Quite a number of years ago, I ran a brief CoC campaign. It never finished up, I forget why, but one session sticks clearly in my head. It raises some questions for me about mismatches between GM and player perceptions, something I’ve banged my head against for years now. So I hope you’ll all join in and tell me where I got lost.

So the setup was that there was a gigantic pentagram across the Atlantic. The points I remember were Halifax and Greenwich (England), and apart from that I forget. At the center of the pentagram, under the sea, was of course the real entrance to R’lyeh, not the false one in the Pacific we all know about from the famous story.

Now I got the party to Halifax to investigate this house where some book or artifact or something was. I forget, and it’s not important. Halifax was totally snowed-in, sort of like Boston right about now actually. And they didn’t have any sort of decent maps of the place, certainly not ones that would help them find a mysterious and not-very-well-known house mentioned in a manuscript a hundred years old. So on the recommendation of a local historian or something, they decide to hire this private detective.

Actually a pair of them, two brothers. Named McKenzie.

So they show up at the P.I.’s office. It’s freezing cold, and quite dark, and the guy tells them his lights aren’t working. He’s huddled up in this big wool coat, and there’s a column of smoke coming up from his cigarette. He’s wearing a toque, of course, and shit-kicker boots. You know, Canadian. He says “eh” a lot, eh?

Basically he talks like Bob and Doug McKenzie. Remember, two brothers. But he’s got this oddly flat raspy twang in his voice, as well as the bad Canadian accent, and he stays huddled up all the time, and kind of shuffles along in the snow and hunches over.

They go with him to the house, where his brother already is (having found it for them), and they go in. They search for a while upstairs, then downstairs. Then they go down into the basement. And the brothers (of course) turn off the lights. The coats fall. The party gets an impression of a lot of legs, and chittering chitin, and these raspy voices going, “They’re real hosers, eh?” and so on. I think the actual detectives were strung up on hooks down there, too, just for extra giggles.

The trick is, the party didn’t realize that they had been telegraphing their intentions to the creepy cultists out there, mostly because they didn’t realize that there were such cultists, because it was very early in the campaign and so they didn’t know that it was a vast cabal. So the cultists had called in their dark forces in Halifax, and they had killed the PI’s, and replaced them, basically with gigantic humanoid spiders.

Blam blam fight scene yadda yadda.

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Okay, so here’s the thing. The whole time, I’m figuring, “This blows, basically, so how do I make it cooler?” And I couldn’t think of much, except to describe the snow and the cold, and drop hints about rats or something. I mean, it’s CoC, you’ve got this guy with a weird voice who shuffles and hunches over and who won’t show you his face and doesn’t mind freezing cold. Can you say monster?

But then I was talking to the players afterwards, and they didn’t figure it out. They were totally shocked, and when the bit about legs and chitin and dead bodies and big humanoid spiders (with bad Canadian accents) got described, in the dark and cold in a basement, they were genuinely scared, that sort of frisson thing.

Now my point is not to draw compliments or whatever. Maybe I’m a good actor, but if so that’s not the point. I doubt it anyway.

My point is, how do I read the players better? I mean, shouldn’t I have known that they weren’t figuring it out? Then I would have enjoyed the whole thing more, because I wouldn’t have been distracted by, “Bugger, this sucks, it’s all so obvious.” I could have relished the part, and the surprise, and the setup more. I certainly could have set up for a cooler “unveiling” scene.

Any suggestions? Any similar experiences others want to relate?

That happens to me all the time when I run.

A game ends and I feel that I have done a miserable job, yet afterward the players go on and on among themselves about what happened, what was cool, what “sucked”, what they are planning to do next, and all these other indicators that they were totally involved.

My DM is much, much better at getting players wrapped and wound up than I am. My 4th of July post was but an example. He had no idea that the killing of Elladan and Elrohir would have such a devastating affect. Following in the week we had two additional days where the bad guys (Black Commandos – which included a number of PC’s) were having almost frictionless success of reaching and taking out their targets. (These targets would include such NPC’s as Adrahil, Imrahil, Ecthelion, and Denethor.) For three days those of us who had no Commandos and were helplessly watching the tide of darkness wash over Gondor we were in impotent agony. Later the DM would comment that he had no idea just how devastated we were watching the world we loved being destroyed.

Some might say that not being able to do something created that feeling of helplessness, but that was his point at the time. He wanted to build despair in preparation for the conclusion which was the destruction of Aria! Having been dragged through the gates of hell itself for 2 days, participating and commanding the destruction of Aria (the home city of the Commandos) was that much more the sweet! We sacked, salted and burned the city to the f**king ground. We could hardly speak at the end of that night. …

However, the GM admitted afterwards that he could not tell from his side of the screen if we were really feeling something or not. The problem is that on the other side of the screen you know its all a sham – so it’s hard to understand what the players are feeling on the other side.

I don’t know if this answers your question or not Chris.

Chris:

This is textbook performance anxiety. The way through is to focus on what you have to do and not how it reflects on you.

I used to play sets in coffee shops with just my voice and an acoustic guitar. I'd finish up, sip my free coffee and think, "Well, that was a collection of mistakes." But people never knew. Or their awareness of a mistake would get flushed out by the next part, since I kept going.

And it always astounded how people who talked the whole way through or never looked up from their book would come up and put their hand on my arm and say, "That was so great," or some such.

Another thing: they have the tremendous advantage of not knowing what you have prepared and not having to deliver it. That makes it easier to surrender to a sense of wonder. Even as I read your post, I got the feeling that something was up with the hunched over in his coat guy, but I was too intent on what might happen next to speculate. And I freaked out ever so slightly when I read "the coats fall."

