Note: This article is an extension of the threads, Drifting to R'lyeh and Cthulhu's clues. It will be best understood by reading those posts

One of the most nagging anomalies of Call of Cthulhu has been a certain hypocrisy about violence. Hyposcrisy ? you may ask. Well yes, isn't it hypocrisy filling the Cthulhu Now supplements with lovingly rendered sketches of automatic weapons and then verbally spanking your hands for wanting to use them. Isn't it hypocrisy to create a game where the only real form of accumulable effectivenss is your gun and then insulting you for noticing it.
Thats right. That's the real Dark Secret of Call of Cthulhu: You are only as good as your gun. And getting a bigger one (and learning to shoot it) is generally the only way to really get better.

Yet the game promotes the idea of looking down on those who notice this. On long thread "Dealing with Rambo wannabees" on the
Yog-Sothoth.com site embodies this attitude. The bring up a lot of house rules mods designed specifically to castrate firearms. But then they are enamored of the ultraviolent 'Masks of Nyarlathotep' a scenario whose opening scene consists of encountering a group of cultists crouched over the mutilated corpse of an old friend. Perhaps they'll drop dead if you critically hit your Fast Talk roll and trick them into having heart attacks, yeah that's it....

HP Lovecraft wasn't shy about putting guns in the hands of his heros. In 'Whisperer in Darkness' an entire colony of Mi-go is held off by an arsenal of firearms and guard dogs that Randy Weaver would have envied. In The Shunned House' in addittion to a bathtubs worth of concentrated acid they also pack a 'military flamethrower' and a Crookes tube, a real honest to Ghostbusters ,20's era particle accelerator.

I rather doubt the Federal Agents that raided Innsmouth were throwing noodles at the time, the cops that waded into the cultists in 'Call of Cthulhu, Certainly weren't.

Even the more intellectual Richard Upton Pickman, and Herber West weren't too good to pack heat when they needed to...why should anybody else playing the game?

Let's take a typical situation from Cthululand. A small colony of Deep Ones has slithered up into the cities sewer system , they are ensconced in some catacomb under an abandoned building and gathered a cult about itself. They are sacrificing ,street people, orphans, what have you to the foul creature. The cult is growing,gaining, in magical power, and temporal influence. They have the potential, if things go on, to turn the place into another Innsmouth.

Okay lets say the players have found all this out, whether they made their skill rolls or you just dropped a book in their laps which lays everything out in block letters. (If they can't do the former you will probably end up doing the later,or it's equivalent.)

Like any self-respecting group of Investigators, they want to put a stop to this.

So, what exactly ARE they supposed to do about it?

There are really only so many options. The typical Cthulhu mythos cult makes Al-Quaida look like a model of probity and good fellowship, so you can be sure reasoning with them isn't going to make much headway. In the aformentioned 'Shadow over Innsmouth' the narrator simply sicced the Feds on them. An acceptable solution in a short story but damn de-protaganising in an rpg (besides in Cthulhu scenarios the authorities will almost certainly ignore or laugh off such a warning).

So what's left? Magic? As the CoC rulebook states quite clearly: "An investigator rarely becomes an adept mage as the necessary knowledge and experience leads to madness first".
Indeed! Reading mythos books costs SAN. Casting mythos spells costs SAN. Getting close enough to a mythos monster to use a spell (can) costs SAN. Using mythos magic items, costs SAN. And since the whiff factor for magic (at least for Investigators) is even worse than for mundane skills, all this throwing away of the hard to regenerate mental hit points known as SAN is likely to be futile anyway.

So magic is unlikely to be useful given the way the CoC rules work. The Authorities wil be unhelpful. Negotiation is likely to be worse than useless. The only real option is a violent one.

CoC's hypocrisy about violence enter into the equation unfortunately. CoC wants to be this cultured,thinking man's game, the rpg equivaltent of Frasier Crane, the opposite of the continuous mindless miniatures combat of D&D. But by and large it's in practice impossible to resolve most scenarios without violence of some kind. As the rules clain, "Investigator's aren't fighting machines. The single extraordinary thing about most investigator's is what they come to know." But as I pointed out in 'Drifting to R'lyeh' what you know really doesn't matter because if the Keeper doesn't want his game to die out in a welter of whiffed skill rolles in the Miskatonic U. reading room he'll tell you what you need to know anyway.

But need to know to do what?

Again how are you going the get that star spawn? Burning down the house merely means they set up shop elsewhere. This has the same problem as the various other 'nuke the site from orbit' options. Explosives are often reccomended, however they have the same problems as throwing a molotov in the window, you don't really know what happened. (This ignores the fact that explosives can be as dangerous as any monster if you dont know what you're doing, it's interesting to note that CoC doesn not and has never had a Demolitions skill!) Was the threat neutralized? You won't find out until later and if it didn't work, the cult will be forewarned that somebody has got their number, and they'll be even more careful in the future (we are constantly told Cthulhu cultists are raving maniacs. Unlike most raving maniacs seem unusually crafty.....). The problem with 'nuke the site from orbit is that you CAN'T be sure. In CoC you can't be sure unless you watch it die, and sometimes not even then......

So usually violence is the only choice you have. And guns are good at violence. Thats why the armies of the world dropped arrows and swords in favor of guns. They are easily and cheaply acquired, (at least in the USA), eminently portable ,concealable, and can strike at a distance. (Hundreds of yards, at least in theory...). The kinds of places most CoC action scenes occur are places where the characters are within the point blank rule for firearms which DOUBLES your hit probability. (haunted houses,caves,sewers ,crypts ,catacombs ,etc...).

Stand and Deliver!:Riding shotgun on the mythos

Hell yes Call of Cthulhu is hypocritical about guns. The 'Theron Marks' article in the Cthulhu Companion (?) is virtually a pean to the shotgun. And well it might, shotguns are the best weapon in the book. At the typical combat ranges their punch is enourmous .14 points for a median 12-guage hit. Shotguns are regulated at a far lower level than automatic weapons,when firing pellets they have no ballistic signature,they can be easily loaded with all kinds of imaginative ammunitions (I've use everthing in my games from rock salt to gigantic glaser rounds that do 8(d6+2) to soft targets), and furthermore they give your characters an excuse to slink around in cool looking,shotgun hiding, black dusters in the middle of the night.

