I’ve been reading way too many recently published #CallOfCthulhu scenarios that feature a perfunctory investigation before the Investigators board a train to creepy town that is a one way exercise in hit point and SAN attrition. Sure, some of the imagery is very creepy, but something is definitely missing, that being real problem solving and meaningful choices.
@Tim_Eagon As I see it, here are some of the problems structurally that lead to bad Call of Cthulhu scenario design.
Both the players and the Keeper know that this is a Lovecraftian horror scenario.
The style of gameplay being initiated is not "play to find out" but instead "play to be told."
Because if the clues aren't found, the horror doesn't happen, but the mechanical architecture doesn't exactly make discovering the clues likely or even possible in some cases.
The mechanics around finding clues are fairly horrifically bad or completely left out because they get in the way of actually executing the plot.
The only on-character markers that can be affected dynamically by the mechanics as presented are HP and SAN, which provide a very narrow scope of "things that can be done to you and that matter in the long run."
Real problem solving requires that there be a real chance of not solving the problem, and if the problem doesn't get solved, the level of threat being manifest is too large to be acceptable either to the players or the Keeper.
My gut says that the underlying idea of "the scenario" is part of the problem.
@Tim_Eagon This doesn't exactly come from a position of ignorance; the first RPG that I ever ran on a regular basis for a stable group was Call of Cthulhu. The combination of mechanics that don't actually lead to behavior that fits with Lovecraftian stories and the really heavy reliance on pre-generated scenarios as the expected means of play, which never turned out to provide a Lovecraftian experience, pushed pretty hard on me.
There have definitely been better approaches to the genre of Lovecraftian horror, specifically Cthulhu, over the years. Cthulhu Dark is a pretty good example. Really, though, the key is to recognize that a good Lovecraftian horror comes together when the players don't necessarily believe there is something to discover, and sometimes there isn't. When there is, it should be threatening to them at a reasonable scale that the cost of failure beyond purely personal cost, of course, is sufficient to make walking away a reasonable response, but not necessarily one they want to do.
A lot of Lovecraftian storytelling boils down to, "We came, we saw, we walked away to tell the tale," and that's a perfectly good story. But those aren't the stories that scenario writers want to push because it's not particularly heroic. Call of Cthulhu, unfortunately, has become a very heroic-character-focused game.
@lextenebris I pretty much agree (a reason why I don't really like the pulp versions of CoC). I do wonder why many scenario writers don't create multiple overlapping clues - it's been 40+ years, it's not rocket science! In any case, this is also why most of my favorite CoC scenarios are small scale things like "What Goes Around" from TUO 8/9.
@Tim_Eagon There's a really simple reason for that. Nobody has done it before.
Obviously, that's a complete simplification, but it's not far off from the truth. "That's not how Call of Cthulhu scenarios are designed" is just the facts. On top of that, it is creating content that you know some significant percentage of the players are never going to see because they will have already got the first clue. So why make the second clue? I mean, sure, they could have completely missed that first clue, and need the second clue, but isn't the "Good Keeper's job" to make sure they don't/can't miss the first one the first time?
The small-scale stories are easier to manage because in the same expected space that someone paid for, you can have a lot more things going on simultaneously and stuff just works.
I would love to see some Lovecraftian fantasy horror using the system of Fantasy World. The game is so low prep and so extremely clear both on how it expects mechanics to be operated and how much it leans on the precepts of PbtA that it almost deliberately excises that get in the way of a good COC game. I think there's something there to be mined out, but my brain is still chewing on it.
@ericmpaq@Tim_Eagon I actually picked it up during its initial Kickstarter and I have a copy sitting on my shelf. I think it's been opened exactly once because it didn't really "do the job" as well as I would have liked.
It was also pretty early on in the PbtA explosion so a lot of those systems didn't really gel so much as took the core mechanics and washed over them briefly. I don't regret making the purchase but… It didn't burn any barns down for a reason.
Maybe it's time to sit down, open it up, and write a bit of an article on why it doesn't quite scratch the edge.
@scimon@Tim_Eagon I have; not surprisingly it's in my library. It's #Gumshoe, which is a bit of a different game design concept then #PbtA #TTRPG but it does have a really good understanding of how to set up a game which centers around research.
The problem is it doesn't really do anything else well in my opinion. There's just too much in the way of mechanics which tried to simulate things which don't need to be simulated within the context of the game.
