We Choose You, Trail of Cthulhu

We're planning to start an episodic Cthulhu game sometime next month, so we discussed choice of system at the end of last week's D&D session, weighing the pros and cons of Call of Cthulhu versus Trail of Cthulhu.  The players are more enthusiastic and familiar with Trail, so that's where we're starting.

Trail of Cthulhu's clue system works really with my proposed campaign setting, a home brew built around a special investigative unit in the NYPD, the Special Crimes Division (the SCD).  I've been re-reading my backlog of Cthulhu books, and I was delighted to see that Arkham Detective Tales has ideas for running a police-heavy Cthulhu game.  Pulling the campaign together will be a cinch.

Trail of Cthulhu shifts much of the action to the players to choose how to push forward and when to spend resources, but it also demands more improvisation by the referee as well - I'm looking forward to the challenge.  It's a perceptual adjustment to stop thinking of the game as a simulation (the way we use D&D to simulate a fantasy world) and instead consider it a recreation of a certain style of fiction, in this case, a blend of pulp detective stories, film noir, and Lovecraft horror.  Kind of a less campy version of the HBO movie Cast A Deadly Spell.  I'll continue to log some notes here as I build out the setting.

Pelgrane Press is an active publisher turning out  a lot of high quality supporting material, so there's no shortage of scenarios to steal.  I'd rather adapt published stuff than create whole cloth, since it lets me put more time towards writing my Black City D&D setting.  I've got a Black City post in the queue next, but will  start doing some regular Pelgrane reviews as I re-read many of the Trail of Cthulhu books for scenarios that play well in The Big Apple.

I'm also scanning the Chaosium backlog for adventures that are a good fit; I found an overlooked gem in the book Fatal Experiments called "The Lurker in the Crypt".  It's exactly the kind of adventure structure I love; it describes a corrupt cemetery and mortuary in the heart of NYC's East Side, managed by a powerful sorcerer and various undead assassins, with ties to a Great Old One and a massive infestation of ghouls in NYC's abandoned sewer sections.  But there's no real plot; the adventure basically describes the myriad forces associated with this extremely powerful conspiracy and their plots and machinations.  I imagine the lack of a linear plot and the huge danger presented by this cult have contributed to it's obscurity, but it'll be spectacular in a 1920's Badges and Guns campaign.  It's a super dangerous situation to plunge into blindly, so this would have to be the capstone to a campaign.  I'm always delighted to encounter a published horror scenario that omits a linear bread crumb of scenes, instead presenting the inhabitants and their motivations sandbox-style for insertion into a campaign.

Taking the Long View - in High Gygaxian

The mantle of referee requires enrobement in such varied guises as tactician of melee, grand strategist, architect of cunning traps, engineer of puzzles, and inventor of myriad enigmas.  As you join the ranks of those forebears who also assumed the storied title of DUNGEON MASTER, embrace this role with élan and engrave your vision boldly across the milieu!  But be forewarned, even the practiced referee may find himself confronted by the circumstance in which the players, through dint of forethought and application of luck or skill, are discovered in a superior position vis a vis a carefully formulated encounter.  The natural tendency of the inexperienced referee in such surroundings would be to alter the deployment of forces arrayed against the players, in devotion to an ideal formulated on a requirement of balance or appropriate test, but this view is incorrect.  You must resist this urge.  THE ROLE OF THE REFEREE IS TO ADJUDICATE SUCH SITUATIONS WITH IMPARTIAL NEUTRALITY AND PRACTICED INDIFFERENCE TO THE RESULTS.

The experienced referee has already seeded the dungeon environment and surrounding milieu with a myriad assortment of challenges,  each amenable to one pattern of solution or another.  When the players have successfully ferreted out a resolution to a given difficulty, allow them to enjoy their fleeting moment of success, but gird yourself for the upcoming confrontations.  Continued success requires adaptation, and the players will soon learn that yesterday's successful techniques hold little water with tomorrow's new challenges!

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Chris over at Hill Canton's announced International Write Like Gygax Day, and I couldn't help but join in the fun, especially as we're using the 1E DMG actively at the table right now.  This was going to be a simple post about "you win some, you lose some, it all balances out in the end", but it seemed like too good an opportunity to spout some High Gygaxian.  Happy Friday!

