Long-Term Keepering Questions

[TK Nyarlathotep]

Hello friends.

 

So I'm a long-time Keeper of Arcane Mysteries, but with a major caveat.

I have never run a game of Call of Cthulhu long-term before this year. The A Time to Harvest organized play campaign has been my first, and my players enjoyed it so much that I can see many more campaigns on the horizon. I have managed to keep up an air of menace as well as keeping the players on their toes and, well, afraid.

Therein lies my problem.

How does one keep the momentum going through multiple campaigns? I feel if Call of Cthulhu stopped being scary then a large part of its appeal would just be gone, so how do you maintain player and character fear as you move from campaign to campaign? How do you keep the players invested even if they know that, inevitably, things will go south for them in the form of madness and death? Running Call of Cthulhu from campaign to campaign is hard - so how on earth do you even do it?

[rust]

Every referee has to find his own way to deal with this problem, therefore I can only describe how I try to do it - with as much variety as I can create. For example, I do not use a series of typical Call of Cthulhu adventures during a campaign, I design more normal mystery adventures and sometimes completely non-horror adventures to introduce them between the Mythos adventures. Some of these non-Mythos adventures are aimed at giving the players the feeling that their characters have a life beyond fighting monstrosities. As for the Mythos adventures themselves, I try to change the locations and the themes of the adventures quite often, to ensure that there is only the unavoidable degree of repetition.

[mvincent]

12 hours ago, TK_Nyarlathotep said:

How do you keep the players invested even if they know that, inevitably, things will go south for them in the form of madness and death?

Madness and death need not be inevitable. I've had PC's last for several years (and campaigns), causing my players to be fearful of losing them. Some tips:

1. Keep the threat of death always present, but actual deaths rare (players will surprise you in becoming cautious or finding ways to avoid death)
2. Focus attacks on the newest PC
3. Allow the players to learn the Resurrection spell
4. Select campaigns with generous SAN rewards (like HotOE and aTtH) 
5. Allow for long periods of down time (allowing players to increase SAN)
6. Use the 7e rule that halves SAN loss once Mythos knowledge exceeds SAN

Edited August 30, 2016 by mvincent

[TK Nyarlathotep]

20 hours ago, rust said:

Every referee has to find his own way to deal with this problem, therefore I can only describe how I try to do it - with as much variety as I can create. For example, I do not use a series of typical Call of Cthulhu adventures during a campaign, I design more normal mystery adventures and sometimes completely non-horror adventures to introduce them between the Mythos adventures. Some of these non-Mythos adventures are aimed at giving the players the feeling that their characters have a life beyond fighting monstrosities. As for the Mythos adventures themselves, I try to change the locations and the themes of the adventures quite often, to ensure that there is only the unavoidable degree of repetition.

I actually quite like this - it'll be great for the Escape From Innsmouth campaign where the PCs are private investigators.

Some good advice, all. Thanks!

[Mankcam]

I tend to run my campaigns with a low-pulp adventure flavour and go for campaigns with multiple locations and global travel. Bringing each location to life is a lot of fun for the GM, and quite immersive for the player-characters.

We started off in New York 1920s with the Edge of Darkness scenario , moved down to New Orleans briefly, then followed some threads abroad to France (The Secrets of Marseilles scenario). Things rambled a bit through unconnected scenarios until moving back to New York and then I moved into running the Masks of Nylarthotep campaign. This one is quite sprawling, and the characters have spent several sessions in New York, then England (London and Essex), and now they are in Egypt (Cairo and surrounds). 

These kind of campaigns are pulpy and more action orientated than most standard Cthulhu scenarios, and I think this is why it works. Action scenes can end up being great centerpieces, and fun cinematic scenes keep the game moving nicely. I am porting it over to the official Pulp Cthulhu 7E rules, although I am using only a few of the options from that book otherwise it would get too pulpy and lose any threat to the characters.

I think the other reason this campaign works as there is also a fair bit of mystery involved rather than grisly horror every minute, and unraveling the threads to the meta-plot is a big thing here. 