One non-argument, is the 'the horrors of the mythos are invulverable to paltry human weapons" routine. I can only think those who belive this haven't looked at the monster stats in CoC very carefully. Sure Cthulhu and the major league 'big bads' are pretty much bulletproof,but most of the lesser servitor and independent races (the overwhelming majority of what will be encountered in any reasonable campaign) come apart pretty well under gunfire. To demostrate this I have compiled a list the number of median damage hits with a shotgun to kill a median hit point creature of the given type. Included are any modifier for armor and other types of damage resistance.


median # hits
Byakhee 2
Deep Ones 1
Dark Young of
Shub-Niggurath 5
Dimension Shamblers 2
Elder Things
Fire Vampires *I
Formless Spawn of
Tsathoggua *I
Ghasts 2
Ghouls 2
Gnoph-Keh 6
Great Race of
Yith 6
Gugs 8
Hunting Horrors 6
Leng Spiders 4
Mi-Go 3
Moon Beasts 5
Nightgaunts 2
Sand Dwellers
Serpent Men 1
Shantaks 7

While a few of the critters on this chart are pretty stiff, most of these are also pretty hard to find, Gugs are almost all in the Dreamlands, You normally have to go back before the dinosaurs to encounter the great race, and knoph-keh are only found in the most godforsaken arctic wastelands.
Only a few are actually gun-proof, most of those that are are vulnerable to incediary attacks.
Fire Vampires are a real problem, but if you happen to be near a garden hose......

The lesson of this chart isn't that the horrors of the mythos are invulnerable to wankety ,wank ,wank , the lesson is 'Shoot early and often'.

There is another lesson too. Call of Cthulhu talks and talks about the uselessness of violence, but creates a game where it's almost inevitable. The lesson of this is simply don't necessarily believe what the designers of a game tell, you , they can be amazingly obtuse about the type of play their rules actually support.

I will end by paraphrasing the immortal words of John Dillinger 'You will get farther with an Orate roll and a gun ,than you will with just an Orate roll".....

Preach it brother.
Call of Cthulhu survives as a game because people did Cthulhu and cultists and the Mythos. The actual game mechanics, IMO, are unqualifiedly horrible.

Hmm, I wonder what Cthulhu's system design goals should actually be, in relation to genre material?

As stated, that genre material includes shooting cultists and the lesser puncths of Cthulhu.

Yet to add in a combat section is like that standard Mike rant, about sticking in combat sections even if your books about the best photographers in the world. And how crud that is.

I wonder if one goal might be that survival is basically formulated through current knowledge + gun skill + how big a barrel you got, all added to one roll and that's it (basically a conflict resolution rather than task resolution). What I mean by current knowledge is what stuff you've learnt from the adventure helps you avoid walking to close to the creatures grasp, which is pretty damn important, perhaps more so than having a big gun (crank your currennt knowledge modifier really high).

Sound legit?

I suppose this could be taken as an example of how Call of Cthulhu is incoherent, yes? It seems the desired mode for most groups playing it is Sim / Exploration of Setting or Color ("What would it be like to be inside a Lovecraft story?") but in fact the game rewards play that's either more Gamist ("look, it only takes one shotgun blast on average to kill a Serpent Man") or Sim in more of a "What if Cthulhu related events happened in the real world" (in which case the right answer really is to either go in with heavy automatic weapons, call the feds, or just turn around and pretend you didn't see anything.)

It's an interesting thought, because there are a number of games that focus on simulation of a cinematic reality, but not many that try to simulate a literary one. CoC is one of those games that knows what it wants to do, but tries to do it in a way similar to other games published around when it came out, and it doesn't really gel.

I think there's always been two strands of Cthulhu play - 'pulp cthulhu' and 'adventures in social history'. From what I've seen of it, D20 Cthulhu drifted towards the former.

The "Theron Mark's Survival Manual" was bundled in with a couple of adventures and was full of advice about shotguns - I think twin sawn-offs is recommended at one point - explosives and flame throwers. The adventures themselves were fairly pulpy. I remember something about Aztec temples in South America, crocodile attacks and the like.

They were a lot of fun.

(Historically, I always found that the big problem with going in guns blazing all the time was that - as a strategy - it ignores the ablative effect of Sanity)

Noon:

Hmm, I wonder what Cthulhu's system design goals should actually be, in relation to genre material?

As stated, that genre material includes shooting cultists and the lesser puncths of Cthulhu.

Yet to add in a combat section is like that standard Mike rant, about sticking in combat sections even if your books about the best photographers in the world. And how crud that is.

Maybe I'm just not highbrow enough (grin), but whenever I ran CoC, firearms were always involved. And I'm talking about the "play-in-the-basement-with-the-lights-out" kind of CoC. However, the characters that we ran were rarely combat beasts. Gunplay with the monsters tended to feel rather desperate. Certainly the monsters weren't invulnerable (even the shoggoth that I once threw at a group), but they were enough to induce fear and panic among both characters and players. So the gunplay and violence tended to increase the fear and desperation, not work against it.

And I say this as a fan of the game.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

To bankhead: I'm not convinced this is hypocrisy. If some author publishes a CoC adventure which rewards gun use, and some internet poster on yog-sothoth.com says "Only munchkins use guns" -- then this is a clash of views, not hypocrisy. The latter presumably prefers more non-violent adventures than the ones published.

My impression from the CoC published books themselves is that they encourage gun use to a certain extent, but also suggest putting limits on it. As a rule of thumb, shotguns and dynamite are fine and indeed expected -- but tanks and mounted machineguns are to be discouraged (with possible exceptions in the case of Delta Green). The "Theron Mark's Survival Manual" is a good illustration. It is absolutely not the case that the game wants PCs to be unarmed scholars who succeed through being smart and reading. Indeed, the game tries to make investigation as dangerous and peril-ridden as combat (i.e. "Don't read that book!!!").

Strangely, the rant that opened this thread has made me (for the very first time) consider that Call of Cthulu might be a really fun game to play.

While the "high brow tone" of the game always put me off in the past, the idea of grabbing my trench coat and 12guage pump to go kick some ancient evil ass gives it just the contrast needed to give it a greater appeal.

Personally I couldn't imagine enjoying a game where I go quietly insane researching old gods in a gloomy library.

But going stark raving bonkers with a 45 in each hand, guns blazing and lighting up the sanity blasting visage of an old one like a staccato strobe light... that would be much more cool.

If I were actually presented with such a situtation in real life, I'd like to think I know which way I'd go out. Definitely with a bang.

madelf wrote: But going stark raving bonkers with a 45 in each hand, guns blazing and lighting up the sanity blasting visage of an old one like a staccato strobe light... that would be much more cool.

