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nclarke

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Posts posted by nclarke

  1. If they aren't then they should sign up. It's free and they only have to provide an email link to download the pdf's as the publishers upload everything to the B&M site.

    The map widget isn't actually broken it just thinks it is. The drop down list only shows US stores and, strangely, one in Northern Ireland. Zooming out on the map shows loads in Europe as well as the UK.

    I used ctrl and scroll with my mouse to zoom in to the UK and found 2 shops in Scotland. 1 in Wales and 22 in England and 1 in Northern Ireland. Clicking on the location flags shows the name and address of each store.

  2. There's hundreds of people running CoC all over the world and it's been a regularly played game since 1981 with pretty much the same rules. Organised Play for CoC is very different to AL or PFS organised play and although CoC is a lighter set of rules than say D&D or PF no-one runs it with rules made up on the fly.

    The CoC Organised Play is so different to WoTC Organised play or Paizo Organised play I'm not surprised that your friend was confused by a non-D20 game system. It's not really designed for drop in play as there is a plot that carries over multiple sessions making it very hard if the players are not consistent from session to session where the Keeper has to recap every time for new players taking up loads of time better spent playing.

  3. Here's my Continuum report. Thanks to everyone for organising another great Continuum and everyone who played in one of my games.

    This past weekend was Continuum, a UK convention that's held at the University of Leicester every second (even) year. It's been running for a number of years and it has in the past been very focused on Chaosium products. There's always been a large number of Call of Cthulhu games, Gloranthan games and Pendragon games as well as the usual selection of other settings and systems. With the new Gloranthan Runequest release and the 5.2 version of Pendragon these game systems/settings have seen a fresh resurgence.

    The convention runs from around midday Friday through Sunday evening although many participants stay over and leave on Monday morning after a final session on Sunday evening. My buddy and I travelled up from the South coast on Friday morning leaving at 9:30 to avoid the rush hour traffic we struggled north via clogged roads as many schools had finished making Friday the first day of the Summer holidays. We arrived just in time for me to throw myself out of the car (not bothering to unload or sign in to the con) and rushing to my first game. It was an Openquest scenario written by Simon Bray and run by Tom Zunder. We had great fun uncovering the significance of the toad god and the strange attraction between the very beautiful women and the very ugly men of the village.

    After getting my bag from the car, checking in and having something to eat I sat down for game two. After 10 minutes I found out that it had pulled from the schedule so I headed for the bar.

    Saturday morning I had an OSR game picked out. Now Saturday morning was only a three hour slot and the  GM had way more material than we could deal with in the time so it got short-circuited to get us to the finale. Several dead characters and two raving PC sorcerers who wanted to rule the world later we broke for lunch.

    Saturday afternoon I ran the Wolrd War Cthulhu scenario I'd previously run at Chimeraides where the PCs are French Resistance fighters tasked with finding out if a local Vicomte has a certain book. Much mayhem later they left the Vicomte's home partly burned down and escaping in the priest's coal gas powered car they got stopped at the Milice checkpoint. Four persons in the car and a rising pall of smoke behind them tipped off the troops. The Chanteuse failed to hide hide her pistol and then shot on of the two Milice dead and wounded the other. As the rest of the Milice squad piled out of the hut the priest pulled his Sten from under his robe and cut down the rest of the troops. The two other partisans came across the bodies strewn across the road later as they had to walk home.

    Pacing myself I spent Saturday evening in the bar and readied myself for Sunday morning. Sunday featured my Bethorm Tekumel game and the sign up sheet gathered a group of hardened fans. You know that game where the players know more than the gm and make his life hell. Well it wasn't like that at all.

    The members of the Glory of the Worm clan set out to discover why the Glass Spear clan had not delivered the necessary amphorae to contain the year's crop of Dlel fruit brandy. As this is a starter type scenario I introduced a Slaver on the trail to add aspects of Tekumel culture slowly to players without any prior experience. This is designed to  work as an alternative to the fresh of the boat option for new players.

    The characters arrived at the village/administrative centre and saw three Shánu’u flying  above them and hunting for something edible. They prepared with a priest who cast Invisibility on them while they shot at the single Shánu’u who stayed behind when the other two departed, It landed and as the Invisibility wore off the clan guards took on the beast ( A ploy to introduce combat gently). They soon had it in dire straits before one priest rushed forward to attack it with his chlen dagger. The player then found out why you don't rush into combat as a priest. The result of Shánu’u 1 Party 0 soon turned into a 1 all draw. The locals came out of hiding and got the chlen carts loaded up and the party was pressured into killing the other two beasts.

