Moes1980

So, 7th edition is my first experince with Coc in any form, though I am a long term role-player (mostly dnd, though I did play some 3rd edition WFRPG which seems to be based on this same basic percentile system). So, my perspective is that this is not an action game in any sense of the word. Mor often than not, guns just don't do any appreciable damage to what you are fighting. Instead, you need to have collected enough clues to be able to come up with some kind of game plan by the end or else everything goes south for the players pretty fast. For what it is worth from someone who is new to the game, I really love this system. I did take a look at the older systems for comparison and to me, they seem to be almost identical, though I would probably update to 7th just to avoid the extra step of making power rolls. For what it is worth, here are my comments on pushed rolls and luck pools: Pushed Roles: One of my favorite mechanics in the game. I was worried that this type of game would suffer from dead ends due to failed rolls, but the use of luck, idea, and pushed rolls helps keeps things going. My players rarely push their rolls. The most memorable moment of a pushed roll was when a mortally wounded character was trying to light dynamite to kill a monster that was wrecking havoc on the party. He needed to make a luck roll because the dynamite was wet. His luck was something like 18, though, due to spending lots of luck throughout the session. So even though he could push his roll, his odds were still not good. Not only did he fail the push roll (which was going to result in the lighter running out of fluid or breaking), but he critically failed, rolling a 98. So instead, he blew the dynamite up in his hands and killed the whole party. The monster died too, though, so they at least got brownie points for that! The other important thing about pushed rolls is that they are not "do-overs." The book explains that they represent trying an action again for the second time, or otherwise spending more time trying to complete the action. This is why you can't push combat rolls. So, there is still a narative, that is supposed to include foreshadowing by the keeper of what might happen if the pushed roll is failed, that keeps everything story focused. Luck Pool: Spending luck is something I allow my players to do just to give them a little bit of an extra edge, though it's also a double-edged sword. For example, in my HoTOE game, there is one player who has actually burnt his luck down to 1% (he is also indefinitely insane). So, his character is just miserable. Restaurants never have what he wants to order, cards drive through puddles and splash water on him, his clothes rip on objects, he is the one singled out by pickpockets in busy shopping bazzars, and of course, he is always attacked first by monsters! Anyway, I love this game! My experience has been that luck pools and pushed rolls don't make my players into action stars. Instead, it just drags out their slow descent into madness and death a little bit longer!

I am almost done with the second scenario book, and pacing, for the most part, has not been too bad. There is one key handout the players get at the start, which is Mr. Beddow's notes. I would say that, at the very least, print off a few copies of that to hand out to players so that they have an idea on what they are doing with each location. The little blue traveler's guide book is also a big help. I have one player who loves reading the section on the current city they are in and visiting mentioned locations, which usually tie into the story. Also, if players get stuck, you can always fall back on the idea roll or just throw them a clue or event to get them back on track. It turns out that it is pretty linear as the players just follow Bedeow's notes, traveling from one town to the next, and doing mostly the same pattern of actions in each town (get a hotel, research at local library/museum, meet with people, get clues, encounter danger at the moment of completing task, then ride train to next destination). I think the pacing is really flexible. I have seen youtube videos with very slow pacing, with lots of detailed descriptions and in-character role-playing. My group, however, runs much quicker. For example, we don't spend a lot of time during the research parts. A player might say "I want to research at the library for the day" and then I just have them roll their skill checks without bothering too much with finding translators or describing what the library looks like. In my game, we can have a whole day go by in 4 seconds by narrating that "you spend the day searching dusty tomes in the library in Pairs and (rolls dice) you don't find anything of interest." The danger level has also been very low in my game. It didn't necessarily have to be that way, but the choices my players made mostly kept them safe, along with a few lucky rolls (that, and being nice with one particularly deadly encounter where I had the antagonist opt for non-deadly attacks). One character, however, just went indefinitely insane, and his luck has been reduced to one percent, so things should start getting interesting. Again, this is something that is flexible, and for a large group, you might want to increase the danger levels. Having a lot of players I think would be tough. I have three players and I wouldn't mind having one more, but four would be my cap. There just isn't quite enough stuff for everyone to do, it seems. With your number of players, if possible, it might be worth getting a second keeper to help manage things. That way, one group of players can go off to research at the library, while maybe another group goes off to meet contacts. Then they can all join back up for the final act of the chapter. Finally, I find that it sometimes help to give a little bit of prodding. I find myself having to ask things like "So, is there anything else you want to do today, or do you just want to head back to the hotel and sleep for your meeting tomorrow morning?" (this is where the blue book comes in handy) And, a lot of the time I can just sit quietly and let them talk about what they want to do or try to figure out what is going on. It has been a lot of fun, but I am looking forward to wrapping it up and maybe starting the two-headed serpent campaign if I can convert it into standard CoC.

