andyl

8 hours ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

Petroleum has a ludicrous number of uses outside of being refined into combustible fuels: construction, waterproofing, boat building, small crafts, medicine, etc. It's gasoline which is just an odd curiosity for several hundreds years after its discovery. Coal doesn't have any uses completely distinct from other fuel sources except that on occasion it is more plentiful and easier to exploit than wood.

In the real world Coal has a few more uses (ignoring more modern chemical engineering).  Decorative jewelery, ornaments and figurines for example. People have even made furniture out of it.

Barntar.

p.77 "Note that Barntar is worshiped using the Worship (Orlanth) skill."

p.78 Summary box (top left) says Initiates get "Worship (Barntar) +20%" (also "Cult Lore (Barntar) +15%" although I am not too fussed about that)

Page 132 (Restrictions section) "Uleria priestesses must 90% of their income to the cult and devote 90% of their time to serving their goddess"

Missing the word give.

Very interested in this.  Doubly so if it involves some details of the sewers (which must be a prime location for all manner of intrigue and adventure).

1 hour ago, Keeper Bolog said:

Hi, it's your boy the new guy who asks stupid questions.

I would like some clarification from people that have played the game more than I do. In 7e CoC, probably exactly like older editions, the players can find Mythos Tomes, I have some questions about this:

1. Initial Reading of a Mythos Tomes grants the players knowledge of spells of course, this is clear, but does this reveal all the spells the book contains to the players or just what the Keeper deems necessary/wants to give them? Spells like Contact/Summon Azathoth could probably be an instant TPK/campaign ender if cast, so such spells would likely be eliminated in campaign play.
    
2. A Full Reading seems to only give 2 benefits: More Cthulhu Mythos points and using the Book as Reference Material for various Mythos topics. (On this note, how do you decide if a certain book contains certain mythos information the players wants to search for? Based on the title perhaps and summary?) Are there other benefits to a Full Reading I have missed? Not that these 2 benefits arent enough, I just want to know if I understood all of the mechanics.
    
3. All Mythos books have summaries, but they mostly seem to have information only an expert could know, like how many copies there are, what year it's from and so on. Do you guys basically just ad-lib the summary if the players manage to read the Tome on their own, omitting stuff like year of publishing and such unless they somehow find that bit out? Do you also add plot relevant stuff to Tomes they find to keep the game moving? For example in Masks of Nyarlathothep they can find a certain Mythos Tome (life as a god I think) that describes plot relevant stuff, but said relevant stuff isn't described in much detail in that "mythos tome summary" of said book so it just leaves the Keeper to add what they think is important.
    
4. Now the interesting bit, Becoming a Believer. I do not quite understand if a player can disbelieve only the things he read in the book or if he saw a Ghoul 10 sessions ago he now by default believes all Mythos Tomes he reads? Up until now I have played it as such: If my players saw a Mythos Monster they are automatically Believers whenever they read a Mythos Tome...but this seems to just eliminate this 'non believer mechanic' in the first sessions before ever finding such a book, so I think I am doing it wrong and players should choose if they believe or not on a book by book basis? What are your thoughts on this?

Thank you very much for reading and your answers!

1.  Firstly you should probably use something other than the official spell name.  However reading a tome gives some knowledge of what is in the tome.  You still have to study the spell to learn how to cast it.  That could take hours, days or even weeks depending on the Keeper.  On the initial reading you realise there the number of spells in the tome and maybe names.

2.  It is quite clear on page 175 with what rolls you make to see if the information is there.  As it says the Keeper decides if the information is clear and understandable or somewhat allusive or obscured.

3. Some characters might know (or think they know) some of that stuff - number of copies, where it was printed. Most will not.  You are obviously not meant to read out the description of the tome - as for some it says things like "Questionable translation of ..."  For me when characters read mythos tomes they want the Cthulhu Mythos skill (they are not too keen on the SAN loss though), or they want spells, or they want to use it to see if there is knowledge in it about some monster or situation.  That latter bit is up to the Keeper to come up with - either on the fly or when prepping the scenario.  I generally write about a couple of paragraphs giving a bit of an overview - the cover, the size, the paper, printed or handwriting, what the handwriting looks like, any stains - especially blood, if it has pictures, and then some vague description about what it contains.  If I have added plot specific information to the tome that will definitely be revealed on a full reading.

