Hounds on the Moor

[Rustin]

Hounds on the Moor.pdf

Here's a little something I threw together if I ever get around to using the DitV mechanics for a Cthulhu game.
It has not been play tested.  It really hasn't even been spell checked :)

Tell me what you think or how I could improve it.

thanks!

[Vaxalon]

Looks like a good start.  My suggestion is to play at least one session with it, possibly two... I'm not a big fan of the Mythos myself, but from what I've read of it, you've captured what's important there.

One thing though... why do "physical" characters have more dice than "educated" characters?

I mean, under your system, I could make a character as follows:

Acuity 8d6, Heart 3d6, Body 3d6, Will 3d6

Is that character "physical"?

[Darcy Burgess]

I beg to differ.

Rustin -- you've done a pretty good job of 'porting Call of Cthulhu over to DitV, but I wouldn't agree with Vaxalon's notion that yuou've captured what's important of the mythos.

I guess it comes down to this: Did you do this just to use a funky resolution mechanic for CoC?

On the flip side, every time I see someone do something cool with something mythos-related it gets me super-psyched to see (or get off of my ass and write) a game that tackles the mythos well.

So, the real question is: what's the mythos (as a gaming experience) about to you?  Personally, it's all about one-upmanship around the table (who can come up with the gnarliest, nastiest stuff).  Not that I've seen a game that does that yet...

[Rustin]

Thanks for the replies.

Vaxalon-

My reasoning for the physical, connected, educated templates was based on my experience with players.  Players either want a bad ass that can pound, stab or shoot things, or they want a specific education build. 

The player that is tempted to be a combat/physical is going to struggle with traits and relationships.  So I gave then 17d6 as a big number so they can spend it on things they can get their heads around- Acuity, heart body will... They are so close to the normal stats we see in most games seeing that big 17 will make them happy.

Even the build you made with Acuity 8d6 would mean this character is pretty good with a gun. 

Once they learn the system, they may discover that its more fun to develop very specific trait.  But I'm planning on using this model to entice players who have shown little to no interest in Dogs.

So I suppose physical could mean good at interacting with the world in a generalized way.   

Note that the educated and connected paths offer up more d10 trait dice.  I also mixed up the traits into categories.  Physical or knowledge.  So even though the physical guy has traits, when he is based on actual  learning, and note 1d4's make for more consequences.   

Darcy-

Did I just do this as a funky resolution for CoC?

No.  This was a very cognizant effort to use a system to solve some problems I have with CoC.   

What is the mythos gaming experience to me?

I've played CoC probably since 1989.  It has always been about a mystery the solution of which was usually some type of horror.   We would make a big effort to create an environment of horror and fear.   Good GMs for our CoC games would pace the game really by stonewalling at key points, and then being more liberal as time passed. 

This was generally accepted by the group just because we didn't know any better.  We let the GM get away with not giving all the info at once, but requiring some investigation, some stumbling about, some brain storming-- but eventually the GM would let us know what we needed/could do. 

The biggest thing, the thing I find the most valuable in gaming experiences out of CoC are the scenes of horror-- communicating to the players and the characters the futility in what they are doing, but nobility that they are at least trying. 

As GM I hated stonewalling, I just didn't know that I hated it until I read DitV. 

This modification of CoC will allow me to still present scenes of horror.  Even better, the narrative resolution will allow us to expand and develop those scenes. 

The mystery part of the Adventure will take a hit.  I plan to really give out information fairly liberally.  No more spot hidden adventure lynch pins, if you know what I mean.  I'm not sure I'll be totally obedient to the rule "say yes or role the dice," but for the most part I think I will try to honor that DitV rule.

Now, after I put that .pdf together I found threads

Mystery Step by Step

and Mysteries how to run them

Though I don't totally grasp what clehrich is getting to, I sort of get a vague sense of what he is suggesting.   Not sure I can incorporate that into what I have here, or whether I have to. 

If I leave all the issues to the human relationships that have developed around the Mysterious Evil, then I should have enough stuff to run a game.  The solution may not be the traditional solution, but convincing those that are tempted to use the evil in some way not to, may prove just as entertaining as the plod along mystery path that the normal CoC adventure tends to take.   Making some cultist sympathetic enough so the investigators don't just blast them away when given the chance, making the mysterious evil only knowable if the party knows what sort of NPCs are connected to it and why.

Also, I would like to have CoC adventures resolved in one sitting.  I think getting the info out would take about 2 hrs.  Getting the resolution for each NPC's relationship could take about 40min.  So I throw in NPC's at the rate I want the game to last.  3-4 connections sounds pretty good for a 5-6 hr gamming session.  Start at 5pm end at 11pm when its nice and dark.....

[devonapple]

I am hoping to use this adaptation myself -- has there been any playtesting?

[zornwil]

I really have to look at this more.