Hi, I just started running this for my local store as well. For one, I think it looks like a good adventure for. I decided to run the Blood Red Fez adventure in book 2 as a prologue to the main adventure. The main reason for this was I really wanted to cement the trust in Prof. Smith, and I figured a prologue with pregens that sets up Smith and a band of investigators that he leads as a good way to do it. Now they know that when they make new characters they should have a background tied to Smith or the Oriental club, or both. It is also a good adventure that gives the players an idea what the larger campaign might look like, and what kind of characters they may want to build. We have only played one session, so I don't have much else to add at this point. I ordered the screen, when it comes in I will let you know what I think of it.

Mine should arrive any day now I hate using PDFs, but it was nice to get it to thumb through before my physical copy arrives.

My PDF lists it as 5....Maybe it is because I am using the new re-release pdf version.

Ok, I think the wording for weapon damage confused me, I didn't realize it was giving an example with the "4 points of damage carries over to the next round." But now I get it, so yes, once my mace takes 20 points, it is ruined, as simple as that. Thank you!

Thank you so much, this helps a lot! First, the base 5 percent chance to parry is under the table "Shields Statistics Table" on pg31. It is 5 10 and 20 percent for small, medium, and large shield respectively. So I could not wield a mace in my offhand anyway as I don't have the dex! But, for the sake of working this out, if I try to parry with mace in off-hand, it would only be 5 percent, just like my small shield (my character has no parry bonus from abilities). Ok, that makes a little bit more sense. If I have two maces, and assuming that I did have the dex, I can: 1) make two attacks, no parry, at 30 and 5 percent. 2) attack with primary for 30 percent and parry at 5 percent 3). Attack at 5 percent and parry at 30 If I have a mace and shield, then I can attack at 30 percent and parry at five, and that's it. So basically, it will be the same parry chance but, the mace might break. The shield won't break, but it only offers damage reduction rather than granting a full miss.. Also, I take it that if I succeed on a parry while the attacker misses, I won't do damage the attacker's weapon like I would do when parrying with my mace. But, I don't have the ability to wield two maces so, my real options then are: 1) Wield a mace and shield, with 30 percent attack and 5 percent parry 2) Give up my attack in order to parry at 30 percent with my main hand mace- a much better defense option but, I basically miss a turn and risk breaking my weapon. Is this correct? This would make more sense, because then if I used a medium shield I would get a 10 percent chance to parry rather than 5, and so then I would have a better chance of parrying with the shield rather than my offhand mace (my character doesn't have the strength to use a medium or large shield, poor Fredrick!). Of course, this only works if I am right in interpreting the rules to mean that you can only attack or parry with a single weapon in a turn, and not both (unless you have 100 percent skill in either action, as explained under splitting attacks). This really seems to make the most sense to me based on the wording for how to handle wielding two weapons, unless that wording is meant to capture the split attack action for characters with 100 percent skill in a weapon/split parry when you have 100 percent in parry, but I don't think so.

According to the rules, as far as I can tale, my mace needs to take 20 points of damage to break. The mace needs to take at least 4 points of damage from a single hit to carry over to the next round. And, as far as I can tell, the rules seem to suggest that if the weapon does not break, all damage against it goes away after the combat is over. it is almost like instead of HP the weapon should be described as having stress points. Or, maybe outside of combat you are able to repair the weapon, or something. I don't know. The rules, as I seem to understand them, just makes no sense. I should have a better chance to parry with a shield, not worse, and shields should certainly have a chance of breaking, especially wooden shields.