I tend to keep most of the villains at mundane human-level, and have supernatural elements & mythos creatures only rarely show up. This keeps things at a reasonable level, and when a mythos creature turns up it really is a big deal. I think this is important in any campaign, as overuse of the mythos leads to you having difficulties building suspense and really lessens the impact of the mythos. So fear of the unknown is another aspect that keeps the momentum going in my campaigns.

My campaigns are more 'investigation-action' flavoured than the usual 'investigation-horror' atmosphere in most Cthulhu scenarios. I think I would only run 'purist' Cthulhu games if I was running one-shots, or perhaps a series of interlocked scenarios around Lovecraft Country.

For the long spanning campaigns I thought the purist flavour may get a bit oppressive for my troupe, and the other difficulty would be the issues associated with a high chance of character turnover. Regularly coming up with reasons to replace insane, incapacitated, or deceased characters with new characters would prove really troublesome. Trying to find reasons why the new characters would be invested in the same goals as the original PCs would require some creativity.

 It's not that it cannot be done, but playing such a campaign without some 'pulp insulation' would end up being a real meat-grinder, and I doubt that any original character would make it all the way through, and the risk of TPK could also be quite high. Whilst this may be a novelty in a one-shot scenario, it definitely could be quite challenging to run a long-term campaign if that keeps happening.

For these reasons I prefer my campaigns to be 'pulpy' rather than 'purist', although many others seem to run 'purist' campaigns with no concerns.

Edited September 1, 2016 by Mankcam

[TK Nyarlathotep]

Part of my ongoing trial is that my players and characters are consistently scared. The paranoid conjecture, the rampant guesses, the wild uncertainty, and the frequent admission that players are afraid to leave for their cars the night after game are all very encouraging signs to me, and I want to keep those coming. I may not even have a concern at all. The players have bought in and want more Call of Cthulhu, so there's no reason that they wouldn't continue to buy in and continue wanting more Call of Cthulhu, but I like to have my bases covered and to keep the momentum. I also like hearing the ideas of others, so, as they say, every little bit helps.

As for pulp-versus-puritan, I've tried and strike a balance - none of the original group in my A Time to Harvest group has died yet, but that's because when the game declares them "dead", I give them an out that might be harder on the character than just dying (one character confined to a wheelchair, the other struck a bargain with a higher power, which is never a good thing in the Mythos). That seems to keep players afraid, but not rolling new characters for no reason other than poor fortune.

[Darius West]

I have been running a very alternative version of CoC for 3 years now, based in Arkham with Miskatonic students and starting in 1920.  We are now just getting to 1922.  I am currently running 3 teams of players, Team Goo, Team Dim Sim, and Team Jackass and have 15 players who regularly criss-cross each other's paths. 

1) One of the main ways I have kept the game running is by including non-mythos related stories to punctuate the pace.  The 1920s provides a rich setting in which characters can get involved in all sorts of shenanigans.  The obvious one is bootlegging to earn some extra money, but there are also plenty of back story opportunities to be built on.  As I had my game set around Miskatonic University this provided ample opportunity for introducing NPCs.  I find building a rich background of persistent and recurring npcs who have ongoing plots and story lines is great.  For example I had A list and B list and C list mythos celebs.  A listers were characters from Lovecraft such as Randolph Carter, B listers are characters from works by the likes of Derleth and Smith, and C listers are characters from games like Arkham Horror.  One C lister was Ruby Standish, who is a perennial bad girl economics student and queen of the Bohemian set, who uses her stealth to keep her friends out of trouble and is clued in about the mythos to some degree.  The game started with her casing the Fraternal Order of the Silver Twilight (which I places on the outskirts of French Hill) because there was a valuable book there she had a buyer for.  I also had her written up as the daughter of a well-to-do NY doctor, and very materialistic.  Imagine my surprise when a newly minted character Norman Blitherington Smythe is a young great war veteran of the ambulance service with wealth and an aristocratic title in Devon, who is attending Miskatonic on a rowing scholarship, and who went and got a job as a waiter at the Silver Twilight (who were impressed by his value as a potential recruit).  Well, Ruby decided that he was going to be her new boyfriend, and that opened the party to her contacts in the Bohemian set quite serendipitously.

