Interest Check: Call of Cthulhu PbP

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Count Otto Black

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I was wondering if there was any love for the Cthulhu Mythos on this forum? If so, it strikes me as a suitable game for play-by-post, partly because in terms of toughness and combat ability, everybody's the equivalent of a D&D 1e character and stays that way permanently, so you don't get too many of those fights where on a tabletop you'd be rolling fistfuls of dice for half an hour trying to put a dent in that huge ancient red dragon, and playing by post you'd literally be hacking away at the bugger for weeks.

To keep things simple and affordable for everybody, I'd use 7e but assume that if you own an earlier edition or none at all, you can get by with the 7e Quickstart booklet, which in case you don't know is a free download from the Chaosium website. The amount of additional material from the Core Rulebook which the players would need to know is very small, just a few bits and bobs I could easily post here. I'd be changing some of the rules anyway, partly to streamline a game designed for tabletop play for faster PbP, and partly because some of them don't make a whole lot of sense.

I'd set the campaign in the classic CoC era between the two world wars, but I'd be heavily editing the Mythos, altering or leaving out a considerable amount that doesn't really fit together properly, or is just plain silly, and adding anything I can think of that strikes me as interesting, so those traditional HPL monsters might not always behave in quite the way you'd expect. I'd also make it a far more character-driven campaign than is usual for CoC.

If you don't know quite what I mean by that, read the mini-scenario included in the Quickstart pamphlet. This, presumably, is how the creators of the game think it's meant to be played. For a very short narrative, it has a truly extraordinary number of things wrong with it! See how many ludicrous implausibilities you can spot (apart from excusable absurdities required by the game, such as there being an undead wizard hiding in the cellar), and assume I noticed them too and will try to write better backstories. For instance, in my gameworld the police are sufficiently competent to search the scene of a major crime well enough not to leave two dead bodies lying around for several years!

I'd take it for granted that the players would have read at least some of the works of H. P. Lovecraft and have some knowledge of the 1920s, but the background to the campaign would be the real world with only minor changes, so if I casually mentioned President Coolidge, I'd mean the real and rather boring Calvin Coolidge about whom Wikipedia has all the facts. Players wouldn't need to be intimately familiar with a complex fictional campaign setting, just the USA of about a century ago, except that it has a few extra towns and cities added by Lovecraft, notably Arkham, Innsmouth and Dunwich.

Would that sort of thing appeal to anyone?
 
While it's nice to see some interest already, I think I should make it clear that by "character-driven" and "set in the real world", I don't mean that the players should attempt to roleplay famous real people, especially ones with extremely complicated social lives.

Dumarest, if you mean you want to play somebody who uses this photo as his character portrait, obviously that's fine, and so is playing a hard-drinking witty socialite who has achieved modest success with his first novel and would like to do better. But if you mean you'd like to play a tubercular alcoholic with a mentally unstable wife, a small child, a tangled love-life, numerous celebrity buddies, and who also happens to be the author of The Great Gatsby, I'm afraid that's more character backstory than I have room for!

Somebody inspired by and quite similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald is entirely appropriate, but the actual F. Scott Fitzgerald wouldn't really fit into a game of this type unless it went full-on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and was entirely about the hitherto undocumented monster-hunting activities of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and also very silly indeed. Which I suppose might be a playable game. But it's not this one.
 
To make what I have in mind a little clearer, the CoC equivalent of "You meet at an inn..." is the good old haunted house, so I'll start the campaign with one of those. But it won't be anything like the example given in the Quickstart pamphlet, because obviously nobody in their right mind would spend the night in a house which is obviously incredibly dangerous to spend the night in, unless they were a fearless occult vigilante from the get-go. And even then it would be a bit stupid.

I mean, I've spent the night in a (supposedly) haunted house just to see if anything would happen (it didn't), but if the previous eight people to do that had been found horribly dismembered the next morning, apart from the one who merely went raving mad and ate his own feet, I wouldn't have gone anywhere near the place! So I'll start you off with a house where the haunting is very ambiguous indeed. It's a strange place with a dark past, but it's neither obviously dangerous nor obviously haunted enough to convince a skeptic. Maybe it's a publicity stunt, or whatever.

