Hot Lead and Hypocrisy: a rant on guns in Call of Cthulhu

[Mike Holmes]

I was vaguely aware of Cthonian from putting it on my list, but I'll take a closer look at it.  I disagree about your system comment though.  The system always has an influence.  There is no such thing as the "natural" or "neutral" choice for system which automatically represents any subject matter.  Rather, the system has to be chosen to match the subject matter.

Well, of course. The point here is that combat is not really specifically supported in the literature nor even by the Cthulhu rules as an ideal means to resolution. So, a system that doesn't promote it specifically matches the design goal well. Or, rather, by having as extensive a combat system as CoC has, it puts an undue mechanical emphasis on that subject matter. So you're making my point for me.

In this case, it's not clear to me that treating non-violent resolution as equal and indeed identical is best for a horror game.  But I should look over Cthonian some more to decide.  

Gads you read in things that aren't there. I'm not saying that there is something in Chthonian that supports anything specifically well in the area of combat, just that it avoids making the error of privileging combat. So you're not going to see much in the way of anything so much as a lack of something problematic.

1) BRP character creation emphasizes the mundanity and similarity of characters.  All characters have all skills; and individuals do not have special mechanical distinctions like talents, feats, or advantages.  This is reinforced in flavor by the simple verb skills like "Climb" and "Hide".  

Well, we were talking about combat, but while we're at it, how is this different from the skill lists of in the other games that both include Climb and Stealth? Hero including them as common man abilities and GURPS in most templates?

2) Character creation also emphasizes the characters more as products of the real world, by basing skill on "Education" and requiring a normal occupation.  HERO and GURPS tend to produce distinctive heroes or even freaks.  CoC at most produces eccentrics.

I'd agree that CoC has more structure here, but as generic games that's what you'd expect. If your only argument was that CoC was better because it's not generic, then I'd agree with you. Still, with templates from a CoC sourcebook, I'm sure GUPRS characters end up being just as "normal," and it's certainly doable in Hero as well. In any case, with the random rolls, I always end up with the guy with the eigth-grade education, meaning he's a thug or good for nothing. Just what I wanted. Actually with my rolling they usually end up being bad at combat as well. The vageries of the system do not produce viable characters, nor characters that players want to play all that often. Hence why the vast majority of play that I've seen has resorted to pregenerated characters. A very standard drift of CoC.

3) The combat system is far more lethal than the HERO combat system, and is also procedurally quicker and simpler.

Same lethality. A sword in Hero does about 1d6 Body against 10 Body for a normal human. Very similar to CoC. In fact the ranges are very similar overall. With stronger creatures, actually, Hero becomes the more lethal. Especially because of Stun damage which can incapacitate in the short run, and effect not seen in Cthulhu (Do "impales" have some similar effect?). I not that you don't mention GURPS because we all know just how "gritty" the damage is in that system - though interestingly a sword or small handgun does about the same damage against the same ten average hits.

As for speed, Hero does have the speed system which can slow things slightly, and some more advanced math in terms of determining your target to hit. But with normal humans this all ends up being relatively simple. In any case, GURPS is almost identical in terms of handling time - determine skill level, modify for range, etc, roll to hit, roll damage, apply damage. Very straightforward. I don't see any particular advantage in terms of speed over these systems.

In any case, there are much quicker systems, and grittier, if that's what's sought.

It does not have flashy maneuver choices like "Haymaker" or "Martial Throw".  This makes the combat more gritty and less cinematic.  There is a big impact from a fast-resolved instant death.  

Martial Throw is only available to a martial artist - probably not allowed in most  CoC games (though it's nice to have it there when you need it, no?). Haymaker is a very gritty maneuver, and just represents taking extra time to off somebody. Perfect for that cultist about to stab a downed investigator - which never seems to resolve right in the normal CoC rules.

4) The percentile system is relatively high-variance compared to skill.  So there is usually a fair chance of failure.  Characters are less likely to be sure of themselves with, say, an 75% skill vs a 16- on 3d6 (which is 98.1%).  Uncertainly is good for horror, and not good for confident heroes.

Well, sure, but I suppose that depends on how you model things in terms of modifiers. The "professional" 16 or less in GURPS is intended to represent a fairly routine task. As such, it's supposed to get negative modifiers to represent less than routine tasks. This makes the system capable of handling a much more reasonable range of actions. In BRP modifiers are potentially very problematic when they go out of range. In any case, Hero takes much the same approach as CoC in terms of skills, and normals tend to have levels like 13-. Which puts them at about the same certaintly level that you want - but still allows for more interesting modifier ranges.

All this said, I put out Hero and GURPS as two games that I would agree don't handle CoC all that well. In not being able to explain to my satisfaction why BRP is substantially better in the combat area, you only more strongly make me feel that CoC is less than optimum in terms of the system.

Again, that doesn't mean that people don't play it and have fun - I do all the time myself. All I'm saying is that to get it to be fun you have to do one of several things with Cthulhu:

1. Just let it be a "game," instead of what I think most people want it to be. Gamist CoC is a drag because you really can't win or even do well.
2. Ignore the combat rules and play the game as the text suggests.

And this is just in regards to the combat - Bryan (who ought to post, damnit) has brought up a number of other problem areas. The thing is that every one of these problems could be addressed by techniques that have come up with since then. Again, all my point has been is that to point out that a car from the 1970s doesn't incporporate any features from today is a rather pointless statement.