2) Developing the setting means allowing the characters to develop their relationships with NPCs.  Some NPCs are broadly capable and can even be an asset when confronting the mythos.  Others have useful skills or might allow characters to, say, rent their grocery truck for example, if they think the characters are trustworthy.  One of the best loved NPCs was a big slobbery St Bernard dog called Lumens that Team Jackass bought.  Now Lumens was very big and strong, and true of heart, but not overly bright, and when he died it was a bit of a party tragedy and cost them each 1d3 SAN because they had all become attached to that stupid dog.  If that is true of a dog, how much truer for the loss of an npc girlfriend, family member etc ?  Developed NPCs are key for a long term game.  For the most part I make ordinary people pretty good-hearted; after all, humanity should be worth the effort to save.

3) Jobs.  Some characters were independently wealthy, but some are poor but on campus due to scholarships and needed part time work.  As Arkham is a creepy place, some jobs were on the level, while others were dubious.  I had fun with one job, that involved the character being given a key to a post office box.  They would find a letter in it addressed to them and inside that they would find instructions to follow.  If they did as the letter told them they would receive their pay, if not, they wouldn't.  In fact they were doing a cult's dirty work and it eventually dawned on them.  I had handouts prepared with essentially lists of scenario ideas.  Some jobs were pretty crappy, and the high paying ones all came with a nasty catch.

4) House Hunting.  Say your characters don't want to live on campus in the dorms anymore, partially because they are scared of who-knows-what and partially because they need privacy to delve into who-knows-what.  Can you imagine a worse job than being a Real Estate Agent in Arkham ? Well, needless to say, I had a pre-prepared handout with more enticing properties that were actually scenarios waiting to happen.  Now if characters play their cards right, the mythos may never find out where they live and follow them home "The Grudge" style.  Suffice to say that Team Jackass developed a great problem maintaining their tenancy anywhere for long, and the other parties used to lay bets on how long they would last in their "new place", much to their chagrined amusement.

5) Mythos Adversaries.  My game has always been an open ended sandbox.  I played with multiple classic mythos outfits operating simultaneously, knowing the objectives of each, and the assets they could bring to bear on a problem.  If left to their own devices the baddies would succeed in their mission and start their next phase.  This was all run to a timeline in a campaign diary. It wasn't like Skyrim where you could leave a story line mid-way and do something else without appalling consequences.  If you poke the bear it will keep coming after you.  Team Jackass at one stage had bought up Crowninshield Manor and had grandiose plans for it, but had left plenty of mythos enemies still operating, such that the manor was raided by 4 different groups in 3 days in May 1921.  Suffice to say it was fascinating to watch how that all played out, and, largely because they ran like whipped dogs, the characters survived.  I also made a point of developing the mythos outfits into something more original and threatening... for example the Mi-go are a lot more like Carpenter's "The Thing", while the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign had advanced technology that makes them terrifying when combined with their magic.  

6) Non Mythos Adversaries.  Whether it is the plans that the members of the Miskatonic Club have for redeveloping the characters' neighbourhood, or the local chapter of the KKK harassing their hobo buddies, or the Glee Club feuding with them over use of the stage, there were ample opportunities for getting on people's bad sides.  Sometimes it was possible for compromise, sometimes not.  Once players got some spells, it was surprising to see how prepared they were to use them on people who annoyed them surreptitiously.  This leads on to point 7.

7) Players are their own worst enemies.    Give them some rope and they will hang themselves.  They would periodically be rewarded with mythos tomes and learn the spells.  One time a team managed to obtain a Hyperborean flying ship.  Another team had a shoggoth they could control like the Elder Things did.  Given a little bit of power, it was surprising how ready the players were to use that power in unscrupulous ways, and how often they screwed themselves up inadvertently by doing so.  One thing I did to help this process along was a very useful little house rule... if you learn a spell, you don't know what it actually does until you cast it.  The books might provide some information, but can you really trust them?  They are, after all, mainly written by crazy cultist types.  Also, magical items need to be tested, unless you have some other means of analysing their properties.  That once ended up with a character hypnotised by a piglet in a bathtub before another player whalloped it with a fire axe.  It's funny how things play out sometimes...

