Call of Cthulhu comes to Critical Role in July

[midwinter]

The question I have is will the Keeper learn the rules before the next CoC session? This actual play was apparently two years in the making according to some info I read on da internetz, probably on Critical Role's site. How many years are needed to learn the rules? And with such high production values, a dice cam/propcam/mapcam would be a thing worth considering. Even the Swedish low-budget Rollspelsmåndag has a dice cam. No voice actors though. Just real roleplayers. 

[Cosmic55]

On 8/15/2019 at 9:04 AM, midwinter said:

The question I have is will the Keeper learn the rules before the next CoC session? This actual play was apparently two years in the making according to some info I read on da internetz, probably on Critical Role's site. How many years are needed to learn the rules? 

LoL This is what I came here to discuss! LoL

The pros: I appreciate the effort, and that it was made at all. Sets, costumes, and to a lesser degree props were amazing (I though there were too many props). The players are so likeable, and the character concepts seemed interesting. To be blunt, it was great to see “not D&D” in the spotlight.

Constructive criticism: lack of rules familiarity hurt the experience for me. Critical Role literally changed how people approach D&D, and now half a million people have a poor understanding of the CoC rules.

Personal preference/lost opportunities: I am frustrated that so many people think a CoC game success is measured in character body counts. This session felt like it perpetuated that, to me. If a story needs PCs dying to establish a feel of horror, I think the GM and/or story writer has failed. I felt bad that such great character concepts and portrayals ended with what seemed like dejected players that realized they never had a chance - although rules unfamiliarity and inconsistency was also a factor. Why would they choose to play that again?  I also prefer games where characters are involved, rather than just things happening to them. Missed opportunity - to me - to show people CoC can be a rich horror story telling game.

Be more familiar with rules. Less props, more engaging story. Let characters have victories. Don’t build in expectations of character death.

Those sincerely are intended as constructive criticism. I think it’s great they did it. I expect as they play more, they’ll improve - as we all do when we start a new game. And it did make me feel like I should run CoC more, so that’s a win.

They should be proud! It was an amazing accomplishment!

[MOB]

Now over 700K views! Pick up the CALL OF CTHULHU STARTER SET for a cosmic horror adventure of your own and use the code CriticalRole at check out for 10% off your entire order: http://bit.ly/2HcE9BY

 

On 8/17/2019 at 11:49 AM, Cosmic55 said:

Constructive criticism: lack of rules familiarity hurt the experience for me. Critical Role literally changed how people approach D&D, and now half a million people have a poor understanding of the CoC rules.

The cast - players and Keeper Taliesen - are all cheerfully new to Call of Cthulhu and still very much getting a handle on the rules. They were up front about that at the beginning of this session. That's part of the charm of it we think.

On 8/17/2019 at 11:49 AM, Cosmic55 said:

Be more familiar with rules. Less props, more engaging story. Let characters have victories. Don’t build in expectations of character death.

Those sincerely are intended as constructive criticism. I think it’s great they did it. I expect as they play more, they’ll improve - as we all do when we start a new game. And it did make me feel like I should run CoC more, so that’s a win. 

They should be proud! It was an amazing accomplishment!

The cast members (Taliesen, Erika, Liam, Marisha) my colleague Neil and I met at the Critical Role Party at Gen Con were certainly very pleased with the reaction to it, and said how much they enjoyed the experience. Everyone involved in making this happen - which took nearly two years - hopes this will be more than just a one-off, but we shall see. 

Edited August 18, 2019 by MOB

[klecser]

I just ran five people through What's In The Cellar at an FLGS. Nine people showed up. I had to arrange an overflow game for four of them (they were good sports about it).  Three of the people who played referenced the Critical Role episode as what inspired them to try CoC.  They had a blast experiencing the tension. One player set himself on fire failing a Pushed roll. He loved it. 

This is all the justification that I need that a "all players welcome" mentality is what is going to grow this game. And if growing the game isn't one of your personal goals, kindly step out of the way of the rest of us who plan to take action to grow it.

Edited August 18, 2019 by klecser

[Lordabdul]

3 hours ago, klecser said:

I just ran five people through What's In The Cellar at an FLGS.

Oh nice I didn't know about this scenario. In the past I also pretty successfully ran "The Murderer of Thomas Fell" (from Trail of Cthulhu) to introduce new people to either horror RPGs or to RPGs in general.

[Mankcam]

This was an enjoyable watch as I did my ironing. Yes there was some bumbling over the rules parts, but that's not uncomon in any game. I think it is great exposure to get on Critical Role - it has been so D&D-centric that this is a big win for BRP games.