Hi, I am playing RQ2, as I just bought it. What you explain here makes sense (and reminds me of the WFRPG), but then it doesn't appear to be that way in the rules. Although, on pg.28-29, where it talks about how having two weapons means you can attack twice, parry twice, or defend and parry, which seems to suggest that you can only do one of these otherwise. But even so, why not just defend with a second mace in the off hand? Sure, it might break, but I would still have my primary mace. It just seems worth the money for the extra protection. It also doesn't make sense that I would have such a harder time to parry with a shield than a light mace. Sure, a weapon might break, but it sounds like the rules are saying that you have to either 1: do all the damage equal to its hit points in a single blow or 2..) do at least 4 points of damage for that damage to carry over to subsequent rounds, but will still go away after the fight if the weapon didn't actually sustain enough damage to break. The mace has 20 hps so I am not too worried about it breaking. To me, it seems like what would make sense is if the base bonus of 5 percent for the small shield was added to my parry skill with the mace. So then I have a choice, either parry with a mace at my normal 25 percent, risking a weapon break, but avoiding all damage on a success, or parry with a shield at a +5, with a success meaning that I get to apply the shield's damage reduction. I am kind of surprised that there is no errata in the new edition to better explain how this works. Seems like everyone has their own system or mishmash with later versions and/or BRP to solve it. I was kind of hoping that this reprint would of had errata for this kind of stuff...

Well, I didn't think I could parry with a missile weapon with a shield anyway...But even if were just talking about melee fighting, why would I ever bother with a shield when I have a better chance to parry with my mace, and a successful parry with the mace means no damage, whereas I still might take damage even when parrying successfully with the shield. As far as training go, it seems like it would just be better to train up with my mace rather than with the shield, since it starts out better and, again, a successful parry will mean no damage. So I don't know why I would bother training with the shield when I get better defense and better offense at the same time by training up with the mace.

Hello. I am new to RuneQuest, and I just rolled up my first character and did a practice battle with a troll-kin and an elf with a bow. The thing is, I am not sure how a shield is supposed to work. For example, it appears that I have a 25 percent chance to parry with my light mace, but with my small shield I only have a 5 percent chance to parry (I have no modifier to parry skill based on ability scores, so I only get the weapon/shield's base chance). So the question is, why would I ever try to parry with the shield when I have a 20 percent better chance to parry with my mace? Also, does the shield's armor reduction only take effect if I successfully parry with the shield? From the rules, this seems to be the case. So, I can either parry to avoid a blow with a 25 percent chance of success or, take a 5 percent chance to add damage reduction. This seems to make shields sound like a bad idea, so I think I must be missing something here. Can anyone help me out with this? Thanks!

Will do! He got his hands on his first mythos tome the last session, but he could not read it as he did not know the language it was written in. I am sure when he makes his own character before kicking off the main campaign, he will take several languages. Oh, the poor soul lol

We just did our first session, and we started with this scenario. They were really glad I did, as now they have a good idea what kind of skills and backgrounds to focus on for the main campaign. So far, one character managed to sneak into the Myer's cabin and steal the Whispering Fez tome, but no one can read Persian, so they are having to rely on Baron Von Hofler's expertise. They don't fully trust him, so one character is going to stay up all night with him while he tries to decipher the tome. Just as they pull into the next stop he will try to mesmerize him to sleep so he can still the book and the red fez (the players actually bought multiple hats to use as decoys to confuse the cultists, but of course, they showed the baron the real hat!). I plan to have the spell wear off with just enough time for the player to jump off the train if he wants to chase the baron down alone, or he can stay on the train with his friends. He won't have to put up too much of a fight, however, as his daughter will be there with her allies, and will be all too happy to rid herself of those things as she tries to get her father psychiatric help, but of course, he will miss the train and have to make the overland journey to the next stop in order to board the train.This would be a blessing in disguise, however, as the shadows will attack the investigators for the first time tonight (the one player who might get left off the train is the only one to have seen them so far, and the one time there was almost a combat (when he was trying to steal the whispering fez tome) he ran away, and the shadow could not follow as there was too much sunlight. Yes, it is longer than I thought! I thought we could do it in maybe two sessions, but now I think it will be tough to do it in less than three. The players pretty much skipped the initial investigations in London, which saved a lot of time. Though, they did learn about the murder of the Fez collector when they went out shopping for multiple decoy fez hats!

