A Time to Harvest and Organized Play?

[SteveMND]

First of all, before I begin, I want to come right out and say my following questions/concerns have absolutely zero to do with the material itself -- from what I've read so far, A Time to Harvest is as absolutely beautiful and evocative and creepy and disturbing and fulfilling as I've come to expect from CoC scenarios over the years.  I was giggling like a schoolgirl while reading the material, and am 100% satisfied on that end.

That said, however, I am genuinely confused by its use of the term "Organized Play."  Or at least, it is not any sort of Organized Play that I've been familiar with over the last 15-20 years or so.  From Living City to Living Dragonstar to Living Greyhawk to Pathfinder Society to Adventurer's League and others, Organized Play -- as I always saw and experienced it -- had a few core tenets that they always followed, and ATtH doesn't seem to have any of them.

For example, there doesn't appear to be any shared campaign ruleset.  By that, I mean, there doesn't seem to be any enforcement of any core consistency from one group to the next (beyond the mundane application of the Core ruleset from the 7e books, etc.).  Characters can be made by for the campaign by Point Buy, or made for the campaign by one of the variants for random rolling, etc.  There are no hard restrictions on what types of characters can be played (altho several Strong Suggestions).  There are no equivalent of adventure records or logs, or the like.  Heck, there have been some suggestions on how to incorporate this into a potential already-existing campaign, and some people were even talking about how they could adjust for other time periods.

In addition, there doesn't seem to be any real portability.  One of the big things with OP campaigns I had encountered in the past was that it was designed so that a player could, in theory, pick up his character and, with the propert documentation, sit down at any other store running the campaign -- say, someone on a business trip over the weekend -- and play his character there, and know more or less what to expect, and where he was.  This portability was a big draw to Organized Play, in that it was no longer a bunch of unknown characters with unverifiable abilities and unexplained gear and perhaps suspect levels of progression coming in from an equally infinite number of disparate home campaigns.

This feat was accomplished both by a common set of campaign-specific guidelines and rules (as opposed to just the rulebook elements), some sort of verification element (logsheets, adventure records, etc.), and most especially the division of the story arcs into smaller, concise, easy-to-organize-around scenarios.  Tradition tended to keep these in some variation of four-hour blocks for maximum flexibility, since Organized Play really got its start in the convention circuits, but these Episodes seem to be much more freeform and far less... well, organized, in that sense.  Each Episode looks to not be designed with any sort of 'standard duration' in mind.

All of which is perfectly fine, but I really am not seeing how this is an "Organized Play" campaign, as opposed to, say, just a regular campaign setting that is broken up into monthly installments.  And in fact, that's what it feels like to me, especially what with the comments about taking all our eventual results and suggestions and recommendations into account for when the campaign is over and the whole is collected into a single bound adventure.

Again, I'm not complaining, as I and the rest of my group are still very much looking forward to playing ATtH with great anticipation.  It's just... not what we were expecting at all when we heard it was an "Organized Play" campaign.  Unfortunately, due to all the other gaming we're already doing, I'm going to have to push back my Horror on the Orient Express home campaign.  We had been assuming that we'd be able to run ATtH much like all the other Organized Play campaigns we've done, but this is looking like it wil take reasonably more than a single 4-hour block per Episode, and more likely something akin to a continual 'once a week' kind of needed schedule.  I don't want to try and artificially compress the contents to make them fit into one of these pre-conceived time blocks, and neither do my players, so we're needing to shuffle some stuff around and put other stuff off temporarily to make time for ATtH.

I'm just genuinely curious as to how this is supposed to fit into the "Organized Play" aspect of gaming.  Aside from being broken up into monthly installments, I'm not seeing this as anything other than a (admittedly well-written and still-engaging) adventure book for a home campaign, much like people running HotOEm or Curse of Strahd or any other similar hardback scenario.  I was admittedly curious as to how they'd be able to adapt something like CoC to operate in an Organized Play sort of framework, but I'm not sure that they actually have.  Am I missing something here, or is it really not Organized Play except in name?  Or is there a whole other aspect of Organized Play that I'm unfamiliar with, disassociated from my experiences in the RPGA and its spiritual successors?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: This thread was born from the recent thread discussing time constraints and such, but i didn't want to derail that one with specific questions herein.