Or, rather, if your point, John, is that he should create a better system or shut up with the criticism, then I completely agree. I think the problems that CoC has are pretty clear to those who have them, and that solutions to the problems would be better than just harping on them. Til then, the rest of us will still have fun playing our drifted versions.

Mike

[John Kim]

I started to answer this point-by-point, but I suspect this may be one of these agree-to-disagree points.  Really, I'm not trying to convince you to personally like Call of Cthulhu -- I'm not a particular fan of it myself.  However, I don't accept that it is objectively bad and outdated by the technologically superior new RPGs.  This isn't pure relativism on my part.  For example, I'm willing to argue at length that many games are indeed objectively bad -- like the Lord of the Ring RPG.  But I can see in other people just how well Call of Cthulhu works exactly as written.  

I'll try to sum up my main disagreements.  As I see it, there are a few persistant false assumptions in the debate here:

1) The point of CoC is to create stories in the genre of Lovecraft

This is false, IMO.  CoC is a game inspired by Lovecraft, not emulation for emulation's sake.  Notably, CoC deliberately chose to center on a group of amateur investigators who are continuous from adventure to adventure.  This is an huge huge huge huge difference from Lovecraft's stories -- a fundamental shift in genre, which also changes how the horror dramatically operates.  It also naturally leads to violence -- see #2 below.  

So any argument of "X isn't in Lovecraft, therefore X is wrong" is overly simplistic.  There can and should be differences.  

2) CoC PCs are expected to be totally non-violent

Get real.  These are fucking horrors from beyond.  Negotiation and harsh language just don't cut it for dealing with them.  Nor does simply thinking hard about the problem give one a nice neat formula for disposing of them non-violently.  No one who actually starts playing CoC actually thinks that violence isn't going to be necessary -- nor do the rules advice such.  Players understand that the horrors are there and real and they will take messy and dangerous means to dispose of.  

To Mike -- I agree with your rant #3 that RPGs do not need combat systems.  For example, I never made up combat rules for my Water-Uphill campaign, and combat never happened.  There are many genres where I think that social and other sorts of problem-solving should be encouraged more.  However, CoC as designed isn't one of them.  It makes use of and benefits from its combat system, in my opinion.  

3) CoC combat is just like other combat systems such as HERO

Well, first of all, I'd like to address a technical error:  

3) The combat system is far more lethal than the HERO combat system, and is also procedurally quicker and simpler.

Same lethality. A sword in Hero does about 1d6 Body against 10 Body for a normal human. Very similar to CoC. In fact the ranges are very similar overall.

I agree with what you say, but you are ignoring what damage means.  If you hit zero BODY in HERO, it means that, while still possibly conscious, you are starting to bleed.  You start to lose 1 body per turn (i.e. 12 seconds and several phases of actions).  If you hit negative your original BODY, then you die.  But in CoC, if you hit zero hit points, you are dead that round.  So CoC is roughly twice as lethal as HERO.  

As for complexity -- the CoC combat system is 4 pages long.  While there is some meat to it, there is a big difference between it and something like full GURPS combat which over 30 pages describing dozens of maneuvers and modifiers.  In a system like GURPS or HERO, the handling time is dominated by modifiers and especially by the maneuvers.  

-----------------------

Now, how to proceed with debate?

Or, rather, if your point, John, is that he should create a better system or shut up with the criticism, then I completely agree. I think the problems that CoC has are pretty clear to those who have them, and that solutions to the problems would be better than just harping on them. Til then, the rest of us will still have fun playing our drifted versions.  

No, not at all.  I don't mean to tell anyone to shut up.  I do disagree with his (Bryan's) criticism in this case -- but I think it is good to criticize.  I feel criticism and discussion of earlier designs is important to design, especially classics like Call of Cthulhu.    So as long as we're not just rehashing the same points, then I'm fine with continuing.  Although the thread is getting long, I think (surprisingly) we are still roughly on the original topic.

[komradebob]

I think folks are forgetting that the main time period for CoC adventures is the early to mid '20s. Many people in this time period have access to weaponry, and have experience using it to kill other human beings. Perhaps folks are looking at this the wrong way. I would say that gun usage for the period is actually very in character for the period.

For games set in the modern era, gun usage might actually go down. The atomic age sees a huge drop in the accessibilty of weaponry to civillians, as well as a drop in the number of people experienced with infantry warfare, at least in the US and Western Europe. Further, police investigative techniques improve, as does the public's attitude toward the police as the only really legitimate wielders of lethal force in those societies.

What seems to be missing from this discussion is the thought of after effects of gun usage in a modern setting. Several people have mentioned that they use Cthulhu as one shots, and I've had this experience myself. Gun usage is really legitimated when players are aware that they are participating in a one-shot, especially with premade characters. Further, I have never seen any RPG where players were NOT encouraged to make a new character and continue playing if their original pc was taken out of the adventure for some reason. Again, this ability validates the use of guns and explosives or other extreme measures to stop the badguys.

Robert

[Storn]

For games set in the modern era, gun usage might actually go down. The atomic age sees a huge drop in the accessibilty of weaponry to civillians,

Really?  Access to military equipment perhaps... if you made a comparison to buying a Thompson SMG in Sears/Roebuck in 1920 to buying a FULLY automatic M-4, which isn't possible.  