Tharizdun Part 3

Game report 58, and our third session involving the entrance battle to THE FORGOTTEN TEMPLE OF THARIZDUN.

Let me tell you something I've observed.  You can solve a lot of problems with a wand of fireballs.

Take my players for instance... they find themselves facing a near endless horde of norkers, ogres, and other monsters.  BLAM, fireball.  BLAM BLAM, fireball fireball.  Oh no, more monsters, whatever are we to do?

Last game session was all about ramping up the pressure, as I tried to make the players dig deep...  for more fireballs.

Mister Moore used an Ice Storm to obscure the battle field and create a slippery mess, slowing the assault down.  This allowed the group to successfully pull everyone back into their fighting formation, dropping the trolls with magic missiles. A crew of norkers came double timing up stairs, carrying small casks which they dropped near the top of the stairs - unfortunately, these were casks of oil.  The monsters had a strategy around carrying up casks, and then the next waves of monsters were ogres, which would throw the casks on the party.  It didn't work out so well for the monsters.  You're going to see a little white disc in a lot of pictures, that's what the players used for targeting their fireballs.  I use a grenade type rule, so they're sometimes off center, but the players usually err on the side of "not accidentally frying their front line by missing a mark".

By the time the large group of ogres had arrived, the norkers carrying casks of oil were all gone, the casks failed their saves vs fireball, and there was a bit of a roaring fire off to one side of the stairs.  Most of the ice from the Ice Storm was gone, but it served its purpose.  For the remainder of the battle, the combat was a lot more "traditional".  The four fighters formed a front line - Shy, Leonidas, Phat Kobra, and Forlorn (he usually casts spells, so we often forget he's a 5/5 fighter/magic user).  The clerics stood behind the front line healing, and other characters went farther back, either using missiles against the large opponents or digging for more spells.

The stairs rattled and the place shook as a titanic bellow let out from downstairs - something big and angry was on the way.  First came a pair of hill giants:

A round or so after the hill giants joined the fight, the leader of the temple's forces, a massive 80hp mountain giant, emerged from the level below.  He barely noticed the fireball coming his way and charged on through.  (I think the mini is from a 4E earth titan; it was one of the bigger giants I had in the box).

When the mountain giant charged the front line, things got dicey for the party.  Shy, on one end of the line, was dropped to zero hit points by a hill giant blow.  The mountain giant charged Leonidas, clubbing the paladin for 30 damage.  The group tends to anchor their front lines with the paladin, so everyone up there is shielded by protection from evil and gets -2 to AC, so bringing down the paladin makes everyone quite a bit easier to hit, and crushing the paladin was the mountain's top priority.

While Moore continued to wash, rinse, repeat with the wand of fireballs, Konstantine had been thumbing through the scrolls until he got to Polymorph Other.  He decided their best chance was to attempt to polymorph the mountain giant into something small - a snail or toad.  It was a big saving throw on the monster side of the battle; the giant needed an 11 or higher to shrug off the spell:

Dang.  The mountain giant was gone, but four more ogres were still coming up the stairs a round or two behind him.  Miraculously, the monsters didn't fail their morale, and kept fighting, but at this point it was pretty much over except for the DM's crying.  Moore softened them up with, yawn, another fireball, before they made it all the way across the room.

The fight ended soon after a few more inconsequential waves of foot soldiers tried to charge the party, with an 80hp snail slinking around the center of the floor, and only two ogres remaining later into the fight.  The party soon won.  Many jokes were made about how they drained the dungeon of inhabitants and hadn't even made it past the first room.

Here's the final tally:

74 Norkers
24 Gnolls
10 Ogres
6 Trolls
2 Hill Giants
1 Mountain Giant

We ended there, but left with an excellent teaser for the next game session.  The party was originally seeking THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH, but they got sidetracked by this quest to help out the gnomes (and entered THE FORGOTTEN TEMPLE OF THARIZDUN).  For their part, the gnomes agreed to patrol the area near THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH.  The party was afraid one of their enemies, a powerful witch, would find it first.

At the end of the game session, a messenger pigeon arrived from the gnomes, explaining how the witch found the caverns the day before and was met by a contingent of gnomish infantry - but we left the actual result of the battle as a cliffhanger, so they don't know if the witch entered the caverns or not.  We're going play the battle out this week with Delta's Book of War skirmish rules.  We'll see how that goes!

