klecser

No. Usually 4-6 months after PDF drop. Printing and travel is slower under these conditions.

1 hour ago, Rick Meints said:

Alas, it could be longer than that. 

Anyone bothered about that news needs to learn to see the forest for the trees. Call me crazy, but game companies can only work on so many products at once. Chaosium has a "good problem:" an extensive back-catalog of excellent work. And everyone will have different favorites. It only makes sense that a product with a "less than ideal" recent reprint needs to go to the back of the line for the "super deluxe" reprint. I would much rather have BTMoM in hand before that, given that it is even harder to find and sells at untenable prices on a secondary market.

You're doing good work, Rick.

16 hours ago, Closterphobia said:

I think I’m goign to hold off until the new edition comes out in 2 - 3 years. I’m sure the POD version will be great, but I just bought Harlem Unbound and will nab Malleus Monstrorum  when it’s available in hardcover, and man I still need to eat.  There’s a lot of books out now on my wish list, I’ll never “catch up.”

We have this terrible problem with them continuing to churn out great releases. Man, I hate Chaosium. 😜 

In this episode of RPG Imaginings, I take on Draven Swiftbow's 50 USD DTRPG Challenge and show people an amazing collection of Classic Call of Cthulhu kit that meets the requirements. The funny thing is that I had no idea that Pagan Publishing offered the original Delta Green as POD until I started messing around looking for stuff. So, it was a win for me. We all know the prices that original DG goes for on eBay. Well, if you didn't know, the answer is: a lot.

Love me an Andy AKA MaxWriter vid.  

This is a good idea Michael @MOB. I'll take recommendations like this. I don't always have knowledge of the full catalog, and you just sold me something just by letting me know it exists.

Wow. That's impressive. I appreciate the work that would go into redoing the layout, arranging for the POD, and other tasks that I'm sure I can't imagine. Chaosium rocks.

21 hours ago, Phil Hendry said:

We're starting another one-shot (which will probably take us several weeks to play through)... Blackwater Creek. I'm struggling with it a bit though - it feels as though it wasn't properly proofread/edited - for one thing, the handouts are supposed to be in an appendix, but they're scattered throgh the text and, though Page 8 refers to a "history of Cade (Blackwater Handout 6)" I can't find it anywhere in the PDF!! Anyone know where it went? Anyone know of a source of 'pretty' handouts for the scenario please?

Answered by @ColoradoCthulhu in a thread from March (forum search can help): 

Quote

3. Where is handout nr 6, I realized after a while that it is the background text on page 5, maybe a small text telling it is handout 6 like the other handouts.

You're correct. On page 8, there is a reference to "information regarding the history of Cade (Blackwater Handout 6)," which is then nowhere to be found in the print version of the scenario's pages. However, there is a "Summary of The Confessions of Ezekiel Cade," Blackwater Handout 6 in the PDF version of the scenario near its end, on page 40.

So, if you don't have the PDF that sucks. I would contact Customer Support and ask them if they would send you the Handout.

There are audio recordings of the Handouts posted at Blasphemous Tomes:

https://blasphemoustomes.com/downloads/

@Mike M there is no reference to this issue in the Errata document for the Keeper screen pack.

9 minutes ago, Closterphobia said:

This is really the best response to all RPG rule arguments.

It is just a shame that, for some people, the idea of someone else finding fun in different ways than them is just untenable. 

Josh777 started the thread with a critical premise: That they/their players don't find as much fun in the rule of increased difficulty for high NPC skill. I hope they've found the discussion interesting, but if they ultimately decide to ditch the rule and their games are more fun, then it's a win.

Just now, Mike M said:

To be honest, we already mostly say in a scenario's introduction what its level is and so on. 

This rating came with the Does Loves Forgive? book, so we thought we'd leave it in and see whether it was of use. 

 

Interesting. Thanks Mike. I can see arguments both for and against being explicit about it in a "system." 

I love the idea of the work of our Polish authors being introduced to a wider audience. Thanks Chaosium!

With the release of Does Love Forgive? (https://www.chaosium.com/blogdoes-love-forgive-a-special-surprise-release-from-chaosium-for-gen-con-2020-/) Chaosium seems to be releasing a scenario rating system. Interesting. I wonder if this will become a common feature moving forward? Will past scenarios get retroactive ratings? Here is a screen shot of the system:

The first scenario in the collection is rated a single star and one session. The second scenario is two stars and one session.

Discuss!

@Fred every book has an errata/corrections thread. I don't think that there is an announcement whenever there is an update. Like most errata documents, the last date of update is listed.

I reorganized the original post to put some short scenario collections right after the Starter. This includes the addition of "Does Love Forgive?" one-to-one scenarios. I haven't read them yet, but they were released with the Polish version so I expect that they'll be good. I think being explicit about a one-to-one option is important here for people trying to find any way to play. Folks in rural areas or who are very busy with jobs/family frequently seek out one-to-one play options.

12 hours ago, Fred said:

It’s a fair and easy change. I always house rule a few things myself. Adapting both to my taste and my players. I hope they keep both those options to handle it in later editions for flexibility. This in combination with advantage/disadvantage mechanics makes it smooth.

Flexibility is the key. Every table is different and every group of people have their own interpretations of what is fair and fun.