That ignores the conversion kits for a civilian m-16 or m-14 or ak-47 sold in many magazines and catalogs.  Full Rock n' Roll is NOT hard to obtain in this country... its illegal... but it can be done.

But gun proliferation in this country is insane.  Something like 3 firearms for every man, woman and child in the country.  Guns are easier and come in more varieties than ever... and that assumes Non-blackmarket items.  Ammo is more lethal.  Starlight goggles, bullet proof vests, listening equipment... all easily optained.... heck, there is a corporate espionage store called the Spy Store just 2 miles from my house in Southfield, MI.

Now, your assertion of infantry training (and more important, combat experience) being more widespread in yesteryear... again... maybe.  US forces in WWI were really small.  WWII, the actual combat fighting has been shown to be as low as 3% of the actual number of men in uniform.  The rest is support.

Now, looking at Europe, yeah... a lot of men saw combat in WWI.  

So your point that yesteryear had men more likely to kill and more likely trained to do so... so this is viable option in CoC?  I think that arguement is a lot more nuanced than you suggested.

I would put forward that police training and mercenary camps and Nat'l Guard makes training, if you want it, today... is a much different kettle of fish.  SWAT teams of today would make police squads of the 20s look like total amateurs when it comes to guns.

Can you rest the 1920s on the cowboy mystic of 1870-1890?  Again, maybe... the dying embers of gun will travel... Certainly marksemenship has always been quite important to the gun mystic of America (and Europe in certain classes).

I guess my point is that Gun usage and a proclivity to violence neither supports or detracts from the assertion that guns in CoC stretches THAT specific genre's convention.

[Mike Holmes]

I started to answer this point-by-point, but I suspect this may be one of these agree-to-disagree points.  Really, I'm not trying to convince you to personally like Call of Cthulhu -- I'm not a particular fan of it myself.  However, I don't accept that it is objectively bad and outdated by the technologically superior new RPGs.  This isn't pure relativism on my part.  For example, I'm willing to argue at length that many games are indeed objectively bad -- like the Lord of the Ring RPG.  But I can see in other people just how well Call of Cthulhu works exactly as written.  

The irony is that you don't have to convince me to like it because I already do like playing CoC. But playing as much as I have, I'm convinced that very little play is conducted with the game system as written. And I think that I have a broad view of play as I frequently play with the folks from "Rogue Chthulhu" and "What the Puck Productions" at cons, who, I think have a pretty widespread effect on CoC play given their proclivity. I'm also rather familiar with the different schools of scenario design from the standard published stuff, to things like Gareth Hanrahan's LARP materials (adopted those for a CoC game I ran for the group including Josh Neff here a while back).

I think where we mostly disagree is in whether the game is actually used as written, or even if it can be used as written. My first experiences with CoC were with my good friend Jim running the game, and it played a lot like D&D in that there was no attempt to get the PCs to the end of the game, just get them to the "dungeon" and let them loose and see what happens. I believe we never successfully solved any of the scenarios presented that way, or, more importantly, ever got to any climatic situations (we often survived because we just couldn't figure out what was going on). Enough so that after several runs certain players - rather gamist players - decided that it wasn't a game worth playing at all. This represents play from about '83 to '92. Does this sound like "CoC as written" to you?

With the con gamers and most other play I've seen, from about '87 on, there's this entirely different CA where the characters are pregenerated, often are integrated into the scenarios closely, and where failing to get to the end isn't likely because things are rigged to ensure that you get there. This play is very fun, but again is it CoC as written?

Look at the published scenarios. They are written like the former play style - where success is so unlikely as to be ludicrous. In play of this sort, I've seen whole groups get wiped out in the first scene. One in particular sticks out in my mind: we were sent to the face of a glacier to inspect some strange symbols that had been exposed by the glacier breaking off into the sea. Basically, my character as the linguist was up on a line making notes about the symbols. I failed a preliminary roll, and playing by what was in the book I'm sure, the GM announced that the glacier was beginning to make sounds of breaking apart. So the decision that we were given was to stay and make another roll, and risk the collapse, or to flee then and there. Well, my thoughts were that, having nothing, what would be the point of fleeing? I mean, the adventure would be over then and there. So I asked to stay. My second roll was bad, and I could see the GM looking at the scenario and that things were going to be bad for us. So he pretty obviously fudged things and said something like, "Well, you have some small amount of information." So, dissatisfied, but informed that I was pushing my luck, I had my character start back down to the ship. Playing dilligently, the GM continued to roll for the glacier, and just as I was reaching the ship, the glacier collapsed killing us all. Again, obviously per the book. The GM was disgusted with the result, but he felt that he'd done his duty and presented the adventure as it was intended to be presented.

(Anybody know the adventure? I can't remember which supplement it was from - I think that the GM wouldn't let us see the cover.)

We died in the first scene. This pointless sort of death is just not functional for most people. The GM asked if we wanted to play the same scenario again. But nobody took him up on it. Why, to die in the second scene if we were lucky in the first? Don't even get me started on the script that is encoded in "At the Mountains of Madness". I'm guessing that, played "straight" that the odds of getting to the end (where the PCs are all but assured to die), would be on the order of ten million to one or so. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. Possibly an order of magnitude less if the players are playing in a very "tactical D&D" style.