Thank you guys! Based on your feedback I think I am going to go with the train. I think it will be better to run a scenario that does not have as much player death, as I want my players to experience a sense of advancement (and one player is interested in learning to cast spells, though he has no idea the dangers that actually entails). Also, I think I can run this adventure in about 8-12 months. We seem to clip along at a pretty good pace, and I am considering skipping the dream lands scenarios, along with some others (like the doom train), but we will see. I think I can complete most scenarios in a session, with a few taking 2-3 sessions to finish. I might try to fit in an occasional weekend marathon session as well, where we play for 6 hours or more to try to knock parts of it out. If it ends up taking much longer than I thought, so be it, that just means more mileage out of my investment (I am pretty new running this game, with only two sessions under my belt, so I could easily be underestimating the time it will take to finish this). I am going to see if I can get a fez hat before I run the blood red fez scenario as a prologue. That optional adventure has really hooked me in. I might see if I can get other people at the store to walk in randomly wearing a fez just to get under my player's skin! (I am hoping that I can find some cheap ones from a Halloween store).

Hello everyone, I was just wondering if I could get some advice. I have both the Time to Harvest material and the new Horror on the Orient Express. I also ran a one shot game at my local store, and everyone had a blast and is looking forward to starting a regular game. So I have a group of players too! The only problem is, I can't decide which to run, Harvest or train? I am really tempted to start Orient Express with the gaslight era scenario as a prologue, but I also love the crazy story in Harvest, which will really freak out my players. The train adventure looks like it will take a long time, which makes me lean towards Harvest, but then again, I did pay an arm and a leg for that box set. For those experienced with both campaigns, which would you recommend?

I have only ran two scenarios so far (the ones that came with the keeper screen), and I suspect a 100 percent in firearms is not that much of a game changer (only one of the scenarios had a situation where guns mattered, and even so, winning that combat was by no means winning the scenario, as the players continued to lose sanity until they figured out how to solve a puzzle). It's true that a character with 100 in firearms will be good at shooting things, but even at medium range, he will still only have a 50 percent chance to hit stuff. If the group really want's to be munchkins, each player could put 100 percent in a different skill, so one has 100 with firearms, one has 100 with library use, one with 100 spot hidden etc. But even still, they will only have 50 percent to pass hard tests, and if one player dies/goes insane then there will be no one to serve as an effective backup for the skill they specialized. In reality, you are probably doing the players a favor by capping skills at 75 percent.

This sounds like a great idea!

Yes, I think I might have actually misunderstood this rule, anyway. Reading back through some adventures, this method is actually used. Official rule or not, however, I think you are both right, so I will keep using it. Thank you all for your feedback

Thank you, sir, for writing an excellent adventure! I wish I could talk more about it but I really don't want to spoil things for others. I never thought I could play a game where players would be seriously spooked by mice! It was fantastic!

Hello everyone! I am new here and excited to be running games at my local store. I am on the fence regarding if I should start with Harvest or Horror on the Orient Express. Any recommendations?

Oh? Well, it certainly was a blast! Though, the next scenario also looks quite good. I ordered Horror on the Orient Express as well, and I am debating getting Namless Horros, and maybe some of the older stuff, like Mansion of Madness, dead lights, and Mask of something-something. Although, it sounds like the Orient Express will keep me busy for some time. What other adventures would you recommend?

Thanks, we all had a blast (no pun intended)! I look forward to having many more game sessions.

