The Popularity of Cthulhu Gaming

I made a decision coming into this year to do more Cthulhu blogging - I've long been an admirer of Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu, I try to run some one-shots each year or so, and there really doesn't seem to be a lot of blogging about those games - it's a fraction of the coverage that D&D gets.

I ran a poll a month or so back, "What kind of experience do you have with Cthulhu gaming?", and here were the results:

• 17% actively play
• 40% play from time to time and still like the game
• 32% are interested
• 9% either didn't like it or aren't interested

That's quite a bit of overlap in the readership between the two types of games!  91% either play, have played, or are at least interested in the horror gaming; I'll just assume you 9%ers aren't interested YET.  I tend to agree there's a lot of overlap; many of the adventure ideas are directly portable from horror gaming into fantasy, and if you go for Weird Fantasy (especially LOTFP style), the horror gaming is like a close cousin.

Cthulhu gaming can be a bit bleak, so maybe it's an acquired taste playing ordinary or mundane folks trying to stop occult horrors, when compared to the accessible power fantasy gaming experienced in the beloved D&D.  On the other hand, pulp fantasists like Clark Ashton Smith and RE Howard put Lovecraftian horrors in plenty of their fantasy stories, too, so the chocolate and peanut butter gets mixed up in the source literature.

That raises an important question - how do you like to use the Cthulhu Mythos in your games? As monsters in a fantasy setting, or alien terrors in a horror game?  I have added a new poll to catalog the results of this important question!  The world must know.

I'll keep up with the weekly Cthulhu posts and occasional reviews, mixing chocolate in the peanut butter and vice versa.  It keeps things interesting for me.  Bon appétit!


*Image is from the cover of Call of Cthulhu's 5th Edition

Barbarians are Big and Strong (But Don't Call Them Dumb)

I've seen a number of folks discussing the faults of differentiating ability score ranges between male and female characters in role playing games this week.  A much more interesting question to me is whether we should consider creating distinctions between culture groups in a human centric world.  AD&D, for instance, has no problem applying ability score adjustments to the demi human races when compared to humans.

Consider that one of the most common themes in Swords & Sorcery literature is the strong but primitive barbarian juxtaposed against the decadent cultures of the large cities.  The barbarian character is invariably more physically capable and resolute than his civilized antagonists.  You see this motif in the RE Howard stories of Conan, the character of Fafhrd in the Lankhmar stories, and countless other stories featuring rugged, sword-wielding barbarians.

Consider also this historical excerpt from Tacitus's Germania, speaking of the many tribal inhabitants across the Rhine:

Hence the physical type, if one may generalize at all about so vast a population, is everywhere the same wild, blue eyes, reddish hair and huge frames that excel only in violent effort. They have no corresponding power to endure hard work and exertion, and have little capacity to bear thirst and heat; but their climate and soil have taught them to bear cold and hunger.
--Tacitus, Germania

My intent isn't to start a real world furor over Tactitus's text; it's been abused by plenty of folks already (koff, Nazis, koff) in other contexts.  But when you're making a game world that features humans from different cultural groups, does it make sense to have racial or cultural abilities that differentiate those groups mechanically in game terms?

My son is playing a lot of the Skyrim game, and he tells me "Nords", the Skyrim analog of the northern barbarians, are tough and resistant to cold.  That sounds a bit like Tacitus's description of the barbarians in Germania.  Video game designers apparently don't have any problems making humans from different areas different from each other based on culture or race.

Let's look at these big blonde northerners again.  According to Tacitus, they're all pretty much big and strong.  The fantasy stereotype of the barbarian is also strength; what's the argument against giving characters from barbarian lands a +1 to the strength score?

