Daucuscarota

11 hours ago, Jeff said:

This is pretty much the feedback we get. The handful of grognards grumbling about a few slight discrepancies seem to be looking for something to grumble about. Then again, it could just be a case of "not really my kind of game" - which is just fine. No game is going to work for everyone. I got a long laundry list of popular games that don't work for me.

Jeff

Come one! Really? That's mean. You deny or minimize your own responsability and exacerbate the "bad players" guilt. That not professional, man.

In my own experience, the book is a chore to read. I haven't finished the character creation chapter yet and I feel fatigued. It's been a couple weeks since I opened the book, I really don't want to go back to it; it should be a pleasure, not a bore.

6 hours ago, Psullie said:

One thing that the Resistance table does that the straight rolls doesn't do is modify your chance based on the resistance. As only once dice is rolled, the active participant, it is for example easier for your spell to work on a POW 8 target than a POW 15 target, how much easier depends of your POW.

Let's say your adventurer has a POW of 12, in CoC this would be 60%. Two possible targets, POW 8 (CoC = 40%) or 15 (CoC = 75%). In CoC your adventurer would need to roll 60% or less on the first (regular difficulty), or 30% on the second (Hard Difficulty). In RGQ your rolls are 70% or 35% respectively (taken from the table). 

Now if your adventurer had POW 18 (80%) the difficulty levels are the same (80% on the first, and 40% on the second), but in RQG it would be 95% and 65%.

I didn't consider this, but I don't think it's that important unless you really need more realistic probabilities. I guess I will choose what my players want. The resistance table is not hard to use, it only takes a few seconds to calculate. I will run both ways in different adventures to see which they like the most or which suits better our style.

But this, on the other hand:

Quote

Also with regard to Skills, RQG has adopted the 'high-roll wins ties' from HeroQuest rather than higher Skill, which IMO provides a better mechanic by allowing weaker opponents a chance to win.

This I guess is what really matters here. As CoC is not focused in combat, it can get away with it, but RQ will benefit a lot from this.

I will check on it. After Crimson Letters and a couple bleak scenarios from The Things We Leave Behind (my friends really dig it! We have yet to run the rest), we want some other moody adventures where nobody really knows what's happening.

We prefer one-shots and short adventures, we really can't engange in long campaigns (we are old now, have jobs and families to tend to and books to write... you know). We never finished Masks of Nyarlathothep.

Nameless Horrors, you say? "The Space Between—What was planned as a fantastic new feature film is turning into the shoot from hell. The leading lady has vanished, the director has retreated from the world, and the police are sniffing around the set. It is up to the investigators to get the film back on track and share its vision with the world." Now that sounds intriguing. I think this books is what we were looking for, thank you very much.

3 hours ago, Scott Dorward said:

I'm not sure I accept that chases aren't part of purist Lovecraftian play. The main inspiration for putting the chase rules in 7th edition was the long, memorable chase scene from The Shadow Over Innsmouth . We wanted to make sure that you could recreate that in your game with mechanical support.

Ok, I'll buy it. It's just not the style I prefer for this game, but it's a good thing this exists for those who like it (or for me to adapt it into another game).

3 hours ago, KnygathinZhaum said:

I guess I just don't see 7e as encouraging pulpier playing (unless we get into specifically discussing the Pulp ruleset). The only chases I've had thus far were human v. human, fwiw (and I must say, they all involved a great degree of peril and/or hilarity, so I feel like I *have* to defend its use in traditional CoC) so it's not like it was some action sequence involving fight or flight against anything in the mythos.

If you're ever in The Triangle...(no, not Bermuda! North Carolina!) come sit at my table. We'll run a Pulp game and I'll show you Pulp, sir!!

I can't travel, I don't have a Visa, but thank you!

Well, I agree that the chase rules are really good, I even incorporated some parts in a Savage Worlds campaign based on Mad Max classic movies. Now, rules for chases are just natural in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone is fighting for water and gasoline, but not in a story about discovering the nature of reality. I resolve chases in my CoC games with simple opposed STR, CON or DEX rolls. These chases are actually to escape a danger, they don't need a lot of rules and rolls. Car chases might be resolver with opposed Drive skill rolls.

