Darius West

I agree with trystero that there should be some sort of proceedure for creating skills that effectively flesh out a character as is done sometimes half jokingly in scenarios.

Personally I have always loathed the process by which everything is transferred over to being a lore or an art/craft, which is far more guilty of point spreading than any other skill system. 

As for Mike M's sugestion that adding skills that aren't specifically represented in scenarios will mean that players have wasted points, to this I would say, that is more a symptom of bad Keeping if you can't step even narrowly outside the published materials.  "Heaven forfend the Keeper allow the players to stray off the railroad tracks in a published scenario so far as to use something other than a regulation skill".  I would agree that other communications skills probably can take the place of streetwise however. 

On the other hand I notably disagree with the idea that somehow Police Proceedure defaults to Law.  The two skills are simply not equivalent.  Police are involved in enforcing the law and they will by necessity have some idea of what the law is, but, that is far from the same as having a formal education in torts, jurisprudence, contracts, family law, criminal law, commercial law etc etc.  On close insepction one might even argue that the Law skill needs revision because there are too many sub-categories, and it needs to be divided into different disciplines like Science is divided into physics, biology, chemistry etc.  But of course in this is simply adding more skills to the mix and that is, of necessity, a bad thing, isn't it?  Despite the fact that IRL people can spend their whole lives perfecting their understanding of particular branches of the law without ever really dabbling in any of the others outside their tertiary education.

I find it far more problematic that CoC has so many different communication skills i.e. Fast Talk, Intimidate, Persuade, Charm, when arguably the whole point of RPGs is for players themselves to do the communicating, so why have any communication skills at all?  What is the point of calling it a role playing game if despite the player's best efforts to communicate well, it all comes down to a dice roll anyhow?  Or more importantly, even if you were okay with that philosophical contradiction, why have 4 skills when one would suffice, i.e. Persuade (except without the ludicrous restriction that it takes 4 hours to perform).  I mean, really isn't persuasion that what every communicaton skill is aiming to do anyhow ?  Aren't charm, intimidation and fast talk merely communication tactics, not skills in themselves?

I hope people enjoy this post, and understand that the purpose of the polemic is to encourage discussion more than anything else.

Well this is pretty cool.

Oh FFS.  What you need to do is introduce an endearing NPC and have them be apparently lost in the woods. Remind players that losing a friend will cost them more SAN for running away than going and investigating.  Have the Sheriff come and personally ask if they want to be involved in the search party.  Let the players make a Psych roll to notice that the Sheriff is observing their reactions unnervingly closely, like he suspects something.  Now they are in the woods with support.  Support gives them the illusion of security; build up the sense that perhaps the woods as a whole seem normal, even pretty. Then draw their attention to something that seems bad which is a red herring, like a savaged deer carcass.  What your cowardly players need is an adult to hold their hand... 

Of course you do have to ask yourself how much you are railroading your players.  Railroading is easy if you know how, but it also sort of sucks for your players if their characters are too SAN thrashed.  Have they really earned the punishment through stupid decisions or has it just been cruel dice? 

That is so cool styopa !  I assume the HPLHS will descend on you now.

So basically the character is severely brain damaged.  They still eat and breathe and move but they are operating at an animal or infantile level.   They have lost most of the power of speech, but may remember simple words and commands, but behaviors will have to be trained as with animals.  They likely have no sense of self i.e. they have no reflexive association with the idea of themselves as a person, they cannot "be" they merely "do".  They have no notion of deferred gratification i.e. they cannot plan ahead.  They also have no theory of mind i.e. they don't identify with people and don't understand their relationship with other people because they don't recognise sentience in others or themselves. It goes without saying that they will not be toilet trained, and will have no notion of personal hygiene.  They may also become aggressive if frightened.  They will also scream quite a lot because they don't understand what they are doing.  They make Ruprecht the Monkey Boy seem like the model of civility.

Good stuff Warchilde, and somewhat similar to where I went and am going with it.  I had a good deal of fun with Atlantis and my players are still very excited about it.