4. The Becoming a Believer is really for the other way around.  You read a book and think "these are all fanciful stories, they are not real" then you see a Deep One (or a Ghoul) and you realise that they are real.  If you had already seen the Deep One and then read about it in a tome - then you are more likely to say "this explains so much ...".

For me shrink-wrap on a book is useless single-use plastic. Goes straight into the bin.  Something we should be aiming to get rid of. 

On 4/1/2023 at 10:58 PM, Zouabar said:

I was completely unaware of such a mechanic, I'll check it out and discuss it with my players, see how they all feel about it (I don't want the blind PC relying too much on other PC, especially for combat, for fear it would impact the group dynamic negatively).

I will also mention that at various times the PCs have ran for their lives - either to the nearest car, or through tunnels, or even down hills on rough terrain.  In some cases you might handwave this as you don't really want to punish the player but in others it could easily seem too unrealistic to the other players especially if the fleeing requires climbing through windows, jumping across gaps etc.  Obviously if you are writing your own scenario you can make sure you don't have any of that (or you can choose a scenario that doesn't) but I think it would add a bit of a constraint on the Keeper.

On 3/1/2023 at 10:42 AM, Shiningbrow said:

What surprises you about the post?

Rather coincidental about the character choices... I do hope one of the others chooses the Stormbull, for Meryn's Landing.

Since Sorala has Uz Lore at 30%, I think I'll also give Darktongue at 1D6 +Comm (or - is it more fun when no-one can really understand each other??)[/q]

I assumed that the Uz were all pretty practiced in Tradetalk. Certainly enough for my players to mollify them - after a one punch fight/contest which caused the Uz great hilarity.

For me the big communication problem was that we had someone play Dazarim who couldn't speak Heortling, and wasn't great at Tradetalk either.

15 hours ago, svensson said:

OK, I've played CoC off and on over the years... mostly just one-off games and the odd short campaign. Last time I owned a set of the rules was way back in the 4th or 5th edition.

I mean, what precisely do you have to learn in CoC from one edition to the other after you learn 'Don't read the book!', right? 😁🤣

But I got the Investigator's and Keeper's Handbooks for my birthday this year. I've been slowly devouring them over the last couple days and enjoying myself immensely while I'm doing it. One thing I do a lot of in multiple-era games is take a look at the technology and costs/benefits thereof... this is the historical reenactor and military historian in me. In most of my previous games, we didn't worry too much about things like cars or homes and so on and I got curious about some of the cars listed in this edition. Now, most of them look precisely like you'd expect... variations on the Model T theme... but a couple of these rides are seriously pretty. For example, the Duisenberg J [an American car company, contrary to popular belief] looks like something a supervillain would drive! [see pic below].

So I guess what I'm saying here is take the time to look up the technologies in the games you run. Not only does it give you a solid feel for 'time and place' but you might be surprised at what a Victrola phonograph player or a Kodak Brownie might add to your game.

Absolutely.  When I run a game set in the UK I take time to research what cars were around then (which is mostly different to what was available in the US - apart from the Model T which was also built in the UK).  Also in the UK the number of phone-lines was much lower than in the US.  We only reached 1 phone line per 10 people well after the end of WW2 (the US was at that point before WW1).

One of the things I like to do is create a document to help the players. What films were released in the year the game is set, what has been in the newspapers over the past year, what inventions are starting to appear in the public consciousness, etc.  I find that helps me as Keeper get in the mindset for the year, but also helps the players a great deal.

1 hour ago, TwiceBorn said:

The board and card art is great.

The card backs and "Power Core" tokens? Ugh... an awful match for the theme of the game.   

I think they have said that they are looking at changing the card backs.

17 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

Pretty much any DeskTopPublishing package. I suspect even M$ Publisher could be used (even M$ seems to want to disavow Publisher -- it is included with some forms of the Office Package, but in books on using Office, Publisher often gets less than 15 pages, while Word takes that many pages just to set up stock margins and fonts).

Once done, print to PDF...

I've used Scribus to do many simple dtp jobs.  I haven't had any non-simple jobs.  You would probably need some graphics programs too - maybe Inkscape for vector graphics, and Gimp for images (although gimp is probably a bit over-powered for this task - you can get away with other image editing software)

All are free software. 