Yeah, the rules are not bad, they are useful for chases. But the fact there is a separate chapter for them, and that it is a more or less long chapter (22 pages, a little longer than the system rules chapter), is meaningful. Ultimateley, the rules allow us to play both purist and pulpier styles, it's just the book that enfatizes the later.

4 minutes ago, KnygathinZhaum said:

Yeah, no.

There are rules for fights and chases in 7e, but I've yet to run a game based on 7e that focused on "Action" and have only had 2 or 3 sessions where a chase even cropped up.

And the only thing 'Pulp Cthulhu' is proof of is that 7e is easily-modifiable for compatibility with an action-based adventure, but Pulp Cthulhu ≠ 7e. I'd imagine having another book to sell means you'll "sell more books", but the only thing it's offered me is another way to play CoC and I'm not sure I can find fault in that.

Also sort of can't believe I have to quote text from the darn book itself but:

I'd assume the members of this dark cult would be known as "cultists", because...well...it's a cult.

There are many pages about chase rules, yeah. It's an entire chapter, actually, and that has to mean something. The chapter devoted to academic research (De Rerum Supernatura) was eliminated altogether, and that has to mean something as well.

Yeah, some of us play the game as it was intended to be in previous editions because we know those previous editions. But the 7th edition, which for me contains the best set of rules (asadie from the chase rules should jut be a couple of pages, not an entire mini-game), is aimed for more action and pulp adventure, even the first scenario was written like this. People reading CoC for the first time, will see it as an action game more than ever.

Your quote from the HPL story doesn't demonstrate there are cultists everywhere for the investigators to fight. The cult is not the focus of the story, the raid is not the focus of the story. We all read about those things second hand. Anyway, I'm not saying there dhoul not be cultists ever, I say there should not be cultist always.

On 4/7/2017 at 3:17 PM, rsanford said:

In haven't read it yet but what about Stealing Cthulhu? Likewise Silent Legions might be useful.

Yes, this is the best book to run Call of Cthulhu. The author understands Lovecraft way more than Sandy Petersen and anyone in Chaosium does. For starters, what with those cultists everywhere in CoC games? Graham Walmsley seems to have read and re-read all HPL works, because he realised there were no cultists in the stories as written.

Cultists come from D&D: Cultistst are the Cthulhu goblins. But CoC is not supposed to be a dungeoncrawling game, you are not supposed to fight and fight and fight. The books states that clearly more than once. Well, 6th edition did. 7th edition is about fights and chases and gunfights (Pulp Cthulhu is the proof of that fast, furious and fun approach;maybe that sells more books, maybe Sandy likes Doc Savage more than

More than that, Graham Walmsley gives really good advice abut how to manage your entities, how to draw elements from Lovecraft (and others) stories and how to riff with themes.

Stealing Cthulhu is the book.

In short terms: Do you know any good cosmic horror/lovecraftian adventures for Call of Cthulhu? Either 7th or previouse editions.

In not to short terms: I have been playing Call of Cthulhu since the 5th edition, but all the published adventures I have read and run are not exactly what one would call cosmic horror or lovecraftian. The classic haunted house is a ghost story, and one of the scenarios in the Keeper's Rulebook isn't exactly horror/mystery, but more gun action oriented (as the 7th edition tends to be, anyway). The second scenario is much better but terribly wordy and hard to prepare.

Do you kknow any good adventures for CoC, that are cosmic horror or more in the Lovecraft vein? Lovecraft almost never wrote about cultists and gangs of investigators fighting with guns, much less with regular guys punching monsters in the face. I know it's not easy to capture Lovecraft style into a game, but that's why I'm asking if you know any adventure like that. Even if not for CoC.

Call of Cthulhu 7: It says opposed skill rolls are only for Player versus Player and Melee Combat, not for regular skill rolls or contests versus a NPC. "Outside of combat, the Keeper should avoid using opposed rolls between non-player characters and investigators", unless, and only when, an opposed roll enhance the drama.

Skill rolls

On a regular basis, CoC 7 says only players should roll dice. Before the player rolls any dice, the Keeper must determine a difficulty level: Regular, Hard and Extreme

*Regular difficulty level: You must roll equal or less your full skill or characteristic[1].
*Hard: You have to roll equal to or below a half of your skill of characteristic.
*Extreme: You need to roll equal to or below a fifth of your skill or characteristic.