Yes, I have a special and particular hatred of skill lists. If you must have them, there should be fewer than 12. I would prefer there to be three or four dynamically generated Traits and no skills at all but I'm willing to be flexible.
I'm going to attach a Trail of Cthulhu character sheet which basically should explain in great detail everything I dislike about the game. #TTRPG#TrailOfCthulhu
@lextenebris@scimon@Tim_Eagon There's a second edition coming out pretty soon, I think. It was actually supposed to Kickstart last month. I'm a pretty big Gumshoe fan, but the later games (specifically Night's Black Agents and Mutant City Blues 2e) definitely do a lot more with the system than the original Gumshoe SRD did.
For me, it's a great system for mysteries, but you've got to be careful about clue design. A clue shouldn't be related to a single specific skill EVER. Or at least rarely.
@wholeenchilada@scimon@Tim_Eagon And yet they fixate on characters having skills to an incredibly fine degree, which is directly at odds with how the clue mechanisms work best.
I like a lot of the advice that you get with Gumshoe better than I like the system that is implemented to manifest Gumshoe, which is an interesting dichotomy.
Maybe in ToC, but later Gumshoe games sort of get away from that. NBA has a mechanic called MOS (method of service) that works around some of the issues with skills, which lets you basically say "Well, I used to do X when I was a government spook, so I would know Y." Plus there's bonuses for having higher points in certain skills (I know, I know) that expand what they can do beyond the original scope of skill-as-written.
Ideally, scenario design in a mystery RPG should sort of follow the rule of 3, which I don't think a lot of designers do. Basically, there should be 3 different ways to discover any given piece of information, and what I like about NBA is that it kind of gives you a route to find a clue via one of three paths: Academic, Interpersonal, or Technical skills. And since there's not necessarily a roll required, you're free to hand those out in a variety of ways.
@Rollenspielblog@lextenebris It definitely sounds like a CoC-type PBTA game, but I was thinking of something that broke through for it's genre like Masks, BitD, Monster of the Week, Brindelwood Bay, etc.
@Rollenspielblog@Tim_Eagon Perversely – not something in my collection, but the existence thereof doesn't shock me at all.
According to DriveThruRPG, it was added to the catalog and thus probably came out about 10 years ago which puts it in a particular era of #PbtA development, one of the front runners. That would explain why it's not in my pocket.
@Tim_Eagon I think I actually have a good reason for it:
Because for three quarters of the PbtA/FitD games out there, some element of Lovecraftian horror is already worked into one of the potential world building paths, so going purely Lovecraftian would be firstly something that felt like somebody else had already done it and secondly duplicating effort.
I can pick up Blades in the Dark right now and run an extremely Lovecraftian-flavored game, and it can even be from the perspective of the cultists. I can pick up Starforged and run an extremely Lovecraftian-flavored game – in space. Scum and Villainy, maybe a little bit harder but not impossible.
It's reasonable to assert that Call of Cthulhu, as a specific subgenre representative, is dominated by a single game which represents pretty much a single manifestation of the style… But Lovecraftian horror has spread as a concept through almost everything else to the point where unless you specifically want to do 1920s-era Lovecraftian horror, you can do it with the tools in your pocket.
@Tim_Eagon I'd say that probably counts. I'd probably throw in Trophy Dark/Gold as a closely related game design which puts its fingers into a lot of the same spaces. Also the Dee Sanction.
Let me grab some links for those people who may be coming along later and want to check out what we're talking about:
That last is particularly interesting because they put out a standalone SRD book (Sanction) which essentially lets anybody build a game off of the core that they want, as quite a lot of indie RPGs these days are doing.
In a real sense, we are not spoiled for choice when it comes to Lovecraft on the tabletop. Not even a little bit. In my mind, truthfully, the question is "why does Call of Cthulhu remain so ridiculously dominant when there are better game designs out there for doing the same thing?"
But I ask the same question about D&D on a regular basis.
