Grimmshade

Maybe go with San loss, but allow it to be cured with huge sandwiches, Scooby snacks, etc.

Velma types definitely lose thier glasses if they lose 5 San but fails thier Int roll. 

Fainting would be great for Bouts of madness. 

Chases definitely have some weird physics in where doors lead, etc.

For combat I would mostly use the knockout rule, and Maneuvers. 

40 minutes ago, Ravenheart87 said:

We should totally do a tournament for the best Chaosium cover. While the classic CoC cover is both evocative and iconic, I would be hesitant to choose it as best with the also amazing classic RuneQuest and Stormbringer/Elric! covers around.

I still own my first edition Call of Cthulhu box set, but I did item the original Runequest box set at the time, and yeah that cover was great. 

That is my absolute favorite cover art. So awesome. 

There's advice in the Keepers section of the book for using APP / Credit Rating for first impressions from Npc's. I use it all the time. 

I would personally probably use Pulp Cthulhu, but I think it sounds awesome. (I'd probably also use the melee combat rules from Dark Ages, Invictus, or Cthulhu Through the Ages)

@DreadDomain

I also think Call of Cthulhu 7e is a fantastic generic toolkit. I probably wouldn't run any sort of high power superhero game with it. It's certainly not the everything system (I don't think any system is), but there are a ton of genres I use it for. It's my go-to Horror, Pulp, Wild West, Historical fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Sherlock Holmes, Modern Spy, Weird Tales, and even Star Trek system. It could also do space horror, but I use the Alien RPG for that, as well as post apocalyptic (but I use Twilight 2000.)

Sanity is fairly easily mod-able by changing the Bout of Insanity tables to better fit the genre you are going for (as Pulp Cthulhu does.) I like your Drive and Adversity breakdown.

4 hours ago, icebrand said:

Where are the dual wielding rules?

Index doesnt help, and search finds the dual wielding rules credits but can't find the actual rule 😭😭😭

Pulp Cthulhu book, p.71

That's a cool idea!

I've decided to just try to get a rough idea of how much time it would take to travel to the various destinations. Enough that I can say some time passes, but not stressing if I'm super accurate or not. 

I also think Pulp is the perfect blend of horror and action. It also finally allows me to use all the cool Mythos stuff that would just end an adventure in regular CoC. 

That's a good rule. 

44 minutes ago, tendentious said:

In a game of Masks that I ran, the investigators "found" a book on mysticism, philosophy and higher dimensional mathematics. This gave the ability to intuit the relation between four-dimensional space and the manifested Hound of Tindalos that had tracked down one of the investigators. Basically, without the augmented mathematics skill the Hound would have been effectively impossible to defeat in combat. As it was, while all the other investigators ran away, one of the investigators managed to shotgun the Hound out of curved space/time by firing along the vertices of angular space/time.

Did you make the Investigator/Hero roll for Augmentation (Extreme Skill roll combined with Cthulhu Mythos roll) each shot, or did you have them roll to Augment and then allow all the shots to use the Augmentation? It's not explained great in the book for things like Firearms. 

22 minutes ago, tendentious said:

Spoilers.

I ran MON using Pulp rules. I souped it up, giving the investigators one pulp talent at the start, and letting them gain another at the end of each chapter until they had 4 talents each. I also allowed them to swap out one talent between chapters, as we discovered which talents work and which ones don't.

There were only a couple of times where people had to spend all Luck to avoid certain death - like being engulfed by a shoggoth. Everyone finished the campaign with the same characters that they started with, and I didn't feel the need to hold back or to "play nice." I even souped up some climactic encounters. For example, I figured that if there was a chakota in the pit in NY, then there should be an even bigger chakota in the Mountain of the Black Wind. And this chakota could emerge from the pit and attack the investigators.

