klecser

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to keep my game quasi-authentic. This is not the first time my players have been overseas, but this is the first time they asked to attempt to do the following. This isn't happening in a game session, so I have a little time to research. If it happened in game, I probably would have just ruled that it could happen.

My players are in Calcutta, India. They have a name and name of business of someone in New York. They do not have a phone number. Our game year is 1923.

If they got connected to an operator in New York (assuming the connection weren't so bad that it was unintelligible), what access to information would a switchboard operator have in 1923? If you call them, and give them a business name, would they be able to look up the number? It seems like, at that time, they just followed the instructions of the person connected and a person had to know a number in advance. A dedicated Directory assistance number doesn't seem to have existed in New York until 1930.

Now, there are ways around this, obviously. A New York contact finds the info for them using local phone books. I feel like even the best libraries in India won't have up-to-date New York phone books. Maybe that is a poor assumption because the British have an interest in keeping that info available? 

I just want to know what a realistic set of barriers would be for someone in this situation in 1923.

What another spectacular surprise. I had been considering Aquelarre for months. As soon as I saw Chaosium distributing, it was a must-buy. Initial reaction to the PDF: Dang, this thing is DEEP. And looks like it will be solid inspiration for CoC, CoC Dark Ages and probably Invictus too!

Please enjoy the latest from RPG Imaginings!

Great report! You touch on some key things that make Keeping any system challenging. Chiefest of which is that it always requires hefty improvisation to give everyone a great experience. To some extent improvisation suggestions can be written into adventures, but in a world of attenuation to publication page counts it shouldn't surprise us that not a lot of text is devoted to it. You (re?)learned a key consideration right out of the gate! I also want to commend you for improvising right out of the gate by immediately ignoring the "suggested" player count and doing what you needed to do for your group. Written suggestions don't need to be followed, and YGMV (your game will vary). I see a lot of Keepers who struggle because they can't bring themselves to deviate from the written text because they hold game designers to a godly level of regard. But game designers are humans, and they have flaws, and they are also simply writing to a huge audience. You have already gotten to the "adaptation is necessary" axiom of Keeping. 

Welcome to the Forums and let us know how else we can help!

Broken glass is such a strong phobia for so many people. It was a perfect choice for an antagonist.

I think we've got at the heart of the matter: You see "improvising" and "fudging" as mutually exclusive. I don't. I think that "improvising" is a lipstick on a pig word that lets us all pretend that improvisation under circumstances you define as ok are ok, and improvisation under other circumstances that you don't prefer are not. It's a double standard, in my eyes.

15 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Are any of those people players? I've never once seem players happy about GMs fudging things.

Yes, they are. I've never once seen players happy about a GM who doesn't act to affect an absurd game situation that a dice roll would make for an uninteresting story. I find it hard to believe that any experienced GM would think they can pre-write their way out of any problem that they encounter. That perfect anticipation is a thing. And that if a GM were doing it right, fudging should be completely unnecessary because any fudge-worthy situation can be prevented categorically. In 30 years in the hobby I have sat at hundreds of tables and I have not seen a single game situation that everything could have been anticipated in advance.

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Maybe not, but is is an accurate one. While the word "cheater" has negative connotations, that is what fudgers are doing -"acting dishonestly or unfairly to gain an advantage".

The advantage goes to everyone.

I'm going to bow out at this stage. Sleep easier knowing that cheaters like us aren't welcome at your table.

30 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Now, I'm not saying that some occasionally fudging can't help at times, only that in my experience, I've seen fudging do far more harm to a campaign than good. All the players in the area know what GMs fudge regularly. 

And the players that I game with know all the GMs who can't improvise and read a table.

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That's not fudging descriptions. At least not if the situation is written that way beforehand. A GM has the power to set up practically all the encounters and scenes beforehand.

Now it is fudging if the GM alters stuff on the fly. 

This comment is really strange to me. If you improvise on the fly, you are a cheater, but if you write it out ahead of time it is ok? How can your players know what you write in advance? And if they don't know what you write in advance, how can they possibly know that "it's ok that you altered a narrative because you wrote it in advance?" It really sounds to me like you are stuck in this perception that there is "one right way" to improvise and that GMs have no choices as soon as dice hit table.

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Or, conversely, don't write stupid outcomes for when the players fail roll or get beaten. Often inopportune die results can be used by the GM to craft more interesting situations and stories rather than stupid ones.

I was waiting for this to happen. The idea that GMs can write scenarios that are good enough to be above mistake potential. Anyone who has GMed for any length of time knows that it is virtually impossible to write a scenario that is not subject to curve balls.