@lextenebris@Tim_Eagon I'm not sure about this re clues, though I admit I'm coming from a DnD not CoC background; but at the moment I'm running The Halls of the Toymaker for my group, which, though not lovecraftian, certainly has similar suspense/horror (though I'm not sure horror is quite the right word for either) - and loads of clues dotted around to what 'really' happened/is happening, which are well written enough to be an organic outworking of a little piece of world building. 1/3
@lextenebris@Tim_Eagon the players have found some, but not all - from which they will have to piece together their own version of the backstory to inform end of adventure decisions... But they're not driven to find clues to the backstory, they're trying to discover what's going on now... So I'm wondering, from what you've said, is a basic problem with any CoC game the basic assumption that players are investigators? So looking for, rather than incidentally finding clues? 2/3
@lextenebris@Tim_Eagon from memory the original Lovecraftian stories often involved protagonists that stumbled onto weird situations, rather than went out looking for them? I don't know how you could start from that premise given the meta situation, but it might be a way to approach things?
@luxet@Tim_Eagon That definitely touches on one of the significant issues in mimicking the architecture of the original mythos stories: they aren't intended to nor do they involve characters who continue from one experience to another.
Some unprepared person falls into a horrific, nightmarish situation and either manages to escape from it or is consumed by it – and then we go on to the next guy.
Continuity of character is not something important to generating verisimilitude of the stories, but it's extremely important to Call of Cthulhu as it is formulated mechanically in the TTRPG.
If it took five minutes to put together a character, you drop them into a situation, and they either get killed while discovering things or make their way out and enter the NPC pool that anyone could draw on, that would be a far better representation of how characters in the Cthulhu mythos actually exist within the stories.
You would also probably get better set up situations, better kickers, as a result.
@lextenebris@luxet For the most part, published CoC scenarios assume that they are your first foray against the Mythos, or at the most, you've had limited interaction with it. I think that's mostly because it can be quite lethal or madness provoking.
@Tim_Eagon@lextenebris@luxet That's one of my problems with CoC as a player. Characters are often normal people with no experience of the supernatural. My first instinct on discovering that bad shit is happening is to run away and try to avoid the adventure.
That is partly down to me finding it harder to play heroic adventure seeking characters the closer the game setting is to the modern day.
I think one reason I prefer Delta Green, is that characters are expecting to deal with bad shit.
@notasnark@Tim_Eagon@luxet That is literally one of the reasons that Delta Green became one of the most interesting evolutions of Call of Cthulhu. And one of the most appreciated.
It is generally more fun to have a character whom you recognize immediately as capable and effective - even if they are capable and effective in tasks which are not going to be critical to the thing that you know you're going to be experiencing. It's why watching Event Horizon is great fun because the protagonists are competent people in their field. And you know they are capable of dealing with extremely difficult situations. They are simply in a situation they aren't prepared for and isn't within the context they have trained for.
The sensible thing for most of the characters created for Call of Cthulhu to do is to find out that there is a weird problem and then run as fast as possible away from it. The problem is that the game itself does not create a reason mechanically on the sheet expressed for those characters to remain engaged, to want to deal with that problem, to put their sanity or lives on the line. That's an artifact of the fact that BRP is effectively an ancient system that predates the development of good tools for creating situational setups that Call of Cthulhu demands.
I was thinking some more about this, especially in relation to one of my favorite #CallOfCthulhu scenarios "Bad Moon Rising," which ends with an extended sequence of horrifying and weird experiences. I think the key difference is that before then, there's an extensive investigation with lots of RP and then the Investigators can explore HMS Selene and do lots of cool things before the Great Race of Yith get a hold of them. It's that build-up that makes the experiential sequences work IMO.
@Tim_Eagon in my experience, most CoC adventures boil down to breaking and entering. Masks of Nyarlathotep was egregious in this regard, with nearly every chapter having crucial information that was only realistically accessible if the PCs busted into the bad guys' house after hours
@Tim_Eagon maybe CoC and D&D are the big products that demand a steady churn of products, which almost by necessity means it's easy comfort food quality.
@AndreasDavour The sheer volume of published adventures is one of the reasons I love #DND and #CallOfCthulhu. That said, the constant churn leads to some really high highs and some really low lows!
@Taskerland I love the historicity of many CoC scenarios - I've actually learnt a bunch of stuff from them. That said, many do lack a solid structure (I'm agreeing with S John Ross's assessment of many modern scenarios more and more) and the older paragraph style of presentation can make them hard to use compared to a Liminal Horror scenario (to borrow from a game in the same genre).
@JazzDude Enduring attritional survival horror is not why I play #CallOfCthulhu. Not saying that it can't be done or you should never do it, but it's so prevalent in today's scenarios.
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