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Call of Cthulhu
Hexmage-PA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, uh, does anybody here play Call of Cthulhu? I only remember ever seeing one PbP game on here. I own the rulebook, but I haven't played or ran a game of it yet. I'm primarily focusing on D&D4E right now, but I've got CoC waiting in the wings should I ever want to run something completely and totally different.
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And with strange aeons even death may die.
I don't actually know a terrible lot about the Cthulhu mythos having not read the books, but what I've come across has certainly been fun. This is me and my friend a few winters ago.
In retrospect, trying to run a game of Call of Cthulhu for some observant Christians was not the greatest idea I ever had.
This is my situation as well. Though I don't even have a RL group at the moment.
To be fair, CoC doesn't bother me at all (reading HP Lovecrafts' stories currently and am really amazed with the writing) nor would it most Christians I know. That said, I don't feel the need to make fun of others' for what they care to partake in. If something bothers them and they choose not to play, that's cool. There are games I probably wouldn't want to play either due to content, as I'm sure there's a line for each of us.
Personally, I like playing an average Joe trying to combat the forces of darkness (even if it will most likely not work out too well in a CoC game).
I've played CoC once and it's been my favorite RP experience so far. I played a one "Daniel White" -- a lovable but not-too-attentive book store owner (I combined Dr Walter Bishop of Fringe with Daniel in LOST and Johnny Depp's character in The Ninth Gate) -- and let me tell you, being unnatentive and having one's mind wander all the time is actually a great asset to keeping one's sanity in the world of Cthulhu!
no absolutely, the point of the post was that i probably should have considered my audience better and realized that it might not appeal to them
Funny enough, one player had two of his characters die. So maybe it was the player
Actually, I take some of that back. We did end the campaign because another character died and basically allowed the Evil Thing to get what he wanted thus pretty much ending the story. So half of us made it through the campaign.
My character, did, however, have an eternity of torment awaiting him after death from reading the King in Yellow.
I will say I found it very refreshing to play in a game where I was not expected to just kill through everything and have to rely on more mundane resources. And of course I wouldn't expect to be able to stand up to some eternal demonic god-like thing.
I agree with what you said though and if the DM is putting together an adventure which causes people to die left and right, that's no fun. As a player, I need to at least get to the point where I'm attached to my character and don't want to see him die! On the other side, at least with my small experience with the game, if you die or not is up to the player (or should be) within reason: if you do silly stuff, expect consequences!
edit: http://www.arcdream.com/dennis/NEMESIS.pdf is the rules, for anyone curious.
The Living Card Game is actually a lot of fun but some of the cards are a little ambiguous and usually start debates on usage. Still highly recommended, though.
I'm answering on the assumption that you're intending to release your adventure into the wild somehow, otherwise you wouldn't care what other GMs thought.
So, with that in mind...
1. Accuracy: The majority of CoC stuff has a historical setting, primarily the 1920's. Many GMs and players are passing history buffs. In other words, if you have a historic setting for your adventure then do your research and get your facts straight. I've seen professionally published adventures get flamed into obscurity not because of the storyline but simply due to a smattering of basic errors like claiming there were tigers in Kenya and misplacing Dublin.
2. Cliches: Be really cautious in using generic evil cultists, deep ones or mi-go. There are a LOT of scenarios out there and these guys are in a LOT of them. Use something less overdone or have a really unique angle. Evil cult and/or wizard finds sinister book and uses it to summon tentacley creature has been done. We don't need another one.
3. Build slowly: Lovecraft's best stories relied on a slow build up to the horror. If your adventure has the players on the Plateua of Leng fighting moon-beasts within an hour then you'll have stretched the suspension of disbelief way pas the breaking point. Always err on the side of subtle. CoC is a thinking player's game.
4. Have a sequence of events in mind that move the players through the plot. It can be a series of preset events or as simple as clue A will lead to clue B will lead to location 1 and monster. A weird background story with an open scenario typically just leaves players wandering and confused.
5. The most useful scenarios are ones that are easy to incorporate into existing campaigns. If your scenario requires that all of the characters be zookeepers or that one of them has a grandmother who just died and left him a creepy old house then you're placing limits on how likely it is that it'll be used.
Hope that's of some help