Gordon C. Landis wrote:
Isn't this the source of popularity for the Delta Green variant of CoC? I confess, I've seen MUCH more Delta Green play than "real" 20's CoC . . .
Gordon

Hello,

Madelf, I also recommend the game Dread, by Rafael Chandler, which for my money captures exactly what you describe in the most effective, playable, and visceral way I've ever seen.

Best,
Ron

Just as a note, Dread seems to be currently unavailable. According to the authors site he has sold his entire print run. The site makes no mention of an intention to print more books.

http://rafaelchandler.com

regards,

Trevis

madelf wrote:
While the "high brow tone" of the game always put me off in the past, the idea of grabbing my trench coat and 12guage pump to go kick some ancient evil ass gives it just the contrast needed to give it a greater appeal.

Personally I couldn't imagine enjoying a game where I go quietly insane researching old gods in a gloomy library.

Not to quibble, but I'm pretty sure the Tommygun went into production prior to 1929. If I recall corectly, it was designed to be marketed to the Allied governments for the anticipated 1919 campaigns, but the war ended before it went into production. Seem to recall that the tommygun in it's early form was used in both the Tan War and the Irish Civil War in the early '20s.
As for alternatives, I believe that France, Britain, and Germany all experimented with machine pistols/submachineguns, lightmachineguns and assault rifles for uses in the trenches. I'm pretty sure that the Browning automatic rifle (B.A.R) came out of those designs, as did the Lewisgun, two light, bipod equiped made by the americans and british respectively.
IIRC, the tommygun, because it fired .45 pistol ammo, was classified as a pistol for legal purposes, and was available over the counter or by mail order in the U.S.(ie- unrestricted access to the public), leading to its popularity with criminal factions during the heyday of the bootlegger wars.
Also remember that in the interwar years, the US had an incredibly laissez-faire attitude toward gun ownership. Critics of the current ease of gun ownership would blow a gasket if they suddenly found themselves in the 1920s. It would not be unbelievable that bookish, law abiding scholars would own some sort of handgun. OTOH, Miranda rights weren't in place at the time, and police had much broader powers, both on the books and in practice, to detain and abuse suspected criminals and malcontents of all stripes.

Ole wrote: So basically you spend hours reading handouts and piecing together information, blast the cultists to kingdom come, steal a musty old-book, spend 3 months reading it (hopefully staying sane), use the information in the book to save the world.

Hypocrisy about violence? You betcha. The introductory material and rules commonly emphasise that this is a game about investigation, and violence will get you nowhere.
The big problem is when players actually buy into this, and create investigators without combat-skills. I`ve yet to see an adventure where violence isnt a necessity at some crucial point.

Call of Cthulhu differs in feel and motivation from other roleplaying games. In many such games, player-characters can directly confront and attempt to destroy obstacles and opponents. This strategy typically leads to disaster in Cthulhu scenarios. The majority of other-world monstrosities are so terrible and often so invulnerable that choosing open combat almost guarantees a gruesome end for an investigator.
...
Different Investigators
Are any investigators specialists? One handy sort is the wise old professor who knows foreign languages, reads arcane manuscripts, and pieces together Sanity-blasting spells able to send the Elder Horrors back whence they came. He or she is typically little use if a fight develops, and generally has low Sanity points, due to intensive study of the Mythos.
An opposite sort is the tough operator able to fight well with fists or guns. He or she should leave the eldritch aspects of the Mythos to others and remain a bodyguard and scout. He or she can be helpful with police and gangsters.
...
Avoid Gunfights
Every group of players has its own feel and customs. If gangsters and foreign spies are common features in a campaign, all the investigators probably carry concealed weapons for self-defense. The number of devastating weapons floating about in the 1990s practically demands sidearms.
...
By all means have lots of firearms. But do not rely on firearms.

komradebob: You are right about the T-gun. It might be that the version in CoC is the 1929-modell, or it might be that I`m confusing it with another gun.

John Kim wrote:
OK, I've re-read the Call of Cthulhu main book. While I can see where you (and bankhead) get that, I think you are projecting too much into it. Consider that most gamers are used to the model of D&D and other heroic games where you immediately meet a monster and kill it. There is an "Expectations & Play" section in the introduction, which says the following:

Call of Cthulhu differs in feel and motivation from other roleplaying games. In many such games, player-characters can directly confront and attempt to destroy obstacles and opponents. This strategy typically leads to disaster in Cthulhu scenarios. The majority of other-world monstrosities are so terrible and often so invulnerable that choosing open combat almost guarantees a gruesome end for an investigator.

Different Investigators
Are any investigators specialists? One handy sort is the wise old professor who knows foreign languages, reads arcane manuscripts, and pieces together Sanity-blasting spells able to send the Elder Horrors back whence they came. He or she is typically little use if a fight develops, and generally has low Sanity points, due to intensive study of the Mythos.
An opposite sort is the tough operator able to fight well with fists or guns. He or she should leave the eldritch aspects of the Mythos to others and remain a bodyguard and scout. He or she can be helpful with police and gangsters.

Avoid Gunfights
Every group of players has its own feel and customs. If gangsters and foreign spies are common features in a campaign, all the investigators probably carry concealed weapons for self-defense. The number of devastating weapons floating about in the 1990s practically demands sidearms.
...
By all means have lots of firearms. But do not rely on firearms.

I don't consider this to be hypocritical. I think it is simply trying to paint exactly the picture you (Ole) paint of adventures: some investigation and some gunplay. The point of this is to distinguish CoC from games like D&D or Feng Shui.

While I can see where people are coming from, I think that the accusations of hypocrisy are unfounded.

The very first scenario in my 5th-edition copy of CoC, entitled "The Edge of Darkness" and being nine pages long, does not require guns or violence at all.

SPOILER WARNING for "The Edge of Darkness"

Instance of violence come down to the following in this 'haunted house' scenario:

(1) A scared hobo tries to flee the cellar when the investigators stumble upon him. He is using an old table leg for a single attack and then tries to escape. He will fight if his escape route is blocked, but there is no harm in letting him go (i.e., he takes no crucial clues with him) and subduing him should be easy even for unarmed bookish types.

(2) The first investigator to take a look into the attic has a fair chance of getting his head torn off. However, the characters can only withdraw as the lurker in the attic cannot be hurt by physical weapons (and the investigators are specifically not assumed to have any spells).

(3) Two animated corpses try to lure the investigators out of the house or eventually threaten to fight their way in. However, the investigators are perfectly safe inside.

