Notes Toward the Design of a New Lovecraftian RPG


This Design precis is for Eldritch Tales, a new Lovecraftian story game that I am writing and is an outgrowth of my long ago '
Drifitng to Rlyeh thread series, which can be seen here.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10197

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8482

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8459

Here I will dicuss what I regard as the important design issues for my game and how i am going about solving them.



Promote exposure to color without reducing player effectiveness

One of the most agonizing problem about playing and running Call of Cthulhu is the fact that it punishes exposure to color with, not only reduced effectiveness but with actual deprotagonization.

I have chosen 3 primary methods of dealing with this dilemma:

1. Allow players to engage in the creation and extension of color at metagame level.
2. Create in-play mechanisms for establishing color by winning conflicts.
3. Game mechanisms should reward negative effects of exposure to color with greater not lesser protagonization.

[/]Build the structure of the typical mythos story into the game

The Mythos story occurs in two primary phases.
In the first phase the situation is being revealed to the protagonist. (but also the protagonist is being revealed to the situation) . In the second phase the situation has become aware of the protagonist and the outcome is in the process of actively being resolved. Normally the Revealation phase is punctuated by a number of thematically significant scenes in which the protagonist is gradually informed of the situation but also offered the chance to accumulate resources.(Similar to the thematic importance of humanity loss scenes in Sorcerer) This process evolves until there is a penultimate revealation scene, then the situation flips into it's resolution Phase.

I have become increasingly sceptical of the value of player character mortality, and I have become increasingly atagonistic of how it is implented in Call of Cthulhu.
Many Call of Cthulhu scenarios offer excellent ways of killing characters before anything interesting happens, you can break your neck in a wagon accident or die falling off a glacier after literally dozens of rolls, or die later of pneumonia after a couple dozen more.
Early player mortaliy shorts circuits exploration of color, exploration of situation, exploration of every godamm thing in the game, at least in the manner it's implented in traditional rpgs.
This is particularly the case when it occurs in the Revealation phase. What would you think of a horror movie which the protagonist is killed in a wagon accident before we even get to the monster?

Therefore whatever mortality mechanisms decided upon in the game (if any) must be COMPLETELY DEACTIVATED DURING THE REVEALATION PHASE. If you die in Eldritch Tales it'll be because Cthulhu bit your head off, not influenza, you have my solemn pledge.

Another difference betweent he two phases is the nature of resources. The Revealation phase is mechanically 'about' resroure accumulation,and unfolding revealations within scenes. THEREFORE CONFLICTS IN THE REVEALTION PHASE SHOULD NOT CONSUME RESOURCES.

Mechanically, the Resolution phase is about consuming resources within scenes to control the outcome of the situation.
THEREFORE RULES FOR RESOURCE CONSUMPTION SHOULD BE ACTIVATED ONLY IN THE RESOLUTION PHASE AND ACCUMULATION SHOULD BE DEACTIVATED.

Finally, there is a differenct in who is steering the game. In the Revealtion phase the player has the right of first refusal for framing a scene. In the Resolution phase the Revealer has right of first refusal. The in the Resolution the revealer also has the power to attack the players resources and connections.

Here is a quick rundown of the differences between the Revealation and Resolution Phases:

Revealation

Situation unvieling

Player unveiling to
situation

Resource anabolosis
Indestructible Player

Situation (Revealer) passive

Player Dominant

Resolution

Situation unveiled

Player unveiled to situation

Resource catabalosis

Fragile Player
Revealer Dominant

Reject the 'puzzle box' scenario design structure

Fundamental to my design approach, the standard 'puzzle box' model for scenarios is more or less inherently broken, not only for Cthulhu mythos gaming, but general rpg scenario design, unless one wants to engage in what is for me a distasteful degree of illusionism, not only at the level of play but at the level of the actual design.

Therefore in Eldritch Tales, the mysterious situation unfolds and is revealed by the gamemaster as a mandated duty , indeed, the player can demand a revelation from the GM for any scene that they frame.
What is to stop the player from simply making the GM simply disgorge the situation onto a silver platter as it were? Remember Eldritch Tales is a game of resource accumulation.Force the situation to reveal itself into too few scenes and you won't have the resources to deal with it when the situation's resolution phase arrives. In fact it's in the player's interest to drag the Revealation phase out to accumulate as many resources as they can an reveal the situation in other ways beside player mandated Revealations.

So why should a player EVER request a revealation? It's necessary to dangle a bait in front of them.....offer the possibility of EXTRA resrouces with the probablity of gaining no resources at all during a mandated revealation. This offers the player the possiblity of either playing a 'ground game' or 'going for it'.