So, I completely understand the drift from this mode to the mode that I've seen prevalent since then. Is the previous mode how CoC is "supposed" to work? Is the heavily drifted mode what the writers intended?

With the right group, with the right mindset, either mode is enjoyable. In the first, we carry dynamite, and check for traps every ten feet. In the second, the GM plays illusionist to ensure that the game gets to some of the better moments later on. I don't think that either of these modes are what the designers intend - even if I have no idea really what the designers hoped would happen. Because the first is so far from Lovecraft to not even be "inspired" by it - more to the point, the text says it's not what's intended. And the second is very far from what the game text indicates, and is only the result of experienced GMs figuring out a way to make it all "work".

So any argument of "X isn't in Lovecraft, therefore X is wrong" is overly simplistic.  There can and should be differences.  

You always bring this up, and it's still a straw man. The game espouses a particular feel. I agree that it's only inspired by Lovecraft. The mechanics don't deliver that espoused feel. That is, your argument seems to be that the system delivers exactly what the designers wanted it to deliver. But I think that play of the system delivers something different. In any case, I think that you don't know any better than I what the designers intend. So, absent of us knowing, we can only look at what is produced. And since D&D Lovecraft is so bizzare a result in play, I can only conclude that it can't be what they were going for - I think that they went for something more with the only tools that they had available, which resulted in D&D Lovecraft by accident. Again, not unviable, just very odd, and, given the tendency to drift to other forms, not something that many people want to play.

2) CoC PCs are expected to be totally non-violent

Get real.

Yes, please do. Who said this? Once again, you overstate the argument to shoot it down. Nobody is saying that investigators shouldn't go after horrors with guns when appropriate. It's just that, as designed, players end up looking like mercenaries rather than investigators. That is, things just get silly in play, and one loses any potential for horror at all as it just becomes a tactical excercise. The text that talks against this is precisely trying to say that this is not the intended feel. It's in there because I believe that the designers knew that the system they'd chosen would precipitate this sort of play without putting in a word about it (and it does despite that - I remember my friend Ben's mild mannered reporter turning into a shotgun wielding action hero after the first session he survived).  

I agree with what you say, but you are ignoring what damage means.  If you hit zero BODY in HERO, it means that, while still possibly conscious, you are starting to bleed.  You start to lose 1 body per turn (i.e. 12 seconds and several phases of actions).  If you hit negative your original BODY, then you die.  But in CoC, if you hit zero hit points, you are dead that round.  So CoC is roughly twice as lethal as HERO.  

That's an interesting statistcal analysis, "roughly twice." If all the PCs go to zero, who's going to revive them? If a PC at zero is left behind with the monster, who's going to revive them? HERO is plenty lethal. But, again, you're ignoring my point. HERO is also not optimum. Even if you did convince me that it was slightly worse, none of what you point out make the combat system good for CoC. Monsters are lethal? Fine, all the better reason to carry more dynamite.

No, not at all.  I don't mean to tell anyone to shut up.  I do disagree with his (Bryan's) criticism in this case -- but I think it is good to criticize.  I feel criticism and discussion of earlier designs is important to design, especially classics like Call of Cthulhu.    So as long as we're not just rehashing the same points, then I'm fine with continuing.  Although the thread is getting long, I think (surprisingly) we are still roughly on the original topic.

Ok, fine.

The problem at this point is that we're devolving into annecdotal evidence. You say that people play the game as written all the time, and have all sorts of fun with it. I say that I've never once seen anything that looked like a recognizable aesthetic produces by the game using the rules as written. Nor has Bryan, apparently. So where do we go from there? We've given you the mechanical analysis that supports where the problems come from. Your response has merely been to say, "Well, it works anyhow." I don't know how we can refute that, so at this point I think that you're correct above where you say that we'll have to agree to disagree. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Mike

[Halzebier]

But playing as much as I have, I'm convinced that very little play is conducted with the game system as written.

The question is whether this is the fault of the system (i.e., Is it incoherent or otherwise contradictory?) or the fault of many of those gamers (e.g. Do many gamers resent the setting's bleak outlook, frequent character death etc. and react by drifting the game?).

I think where we mostly disagree is in whether the game is actually used as written, or even if it can be used as written.

I agree with another of your points, namely that anecdotes won't help us.

So...let's just take a look at the mechanics. I'll try my hand at analysing a single aspect.

*-*-*

First of all, I posit that "Humans are fragile" is a tenet of both Lovecraft's stories and CoC's take on this genre.

Examples for counter-productive mechanics would be fate points, a damage system favoring incapacitation over death and readily available healing magic, to name a few things.

CoC provides none of these, so one might say that it supports the tenet to some extent.

However, the dodge skill offers quite a bit of protection from harm. I think the tenet would be better served if the highly trained navy seal died just as easily as the old professor. He does, in terms of the capability to take damage, yet his survivability is much higher.

(The ability to dish out damage is beside the point in discussing the tenet.)

So, in conclusion & for this particular tenet only, I'd say that the CoC mechanics are a decent, but not perfect match.

Regards,

Hal

[Mike Holmes]

First of all, I posit that "Humans are fragile" is a tenet of both Lovecraft's stories and CoC's take on this genre.