So any type of ghost-hunter from the paranormal obsessive to the fanatical debunker would make sense, including idle rich kids who just came along because it's the only decadent thrill they haven't tried yet. And if you want to play somebody with no interest in the supernatural at all who doesn't have any obvious reason to hunt ghosts, create the character but don't bother with a motive. Plot-hooks will be provided.

Of course, they're all going to get drawn into something much bigger, darker, and terrifyingly real than any of them could possibly have imagined. And if you've read the Quickstart pamphlet, you won't know what the Dark Secret is, but you'll know what it definitely isn't.
 
While it's nice to see some interest already, I think I should make it clear that by "character-driven" and "set in the real world", I don't mean that the players should attempt to roleplay famous real people, especially ones with extremely complicated social lives.

Dumarest, if you mean you want to play somebody who uses this photo as his character portrait, obviously that's fine, and so is playing a hard-drinking witty socialite who has achieved modest success with his first novel and would like to do better. But if you mean you'd like to play a tubercular alcoholic with a mentally unstable wife, a small child, a tangled love-life, numerous celebrity buddies, and who also happens to be the author of The Great Gatsby, I'm afraid that's more character backstory than I have room for!

Somebody inspired by and quite similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald is entirely appropriate, but the actual F. Scott Fitzgerald wouldn't really fit into a game of this type unless it went full-on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and was entirely about the hitherto undocumented monster-hunting activities of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and also very silly indeed. Which I suppose might be a playable game. But it's not this one.
Just a drunken author inspired by the inimitable and eminently quotable F. Scott. Perhaps gathering material for the follow-up to my well-received debut novel The Other Side of Eden.
 
I'm interested in playing a stage magician who debunks and humiliates "mystics" that prey on the superstitious. Concept inspired by:

gettyimages-2674405-2-2.jpg
 
Good characters coming in! Strangely, the sample occupations in the rulebook don't include Stage Magician, though I bet more players want to be one than an Accountant, an Undertaker or a Zookeeper, so just pick any eight skills that make sense (Houdini was actually a very bad magician, which is ironic because he would far rather have been famous for that than escapology). That's a particularly interesting choice because it just so happens there's an NPC who is going to take an instant dislike to you and vice versa, even before you've figured out whether he's a fiend incarnate or just an annoying poseur.

Novelists, sober or sozzled, are more straightforward, but as with all the characters, if an occupation is listed in the rulebook I'm not going to insist that you have to stick rigidly to the suggested skills. That's particularly true of somebody like a writer, since anyone who isn't illiterate might one day pick up a pen and start writing. I personally know a novelist who attempted a ridulous number of careers before he found out what he was really good at, including garden gnome salesman, which he was particularly rubbish at, due to a complete inability to look or sound sincere while telling people they needed to buy a concrete dwarf.
 
Agreed that writers make a great "pick any goddamn skills I want" character concept. I'll take a look at 7th edition later tonight and bang out a character if I get the time.
 
Since this is only an interest check for a campaign that isn't fully fleshed out yet, I won't be starting immediately and there's no hurry for anyone to create a complete character, though there's no harm in doing it either. But if you want to get the details sorted out at this early stage, if you have the 7e Core Rulebook, to generate your stats use Option 3 on Page 48. For those who don't have the book, this is:

"Roll and record five rolls of 3D6 and three rolls of 2D6+6. Multiply each of these eight results by 5. Allocate the characteristic values as you wish among the eight characteristics. There is a recommended minimum value of 40 for INT and SIZ, although these may be lower, with the Keeper's agreement."

I'll also be using the rules applying to old age which aren't in the Quickstart booklet. I'll post the exact details if anyone needs them, but basically, if you're past the prime of life you start to suffer from physical infirmities, but your skills improve because you're more experienced. Since this will not be a combat-heavy game, being a bit elderly (within reason) shouldn't be a problem so long as the party isn't entirely composed of doddering wrecks.