But how about a -1 to the intelligence?  You know, to balance it out.  The way I read the intelligence tables in D&D, intelligence gives you literacy, knowledge of extra languages, and the ability to learn spells - all capabilities that are the result of education and not primarily aptitude.  There shouldn't be a problem declaring that characters living out in the untamed wilderness, as an insular tribal unit, haven't had the same education as the decadent urbanites - but the moment you tack a -1 intelligence onto a cultural group, you step onto a pretty slippery slope my friend.  Even if it is a fantasy culture.  Would Conan put up with a -1 to *his* Intelligence score?  You don't tug on Superman's cape, or call a Cimmerian uneducated or stupid.  The Romans may have looked down on the barbarians, but who had the last laugh?  (Alaric did).

I'm only familiar with one official D&D supplement that tackled human racial and cultural differences - it was the Hollow World boxed set for classic D&D / Mystara.  The Hollow World gave humans from different ethnic groups pseudo skills and proficiencies to differentiate their culture backgrounds.  Antalians (the Viking analog) could climb like thieves; Milenians (ancient Greeks) all had extra bonuses with spears.  Some of them were more extreme; Tanagoro tribes people (analogs for African cultures) could all move at  150' base movement.  Azcans (the Aztec knock offs) were ridiculously tough and got an entire extra hit die at level 1!

What's my point?  In today's day and age, humans are uncomfortable declaring another group diminished in any capacity.  Maybe games have no place classifying differences between groups of people (or the sexes) in this way.  But there's a cynical side of me that sees a really simple way around the problem.  Just flip it around and highlight a positive benefit, and cultural differentiation becomes much less controversial (and judgmental).  "Scythians and Parthians don't get minuses when firing from horseback!", that kind of thing.  Make people feel good about the in-game differences.

Hey, look at what I just did?  I managed to justify giving all those barbarian tribesman a +1 to their strength scores after all.  I feel better already.

A Mystaran Shout Out for a New Blogger

Bighara over at Echoes from the Geek Cave has been making posts reviewing signature monsters from the old BX and Mentzer classic D&D sets; I've enjoyed all the usage suggestions.  Seeing as it's a newish blog and the word hasn't gotten out, go check it out!  The monster stuff is here:  random monster assessments.

Note:
Bighara is also the guy behind Faster Monkey Games; I reviewed FMG's Lesserton & Mor last year.

ACKS Player's Companion Preview

Just last week I reviewed the ACKS core book, and Lo, the guys over there had already announced a Kickstarter for their next supplement, the ACKS Player's Companion.  How could I resist?  So here's some first impressions on the play test version that's been posted to the project backers.  (You back the project, you get sneak peeks, and a chance to play test and make suggestions.  It's great marketing.)

The Player's Companion extends the core rules by adding a series of new classes, the dwarven machinist and spelunker, the elven ranger, and some human classes - mystic (monk), shaman (druid), and priestess.

I'll come out and say it though, the thing that got me fired up with the book-love was the extensive list of templates.  (I think they claim there are 144 of them).  An ACKS template is basically some pre-selected options that speeds up character generation and gives the character a bit of early flavor.  ACKS supports the old school roll-and-go - it's got basic 3d6 in order for abilities and simple classes, like classic D&D.  The templates take it the rest of the way, by adding a preconfigured set of starting equipment, starting money, and suggested proficiency selections.

For instance, your 1st level fighter could be flavored like a Norse ravager, a knight, a Roman legionnaire, a mercenary, a gladiator, or perhaps a pirate.  I love the support this provides for roll-and-go, and heartily approve of archetypical fast-packs of equipment.  Maybe it's just me, but nothing drives me nuts quite like the guy that shows up late, then wants to roll up a character, and then has to wade through the equipment list - while everyone's waiting.  "You mean now I get to pick some spells and a proficiency or two, as well?"  GAH.  Just put my head in a vise already.  So I love fast packs and random equipment generators; that stuff's like gold.  There's also plenty of inspiration for depictions of the classes, just by browsing the templates.

