Does a Lovecraft game need combat rules?

[b_bankhead]

As some of you know I am working on a Lovecraftian game called Eldritch Tales, and I have become bogged down on an area with regard what is really signifigant in the game.

As it stands I have isolated the following basic types of conflict signifigant in the game:

Fight-ordinary physical conflict
Flight-the ability to end a scene and relocate
Social-affinity with the normal world
Eldritch-conflict with mythos creatures ,using magic, interpreting glyphs etc.

Now as I looked at that list 'Fight' kept jumping out at me.  Is it really necessary? Are ordinary physical conflicts really signifigant in a Lovecratian story?
Now as everyone is fond of pointing out Lovecraft's hero's weren't primarily fighters and I don't recall any of the stakes in a Lovecraft story every being resolved by ordinary physical combat. In fact I can't think of any memorable swordfights,brawls, or gunfights either.
So given this the 'fight' conflict stood out like a sore thumb. I'm not sure if it really belongs but  can't figure out how to do without it.

Pure negotiation
Essentially the GM asks the character 'what do YOU think should happen"? The player and the gm hash out, metagamwise some mutually reasonable outcome.

Pure Color
Physicaly combat NEVER resolves the stakes of a situation, therefore the player gets to describe whatever outcome he wants.  It's as insignifigant to the situation as what he had for breakfast

A Line
Put simply ordinary combat doesn't occur. No provisions are made for it in the game rules.


That's what I can come up with so far.  Anybody have any ideas on this?

[GB Steve]

I'm not aware of your game, but I'm working on a Mythos game too. I can recall a few fights in HPL from Lagrasse in the Call of Cthulhu to the clearing of Innsmouth and I'm sure there are more.

I've got a few of questions. I doubt that there's a single game that can capture all the aspects of HPL beyond going the generic route of Call of Cthulhu and relying on player/GM input to create colour. What kind of game are you hoping for?

Who do you expect PCs to fight? Cultists, creatures, gods, other people (cops, gangsters, orderlies)?

What kind of outcome do you expect from fights? Will the PCs be beaten, weakened, captured, die?

Do you think fights will serve a dramatic purpose and heighten the tension? Will you have sufficient tension without fighting?

As you say, fights could just be used as colour so I think it's got to be your decision as to whether you're going to go this way. Playtesting is probably what'll tell you whether it works or not. I wouldn't underestimate the benefits of a good playtest.

[ffilz]

From what I remember of the Lovecraft I read (which was like 20 years ago...), there really wasn't any combat. So I think you're right, you could do it without combat. Thrre's lots of other conflict (of course a generalized conflict system could handle physical combat - though if you don't have any abilities describing anything useful in combat, it would be pretty hard to create combat conflicts - so I guess in a way that's a consideration to avoid having, for example, strength as an ability [or if you do, make sure you understand what it's used for if not for combat]).

Frank

[MikeSands]

Regarding the source material, there's plenty of fighting in Lovecraft's stories. However,  it's usually fairly incidental.

The idea that people dealing with the mythos shouldn't be fighting things seems to have developed from Call of Cthulhu play rather than reference to the stories.

[nsruf]

A game where people can go insane without rules for physical violence seems odd to me. How about using purely negative effects for physical combat: it can never resolve the current conflict, but it can waste precious resources (health, sanity) and thus increase tension. So the best result you can hope for from combat is getting away unharmed. Of course, I don't know your exact game mechanics and whether this would be feasible.

As for the general question, if physical combat belongs in a Lovecraftian game: it is true that the original HPL stories feature little phyiscal violence. However, there is at least the one scene where Cthulhu is run over with the steamboat... And if you look at the mythos fiction by other authors, force sometimes works (R.E. Howard, I am looking at you!). So it really is a question of which kind of stories you want to create.