Also, I don't expect you to be quite as methodical about filling in every box on the character sheet as the rulebook says you should be. Things like Traits and Ideology/Beliefs ought to be covered in your general character description, and I couldn't care less whether you have a Meaningful Location or a Treasured Possession. And don't worry too much about Significant Others. If you have such a person, you just know you're setting up a doomed NPC for your beloved GM to slaughter horribly, don't you? Besides, if you're constantly finding excuses to be anywhere other than your own home even if it means squelching through a swamp riddled with aligators, malarial mosquitos, and giant mutant leeches from the planet Yuggoth, my guess is you aren't all that fond of your wife.
 
I think if I have my CoC PC come back, we could have him being the pen pal of the PC Dumarest Dumarest is planning. My character was a pulp fiction writer who just so happened to be a boxing/wrestling/weightlifting amateur, originally from the South (Loiusiana, because I wasn't going for a full REH copy:devil:)!

...Now I just need to decide whether I could squeeze some more time for PbP. Those prospects ain't looking so bright, alas:shade:!

Also, I don't expect you to be quite as methodical about filling in every box on the character sheet as the rulebook says you should be. Things like Traits and Ideology/Beliefs ought to be covered in your general character description, and I couldn't care less whether you have a Meaningful Location or a Treasured Possession. And don't worry too much about Significant Others. If you have such a person, you just know you're setting up a doomed NPC for your beloved GM to slaughter horribly, don't you? Besides, if you're constantly finding excuses to be anywhere other than your own home even if it means squelching through a swamp riddled with aligators, malarial mosquitos, and giant mutant leeches from the planet Yuggoth, my guess is you aren't all that fond of your wife.
Why? Is there anything about 1920s USA that prevents you from being both an adrenaline junky and having a Significant Other:tongue:?
Plenty of real people manage that somehow.
 
Hmm... perhaps some manner of muckraking journalist?

STR 35
DEX 60
POW 50
APP 55
SIZ 45
INT 65
CON 45
EDU 60

I seem to be a few editions behind, though - could you tell me what sort of occupational skills a journalist gets in the seventh edition? Assuming it still exists there, I guess.
 
AsenRG, I merely wished to point out that in a game like this, the favourite people, things and places you're supposed to have are such blatant plot-hooks that you know your beloved wife will end up dead or gibbering in an asylum, your lucky plush toy exists so that at some point you'll have to run back into a burning building to retrieve it, and in the unlikely event that anybody remembers to do anything with the Meaningful Location, next time you go to lay flowers on your mother's grave, what's left of the old lady will claw its way out of the ground and you'll never again have happy thoughts about maggots.

As for 1920s adventurers and their significant others, I suppose the archetypal example would be Colonel Percy Fawcett, who spent a large part of his married life risking his neck in South American jungles looking for a lost city so legendary it was just called Z, and not surprisingly failing to find it. Though he did shoot a 62-foot anaconda, honestly, but for some reason he couldn't bring back any bones or photos or anything, and the same goes for the giant spiders. In 1925 he set off yet again in search of Z, accompanied by his son Jack and Jack's best friend because by that stage no real explorers would join his borderline suicidal expeditions. They were never seen again. From the point of view of Mrs. Fawcett, the situation was probably far from ideal.

Oh, about that CoC character you might revive if you have time to join in, he reminds me of Arthur Cravan. Have you heard of him? Probably not, because he's a very obscure poet and boxer who disappeared in 1918 after accidentally sailing his yacht into a hurricane. He is sometimes credited with inventing performance art during his membership of the Dadaist movement, and his only professional fight was with world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, who always swore he believed Cravan's claim to be the heavyweight boxing champion of Europe, and was genuinely surprised to win so easily. Though bearing in mind that a brief film clip exists of Cravan "training" for the fight by publicly sparring with a midget, the two of them almost certainly cooked it up together because they both needed the money. He was also Oscar Wilde's nephew.
 
