Chthonian - Indie Gaming Monday (7/29)

[Zak Arntson]

Okay, we finally finished our Chthonian adventure, the first two parts can be found at:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2439
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2750

Pregame
Well, I didn't have the last section of the adventure as well planned out as I had remembered. I could have sworn I had written more about the end. This meant a little bit of setup before the game, getting some statistics pumped out.

Lesson One: 6 Successes for a boss is too few. I wound up ramping fights up to 10-12 successes needed, since my Players kept Burning Safety for tons of dice.

Gameplay
So basically we needed to a) get to the cabin, b) encounter some baboons, c) fight the boss.

The Trip There

Lesson Two: Let your Players recap events from last session. My memory was terrible tonight, so the Players did a _great_ job of filling the rest of the group in on prior events. It also showed me what they remembered most. Basically, the big event that stuck in their head was the TA falling on his back, dislocating his own limbs and scuttling away like some freaky insect.

So the Character hop in a Ford Explorer and make the trip up to the lake.

Lesson Three: Don't shy from telling the Players where to go. This is a survival horror/video game RPG, so it's perfectly fine for Characters to immediately go into trouble. This isn't real-life realism, it's action "realism." Of course, this isn't for every group. The only time I'd strongly suggest telling your Players the way it is would be the very first scene of the adventure.

Lesson Four: Speed through boring events. The Characters are driving. It takes an hour of game time, and I use brief descriptions to build tension. It goes like this: You all hop in the car and head north on the highway. About a mile from Raccoon Lake, you see a left turn down an unkempt but paved road. After about 5 minutes of driving you see a mailbox marked "Schlessing." You turn down the road, which is just two lines of sparse gravel where you aim your tires.

Lesson Four-and-a-half: Allow for improv'd gear. Chthonian isn't at all about powerful stuff (in fact, the rules don't support gear, beyond "can you do xyz," so a machete is the same as a pistol). The system supports each Player equipping their Character as they see fit with no loss of in-game effectiveness. Yay!

Lesson Five: Turn the mundane into the unknown. I decided that their car would have to stop before reaching the cabin. So up ahead, I plop a fallen tree and Dr. Schlessing's parked car. But instead of describing this, I mention the Character's headlights reflecting off of something up ahead. Tension all around.

Lesson Six: Take advantage of Character actions. Two Characters opted to flank the shiny thing through the woods. I decide to have the baboons (originally slated to appear at the cabin) show up early. So we have Aware checks all around and the wooded Characters hear rustling in the woods.

Of the Characters still in the car, one stays, two go investigate the tree and car. They were already spooked, and describing an abandoned station wagon complete with empty animal cage sin the back, plus an odd primate footprint on the tree leads to paranoia. A bit of tension later and there's the release when a baboon leaps out of the woods to attack the group.

Lesson Seven: When splitting up the group, tension for some equals tension for all. Even though half the Characters are unaware of the other half's tension, all the Players know what's going on. Use this to play up fear and suspense.

Lesson Eight: Sometimes, Characters need to kick a lot of ass. Owing to some Burning for extra dice and some bad-ass rolls, the Characters wound up (after one or two rounds of rolling) standing in a pile of steaming ex-baboon. They all felt pretty tough after this.

The Cabin
The Characters now have to walk to the cabin. Though we didn't much coordinate beforehand, we decided they had two flashlights among them.

Lesson Nine: Limited in-game resources can do wonders for keeping people together. With only two flashlights, it meant at most I dealt with two different groups. This was a play management relief.

Lesson Ten: Creepy locations are a Good Thing. So in-game it's like 1:30am. The Players are coming up to an unlit cabin built into a slope (with a day basement facing the lake). About 30 yards past the cabin the lake can be seen reflecting moon- and star-light through the trees. I also kept mentioning the flashlight beams. It's scary to rely on a stupid flashlight.

Two players enter the backdoor (boarded up, but I used their efforts to break in as a stalling tactic -- as soon as they said "we go to back door" I wanted to have everyone reach the basement at the same time). The other four go through the front.

Lesson Eleven: A Breather between scary moments is good. The upstairs is pretty dull. Books, a sofa, a kitchen area (smells awful with bad food). One player lifted the sofa and a bunch of ants poured out of a hole in the floor. Nothing real scary, though. Just odd.

I timed things between the two groups so that when the four Characters went downstairs, the two Characters busted open the back door, bringing them all back together.