    With the amphorae on the way the party climbed up to the cave where the Shánu’u laired. Fiding the cave empty but showing signs of ancient occupation they prepared to fight the Shánu’u. By now they had found out  the best combat options were to get the clan guards fighting the beast in a bottlenecked area to reduce the number who could engage the party and then proceed to use the Bypass Armour option to improve the damage from one of two points a round each to lots more. One Shánu’u fell to a blow to the head that stunned it and it's mate took a death blow. 

    The party explored the cave and found it was an old, very old temple to Sarku and ominmous slithering sounds from the depths caused them to choose to report it for a potential reward.

    The players had fun, the rules got tested and approved (only one player had used them before) and the scenario was deemed to be suitable mainly unchanged but with some tweaks for a introductory style game.

    Final game of the con was a rerun of a Mythras scenario where I have some Greek heroes end up on Monster island in a very Harryhausen movie style game. As usual one cannot put a golden chalice and some gems on a temple altar without someone in the party choosing to try and take them. The Ice Worm Guardian of the Temple of Raylimshaitan and Actinius the human guardian proceed to damage the party and send them fleeing before the drums brought native lizardmen who demanded a return of the stolen goods. The party limped back to Port Grimsand with a single wild boar skin as their 'winnings'. One of the players was the translator of the German version of Mythras material and we had an interesting discussion about the difficulty of translating the Greek material in Mythic Constantinople as German and English use different transliterations of Greek letters.

  4. OP seems to be looking for a  'free' licence to write an RPG to compete with something written in the Eighties (I can't find the original post again) that he claims is overwhelmingly prevalent in his country. I did a quick check when I saw the first post and couldn't find anything referring to the said game in English so although it may be popular where he's from but it's virtually unheard of outside.

    As far as writing a game based on using a pair of percentile dice goes there's hardly a need to acquire a licence as several games/editions have been published that use d100 dice in Sweden and haven't suffered from any legal difficulties. As Jeff points out no-one in this business has deep enough pockets to take anyone to litigation. A Cease and Desist letter is another matter and can easily be sent by contacting (and paying) a lawyer in the country of the publisher and hoping that they are frightened off by the letter. It's worked for Games Workshop but they have a squadron of lawyers constantly poised to attack any attempt to infringe on their IP (a completely different thing to writing a set of RPG rules).

  5. Sorry, but modular games don't do investigation at all well. You either have to have everyone (just about) play every time you run or play a different scenario style  - the convention scenarios designed to run in 3-4 hours instead.

    There's no way you can honestly have 5 of 6 players sit around for 30 minutes while you explain to the one person who didn't turn up previously what exactly went on last time.

    Alternatively you can have a cheat sheet which you have to write every time to bring people up to speed and then either they have to read it before hand or during the game - not much fun at all.

    BTW that's your 'organised play' concept which is tainted by association with the AL style of play. Anyone playing an investigative game like they play D&D will not enjoy themselves at all and will likely be dead in the first session.

  6. Have you considered that Chaosium had different criteria from WotC for their Organised Play product?

    While AL is run as if no-one will return week on week an investigative scenario differs from the D&D style scenario as it requires continuity in the participants or you'll spend at least 1/3rd of the time each week explaining what's gone on and what clues have been found to new players leaving current players fuming.

    You cannot compare apples to oranges so I suggest you find alternative ways of engaging players via one shot games that last just 3-4 hours (there's plenty of those conventions style games produced over the years) rather than blame Chaosium for providing an interesting mini-campaign that most CoC players enjoy.

  7. Have you seen any of the crappy things they put together to show on the TV?  People who rummage around in junk yards for pricey collectables, debt collectors who everyone watches to see if they get their lights punched out or if someone takes a shotgun to them. We've had documentaries about the people who remove the fatbergs from London's sewers - riveting TV I'm sure). Plus having heard when and where the scenario was originally written (on a plane to Gencon IIRC) I'm pleasantly surprised how well it turned out with some more polish and decent mappage.

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  8. Core rulebook p39 left hand column first line "Your investigator’s Credit Rating skill begins at zero." You have to start CR at zero and add enough points to reach the minimum for that Occupation according to RAW.

    Core rulebook p36 left hand column Personal Interest 2nd paragraph "Multiply the investigator’s INT × 2 and allot the points to any skills (which can include adding further points to occupation skills), except Cthulhu Mythos". Credit Rating could be regarded a a skill ,check with your Keeper for a final decision
     

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  9. You normally get a pdf when you buy direct from Chaosium or if the game store you buy from  is part of Bits and Mortar. I don't think a web store counts (unless it has a physical shop front). You could send a copy of your receipt to Chaosium's support email address and ask them if you qualify.

  10. If you go through the checkout process I think it looks at your shipping address and calculates shipping accordingly. At least that's how it seems to me in the UK. Obvioulsy you can check this before confirming the purchase and cancelling it it the shipping is too high. Note that depending upon where you live customs may add taxes (Germany has VAT on books whereas the UK doesn't for example)

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