Baeraad - Yes, Journalist does still exist in 7e, which I think is pretty much identical to earlier editions apart from some of the game mechanics, nearly all of which are explained in that free Quickstart booklet you can download from Chaosium. The skills for Journalists, which are probably exactly the same in whichever edition you've got, are:

Art/Craft (Photography), History, Library Use, Own Language, one interpersonal skill (Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate, or Persuade), Psychology, any two other skills.
 
Do you want us using the Quickstart rules for character generation?
 
Brock Savage - Use Quickstart if that's what you've got. There's very little difference from the Core Rulebook, except for a few details, the most important of which is age. The age rules are as follows:

15-19 - Deduct 5 points among STR & SIZ; deduct 5 points from EDU; roll Luck twice and use the higher score.
20-39 - 1 EDU improvement check.
40-49 - 2 EDU improvement checks; deduct 5 points among STR, CON & DEX; reduce APP by 5.
50-59 - 3 EDU improvement checks; deduct 10 points among STR, CON & DEX; reduce APP by 10.
60-69 - 4 EDU improvement checks; deduct 20 points among STR, CON & DEX; reduce APP by 15.

(If you're 70 or older, your EDU doesn't go up any further and you get very much frailer, so extreme old age is for NPCs only.)

And instead of using the Quickstart prerolls, generate your stats thusly:

Roll and record five rolls of 3D6 and three rolls of 2D6+6. Multiply each of these eight results by 5. Allocate the characteristic values as you wish among the eight characteristics. There is a recommended minimum value of 40 for INT and SIZ, although these may be lower, with the Keeper's agreement.
 
I picked up 7th edition plus the player's guide last night. I fell asleep before I could do more than skim but at a glance it didn't look too different from previous editions. What are the major differences in 7th?
 
Brock Savage - Many of the changes from 6e are listed at the back of the book in Appendix II, but the ones that matter most are probably the Pushed Roll and the Idea Roll, both of which are just fancy ways of getting around the fact that this game is so lethal that sometimes one careless mistake or unlucky roll results in somebody, or indeed everybody, having to stop and create new characters, which is a bloody nuisance if it happens too often.

Everyone who's played CoC more than once knows that most GMs constantly fudge rolls to let unlucky players off the hook when it serves no purpose to kill them, especially if they're getting bored with this bit of the story because it's wiped out the party six times already, but some excessively serious players feel uncomfortable about bending the rules in any way because the rulebook is God. Well, now they can rest easy, because fudging is in the rulebook and has an official name and everything. It shouldn't take you long to get the hang of the concept, since it's just the same thing that's been going on since 1e, with a figleaf of minimalist game mechanics to cover the fact that it's still cheating.

Idea Rolls are the same kind of thing only more so, since they let the GM straight up tell the players they've missed a screamingly obvious and vitally important clue because they weren't paying attention to the game, just like he would have had to do anyway, only now it's an official rule. But they do suffer some kind of penalty for their carelessness, and they can't whine that it's not fair because that's an official rule too. So there!

In this campaign, Pushed Rolls may be used quite frequently, so players will need to understand the mechanics of them. Which are very simple, but they're not in the Quickstart and we've got at least one player who doesn't have 7e, so I'll explain them later. They're not needed yet anyway.

Idea Rolls are even simpler to understand, but I won't bother to explain them because I won't be using them. If some poor schmuck with a knife in his back collapses on your doorstep, gasps "The Blind Rat..." and dies, and you completely miss the point that someone or something called the Blind Rat might be important, I give up!

The other big change is the chapter on chases, especially those involving cars, but I've never used those rules and probably never will, because it looks like a horribly clunky and over-complicated solution to a very simple problem that doesn't arise that often anyway. If this campaign turns out to involve car-chases, I'll probably ignore all that flapdoodle and assume that the better driver usually wins, and however good or bad the drivers are, there's absolutely no way you can outrun a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost in a Ford Model T.