Just as a comment re the death/insanity spiral, we've started toying with "Weaknesses" for action games but with an eye towards using it for these sorts of related games as well.  A Weakness is something that is rolled against your PC whenever it comes up, e.g., "I"m afraid of spiders, 2d6," spiders enter scene and whoever has narration can roll those 2d6 against your PC - very different from Fallout.  Anyway, after various attempts, just reconstructed Weaknesses so that you take the 3rd and 4th highest of Fallout (in other words, the top 2 are "normal Fallout", the next 2 highest die are for Weaknesses) and consult below:

8    1 Weakness, minimum d4
12   2 Weaknesses, minimum d6
16   3 Weaknesses, minimum d8
20 (we are using games where 20 doesn't auto-kill you)    5 Weaknesses, minimum d10

So let's say in Fallout you took:  8, 6, 6, 6, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1.  The top 2 (8, 6) are 14, that's a normal 14 for Fallout so you get 2 Fallouts but no requirement to do a Body roll ot see if you need a medical follow-up.  The next 2 (6, 6) are 12, so that's 2 Weaknesses, minimum d6.

What does the above chart mean?  Think of each Weakness as if you were getting an Experience in that if you have 1 Weakness you introduce a Weakness or add 1 die to an existing Weakness or add 1 die type to an existing Weakness.  The "minimum" means that when you apply any/all of these Weaknesses, you MUST have at least one Weakness resulting in this die type.  Weaknesses, unlike Experience but like Fallout, start at d4s.

So following the above example of 6 and 6 for a 12, for 2 Weaknesses of minimum d6, let's say your character already has only 1 Weakness, "Wants to stay in the Dreamlands 1d4".  Now, for a 12, you have to apply 2 Weaknesses and at least one has to end up at a d6.  So you increase the die type of "Wants to stay in the Dreamlands" to 1d6, and then also add a new Weakness "Afraid in the dark 1d4".  Supposing, of course, all this is consistent with the Conflict that occurred.

The above chart is fairly "soft" for a Cthuhlu game where you WANT to have characters' Weaknesses slowly piling up against them until they can no longer go on.  So I'd suggest amping it.   Experience can offset (reduce) a Weakness; in a Cthuhlu game, you may not want that.  As you can see, we didn't think it through all the way for Cthuhlu, we were orienting this as part of our action-adventure Dogs work, but we were at least thinking about Cthuhlu.

By the way, as a separate Cthuhlu mod, we also did a parallel track for insanity/madness damage, I don't recall but similar to the 4 states in this PDF, along with the regular Talking/Physical/Fighting/Killing, damage could be inflicted something like Eerie/Scary/Freakout/Mindbending or such (I don't have the terms we used handy at all) with d4/d6/d8/d10 Fallout as well.  If you took a majority of Madness type damage (Eerie/Scary/Freakout/Mindbending) compared to the "regular" Social/Physical damage, then you could roll Will to see if you needed a medical follow-up instead of Body.  Otherwise, mechanically, it all works the same, but of course if you do Will and you're doing a follow-up thus more against Madness, then the results of that encounter would mirror that sort of thing instead of a regular medical follow-up, meaning if you fail you're hopelessly mad or such, and all the steps in the conflict are to save your sanity as opposed to physical state.

I'm looking forward to going through the PDF in more detail, not sure how soon, but definitely shall.

[devonapple]

Here's a little something I threw together if I ever get around to using the DitV mechanics for a Cthulhu game.  It has not been play tested.  It really hasn't even been spell checked   Tell me what you think or how I could improve it.

I was running some conflicts using the "Afraid," "DitV" and "Hounds" rules with a couple of open-minded players (a guinea pig session) and the immediate roadblock I hit with "Hounds" was with the Sanity conflicts.  Specifically what I, the GM, was going to roll.  I grabbed the "non-human" traits from the "Afraid" rules, picked the set of dice I though appropriate to the encounter (in this case, 5d6 1d10), and then used the "Hounds" rules for a Sanity conflict.  The players suggested that Mythos monsters maybe have a set die value for their horror index/San risk. 

Or were you originally thinking Sanity threats would be part of the normal Raise and See conflict with a Mythos creature?

Also, for the chargen, I would propose that the Physical character's traits instead be split between "Physical" and "Other" (rather than "Physical" vs "Knowledge"), while the Educated character's traits should be split between "Knowledges" and "Other" (again, rather than "Physical" vs "Knowledge").  The Connected type gets to split its traits as it sees fit, but treating all traits as either "Physical" or "Knowledge" may inadvertently stifle some players' imaginations when rounding out these characters.

[Rustin]

Your players have it right. Each Sanity situation would have different dice assignments. Big nasties have big nasty dice stacks. You could even break it down into sub-traits, with the goal of increasing the horrific atmosphere.