I agree. I think that the game should encourage players to accept their character's deaths to an extent. But instead it seems to be largely (in terms of system) about player tactics in keeping them alive.

Examples for counter-productive mechanics would be fate points, a damage system favoring incapacitation over death and readily available healing magic, to name a few things.

CoC provides none of these, so one might say that it supports the tenet to some extent.

CoC also does not have a rule that when anyone says the word Cthulhu that everyone gets up at dances the Cha-Cha. There are an infinite number of things that it could do worse, but they're not worth discussing. We can really only talk about what it does to promote the desired style of play.

However, the dodge skill offers quite a bit of protection from harm. I think the tenet would be better served if the highly trained navy seal died just as easily as the old professor. He does, in terms of the capability to take damage, yet his survivability is much higher.

(The ability to dish out damage is beside the point in discussing the tenet.)

So, in conclusion & for this particular tenet only, I'd say that the CoC mechanics are a decent, but not perfect match.

Exactly my point above. In fact, I think the game would be substantively improved by just saying that when the PCs encounter a horror without having gained the upper hand in some way that they just run or die. I think that would up the tension some. Not a perfect solution, but better than a system that forces the player to think in terms of which particular firearms deal more damage than others, or whether or not a high Dodge skill is an asset.

Mike

[komradebob]

Storn;
I'm not sure were actually disagreeing, so I'm not sure how to approach this.

My point was just that lots of folks in the 1920s have guns, have experience with using them, and have access to them.

Relatively small US forrces in WW1? True, not as big as European forces, but not small in terms of actual numbers either. Secondly, you seem to be forgetting about the Europeans themselves, as well as all the folks that interact with them.

The old west influence? Well yes, but also the colonial influence. The US wasn't the only place were the "violent frontier" experience existed. Pretty much huge chunks of the world were considered "frontier" by the Europeans/Americans. Then of course you might want to account for the polulations these white guys were coming into conflict with...

Related to this are all of the smaller wars that precede and follow WW1. Russo-Japanese War, Sino-Japanese War, the Plains Wars, Moro Rebellion, various British, French and German military adventures, The BoerWar, The Tan War, Boxer Rebellion, Spanish Civil War, Russian Revolution, Spartacist revolt, Balkan War of '12, etcetcetcetcetcetc.

Then there is the internal violence, usually related to labor unrest and other political violence. Wobblies, anarchists, Pinkertons, secret police, Palmer Raids, and so forth. Add a nice dose of ethnic and religious violence, too. Probably organized crime violence is actually the most minor source of armed violence for the period.

As to modern weaponry, you're right. Technology has given us some very serious upgrades in personal firepower. I would still argue that firepower is easier to come by in the '20s, however.

As to stretching the genre: strong maybe. I certainly picked up on the game because I wanted to try something where smart, normalish humans did amazing stuff to save the world. That already suggests a certain drift of mindset away from the horror aspect from step one.

I've always thought that the In Media Res scenario by pagan publishing was one of the better HORROR scenarios for CoC. Off the top of my head, I'd be hard pressed to name too may other published CoC adventures that I felt were really horror...

Robert

[John Kim]

Look at the published scenarios. They are written like the former play style - where success is so unlikely as to be ludicrous. In play of this sort, I've seen whole groups get wiped out in the first scene.
...
With the con gamers and most other play I've seen, from about '87 on, there's this entirely different CA where the characters are pregenerated, often are integrated into the scenarios closely, and where failing to get to the end isn't likely because things are rigged to ensure that you get there. This play is very fun, but again is it CoC as written?
...
So, I completely understand the drift from this mode to the mode that I've seen prevalent since then. Is the previous mode how CoC is "supposed" to work? Is the heavily drifted mode what the writers intended?  

With the right group, with the right mindset, either mode is enjoyable. In the first, we carry dynamite, and check for traps every ten feet. In the second, the GM plays illusionist to ensure that the game gets to some of the better moments later on. I don't think that either of these modes are what the designers intend - even if I have no idea really what the designers hoped would happen.  

Er, isn't the answer clear?!?  The convention scenario designers you mention don't follow the rules as written -- particularly for character creation.  Their scenarios do not resemble the CoC scenarios published by the designers, and their style of play isn't as strongly supported by the rules.  Now, they may have made some very cool things using CoC, but it's not part of the original design.  i.e. The second is clearly the variant, as opposed to the original.  Incidentally, "Cthulhu Live" was designed more with the convention scene in mind -- and it is markedly different from the original in many respects.  

So in my opinion, the original CoC is closer to your first case.  And yes, it involves PCs using guns and dynamite.  The game text clearly expect such from the PCs, and the advice simply recommends a degree of caution and limits on the use of guns.  That said, your particular adventures may not have gone as the designer's intended.  Published adventures can have flaws, GMs can make mistakes, players can be in the wrong frame of mind, etc.  Personally, I am also dismayed at the glaring flaws in some (but by no means all) of the published scenarios -- including high chance of Total Party Kill.  On the other hand, as far as I've seen virtually all published scenarios suck -- and relatively speaking CoC ones are among the best.  Moreover, even if the rules objectively worked as intended, you might not like it while another person does.  Maybe something else would have worked better for you.  

2) CoC PCs are expected to be totally non-violent

Get real.