I'm beginning to see how race-as-class is evolving in ACKS.  Remember that classic D&D used Dwarf or Elf as a class, effectively making all dwarves as fighters and all elves as fighter/magic users.  AD&D separated race and class, allowing things like dwarven clerics and elven thieves.  It's clear the ACKS approach is to give each race a selection of classes that are similar to the human versions, but different enough to maintain racial distinctiveness, and costing the racial benefits into the experience curve.  Thus, a dwarf player can be a dwarven vaultguard (for a fighter flavor), a craftpriest (for cleric), or a spelunker (for a taste of thief).  The new one is the dwarf machinist, which is totally new, and provides the ability to create automatons and clockwork creatures - assuming that fits into your campaign's vision of dwarves.

There's some extra stuff in there too, such as extended spell lists for the new caster classes, and a section on creating custom classes.  This idea of expanding class coverage horizontally is very much in line with how Mentzer/Mystara evolved.

Okay, here's an interesting bit about this particular Kickstarter.  It met the goal in what, 3 days?  I've  had questions whether the announcement of 5E, coming out presumably sometime next year, would dampen people's enthusiasm for backing OSR projects in 2012.  Apparently that's not a problem.  I can't say that anything I've seen from the 5E discussions has lit my world on fire yet.  I also don't see the new game catering to the crowd that wants to see economics and domains in their campaigns.  Games like ACKS will be able to keep on trucking.

ps:  Haven't had the chance to sign up for the LOTFP indiegogo yet, I want to see how it differs from Kickstarter first.  Who's in that one?

Mapping the Investigation like a Dungeon

This week's offering of blogthulhu starts with a simple premise:  the traditional D&D dungeon is a type of workflow.  It offers nodes and processes and decision points, and the players navigate these decision points to reach their final destination - the boss fight, the big treasure, the answer to the quest - whatever goal that inspired them to choose this dungeon in the first place.  The dungeon as an adventure setting is such an enduring fixture because it provides a great degree of choice and agency for the players, within a limited structure that even a new DM or game master can handle well.

You could step back from a dungeon and map it out like a flow chart, and realize it looks an awful lot like an investigative scenario.  To drive the point home, I went ahead and mapped out a few signature investigative scenarios as dungeons!    Sit back and enjoy as we send our adventurers into The Haunting and The Kingsbury Horror.  The Haunting has appeared in just about every edition of Call of Cthulhu as a sample investigation, and The Kingsbury Horror appears in Trail of Cthulhu.  Spoilers abound - you are warned!

The Haunting

In The Haunting, the players are hired by a landlord to look into problems at a rental property - seems like the last tenants ended up in the nuthouse!  The place indeed has a sordid history, as a quick jaunt to the library or newspaper records will reveal, and if the group follows up these threads all the way through, they may even discover an old cultist's hangout at the abandoned Chapel of Contemplation and find their first Mythos tome.

Note how a group might choose to go right to the house (the right path), move from exploring the first floor, to the cellar, and find the secret chamber leading to the resolution of the scenario.  I've seen folks decry that the players can "solve" the investigation without going through each and every potential research point in a linear fashion.  Bah!

Before critiquing The Haunting, let's take a brief look at The Kingsbury Horror.

The Kingsbury Horror

The Kingsbury Horror is the sample scenario in The Trail of Cthulhu book.  It involves the investigators acting as consultants to the sheriff, helping to find a serial killer during an election cycle.  But this is Cthulhu gaming, so naturally the serial killer is a cultist!  Much fun ensues.

Like The Haunting, there's an investigative path on the right side of the "dungeon" that can lead to the resolution fairly quickly; once again, that's a feature, not a bug!  However, The Kingsbury Horror adds an important element to the mix that The Haunting is missing - "wandering monsters".

Wandering monsters, you say?  In 1930's Cleveland?  There are a number of floating events, such as a nosy detective, breaking news around additional killings, or "time slips" as the weirdness mounts, that can sidetrack the investigation, or increase tension as the players realize they're running out of time.  I'm just being a bit cheeky in calling them wandering monsters, but the effect is similar.  It's a simple element to add, but these events transform the investigation into a much more dynamic environment.