Edited April 12, 2016 by SteveMND

[nclarke]

Because CoC operates in a sandboxy manner there is no simple way to make it conform to the "Start at the Inn walk a bit, attack something, walk a bit, hit something" ad nauseum style of organised play as exemplified by other Living style campaigns. Unless you follow some sort of railroad you are never going to end up in the same place at the end of a session as all the other groups of players. I cannot think how you would believe a modern well written CoC game would be forced into the sort of straitjacket you mention.

[Sean_RDP]

5 hours ago, nclarke said:

Because CoC operates in a sandboxy manner there is no simple way to make it conform to the "Start at the Inn walk a bit, attack something, walk a bit, hit something" ad nauseum style of organised play as exemplified by other Living style campaigns. Unless you follow some sort of railroad you are never going to end up in the same place at the end of a session as all the other groups of players. I cannot think how you would believe a modern well written CoC game would be forced into the sort of straitjacket you mention.

That is absolutely ridiculous. A sandbox is in no way an impediment to creating a shared experience, especially since CoC scenarios are generally designed on a time schedule where things will happen unless the players manage to  interrupt them. Additionally many of the Living scenarios had multiple options and multiple endings, meaning that players would come away with different results depending on their choices. So a railroad is not at all needed, though I will point out that there are rail road aspects to A Time To Harvest. I won't speak for the OP, but my perspective of what he is asking is why is there not a unified set of chargen and similar rules that put each player on an even field and allow a player in one city the ability to take his or her character to a different table for Part 2 and know that those players made their character in the same way.

There is always a suspension of disbelief in OrgPlay games where you have to hand wave a bit if characters have had different endings and experiences to different modules. That is nothing new and I do not think that is or would be an issue with ATtH.

To the OP: I think this decentralized approach is the evolution (for good or ill) of Organized Play. The Living campaigns were extremely intense (as you know) and I think there has been some, spoken or unspoken, decision to back away from things that are so logistically intense. Chaosium is an even smaller company, so even with volunteers the logistics would be difficult I imagine. Even if most of them were volunteers doing it on their own time. Additionally the player base is changing and this may fit the evolution of the gamer a bit better, short attention spans etc.. 

I personally like the CoC OrgPlay for what it is and recognize it for what it isn't. 

[morganhua]

I've played and run CoC for at least 8 years.  From my experience, there's no power curve for PCs.  e.g. they don't pick up oodles of magic items, gain hit points, massive tomes of arcane lore, etc.  So, a PC from one campaign can easily be transferred to another.  They may have more skill points or Cthulhu mythos, but they're probably lacking in SAN. Actually what happens is that Player knowledge increases and they learn about specific monsters and what to do and what not to do.  They get more cautious and they investigate more before jumping to conclusions, but that is an increase in Player knowledge vs PC knowledge.

Chaosium has called "A Time to Harvest" Organized Play.  But what I think IMHO is that it is mainly a marketing ploy for CoC 7th.  But I love it.  Free scenarios for us to run and support for it.  And a platform for Keepers and Players to get excited about CoC.  Yes, it's not D&D Organized Play or Pathfinder Organized Play.

Call of Cthulhu is an investigative game.  The more red herrings, complexity of subplots, etc, the longer the scenario is.  To have a scenario run in 2 hours or 4 hours means that the scenario most likely is very streamlined and for Veteran players too straight forward and easily solved.  I for one like complex clue trails and I love to surprise my players. So, for me, I want long scenarios that take 8  or more hours to complete.

When I run a long campaign, only one or two PCs make it from the beginning to the end.  Most wind up dead or permanently insane (including replacement characters).  The survivors are generally damaged goods.  So, I'm not too worried about PCs being transferred from another campaign.  But I would be worried if the PCs show up with Monty-Haul magic items, spells, and books.  I would either disallow the PC or kill them (or drive insane) in the first scene as you can't really carry the Necronomicon with you without serious consequences.  e.g. See Ash vs. The Evil Dead.

So, I would say players used to D&D or Pathfinder Organized Play, should not expect the same type of Organized Play from Call of Cthulhu.  CoC is an entirely different beast.