Of course there is the possibility of a revealation occuring in any scene a character gets a resource. But its a lot lower than mandated revealation scene and it's only a workaday resource not a really special one.

Finally the Revealer has the right to put a revealation into any scene he frames. So whats to stop him from slamming the player with revealation after revealation, dumping the player into Resolution real early? NOTHING!!! Unless the player maintains control by thinking up neat scenes to frame......

Make madness and mutation protagonizing

Defenders of Call of Cthulhu tell us that you have to get into going mad and falling apart to play Cthulhu , and you have to with the games fundamentally albative characters. But the problem with madness in the game is that it's merely another way to be deprotagonized. Miss your madness roll and the Keeper plays your character while you go nuts. Miss enough of them and you lose your character for good. The madness mechanic, CoC's only innovation over Runequest, essentially just gave you a new way to lose your character.

Taking the common principle that the player who loses a struggle gets to describe how the stakes are resolved then an elegant mechanism presents itself. Simply make mental and physical mythos mutations affect the intensity of failure on certain kinds of struggles. By placing the nature of effects of corruption firmly in the hands of the players offers the chance of genuine protagonisation.



Develop a real solution to the problem of character mortality

As I have said earlier I have less and less affection for character death in rpgs, I think it is an unecessary appendix carried over from wargames. Particularly since it punishes with removal from play. Call of Cthulhu is notorious for the mortality issue, and constitutes one of the most disliked parts of that game. Therefore my conclusion is to simply remove mechnically determined player death from the game period, as I have already advocated for the Revealation phase.

Another prospect would be to allow some kind of 'virtual' player participation after the death of the character. Trollbabe already has a mechanism for this, but I would like to see it extended, if would be fascinating to play a scenario out where all the characters are in fact 'dead'.......
One mechanism would be to allow increased power to create color to players with dead character's, another would be to allow them to bestow their accumulated resources as rewards onto other players in their conflict scenes.



Create a design that actually supports the extended campaign

Call of Cthulhu is most popular as a one-shot, particularly a convention game. The game's design issues are far less troublesome in one shots. The type of character the game postulates, a naif who uncovers the mythos by accident and is usually slaughtered by it it poorly suited for the traditional long term campaign, in fact CoC is one of the game LEAST suited for it.

Given my previous design paradigms certain possibilities present themselves.

Reward contribution to game color
Reward protagonising actions over the long term
Give increased power to guide creation of color in the game.



These are my thoughts as I work on the game itself. A publicly available playtest document will be online soon.

Ah, nice. I've been looking forward to this ever since the old Drifting To Rlyeh threads. Not much else to add at this point - I like where you're going (and I assume you've looked at InSpectres and its Cthulhu mini-supplement UnSpeakable?) - but is that an intentional new word, or are you misspelling "revelation"?

Hey Bryan,

You've been kicking ass on this particular topic for a long time now...

Revealation

Situation unvieling

Player unveiling to
situation

Resource anabolosis
Indestructible Player

Situation (Revealer) passive

Player Dominant

Resolution

Situation unveiled

Player unveiled to situation

Resource catabalosis

Fragile Player
Revealer Dominant

I'm definitely interested in seeing an example of play that nails each of these. I've read my share of Lovecraft. So I think I know what you mean by "resource accumulation." Knowledge, connections, objects, and more, right? Gilman being able to rent Keziah's room is a resource, right?

Also, I like the Revelation/Resolution dichotomy, and the impact it has on character effectiveness. Have you seen the conversation I had with Zak Arntson about the Practicality/Cognizance dichotomy he was working up for Chthonian? His Practicality/Cognizance thing also had an impact on character effectiveness, as well as great potential, in my mind, to inform on player and GM use of color. But I think he was designing for Practicality and Cognizance to fluctuate on a scene-by-scene basis. You're expecting a total switch-over at some point during play, from Revelation to Resolution?

Anyway, you've got me very keen to see your playtest rules.

Another prospect would be to allow some kind of 'virtual' player participation after the death of the character. Trollbabe already has a mechanism for this, but I would like to see it extended, if would be fascinating to play a scenario out where all the characters are in fact 'dead'.......

No reason you couldn't have multiple death type states, each mechanically distinct. Arrowflight flirts with brilliance in its treatment of character death.

Characters have Mana and Spirit traits. Mana is the part of the character linked to the web of life, from which the power of magic is drawn. Spirit is the part of the character linked to gods and forces beyond the material world. The traits fluctuate in play. At the point of death, the game's cosmology has it that there is a necessary communication between Mana and Spirit, with each informing the other how to respond to dying. If a character dies with Spirit at 0, there is no communication from Spirit telling Mana to resolve its ties to the material world. The character becomes a soulless being attached bodily to the material world: a ghoul. If a character dies with Mana at 0, there is no communication from Mana telling Spirit to resolve its ties to the material world. The character becomes a bodiless spirit attached to the material world: a ghost.