As for the Investigators' Handbook, it's just the usual Chaosium waste of space, padded with lots of stuff that's also in the Core Rulebook, the usual fairly accurate lists of historical trivia for the benefit of people who think "google" and "wikipedia" are naughty diseases you catch from sheep, and for the benefit of people who bought a game based on the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft without bothering to read any of it first, one of his stories, all of which are in the public domain, and by the way, you can download a compendium of the whole lot in various formats here:

http://arkhamarchivist.com/free-complete-lovecraft-ebook-nook-kindle/
 
Well, there's a curious bit of synchronicity! Not being a subscriber to Collier's Weekly, I was completely unaware of your story, and I was referencing a fictional Parisian pub in a ridiculous old horror movie called The Face at the Window starring the inimitable Tod Slaughter. Does your tale happen to be about this tremendously entertaining forgotten classic in some way?

blind rat.jpg
 
Well, there's a curious bit of synchronicity! Not being a subscriber to Collier's Weekly, I was completely unaware of your story, and I was referencing a fictional Parisian pub in a ridiculous old horror movie called The Face at the Window starring the inimitable Tod Slaughter. Does your tale happen to be about this tremendously entertaining forgotten classic in some way?

I'm afraid that's a good ten to twenty years into the future, old sport, and I've never been one for the talkies anyway. All that jabber ruins the visual thrill of the motion pictures! They'll never last. -- J. Pierpont Finnegan
 
Oh, sorry, since we haven't started the game yet I didn't realise you were in character already. For a minute there I thought you were an actual author who had in fact published a story in a magazine which, not being well up on American literary journals, I assumed was still a going concern. Which from the chronological perspective of J. Pierpont Finnegan it is, and will continue to be until 1957, which means it's likely to be around a lot longer than he is.

Which doesn't solve the great mystery of our troubled times: why does nobody remember Tod Slaughter, not even the B-movie fanatics who go on about the genius of Ed Wood and Roger Corman and idolise tenth-raters like Lon Chaney Jr.? The redoubtable Mr. Slaughter is the only actor I've ever seen actually twirl his mustache and cackle in anything that wasn't a comedy or a cartoon. What's not to like?

curse-of-the-wraydons.png

Pictured: Greatness!​
 
Baeraad - Yes, Journalist does still exist in 7e, which I think is pretty much identical to earlier editions apart from some of the game mechanics, nearly all of which are explained in that free Quickstart booklet you can download from Chaosium. The skills for Journalists, which are probably exactly the same in whichever edition you've got, are:

Art/Craft (Photography), History, Library Use, Own Language, one interpersonal skill (Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate, or Persuade), Psychology, any two other skills.

That's pretty similar to the fifth edition (which seems to be what I have) but not quite the same. Thanks. :smile:

Another question: a journalist has Language: Own as an Occupation Skill. That means assigning it one of the values from the array. But baseline skill in Language: Own is EDU. Can I assign a 40% to Language: Own and still use the EDU baseline if (as is the case here) my EDU is higher than 40?

Name: Millard Jackson
Occupation: Journalist
Age: 37

APP 55 (27/11)
CON 45 (22/9)
DEX 60 (30/12)
EDU 60 (30/12)
INT 65 (32/13)
POW 50 (25/10)
SIZ 45 (22/9)
STR 35 (17/7)

Occupation Skills: Art/Craft (Photography) 50%, Credit Rating 50%, Fast Talk 70%, History 40%, Language: English 60%, Library Use 40%, Persuade 60%, Psychology 50%, Stealth 60%
Personal Interest Skills: Disguise 25%, Dodge 50%, Climb 40%, Jump 40%

Personal Description: Small and slight, with slicked-back black hair and a small mustache. Wears cheap and somewhat tasteless suits.
Beliefs: Give people what they want! No one actually wants the truth, but everyone loves an entertaining liar. The paranormal don't really exist, but people will pay money to read about it, so let's pretend it does. Everyone's ultimately looking out for number one, but that's no reason to be unpleasant - put on a big smile and tell people what they want to hear, and everyone's going to be in a better mood than otherwise.
 