Folks frequently ask how to make The Haunting into a better adventure, and that's the first thing I'd suggest - add in some variable encounters that bring the surrounding area to life.  It could be suspicious gangsters or street thugs, nervous about the investigators casing the neighborhood; it could be a hobo or squatter trying to camp out in the abandoned house and yard; it could be a beat cop asking a lot of questions and checking the investigator's references.  One of my favorite ideas is to have the landlord find new renters, and press the players to cut their investigation and quickly give the house the all clear so he can move a lovely young family in there… while they know something is still very, very wrong there!

I enjoy both of these scenarios because they offer multiple paths to navigate the scenes and reach a resolution - I recommend both of them highly.  The Kingsbury Horror gets that extra edge due to the pacing and sense of building menace the Keeper can achieve by interspersing variable events.  Good stuff.

We’re not done looking at investigation design;  there are suggestions on designing your own in both the Call of Cthulhu and Trail books, and next week's blogthulhu will hold that advice up to the light.  But today's post gives you a flavor on what I value in an investigation, and how these match up with old school priorities:

• A non-linear path through the adventure
• Multiple roads to victory
• No indispensable NPCs pushing the Keeper's story - it must be player driven
• Some variable events that keep the situation dynamic

I'm reading a Cthulhu campaign book right now that has lots of "this NPC is too important to die, don't let the players kill him/her", and "the players need to trust and like this other NPC for the adventure to continue", and that kind of stuff , and it makes me reach for the heartburn medicine.  Don't do that, people, don't make Beedo nuts.  Games can feature powerful NPCs giving directives; that's how life works.  What is not okay is mandating that the players need to act or feel a certain way towards an NPC because of a preconceived story the Keeper wants to implement.

Next week we'll look at the design advice offered in the main rule books.  This series of articles started as a top-down approach to setting up a Cthulhu campaign - but one that can be managed like an investigative sandbox - so it seems only fitting to top it off with an original campaign framework at the end.  That's in the works, and it'll become my default go-to setting for both Cthulhu one-shots and campaign play (at least with my regular group).  I'll wrap up this series with that setting in a few more weeks.  See you next time!

Gothic Greyhawk Game 53 - 3 Dead Giants

The first of many

Player Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-7: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf F/MU 5/5: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-6: Mike
Shy, a Fighter-6:  JR
Leonidas the Paladin-5:  Nogal
Digit, the Elf Thief-7:  Z
Konstantine, Magic User-5: Smitty

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf Fighter-5
Grumble the Smug, Halfling Thief-7
Donavich, Cleric-5
Boris, Druid-4
Meatshield 1, Ranger-1
Meatshield 2, Ranger-1
Ireena, a Fighter - 5
Vlad the Inhaler, Magic User-1
Meatshield 3, Cleric-1
*Italicized characters are back in Barovia


The party continued their sojourn through the valleys and passes of the Crystalmist mountains, seeking THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH*.

After a long day of travel westward, they discovered an open valley in the mountains with four distinct mountain passes leading out of it.  Three of the passes were on the old map they had gotten from the gypsies, but the pass leading north and east was new.  Their own heading on the morrow would be southwest, towards the Gnome Vale.  But first, they made a camp in a stand of sheltered pines.

The major action of the evening kicked off when the party's first watch was alerted to a large figure pushing it's way through the trees - a giant.  They could hear its breathing just beyond their campfire light, the group in a circle around the fire, waiting with weapons drawn.  Then it crashed off into the night panting.

You know what players are thinking, right?  "Holy crap, look at the size of those tracks", as the rangers stand over a footprint in the damp soil.  "We're going to get to kill a giant!"  And they promptly went about plotting, scheming, and planning various traps and ambushes.

The druid ended up casting a fire trap on one of Konstantine's empty bottles of vodka, and then planted it in the woods next to a coin with a continual light spell on it.  I guess they were thinking, giants are dumb, and what self-respecting giant would pass up a chance to snag a free bottle of vodka?  You just can't fault that kind of player logic.