SPOILER ENDING

That's it. No need for guns. Not even a single attack roll is required.

Obviously, there are other types of scenarios, but this one fits the CoC stereotype - mythos monsters are invincible, player characters are investigators rather than commandoes - nicely. And as John has pointed out, CoC doesn't really subscribe to the stereotypes about itself.

Regards,

Hal

One of the things I've noticed about CoC ( and other Realworldish setting that use firearms) is just how accurate weapons fire is. To be honest, amateurs with guns should not hit as often as they do. Like, put their chance tohit in the single digit percentages excxept under optimal circumstances. And when I say amateur, I mean everyone short of a well seasoned soldier, with both training and hard won experience, plus natural talent.

OTOH single bullets from weapons also seem less deadly than they really should be. It is hard for me to imagine a game designer that doesn't consider that a single bullet should well be capable of killing even an execeedingly strong and healthy human being. Perhaps the chance is small, but it should be there.

As for hypocrisy, well maybe.

Perhaps what is missing is repurcussions for one's actions. I mentioned in an earlier post that guns were readily accessible in the US in the interwar years. Consider, however, that their use has repurcussions. Cops or military personnel acting under orders might well be able to get away with destroying a Deep One horde and infested town. A bunch of college professors and a couple of low-class PIs wasting a nice old eccentric and his psychic medium friend is just bucking for a visit with Ol' Sparky. If the pcs are miners that blew up a shaft to "stop a monster", get ready to do a Sacco and Vanzetti sequel. Hey, nobody likes anarchist terrorists anyway, especially not juries loaded with upstanding middle-class citizens.

Halzebier wrote: While I can see where people are coming from, I think that the accusations of hypocrisy are unfounded.

The very first scenario in my 5th-edition copy of CoC, entitled "The Edge of Darkness" and being nine pages long, does not require guns or violence at all.

Obviously, there are other types of scenarios, but this one fits the CoC stereotype - mythos monsters are invincible, player characters are investigators rather than commandoes - nicely. And as John has pointed out, CoC doesn't really subscribe to the stereotypes about itself.

Geeze louise.

Its amazing the depths that people will go to avoid discussing a topic by nitpicking the appropriateness of a single world to death.

Fine. There are people, even a sizeable number, who do not consider the situation Chris describes to be hypocritical. Others do. Fine, big whoop.

Can we try discussing the actual issue he brought forward regarding the nature of CoC actual play that is encouraged by the BRP rules, and whether that really reflects the nature and mood of Mythos stories as well as it should.

To me the BRP system doesn't do anything at all to reflect the nature and mood of the Mythos stories. The game designers expect the players to already be fully aware of the mythos and simply mimick the stories in play regardless of what the rules suggest the best course of action is.

The stories suggest a character in the mythos should investigate occult arcana, willingly searching for the knowledge that man was not meant to know. The rules, however, make it clear that this is a bad idea. So, players desireing to mimic the mythos must voluntarily do something which they know the game will punish them for...and to make matters have even less of a mythos feel, they know pretty much exactly how and when they're going to be punished also.

There is very little built into the rules to support mythos play. And by support I mean someone whose never read a mythos story, heard about them, or even heard the name of Cthulhu before, could sit down, play a couple of games, and after getting over the learning curve of the rules come away from the table with a pretty good idea what a Mythos story looks like.

That's the point of Chris's three threads on the subject. That is what I would find much more interesting to discuss.

Valamir wrote: Geeze louise.

Its amazing the depths that people will go to avoid discussing a topic by nitpicking the appropriateness of a single world to death.

Can we try discussing the actual issue he brought forward regarding the nature of CoC actual play that is encouraged by the BRP rules, and whether that really reflects the nature and mood of Mythos stories as well as it should.

Halzebier wrote: And might I point out that in my opinion your deliberate or continued use of negative terms (e.g. calling immersive play 'selfish') has sometimes had the same effect, i.e. hindered discussion.

Valamir wrote: There is very little built into the rules to support mythos play. And by support I mean someone whose never read a mythos story, heard about them, or even heard the name of Cthulhu before, could sit down, play a couple of games, and after getting over the learning curve of the rules come away from the table with a pretty good idea what a Mythos story looks like.

That's the point of Chris's three threads on the subject. That is what I would find much more interesting to discuss.

Valamir wrote: There is very little built into the rules to support mythos play. And by support I mean someone whose never read a mythos story, heard about them, or even heard the name of Cthulhu before, could sit down, play a couple of games, and after getting over the learning curve of the rules come away from the table with a pretty good idea what a Mythos story looks like.

I think Hypocrisy is a very strong word, and is a long way from neing justified in this case.

It is true that some of CoC's supporters can be a bit hyperbolic in their praise of the game and the 'ideal' play style, but the actual game itself is very practical and down to earth about these issues. As the poster states Lovecraft's stories contain ample examples of people taking on the Mythos with firepower, often successfuly. Some threats aren't amenable to this kind of attack though, and this too is mentioned in the game and supported in the rules. I think the game matches what you'd expect from a reading of the stories very well in this regard.

Sometimes fireams work, sometimes they don't. There's nothing contradictory in saying that.

I disagree with the way magic is being characterised, and here I will depart a little from the recommendations in the game text. Sometimes magic is either the best, or sometimes even the only solution to a problem. In those cases, the magic you require exacts a terrible price. Again this is very well supported in the rules. Having a character go nuts, or even losing the character through injury or SAN loss is one thing. Actualy choosing to weaken or destroy your character, often in horrible ways, for the greater good is quite another and being put in a possition to have to make those choices and balance those risks IMHO is one of the great experiences roleplaying games have to offer. And all this 20 years ago!


Simon Hibbs

To agree with Simon, and with Ralph simultaneously, I think that Hypocrisy is just a term that he's using to charge the issue. What he really means is that the game doesn't do well what it's supposed to do, given the game "technology" that exists today. That is, for 20 years ago, they probably did the best that they could, and I laud the attempt to hammer such difficult subject matter into the form of what RPGs were seen to be at the time. Yes it's problematic, but nobody could have done better at the time.

So, saying that CoC doesn't play better is akin to saying that cars in the seventies should have had airbags. Well, sure, but who knew? So, yes, your old car from the seventies isn't as good as an up to date car. So what?

Ralph is right that the overall subject of these threads is how well CoC supports what it intends to support (and in this one how guns affect that). But my question to Brian is why he's bothering to shoot fish in a barrel? Let's postulate that he's correct - then what? You can't even be proscriptive and point out what not to do, because most of what's in the game is outmoded by the intervening 25 years, and isn't used by other systems.