[Sean_RDP]

10 minutes ago, morganhua said:

Call of Cthulhu is an investigative game.  The more red herrings, complexity of subplots, etc, the longer the scenario is.  To have a scenario run in 2 hours or 4 hours means that the scenario most likely is very streamlined and for Veteran players too straight forward and easily solved.  I for one like complex clue trails and I love to surprise my players. So, for me, I want long scenarios that take 8  or more hours to complete.

When I run a long campaign, only one or two PCs make it from the beginning to the end.  Most wind up dead or permanently insane (including replacement characters).  The survivors are generally damaged goods.  So, I'm not too worried about PCs being transferred from another campaign.  But I would be worried if the PCs show up with Monty-Haul magic items, spells, and books.  I would either disallow the PC or kill them (or drive insane) in the first scene as you can't really carry the Necronomicon with you without serious consequences.  e.g. See Ash vs. The Evil Dead.

...and D&D is a dungeon crawl, which could easily have a hundred rooms in it. Those 100 rooms could be spread out over 8 hours of blood letting and murderhobo glory. But you can distill that down into 4 or even 2 hours. It does not leave as much room for nuance as a longer session might, but it also fits the modern gamer better. there is no reason, other than their choice, that CoC could not be equally distilled into something investigative and enjoyable. Indeed, many of Lovecraft's stories are of short duration and some of those are the most interesting and visceral. ATtH does not really suffer any of that unless one wants to run it a convention. Otherwise, four weekly 2 hour sessions fit most folks' needs pretty well.

Again though that really is beside the point. The idea behind Organized Play is a shared experience that is unique while being fair and falling in from a given set of guidelines that everyone uses. Some folks are used to a more rigid structure that, despite what some may think, actually creates an enhanced playing experience. I suspect that with ATtH, we may still get that anyway, but by accident and drift as opposed to by design. 

But there is an upside, a level of freedom in running this that is not available in other OrgPlay campaigns. Everything in life is a give and take and if ATtH biggest sin as an organized play is that its not all that organized, well there are worse things. I want to see how these six months play out, what adjustments are made and what Chaosium gets out of it before making too many judgments. 

I just would like to, gently and respectfully, dispense with the subtext that CoC is "not like those other games" and cannot fit and should not fit into similar molds. Yes the end game, living through it with as much sanity as possible vs. gold and glory, are certainly different, but both can and do offer a rewarding role playing experience. 

As for ATtH being a marketing ploy, I say great! All OrgPlay is part of marketing and if it gets new people playing CoC, then I am all for it. I am happy to be an ambassador for the game. 

[SteveMND]

Reign was correct; I was mainly curious as to how it qualified as an "Organized Play" campaign, when it seemed to have virtually nothing in common with any Organized Play campaign I'd encountered yet since back in the day.  As stated previously, I don't mind that it's not, as I love it just the same... I was just a little dissapointed and surprised that it's not actually an Organized Play campaign as anticipated.

If it's just being used as a marketing buzzword, that's acceptable as well, I suppose, albeit not quite what I was hoping for.  Perhaps after season one, we may see a more 'traditional' Organized Play CoC campaign emerge from the development of this inaugural launch (after all, such a thing has been done before by third-party groups, so I'd love to see an official CoC Organized Play campaign like those).

Thanks for the comments, all.

[trevlix]

I find myself agreeing with both sides (if there are really sides here) in this thread.

I have to wonder, what would be a better term than "Organized Play"?

[morganhua]

Disorganized Play?  (Yes, I'm kidding, but it is Chaos-ium).  

[Marcus]

On 4/13/2016 at 4:16 PM, trevlix said:

I have to wonder, what would be a better term than "Organized Play"?

Institutionalized Play.

CoC OP won't satisfy the Munchkins/Power Levelers. Perhaps Chaosium could reward the players instead of the characters. So many points would get you a discount online, for example.

[mvincent]

Please don't try to remove the "Organized Play" label. I was heavily into running Organized Play for WotC for the last 6 years (when it seemed to be at its biggest and most defining period), and this label is exactly what I wanted from CoC. I'm extremely glad it occurred.