You could even have different stakes than "do I keep my wits" so it makes for an interesting value judgment if they just want to give.  You may even throw in a bribe, that if they give, they can keep their top dice on the table for the next associated conflict.  ie, stakes are, if you lose this sanity check you'll rip the skin off the left side of your face, taking a 2d4 trait.  What about, if you lose this sanity check, eventually you'll despair and try to kill someone you love.

I like your idea of character generation.  I think it's been pointed out that there are some glitches in the way i've broken it down in that the traits really don't break down along the lines that I had them there.

[devonapple]

Your players have it right. Each Sanity situation would have different dice assignments. Big nasties have big nasty dice stacks. You could even break it down into sub-traits, with the goal of increasing the horrific atmosphere.

If I want to use a separate Sanity check, I may end up looking for a way to convert the CoC San risks into a dice format.  The scaled consequences of Sanity Fallout already simulate the Sanity Check/consequences in the CoC -- it's just the initial difficulty which will need to be generated:  maybe 4d6 4d10 (like an initial conflict) for small San risks like zombies.

You could even have different stakes than "do I keep my wits" so it makes for an interesting value judgment if they just want to give.  You may even throw in a bribe, that if they give, they can keep their top dice on the table for the next associated conflict.  ie, stakes are, if you lose this sanity check you'll rip the skin off the left side of your face, taking a 2d4 trait.  What about, if you lose this sanity check, eventually you'll despair and try to kill someone you love.

The initial encounter was "do I get away from the Mi-Go's genetically modified spider-hounds" (and my 'non-human opponent] roll from "Afraid" gave me a lot of initial dice and two escalations more), and then I said "do you keep your wits: 4d6+4d10 vs. player's Will+appropriate traits/items."  He pulled in his Gold Cross, and the memory of the Nun who took care of him as a child, for which I ruled that in Sanity conflicts, Relationships with people whose faith influenced the character COULD be brought into play, even if that Relationship is not directly involved.  I did not allow the Relationship dice for another character's Grandfather because, as much as the character may care, it doesn't represent Faith or God's Will.

I like your idea of character generation.  I think it's been pointed out that there are some glitches in the way i've broken it down in that the traits really don't break down along the lines that I had them there.

I think you had a good intention: make sure the Physical folks got an appropriate amount of Physical Traits, and the same with Educated folks and Knowledges. 

In comparing "Hounds" to "Afraid," characters in "Hounds" get more Attribute dice, but seem to get fewer Trait dice.  We converted an "Investigator" archetype from "Afraid" into a "Connected" archetype in "Hounds" and it was pretty simple.

[devonapple]

Your players have it right. Each Sanity situation would have different dice assignments. Big nasties have big nasty dice stacks. You could even break it down into sub-traits, with the goal of increasing the horrific atmosphere.

One thing would be to give monsters/Mythos creatures 'Blasphemous Traits' (or, in the case of nonspecific monsters which aren't given traits, to simply say "this raise is intended to freak you out"), which can cause Sanity Fallout if they are involved in making a character Take The Blow, while simple physical traits cause regular Fallout (injury, disadvantages, etc.) if a character is forced to Take The Blow. 

So at the end of a Conflict, the player might be rolling two sets of Fallout Dice: one for regular Fallout, and one for Sanity.

I think this might work great with the Monster in the "Afraid" game system, as some of their traits can easily be considered Mythos-worthy or supernatural enough to cause a Sanity check.

For instance, the Stakes are "do I escape this crazy Cultist"?:
1. My Cultist attacks you: Raise 8
2. You duck out of the way.  See 9.
3. You then swing with your baseball bat. Raise 7.
4. My Cultist Sees, Reversing the Blow with a single 7, as his chest opens to reveal a gigantic fanged maw, causing you to stop in mid-swing.
5. My Cultist then adds that 7 to a 4 for a total Raise of 11, as his gigantic maw slavers and babbles in an incomprehensible patter: this is considered a Sanity-Threatening Raise, as its intent was to freak out the opponent.
6. You are forced to Take the Blow when you have to scrape together four dice to See; because it was a Sanity-Threatening Raise which caused you to Take the Blow, you're rolling THIS four Fallout Dice on the Sanity table -- you Take the Blow by narrating your character stepping back, falling over himself, and gibbering.
7.  You narrate that you snap out of it, and bring in a particular Trait (like Mindless Violence) which gives you some more dice for your conflict.  You get up and swing low to sweep out the Cultist's legs (Raise 6).
8. The Cultist easily leaps over your bat (See 7)
9. The Cultist then lunges down to gnaw on your head (Raise 5)
10. You Take the Blow using three dice to See his Raise, but THESE three Fallout Dice are on the regular table.

Eventually, your dude is victorious, and then rolls Fallout Dice.  He rolls 4d6 on the Sanity Fallout Chart and 3d6 on the Fallout Chart.

How does that work for you?