It all comes down to a big fat example of "System Does Matter." Well, not really new news there. And we can debate until the cows come home just how bad or good it is, but I don't think that's going to change anyone's mind on the matter, if they're fans of the game - likely they're not reading the essays. In any case, I think that what the players of CoC like are the subject matter, and the ways in which they've come to cope with the problems of the system. So there's really nothing to "cure" anyhow.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: So, saying that CoC doesn't play better is akin to saying that cars in the seventies should have had airbags. Well, sure, but who knew? So, yes, your old car from the seventies isn't as good as an up to date car. So what?

Mike Holmes wrote: It all comes down to a big fat example of "System Does Matter." Well, not really new news there. And we can debate until the cows come home just how bad or good it is, but I don't think that's going to change anyone's mind on the matter, if they're fans of the game - likely they're not reading the essays. In any case, I think that what the players of CoC like are the subject matter, and the ways in which they've come to cope with the problems of the system. So there's really nothing to "cure" anyhow.

Instead of hypocritical, could we say that it's incoherent? That was my initial reading of this thread, that CoC wants to simulate one thing but the rules encourage a different type of behavior.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the meaning of incoherent in GNS terminology but it seems like less of a loaded term. (Then again, 'hypocritical' in terms of 'says one thing, does another' doesn't really strike me as offensive to begin with when applied to a text rather than a person.)

Andrew Norris wrote: Instead of hypocritical, could we say that it's incoherent? That was my initial reading of this thread, that CoC wants to simulate one thing but the rules encourage a different type of behavior.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the meaning of incoherent in GNS terminology but it seems like less of a loaded term. (Then again, 'hypocritical' in terms of 'says one thing, does another' doesn't really strike me as offensive to begin with when applied to a text rather than a person.)

John Kim wrote:
Just to review my position: As far as I can tell, Call of Cthulhu is not trying to claim that it exactly reproduces the genre of Lovecraft stories with its adventures. The overwhelming difference is having very different protagonists: a group of investigators who are continuous from one horror encounter to the next.

This is entirely intentional. The PCs expect horrors and try to deal with them. Based on this, the game text expects and indeed encourages a certain level of violence -- including firearms.

Channeling Ron for a moment, I suspect that there is some degree of synecdoche going on here. i.e. The name is "Call of Cthulhu", so therefore the game should correctly emulate a particular genre and/or be more literary and/or be Narrativist.... But I don't see this in the actual game.

Hmm... I know I'm projecting, but I get the feeling that Chaosium acquired the license, then very lightly altered BRP (essentially with the SAN mechanism, and an attempt to reduce the utility of guns against certain creatures) to attempt to sim 1920's reality with Lovecraft monsters on top, in preference to going back to scratch. Hence the perceived incoherence.

Also, John, I think the available techniques / deisgns comment really was that: was there anyone in commercial RPG design in 1982 thinking in terms of what we would recognise as narrative design, or rule systems that wholesale went for genre emulation above real-world simulation?

(this is, of course, an enormous tease, as I know about one off the top of my head, and he's not entirely unconnected with CoC...)

But there's a whole 'nother thread about to start there, and I'll start it when I'm not grossly extending my lunch...

pete_darby wrote: Hmm... I know I'm projecting, but I get the feeling that Chaosium acquired the license, then very lightly altered BRP (essentially with the SAN mechanism, and an attempt to reduce the utility of guns against certain creatures) to attempt to sim 1920's reality with Lovecraft monsters on top, in preference to going back to scratch. Hence the perceived incoherence.

Also, John, I think the available techniques / deisgns comment really was that: was there anyone in commercial RPG design in 1982 thinking in terms of what we would recognise as narrative design, or rule systems that wholesale went for genre emulation above real-world simulation?

(this is, of course, an enormous tease, as I know about one off the top of my head, and he's not entirely unconnected with CoC...)

Okay, I'll give... Greg Stafford, who put out Prince Valiant, but my research-fu was weak, and it turns out PV was 7 years later... but that kind of re-inforces my point, that AFAIK no-one was thinking in terms of subtracting what wasn't needed for the game, or rethinking the basic form of RPG's in order to better emulate the source material in 1982.

I'm really calling down the lightning here, aren't I? There's bound to be one big exception to this that I've missed...

No, I think you're precisely right, Pete. I think they had a vision that they just couldn't accomplish with the sorts of rules they had at the time. I think it's patent from the text. That's not to say that people don't play the resulting game in ways that they enjoy, just that, typically, it requires some drift like ignoring some of the rules that you point out.

Mike

pete_darby wrote: Also, John, I think the available techniques / deisgns comment really was that: was there anyone in commercial RPG design in 1982 thinking in terms of what we would recognise as narrative design, or rule systems that wholesale went for genre emulation above real-world simulation?

(this is, of course, an enormous tease, as I know about one off the top of my head, and he's not entirely unconnected with CoC...)

Mike Holmes wrote: I think they had a vision that they just couldn't accomplish with the sorts of rules they had at the time. I think it's patent from the text. That's not to say that people don't play the resulting game in ways that they enjoy, just that, typically, it requires some drift like ignoring some of the rules that you point out.

Mike Holmes wrote: I think they had a vision that they just couldn't accomplish with the sorts of rules they had at the time. I think it's patent from the text. That's not to say that people don't play the resulting game in ways that they enjoy, just that, typically, it requires some drift like ignoring some of the rules that you point out.

Well, I don't really know anything about the designers directly, but I don't get the impression that they were very disappointed.

The game has gone through quite a few editions with various reorganization and rewriting, but the core rules have changed very little. Most other long-lived games have had much more major changes with new editions. If the designers were disappointed and really wanted more "modern" rules that they just hadn't thought of, surely something would appear in later editions -- or at least in articles or supplements.

For the latter part, I guess I missed something. What rules are you saying people ignore in CoC?

With others, I don't think CoC was ever designed to support a particular style of play. Incoherence cannot be applied because design golas were different.

I've played it in many different ways from gamist dungeon bash where SAN replaces HPs (not my favourite way at all) through to intense psycho-drama, all with the same rules.

The rules didn't do anything in particular to support the style of play, although they do perhaps favour the dungeon bash.

I've used other rules for running Mythos games, from diceless funny Over The Edge through to Pulpy d20 and with the right groups they've all worked pretty well. Personally, I don't like BRP but it's easy to use and understand and is no worse than many other systems for running Cthulhu games.