There are 3 player characters in the party:

"The Cat": International man of mystery.  Could even half of what they say about him be true?

Aurelie Butcher-Bourgeois: A bohemian seeress from a rich family who is in some sort of open relationship with The Cat.

Frank Torgeir:  Circus strongman, now chauffer and bodyguard to The Cat.

As background, The Cat has been doing business with the Rum Runners of the Biminis and Bahamas.  Essentially he has a shipyard where he builds or reconditions sloops, fills them with re-plated stolen cars, and sells the whole lot at auction to the Rum Runners, making a tidy profit.  Some of that money has gone into the purchase of South Cat Cay where The Cat has hired Frank Lloyd Wright to build him a Resort complex capable of standing up to any hurricane that he can use to further cement his domination of the Rum Running.  It turned out that South Cat Cay is actually built on the remains of an old Atlantean Pharos, and that Mr. Wright is actually the present incarnation of the Nephilim "Imhotep".  There they found a crystal ball that linked to another crystal ball and with magic they figured out that it was near Berry Island.  They could also see a pyramid under water.

After a preamble that involved chartering a boat and using the side effect of a gate spell to provide them with gills temporarily, the party wended their way to the pyramid after recovering the other crystal.  They had by this stage managed to win Wright's trust after am incident with wraiths in the Pharos so he came too.  Wright, being a Nephilim could understand Senzar.  The pyramid subjected them to a "ritual cleansing" announced by a hologram that only Wright could understand, and they were all hit with a series of nasty rays before they were finally healed.  They were then allowed entry through huge Iris doors.  They found the Pyramid was devoted to Atlas and staffed by cyclops automata which Wright was able to ascertain were going through the motions of maintaining the facility on an emergency footing.  After a bit of fancy footwork the party figured out that they could effectively apply for Atlantean citizenship and take up "jobs" in the Pyramid provided they could supply enough paper and ink to get the cyclops bureaucrats to provide forms. They also realised that the cyclopses were willing to pay in gold for cargoes of "essential goods".  Literate Atlanteans had access to documents stored on "Crystal tablets", but sorcerers had to store their spells (by law) on Emerald Tablets.  The party came within a hair's breadth of causing a "security breach" that would have killed them all by opening a gate withing the Pyramid, but thought better of it thanks to Aurelie being on the ball, and set it up outside.  They found that the system for negotiating transit to the rooms was managed by way of statues that animated, and would quasi-teleport you withing the structure if you kissed them.  Some parts of the pyramid were intact, other parts were too damaged to enter, but the party has so far managed to redeem $20,000 US in gold and they are pretty happy. 

For what it is worth, I opted to solve my little Atlantis dilemma by incorporating Nephilim, as it has an interesting background that is rich in Atlantean lore that fits quite well with CoC after a bit of tweaking.  In my Campaign, the Nephilim are basically a species of terrestrially generated Spirit parasites who are also the larval stage of the Elder Gods, and their presence on Earth is one of the things that drew the Mythos in to feed.  Essentially the humans are an afterthought, a bit like being the wildlife on Peleliu prior to the US Marines landing to fight Japan.

I am a bit flummoxed by how to manage HQ missile combat.  Could someone maybe talk me through a fight between a party of Yelmalio Phalangites (20 with pikes, 10 with bows) versus a similar number of Sable riders (10 with lances, 20 with bows), assuming everyone's primary skills and their augmenting skills being at about 1W, it being a fine day in Prax, and with the fight being conducted initially with the Sable riders coming up a dry "serpent" bed out of sight of the Yelmalios ?  