Yes, please do. Who said this? Once again, you overstate the argument to shoot it down. Nobody is saying that investigators shouldn't go after horrors with guns when appropriate. It's just that, as designed, players end up looking like mercenaries rather than investigators. That is, things just get silly in play, and one loses any potential for horror at all as it just becomes a tactical excercise.  
...
I remember my friend Ben's mild mannered reporter turning into a shotgun wielding action hero after the first session he survived

So what do you think appropriate behavior is?  I mean, after surviving horrors and going back in to deal with more, should he poke around in basements with a pencil and camera?  I wouldn't think so.  Now, the more standard horror trope is for the protagonist to be unaware of the horrors.  But once you have continuing characters in horror, then you're stuck.  They can't casually wander into danger, because then they just seem stupid.   This is exactly the same phenomenon you see in many horror films.  In sequels with continuing protagonists like Evil Dead II or Phantasm II, the protagonists become war-hardened.  You see this happen between the first and second halves of "Dawn of the Dead".  Having encountered horrors, protagonists will quite reasonably arm themselves with shotguns and chainsaws.  This doesn't destroy horror, I think, but it does change the flavor.  

So you're right that the flavor of the more standard horror story is lost.  But I'm not sure what the alternative is other than giving up on continuing PCs.  At least for me personally, I certainly lose all patience and feeling of horror when the protagonists blithely wander into danger after knowing what they are facing.  I would note that Unknown Armies took up whole hog the idea of gun-toting PCs.  What do you think of it, by the way?  

The problem at this point is that we're devolving into annecdotal evidence. You say that people play the game as written all the time, and have all sorts of fun with it. I say that I've never once seen anything that looked like a recognizable aesthetic produces by the game using the rules as written. Nor has Bryan, apparently. So where do we go from there? We've given you the mechanical analysis that supports where the problems come from. Your response has merely been to say, "Well, it works anyhow." I don't know how we can refute that, so at this point I think that you're correct above where you say that we'll have to agree to disagree. Correct me if I'm wrong.  

Yeah, I think we're getting to the agree-to-disagree stage.  The thing is, I don't see that we differ that much on what the rules produce.  I agree that it is a shotgun-toting kind of game as written -- and you agree that PCs should carry firearms "when appropriate".  We agree that it is a derivative work rather than an attempt to reproduce Lovecraft stories.  For example, it is similar to later non-Lovecraft stories in its approach to the "Mythos".   You even seem to acknowledge that people have fun playing by the rules using at least some published scenarios (though I agree that some are just broken as written).

[Mike Holmes]

Sigh, this is going to sound like I'm trying to get the last word in, but I wrote the response before the outage (during actually, somehow), and I forgot to post it until now. But heregoes...

Er, isn't the answer clear?!?  The convention scenario designers you mention don't follow the rules as written -- particularly for character creation.

Yes, that was my point, we don't have to belabor that.

So in my opinion, the original CoC is closer to your first case.  And yes, it involves PCs using guns and dynamite.  The game text clearly expect such from the PCs, and the advice simply recommends a degree of caution and limits on the use of guns.

The guns caveat is just one issue. To be clear, Bryan and those on our side of that point are saying that the caveat isn't just that guns are only so lethal, but that they are stylistically inappropriate - it seems to be arguing against D&D play to us. In any case, if it's saying that guns aren't effective, then it's incorrect as Bryan points out. The system promotes "winning" via guns. Yes, that's theoretically functional, but then why the high lethality in other areas? Why is it that characters in CoC games I play tend to get killed off far more often by shutters blowing in the wind, and their own fumbles with dynamite than by the "monsters."

Even from a D&D style perspective it's just silly.

That said, your particular adventures may not have gone as the designer's intended.

Every single time? When playing this mode, in at least a dozen adventures we never once solved the mystery. And that's with players in some cases "cheating" by using OOC knowledge, for example. There was this one adventure I remember where the "solution" was that there was some evil spirit locked in the oaken mantel of a fireplace. I recieved a dream at one point that there were these guys in robes with sacrificial daggers and other acoutrement. With my OOC knowlede, I postulated that this all would indicate that they were druids. We'd gotten all the relevant information from hunting around that we could possibly get, and, dead-ended, I started thinking about persuing the druid angle. Sure it was OOC, but I wanted to give us a shot at winning. Still, it was to no avail, and we ended up just walking away from the haunted house.

The GM told us afterwards that my speculation about the druids was accurate, and that, somehow, we were supposed to put together that because of this it was the oaken mantle (as opposed to the much more sinister ebony mantle that was a red herring) that was the source of the trouble. But we'd missed too many die rolls, and too many pieces of the puzzle were missing.

Maybe our group (which has since produced several masters degree graduates) was just too dense? Or is it that the D&D mode only works as a model when you put the monsters in front of the party. Think about it. In D&D, if you miss the bejeweled dagger hidden under the flagstone because of a bad roll, the players just don't get as large a reward, the whole adventure doesn't fall apart.  

But in CoC, even by the most Gamist interpretation in which the characters pay is the reward or something, we never got paid because we could never figure out what was going on. Sure, occasionally we'd encounter some creature and blow it away, but that's never the entire story. So from no POV was our play ever successful. Not because we didn't win, but because I believe that it was impossible to win in many of these circumstances, and the game made you feel that you couldn't win, that there was nothing to do to better your chances. I mean, where's the gamism in making or failing your Library Use die roll? How is that a tactical challenge for the player? Usually the need to go to the Library was so obvious that, after several scenarios it became a perfunctory stop ("Hmmm, I can't think of what to do - let's hit the library in town.")