[iain]

To be honest i don't know a huge amount about lovecraft stuff, but from a general viewpoint on a game that should be mainly about investigation and psychology, I would say that a conflict involving a physical confrontation should have some physical outcome, but the main problem would be the characters maintining their grip on reality long enough to do what they need to do. I was asked a similar question about my own Mob game, which has now removed all the physical traits and become more narrative with social and physical conseqeunce to losing a conflict, which is decided purely by poker. Maybe players could stake a physical impairment to reduce the chance of them becoming stark raving insane, bakancing taking a hit, with losing their mind?
I would say you want some kind of structured narration, where players can try and do physical things but in the end it will be their psychological well being that is the biggest thing. Physical combat might work against minor elements of the Mythos bu t generally they should quickly discover that it won't really have any effect against the big boys.  basically have physical conflict in, but make it next to useless, and very narrative.
Cheers
Iain

[Graham W]

As I remember, there's combat in Lovecraft, but it's mostly off-camera. So, for example, there's a section in At the Mountains Of Madness in which they come across a camp, where the humans and dogs have clearly been murdered and experimented on. It's clear that there has been combat and it's clear that that combat resolved the stakes of the situation at the time, but it's not described in the narrative.

The only sequence I can think of which comes close to combat is in the The Shadow Over Innsmouth. During the central character's flight from Innsmouth, there's a lot of barging doors open and, on one occasion, holding a door so that a Deep One couldn't come through.

So...with all that in mind, I think there would need to be some provision for combat. The "Pure Colour" option you give above is the one I like best, but I think it does assume that most combat occurs outside of the main narrative.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Boys, boys, let's not get confused. If it's Lovecraft you're emulating, then the presence or non-precence of combat is incidental and irrelevant. Combat might happen or not happen, depending on the mores and situation of an individual story. But combat is never a source of conflict in a thematic sense; in your typical Lovecraft horror story violence does not carry thematic weight. It's purpose is purely color, as we say here.

To put it simply: combat might be a result of a conflict, if you will, but not the means. Even when the chain of consequence is not clear, it's usually the case that the actual issue is being hashed under the veneer of combat. If you read any Lovecraft story, you'll easily see that if there's any conflict in there, then it's usually only once per story, after which it's the rules of the universe that take care of the rest.

But, the actual problem here is that the same holds true for most applications of the other conflict types the original poster postulates. Lovecraftian literature simply doesn't operate on the level of character conflict, so any system breakdowns starting with social, esoteric, physical etc. conflicts is already working outside the literary logic of Lovecraft. You're simulating the hypothetical world the events happen in, not the story logic.

The above is important, because if the goal is to offer the players similar means to what the protagonists of those stories have in their disposal, then your best bet is to allow physical conflict and play up the consequences appropriately. Lovecraftian stories strive very much to be realistically constrained (not as in literary realism, but romantically; there is a certain kind of world Lovecraft depicts, and the protagonists live with it's rules), so it's fully appropriate to be all realistic about violence. If it's an appropriate answer to a situation, then the lovecraftian protagonist certainly uses it.

[Jason Morningstar]

You might check out my game, ]The Shab-al-Hiri Roach.  It hits all the Lovecraft buttons in a light-hearted way and doesn't have any special rules for fighting, although there are explicit rules for resolving conflicts. 

--Jason

[Balbinus]

What Lovecraft stories are you seeking to emulate?

Lovecraft did not write a consistent canon, stories like Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth certainly involve physical conflict, even The Whisperer in Darkness has mi-go getting killed by dogs.

In fact, violence is a solution in the stories far more often than people think as others have already observed.

I think the better question then is what is it in Lovecraft you want to bring out?  What is it in his stories that interests you?

If the answer is a better CoC, then IMO yes you need combat rules because it comes up quite a lot in the source material.  If though, for example, you want a cerebral game of man investigating truths best left unknown, combat rules may be pretty irrelevant.

So, what do you want your game to be about?  What kind of characters will be in the game and what will they do in a typical session?

[Vibilo]

Hi, I'm new to the Forge... You can call me Dan.