I bought Convicts & C'thulhu but I can't see why any of this has to be mis-attributed to the Mythos.  All the horror and disappearances are a perfectly normal part of the Australian way of life in the outback, thanks to Australia's unique fauna.  We took my Norwegian in-laws out to our cabin at Harrietville and they all nearly lost their shit over a couple of spiders the complained were the size of coffee tables.  I mean, spiders make bloody great coffee tables; they're a big fuzzy novelties if you ask me, and we trained them to bring the drinks closer, but the Norwegians didn't seem to want the beer, and that is very unlike Norwegians.  Spiders though are not so bad;  feed them right and they will eat off your hand (of course feed them wrong and they will eat off your hand up to the elbow).  I think everyone is just over-reacting.  Have a look at this lovely series of slides from Tourism Australia http://www.swifty.com/destinations/7681/17-nope-animal-pics-that-prove-australia-is-absolutely-terrifying/#slide/0  A trip to Australia is an unforgettable experience, and very affordable at 8-20 SAN loss net total.

Here are some lovely places to visit:

http://www.castleofspirits.com/blackmount.html

http://www.yourghoststories.com/real-ghost-story.php?story=16290

https://portarthurparanormal.com/

http://www.mynrma.com.au/travel/holiday-ideas/nt/the-lost-city-in-limmen-np.htm

https://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/park/wolfe-creek-crater 

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/the-chilling-record-of-lost-lives-at-devils-pool/2008/12/01/1227979901593.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2521752/Children-incest-cult-living-deformed-mute-Australian-valley.html

https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attraction_Review-g552137-d9559909-Reviews-Asylum_Ghost_Tours-Beechworth_Victoria.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_shark_attacks_in_Australia

http://listverse.com/2011/03/30/top-10-most-venomous-snakes/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/viral-video/11446648/Watch-Deadly-snake-and-killer-spider-duel-in-Australia.html

Yeah, getting through all of that probably cost you about 2d4 SAN.  Man up and stop whining.

Thanks rsanford.  The way Nephilim is written it is easy to be sympathetic to the nephilim, but in many ways they are every bit as bad as the various secret societies determined to destroy them suspect.  They are essentially weird and unnatural body invaders.  The Star Arcanum are interesting in my game as they seek to discover "alien nephilim" who are in fact the Great Race of Yith.  Naturally the Great Race are not interested in being found and the probable negative impact on their time line to their next species jump.

One of the ideas I have been playing with is that the reason that C'thulhu and the whole Xothian civilization have attacked Earth and currently lie dormant is because the Nephilim are actually infant Elder Gods, and  when the stars are right and the Mythos rises they can consume the young of their great enemies and potentially escape this, their prison Universe. The Nephilim of course want to escape that fate, and that means transcending out of the world through the Subtle Realms asap.

Another thing that I am using is that some humans know the secrets of initiation, which in Nephilim terms means that they have an awakened Solar Ka, and this is true of all Dreamers i.e. people who have entered the Dreamlands.  The problem is however that Nephilim are not human, and so cannot enter the Human Dreamlands, as they were locked out as part of the cataclysm that destroyed Atlantis.  (Atlantis physically sank, but it also sank into the human unconscious).  As a result, the Nephilim can only physically enter the "Subtle Realms" by way of the spell "The Gate of Oneirology", which is a rare one (Needless to say that the campaign focuses heavily on players finding the clues to find the clues to work that out).  Once in the Dreamlands however, the Nephilim  are at a huge advantage, because they are the true originators of the Dreamlands, for example they can invent new spells there.

As far as SAN loss for seeing Nephilim goes, they are rated by their level of transformation, 1-20 =0/1d2, 21-40=0/1d4, 41-60=0/1d6, 61-80=0/1d8.  Not every SAN check is about being scared out of your wits, sometimes it involves a loss of your sense of reality.  Viewing a Nephilim who is using some of their magic can also incur more SAN loss, e.g. You see an Angel with Burning Bands of Flame and Wind surrounding them; seeing an angel is bad, but the extra special effects add to how alarming that will be.

Has anyone else noticed how easily a game of Nephilim can be crossed into C'thulhu? There are a few hang-ups, in that the esoteric history of the Nephilim doesn't quite fit in with the broader and geological time history of the Cthulhu Mythos, but it is easily possible to create work-arounds.

In essence, the Nephilim are a species of immortal spirit parasite that have followed a very similar trajectory on an evolutionary scale to that of the Great Race of Yith.  The difference being that the Nephilim are of terrestrial origin, while the Yithians are aliens.

