Changes Revealed by the Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed Quickstart

I very much dig the changes in 7th edition from a gameplay perspective.  Here's why.

Cthulhu 7th Edition Quickstart

Chaosium has posted a QuickStart for Cthulhu 7th Edition. You can find it on DriveThruRPG and Chaosium's site.

A summary and review are forthcoming.

Employing Horror Despite Technology, pt 2

Following up Monday's post about counteracting the use of cell phones in a modern Horror RPG setting, I'm going to talk about the Internet today.  One of the major threats to supernatural entities is exposure, and the internet is the ultimate in exposure.  Here are some ways to handle it.

Employing Horror Despite Technology, pt. 1

A recent hypothesis was recently posed to me by a friend about how supernatural suspense/horror would be different with the use of modern technology -- cell phones, the internet, and other forms of instantaneous communication.

Two Beautiful Dreamlands Maps

While browsing, I found two beautiful maps of H. P. Lovecraft's dreamlands.

The first is a photoshop of an existing Dreamlands map, looking to be from the Chaosium Dreamlands book, by DeviantArt user Danial79:

The second is entirely more interesting to me, as a crafted-from scratch illustration capturing much more of the flavor of the Dreamlands, crafted by Jason Thompson (Mockman):

Cults of Cthulhu

Courtesy of Wikipedia, here's a list of all the cults mentioned in canonical Lovecraftian work.
Here's an example of how a cult works in the Arkham Horror game (for a bit of a guide).
Here's an initiation right of the Order of the Golden Dawn.
Here's a list of Masonic initiation rites.

Not that I'm plotting anything related to this for a game or anything.

Tidbits of Cthulhu 7th

Updates from the Kickstarter (and the AMA):

A quick summary, taken from the AMA:
*The rules have been revised to make certain situations flow more easily in the game (combat and skill use for example), its the same game in nature.
*The rulebook have been completely revised and restructured. The experience of play remains much the same. Some of the new rules include the option to 'push' skill rolls, opposed combat rolls and the optional use of Luck points as a resource that can be spent to buy off failure.
*The characteristics are now percentages (e.g. 60%) which allows for straight characteristic rolls rather than needing to x5 stats etc. This also allows for opposed rolls, which essentially eliminates the need to refer back to a resistance table.

Cthulhu Wars Kickstarter

Since I missed Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu 7th Kickstarter, I might as well make this Cthulhu week.  The creator of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, Sandy Petersen, is creating a board game of miniatures combat featuring elder gods, cults, and the opening of gates.  The concept reminds me very much of the old Cults Across America, but with two large changes -- gone is the old tongue-in-cheek flavor, and replacing the old cardboard pieces, there are a full range of 28mm-scale miniatures, including the Elder Gods.  Check it out on Kickstarter.

Cthulhu 7th Ed Kickstarter

File in the "How the Helpful Hints from Heloise did I miss this?" category:

The Cthulhu 7th Edition Kickstarter, which I'd already somewhat covered, ended on Friday.  You can still get pledges in via PayPal.  Instructions follow.

Kickstarter: Achtung! Cthulhu

Inspired by Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics and the perennial stories of the German Ahnenerbe in popular media as a prominent WWII occult baddie, I've toyed with the idea of a race against the Nazis as an RPG campaign.  Delta Green's historical fiction led me planning to race the players against the Ahnenerbe in a race to Atlantis, and a race to keep sleeping Cthulhu awake.  I even started converting weapons that were popular in the '40s, but ultimately, I scrapped the project due to lack of player interest.  Achtung! Cthulhu has now beat me to the punch, and done (presumably) the majority of the legwork both for converting the '40s into BRP rules and documenting a race for Atlantis.

Breaking Cthulhu: Combat

After making a superhuman born prior to the birth of America, figuring out how to become a master of all trades, and become impervious to insanity, it's only fitting that we talk about how a Call of Cthulhu character can exploit combat.

Breaking Character Creation

After looking at skills and sanity checks, it should be fairly apparent that Cthulhu's system isn't particularly balanced for party play in the same way that other games aspire to be.  Character Creation, the very thing that determines all of these, is also easily exploitable.  We continue our look at Cthulhu as we move forward into 7th Edition.

Kickstarter: Horror on the Orient Express

I've been ramping up for the 7th edition of Call of Cthulhu, as you've seen for the past week in my analysis articles.  I've got a handful more before I'm done, but I did want to highlight that Chaosium is creating a Cthulhu boxed campaign for 7th, out of their old module, Horror on the Orient Express.

Breaking Minds

After Monday's post working out the statistics of abusing skill checks in Call of Cthulhu, I moved on to crunching statistics on Sanity when working through scenarios -- specifically, the odds of not going either temporarily or permanently insane during a scenario.  While Education is the most important stat at generation, Power seems to be the most helpful statistic afterward.

Breaking Cthulhu's Skill System

Call of Cthulhu (and Delta Green) has a rather unique skill system. While d% challenges are fairly common among role-playing games, Cthulhu has a unique system of skill improvement. Each time you succeed at a check, you mark a box next to the skill name, and have a chance of improving that skill by rolling over your skill value on a d%. If you succeed, you get a die roll to determine how far your skill improves. As someone running a game, I like to learn how to break a system in order to let me better design scenarios to keep things balanced. Here's how Cthulhu 6th is ruined.

Cthulhu 7th Edition

Cthulhu's my baby.  Though it wasn't my first love (oWoD takes that title), Cthulhu was the girl I cheated on oWoD with and married later.  It's not without its flaws, but it's a beutifully simple, beautifully deadly system.  Unspeakable Oath offered a brief glimpse of the 2013 Seventh Edition of Cthulhu (which, they point out, is still up for revision), courtesy of a Continuum presentation of developers Paul Fricker and Mike Mason.  Below, I've got both a summary of what UO had to offer and my thoughts, having delved into the depths of unspeakable horror for nearly fifteen years.

Gaming a Zombie Apocalypse

With the events of the past month pointing toward (hopefully) silly statements about a zombie apocalypse, let's talk about how to tie them into some sort of role-playing game.

Shaping a World

Perhaps above all else, I feel like depth is important in a setting.  I want to feel like things are well thought out, or have some sort of plan.  If I don't feel connected with a game/book setting, I find myself more frequently disengaging, which means less connection with a character and a game world.  In order to provide this for my players, I like to do extensive setting research before I'm comfortable getting to the point where I'm ready to present it.  Here are ten tools that I've found rather useful in writing a setting, given that I've primarily run historical games or games based in real-world settings (Cthulhu, Shadowrun, World of Darkness).