will not be through Veve.

That's pretty standard for the NFT/Crypto world. It's a big reason some of us don't want it contaminating TTRPG gaming. 

On 2/6/2022 at 11:41 PM, The Ancient One said:

I was wondering why there were alternate names for the mythos creatures in the Fall of Delta Green book

This is usually a facet of a critter being in Lovecraft's works, but a name being from someone else, usually Derleth. If you get into researching it, there's a lot of how many shoggoths can dance on the head of a pin about whether or not different critters are the same or just similar and merged in the game. I've spent an inordinate amount of time with a Lovecraft ebook open in one window and the Harms' Mythos Encyclopedia in another looking at where things came from. (Which is probably a way of saying you were an English major without saying you were an English major.)

I've seen this come up several times on different boards and barring an intervention via an official ruling, the general consensus has been to adjust it based on the kind of game you want to run. 

Any remember if Chessex was making their own dice at that point or just acting a distributor? I remember Gamescience and The Armory being the big players at the time, but I do have some mystery Windmill from that period which bear a pretty solid resemblance to the smallish-looking d20/percentile dice in the photos.

7 hours ago, Jeff said:

If you think the Legend OGL is "cast-iron", then you are fooling yourself. Heck, on the face of it, the very license used is invalid.

 

I seem to remember that Chaosium has stated in the past, during the OpenCthulhu arguments, that the Legend OGL and the derived Delta Green OGL were recognized as being legitimate. Is this a change of Chaosium's legal position?

On 3/6/2020 at 6:15 PM, klecser said:

I just got into ASL...

I'll pray for you.

The character sheet is an utter disaster. It's unintuitive, requires multiple clicks to perform basic actions, and on smaller screens (ie a laptop--not just a tablet or phone) requires scrolling from the skill to the dice button. It's really unusable. 

On the systems, I'd say that Delta Green is more realistic and more depressing in its sanity rules. People don't get funny phobias like a fear of rocking chairs or aardvarks, instead they become alcoholics or drug addicts, stressed out people who can't sleep without waking up screaming, or other more "real world" reaction to extreme stress. For some, this is a little too realistic and depressing. For others it fits in well.

There's also some skill consolidation and different, dare I say better, automatic weapons rules. And they use percentile adjustments instead of IMHO the superior bonus/penalty dice of 7E.

In gamer-culture, DG seems to trend more towards short brutal scenarios while CoC trends towards globe trotting grand but a little pulpy campaigns. Nothing in the rules that makes that the case, it's just how things have shaken out with the two groups of players.

2 minutes ago, Dethstrok9 said:

Are the books worth 100$?

I think so.