A Black City Post - Tower of Astronomy, First Floor

Kind of a lazy morning here, so I thought I'd post a piece I was editing for the Black City.  It shows the huge gap between jotting quick notes for use in a home game, versus the amount of text you might need to explain to someone else how something should work in game.  The first floor of the tower feature features a gate opening mechanism where the aliens mechanized a ritual to summon a Lovecraftian entity; that's one of the themes in the ruins, not necessarily original, the exploitation of dark magic and how it's gone horribly wrong and created these sprawling ruins.

For contrast, the previous write up of the Tower of Astronomy, back when I was brainstorming, is part of this old post:  B Tower of Astronomy

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B Tower of Astronomy

The Tower of Astronomy is a twisted spire of impregnable black rock looming over the southern part of the city; a long stair climbs to the sole entrance, a doorway 50' above the ground, where a pair of Watchers (orange level) flank the door.  The Watchers fire force beams from their eyes, forcing a save vs paralysis to avoid being thrown off the stairs, in addition to the normal damage.

Beyond the Watchers are large half circle doors (orange) of permalloy that retract back into the walls allowing access when a passkey is presented.  A spiral pattern is engraved on the doors.

The Inhabitant from Carcosa
The only creature currently in the tower is a wraithlike spirit that became trapped here after crossing into the tower from the gate to Carcosa.  Passage through the gate drained much of its animus, so it appears misty and indistinct with pinpoint eyes.  It hides in alcoves and watches from a distance, ambushing a victim after a group splits up to explore or is distracted by the mahcinery.  With each successful level drain attack it makes, it's appearance solidifies to portray a haggard man in Renaissance finery.  After two successful drains, the spirit has enough vigor to pass back through the Carcosa gate.  In life, the thing was a noble from a doomed world absorbed into the corpse city of Carcosa, and the ghost is a thrall to the King in Yellow.  After crossing over, the ghostly nobleman makes his way across the Lake of Hali, to report to the King about the gate.  A serious foray from Carcosa is soon made when the King learns of the new world to spread madness and despair.

Ghostly Nobleman of a Doomed City
[ Omitting the stat block, uses stats as a Wraith ]

Lower Floor - The Gateway Apparatus
Directly across from the door is a large, arched portal, obscured by flowing mist.  To the left of the room is a broad stone table, stacked with metal tablets.  The center floor is dominated by a pair of nested magical circles inscribed on discs.  Running along the right side of the tower is a complicated mechanical mechanism comprised of tubes, cables, and armatures; the mechanism arches into the air high above the circle and also projects upward through the ceiling.  The mechanism thrums with power.  All of these areas are further detailed below.

The Thaumaturgic Circles
The interior of the tower is glistening black rock, polished to a mirror surface and highly reflective.  The floor is made of basalt blocks, but the central section is a 30' diameter circular disc, slightly raised above the level of the outer floor.  A thaumaturgic circle and a five-pointed star are carved into the large disc.  At each point in the star, there's a small platform for standing, and a hand post topped by a crystal globe.  Within the center of the 30' diameter disc is a smaller disc, also inscribed with thaumaturgical circles, but this circle contains a stone rectangle with a manacles.

The stone rectangle is long enough for a human to lie on, and there is a body-cavity depression carved into the stone surface.  There are two pairs of manacles, for ankles and wrists, and when first encountered, the manacles are open.  They clasp firmly on anyone that puts them around a limb, sealing fast with no apparent mechanism.  They are enchanted adamant, and are impregnable; only a Knock spell frees a captive once a manacle is closed.

The Portal
If a character approaches the portal, the mist dissipates, and a scene along a mournful lakeshore is viewed through the arch.  Across the lake is the faint ghost image of an ancient city.  If a character steps through the portal, they are drained of 4 constitution points (temporarily) and find themselves on the shore of the Lake of Hali.  This is Carcosa.

Once on the other side, the portal is vague and indistinct, detectable as a faint shimmer in the air, like a heat mirage.  For the next 24 hours, any wandering monsters have a slight chance of detecting the portal and crossing into the tower.  After 24 hours, the portal obscures with mist again and disappears on the Carcosa side; only a Detect Invisible identifies the exact location once the portal has disappeared.