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Dice are used in RPGs for a reason- to randomize the results. If you, as a GM do not wan't random results, don't roll dice.

We've gone from "fudging is bad because it removes player agency" to "you can avoid bad outcomes by not rolling dice at all." How does that not also remove player agency to some extent? You remove a players mechanical skill suite in favor of just the creativity. At the end of the day, does the Keeper not always make decisions that influences a story outcome and that are predicated on creative non-mechanical solutions?

You seem to be questioning things that "people who fudge dice" do, but its ok for people who don't fudge to do similar things, so long as they dress it with rhetoric that makes it feel comfortable.

I'm not asking you to agree with me. I know that isn't going to happen. I'm just trying to point out how "potayto potahto" the arguments seem to be. I don't think any GM can be effective without controlling narrative in some way. I think "random rolls make it fun" is just an illusion. Everything in a game is a lot less random than players imagine it to be.

At the end of the day, the goal should be MGF. But I think its also worth noting to people that what produces that can be very different in different groups. And thats why the debate over "fudging" is a problem for the hobby, in my opinion, because it ultimately results in value judgments about what "acceptable" and "unacceptable" table environments are. And you get people saying "fudging has helped us have more interesting table story outcomes" and the response is: "you're all a bunch of cheaters." That's a real hobby-growing exchange right there. 

2 hours ago, commandercrud said:

If I'm going to just ignore what they say, then why bother rolling?

This isn't a binary choice. It's not like you either fudge all the time or run straight dice all the time. You use fudging strategically to help your game not suck. Why are people ok with stories sucking? Are we assuming it is inevitable and that we have no choice in the matter? That we have no agency to make sure stories are satisfying to people?

I think most Keepers fudge. And I'm not talking about physical dice. I believe that some have never fudged the number that pops up on a roll. But I question that they aren't fudging some other part of the process as they manage their tables. Whether they realize where the fudge occurs is another question. People may  construct rationalizations as to why they don't fudge in some capacity, chiefest of which is Keeper descriptive decision-making. If you aren't fudging a physical roll, you are very likely fudging description. And I'm going to go back to my "PC head blown off in the first five minutes" example above.

If you have an early fight in a game, whether intended or not, and a PC has been building up to an interesting climax with complex politics and a lot of work and fun role-playing, why would you rob them of that on an errant dice roll? I find it hard to believe that a Keeper with any sense let's that character's head get blown off. So what do you do? You fudge. And you can rationalize all you want that fudging descriptions isn't the same as fudging dice, but they aren't effectively any different. It is a Keeper making a decision to alter an outcome for a more interesting story. And it doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a story-telling leader. It absolutely boggles my mind that some of you are willing to accept a more mediocre story if it means attenuating to the dice.

I think part of the interesting psychology of this is that some associate "fudging dice" with cheating and being a "bad or unfair person" so strongly. But as soon as you start fudging description, that's part and parcel with what we do. And it works with players too. I've been at tables where the example above has happened. And I've seen players get irritated when a Keeper rolls behind the screen. Yet, they are perfectly ok with them fudging a description, winking at all the players (or not winking, but most know what's going on), and everybody goes about their merry way. As if fudging description is perfectly acceptable, but fudging dice is an affront to the "spirit of the game." They know that this was an inopportune moment in the story, and that it would be silly to let an errant roll ruin it.

I'm all ears as to what the appropriately supportive alternative is to some kind of fudge in that example. And by appropriately supportive, I don't mean a Gygaxian "too bad so sad" mentality, or "solutions" that include victim blaming.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

But if I know the GM is going to fudge things so that they work out for me regardless, then I stop caring much about the game. It will all turn out the same no matter what I try do.

Once again, I am not saying "no risk." I'm saying "remove stupid outcomes."

You want high risk. I don't want dice-driven, random stories.

I just want to point out that the Luck mechanic doesn't stop an NPC from blowing a character's head off in the first five minutes of a game. (So much for player agency, huh?) If you have games like that, where you say "Welp the dice! They have spoken. You didn't get to do anything, but dice always make things better!" I don't want to game at your table. That is a failure of attenuation to table psychology.

How does the gamer report go for that?

"How was your game?" 

"My character's head got blown off in the first five minutes."

"Isn't that your character that you had been building to that climax and were engineering a political reversal of the cult's policy?"

"Yep, that all ended. Dice don't lie. My character went from relevant and engaged to non-existent in five seconds."

"What a great Keeper! Man, imagine how boring your experience would have been if you got to accomplish your goals. Lucky that the dice were there to put you in your place!"

Yeah, I don't buy it.

3 minutes ago, Imperial_Solaire said:

That's kind of my take on it, and although I feel strongly on this I have to say that I fudge a toll maybe once every 5 sessions, so its far between.