Oh, I guess I should point out what was the most confusing elements for the players to grasp. This element was when the degree of success mattered and when it didn't. For example, they knew that an extreme success in shooting meant more damage, so they started to think that with all skill checks, a better roll would mean more detail, even though that is not necessarily the case. Really, the only time the player needs to tell me the degree of success is with opposed melee combat roles. All other roles are either a success of failure, with different thresholds required for success. However, I never explained this nuance of the rules to them, and even found myself going along with it and giving more information or improved results when players rolled a hard or extreme success, even if only a normal success was necessary. I will explain this difference in more detail for a regular gaming group, once I get it going, but I figured I didn't really need to spend the time on it for one shot adventure.

Hi Johnny Dollar, I am glad that you liked the review! The bonus/penalty mechanic was pretty straight forward and easy to implement. The only hiccup was one player was rerolling the ones die instead of the tens, but that was an easy fix. The push mechanic took slightly more getting used to as players learned that it was not a do-over, and could not be applied to all types of rolls. However, they did get the hang of things very quickly, and for a first time playing this game for all involved, it was surprisingly smooth experience with very little rules referencing. It should be noted, however, that even though this was the first time for me and the players to play CoC, everyone was still a veteran player, with the exception of one player (who still picked it up pretty quick). As for multiple attacks, as I understand it, you can shoot your gun a number of times equal to its rate of fire, but if you do, every shot must include a penalty die, and all shots are made on your turn, in dex order (though, readied ranged weapons attack at dex +50). I told the players this but they never opted to take multiple shots. Machine guns, however, have more options as they can fire semi and fully automatic, and also have the option for doing suppressive fire (you can unload a 50 round drum in your Tommy gun in one turn!). I did not read these rules too carefully as I knew there would be no machine guns in the scenario, but it is something along the lines of firing bursts of ammunition (i.e. you roll to hit for a group of bullets instead of each individual bullet). I am also not sure if the penalty die applies to melee attacks. There was also a confusing contradiction in the rules where a monster had two attacks, but also stated that it only had a swarm attack, which affects everyone within 10 yards. I wasn't sure how to interpret that, but the players avoided that encounter so again, it didn't come up. I was planning on splitting the difference, and saying the monster can attack up to two people in the area, along with anyone within 10 yards. I am glad people are enjoying the review, and I look forward to my next session. I have already started preparing for my next demo!