Above the keystone of the arch is a 2' tall bronze metal tablet inscribed with dots and alchemical symbols, resting in a niche.

The Stone Table
Stacked on this 10' long basalt table are 7 bronze tablets, each 2' x 4' and about an inch thick.  Carved into each surface is alien dot-matrix script, mathematic and alchemical symbols, and a pattern of random lines and dots.  The lines and dots represent a star pattern for the star charts on the next floor, but this isn't immediately apparent to the characters.

The tablets contain the coordinates for calibrating the Gateway Apparatus to open the proper gate.  There are 7 tablets on the table, since the 8th tablet, the Carcosa Tablet, is already loaded over the portal.  If the party learns how to open gateways and experiments by loading other tablets, here is the list of tablets and destinations.  Note:  A Read Languages translates alien script and identifies the title for each tablet.

List of Gate Tablets:
1  The Black City
2  The Great Library
3  The Moon
4  Unknown Kadath in the Cold Waste
5  The Plateau of Leng
6  Lightless Cavern of N'Kai
7  The Isle of the Unknown
8  The Lake of Hali (this tablet is already loaded)

[ I may add a brief description for each location.  For instance, the Black City location offers a view into the city's past, 80,000 years ago when it was teeming with alien greys and their monstrous servitors.  Certainly items 7 and 8 I'll use for my home game, but if this ever reaches print, I'm not sure the etiquette for referencing someone else's published work, it's probably wise to get the author's permission. ]

Behind the stone table is an alcove with a shaft leading up to the second and third floors of the tower.  The aliens used levitation to move between levels, but rungs were provided for their earthbound Plastical servitors.

The Gateway Apparatus
This massive arcane machine thrums with nascent power coming up through the floor.  There is a trapdoor hatch (orange) nearby that leads to a maintenance shaft running alongside the vibrating power conduits.  The shaft leads to the Transit Tunnels (dungeon level 1) and then continues all the way down to the Warrens of Decay (dungeon level 2).  A simple set of metal rungs allows descent.

The machine consists of a large switch, a series of five joystick controls, and a large button.  The switch turns on the machine, which hums more noticeably.  Immediately, the thaumaturgic circles in the nested discs begin to glow with a blue light.  Over on the bronze tablet above the portal, the star coordinates also begin to glow.

The joysticks are locked in place.  They can be pulled slightly up to unlock them, and the glowing dots on the bronze tablet star coordinates move out of alignment.  The portal to Carcosa immediately closes.  There are five joysticks, and each tablet has five dots for guiding them into celestial alignment.  As the joysticks are moved, the armatures of the machine shift and move, and the view of the night sky on the next floor up shifts to align with the proper constellations.

The large button sets off a cacophony of fluting sounds, chimes, and harmonics from myriad bronze devices hanging off the ceiling.  The music sounds discordant, atonal, and oddly mathematical to human ears.  The quality of the music changes as the joysticks are realigned to ensure proper harmonics for the summoning.

Experimentation
The aliens used the Gateway Apparatus to unseal portals to other times and places by summoning the Opener of the Way through the music of the spheres.  The proper ritual sequence starts with placing an appropriate bronze tablet above the portal.  A living sacrifice is manacled to the sacrificial stone in the inner circle.  The machine is powered on with the large throw switch.  The joysticks are used to align the projected lights on the tablets with the celestial dots on the tablets, and the joysticks lock into place.  On the second floor of the tower, the view of the night sky shifts to the correct celestial quadrant, though this isn't readily apparent from the first floor.  Five ritual contributors step onto the five points of the star and place their hands on the crystal orbs.  The button is pressed, and the "music" of the spheres begins to reverberate through the room.

The ritual can take 5 to 30 minutes of the atonal music before the Opener of the Way, an avatar of Yog Sothoth, arrives.  For every 5 minutes of ritual time, a spell level of magical energy is drained by the orbs, or a point of wisdom (temporary ability score loss) is taken from one or more of the contributors.  If the ritual takes 25 minutes, 5 total points of spell levels or wisdom are taken by the orbs.  A single caster could contribute three 1st level spells and a 2nd level spell to meet the entire requirement, or it could be apportioned amongst all the contributors.  When the Opener of the Way appears, its a bizarre globular monster composed of silvery spheres - it materializes in the central thaumaturgic circle.  Standing in the presence of the Opener of the Way is terrifying, and the characters at the orb stations must make a Save vs Spells to avoid falling away in fear.