Hmm, I had kind of a similar experience, I guess. I was running this nobilis game, and some of the PCs were poking around a private place set up by their imperator (their weird god-like boss), and I'm trying to think of something creepy, since it's that kind of place, and I toss in a living bookcase and a trophy human head on the wall and some mysterious envelopes with their names on them.

For me it was all spur-of-the-moment and not that scary, but afterwards the players were talking about how creepy it was. Part of the deal was that I was running another plot thread at the same time (this was an online game) so probably I wasn't monitoring things as closely as I could, but I think there's a larger issue where it's easy for GMs to lose touch with the totality of the experience.

The players don't know what's important and what's not important, so there is this compulsion to pay attention to everything the GM is saying, and all the little described bits hang out at the edge of your consciousness being creepy, even if individually none of them are especially frightening. They serve to put the players in the right mood, and then when something actually scary shows up, it has a magnified effect.

On the other hand, the GM knows exactly what's significant and what's not. They don't have to worry about the black cat that suddenly shrieks and runs across the street -- they have to remember it's there for later reference, but they know it's not important in the grand scheme of things. Furthermore, they're (or at least I'm) focusing intently on each individual story element as it comes along, and that leads to forgetting about previous story elements.

So, hmm, I guess the practical takeaway here is that unless the players are saying they're not with it, it is generally a good idea to assume they're with it. Yeah? Like, if they're cracking jokes about the detectives or the atmosphere, or not willing to follow them into the basement, then you probably have to write this one off. But otherwise, assume they're with you.

(The thing is, even if they're with you, you can't always tell how hard stuff is going to hit the players' buttons. This certainly hits my buttons -- giant spiders and being in the dark is a hell of a combo. I think you have to just throw stuff out there and see what creeps them out, and milk those scenes more -- this whole thing is kind of like trying to do good standup comedy, come to think of it)

Chris, did you play with experienced CoC gamers?
When I play with experienced CoC gamers (who probably read half of Lovecraft's stories as well), it's just about impossible to serve them anything horrifying that will actually work. Seen it, been there, done that...
What does work is the playing out of madness and the reveling in doing illegal things for humanity's sake (not very healthy, eh? :) )

On the other side, I mastered a game for my little brother and a few of his friends (around age 15, never read any Cthulhu mythos stories).
It was a modern day commando kind of game.
When I told one guy he just glimpsed a byakhee out of the choppers window, it left him pretty impressed. So mucht that he wouldn't tell the others in fear of being laughed at (this would have been just another clue for the experienced players).
I also toyed with the room's lights to indicate the time of the day. I thought it was an extremely cheap technique, but some guys actually hid under the table when all the lights where out, especially since I was moving around, whispering Cthuluesque dreams to some player's ear.

I didn't realize that it would work so well. Maybe because I was too accustomed to playing with "experienced" players.
I can't tell if it's because the players where young or because they didn't know what to expect out of a CoC game, or even if it just worked thanks to their specific personnalities.
Maybe this can give you some more information to compare and analyze.


This forum is really cool :)

Artanis wrote: Chris, did you play with experienced CoC gamers?
When I play with experienced CoC gamers (who probably read half of Lovecraft's stories as well), it's just about impossible to serve them anything horrifying that will actually work. Seen it, been there, done that...
What does work is the playing out of madness and the reveling in doing illegal things for humanity's sake (not very healthy, eh? :) )

There's something to that. When I DM games, a lot of times I'll describe a creature the characters hear clanking in leg armor or they may glimpse a fur-covered bulk or rangey limb around the corner. They say things like, "What is it? A bugbear?" I say, "You don't know. You've never seen anything like it." They may press. "So what are its facial features?" And I'll say, "Between the swinging, spiked clubs and dragging of villagers into the woods, it's all happening too fast." Disallowing their assumptions keeps them in a mode of investigation.

It's really hard (well, impossible--for most of us) to know what players are thinking. It's never a given that you're going to be able to do it. Here is what I suggest:

1. Ask what their characters are thinking (or what they think). It doesn't have to be "does this suck or what?" but sometimes I'll ask "What's your character's perception of what is going on?" I usually do this when I think the character is about to make a mistake that I think is obvious and want to know if there has been a disconnect--but sometimes it helps too, just to have things explained.

2. Energy Check. Calling for an Energy Check (once you discuss with the group) is a good way for people to like call for a food-break or say they're tired or getting burnt out or something. If the group is down on the game you might get a clue. If everyone says "We're great, let's keep going!" then, well, you know something.

3. Elastic Pacing. Introduce a pacing element that'll move the game along but doesn't have to (i.e. "You're searching the abandoned house--in the meantime, you have that meeting at three o'clock with the Inspector. Just let me know when you're ready to move to that.")

If they want to stay at the house, you'll know.

None of these work all the time--but they've worked for me in some incarnation. That and just driving on through and figuring that if they come next time to play they must've liked it :)

-Marco

Marco,

Thanks a lot, man, I feel like a moron. I should have thought of the Energy Check long ago.

I think the players' familiarity with HPL can play against the GM trying to build an atmosphere. On the other hand, when you get players who know HPL, and still play for atmosphere, that is when you get the best games.

My recent SteveCon effort, Cthulhu Dark Ages, could have easily been spoilt by the players doing the obvious investigative things, but they played their DA PCs to the hilt. They were aware of and enjoyed the genre conventions, so that when it came to the crunch at the end, the work they had put into enjoying and building the atmosphere really paid off.