The term "Organized Play" denotes an organized, supported effort to play the game we love. It generates enthusiasm and a sense of community, which results in more players. It need not indicate additional rules (especially since CoC tends to be so freeform anyway). Certs and logs were fitting for some organized play games (where leveling up and optimization were a large part of the fun), but I wouldn't think their strict nature would really be apropos for CoC, nor would the extra work be as likely to be viewed as 'fun'. Better to just use clue handouts and research notes as normal instead of formal certs and logs.

Indeed, strictly enforcing rules just in general seems antithetical to CoC (and this is coming from someone that was the biggest rules lawyer ever in D&D4e). That said, I still might like to see:

- Scenarios designed to be 4 hours long. This helps with both gamestore and convention play. It also allows players to move between referees as necessary (as they won't be doing so in the middle of a scenario).

- Point buy as the accepted practice for generating PC's. I don't want to have to explain to an... enthusiastic player that his rolled stats don't seem credible.

 

 

Edited April 22, 2016 by mvincent

[Philippa]

I was one of the people who did the playtest by Khelbiros last month, and separate from the game feedback she gave we had some structural feedback that we are going to try so we can run at conventions.  Like SteveMND we were looking for something that more resembled what players will expect from 'Organised Play' so that we can bring CoC to a wider audience at our gaming conventions.  I should add that at least 3 of us who playtested are con organisers of 2 of the major conventions in our city, and we have the capacity to do this so we really want to. 

I realise that this is not how everyone is planning to run the campaign, which is of course perfectly fine.  But for us, this seems to be the best way we can promote Call of Cthulhu as organised play, and bring the game to the widest audience.  We also discussed ways to allow players who may miss some sessions to join in later ones, because those who are used to other organised play games will expect that kind of flexibility.

So here are our thoughts, but if others who know of this style of play feel we have missed something, please feel free to comment and add to the list.

• We want to advertise the game in the same section as the 'Living' campaigns (D&D, Pathfinder etc) that currently run at our conventions.  These have been 3 hour slots, but will be changed to 5 hour slots from our next con in October.  As I can run my own CoC modules in a 3 - 4 hour slot despite going for 9 hours in playtest, I don't see this as an issue.  The plan is to have 2 modules available at each of the next 3 conventions, all going well.
• We will promote a 'points buy' character generation system so that all new characters are based on the same number of points (I think this is in the Quick start guide?).  This is important to those who have a D&D background, and we want to encourage them to try the game.
• While players are able to make their own characters, we will also have a set of pre-gens in a range of different study majors available (a tip I learned from the Order of the White Star GMs).  Players can then jump straight in and personalise with names and backgrounds but not worry about creation.  These will also be using the same points buy system.
• At the end of the session, we got told of skills that we could improve etc.  I want to make 'A Time to Harvest' game certs, and include the information on that.  They can also include relevant information for each session - Did you rescue Person X - Y/N.  You gain influence with Person Y (eg I thought in scenario 2 perhaps with Professor Armitage to ask 1 question or access 1 book, dependent on the module of course).  Plus the sanity gains, skill increases etc.  These are pretty minor in the overall CoC gameplay, but it will mean those who play every session will have some advantages over those who missed Con 1 (and sessions 1 & 2) but jumped in at session 3.  We don't want to bar those who missed the previous con from joining in at the next con.
• We will make it clear that this is a limited run campaign (like the old Legacy of the Green Regent, for those who remember it), and the characters are for 'A Time To Harvest' sessions only.  Should there be another CoC organised play, other characters would be required.

I have probably forgotten something from my notes, but I think those were the main points.  Once we design the game certs for each session, we are more than happy to share them with other GMs who are interested in running the game along these lines.

Is there anything else that should or could be included?  Other suggestions for cert content?  (I used to love my influences and minor access to stuff, I collected them like crazy even if I rarely got a chance to use them!  I figure other players may feel the same )

[Philippa]

On 12/04/2016 at 6:43 AM, morganhua said:

Call of Cthulhu is an investigative game.  The more red herrings, complexity of subplots, etc, the longer the scenario is.  To have a scenario run in 2 hours or 4 hours means that the scenario most likely is very streamlined and for Veteran players too straight forward and easily solved.  I for one like complex clue trails and I love to surprise my players. So, for me, I want long scenarios that take 8  or more hours to complete.