[1] In Call of Cthulhu 7, characteristics and skills are both represented as a % value ranging from 0% to 100%. Characteristics are determined with 3d6 x 5. Why RQG returned to a previous modality is beyond my grasp.

Player vs NPC: If you are facing a living entity (or sort of living; it's Cthulhu, remember), the difficulty is set based on a foe's complementary skill (Stealth is opposed by Spot Hidden, for example) and you don't make opposed rolls.

*If the opponent’s skill or characteristic is below 50, the difficulty level is Regular.
*If the opponent’s skill or characteristic is equal to or above 50, the difficulty level is Hard.
*If the opponent’s skill or characteristic is equal to or above 90, the difficulty level is Extreme.

Opposed skill rolls

When you make an opposed roll, you can get one of six results:

*Fumble: the roll is 100. If the roll required for success is less than 50, a roll of 96 or over is a fumble.
*Failure: the roll is above the character’s skill or characteristic (but not a fumble).
*Regular success: the roll is equal to or below the character’s skill or characteristic.
*Hard success: the roll is equal to or below a half of the character’s skill or characteristic.
*Extreme success: the roll is equal to or below a fifth of the character’s skill or characteristic.
*Critical success: a roll of 01.

Who wins? Critical beats Extreme; Extreme beats Hard; Hard beats Regular; Regular beats Failure and Fumble. In a tie, the higher skill or characteristic wins. If again it is a tie, then the Keeper declares and impasse or the players can re-roll.

Cthulhu doesn't have criticals and specials the way RuneQuest have them, but with these elegant rules, you not only get rid of the annoying resistance table (yeah, it's annoying and you know it; it was removed from CoC because of it), but also you can equal Extreme and Hard successes as Critical and Special successes.

You can armwrestle both ways. If a player wrestles another player, they make opposed rolls, if the player wrestles an NPC, he makes a skill roll with the difficulty determined by the appropriate opposing characteristic or skill. If the NPC is an important character or somehow it will be more interesting if the player and the GM both roll dice, then it can be an opposed roll as well.

Call of Cthulhu example of armwrestling:

Harvey gets drawn into a bar with Edgar, another investigator, and after getting drunk they start to fight. Investigators tend to be fat, so they fight as kids, armwrestling. There is nothing riding on the outcome of the game, but the players still want to know who wins. Both sides have the goal ‘to win’. These goals are mutually exclusive; if one wins the other must lose. The situation is also irreversible; if Edgar wins, there is nothing Harvey can do to change that. Neither has ‘armwrestling’ as a skill, so both agree to use STR. Both players roll a Regular success. Edgar has the higher STR, and so wins the wrestle.

As a commentary aside:

On 28/6/2017 at 6:56 AM, Jeff said:

Actually, the spread of result is why both are in. The two methods end up with different statistical spreads - and POW v POW has a certain expectation of result that we do not want to alter (and opposed resolution does alter that rather substantially - in a way that would change setting assumptions). Where the Resistance Table was traditionally used, we kept it. Where the Resistance Table was not used, and where just resolving the issue fast is desired (rather than preserving a certainly predictable spread of result), use a quick opposed resolution. 

The complementary skill setting the difficulty might be not the most realistic [I understad "the spread of result is why both are in. The two methods end up with different statistical spreads" as an intent to be more realistic or fairer] way to determine the exact chance of success, but nothing else is either. The resistance table just gives the impression the chances are fairer, but it's purely by chance when you succeed or fail. There is not an exact way to determine how realistic is it for you to win a contest; you can just flip a coin or roll many dice and compare results on a table. You don't know which of those will tell you the right result if it was a real-life intent, because probability is not divination, just statistics. You can determine probability with statistics and mathematics, but you can determine the outcome, just assume one. To assume an outcome it's just as good flipping coins than rolling dice than using a super computer that takes montsh to give an answer. Choose which is funnier for you, either because it's fastest to resolver or because it's more complex and rules-based or more probable (which would seem to be fairer). That's good. But what is not good is to say that this choice (to bring the resistance table back) was made because it is more realistic. Because that's not the case. And not especially in a world where ducks can kill people with lances.