Yep it is very good - I am just getting to the end of 6 weeks of running for a new group.  A Rought Landing and A Fire In The Darkness.  The best scene was when the player playing Dazarim decides he is going to try and spot anyone suspicious running through the streets and chose Eurmal's Hill as his spypoint.  I asked if he was sure, if he remembered me saying that Eurmal was the Trickster and a bit of a dick - even to his friends.  Yep It is a bit of a hill I will be able to see more was his rationale, and the Upper City and Merchant's Quarter was a bit too much and would be slower to get into the action.  So he was up on Eurmal's Hill and he cast farsee on himself and was feeling pretty good.  I then asked him to roll his Scan and he got a 100.  So as soon as he looked at the streets his vision blurred and he could see nothing.  If he looked at his hand or the temple on the hill then it was perfectly in focus. When he looked back down into the city - blurred again.  Which just goes to show - don't try and tempt the gods and especially don't tempt Eurmal.

You can probably use inflation from the 90s to now (or just ask people who were around in the 90s) for most things apart from computing.

When it comes to the 20s or even worse Gaslight you cannot really use baseline inflation to get today's price.  For example the price of a movie ticket was about 15 cents in the early 20s (inflation price is $2.18).  A dozen eggs was about 47 cents in the early 20s (inflation price is $6.80).

It is always better to try and find some price catalogues from the 1920s (or 1890s) either online or physical copies at car boots / yard sales etc.

15 hours ago, soltakss said:

If you have Fear Dragons, see a dragon, roll the Passion and succeed then you are afraid of the Dragon and can run away, or can try and face your fear. Either is good to me.

TBH if they have a high Fear Dragons and they roleplay their fear (or how they overcome it) when they see a dragon then that would be good enough for me. I wouldn't make them roll the passion as well.  But if the player does not roleplay any fear of dragons then I ask them to roll it.  As you say if the roll succeeds they must then decide how to play it - run away, stand stock still in fear, hide, fall to the ground, or do something that lets them overcome the fear. What they do is their choice, but their fear must influence their actions.

1 hour ago, JDS said:

I'm not really using the credit rating system; players will be tracking income as is usual for most games. 

I run long campaigns (40+) sessions, so the PCs will be dealing with a lot more cultists than Mythos entities.

Yes but I still think skills, sanity, luck, money, and contacts are far more important that attributes.

Earlier you said "I'm doing for for a sense of accomplishment for the players. Most players want to see their PCs improve, even if it is in small increments".  In that case just have regular Investigator Development Phases.  Surely seeing your skills go up gives that sense of accomplishment.  Surely interim SAN awards (where appropriate and tied to the story) do that even more.

9 hours ago, JDS said:

I don't see questions arising in a firefight. Good point about a fellow PC losing it, though. But still, that's easily accommodated in a more defined combat round. I'm certainly not going to allow someone to run over a hundred feet in a single combat round.

The point about questions is that you very often want (well not want but have to) talk to the cultists, to ask them questions, get information from them.  A shoot first from 25 yards approach isn't good for that.

Also cultists (and sometimes monsters) will ambush you when you have not got your guns out, or even when you don't have your guns on you.  So sometimes you cannot avoid melee.

Finally the people of a town (and the police) are probably going to be pretty annoyed but these out-of-towners walking around armed to the teeth gunning down people left, right, and centre. 

I've had pretty varied combats including one which involved one person sneaking into a barn to stampede a load of horses out of it and then in later rounds shoot the bad guys in the confusion, one person in melee, one person running to the car (to try and use it as a weapon - he failed his drive roll on the next round), and one person rolling a hard success to empty out a heavy water-trough, turn it over on top of himself and hide under it before the bad guys got to him.  Combats aren't always straightforward and that is with the things that can be easily hurt.

On the run 100 feet in a combat round. That certainly seems easily doable for athletes and characters that keep themselves in shape. I certainly wouldn't let them take another action that round. Maybe the old professor, or the flapper in heels or maybe some other character concepts, is not going to be able to sprint like that - but that is more a narrative thing not something that should be covered by a more concrete combat system.

8 hours ago, Grimmshade said:

Is there a price / gear guide for gaslight anywhere? It seems to be the only thing I'm now lacking to run a campaign.  

For a brief overview of everyday prices in the UK you can look at https://victorianweb.org/economics/wages4.html

For guns then a very small gun (The Cyclist's Friend) was sold for 12/- in late 1890s London (13/3 with 100 cartridges).  Better guns were quite a bit more expensive.  There are plenty of sources of period advertising but you do have to do a fair bit of work.