And I don't mind people disagreeing at all. There are certainly aspects of CoC (any version) I liked from the beginning, grew to love, or have never liked. People hate change. That is an immutable fact. I've worked in a profession for 18 years now and no matter how logical or beneficial some changes are, there will always be people immediately opposed to any change. One of my favorite game-related quotes of the past: "If boosters were filled with hundred-dollar bills, people would complain about how they were folded."

4 minutes ago, Fred said:

In regards to the hatred: See the above comment - “so repulsed by it he plays an earlier edition.” 😉 

And that you all get to hear about that repulsion...over and over and over and over and over again...

I don't come here to be people's therapists or punching bags. Which is why I have a hefty Ignore list.

Back on topic, I'm really glad that @Josh777 posted this thread, because it gives some of us another opportunity to hear insight from a game designer ( @Paul Fricker ) about the hithertos and why-fores of the design process. Like the final decision or not, I find the discussion of the choices fascinating.  

The nerdly cultural obsession with "canon" is an interesting aspect of our hobby.

I've gamed with a lot of people, and in that time I've met many an enthusiast that get visibly upset when they aren't "on the side of canon." They treat the RAW as a sacred thing. "If its in the RAW, it must be 'right,' and if it isn't my perspective, the RAW's wrong."  It strikes me as a need for belonging. A need for the "official authority" to jive with personal perspective. People will sometimes take derivations that don't jive with their personal beliefs of fairness personally (that is not a comment on Joshua's original question...it is never wrong to question.)

The truth is that there is nothing sacred about the RAW. It is what the human designers did with a human creation at a time when they decided they were finished with playtesting and editing. In CoC Paul et al decided to have a tiered difficulty setting system rather than strict arithmetic comparison of rolls. And it fits the setting. If you are "world-class good" at something, it should be all the harder for someone to avoid your experienced and skillful eye.

What is the real surprise to me is the continual raging that some people continue to have over 7th. Its just getting so boring. We get it. A designer took a different direction than you would have. The ship has sailed. The complaining doesn't accomplish anything other than continuing to poison the well of the fandom. Its hard to justify why someone would be so upset about something that they feel the need to ruin it for everybody else.

Can anybody confirm for me that the "Temperance" secondary characteristic defined in the rulebook is the "Willpower" characteristic listed on the character sheet?

The Section marked "Part 4: Conflict" on page 138 answers your question. Initiating an attack in the same space as someone you are pursuing costs a movement action.

The seemingly contradictory summary on page 414 is simply addressing the exception: firearms when ranged.

I thought I might address an elephant in the room this morning. Be civil.

If you're interested, this video has me unboxing and giving overviews of the recently released hardcovers for Runequest and Call of Cthulhu. Time codes in the description if you are focused on one or two products. Smoking Ruins is up front for all the Glorantha fans in the audience!

If you're interested, this video has me unboxing and giving overviews of the recently released hardcovers for Runequest and Call of Cthulhu. Time codes in the description if you are focused on one or two products.

1 hour ago, SunlessNick said:

At the moment, it's a common practice in game design to base mechanics around narrative structure. That's also a factor in Gumshoe, and clue aquisition isn't the only way it does it.

"Scene type" being the clearest example, I'd say. I personally find that labeling a scene a certain type from the start doesn't help me to manage encounters any better than I did before. But if it helps other people, more power to them.

@MOB Can I clarify what this actually means? This means that not only will new products not be available for POD on DTRPG, but old products that the Choasium community has been clamoring for to become available as POD (Armies of Dragon Pass comes to mind as a popular request) are also unlikely to become newly available as POD, correct?

43 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

Ouch!  But, yeah, adversarial games of GM vs The Players need to be agreed upon in advance.

I am fully prepared to contend that Gary Gygax was a human being, and not a god. And that there are aspects of his GMing that are not models for what we have learned over the last 40 years. And I recognize that is not a popular opinion in the hobby. 

20 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

Ditto here, though I'll add that I almost always regret it when I discuss what players missed.  Almost always there's a sense of deflation when you tell them that they did something wrong.  It's a little more positive when they're clearly discouraged from a frustrating session, and you're trying to work through what did and didn't work mechanically, as opposed to according to desires and expectations.

It's also worth noting that often as not, when a session doesn't work out it's because the players weren't acting according to my expectations as a GM, not that they were doing anything wrong.

Ian is making two critical points here.

I very rarely describe the clues they miss. I agree with him that there are risks to pulling back the curtain too much. Attenuation to the mystery is an important Keeper skill and we shouldn't be putting on a magic show that is immediately followed by describing how every trick worked. There is also tremendous fun in not knowing things.

The tone in which you engage matters. I think it critical that a Keeper has the skills to to be empathetic and not be emphasizing "well, you all really screwed that up!" That is not helpful or productive. In my experience, it is more along the lines of "You made a really interesting decision here and I had to work really hard to figure out how to respond to that effectively!" In other words, showing them how they are encouraging me to grow as a Keeper. And that I take their decisions as opportunities, rather than nuisance. You can spot a Keeper that treats their players as if they are a nuisance from a mile away. And I'd venture that they likely aren't as productive of a Keeper as they think they are. Don't be Gygax, unless your players explicitly tell you that is what they want.