So, I was able to run a one shot adventure that came with the keeper screen yesterday and I thought I would post a review/first impressions of the game. 7th edition is my first and only experience with CoC games, and it was tons of fun! Here is a not-so-brief overview of my impression of certain rules and how it all worked. I tried to write it as spoiler-free as possible, but very astute players may pick up on a thing or two, maybe. 1) Sanity loss was not as debilitating as I thought it would be, but it did seem to kick in at the worse moments. In the final fight, for example, a character who had indefinite insanity lost a sanity point (even though they passed their sanity role) and had a bout of madness for 9 rounds (in other words, there was no way to avoid the madness in the final scene!). I rolled randomly and the chart said to pick a person of interest from their background, and that the player hallucinates and sees this person. So, he started shooting another one of the players as he thought it was his arch enemy. And yes, he dealt a mortal wound to him! 2) I allowed the optional rule for rolling luck. Most players were hesitant to use it, as decreasing their luck stat seemed to be a pretty steep cost. Also, one player rolled three 1s, and so he started out with a luck of 15! That meant the group luck was 15, which really hurt the group (hurt as in it killed everyone! More on this below). 2.5) I also used luck rolls when characters asked about something I hadn't thought of. For example, they found a pile of old junk and asked if they could find rope in it. I called for a luck roll to see. Second, in the fight at the end where guns were not helping much, and one character wanted to free another player from some grabbing tentacles, I called for a luck roll to see if one of the player's signature straight razor had fallen out of his pocket. In both cases, the luck roll failed. 3) The idea roll only came up once. The players were a bit stuck, and I wanted to hurry things along a bit as we only had one session to play this scenario. They had already discovered most of the main clues, so I allowed an idea roll in order to see how the clues fit together. Basically, I told them straight up that they had two locations to explore, but the choice was theirs. 4) There was really only one combat, though technically we did things in initiative order twice, but the first time the party just ran away (Good idea). In one scene, I thought for sure there would be a combat, but the players surprised me. Combat is very deadly. One player fired his rifle at an animal and did impaling damage (with an extreme success), and dished out 15 or 20 points of damage. This made everyone pretty nervous about starting fights. 5) I had planned for a chase scene but it never happened, mainly because the players avoided a major combat. So, I didn't get to try those rules out. Also no magic rules used. 6) Players did try to push rolls a few times, and with disastrious consequences. At one point, for example, a player tried to steal a stick of dynamite out of another player's pocket, failed, tried to push, and failed again. So I ruled that not only did the other player notice the attempt, but that the stick was dropped into a creek and floated away. The worst was at the end, however, where one player, who was seriously injured and laying up against the back of a cave wall (he was shot by the other player who was going insane), tried to light a stick of dynamite to kill the big horrible monster causing all the trouble. In the scenario, lighting a stick requires a luck roll as the sticks are damp and hard to light. Well, this was the character with a luck of 15 (it was actually now 9 as he had burnt luck earlier). He failed his role, then pushed, and failed again (I am not sure if you can actually push luck rolls, but since this was an actual task of lighting the fuse, I figured it made sense to be able to push it). I was debating on what terrible thing should happen when I suddenly realized that he had rolled a 97, a critical failure on a failed push roll! So, yeah, in his haste and desperation to light the fuse, he accidently touched the stick to the flame and exploded the dynamite (trying to light a stick of dynamite after sustaining major blood loss, and in the dark, is a risky thing to do). He and everyone in the cave, along with the monster, were instantly killed (as per the published scenario rules). So, no one made it out alive, but they did kill the evil boss monster. It was very memorable. Oh, I almost forgot, I also allowed for a pushed luck roll to search a pile of junk (I don't remember what they were looking for) but failed, and the player cut himself on a rusty nail for 3 points of damage, a third of their health! I did have to deny a few requests to push some rolls, but this came more from not quite knowing how they worked. After a few times, the players were able to figure out how it worked and then it wasn't a problem. Personally, I love the push mechanic, the tension it builds and the very bad things that happen when they go wrong is loads of fun. For those who aren't sure about it, I would say give it a go! On a related note, the bonus/penalty die/dice seemed to work well enough. It saved me time from trying to figure out how much of bonus/penalty modifier I should apply. 7) The scenario recommended giving an epilogue . I can't really restate it here for risk of spoilers, but basically, it was along the lines of a newspaper story coming out several months later where people had no idea what the heck happened. None of the player character bodies were ever found. 8) I was initially worried that the game might get stale or boring with not much action happening until the end, but this was not the case. The atmosphere, mystery, and slowly ratcheting up the steaks and weirdness kept everyone engaged. Veteran players of DnD and other RPGs were jumping scared from plain old barn mice! Part of this might of been that I was just running a really good published adventure, but it was still comforting to see that it is possible to keep the game exciting with few combats and dice rolls. 9) In conclusion, I found the game to be extremely enjoyable, but I do think it requires a bit of skill on the game master's part, as well as an understanding from the players that they are not action heroes. Pacing seems to be very important. Right when the players were starting to get a little bored or frustrated, I made sure to make those the times I "fast forwarded" ahead, called for an idea role, or had something interesting happen. The last thing I wanted was the players sitting around not sure what to do. If they started to not drive the story with their actions, then I would drive it with events that escalated the situation. Having a well-written adventure also seems to be pretty important. I do not yet feel confident that I can write a good scenario for this game, and I don't think I will try for a while as I want to get more players for the game. In terms of how it compares to older versions, I can't say. All I can say is, it was far more horror than it was pulp action. I think a gun was shot only 4 or 5times in 6 hours of playing. Characters got seriously injured from doing things like climbing up into a cave and searching piles of junk. One player who had a bout of madness was punching a tree and hurting himself, he lost half his health doing that! In conclusion, I am very happy with this game, I love every rule mechanic and aspect about it so far! I can't wait to pick up the investigator's handbook and Horror on the Orient Express on Tuesday!