 

Not true.  I run open sandbox CoC investigation games at conventions, both classic 1920s and Invictus.  The clue paths are non-linear, and information can be picked up at multiple locations.  NPCs are written in a kind of 'six degrees of separation' style where they link to multiple characters / clues / locations in multiple ways.  My playtests (and I always do at least 2 prior to a con) explore every single option within the game and usually go for 10 - 12 hours.  At the con, I run with whatever the players are doing, but also remind them there is a time clock going, and fit it into 4 hour sessions.  They may not get to every single NPC and location but as long as they hit the finale (which they can get to from multiple angles) that is fine.  If I have to call the combat a bit - well, they seem to be ok with that especially if I let them have san loss all over the place which everyone loves in a con game.  (I admit combat isn't my strength, world-building and storytelling are). 

And guess what?  The stories I run are NEVER too straight forward for veteran players.  The veterans are the ones who think they are too smart to fall for the obvious red herrings and so instead fall for the meta red herrings EVERY TIME - I still get curses about the Dark Ocean Society, or Emperor Norton, or 'Have you heard the Hounds?' or even 'going to bloody Ostia' from the experienced players who should know better but can't resist.  But because there is a timeline, by following the red herrings like that they missed out on stuff that other teams got to experience.  So no two sessions are the same (thank goodness tbh, when I am running 11 in the same weekend).

[MOB]

 

On 4/22/2016 at 10:38 AM, Marcus said:

Institutionalized Play.

Yep, "Institutionalised Play" would be very appropriate term for Call of Cthulhu, especially a long-running campaign! "Organized Play" is a familiar term, even if what we're doing in this first OP campaign for Chaosium doesn't necessarily have all the same elements as you would find in Pathfinder etc. 

On 4/22/2016 at 4:41 AM, mvincent said:

The term "Organized Play" denotes an organized, supported effort to play the game we love. It generates enthusiasm and a sense of community, which results in more players.

Yes, that is a good description of what we're attempting here. These comments are all welcome, and we will factor in feedback as we develop Chaosium's OP program. I am not getting the sense anyone wants what we're going to offer to be as structured or competitive as some of the other OP, but there are some structural elements we might consider - e.g. making character generation a bit tighter, e.g. strongly recommending points build.

On 4/22/2016 at 10:38 AM, Marcus said:

Perhaps Chaosium could reward the players instead of the characters. So many points would get you a discount online, for example.

At the moment, Cult of Chaos is really focussed on Keepers, but we do want broaden that to players as well

On 4/12/2016 at 7:14 AM, ReignDragonSMH said:

As for ATtH being a marketing ploy, I say great! All OrgPlay is part of marketing and if it gets new people playing CoC, then I am all for it. I am happy to be an ambassador for the game

Many thanks to all the Keepers participating in A Time to Harvest. We greatly value your feedback, and will take it all on board as we develop the OP program!

 

 

[morganhua]

3 hours ago, Philippa said:

The stories I run are NEVER too straight forward for veteran players.  The veterans are the ones who think they are too smart to fall for the obvious red herrings and so instead fall for the meta red herrings EVERY TIME - I still get curses about the Dark Ocean Society, or Emperor Norton, or 'Have you heard the Hounds?' or even 'going to bloody Ostia' from the experienced players who should know better but can't resist.  But because there is a timeline, by following the red herrings like that they missed out on stuff that other teams got to experience.  So no two sessions are the same (thank goodness tbh, when I am running 11 in the same weekend).

This sounds really interesting.  So far, I've only run published scenarios of CoC (haven't designed my own for CoC, but have for other systems).  Would love to see how you design your games and fool the veteran players.

[greylurk]

I would say that this sort of cuts the difference between the "Organized Play" that D&D and Pathfinder have, and the "Global Chronicle Continuity" that White Wolf and Onyx Path do/have done with The Camarilla, One World by Night and the Mind's Eye Society.  It's not quite a shared universe with individual storytellers having the freedom to run their own plots, but it's also not as strict and constraining with respect to "adventures" as D&D Adventurer's League or Pathfinder Society are. Having done both, I like seeing a good blend like this.