I think that treating dice rolls as incontrovertibly sacred is just as toxic to a table vibe as fudging them maliciously against players. But that's just my perspective, and at any table any Keeper runs this is an example of something that should be discussed by any campaign group in advance. My players know I'm on their side, but they've taken enough knocks to know that they aren't being coddled.

16 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes, but that really wasn't what I was getting at. I was talking about agency.

Stories are mutually crafted. Keepers depend upon players to make creative decisions to drive the narrative. Players depend upon Keepers to regulate the narrative and make decisions of their own. Fudging rolls doesn't have to deny agency. This isn't a binary decision-process. It is a continuum. You can have player agency and make decisions as a Keeper. The Keeper should have some agency to regulate story as the players do, in situ.  Being at the total mercy of the dice removes agency from everybody.

Agency is also, to some extent, illusion. The Keeper is constantly making decisions to regulate fun, and you either trust that process, or you don't. I've always found it pretty amazing that player's will trust their Keeper to present the framework for an interesting story, but then are completely ok with an errant die roll ruining what had the possibility of being a solid narrative. And just so I'm clear here, I'm not talking about preventing "something unexpected and bad happened to the Investigators and now they have to persevere to overcome it." I'm talking about "this produced an outcome completely illogical and fun-killing and now everybody's vibe is lost." And I can see that the logical response to that is that we also need to decide if it is even appropriate to have a die roll to begin with under certain circumstances. But people make mistakes. And you can either let a mistake derail the whole game, or you can take short term action to stop that.

We all have different experiences. You've experienced loss of agency more. I've experienced inane and obtuse die rolls derailing fun more. Consideration for both is important.

4 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I'v e seen far more games ruined by GM fudging that by bad die rolls, or TPKs. Bad die rolls or poor judgement are thing that players understand and can deal with, but GM fudging is something they can't do anything about.

You do bring up an important point here. To a great extent this is an issue of trust. Trust swings both ways. Many of us have had problems with being able to trust GMs. Some players have issues trusting GMs before a game even begins. Some of us have had GMs that we've trusted at the beginning, and then that trust was betrayed when they let an errant die roll completely derail the immersion and fun of the game.

The truth is that all of these things happen and we should all work to stop any issue that doesn't produce MGF. How can we, as Keepers, get better at anticipating issues of trust in advance?

10 hours ago, Imperial_Solaire said:

I believe you should only fudge the roll if it improves fun and/or the narrative.

This. 

Now, a couple disclaimers: 1) roll fudging that maintains a "Keeper vs player" mentality or that is designed to harm the players is never acceptable. You only "fudge up." 2) I do mostly campaign play. Players get attached to their characters. It is ok for players to get attached to their characters. It is not a Keeper's business to tell a player how they should feel about anything, let alone their character. It becomes all about communication under those circumstances and respecting what people like about games. In one-shots, where the expectation of TPK or player-death is expected, this isn't controversial. I would roll completely out in the open when running a game at an FLGS, and make clear that TPK and player death was possible/likely. 3) Anyone reading this should consider that there may be different purposes to fudging rolls than what you imagine. If you have only encountered roll fudging in an anti-player nefarious context, please be open to the possibility that it isn't the only reason why people fudge rolls. I get the impression that people come into this debate with the gloves off because they think the debate is about cheating when, in my eyes, it is really about psychological table management, story-telling, and respect for the players. So, just cool your jets.

I really struggle with the group that says that you should never fudge rolls in campaign play. I also think that, to some extent, this should extend to one-shots too. Why?

Stories with too many "random" elements just aren't fun. Maybe they are fun to you. And maybe you also aren't recognizing times when a roll ruined a story. There is no Keeper on the planet that can perfectly balance a scenario. It is complete arrogance to believe that the dice will always produce fun and compelling stories, or that you can explain your way out of any situation in a way that makes it plausible to your players. Even if you are running a one-shot, you always have to contend with the situation where a player trips on a stone in the first ten minutes and falls into a pit of lava. "You just have extra characters on hand." Yeah, but my response to that is that the random thing that just happened is absurd and stupid. Now, a good Keeper can maybe explain their way out of that. They have the sense to describe the "near miss." But everybody then knows that you did fudge. You just fudged your description rather than the roll. I think a lot of people who think they don't fudge, actually fudge. But it's just a matter of where they fudge.

The true elephant in the room?

Stories are not random. Period. 