Mike Holmes wrote: Like I said, it's a technology issue. How can you miss a cell phone if you've never seen one. Once you've seen one, however, it can become a very in-demand item. They couldn't put die pools in their game because die pools had not yet been invented. Never mind that it might not have been an improvement to the game, it wasn't an option. Like die pools every innovation in gaming that came later wasn't available to these designers.

Hello,

That's an interesting point, John. I agree with it halfway and disagree with it halfway.

I agree with it in terms of older games per se. As you know, I think a lot of them were and are brilliant. As I've said before, I'm still a big fan of Champions, especially the 2nd-to-3rd edition phase, and I still think Tunnels & Trolls and Marvel Super Heroes are pinnacles of design and presentation. And these are just some of my faves, not by any means a good representation of pre-1983 diversity of play/design. And I do think that Call of Cthulhu represents some seriously functional and powerful game design, of a particular sort (people have probably noted that I don't jump in with all sorts of critique in this series of threads; that's because I'm not especially seeing flaws in the game given how its parts operate among one another).

On the other hand, I think that you might be asking a bit too much of the market as it stands to expect it to reflect "play quality" of games, at least not solely. I think that such a trend does exist to a great extent, when one steps back far enough (e.g. Marvel Super Heroes is played consistently to date despite its utter absence in the commercial environment) ... but also that games' success can also arise from subcultural identification and product loyalty. White Wolf games seem to me to be excellent examples, and I think that Cthulhu-esque fandom and fanfic are sufficiently linked to Call of Cthulhu the role-playing game as to be nearly identical. So actual play, and success thereof, may not be the single overriding variable involved.

So I'm hopping in to suggest that perhaps what this thread needs is a little focus about just what's being debated. When I start half-agreeing and half-disagreeing with various posts (and John's is just one), it's a sign that I, at least, am getting confused about that.

Best,
Ron

I don't entirely disagree with your main point above John, but I do think that reality is somewhere in between. You say that the Casablanca film makers weren't held back because the film wasn't in color...but I'm willing to bet that if color had been an option, they would have leapt at it. Further we know for a fact that Lucas felt held back by the level of technology he had to work with with Star Wars, because he did go back and rework it once new technology became available.

In fact, I'd say this:

they made a great film within the bounds of the film technology they had.

If they try it, everyone will go to it because it is objectively better and more advanced.

Valamir wrote: You say that the Casablanca film makers weren't held back because the film wasn't in color...but I'm willing to bet that if color had been an option, they would have leapt at it. Further we know for a fact that Lucas felt held back by the level of technology he had to work with with Star Wars, because he did go back and rework it once new technology became available.

Valamir wrote:

John Kim wrote: If they try it, everyone will go to it because it is objectively better and more advanced.

But this is simply an impossible standard. Its never been true of any product line let alone RPGs. I reject any attempt to apply it as a yard stick of quality.

John Kim wrote:
I would ask: did the advanced technology make Star Wars a better film? In my opinion, no, it made it worse. In fact, I think the changes demonstrate exactly my worry: that new technology makes things worse because people insist on using it even where it is inappropriate.

ChefKyle wrote: I suspect the anti-gun speech in CoC was a reaction against the dungeon crawling that was so popular at the time. Perhaps it wasn't even intended completely sincerely. It may have been, "the players are going to want to blow everything up. If I tell them they can not blow anything up, they still will, but it'll pull them from their extreme into a sensible middle ground."

Ole wrote:
Last time I checked CoC was in its fifth edition, and dungeon crawls were going out of fashion around the 2nd. So if it were correct, why would they still cling to this attitude? Why they havent bothered to make any significant changes to a rather poor system is another question.

I haven't played all that often, but from the few times I have, it seems to me
that criticism of this game as being incoherrent are based on some false
premises.

When I have played CoC, always as a one-shot, the game fit the paradigm
of Narrativist/Dramatist pretty well. One question that's been asked is:
Why does the game claim to reward investigation when violence is more
effective? Actually, playing CoC made clear to me exactly what a
discrepancy there is in the term `reward''. The system does NOT
reward characters at all. The best thing for a character to ACTUALLY
do in any situation is to run or hide while pretending to themselves it is
all a bad dream. The system rewards players with the experiences of
(if you're immersive) or opportunity to portray in an unrestrained way
(if you take the actor stance) a character in a nightmarish situation
beyond comprehension. The tone of the game can range from
terror and disgust to comedy, depending on how deep you get into
character.

All seeming success in CoC is either a holding action or driving
your characters further on to greater horrors. If your gangster
character evades the cops, he'll soon realize that he'd have been
better off in prison. If your researcher finds clues to where the
kidnap victim was taken, he regrets it when the victim transforms
into a demon-possessed creature. They're right when they
say you can't win through violence. It's just that characters
can't win, period.

The times I played it, all the players thought the point
of the game was to suffer horror in character, and add dramatic
elements to the story. Some characters react to panic by violence,
others by curling into a fetal position, still others by espousing the
darkness. All of these methods are equally valid and effective,
i.e., they all eventually lead to destruction. The rules were just
about what the system
required. They made some distinctions between the characters,
giving each character spotlight time,
but didn't slow down the descent into horror. I think the success
of CoC is that it really is a very rules-light system, where the
rules are easy to learn and don't interfere in the storytelling, with a few
twists that enhanced the mood.

ChefKyle wrote:

Ole wrote:
Last time I checked CoC was in its fifth edition, and dungeon crawls were going out of fashion around the 2nd. So if it were correct, why would they still cling to this attitude? Why they havent bothered to make any significant changes to a rather poor system is another question.

When, precisely, did dungeon-crawls go out of fashion? D&D and Hackmaster are still selling like mad. Every roleplaying club I know of has at least one dungeon-crawl-type game going on. They have other games, but always there's a bunch of guys playing and counting hit points.

ChefKyle wrote:
I suspect the anti-gun speech in CoC was a reaction against the dungeon crawling that was so popular at the time. Perhaps it wasn't even intended completely sincerely. It may have been, "the players are going to want to blow everything up. If I tell them they can not blow anything up, they still will, but it'll pull them from their extreme into a sensible middle ground."

Also remember that when you write a book, it's not just for today - especially a roleplaying book. Someone might still be playing with that copy ten or twenty years from now. So, when you write a roleplaying book, you're thinking not just of people's reactions today, but of their reactions years hence. So the writer might have thought, "okay, dungeon crawls ain't so fashionable today, but they might pop up again in a few years. So better keep that section in."