The level of pawn stance which this drives one to is neither effective, nor fun. So I can't believe that it was the designers intent.

Published adventures can have flaws, GMs can make mistakes, players can be in the wrong frame of mind, etc.  

Hey, we're not perfect. But on the whole I think we played as well or better than most groups. The published adventure has to take into account the players imperfect nature to be well designed.

If you're positing that we just "did it wrong" I'd ask you to explain what it was that we weren't doing right.

Personally, I am also dismayed at the glaring flaws in some (but by no means all) of the published scenarios -- including high chance of Total Party Kill.

Can you point me to one that is functional as writtten in terms of a Gamist crawl? I've played through so many that I really think that they don't exist. I think that to make any of them functional that you have to drift at least a little to the Illusionist. That is, to say, "fudge".

On the other hand, as far as I've seen virtually all published scenarios suck -- and relatively speaking CoC ones are among the best.  

I found that for D&D play all the D&D modules produced by TSR worked just fine. Yeah, Tomb of Horrors was silly, but it presented an entirely different sort of challenge (we'd just keep playing it over and over until after about 50 times we did it right). But in general they provided functional play.

Moreover, even if the rules objectively worked as intended, you might not like it while another person does.  Maybe something else would have worked better for you.  

Look, I was into dungeon crawls at the time. I wanted to "win" the scenarios and figure out what was going on so my character would get paid. It's not the Gamism that I didn't like, it was that you couldn't do anything to do "better" except carry the largest ordinace available. That's not even a source of Gamism. Often the only Gamism that we'd experience would be trying to figure out how to Calvinball the GM so that he'd have to give us Thompsons or something more powerful.

So what do you think appropriate behavior is?  I mean, after surviving horrors and going back in to deal with more, should he poke around in basements with a pencil and camera?  I wouldn't think so.

Why do you persist in painting me an idiot? What's "appropriate" is something in-character. I don't think that the pawn stance that the game engendered as written was intentional. I don't think that after three brushes with the dark that people would be running around with dynamite saying, "Gotta have this stuff more to get rid of the bodies when we're done than to fight the monsters."

The "appropriate" thing would be for the "investigators" to retire, or, more likely to find some place to hide. But that wouldn't allow continued play. So, instead we get inhuman play, where the investigators keep coming back for more. Soley in order to perpetuate play. Makes "black robed guy in a tavern" party play look very viable by comparison. At least in D&D the characters have a decent chance of survival.

So you're right that the flavor of the more standard horror story is lost.  But I'm not sure what the alternative is other than giving up on continuing PCs.  At least for me personally, I certainly lose all patience and feeling of horror when the protagonists blithely wander into danger after knowing what they are facing.

As would I. But, what about when they "sniff" something mythos? Do they do the "sane" thing and run for the hills, or do they say, "Bah, can't be like last time." No, the player just says, "Well, that's why we're playing CoC," and heads out loaded for bear, knowing that he'll probably die from reading a book.

I would note that Unknown Armies took up whole hog the idea of gun-toting PCs.  What do you think of it, by the way?  

I think that it's much more functional for many reasons. First, the aesthetic is built from the ground up with violence as part of the experience. That said, the system doesn't promote being a combat monster as the only way to solve things. The focus on magic tends to ensure that play meets the focus well.

That's in only three sessions of play, mind you. I'm no UA expert. But from the rules, I think that the play I experienced was well supported by the rules. As Bryan says, Madness meters being about personality as opposed to the hit point effect of Sanity.

Yeah, I think we're getting to the agree-to-disagree stage.  The thing is, I don't see that we differ that much on what the rules produce.  I agree that it is a shotgun-toting kind of game as written -- and you agree that PCs should carry firearms "when appropriate".

Yes, but they don't. I've seen players just ignore potential entanglements with the law because they knew that wasn't what the game was about. Knowing instead that keeping that tommy gun under your arm, even when walking about Bumble, Massachusetts, was the most sensible thing to do in terms of winning.

Yeah, maybe my group just never "got it to work" like it was supposed to work, and that was just accident. But I think that the drift to the aforementioned "convention" form of the game is evidence that it blows so badly in that form for so many, that few play it that way. Do you play it that way? Do you know groups that do? Without complaint or changing the game?

Mike

[John Kim]

Yeah, maybe my group just never "got it to work" like it was supposed to work, and that was just accident. But I think that the drift to the aforementioned "convention" form of the game is evidence that it blows so badly in that form for so many, that few play it that way. Do you play it that way? Do you know groups that do? Without complaint or changing the game?

Your games sound different than the ones which I have been in as far as tone and player behavior.  FWIW, I've never run straight CoC as GM.  I've played in a long variant campaign, and maybe 8 to 10 single adventures -- maybe half of them at conventions, the other half with friends taking at most three sessions.  So I can't say anything about long-term campaigns really.  

In the games I played, the players generally enjoyed playing nervous and screwed-up types.  There was typically a lot of discord among the PCs, with people splitting up at various times.  However, this was generally fine with the players.  Some PCs went for guns, and they had a higher survival rate (though they often died too), and there were also plenty who did without guns and died horrible deaths.  