I'm probably pretty far afield of a lot of gamers in that I land on an extreme end of the continuum of role-players. I believe that the tactical wargamer background of some of the early RPG creators produced a story-telling crutch in the hobby that most have never fully recovered from. It has trained people to devalue the nature of human story creation. I understand that a lot of people like the random elements in role-playing games. I understand that there is a little thrill that people get from the possibility of someone surprisingly doing really bad or really great in a circumstance. But I also think that if you, as a Keeper, never fudge rolls in campaign play, your stories are probably being compromised in some way, and your players may not be having as much fun as you think they are.

This is why I am attracted to games like Amber and Hillfolk. It is why I really like the trend of "rules-light" games like Kids On Bikes and Tales from the Loop. It is also part of the reason why I like BRP, because BRP can be played rules-light. And we do. Now, if that isn't your cup of tea, that's fine. I've been gaming for nearly 30 years and I've seen "no fudge" ruin so many people's table experiences that I feel compelled to challenge what I consider to be poor conventional wisdom in the hobby.

On 4/6/2020 at 6:59 PM, Dethstrok9 said:

If you are looking for a way to judge a monster's power level, take a look at how much damage it can deal in a turn and how much health it has.

What I would add to this is that the true challenge of a monster is often in it's defensive armor. It doesn't matter what conventional weapon a PC has when, hidden deep in the stat block, many creatures have the fun clauses: "takes one damage from conventional weapons" and "immune to conventional weapons." Most monsters also have hefty armor to the point where a PC can roll max damage on their fancy gun and it doesn't scratch them. I disagree with The Enclave, with respect. Call of Cthulhu stat blocks frequently invalidate the idea  that "if it bleeds you can kill it." Doing one damage to a creature with 32 hit points, 32 times, while facing attacks of 3D6+4D6 DB is tedious and unfun in the best circumstances and a total party wipe under average circumstances. No group of investigators is meant to gain martial victory under those circumstances. Now, a Keeper might throw in a whole bunch of NPC cannon fodder, maybe. But when you analyse your table feel, you may sense a lot of frustration. A little frustration might be ok. But you gotta know your group.

56 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Same... that's one reason I'm not interested in the leatherettes, even though I'm usually a sucker for spending extra money on fancy gimmicks and pretty books. Is makes me a bit sad.... But the leatherette covers are just pretty much always inferior (to my eyes) to the full colour hardbacks.

Totally get it. In light of this news, I'll get the HU Leatherette to support Chris' work and the regular book for Dark Ages.

2 hours ago, davewire said:

I already have the PDFs in prep for these. Any idea what the price will be? Also, will paperback editions eventually be available?

I'm obviously not Chaosium, but their general operating procedure has been to produce softcovers of smaller books and hardcovers of larger books. Yes, there are softcovers of the Keeper's and Investigator's handbooks, but I'm thinking that is more of an artifact of the original 7E Kickstarter. I highly doubt either of these are coming in softcover.

The last page of your PDFs shows the retail price of the standard hardbacks: Harlem Unbound 49.99 USD and Dark Ages 44.99 USD

Leatherettes have ranged between 90 USD(smaller books) and 110 USD (larger books). I would guess that, given these are pretty meaty books, they'll be in the 100.00-110.00 USD range.

On 4/12/2020 at 11:42 AM, Damian said:

I want.

update: I caved and bought it. Looks too awesome to pass up. 
 

Curious question: Is the original cover art included in your leatherette or is that sacrificed to the Old Ones?

1 hour ago, tendentious said:

And if everyone is playing in that spirit, then the question as to whether characters should learn spells becomes moot.

You bring up an excellent point. I don't think it is fair to just assume that players are going to min-max every opportunity that they get. Some of the arguments against players learning spells at all seem to assume this table psychology. Is there a lot of powergaming in the hobby? Yes. Does that mean that a CoC investigator will always choose to learn a spell, or always choose to cast spells that they learn? No. My players are savvy enough, and in tune with the setting enough, to be mortified of casting spells. They understand that every single time they choose to cast a spell, they are making both systemic mechanical and mood decisions. Mechanically, they are effectively choosing to undo any of the SAN gains they got from accomplishing goals in scenarios. In terms of mood, they LOVE the flavor of the struggle to learn and the process of learning spells. They play it as knowing that desperate situations may require desperate measures, and learning spells gives them access to nuclear solutions to problems. And then grappling with whether or not to take the nuclear solution is a lot of fun for them. In this context, it seems incredibly odd and sad to me that a Keeper would choose to remove the possibility of this struggle from their players. It seems like a "training wheels that never come off" approach to Keeping. "I can't trust you to use spells with mood and costs in mind, so you never get the opportunity to use spells." That's what it sounds like to me.