AsenRG, I merely wished to point out that in a game like this, the favourite people, things and places you're supposed to have are such blatant plot-hooks that you know your beloved wife will end up dead or gibbering in an asylum, your lucky plush toy exists so that at some point you'll have to run back into a burning building to retrieve it, and in the unlikely event that anybody remembers to do anything with the Meaningful Location, next time you go to lay flowers on your mother's grave, what's left of the old lady will claw its way out of the ground and you'll never again have happy thoughts about maggots.
What you mean is, this is a CoC campaign? That was right in the title:grin:!


As for 1920s adventurers and their significant others, I suppose the archetypal example would be Colonel Percy Fawcett, who spent a large part of his married life risking his neck in South American jungles looking for a lost city so legendary it was just called Z, and not surprisingly failing to find it. Though he did shoot a 62-foot anaconda, honestly, but for some reason he couldn't bring back any bones or photos or anything, and the same goes for the giant spiders. In 1925 he set off yet again in search of Z, accompanied by his son Jack and Jack's best friend because by that stage no real explorers would join his borderline suicidal expeditions. They were never seen again. From the point of view of Mrs. Fawcett, the situation was probably far from ideal.
I'd agree with Mrs. Fawcett, personally. But then I can't judge a man for wanting some quality time with his boy...though the South American jungles would unsell me on the idea, personally:smile:!

Oh, about that CoC character you might revive if you have time to join in, he reminds me of Arthur Cravan. Have you heard of him? Probably not, because he's a very obscure poet and boxer who disappeared in 1918 after accidentally sailing his yacht into a hurricane. He is sometimes credited with inventing performance art during his membership of the Dadaist movement, and his only professional fight was with world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, who always swore he believed Cravan's claim to be the heavyweight boxing champion of Europe, and was genuinely surprised to win so easily. Though bearing in mind that a brief film clip exists of Cravan "training" for the fight by publicly sparring with a midget, the two of them almost certainly cooked it up together because they both needed the money. He was also Oscar Wilde's nephew.
Well, close enough. Though you should note that Cravan had a SO, Loy.
It takes guts to fight a man like Johnson, of all people, even if it was a fixed match as the research I read seems to suggest. You have to give him that much:wink:!

As I said earlier, I modelled my guy on RE Howard, but from a richer (like, not struggling) Louisiana family who had fallen on harder times. (Still, he earned some money in his first adventure, and sold the accounts of his own adventure to the pulps, because you can be trifty even with your time and inspiration:grin:)!

As stated before, the reason I'm hesitating is quite simple. Time. The matter is still unresolved, BTW.
 
Baeraad - Some of the game mechanics in CoC are a little odd, to say the least! I wasn't sure at first where you were getting that figure of 40 points from, but I've just realised that for some idiotic reason, there are major differences in the way you generate characters in the Core Rulebook from how it's done in the Quickstart pamphlet, the technical sections of which I hadn't read thoroughly because I assumed that, being an introduction to the game, it used the same rules as the rest of 7e. So you need to allocate your skill points all over again, as follows:

Firstly, Millard is 37, which means he gets one EDU check - roll D100 and if it's over 60, add 1D1O points to EDU.

Now multiply EDU by 4 (not all professions use the same method, but for Journalists it's EDUx4); these are your points for professional skills and Credit Rating, which in Millard's case should be between 9 and 30 (a rock-bottom value of 9 means he's downright poor but 10-30 is in the low to middle range of average). Since his Own Language skill is already 60 and maybe higher if you lucked out with your EDU check, Millard is easily eloquent enough to write for the kind of rag that sends hacks in cheap suits to cover haunted houses, so you don't need to spend any points at all on Own Language unless you want him to be a truly brilliant writer.

Finally, multiply INT by 2, which is 130, and allocate those points to as many or as few personal interest skills as you like.

Oh, and don't forget your Luck, which you might need later! Luck is just a simple roll of 3D6 multiplied by 5 for all PCs except those under the age of 20, who roll twice and use the higher result.
 