Lesson Twelve: You can be threatening without harming the Players. In a minor insanity-inducing experience, a closed door was flanked with cages holding rabbits. They were docile until one Character got too close, after which all the rabbits started going apeshit and screaming (every hear a rabbit scream? It's like a dying woman or child). I got a good response when I mentioned one rabbit had flayed its own face pushing its head through the wire mush.

They try the door and it's locked. One Character has lockpicking tools, so while he's working on this, instead of allowing for a typical "pick lock, open door", the doorknob starts to rattle! This flips everyone out, and the door is unlocked from the inside and falls open a crack. One Player takes super advantage and kicks the door in.

Lesson Thirteen: Incapacitate only when convenient. The Characters enter a storage room filled with old crap, phonographs, stacks of magazines and blankets, old clothers, and in the center (just having been kocked over by the kicked door) is a prone man. Dr. Schlessing. When someone bent down to examine him, he comes to life and starts begging for mercy. He seems harmless, and the Players are tricked.

Confession: From here on out I'm pretty much winging things. I, frustratingly, didn't write as much of the adventure out as I thought, dammit.

With the Players looking into this room, Dr. Schlessing suddenly says something ominous, like "You're the only ones who know my secret" and starts chanting in some terrible language, like a perverse Latin. The Characters try to stop him and a fight ensues. Just as he's about to breath his last, I have a hand fall on one Player's shoulder. Who is it!?

Lesson Fourteen: Suspense and starting something without resolving it right away. I do a lot of switching from Player to Player, getting a brief rundown on actions. I dole out Difficulties pretty quickly, so everyone's rolling while I'm not attending to them. At one point I turn to one Player and say, "A hand grabs your shoulder" and leave him hanging as I go to the next Player.

Lesson Fifteen: Don't be afraid to bring back loose ends, even if you don't know where it'll lead. Surprise! The owner of the hand is the TA from before. This time he looks half-ape, half-spider and mocks the Characters. "You have only defeated one pitiful servant!" He dislocates a shoulder and bolts. The Characters dowse the dead mad Dr. Schlessing with gasoline, light him, and run.

As they are about to run up the stairs, I mention the sound of lapping water (much closer than it ought to be) from towards the lake. From the busted door, a sick bluish glow is glowing faintly. Four Characters bolt upstairs while one looks back.

Lesson Sixteen: End with a bang. A really WEIRD bang. The Character who looked sees the lake much to close and swelling strangely while flickering with that eerie green and blue light.

All the Characters run out of the house to see the TA, now a terrible monster, standing in the road. He is chanting in a language that makes the Characters nauseous. A blue light is visibly shining from behind the cabin, towards the lake. Here's where Players knowing every Character's knowledge works great.

Three Characters turn to see the source of the light. One ignores it and just busts into the TA. The last simply runs away. This is great because it allows me to describe the approaching horror to the entire group, as well as a climactic fight scene.

In any case, with a wall of glowing lake-muck swarming with fish and tentacles and writhing roots rising up behind but taller then the cabin, and the evil monster TA obviously summoning this terrible monster, it's no wonder a fight breaks out. With a great roll, the Character gets the TA on the ground with a crowbar pressed against its neck, stopping the chanting immediately.

Lesson Seventeen: End with a bang, if you can. While the TA is trapped beneath the crowbar and tensions are high, another player rolls real high on his Shoot. So in-game: A Character is kneeling over the monster, about to be pushed off when the muzzle of a gun presses into the TA's head. A pull of the trigger and game over.

With the death of the TA, the wave of Lovecraftian ick immediately turns to muddy lakewater and collapses on top of the Characters, sending them sprawling but alive. They see the lake is back to normal, the cabin is smoldering from the inside, covered with enough lake muck to keep the fire from spreading. Game ends and credits roll.

Post-Game
We had a great post-session where we talked about what went right and wrong.

No Player knowledge of closeness to accomplishing a task. Chthonian uses a system where fights are finished after a certain number of successes are rolled. This means that it will take 5 players one or two rounds to knock out a Difficulty 6/10 success challenge. Only one Player complained about the 10 success part being secret, the rest didn't feel bothered by it, but it's something to think about.