I think by the end that almost everyone had taken the talent that grants more LUCK at the start of each session, and a lot had taken the talent that allowed SAN loss to be bought off point-for-point with LUCK. These are easily the most powerful talents. By the time one of the investigator's SAN was lower than his Cthulhu Mythos he basically didn't have to worry about SAN loss anymore. 10 points of SAN loss becomes 5 because of high Cthulhu Mythos, and 5 points of LUCK takes that to 0.

I felt that the Pulp rules we used made the game highly enjoyable, as MON is a combat-heavy, pulp adventure style campaign as written. From my experience I would recommend giving the Pulp rules a try.

That's super helpful! Thanks! I'll definitely run it with Pulp Cthulhu. 

I'm running Two-Headed Serpent now, and I have one PC with both of the Talents you listed. He gets more Luck each session, and has used it to buy off all San loss so far. I was worried this would diminish the game, but in the end he's still susceptible to combat, etc., and can't do some of the cool stuff the other PC's can (with their Talents.)

Haha yeah. I'm having a blast with the pulp setting (plus anything to get away from D&D for a while.) So far the only problem I've had with the campaign is that I wish that it gave travel times. Seems like a huge oversight.

I just added my own mini chapter after the first chapter involving a trip on the Graf Zeppelin. I'm also planning on adding another mini chapter involving a plot by the Jade emperor.

It's funny you mentioned the high san making the talent worthless. As my player with the talent just got a bunch of san rewards for the first chapter of two-headed serpent without taking any san loss because of the talent, I just realized he'll be using the talent a lot less because he won't be losing san anyway.

Thanks for the reply! Your line of thinking pretty much matches mine.

We just started Two-Headed Serpent, and I'm going to be inserting a couple of small pulp scenarios I've written into the campaign. 

Any suggestions for classic CoC scenarios that would work with pulp and be fairly easy to insert into downtime in a campaign?

Just received my copy of Masks of Nyarlathotep. Man, is it gorgeous! I've been wanting to run this campaign since the original first edition. Feels good to finally have this ultimate edition. I may have to grab the props kit too. 

14 minutes ago, JDS said:

We just finished our 33rd session in my Tuesday campaign. That's 147 hours so far, and my investment is $50. Five players and me, that means I'm at a nickel a man-hour, and its still got a long way to go. 

Not really seeing why you're so adamantly against other people having fun their way. Some of us like good props and not always having to do all the work ourselves. It's cool if you don't like MoN, but it's also cool if we do. I generally don't make 4 posts about something I'm not interested in, but whatever. 

30 minutes ago, JDS said:

I haven't bought a hard copy in fifteen years. And there hasn't been a scenario written that I would pay $60 for. Frankly, Masks is pretty much a run-of-the-mill CoC adventure, shallow draft, if a longer run than most.

Cool I guess?

54 minutes ago, JDS said:

The pdf costs $17.50 on Drivethru.

Keeping in mind that this is an old campaign, well-known and often-read.

I see no point in running a campaign where your players are very likely going to know it as well as the GM.

The 7th edition version pdf is $60, and the original is only 248 pages compared to 666 in the new version. 

None of my players have read either version. 

Plus, I hate running games with PDF's.

On 4/23/2022 at 10:28 AM, JDS said:

$129? You have got to be kidding.

Happily just bought it. 90+ handouts, a screen, and two books totaling 666 pages. Can't wait. 

I run it the same as Greger. 

30 minutes ago, TheophilusCarter said:

I need to buy Pulp Cthulhu!  😄

Pulp Cthulhu is a great toolset. It could have used a bit more in some areas, but what it does have and the way it easily changes the style of the game is totally worth the money. You can also add or remove rules to hit the level you want. 

Also, The Two-Headed Serpent is a great campaign. 

I had it come up in my first session of Two-Headed Serpent last week. It's actually pretty fast and easy at the table. Didn't take much longer than anyone else's turn and the PC wasted two mooks right away. 

Agreed! Another thing I like about it is Maneuvers. It makes it so easy to let the players try options instead of just straight attacking.