As for Nephilim magic, it makes for an interesting juxtaposition to that of the Mythos.

The links between the Nephilim and Atlantis are well established, but the Mythos makes only casual reference to Atlantis, making the question of Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, and Thule, open slather as to what a Keeper wants to do with them.  Of course by involving Nephilim this also serves to make the "magic of Atlantis" largely unavailable to player character human investigators.

 For me, the most interesting thing to develop is the Dream Lands as a Subtle Realm.  The Subtle Realms are where the magic of the Nephilim comes from, and clearly dreams and the dream lands are intensely magical, so perhaps the Nephilim created the Dream Lands as a sort of virtual reality and magical laboratory ?

Has anyone considered that perhaps Innsmouth is merely a colony of Tritons at an advanced stage of Nephilim transformation?

I would be interested in how other people have developed these ideas, as I KNOW this is not an original idea.

The Chaosium supplement "Enlightened Magic" essentially covers translating Nephilim magic into BRP.

When I saw the title "Nephilim Clone" I immediately thought it would reference Chaosium's BRP supplement "Enlightened Magic". This item essentially takes the magic from Nephilim in a form that allows it to be incorporated into any BRP game.

Thanks for the flood of help everyone.  What I am specifically looking for is fonts for Aklo (a couple exist, but I don't like them), Elder Thing Cipher, Mi-Go runes, Muvian Naacal, R'lyeh Glyphs, Senzar and Tsath-Yo.  I am well aware of the fine work of the HPLHS, in fact I bought their fonts back in 2013.

The HPLHS site has some really great period fonts, but they don't have the fonts I'm looking for.  Here is what I have come up with thus far...

http://www.fonts2u.com/hieratic-numerals.font  Egyptian Heiratic makes a better Aklo imo.

http://www.fontspace.com/digital-type-foundry/enochian  Might as well use Enochian for Enochian

http://www.dafont.com/iokharic.font  Iokharic is a fine looking jagged script that is vaguely like Senzar

http://www.dafont.com/rongorongo.font  Rongorongo, the characters from Easter Island are a bit like R'lyeh Glyphs...obviously a derived language

http://www.fonts2u.com/maya-hieroglyphics.font  Mayan Heiroglyphics provide a decent Naacal font

http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1221931/rosicrucian_cipher Rosicrucian Cipher Font. 

http://www.fonts2u.com/masonic-cipher-symbols.font Masonic Cipher font

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5218119/13-alien-languages-you-can-actually-read' This site was an eye-opener.

http://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/conlangs.htm This one is cool too.

Don't get me wrong, I love period fonts for the 1920s too and I have quite a few, but I am after "constructed language" mythos fonts.  For those who have the Keeper's Companion 1 from 6th Ed, the article on pages 38-40, with special reference to the illustrations provided as examples.

When keeping, I give out handouts in these fonts periodically and award the first people to decipher them a +5% in the language in question. Normally I only use a simple substitution cipher to make it do-able.  My players love it and look forwards to it... perhaps they are already insane?

As a keeper I have always enjoyed making my own handouts, and to that end I have gathered a few fonts together to stand in for various runes, glyphs and sigils of the various mythos creatures.  One of my dearest wishes is that Chaosium would release official fonts for languages like Aklo, Tsath-Yo, Senzar, etc.

Thanks Vorax.  I will definitely go have a look. 

So far I have decided to provide the ruins of the lighthouse with a few things.  A crystal ball that acts as a visual communicator... but with what?  Shards of a large lens that if all the pieces are found will produce a 2 million candlepower light capable of stunning anyone who looks at it, but weights 50lb and needs to be powered by magic points or a ley line. There is also a parchment bag with a string. You pull the string and it heats up rapidly and turns into a flying lantern that is very bright and hot and  flies straight up.   There is also a lot of high quality orichalcum wire that was once used to tether a rescue kite.  As to monsters, I am thinking one lonely but terrible wraith of an Atlantean lighthouse keeper.