Any Keeper needs to understand their players, and shouldn't treat their players like they are fools. I am deeply concerned that some perspectives on this issue seem to treat players like they are fools, and that it is the Keeper's job to not "suffer" those fools. I find it to be a incredibly cynical approach to table management. That, or simple lack of experience in Keeping the game. Just because a Keeper doesn't understand how to do something effectively doesn't mean that there isn't a way to do it effectively. It also doesn't mean that doing it effectively isn't difficult. There are aspects of Keeping that I haven't figured out yet. Whoever is reading this, there are aspects of Keeping that you, whoever you are, haven't figured out yet. And that means it is incumbent upon all of us to ask questions and answer questions more than we give advice. Any advice can be completely useless or even harmful in the right context.

2 hours ago, Dagonet said:

This may be heretical, but I'd go for the standard cover in both instances. The art is so nice!

No, I feel you. If I go Leatherette I would be sad to lose the art of both.

@MOB, do leatherette versions of books have the full cover art printed inside?

3 hours ago, Stormkhan Cogg of Pavis said:

But isn't this actually going against the feel of the whole game?

*sigh*

Your position seems to make the baseline assumption that it either isn't possible, or isn't desirable, to successfully run a game with Investigators wielding magic. You have your disclaimer at the beginning, "you do you," but then the rest of your post is basically an argument for why Keepers have miscalculated if they use magic. I completely lost faith in the intentions of "you do you" after reading your whole post.

Man, this is a buzzkill. And maybe you didn't intend it that way, but I'm just telling you how I feel. It makes me feel like I'm not supposed to be capable of attenuating to the concerns you raise.

And my concise counter-argument is:

I am capable, as a Keeper, of addressing the concerns you raise.

We can't say "Your Game Will Vary" in the hobby, while simultaneously making arguments that "yeah, but is it right for your game to vary?"

Oof, I've gone from not desiring Leatherettes to desiring two Leatherettes. Curse you, Chaosium!

3 hours ago, Valyar said:

Guys, the concepts are very simple when it comes to fantasy grounds version and hosting game:

With  respect, whether you find them simple or not doesn't matter to your audience. As an educator, if someone asks you a question, saying "it's simple" doesn't instantaneously make it simple in the audience's mind. You have to know your audience. Not all of us are tech savvy, or have experience in VTTs.  We're also essentially asking these questions because Fantasy Grounds website does not adequately make it clear to us what we are paying for. That isn't our problem. That's Fantasy Grounds' problem.

I'd like to point out that what you said in your last message is far clearer than anything anywhere on the website. Thank you for doing that. 

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Someone should tell FG that their website should copy and paste Valyar's text. Their own webpage is clear as mud to someone trying to work out what licence to buy/subscribe to.

I think "Demo" is probably a poor choice of words for the low level licence - something like "Player Character Only" might have been better. 

And I typed my response before reading this.  Well said groovyclam!

9 minutes ago, ColoradoCthulhu said:

The enterprise video conferencing solution Google Meet is now free without limitations until September 30th, 2020. That is what I use for my biweekly virtual group along with Fantasy Grounds and it works very well for five people. Roll20's integrated video solution isn't supposed to work well at all, btw.

You just saved me 15 bucks a month/99.99 a year! Thanks @ColoradoCthulhu!

4 hours ago, Valyar said:

1) If you have the Ultimate edition (it does not matter if you purchase the perpetual license or the subscription) you will be able to host games for unlimited amount of players. The platform is NOT providing audio and video capabilities. For those you will have to use Discord/Skype/Zoom/whatever. Fantasy Grounds is simply VTT. If you want your VTT to support audio and video, go for Roll20 which has OK charsheet for CoC and modules. Foundry VTT has no CoC support in the form of working charsheet, so don't go there.

This helps me more than you know, because I assumed that it was doing something that it doesn't do. When I've been watching videos of actual play that cite Fantasy Grounds, I assumed that all the video and audio that was wrapped into was what Fantasy Grounds was doing. Roll20 may be more what I'm looking for. Maybe Zoom. Video with screen sharing is what I really need. Not VTT support.

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2) what do you mean? Fantasy Grounds comes with ruleset with already defined character sheet with automation built-in

Meaning that a Keeper's Fantasy Grounds account has saved digital characters for each of their players. Based upon your response, it doesn't sound like it does this either?

Thanks for responding!

I'll throw some logs on the fire.

1) So, if I purchase an Ultimate subscription, so long as I maintain it, my players with the demo version would be able to participate in video conferencing using the platform?

2) Would they be able to host digital character sheets too? 

3) Despite the answers above, we could still purchase any CoC module, use hardback rulebooks for consultation, and run dice rolling and the handouts out of FG?