As to their doing the rules, this has already been answered for you. You alter the rules too much, you alienate your fanbase. You might get new fans, but you will definitely piss off the old fans. Given that publishing game systems is a business affair, it's too much of a risk to take just because someone doesn't like hit points or whatever.

Ole wrote: When CoC was developed, around 78-80 I imagine, one could assume that a large majority of players came from a dungeon crawling background, and didnt even know there was any alternative. Today I`d estimate that about a quarter of all players do dungeon crawls, or todays equivalent, but most of them know that there are other styles of play.
So why the anti-gun speach, especially when violence plays a crucial role in most scenarios?

But I think that games like Champions and Call of Cthulhu (both from 1981) have proven themselves, and I think it is a horrible idea to dismiss them as failures caused by designer ignorance.

Mike Holmes wrote: And I do think that there have been better adaptations of CoC since then - at the very least ones that don't have the incoherence problems that CoC has. Again, remember that incoherence doesn't make a game unplayable, it just means that all play that's coherent is drifted from what the text suggests. And I'll stand by that statement, having played as much Cthulhu or more than the next guy.

Ole wrote:
I'd also note that CoC has sold well all these years. If it's selling well, the owners don't care if people are complaining. Their yardstick of whether to change things, of the level of satisfaction, is sales figures. If it's selling, then it ain't broke, so don't fix it.

If it's not selling, then the writers go broke, and can't fix anything:)

Haven't played or GMd CoC in a long time but i can see how folks can think guns are going to let them win all the time even if it really will not work that way in every adventure.

Folks just don't have a lot of hp in CoC compared to the weapon damages, most folks even crazed cultists might think about sneaking and running since they want to live to see another day.

One doesn't have to bust up a ring of cultists with a shotgun, one can use a camera instead and develop the film later to figure out who the cultists were and follow up on the leads that creates, the cultists are just as warned as they would be by a flurry of shotgun fire but the GM and players are left with something to work from afterwards. You can't follow a corpse about for days and keep track of who it talks to and where it goes (not usually).

For the players a lot of fights should be avoidable by getting the heck out of dodge or just never getting noticed. GMs should profit by encouraging/allowing the success of this, a GM has to develop far fewer npcs if they (the npcs) aren't all that likely to get thier heads blown off.

In a way I see Unknown Armies as the heir to CoC -- it's got a greatly improved Sanity mechanic, it's got a rough division between crazy magic-users and tough guys, it's got a greatly improved combat system that keeps some of the same flavor -- combat is a highly effective problem-solving technique, but is also highly lethal.

Has anyone tried running Cthulhu scenarios using UA rules? One big advantage I can see right off is that you'd get a more flexible Sanity mechanic, and that combat could cause madness just like Mythos encounters can.

Also, chargen would be so much easier! A few months ago, I had to create a UA and a CoC character simultaneously for two separate games. For the CoC character, I downloaded the freeware program Byakhee and worked on it for a couple of hours.

For the UA game, it took about 25 minutes and I had a much better sense of who the character was after figuring out the names of his skills, rage stimuli, etc.


I've also heard of folks adapting the Adventure! ruleset to really amp up the pulpiness in Masks of Nyarlathotep.

DannyK

Ole wrote:

As to their doing the rules, this has already been answered for you. You alter the rules too much, you alienate your fanbase. You might get new fans, but you will definitely piss off the old fans. Given that publishing game systems is a business affair, it's too much of a risk to take just because someone doesn't like hit points or whatever.

It explains it, but it doesnt excuse it.

James Holloway wrote:

Ole wrote:
I'd also note that CoC has sold well all these years. If it's selling well, the owners don't care if people are complaining. Their yardstick of whether to change things, of the level of satisfaction, is sales figures. If it's selling, then it ain't broke, so don't fix it.

If it's not selling, then the writers go broke, and can't fix anything:)

Okay, it has been a while since i played CoC, so I am not as familiar with later editions of the game. In the older edition that i played, I seem to recall that gun usage was encouraged by chargen.

Huh?

Basically, CoC only has 4 types of gun skills: pistol, rifle, shotgun and smg. I recall a similar number of melee type skills.

Inotherwords, to be very good with commonly available weapons, a player need only spend a few points on one or two skills.

By comparison, an investigative oriented character must spread a limited number of points over a wide variety of skills. Usually I've seen this done as a group effort, leading to groups consisting oof things like a smg toting librarian, a pistolero linguist, a shotgun-happy biochemist, and huntsman/tracker type.

As a rules tweak, one might either further differentiate weapon types ( frex, pcs don't bump up their pistol skill, they bump up their .45 automatic skill or their Luger skill) OR, start lumping together investigative type skills ( Instead of Read/write French, R/w Latin, Speak Swahili, the characters get something like R/W ancient languages, Speak Regional Languages: Western European).

Optionally, one might differentiate groups of skills based on character type/profession. I recall that CoC already does this to some extent, but it could go a bit further, perhaps having higher minimum skill scores for profession ( Perhaps allowing PCs to add their EDU score as percentage points to all skills related to their profession at the beginning of play).

Robert

John Kim wrote: Maybe a comparison would help. So what are the better adaptations of CoC, and more specifically, how do they approach the question of violence?

Ole wrote:

James Holloway wrote:

Ole wrote:
I'd also note that CoC has sold well all these years. If it's selling well, the owners don't care if people are complaining. Their yardstick of whether to change things, of the level of satisfaction, is sales figures. If it's selling, then it ain't broke, so don't fix it.

If it's not selling, then the writers go broke, and can't fix anything:)

I didnt write that.

Following up on the post above, I've been reminded that indeed, yes, Jared has written two supplements for Cthulhu...one for Inspectres, and one for Squeam. Either of which sound like a hoot.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote:

John Kim wrote: Maybe a comparison would help. So what are the better adaptations of CoC, and more specifically, how do they approach the question of violence?

Cthonian comes to mind: http://zaknet.tripod.com/hmouse/games/chthonian.html

It handles violence as just another form of conflict. In not priviliging combat, it makes it just another potential means to success. Meaning that players will be influenced by the subject matter, and not by the system in trying to determine how to proceed.

Mike Holmes wrote: In any case, consider this - what makes CoC's system better for play than, say, Hero System? Or GURPs (which does also have some Chthulhu stuff)? Is it just the sanity system? Or is there something about that combat system that makes BRP better for Lovecraftian horror than other systems? Or is it merely "adequate"?

