Call of Cthulhu Forum Game: Who Wants To Die Horribly?

[Uzumaki]

I want to see if I can put together a group to run Call of Cthulhu here. Anyone who wants in can play.

The premise for the campaign would basically be the TV show Lost but with the Cthulhu Mythos in place of the stupid Lost mythology. Also unlike Lost I wouldn't be making up random twists as I go and then pretending it was a story arc. I have designed a crazy island with a central mystery that is elaborate and piecemeal but coherent. The goal of the players would be to survive on the island, and maybe even unravel this mystery before everyone is killed or goes insane. Presumably they would also seek rescue, but we'll see how well that goes.

I will be using Call of Cthulhu 6th edition. Anyone who has access to that can make their own character. Anyone else who wants to play can give a background for their character and I can throw together some stats. CoC isn't a game where character builds are a big issue.

For those not familiar with CoC, it's probably the most lethal RPG ever produced. I'm going to start with as big a group as possible but it will slowly get whittled down as people get killed or go insane. The game isn't as capricious about killing characters as it's reputation would suggest, it's just very "realistic" about your chances of survival if you do come face-to-face with Lovecraftian horrors. Protip: avoid coming face-to-face with Lovecraftian horrors.

While I'm not adverse to joke characters or characters based on lolcows (our proud forum tradition) most of these kinds of characters would get horribly killed so fast in this game that it wouldn't really be worth the effort to make them. Fair warning. I will be playing it as straight horror.

Note: While I did flake out on the last game I ran here, I had personal meatspace reasons that I'm not going to air out in public.

 

[Surtur]

I might. How are we rolling and can we make alts?

 

[Uzumaki]

3d6 for STR, CON, POW, DEX and APP.
2d6+6 for SIZ and INT
3d6+3 for EDU

Sanity is POW x5
Hit points are CON + SIZ / 2

You can reroll if what you get doesn't fit the character you want to make but don't be a munchkin about it.

I'm okay with alts, but they'd be background NPC "fellow survivors" until such time as they became necessary to use. One character per player at a time. On the off chance that I get way disproportionate interest and have too many characters I may change my ruling on this, but I highly doubt it.

 

[Randall Fragg]

Sounds fun. Quote Me Now's already doing a Sonichu themed game, and I'm having fun there. I'm in.

 

[Judge Holden]

Im in.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

I've always wanted to try a Call of Cthulhu game. Is it easy to learn?

 

[Sammy]

Only if I can roleplay one of our cows, and voluntarily cut my starting SAN roll in half.

 

[Uzumaki]

I've always wanted to try a Call of Cthulhu game. Is it easy to learn?

Oh yeah, it's dead simple. Your skills are rated in a percentage. You roll 1d100 to use them. If your roll is under your skill rating, you succeed, if it's over, you fail.

If you run out of hit points, you die, if you run out of sanity points, you go mad.

The end.

Only if I can roleplay one of our cows, and voluntarily cut my starting SAN roll in half.

Like I said, you can play lolcows if you feel you simply must, but I'm not willing to make the sanity system the butt of jokes because that would have a deleterious effect on the game's tone. Lolcows aren't insane in the Call of Cthulhu sense of the term anyway.

 

[Sammy]

I've always wanted to try a Call of Cthulhu game. Is it easy to learn?

Mechanically yes, its one of the simplest games to play once you have the character created. Typically, you perform an action, and roll percentile dice for the skill. If you get LOWER than your skill, you succeed.

Example given. Jace Conners, wants to shoot his Desert Eagle pellet gun at the traitor Tyce Andrews. Lets for argument sakes say he has a 50% in his handguns skill.

Jace's player rolls percentile dice (Usually 2 d10s if you know what those are, but if not, its just a random number set from 0-100). He gets a 23%. That's below 50% so thats a success! It will be a long time before Tyce forgets the day Jace gave him a good old welt on the arm with his Desert Eagle pellet gun!

But now Tyce is coming around with his Race War van, its getting awful dangerous for Jace here, so he decides he wants to escape over a large brick wall so Tyce can't run him down. the GM rules Jace must make a parkour check to do so (again for argument's sake, lets just say Jace has a 50% in Parkour). Jace's player rolls again, but rolls a 78. Failure! Jace fails to clear the wall, and now is in some serious trouble!

At the end of the game session, since Jace successfully rolled a handgun check, he has a chance to improve the skill (this is how CoC deals with leveling up characters). He rolls a handgun check - except that this time, he wants to roll OVER the percentage, effectively failing the check. Jace rolls a 62, meaning that his handgun skill improved (roll a d6, add that many percentile points to the skill. Jace rolls a 3, so his new handgun skill is 53%). Its a pretty balanced solution to improving skills, since the better you get at them, the harder it is to improve (but if your numbers are still relatively low and you manage to make a successful check, you have lots of room to improve and learn). Since Jace didn't succeed at his parkour check, he's not allowed to try and improve that skill. And again, this only happens at the end of a game night.

That's pretty much everything you need to know the mechanics of the game once your character is made. The hard part of Call of Cthulhu is learning how to survive. Uzumaki is not lying, its a vicious game. There is no shame in running from a bad situation. More often than not, you will be put in unfair scenarios, and sometimes there's just no stopping your untimely demise. That's not to say its a game without hope, but it is a game with very, very little.

 

[Sammy]

Like I said, you can play lolcows if you feel you simply must, but I'm not willing to make the sanity system the butt of jokes because that would have a deleterious effect on the game's tone. Lolcows aren't insane in the Call of Cthulhu sense of the term anyway.