That's true, Deep ones are a good fall back.  I was thinking more something like a magical item that probably shouldn't be messed with... that players will inevitably mess with...

Something a little like the crystal ball in this link  http://www.philipcoppens.com/nap_art15.html but more problematic.  

No, I haven't read that yet yet, I would be drawing on RQ3 Gods of Glorantha, Hero Wars and ToTRM for such definitions. 

To quote from Pavis: Threshold to Danger Page 13 (The Zebra People)...

Joraz was favored by Issaries as well, in any case he knew how to dicker.  "Under what meagre conditions would one allow a horse to live in one's lands" he asked a priestess of the Paps one day.  "In bondage," she replied "Broken from kin." She spoke with the words of the Goddess.  "Need they be unhealthy?" He asked.  "You aid herd men and giant lizards".  "Their health I grant, within their confines".

Now the point here is, if the Praxians were so pro-horse, why did Joraz Kyrem need to perform a Hero Quest to make rideable Zebras ?

As for Jaldon Toothmaker, he is an immortal Khan summoned when Praxians want to raid into Dragon Pass.  He rides a beast that nobody knows.  On the other hand King of Sartar page 120 says that Derik Poljoni laid Jaldon Toothmaker to rest again.  It also clearly says that Derik worships Orlanth.  Now what happens in the Hero Wars to allow the Pol Joni to raid with Jaldon Toothmaker, I would suggest that would be explained by the White Bull Army.

As to Cults of Prax appendix C...  it also clearly mentions that 14% of Morokanth worship Zorak Zoran along with 7% of the Pol Joni.  Now I bet that it isn't Eiritha they worship but Uralda, because back when Cults of Prax was produced there were a lot of deities we now know about that weren't around or even mentioned back then.  There was no write-up of Hyalor Horsebreaker or Kargzant back then.  Also, isn't it odd how the Pol Joni have no Elmal worshippers, only Yelmalios, and no Vingans ?  I would have thought that Elmal the Horse Thane would have been well received amongst the Pol Joni, but apparently Cults of Prax doesn't think so.  Or maybe, juuust maybe, it's a little out of date now?

Add to this the fact that the Pure Horse People (now the Grazelanders) were driven out of Prax by the Waha cult, and there are mentions of Pentans and Praxians periodically raiding each other in the wastes mainly because of their hatred of each other's beasts.  Now we know that the Praxians don't attack every Lunar cavalry patrol, so there is obviously some pragmatism at work, but I am sure that horse and cattle hating comes in and out of vogue depending on where the good grazing is. 

Now I will offer an odd compromise here.  Prax is a big place and inter-tribal marriage is a way to make peace.  While it hasn't expressedly been mentioned, it is possible that certain pragmatic parties have cross-married between tribes and that may include certain Pol Joni braves leaving their horses behind to follow Waha in their rich wife's tribe on the back of a different sort of beast.

You raise a good point and I am aware of fluorite Derbyshire Spar ( I think there is also some in China from memory), as I have looked up Blue John before.  I suspect that rather like "the crow" or "duelech" or "the eagle", it is alchemical shorthand for something else.  It is a pretty material though, and it might be the Mi-go have a sense of aesthetics...or it could be that you are working for them...

The list of skills in Call of C'thulhu is good, but there are a few extras that could be included imo.  Please consider the following, and make your own suggestions for skills you would like to see.

Police Procedure (05)

Police procedure is a knowledge of what is expected of a police officer when investigating a crime or allegations thereof.  Police procedure covers things such as how different types of crimes should be approached, taking statements from witnesses and obtaining their contact details and whereabouts at times relevant to the events being investigated.  It also includes the expectations of policymakers as to standards of police behavior during an investigation.  It is a skill that would be of benefit to Police Officers, Detectives, Federal Agents, Private Investigators (many of whom have formerly been police), Forensic Pathologists.  It would be invoked to ensure that characters are following proper procedure, and are aware when they are breaking procedure.  It would also provide some notion of what to do when an investigation hits a dead end, or when handling uncooperative witnesses.