Yeah I thought the GM would know the rules a bit better, considering it is a 'professional' production these days. But he had the right attitude, and got most of it down-pat, so it's no big deal, and it shows people that GMs & other participants don't have to get things right ALL the time. I still bumble over rules at times, and I've been playing for a few decades.

They did hammer the Body Count notion just a bit - yeah this is always on the table in a standard Cthulhu game, but characters can also be heroic as well and go on to have many investigations. However it is very old school in that character death is generally more probable than some other rpgs, and I guess they were using this as another point of difference between CoC 7E and D&D 5E, in addition to the radically different setting. That isn't too bad, as people do often need a reason to expand out of their usual gaming comfort zone.

A few more of these and the sales will definately go up.  I wouldn't mind seeing how they go with Glorantha one day

This was a good idea

Edited August 19, 2019 by Mankcam

[MOB]

Wow CritRoleStats kept track of literally everything that happened during Critical Role's 'The Shadow of the Crystal Palace'. Even the puns:

https://www.critrolestats.com/blog/2019/7/31/call-of-cthulhu-shadow-of-the-crystal-palace-masterpost

[MOB]

In the first of three articles exploring the lore and legerdemain behind The Shadow of the Crystal Palace, Keeper Taliesin Jaffe talks about the memorable assortment of player characters created for the one-shot:

https://critrole.com/shadow-of-the-crystal-palace-the-investigators

[MOB]

In the wake of Critical Role's 'Shadow of the Crystal Palace' airing on Twitch and YouTube our fulfilment warehouses have been pummelled with orders for the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. Which is great!

But it seems our overwhelmed US warehouse has goofed somewhere along the way: we're helping our friends at Nocturnal Media out with distribution, and a handful of Starter Set customers were sent a copy of their game 'Aquelarre' by mistake. Don't worry if this happens to you, we'll send you the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set replacement right away! And you can just keep and enjoy 'Aquelarre' too.

[MOB]

The second of three articles exploring the world of 'Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace', Critical Role's recent cosmic horror one-shot. Here Keeper Taliesin Jaffe looks at the fascinating setting itself - a prequel of sorts to the “Edge of Darkness” scenario in the CALL OF CTHULHU STARTER SET, taking place some 30 years or so prior to those events.

https://critrole.com/shadow-of-the-crystal-palace-the-setting

[Lordabdul]

12 hours ago, MOB said:

In the wake of Critical Role's 'Shadow of the Crystal Palace' airing on Twitch and YouTube our fulfilment warehouses have been pummelled with orders for the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. Which is great!

It's remarkable that a CritRole video would warrant the use of a word like "pummelled". I expected a blip or two in the sales, but it sounds like it's really significant jump?

[Mankcam]

Wil Wheaton played a game of Fate Core on his Geek n Sundry Tabletop show a few years ago, and sales apparently went thru the roof for a few months, according to Evil Hat.

So I have no doubt that something like this could easily happen here now that CoC 7E has been played on Critical Role.

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Mankcam

[stadi]

8 hours ago, midwinter said:

I wish that Into the Darkness Youtube-channel and the Skype of Cthulhu podcasts had 700k views. They deserve it. Show them some love too, Chaosium.

I had a quick look at Into the Darkness. You can't compare the two, one is an AAA quality show with (voice)actors, props and people sitting at an actual table, the other is a bunch of dude-heads with headsets. Don't get me wrong, they and the story might be great, but the two are on a completely different level.

And then the other thing. They are again all white males. Even I as a white male am not really interested in other (only) white males gaming. If someone does something like this, they should at least get some girls to play along.

[klecser]

There are a couple pretty simple life axioms that people can follow to have a sense of perspective about their hobbies.

One is that if you aren't in the driver's seat, you don't get to drive the car. Nobody likes a back seat driver. 

You don't get to pick other people's ice cream flavors. And if you are the sort of person who complains about the ice cream flavor another person chooses, you need to reevaluate your priorities.

If the ice cream shop starts doing really well off that flavor you don't like, with an ad campaign that you don't like, complaining to the ice cream store about selling it and how they sell it is nothing but noise.

It's a great way to get the shop and the shoppers to ignore you.

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by klecser

[Lordabdul]

Finally finished watching it! It took me a couple sessions since the beginning was pretty slow and I was getting a bit bored. Once it gets started with the shadow-people it's pretty fun, though -- the production values are insane (see what I did there?) and the roleplaying is, as usual, quite solid. It was just difficult to watch at times because they got so many basic rules wrong... it felt that only Ashly actually read the starter rules and remember any of it. The most interesting thing, of course, was hearing them use so many "D&D-isms" which, in turn (I think) contributed to getting some of the rules wrong, because they were reverting to their old D&D habits and mixing them with CoC mechanics.