21 hours ago, SaintMeerkat said:

p. 238, Column 2, Paragraph 2, Sentence 5 -- should be "...returned whence they came."

I think this one is a judgement call.  After all Shakespeare had "Let them be whipp'd through every market town till they come to Berwick, from whence they came." - Henry VI pt 2.  Similarly other great writers such as Dickens and Trollope for example have used "from whence".

23 hours ago, Darius West said:

Introduce a 15-30minute (1d4+2x5min) response time for armed police to respond to a phone call by conscientious neighbors about "shots fired" within any urban area.  Double the response times for rural areas, and only if there are multiple shots fired.  Realistically, rural communities are a lot less worried about gunshots, generally assuming someone is out shooting pests or some-such.  Of course don't tell the players anything about these rules.
 

I think that is a bit too non-realistic in all except decent sized towns.  In the 20s something like 1 in 10 households had a phone in the US (even though in scenarios it seems like everyone does) and I guess that the poorer areas of town are likely to be lower than that. Also police response in very rural areas is likely to be quite a bit slower than that. Although a single rural policeman confronting a gun-happy PC group might be interesting.  Even if there is no immediate confrontation there is likely to be a much higher police presence in the area after a dead body is found and the police are likely going to be talking to outsiders, as well as town-dwellers.

10 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

ON the "Keeper Screen" part of the Mask of Nyarlathotep one can see: 
Learning Skills: POW roll grants +4%

What is this about?

+1d4 not +4 for existing skills.  1d10+1 for new skills.

It is about learning and improving skills when travelling (for example on an ocean liner between the US and England).  See Appendix A in the Masks books.

21 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Another question about sanity...

After much thinking about it, I can make sense of it and make the game more fun with it... One inherent contradiction annoys me though. Monster encounter will make sanity go down (people get traumatized with close encounter of the Cthulhu type), and Mythos knowledge (knowing about the ultimate truth of the cosmos make the person much more detached from humanity).

Here is my conundrum.. someone with high Mythos knowledge, hence low sanity will get scared and traumatized easily, whereas one would really expect the opposite!
Did I get that right? How do you work around that?

Yep generally it is a spiral - and it is a feature not something to work against.   Also scared and traumatized aren't the only result - they might become manic, convinced that they should usher in the monsters etc.  I also think that re-reading "Getting Used to the Awfulness" in the Keeper's Rulebook will help - as repeated exposures to the same monster doesn't have the same effect.  Also none of the investigators should be starting out with a high Cthulhu Mythos skill (of course their starting SAN could be fairly low though).

19 minutes ago, Whizbang said:

Our Babeester Gorian and our Sundome Templar both fumbled their Dance rolls at Apple Lane's Applefest and ended up both entangled beside each other to the Maypole on top of the sacred hill.

...then the Krarshtkids attacked.

Well I am sure there were plenty of NPCs for the Krarshtkids to have a go at first so that they could get untangled a bit.

For me at least most dancers aren't going to be fully armed anyway. Yes there may be some cults that may have a ritualised dance with a weapon but in general most dances are not going to be with weapons. Which might have delayed the dancing PCs somewhat.

2 hours ago, Kloster said:

Exactly. But it is not fun to have your character killed because you miss a parry because you failed an augment. This is exactly the answer I was given, and I have to agree:

Yep but not everything is combat. Trying an augment when you are doing something social would seem pretty safe. I find it difficult to see how a failed dance or sing or orate could lead to immediate death.

I think if I had players who were resistant to augments I would start by suggesting them outside combat.

Well I would certainly narrate how the target feels drained as he loses 18 POW unexpectedly in an instant. Does it have a physical effect?  Maybe it does? I wouldn't argue against narrating how the target starts sinking to their knees before catching themselves.  Or then again maybe it doesn't - using Elder Sign costs 10 POW, I wouldn't expect that to cause physical effects to the caster.  Of course as the target gets closer to 0 POW you can narrate them being affected even more adversely.

23 minutes ago, Mike M said:

These have been added to the PDF download pack for Masks of Nyarlathotep. If you purchased the book from Chaosium.com, just look at the files your purchases and you can redownload the pack. The same goes for Bits & Mortar and DriveThruRPG. 

How does that work for us who got the old style Bits & Mortar download links and so have nothing in our Bits & Mortar account (indeed until today didn't have a Bits & Mortar account)?