I think combat in a Lovecraft style game, while bound to occur, is not really needed in the rules.  As I see it the game probably won't revolve around combat, but more around the character interactions themselves.  For example: At the Mountains of Madness, which features a group of antarctic explorers, does have a number of combat circumstances, but most appear off screen. Again in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward Charles is strangled by Joseph Curwen; combat is very common in the stories but since it is not central to the story does not really require a seperate system. IMO it should resolved just like any other circumstance, you do not really need HP or weapon damage (any of that jazz).  It should either be left to straight narration or be treated as any other challenge (such as lifting an extremely heavy object or deciphering a scroll).

[tj333]

From the above posts and my own readings I can see a Lovecraft style game can with fights but they are not focused on them.
So the opportunity to engage in physical conflicts does seem to fit better to me then leaving mechanics for it out of the game.

Since you have identified these as types of conflicts I'm assuming the players have certain skills/abilities that match to the types of conflict in some way.

Fight seems out of place to me as well since I can see it as overlapping with Social (Ordinary physical conflict fits within normal world) or as a possibility when dealing with either normal or mythos conflicts.
To fit it in better in the first case it can be made a subset of Social (perhaps renaming Social to Mundane) or in the second case adding some sort of extra fallout/complications to it is when used.
For an example of the fallout/complications method having the PC fight a cultist and take his robe to sneak into the ceremony leaves behind either a dead/unconscious body that can be found as opposed using Social to convince him that you deserve a robe.

Though as an alternative that seems to fit you could have Social for dealing with mundane things in a mundane way, Eldritch for dealing with the mythos with mythos stuff/knowledge and Fight for when you start trying to handle the Social(Mundane)/Eldritch conflicts with the opposite type of skills.
Trying to shoot out an mythos beast's eyes since you know that has some special effect on it or using spell to banish it are both Eldritch conflicts but just trying to shoot the beast is applying an Social skill to an Eldritch situation and has special/additional effects such as sanity loss/penalties/complications to it.

[anonymouse]

Its been mentioned a few times, but the obvious example seems to have been left out. "Lovecraft game" is as nebulous as, say, a "DUNE game". There's all kinds of stuff you can grab from those sources and spin off into a Forge-style, super-focused game, or something more "mainstream" which says, "Here is a whole bunch of setting details about things making you go insane and/or court politics, and also here is the damage for guns and 10 pages on weapon range".

Anyway, the example for this - Lovecraft combat - is Delta Green which, if you're not familiar with it, was a secret US government military unit that went around dealing with all the bad mythos juju. Chaosium put it out alongside CoC, had its own core book, supplements, et cetera. I'd lean towards calling it Lovecraft-as-video-game; plenty of monster hunting built in, with whatever extra drama the GM thought to splice in. (and typical COC instant-death; one scenario had the players in a spaceship. if they looked out the window at the nearby planet, said planet looked back at them and everyone lost 100d100 sanity or something ridiculous)

So the question is: do you want a detective game, a military game, a psycho-horror game..? And then you dress it up in Cthulhu's clothes and call it good. (and, incidentally, I'd say the kind of combat you'd have in a detective game is rather different from a military game, and both would likely benefit from something combat-y in the rules)

[b_bankhead]

My thanks to all those who replied to this thread.  It was a big help in solidifying in my own mind the direction I want to go.

Balbinus:
   Lovecraft did not write a consistent canon, stories like Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth certainly involve physical conflict, even The Whisperer in Darkness has mi-go getting killed by dogs.

In fact, violence is a solution in the stories far more often than people think as others have already observed.

Indeed.  I realise that the kind of Lovecraft I'm moving toward is the ultra high color, through-the-rabbit-hole kind in stories like 'Dream Quest of Unknown Kaddath' or Beyond the Gate of the Silver Key' .  If you want to think of what an Eldritch Tales character is like , think Randolph Carter. These tales in fact have plenty of physical conflict.  Also a tussle with a low level Eldritch creature like a ghoul or a Deep one defaults to a normal physical combat anyway.

Well thanks again and with this I request this thread be closed.