klecser

Then this is all that matters.

Please feel free to read the rest of my post in which I say, on at least two occasions, that fun is the ultimate goal and if this group has fun, then my comments become more general. When I said I would consider a disaster, I mean if I ran it or experienced that game. As in for me personally, and my play style. And others MAY feel the same. They may not. And if not, that is fine. I've been role-playing long enough and played with enough players that the description the TC gave makes me wince. It doesn't make you wince?

This is what I was trying to get at, but perhaps a bit more subtly. I would consider this session to be a disaster and wouldn't expect that my players would find it very fun. Running CoC is difficult. It isn't like hack and slash DND where everything comes down to a roll. Now, I don't just want to come off as if I am scolding the TC without purpose so I'll throw a couple of things out there that the TC can, of course, choose to ignore, but it goes out to anyone Keeping CoC for the first time, and I'd argue for GMing in general for any game. 1) How can I help my players succeed while still challenging them? I'm not saying players shouldn't be challenged. If there was no challenge it wouldn't be a "game." Yet, neither is "so challenging that nothing can be achieved" fun for a majority of role-players. E Gary Gygax kicked off an amazing hobby, but I'm just going to go on the record and say that he was a crappy GM. Nobody should be emulating his GM style if your goal is for your players to have fun. The vinette above reads as if the the TC's GM style is to imagine all the possible ways that players can fail, and give them a darn good chance of making sure they all happen. Now, maybe their play group LIKES Tomb of Horror-style gaming, and that's fine. If that's the case, more power to them. If they had fun, great. But I'd venture a guess that even if every player in that group said they had fun, at least some of them are lying to be polite. Yes, the point of CoC, to a great extent, is to have threats that the heroes can't deal with through human agency. It is the THREATS they should struggle to deal with, not the mechanics of the game. That is an important distinction, in my mind. CoC is about NARRATIVE losing, not constant mechanical losing. 2) Call of Cthulhu, like any role-playing game, can be run in anyway a group wants that they find fun. Any RPG can arguably be run anywhere on the continuum of roll-playing to role-playing. Role-playing games become most beautiful when mechanics take a back seat to the story, in my opinion. CoC wasn't designed to be run like a hack and slash or a mechanics-focused game. It is an investigative game in which the players work to uncover clues. Players won't always find every clue. When they do, contrary to what ToC would have us believe, it is not the end of the game, or an unrecoverable situation. It is the CoC Keeper's job to move clues around and/or craft opportunities to get clues. A Keeper should WANT players to struggle anywhere from a little bit to a lot to get clues, but ultimately make sure that they get clues in a timely manner that doesn't grind the game to a halt. The vinette above makes it sound like the clues in that game must be protected at all costs and should only be attainable after anguish. I wouldn't like that style of game and I've met few role-players that do. Maybe the TC and their group is the exception. So, TC, please do ask yourself if your players had fun. If they did, more power to you. If there is a chance they did not (which it wouldn't surprise me if they did not), ask yourself what work can be done to increase the enjoyment.

1) Did they have fun? 2) Do you want them to succeed?

I predict this wins awards. Just calling it, right now.

Bumping this because there is less than a day to go and they reduced the total needed for the print quality increase stretch goal. Less than 500 needed for it to go to print instead of POD. Go back it people!

I think it is so nifty that authors of books post on these forums. Thank you Peter!

I have never met Greg personally and I only got into Chaosium products in 2016. But as a lifelong gamer, we should all owe a debt of gratitude to Greg for pushing the boundaries of this hobby and bringing a wide variety of interests into it.

I'm an American and I understood that colloquialism!

Wow, that is super nice production values for the physical box. Useful for carrying a single adventure around too.

Backed.

Honestly, I'm really hoping this pans out. The Doors to Darkness web series had nothing to do with the Chaosium supplement and really felt like a bait-and-switch to me.

You might be able to turn off backgrounds in the PDF without losing text?

Get to know Seth's Channel:

Thank you for responding!