The Opener of the Way is fully formed after about 5 minutes, and the new portal opens.  The Opener consumes the sacrifice, absorbing the victim completely (treat as disintegration).  The machine is safe to shut down, dispelling the Opener.  If no sacrifice is offered, it grabs for any character that abandoned an Orb station before leaving; if none of the stations were abandoned, a random character is selected from those standing outside the magic circles.  A Protection from Evil spell wards a character outside the thaumaturgic circles.

Through trial and error, players may discover the proper sequence to align the machinery and summon the Opener of the Way.

The Opener of the Way
[  Omitting stats for the avatar of Yog Sothoth, the All-in-One ]
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That's the first floor, at least...

Scooby Doo Cthulhu Gaming

Good news - my group loves the idea of playing detectives and investigators in the SCD, the NYPD Special Crimes Division, last week's campaign idea for my upcoming Cthulhu campaign.  I'm sifting through my Trail of Cthulhu scenarios and Chaosium's backlog to identify a good set of adventures to relocate to New York.  We're still undecided whether the rules will be Trail of Cthulhu or Call of Cthulhu; we like the Trail clue system but the Chaosium combat system… and we didn't discuss whether the 1920's would be more fun than the 1930's.  But campaign planning is moving forward.  Joy.

However, sifting through all these published scenarios brings me to a soapbox moment, a mini rant on what I call "passive plot hooks", or Scooby Doo Cthulhu.

The suggested plot hooks for most Cthulhu scenarios involve the players being asked to perform a service or investigation on behalf of a friend, loved one, relative, or an employer, usually with no direct reference to the occult or supernatural… and yet, miraculously, as the players get involved, it becomes obviously clear within a short time that this is another full blown Occult Investigation™.   Over and over again.

When every scenario starts with an innocuous letter from an old friend or relative seeking help, and leads to madness and insanity, either credulity stretches beyond belief or you stop picking up the phone and opening your mail.

I understand why scenario writers resort to loading pre-existing relationships onto the players; those loaded relationships create instant motivations for the characters, and a bit of cheap emotional resonance with the subject matter.  "You have to go to Dunwich for Aunt Patricia's Christmas dinner, she sent you a letter with an invitation, and just happened to invite all of your colleagues for dinner as well.  You wouldn't want to hurt her feelings."  Sure, it always starts  as Christmas goose and tarts, the cultists and the awful rites to Yog-Sothoth only come later.

If you are running an endless parade of one-shots, with new characters that begin as ordinary folks with no previous Mythos experience, then I suppose it makes sense their first induction into the world of occult horror would come indirectly through the benign summons of a friend, relative, or mundane employment opportunity, which goes terribly wrong when a monster shows up.  But if you try to run your campaign in this mode, you end up with Scooby Doo; no matter where the Mystery Machine goes, there's always an occult mystery that needs to be solved by the gang at the precise moment when they're driving through.

This is why they're passive plot hooks.  There's no looking for trouble; trouble always finds the crew of the Mystery Machine.  No matter how cute you think are Daphne and Velma (or Fred), I'm asking you to say no to Scooby Doo Cthulhu gaming.  (I was always partial to Velma).

My first task when identifying scenarios for use in the SCD campaign is to ruthlessly strip the passive plot hooks and reposition the entry point of the scenario so that it gets on the radar of an investigative organization like the SCD. This might mean advancing the inherent timeline a bit, or moving the action closer to the boiling point.  So be it.  Let's take a look at a few popular introductory scenarios that are burdened with Scooby Doo plot hooks, and flip them around to work with the SCD.  (This technique would work great for your Delta Green setting Cthulhu game, too).

Edge of Darkness
"Edge of Darkness", from the core book, begins when the player characters arrive at the bedside of a dying man, Rupert Merriweather.   "The investigators are all friends, relatives, past students, and former colleagues of the man."  How convenient.  The characters go on to learn that Rupert had a dark secret, and if the characters don't take up his cause, something terrible will happen. "Ruh-Roh, Shaggy."