Sanity/Disorder rules don't flow. The Players didn't feel like Disorders worked well, trying a new idea where only P Sanity damage grants a disorder, and you can Burn Sanity for extra dice. I may even remove disorders all together and just have a Player roleplay all bugshit crazy when a Sanity roll fails.

(EDIT) Looking back at a post by Melodie in a prior Chthonian Play, it sounds like her Players enjoyed Disorders. One of my Players complained that he wasn't a good enough roleplayer to roleplay a Disorder, the others felt like they earned Disorders too quickly for them to sink in. I'm really unsure how to solve this, so more playtesting all around!

Unequal Skill distribution. Some Skills were used way more than others. Persuade was used maybe once. Role was use once. Fight and Aware were used a TON. Shoot was used by only one Player, due to him having the only gun. I need to redo the Skills to properly take into account the purposefully combat-heavy aspect. I'm thinking of keeping Role, but not including a score for it (you can still Burn its Descriptor for an extra die), somehow combining Persuade and Research into one, and having one Fight score with two or three different Descriptors. That way you don't have Shoot and Fight. You have Fight which can have a shooting Descriptor.

The option for Sacrifical Characters. One Player was really disappointed when his Character wasn't killed! I will definitely include advice on allowing a Player to have a Character die if he wants. In fact, the Player can, at the beginning of the session, roll up a NEW character with some consulted-with-group/GM way to bring the new character in when the old character dies. I want to allow Character death without the whole, "oops, your Character's dead, you gotta sit out until the game's over" effect.

Conclusion
Chthonian is very satisfying for our group, supported by the Players being excited about next week (it'll either be more Chthonian or Clinton's Space-age Paladin), but the system still needs some ironing out. I was planning on releasing the game in full, believing I had playtested it enough. Hah! Now I am certainly going to release a shareware Playtest version with the basic rules, a bit of advice (gleaned from these Indie Gaming Monday Lessons), and this fun evil Dr. Schlessing adventure.

[Zak Arntson]

I forgot to mention that when I said "Baboon" above I meant "A whole little freaking horde of baboons." Seriously, five Characters versus six baboons, and the things dropped like flies. Well, they dropped more like wet bags of raw hamburger flayed open by a crowbar, a tire iron, a powerdrill, a machete and I think just bare hands.

Gun-light, improvised weapon gaming is great for the horror film ultraviolence. I may even set aside a special section in Chthonian for encouraging improvised weapons (a la Dead Alive's notorious lawnmower scene).

[rabidchyld]

Lesson Two: Let your Players recap events from last session.

I always let my players recap from the last session.  Mainly because I can't remember (yes, I am a flake that way), but more because it gets them in the mood for playing more.  

Lesson Four-and-a-half: Allow for improv'd gear. Chthonian isn't at all about powerful stuff (in fact, the rules don't support gear, beyond "can you do xyz," so a machete is the same as a pistol). The system supports each Player equipping their Character as they see fit with no loss of in-game effectiveness. Yay!

We ended up doing the same thing.  Hence, Charley's tire iron.  He didn't have it before, but it was perfectly reasonable that he might have grabbed it out of the trunk when they got out of the car, and he started kicking baboon ass.  

Lesson Five: Turn the mundane into the unknown. I decided that their car would have to stop before reaching the cabin. So up ahead, I plop a fallen tree and Dr. Schlessing's parked car. But instead of describing this, I mention the Character's headlights reflecting off of something up ahead. Tension all around.

Since I described the sucking mud, my characters abandoned the car at the beginning of the driveway, not knowing how far a hike it would be.  They did make sure I knew that they turned the car around so it was facing toward the street before they went along their way, though.   That walk was miserable for them, and was a hindrance to them in the long run...safety indeed!

Isn't it funny how my players reacted so completely different as compared to your players.  

Confession: From here on out I'm pretty much winging things. I, frustratingly, didn't write as much of the adventure out as I thought, dammit.

No kidding!!!

Sanity/Disorder rules don't flow. The Players didn't feel like Disorders worked well, trying a new idea where only P Sanity damage grants a disorder, and you can Burn Sanity for extra dice. I may even remove disorders all together and just have a Player roleplay all bugshit crazy when a Sanity roll fails.

(EDIT) Looking back at a post by Melodie in a prior Chthonian Play, it sounds like her Players enjoyed Disorders. One of my Players complained that he wasn't a good enough roleplayer to roleplay a Disorder, the others felt like they earned Disorders too quickly for them to sink in. I'm really unsure how to solve this, so more playtesting all around!