[MOB]

11 hours ago, stadi said:

I had a quick look at Into the Darkness. You can't compare the two, one is an AAA quality show with (voice)actors, props and people sitting at an actual table, the other is a bunch of dude-heads with headsets. Don't get me wrong, they and the story might be great, but the two are on a completely different level.

We love what Into the Darkness do too, and have been giving them some prize support to help promote their show. They are very different in intent to Critical Role, being a club with around 60 players and 20 Keepers, with newcomers welcomed. Into the Darkness have a vast repertoire of Call of Cthulhu actual play in their back catalogue (having played almost 100 scenarios and campaigns, including HotOE which took them almost three years). This is a very handy reference for Keepers and the Cthulhu curious.  

They get most of their listens on podbean and i-Tunes.

Edited August 22, 2019 by MOB

[MOB]

In the third article about Shadow of the Crystal Palace, as physical props can be a big part of Call of Cthulhu, here's how they were brought at the game table by Keeper Taliesin with certain narrative and mechanical implications in mind.

https://critrole.com/shadow-of-the-crystal-palace-the-props

[midwinter]

On 8/22/2019 at 12:08 PM, stadi said:

I had a quick look at Into the Darkness. You can't compare the two, one is an AAA quality show with (voice)actors, props and people sitting at an actual table, the other is a bunch of dude-heads with headsets. Don't get me wrong, they and the story might be great, but the two are on a completely different level.

And then the other thing. They are again all white males. Even I as a white male am not really interested in other (only) white males gaming. If someone does something like this, they should at least get some girls to play along.

You're mistaken. Into the Darkness is a more authentic take on how CoC really looks like. Naturally they can't sit around the same table because many live far away from each other. And Thom Raley and others are better Keepers than the guy on Critical Role. They know the rules. They know Lovecraft's material better too. They are authentic CoC-players and they play tons of official releases. Look at their sessions of Amidst the ancient Trees. That's one of my favourite sessions on that channel (and they played through the ENTIRE Horror on the Orient Express campaign too). Into the Darkness have had had both coloured players/Keepers, female players/Keepers, gay Keepers/gay players and people from all over the world. All that jazz.

The props of Critical Role filled no particular function. The written paper that the Asian woman got, did one even get to see it? I must have missed that part. I must have missed the maps too. And with all these voice actors (that lack the charisma to be big actors) it's always "look at me, look at me now". The only guy who was more laidback and natural was the black guy. And there was alot of laughter too which hampered the horror mood. I'm sorry, but this was more cosplay than Call of Cthulhu. And looking at the fan art, it's a voice actor's cult. Almost every illustration were of the participants, not events in the scenario.

If you have AAA quality like you say, invest in a dice/prop cam (because I think they cheat with their rolls). Make the actors understand that it's a horror game, not Victorian era Scooby-Doo. Keep the mood in the horror vein, take the game and the scenario seriously. And learn the rules as a Keeper if you have had two years to do it.

[soltakss]

On 8/20/2019 at 4:21 AM, MOB said:

Wow CritRoleStats kept track of literally everything that happened during Critical Role's 'The Shadow of the Crystal Palace'. Even the puns:

https://www.critrolestats.com/blog/2019/7/31/call-of-cthulhu-shadow-of-the-crystal-palace-masterpost

Where did Scooby Doo get to?

[SilverSeraph]

On 8/21/2019 at 7:54 AM, MOB said:

In the wake of Critical Role's 'Shadow of the Crystal Palace' airing on Twitch and YouTube our fulfilment warehouses have been pummelled with orders for the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. Which is great!

But it seems our overwhelmed US warehouse has goofed somewhere along the way: we're helping our friends at Nocturnal Media out with distribution, and a handful of Starter Set customers were sent a copy of their game 'Aquelarre' by mistake. Don't worry if this happens to you, we'll send you the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set replacement right away! And you can just keep and enjoy 'Aquelarre' too.

When can the general public buy Aqualarre?  I had no idea this even existed until about a year ago otherwise I would not have hesitated to go in for the wooden box in the Kickstarter.

[MOB]

On 8/21/2019 at 9:54 PM, MOB said:

In the wake of Critical Role's 'Shadow of the Crystal Palace' airing on Twitch and YouTube our fulfilment warehouses have been pummelled with orders for the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. Which is great!

As noted, we've received an avalanche of orders after Shadow of the Crystal Palace went to air and our North American Shipping Company has been overwhelmed by the Critter Community Death Hug! 

Our customer support specialist Dustin outlines what we're doing to to catch up...

https://www.chaosium.com/bloga-note-from-dustin-shipping-delays-death-hugs-and-your-order-status

Edited August 25, 2019 by MOB