Let's change the entry point but leave the rest of the scenario intact.  With no one to turn to, Rupert wrote a letter on his death bed and had his last words sent in a package to the local police, warning them about a coming horror.  Whenever anything weird and unusual shows up in the mail, like Rupert's rambling death bed letter, occult journal, and weird Egyptian box, it gets routed to the mail room of the SCD and ends up sitting on a shelf somewhere.  It's not until the actual murders and disappearances start to happen in Ross's Corners, the place where Rupert warned the horror would begin, that this plot hook bubbles up to become a potential case.

The desk sergeant:
"We got a note off the wire about a mutilated woman's body found out near this small town, Ross's Corners.  Yeah, I never heard of the place either.  Normally I wouldn't pay attention to an isolated murder, and just let the locals handle it, but I remembered this kooky old guy sent us a box a week or so back with a letter, saying that once he was gone, bad things would start happening out at Ross's Corners."

"O'Malley, maybe you should get your team together and consider looking into it.  I bet Charlie in the mail room remembers where he put the box with the kook's letter and book.  You never know - this could be a real SCD case after all."

Mister Corbitt
The collection Mansions of Madness features "Mister Corbitt", and this is another popular kick-off scenario.  In this case, one of the investigators just happens to be the neighbor across the street from a guy that may or may not be a major sorceror.  Apparently, our nosy future investigator likes to peer out the venetian blinds at his neighbor, and sees him carrying a mysterious bundle into the house… and something flops out of the bundle that looks like an arm!  Yikes.  It's totally reminiscent of Hitchcock's Rear Window, which should be awesome.

Unfortunately, the approach is a bit too passive for the SCD campaign.  Our investigators are professional detectives, not the local babysitter and her friends who spy on the neighbor out the window and imagine dark things going on behind closed doors.

Let's keep the basic facts the same, where the babysitter or neighbor actually does think she saw something weird, and calls the local police.  A nervous teenager isn't a big priority, so by the time a patrol car swings by to speak to the sitter and knock on Corbitt's door, the man is already gone again.  The officer snoops around the house to allay the babysitter's fears, checks out the weird looking green house in the back, and then drives off.  All clear.

The player characters get involved when they're called down to the morgue to check out a corpse - our local patrol officer was seen a bit later at the gas station, getting torn to pieces in broad daylight by some kind of "thing", only there was nothing there.  Wounds just opened up spontaneously on the screaming cop.  The terrified gas station attendant can relate the whole incident.

Desk Sergeant:
"We've got a report of a patrol officer being lifted into the air and ripped to pieces by an invisible monster over on 3rd Avenue, in broad daylight.  O'Malley, why don't you take someone over to the morgue and check it out.  They've got a witness down at the precinct giving a statement - the gas station attendant.  Make sure you test him for booze.  If he checks out, it sounds like we might have a case. "

The group is able to trace the officer's dispatches, so they'll end up at a similar starting point - looking at Corbitt's house from across the street while speaking to the babysitter about the arm she thought she saw flopping out of a package.  But this entry point is more action oriented and horrible, and the investigators will also have a nifty coroner's report and toxicology analysis on what really might have happened to the dead officer.

So that's what I'm doing the next few weeks - reading through these old scenarios, seeing which ones can be positioned to work in the SCD campaign, and fixing the plot hooks.

Lauding the Wiki

One of the cooler things we've put in place the past month or so has been the Gothic Greyhawk campaign wiki.  I had asked for recommendations some time back, and folks suggested a few platforms - we started playing around with the free version of Obsidian Portal.

I wasn't interested in posting backgrounds, NPCs, and using the wiki to organize the DM's content - the typical stuff (I use OneNote on the laptop).  Instead, we've been using it to keep track of the group's public information - their expedition equipment and gear, treasury, list of magic items and resources, that kind of stuff.  This has been a huge advantage for enabling player planning.  Take the list of scrolls, for instance.  In between game sessions, anyone in the campaign can peruse the list of scrolls and see what's in the group's arsenal. Ditto with the magic items.  My players wouldn't have been nearly as successful in some of the recent knock-down fights without the ability to collectively discuss the resource pool and brainstorm in between sessions on how to deploy their resources.

They've even taken to bringing tablets so they can pop out to the wiki if necessary and look stuff up.

There's also a body of standard procedures that always gets written down and lost - marching orders, overnight watches, standard memorized spells.  Putting those things on the wiki and defaulting to the standard procedure has also stream lined play and maximized table time.  I dislike spending game time on stuff that you should be able to write down once, and just reference and update.