Well, my players are freaks of nature, but they liked the idea of the disorders only after I explained to them that they could be beneficial to them.  Like say, Charley is attacked by a wild dog and gets a phobia of dogs.  After that, it:
1.  Makes for some interesting role playing if he encounters any dogs.      
2.  Could give him extra dice if he encounter wild dogs again, and burns that disorder.  

The key is to remind the players that disorders aren't all bad, and that they can employ them in certain situations.  It might be prudent to define sanity more clearly and make it more difficult to get a disorder, but IMHO, you shouldn't get rid of them altogether.   Maybe a P sanity that they don't get rid of at the end of a scene/ adventure might entail a disorder....

a la Dead Alive's notorious lawnmower scene

Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!!  ha!   HA!!

......ha!  ha!!....

too funny

melodie

[Zak Arntson]

Isn't it funny how my players reacted so completely different as compared to your players.

It is! My Players have little history in the strategic win-the-fight style of gaming. Their experiences have either been absent or the CoC-type of "I can't wait to see how my Character dies!" It helps to make references to action/horror movies here and there, and to openly tell them that recklessness is okay.

Of course, if your Players like the whole strategic thinking angle, then more power to them! As long as they kick ass in the end, and with style (or die trying, with style).

The key is to remind the players that disorders aren't all bad, and that they can employ them in certain situations.
...
Maybe a P sanity that they don't get rid of at the end of a scene/ adventure might entail a disorder....

We discussed this a bit. I like your rule of getting a P gives a disorder after the fact. In any case, though, Sanity rolls in the middle of a heated situation bogs the action down. And besides, I don't want heroes running away at the beginning of a fight. Only afterwards, when it sinks in.

I've always experienced Sanity rolls as jarring, pulling the group out of the moment. As the rules go (in CoC, also), at the height of a scary moment you suddenly break the tone and call for Sanity checks! This is unacceptable for me.

I think instead of Sanity rolls, I will allow Players to burn both Safety AND Sanity. When you Burn Safety, you do something ballsy. When you Burn Sanity, you do something apeshit.

Maybe instead of Safety vs. Sanity, you just have ONE score? Like some kind of life bar. From one side you fill in "F" for Safety, and from the other you write in "S" for Sanity. At the end of the scene you make a Life roll and remove S's or F's as you see fit. If you have any S's left over you get a Disorder.

Wow, combine this post with my Proposed new Skill use, Chthonian's really going through some changes! Thank goodness (and Melodie) for playtesting!

[rabidchyld]

I've always experienced Sanity rolls as jarring, pulling the group out of the moment. As the rules go (in CoC, also), at the height of a scary moment you suddenly break the tone and call for Sanity checks! This is unacceptable for me.

I think instead of Sanity rolls, I will allow Players to burn both Safety AND Sanity. When you Burn Safety, you do something ballsy. When you Burn Sanity, you do something apeshit.

I agree...it is a little disruptive to the feeling of the game to have to stop everything and do sanity rolls.  My suggestion would be to roll sanity checks at the end of the scene.  After all the action is over.  Just like in life, these people would be merely reacting to whatever danger presents itself, and running on nothing but adrenaline (if we did our job correctly), then when it's all over, they realize, "Oh my god, I've just killed a horrible creature/ jumped 2 stories from a burning building/ saved my baby from a burning car by ripping out the backseat!!", or something equally horrific.  At that point they roll sanity.  

Letting them burn their sanity during battle is a fine idea, as well.  They can make their own decision on whether or not they go apeshit in the beginning, which could help them at the time.  When it's over, it could be much more interesting if they say...had to keep that sanity they burned, at least temporarily, on top of any other sanity loss.  If the game is about fear, that would be one good way to enforce it.  

Maybe instead of Safety vs. Sanity, you just have ONE score? Like some kind of life bar. From one side you fill in "F" for Safety, and from the other you write in "S" for Sanity. At the end of the scene you make a Life roll and remove S's or F's as you see fit. If you have any S's left over you get a Disorder.

Nah...you'd have to completely re-do damage to keep the players from being permanently shitters or crippled, unless you kept the same amount of sanity and safety points, which would defeat the purpose.  Keep them separate, that's part of the fun of the game.  If you roll sanity at the end of the scene, there is no need to combine the two stats.  

melodie