Domestics (25)

Domestics is the science of house keeping.  Had H.P. Lovecraft spent more points in it, he might have lived longer.  It covers such things as cooking cheap nutritious meals, keeping one's home clean, cleaning windows and surfaces, repairs to clothing and basic tailoring, knowing how to do laundry and iron clothes, caring for infants, knowing how to store produce to improve shelf life, basic horticulture, and gardening, budgeting the groceries, rent and utilities as appropriate.  Basically, how to live with a measure of dignity in a domestic urban setting.  It also covers such things as when things are out of place or don't make sense in a house.  It can be assumed that a character with 50% is able to live with a measure of dignity, and a character with 75% or more is an organized person with an organized household who is well able to cope with life's little emergencies.  Domestics is essentially what was called "women's work" in times past, with all the sexism that implies, and was a staple of housewives, domestic staff, and bachelors who aspired to live better than swine.

Streetwise (05)

Streetwise is the skill of liaising with criminals.  It is used to make contact with people engaged in criminal activities in such a way that they don't become overly suspicious.  It includes using the right slang terms, looking the part, and conducting oneself with enough projection of threat that you are not seen as a victim, but enough savoire faire that you are not assumed to be a police officer or infiltrator.  It is used to obtain information about illegal activities, local criminal personalities, and where illegal goods might be purchased and so forth.

Handyman (10)

This skill subsumes Mechanical and Electrical repair, and includes carpentry, painting, and gardening.  This is the skill of repairing, maintaining, and making things for domestic consumption. It includes repairing household appliances and a familiarity with their use, up to and including spot repairs on broken down cars.  it includes such things as repairing furniture, putting up shelves, hanging paintings, renovating a room, or even building a house (though that is probably better left to professionals), changing lights, knowing to turn the electricity off before re-wiring a room and actually remembering to do it, cleaning chimneys, etc. This is the masculine equivalent of domestics skill, with all the sexism that implies from times past, i.e. that only men could fix mechanical things.  This is also the sort of skill that anyone might possess but would be of most value to drifters, agricultural workers, and handymen (i.e. untrained repair specialists).

In terms of what Mi-go mine, the two substances mentioned are Blue john (from The Fungi from Yuggoth Campaign), and Tokl (from Ramsey Campbell).  They also conduct investigations into Ubbo Sathla sites on Earth (from Return to Dunwich).  I am inclined to think that they taught human beings the resurrection spell and that it involves Blue John as the blue powder mentioned in the Disturbing Case of Charles Dexter Ward.  That is a syncretic assumption though.

Interesting.  I was referring to the initiations that outsiders must go through to enter the Pol Joni.

As for the Pol Joni worshiping Waha, I thought that was impossible for the "Cattle Bastards" or "Horse Bastards" (season to taste) ?  My understanding was that the Pol Joni were from Orlanthi stock who moved into the area during the migration back into Dragon Pass under the leadership of Derik Pol Joni, and they worship Orlanth, ride horses and herd cattle.  The deal being that the Praxians hadn't ever quite managed to drive them from the area on the edge of Sartar and up between Dagori Inkarth and Tada's High Tumulus which is known as Pol Joni march.  Now the Praxians have a long history of hating horse riders because the horse is not one of Eiritha's beasts but has Yelmic associations, hence the Pol Joni generally attach themselves to modified Hendriki/Sartarite traditions and are only grudgingly tolerated by Praxians because most tribes have other feuds and problems that take precedence.

Spoken like a true Lhankoring M Helsdon.  I am sure your dissertation on Malkioni Theology was well received by your peers in Jonstown, however the ignorant masses are likely to find themselves at odds with hair-splitting differentiations and are far more interested in whether someone needs to be knocked on the head or not.  I am sure that henotheism is a thing amongst the chicken hsunchen, in fact I heard that they worship the local  rooster in the village of Weis, because he is a nasty bastard and must be placated or he will peck your damned eyes out.