John Kim wrote: 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.

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.

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".

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.

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

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.

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.

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:

Mike Holmes wrote:

John Kim wrote: 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.

Mike Holmes wrote: 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.

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

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,

John Kim wrote: 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Halzebier wrote: 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.

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

Mike Holmes wrote: 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.

Mike Holmes wrote:

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

Mike Holmes wrote: 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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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?

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".

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?

John Kim wrote: 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.

Storn wrote:
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...

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

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.

I like Call of Cthulhu and have been running it for about eighteen years, off and on. I'll be running some COC sessions this summer, in fact, largely because one of my players has never experienced horror gaming (tho' my love of the game plays a large role, too). I have always taken the injunctions against violence in COC to largely be curative for the way that most games run.

For instance, in the D&D game I am in, we see a monster, we attack. Usually, we win, and thus far -- in something like twenty sessions -- we have never gotten into a fight we haven't won; in some sessions there were as many three fights. This is, I think, typical of many gamer's experiences.

Go ahead, try that in Call of Cthulhu. Not only would you very, very likely die but all your SAN would be gone even if you managed to live.

(Indeed, IME, non-COC gamers who play COC go through identifiable stages. Stage one: they create a character as they would for any other RPG -- good at stuff like shooting and driving. Then that character dies. Stage two: they decide the problem was that their character was insufficiently skilled at overwhelming violence -- so instead of Pistol they get MACHINE GUN as skills. Well, that character dies. Then they either leave the game or go to stage three, which involves building a character with a greater emphasis on investigation and research than violence -- though they generally have a combat skill or two, which suits me fine.)

So, yeah, I don't see COC's injunctions against violence to be hypocritical but curative for mindset that is possessed by the majority of games played.

And at the risk of sounding arrogant, I have also seen a lot of COC played pretty badly in terms of plot. While I recognize the place of railroading, it does very much happen in COC games that if the investigators fail their skill rolls or whatever that the GM will basically drop the information into their laps, anyway. I, personally, prefer killing them all for failing to get the appropriate information. I turn to them and say, "Well, it is a horror game." :D

As far as a critical analysis goes, an observable rule is being forgotten.

That is, almost ALL RPG's can be played and fun had from them. The important thing to realise from this is that A: You might have to bend and twist the system to do it B: Not take it seriously or some other way that the writer didn't intend when designing it C: Aim for different goals than the author, when it comes to play (often guessing as you go as to which would be good).

In other words, groups can snake, twist and turn until the damn thing works. This makes the following problematic
'Oh, it was awful, it didn't support that style of play'
'No, it was wonderful, we enjoyed it immensly'

We have NO idea of how much snaking and twisting makers of these statements have done. Often groups can be unaware of just how much the RPG their using is making them dance a jig just to have fun with it...their used to jigging to get things to work. So you can't even ask, as they'll say 'we just played it normally', which they did indeed, as jigging is normal for them.

To further complicate things, just about every RPG requires some snaking and twisting to work, as everyone buys off the rack so to speak (not customised). So this gives the impression that if some snaking and twisting has to happen, then X amount of snaking and twisting is okay. This leads to 'oh, it worked great as is...didn't need to change much at all' sort of stuff, since we hand wave Y amount, we can hand wave X amount. Further complicated that is that with some group, you can indeed hand wave X amount.

Personally I'd suggest looking at a piece at a time, rather than trying to handle the whole thing at once, in addition to asking exactly what the book gives the group who uses it. For example, what does failing a library use roll give the group? Careful, the question isn't about what you as a user do, but what the book gives you group from that rule/failed roll. Other questions are, what is the design goal of CoC and how does this particular rule live up to it.

CoC has a simple system (so I'm told), so stuff like its skill rolls and other high use rules can be picked out piece by piece and examined to give a good idea of what they (NOT the group) adds to the play groups session.

BTW, what does a failed library check add to the game, by itself before
users assistance is applied?

Noon wrote:
"As far as a critical analysis goes, an observable rule is being forgotten.

[snippage]

...groups can snake, twist and turn until the damn thing works. This makes the following problematic
'Oh, it was awful, it didn't support that style of play'
'No, it was wonderful, we enjoyed it immensly'

We have NO idea of how much snaking and twisting makers of these statements have done. "

I do think that traditional CoC has the problem that success in the scenario requires successful skill rolls all the way. You either pass the Library Use roll, or Spot Hidden roll; or you don't. It can become like one of those annoying CPRG where if you don't jump on the exact right spot then you fall into the river, back into the old cavern, then have to climb up the stairs for another go.

Or, worse that one failed roll dooms you. The GM has to either kill your character, or just drop the whole key to the adventure in your lap. Neither's really that satisfying.

This is why introducing some concept of degrees of success in a skill roll is good. So if the player fails their Library Use roll, but only by 8 points, well, maybe you give them half the information they need. Enough to keep them going.

It's also an argument for better scenario design. If a scenario is structured as "do this, and your have succeeded in the Goal," then there ought to be serveral paths to the same goal. It shouldn't all devolve onto one die roll. You all fail? "Aha! That's horror!" No: a horror story is one in which the characters realise the Evil That Awaits In The Dark, they try to defeat or escape it, and some of them fail and die. The others survive, with or without victory, but changed by their experience.

"Haha, you're all dead." That's not horror. "Haha, you all failed your Library Use roll, you know nothing," that's not horror, that's just inactivity, which players can manage without game books, dice, and paper.

So, some mechanic by which there are degrees of success is very useful in conducting a CoC game, I think.

ChefKyle wrote:
It's also an argument for better scenario design. If a scenario is structured as "do this, and your have succeeded in the Goal," then there ought to be serveral paths to the same goal. It shouldn't all devolve onto one die roll. You all fail? "Aha! That's horror!" No: a horror story is one in which the characters realise the Evil That Awaits In The Dark, they try to defeat or escape it, and some of them fail and die. The others survive, with or without victory, but changed by their experience.

"Haha, you're all dead." That's not horror. "Haha, you all failed your Library Use roll, you know nothing," that's not horror, that's just inactivity, which players can manage without game books, dice, and paper.

So, some mechanic by which there are degrees of success is very useful in conducting a CoC game, I think.

ChefKyle wrote: This is why introducing some concept of degrees of success in a skill roll is good. So if the player fails their Library Use roll, but only by 8 points, well, maybe you give them half the information they need. Enough to keep them going.