I think there's a huge difference between playing CWC and hamming it up by willingly walking into danger screaming "I'm Chris Chan Sonichu!", or forcing SAN checks after hearing Chris rant about his comics (taint piercing images might still warrant a check, I think thats true of real life for God's sake), and putting our pet lolcow in a story where he/she simply fell into a bad situation.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

I figured as much. Wouldn't be proper eldritch horror if I was just running around beating everything.

Depending on when you run it, I'd like to give it a go.

 

[Uzumaki]

I think there's a huge difference between playing CWC and hamming it up by willingly walking into danger screaming "I'm Chris Chan Sonichu!", or forcing SAN checks after hearing Chris rant about his comics (taint piercing images might still warrant a check, I think thats true of real life for God's sake), and putting our pet lolcow in a story where he/she simply fell into a bad situation.

Oh absolutely, you can play Chris if you want. You just can't lower your starting sanity since in CoC it mostly represents the mind's inability to function in the face of the stark inhuman truths of the universe, not autism or personality disorders. Comparing that state of affairs to Chris being weird cheapens it. But you can play Chris, and you can be weird, and arguably insane, that's all fine.

Reroll until you get a low POW and your sanity won't be so hot to start anyway. Although Chris does black magic so maybe he should have a respectable POW. Actually, now that I think of it, his complete refusal to process information he dislikes would actually probably help him withstand the sanity blasting nature of the mythos and cause him to, effectively, have a high starting sanity.

Depending on when you run it, I'd like to give it a go.

Gonna do play by post in these forums, so it would be played slowly over time with people checking the thread at their convenience.

 

[Sammy]

Reroll until you get a low POW and your sanity won't be so hot to start anyway. Although Chris does black magic so maybe he should have a respectable POW. Actually, now that I think of it, his complete refusal to process information he dislikes would actually probably help him withstand the sanity blasting nature of the mythos and cause him to, effectively, have a high starting sanity.

I...
You know, I never thought about it that way. Chris would probably have a high SAN, as he just rejects reality for what it is (Which, in CoC, reality is pretty horrible, so..)

Huh.

 

[Uzumaki]

I...
You know, I never thought about it that way. Chris would probably have a high SAN, as he just rejects reality for what it is (Which, in CoC, reality is pretty horrible, so..)

Huh.

We're blazing new trails in the art of playing lolcows in RPGs.

Edit: If I remember correctly, the opening line of the story Call of Cthulhu is "I believe that the most merciful thing about the human mind is it's inability to properly correlate all it's contents."

 

[Surtur]

Ok here is my sheet for Joe Wilcock, up and coming prizefighter. A bit of a note, I used the Boxer occupation from the Investigators Companion witch gave me a boost to STR and CON and the expense of EDU and starting skill points, so that's why my STR and CON are a bit high.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=1076039

I have not got items yet since I did not know what you want us to do for that.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

I...
You know, I never thought about it that way. Chris would probably have a high SAN, as he just rejects reality for what it is (Which, in CoC, reality is pretty horrible, so..)

Huh.

Except that certain mundane things (blue arms, men, his own penis) will cause sanity damage to him.

Edit: I'll try putting something together tonight for a character. You can help/mock me from there.

 

[Randall Fragg]

Okay, I threw together three characters, one of which I used for Call of C'handler:
Tyce Andrews, the marine trained teen in all of his drug fueled glory.
Tyce.pdf
Alek Dobson Ferison, an ADF knock off who's dedicated to spreading Social Justice and smashing the penisarchy.
adf.pdf
And Dale Joneson, who's basically a more unhinged Dale Gribble.
dale.pdf
(My strategy for CoC? Make all of your characters assholes so it's not as sad when they die.)
I don't know how complete this is, or if there's anything else I need to do.

 

[Uzumaki]

Ok here is my sheet for Joe Wilcock, up and coming prizefighter. A bit of a note, I used the Boxer occupation from the Investigators Companion witch gave me a boost to STR and CON and the expense of EDU and starting skill points, so that's why my STR and CON are a bit high.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=1076039

Cool. I'm fine with custom occupations so ones from the sourcebooks are extra acceptable.

Edit: HP are 8 though, you add together then cut in half.

I have not got items yet since I did not know what you want us to do for that.

Yeah. don't bother with equipment yet, I'm doing a thing with it where you salvage stuff from the plane. You can define what you had in your luggage if you like, though.

I'll try putting something together tonight for a character. You can help/mock me from there.

If you need a jumping off point, back in the day when shit like CoC was cutting edge what we'd do is generate random stats (as indicated above) and then interpret them into a character. Like if I rolled low Power, low Size, low Constitution but high Intelligence and Education I might assume I'm a small, frail, weak-willed academic of some kind.

For the record the stats are Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Appearance, Power, Size, Intelligence, Education. Power is sort of willpower + magic aptitude (although none of you will have any starting knowledge of magic, and it might not be so smart an idea to learn any).

I don't know how complete this is, or if there's anything else I need to do.

Don't fill every empty box on your sheet with jokes because you might need those later (specifically the Mental Disorders section). Your sheets are complete, though. Like I said it's pretty simple. You just need to pick which human disaster you're going to portray. Dale sounds awesome though. Sovereign Citizen is just the right flavor of ridiculous for Call of Cthulhu.

------

I pointed this out to Surtur but you can define what was in your luggage (which you may or may not be able to retrieve, depending on your in-game actions) but this must be limited to things you could reasonably get on a plane. The only way I can imagine a character having a gun would be if you want to play an air marshal (but maybe you can think of another reason). Presumably everyone brought clothes and toiletries and stuff so you only really need to list survival-relevant items.

 

[Enjoy your spaghetti]

Deal me in.

 

[Uzumaki]

Deal me in.