(Unfortunately for Arrowflight characters, to become a ghoul or ghost makes you an NPC.)

Paul

Well, I almost passed over this thread, feeling that I'd nothing constructive to say. Then, I remembered having read somewhere that praise, in the form of encouraging someone to continue with their work was an acceptable post. :) So...

I've really enjoyed keeping up with the past threads that lead here, and I'm finding what's written here so intriguing so far. I'm really looking forward to seeing how you impliment your design goals into working game system.

So now, I'll sit back and enjoy how things unravel.

-Eric

What's catabalosis? Google doesn't seem to know.

There was a recent thread on yog-sothoth.com about new designs for Call of Cthulhu. Most of the discusions were about the trade off between knowledge and madness, corruption even, that seem central to the books and seem to have rather been missed in many of the pulpier games.

I've been thinking about some similar issues with Lovecraftian games, and it sounds like you've hit all the things that I thought needed to be hit. So much so that I'll abandon any interest in building it myself and wait for Eldritch Tales.

One thing that you haven't put in there that I liked the idea of is to allow players, in some circumstances, to decide what's going on - like you can in InSpectres. Have you considered that?

It might also be good to allow character death in the revelation phase of the game, but only if the player wants. This could give you even more resources than corruption/madness but you'd have to bring in a replacement character. You may not want to go this way, as it may lead back to some of the things you are getting away from, but keeping it player choice avoids most of them I think. And this does happen in a lot of Lovecraft's stories.

Or boast the strength of any other players upon death. Not that the party mentality is needed, but I imagine there are legit ways to do so.

A) Player discovers something horrifying, killer, but important. Character dies, but Player is allowed to pass on Information or narrate the Character providing something of specific use for the other players coming up behind.

B) Character does have some importance to the other Characters, so his or her death spurs them on to discover/stop whatever it is. Rather than a material bonus of some kind, this is a "spiritual" kind, "Doing it for Robert" or the like.

C) Not fully aware of typical Cthulu play, but should a player be playing the opposition in some fashion, they could score some bonus props for getting one of the characters to bite the bullet.

Just some ideas to accompany the Death idea.

Rob MacDougall wrote: - but is that an intentional new word, or are you misspelling "revelation"?

MikeSands wrote: I've been thinking about some similar issues with Lovecraftian games, and it sounds like you've hit all the things that I thought needed to be hit. So much so that I'll abandon any interest in building it myself and wait for Eldritch Tales.

MikeSands wrote:
One thing that you haven't put in there that I liked the idea of is to allow players, in some circumstances, to decide what's going on - like you can in InSpectres. Have you considered that?

MikeSands wrote:
It might also be good to allow character death in the revelation phase of the game, but only if the player wants.

b_bankhead wrote: Without forshadowing too much, ET has something like a traditional gm who has the lions share of power to create situation. (While it will give the players the lion share of power to create setting).

b_bankhead,

I think you have some very nice ideas here. I especially like the structure of story progression. Its clever how you let the players frame the scene but (please correct me if I am wrong) the GM decides exactly which elements of the horror they will face are revealed during the revelation scene. It’s a very unique dichotomy.

The only major question your game leaves me with is this: If the players have the power to extend the revelation scenes indefinitely and thus gain infinite resources with which to use in the resolution scenes, why shouldn’t they? You mention dangling resources in front of them, but they already have access to an arbitrarily large number of resources. I see no reason why they should accept the bait.

One elegant way to deal with this would be to turn to the insanity mechanic. As more information is revealed to the players their 'effectiveness' resources (what ever you decide they are) increase while their insanity decreases. IE: As they learn more about the true horrors they face they begin to slip. Note that even though the players are loosing a resource during this phase they are still in full control.

So the players have a choice. They can face the horrors of the resolution scenes with very little in the way of sanity but plenty of power, they can face them with less power but more sanity or they can choose a more balanced path. I believe that this rule would fix the resource hoarding issue while keeping all the thematic elements you are trying to achieve.

Best,
Bill

Bill Masek wrote:

The only major question your game leaves me with is this: If the players have the power to extend the revelation scenes indefinitely and thus gain infinite resources with which to use in the resolution scenes, why shouldn’t they? You mention dangling resources in front of them, but they already have access to an arbitrarily large number of resources. I see no reason why they should accept the bait.