The other trap involved string trip lines across the most obvious approaches to the camp and tying some metal pots and pans to them, to make noise if disturbed.

All these preparations took a good half hour of time during the watch, so I went ahead to figure out what the giant was doing in the meantime.  Bubba, so named because all Hill Giants are going to be a bit like amiable rednecks with a hankering to eat people, ran back to the cave where Roscoe and Ewolt were sitting around a meager fire and grumbling.

"Butter my butt, and call me a biscuit, there's humans in the valley!  With tasty horses and mules!"  Roscoe, the Hill Giant leader, responds, "If you doubled your brains, you'd still be a halfwit.  There ain't no humans in the valley, you blockhead."  "No, really, and they had tasty mules and horses!  Stoke up the fire, we're eating right good tonight!"  A random dice roll revealed to me the giants took their time arguing and building up their cooking fire before piling out of the cave to investigate the truth of Bubba's find.

Ewolt snuck off to one side of the woods to do some mule raiding, while Roscoe and Bubba went towards the bright light in the forest.  "Don't go touching that bottle, Bubba, you're a few grains short of a full silo.  We've got to make a distraction so Ewolt can steal the mules.  Keep your eyes on the prize!"  They plunged forward and promptly fell over the trip line, creating a ruckus in the woods.  That alerted the guards, who woke up everyone else in the camp.

The fight was pretty simple; Ewolt snuck in the back way, but couldn't resist the urge to chuck rocks at the back of the party.  Bubba and Roscoe went with the full frontal assault, swinging giant-sized clubs.  The MVP of the melee side of the battle was Grumble the Smug, who used the ring of invisibility and halfling sneakiness to get in position for a backstab; 7th level thieves do triple damage!  Between the front line fighters, prayers, chants and similar buffs, and a barrage of magic missiles, the attacking giants died pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, they struggled with Ewolt, who stood off in the dark tree line, well outside their firelight, and chucked rocks at the party for 2-16hp per shot.  Mister Moore asked his faithful brownie familiar, Packer, to light up the area with a continual light spell, and they were able to blast Ewolt with a lightning bolt shortly thereafter.

That's pretty much it.  There was some looting and scouting and other stuff I'm glossing over, but that's dull to relate.  See you next time!

Postcript:
It's funny to imagine some random slob in the future, coming across that abandoned bottle of Vodka with the lingering fire trap on it.  "This must be my lucky day.  Someone left a bottle of booze!"  He'll be standing there with a blackened face, white eyes blinking, like Yosemite Sam after Bugs Bunny gave him an exploding cigar.  These are the things for which D&D excels.


*If you missed last week's game report, I have to ask, why?  Don't you realize these game reports are made of awesome and topped off with a frosting of pure win?  On a less serious note, let me tell you why THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH will always be capitalized now.


Gygax  always capitalized product names in the AD&D books.  In order to interject a much needed dose of Gygaxian swagger into these reports, henceforth shall products be equally capitalized, making them totally Gygaxian.

Share some War Stories

Hey folks, consider this a small experiment.  I'm going to pick just a few modules from the hobby's past, and I'd be grateful if you could drop a quick comment here, or on G+, with a quick war story from any one of these legendary modules.

B2 Keep on the Borderlands
B4 The Lost City
X2 Castle Amber

Okay, I'll start:

B2 Keep on the Borderlands
Our group of salacious 13 year olds all got turned to stone by the Medusa after she flashed some leg from around the corner.  There's a life lesson for you!

B4 The Lost City
The party dwarfs hummed the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark while trying to outrun the boulder, while wearing plate armor.  They were flattened.

X2 Castle Amber
Our party got mauled by Killer Trees in the indoor forest, and the party magic user was torn into pieces.  The thief was carrying the spellbooks, potions, and scrolls, and got turned to stone by an animated statue.  We were able to get a raise dead for the magic user shortly, but he was very sad not to have his stuff.

You've played them, you loved the adventures, now share a tale or two!