It's still a work in progress, but you can see what we've done with the wiki here:
Gothic Greyhawk on Obsidian Portal
List of Magic Items
List of Scrolls

*Smitty, one of the players, put together that nifty Gothic Greyhawk banner.  Thanks man!

Fear with a Handful of Dice

It's a common question, especially if you're going to run a horror game, or run D&D with a nod towards weird horror like LOTFP.  How do you scare your players?

After all, the typical gaming table is not conducive to generating fear.  It's a bunch of folks, usually in a brightly lit place, munching on chips and cracking jokes.  We're playing a game, after all.  The monsters, no matter how fearsome, may be well-known and "banal".  The cosmic horror and inherent atheism of Lovecraft can seem a bit quaint these days.

However, the method to generate genuine player fear is simple, and involves two basic elements - investment and atmosphere.

Investment
Disposable characters and an uninteresting setting are the enemies of your fear.  The players need to genuinely care about their characters before they'll feel any concern about the game situation.  I don't mean copious back story.  Even the "hopeless" 1st level fighter can suddenly become interesting when he manages to survive to level 2, and the player starts to identify with the character - he's become the underdog that's bucking the odds.

As a DM or Keeper starting a new game, that might mean doing something as simple as asking each player to say one thing they like about their new character.  The idea here is so basic it's almost too obvious - the players need to care about what happens to their game-world avatars before they can feel fear and concern for them.  Still, this is an important idea for the game master to remember - the prerequisite to generating fear has nothing to with the game master scaring the players, and everything to do with the players creating an opportunity to be frightened by having a stake in the outcome.

Once there is some investment by the players, even situations that are directly threatening will be sufficient to generate fear.  A banal monster like an ogre in D&D will frighten a low level group of adventurers, if the group cares about keeping their characters alive.  There is a preoccupation at times about using unique bestiaries and monsters, but the ability to calculate the odds, and recognize that the group is hopelessly outclassed, is an effective, direct way to generate fear.   Published bestiaries serve your ends for this technique.

"Oh no, that's a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath! Run!"
"Crap, energy draining undead - we have no magic weapons - run for it!"
"Ugh, not killer bees - again.  Save or die.  Run!"

Atmosphere
I like the term "narrative distance" to describe how the events of the game world can be so serious, but the group is cracking jokes and laughing about other things out of game.  It's important to the social side of gaming - I'm no fanatic when it comes to trying to run a "serious" table.  But it's a good practice to quiet things down once in a while and restore focus to the game world when you need to introduce something creepy.

Staging can help - some game masters advocate dimming the lights or doing something with the physical environment - but I rarely use those types of techniques.  I do recommend tactics like changing the speed, tone, and volume of your delivery, keeping your descriptions vague, and creating ambiguity.  Start with progressively more revealing glimpses of what’s to come.  Using unique or unknown monsters, with equally unknown capabilities, reinforces the ambiguity.  An entire post could be written just on narrative presentation and creating creepy descriptions by teasing the information.  There's an art to ramping up tension through description and pacing.

But atmosphere ultimately boils down to destabilizing the player's control over a situation by presenting the unknown.  Withholding or teasing descriptive information creates uncertainty in the minds of the players.  New monsters, with unknown capabilities, prevents planning, and this also blocks the players from controlling the situation.

Random effects and creatures that force saving throws are excellent for building a fearful atmosphere because of the uncertainty they engender - the player has limited control over the dice results, but the effect on their character can be both massive and negative (like petrification, or Call of Cthulhu's insanity rules).

The fear from the previous section, fear from a known but direct threat, is more like stress and anxiety, but still creates that cathartic feeling of relief when the situation is survived; fear of the unknown, built up through atmosphere and uncertainty and loss of control, is sharp and much more powerful.  I suggest you work at making both a part of your arsenal - and good luck!

Post Script:
Over at Jack's place, he posted a few articles this week on using terror and horror effects in gaming, and pushing those effects onto the characters.  It got the wheels turning on the interrelationship of fear, terror, and horror, and when should they be targeted at the player, and when should they be targeted at the character.  It's an interesting question!  This piece is looking at achieving player-focused fear, but it's made me want to review some of my favorite gaming moments that provoke terror or horror and see what makes those situations work.