8) Dreamlands.  While access to the Dreamlands is restricted to those who figure out how to gain entry, once in, it is a great place to set adventures that allow players to have big mythos adventures without leaving Arkham, or interrupting their routine lives.  

9) Deities.  I have been sparing with these.  I had great fun playing an interaction with Nyarlathotep's Black Man incarnation at one stage.  It involved dog headed zombies (human bodies) smoking and playing cards in the parlour while Nyarlathotep basically body swapped from one character to another, while the misplaced person was put into the body of a zombie.  Very SAN ouch.  I played Nyarlathotep in a spaced out deadpan, directing my gaze deliberately right through the players with a thousand yard stare that was fixed on the starry space beyond their reckoning, while he recounted elements of what they had done to thwart him, and how if they joined him all would be forgiven.  He even cracked jokes, but when delivered in an unfocused deadpan, the effect was apparently utterly chilling.  Finally he left them some brandy snaps in the letterbox just to mess with their heads... and it worked...  The mere mention of brandy snaps drove the players, let alone the characters, into conniptions after that episode, I think they actually lost some SAN for real over the brandy snaps.  The players said it literally made their skin crawl it was that scary.  Score 1 for my acting ability I reckon, "oh what an artiste is lost in me that I tread not the hallowed boards tra-la!" etc.

I don't think anything I have said contradicts any other posts here.  Yeah, that ought to do it for now. Hope this was helpful.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Darius West

[rsanford]

I have yet to run my first CoC game but reading everyone's post here is intimidating... Sounds like you have to do a lot of things right if you want to maintain the scare factor.

[mvincent]

38 minutes ago, rsanford said:

I have yet to run my first CoC game but reading everyone's post here is intimidating... Sounds like you have to do a lot of things right if you want to maintain the scare factor.

Well... CoC GM's love to write long passages, but they are just ideas/tips. Reading/following all advice isn't required to maintain the scare factor. Just running a published adventure should be enough at first. Later, you'll likely discover other things on your own as you go along.

[TK Nyarlathotep]

Indeed! My advice to you would be simply this - know your players. What scares them? What doesn't? Is tension being built for them, or just annoyance? Read the room.

Everything I know about scaring CoC players in less than a paragraph. What more could you ask for

[rsanford]

11 hours ago, TK_Nyarlathotep said:

Indeed! My advice to you would be simply this - know your players. What scares them? What doesn't? Is tension being built for them, or just annoyance? Read the room.

Everything I know about scaring CoC players in less than a paragraph. What more could you ask for

Not sure I know the players well enough to scare them.  So far we have played D&D games where they kill everything and take their stuff and BRP games were the players are involved with nation politics (investigation, mystery, problem solving, etc...). Using the notes from this thread and its sister on rpg.net I am going to try to scare them.  What I would really like to do is to mantain their fright like tk_nyarlathotep does but I have might doubts I can pull it off on the first try. Wish me luck.

 

[rust]

32 minutes ago, rsanford said:

Not sure I know the players well enough to scare them. 

Well, if your players agreed to play Call of Cthulhu they most probably want to be scared, which makes your task a lot easier. 

[TK Nyarlathotep]

On 9/1/2016 at 0:11 PM, rust said:

Well, if your players agreed to play Call of Cthulhu they most probably want to be scared, which makes your task a lot easier. 

Furthermore - if you don't know, you'll learn just by playing the game. I sure didn't realize I could reduce my players (who had previously conquered a wing of the Galactic Imperial Navy, saved China from the grip of an evil sorcerer, and brought a city built in an ancient prison out from the grip of a mad tyrant) to paranoid conjecture about "mushroom people" just by intimating a race of beings called "Fungi From Yuggoth". Get some good setup and learn!