My stereotypical picture of classic CoC is a bunch of PCs running around in a house, when the shit hits the fan somehow.  A few run out; a few try to shoot it out inside.  There is general chaos and several PCs die, but being split up not everyone does.  The PCs rarely got the whole picture of what was going on, but got enough to piece at least a small fraction together.  Sometimes we would chat with the GM afterwards over what we missed.  The players viewed it as a romp rather than a competitive tactical exercise, and dying horribly was generally applauded and enjoyed.

[Mike Holmes]

The PCs rarely got the whole picture of what was going on, but got enough to piece at least a small fraction together.  Sometimes we would chat with the GM afterwards over what we missed.  The players viewed it as a romp rather than a competitive tactical exercise, and dying horribly was generally applauded and enjoyed.

Sounds very much like my experiences. I think what happens is that people learn to love the lash, and eventually wonder why they worried about carrying the big guns in the first place. That's when you start to get the drift to the other form.

In any case, I think that the difference between the "trying" gun-toters, and the "in-character" skittish types is precisely a Gamism/Simulationism incoherency. I've noted a lot of games where the one type of player loathes the other.

Mike

[JDJarvis]

But gun proliferation in this country is insane.  Something like 3 firearms for every man, woman and child in the country.  Guns are easier and come in more varieties than ever...

The numbers are accurately more like one gun per person in the U.S. , still a lot of guns, no reason to stretch the numbers to make that point.
They also aren't easier to come by; You could mail order pistols legally with no problems a generation or so ago, can't do that now.



Howe guns can be limited in CoC-  
Characters exsist in a world where folks get nervous and jumpy when they see a bunch of freaks carrying dynamite, submahcineguns and a couple of shotguns walk into a neighboring house.

Have the badguys attack the most dangerous looking person first, those guys will not last long.  Who'd you chomp  first if your brain was infested by brain worms from saturn- the guy cringing in the corner or the psycho charging you blazing away with a shotgun?

[Castellanus]

Mike Holmes wrote:
"Yeah, maybe my group just never "got it to work" like it was supposed to work, and that was just accident. But I think that the drift to the aforementioned "convention" form of the game is evidence that it blows so badly in that form for so many, that few play it that way. Do you play it that way? Do you know groups that do? Without complaint or changing the game?"

My experience with playing CoC does not mirror yours in any way.  At the risk of responding anecdotally (and I don't intend to dis you as a player -- you had different expectations of play and CoC did not fulfil them), if the scenario included a 'rumbling glacier' I would expect players to make a quick sketch of the signs and retire quickly to their cabin on board ship where they could study them at leisure (no 'combat pressure' to require a skill roll, or perhaps better many chances to make skill rolls as characters) .  If a character received a dream with people in it costumes he did not (in character) recognize, I would expect him to mention it to others in the group and then have a massive 'let's go to the library and look all this stuff up' scene.  If a group of investigators didn't 'get' the clues the first time through a scene, I'd expect them to do some research based on what they had found and come back to try again (It took my bunch 3 trips to get the thing in the oak mantlepiece).  And yes I'd expect players to run through multiple investigator characters as they became variously old, decrepit, or insane -- one player in the game I ran from 90-93 was on her third and that one mentally very fragile when I moved and had to stop running that game.

And yes, when the monsters were finally confronted it was very often to try to shoot them down -- but the characters relied as much on calling in the cops or military as they did on their own weapons.  And against the greates of evils the guns were useless -- heroes gave their sanity to cast the spells that could disrupt the summoning of Great Cthulhu and others of that ilk.

CoC is intended to present a role-playing opportunity that evokes the tone and feel of the Cthulhu mythos.  It doesn't do that perfectly (no game is perfect), but as an inveterate tinkerer I tinkered with it (4th and 5th ed. when I ran a game) the least of all the game systems I've used.

I can buy that its not a game you particularly like; It seems as if you and your group expected a straight ahead adventure session and Coc is noth that at all.  What I cant buy into is the peremise that started this thread -- CoC is not 'hypocritical' in its treatment of combat.  In the long run, amost every other skill set is far more important to the investigators.

Ed

[contracycle]

I have not played CoC much - exactly 2 games.  But one of the long term players remarked - while we were setting a fire to burn down a haunted house - that you can follow a group of CoC characters by the trail of burned-out buildings.  And while it may be argued that these guys did not 'get' it, they were smart people, enjoyed themselves, read lovecraft, and clearly thought they were playing the right way.

Again, I played the two games I played with this group; the first was really a dinner party/locked room murder which was only intended as an intro to the setting, and the other was a published adventure.  The former was great, a joy, one of my Favourite Games Of All Time, and the latter was like a hopeless bug-hunt.

Having only a cursory interest in Lovecraft, and that only for RPG purposes, I've only read a couple of short stories... but it seems to me that this is one of those games in which there is likely to be a GM with a very clear, Loveraft-informed view of how play is suposed to go, and a number of players who are totally unfamiliar with the work, have no intention of ever becomeing familiar with it, and have little idea of the 'appropriate lovecraftian response' to some sort of horror.  Therefore they respond with stock RPG behaviour: if it moves, shoot it; if it doesn't move, put it in the bag of holding; if you can't bag it, make camp and memorise spells.