The idea that you don't even have to leave Earth for Investigators to experience mind-shattering challenges to their concept of history is very appealing to me. I also love Robert E. Howard's work. Ergo, I've latched on to Serpent people as an existential magical/scientific threat and have been seeking out adventures that feature them. I already have the Hand of Abyzhou (Shadows Over Scotland) and The Darkness Beneath the Hill (Doors to Darkness) prepped and in the pipe for my group as a broad campaign arc, with the goal of either: 1) Connecting the two Serpent Person groups in Rhode Island and Edinburgh or 2) making them opposing factions worshiping different Great Old Ones (Yig and Tsathoggua) as described in The Two Headed-Serpent. Along those lines, I may pull scenarios/ideas directly from The Two-Headed Serpent, but watered down as Classic-style investigative Cthulhu. Finally, I also have Goodman Games' Transatlantic Terror to hit them with as they traverse the Atlantic. London Chapter of Masks? The Chelsea Serpent Which other CoC scenarios/campaigns feature Serpent People that may have mineable material? Thanks in advance for your help!

Page 158 very top left line - "chronometer" is missing an "e"

This is a good example of how there are really two cultures that represent the bulk of writers for Call of Cthulhu: British and American. And while they have a lot in common there are also a lot of differences. I don't know who precisely wrote that passage in the old or new version. But it is something that someone with the Law (US) skill specialization might interpret differently! Scritch Scratch is another example: there were assumptions that need to be made about pub lingo and ownership in Scritch Scratch that are obvious to UK players but were a bit confusing to American players because we don't know pub culture as well. No matter what, its fun to learn these nuances and I'm glad CoC has an international writing bullpen!

The real answer to that question is that people are on death row for years/decades in the US. It would not be out of line for you to tell them: "You don't know" because it is very likely there wouldn't be a date set for a long time after he was convicted. Cops incorrectly jailing him doesn't prevent his lawyer from filing continuances and motions.

It's less about a precise date and more about what has the narrative potential to free him: Page 160: As a player, I'd be pretty demoralized to bring down the Ju-Ju cult or even the corrupt cop and then have him executed anyway because of a date. Just my opinion. "You went to great links to get this awesome evidence. But it was too late." Ouch.

Keeper note on page 154? "Keeper note: depending on when the investigators get round to tackling Ju-Ju House, the dark of the moon falls on January 24 and 25, 1925, meaning they may or may not get to interrupt a rite in progress." The "Rites of the Bloody Tongue at Ju-Ju House" section on page 159 specifies that two sacrifices are needed for each monthly ritual. So, this assumes that you follow the precise timeline at the start of Masks. But, if you don't, you could do whatever you want. There is no rule that says that the ritual night couldn't be "whenever the Investigator's decide to go there."

Thanks for confirming this Mike.

I just want to go on the record here and say that I hope the heck Dave is getting paid to do this work. The quantity of errors here is extensive, and although I'm not an editor, I know a few, and this looks like Chaosium is avoiding having to pay an editor by just having "the public" do it for free. If I'm in the wrong, I'll accept that. But appearances matter. And the appearance here isn't good, IMO. Maybe this is par-for-the-course for the gaming industry and is the only thing that allows Chaosium to get in under budget. But even if that is the case, it bothers me.

We do have specific data on this. I don't remember the raw number of people killed. But I do know that the deaths per 100,000 miles travelled in the 1920s was around 24, and in the modern era it is less than 1 (calculated from government record values). The raw deaths are obviously much, much higher this decade simply because the population has tripled. In addition, safety features have made a huge difference in lowering the derived value (crumple zones, seat belts, air bags, none of which existed in the 20s).

Great question. I'm struggling to find specific timetables of the period. For better or for worse, I told them 10 hours, including stops. That isn't quite realistic maybe in that would be an average of 55 miles per hour, but maybe there was a direct express. But hey, it was off the cuff. A modern train takes 13 hours for that train journey, but train travel times are regressive nowadays compared to the 1920s. Far more mechanical breakdowns and delays in modern times.