Hmm, okay... Here's my adjusted variant. I changed as little as possible, though I had to drop History a little aside from lowering Credit Rating to something more reasonable. Oh, and Millard has the worst luck, apparently, but I'm pretty sure that's just what he deserves. :tongue:

Name: Millard Jackson
Occupation: Journalist
Age: 37

APP 55 (27/11)
CON 45 (22/9)
DEX 60 (30/12)
EDU 60 (30/12)
INT 65 (32/13)
POW 50 (25/10)
SIZ 45 (22/9)
STR 35 (17/7)

Luck 30 (15/6)
Damage Bonus: -1
Build: -1
Hit Points: 9
Sanity: 50

Occupation Skills: Art/Craft (Photography) 50%, Credit Rating 25%, Fast Talk 70%, History 31%, Language: English 60%, Library Use 40%, Persuade 60%, Psychology 50%, Stealth 60%
Other Skills: Climb 40%, Disguise 25%, Dodge 50%, Jump 40%

Personal Description: Small and slight, with slicked-back black hair and a small mustache. Wears cheap and somewhat tasteless suits.
Beliefs: Give people what they want! No one actually wants the truth, but everyone loves an entertaining liar. The paranormal don't really exist, but people will pay money to read about it, so let's pretend it does. Everyone's ultimately looking out for number one, but that's no reason to be unpleasant - put on a big smile and tell people what they want to hear, and everyone's going to be in a better mood than otherwise.
 
Give people what they want! No one actually wants the truth, but everyone loves an entertaining liar. The paranormal don't really exist, but people will pay money to read about it, so let's pretend it does. Everyone's ultimately looking out for number one, but that's no reason to be unpleasant - put on a big smile and tell people what they want to hear, and everyone's going to be in a better mood than otherwise.
I think I have his mobile number:grin:!
 
Baeraad - I'd like to offer you an optional extra bit of character development, which may have its uses for us both. Since Millard works for a newspaper (which needs a name - The Salem Inquisitor, perhaps?), it would make sense for him to phone his editor with regular updates on the story, and when it gets bigger than anyone expected, to be sent reinforcements. A skinny kid whose entire job is photography so he's really good at it even if he can't do much else, a grizzled, cynical, and almost certainly alcoholic veteran of the crime desk who spends most of his waking hours oscillating between the bar and the morgue, and so on.

My main reason for this is that in a game of this kind, it's handy to have a few people around who are definitely not in league with Yog-Sothoth, don't really have much to do with the story, and have no excessively useful skills or massive firepower, so that if somebody's character dies or is incapacitated at a time when rolling up a permanent or temporary replacement isn't convenient, the players know they can always step into the shoes of one of these guys, and if they don't really want to play a spotty teenager who's a whiz with a camera, it doesn't matter because it's only until they've created a proper new Investigator, or their PC gets out of the loony bin, or whatever.

Since I'm going to do this, if you like, you can contribute descriptions of some of your workmates, describe how well you get on with them, and so on. Of course, I'll create the actual characters, so I can do the bios and all that myself if you wish; I just thought you might like to have a hand in it, since they're Millard's colleagues and perhaps his friends.
 
If there's still room, I would also like to get in on this.
 
(working from the quickstart rules, not the full rulebook)

Margaret Ashford, Dilettante

Age 25 (failed improvement check for EDU)

STR 40 (20/8)
CON 55 (27/11)
POW 60 (30/12)
DEX 60 (30/12)
APP 70 (35/14)
SIZ 45 (22/9)
INT 65 (32/13)
EDU 65 (32/13)

Luck 50
MP 12
Damage Bonus n/a
Build 0
HP 10
Sanity 60

Accounting 50
Art/Craft (Dancing) 60
Charm 60
Credit Rating 70
Dodge 40
Drive Auto 30
Firearms (Handgun) 30
History 10
Language (French) 50
Library Use 50
Occult 11
Persuade 50
Ride 30

Skills edited to reflect full rulebook skill allotment

Short, tentative bio: Margaret is the last of her immediate family. Her mother passed away when she was five, her older brother was killed in the Great War, and her father died the year before of a stroke. She is part of the 'new money' in Arkham, her father having built up a successful rail business in the area. She has taken over as owner of the business, but except for checking in periodically to make sure that the books are in order and that nothing truly unusual needs her attention, she is happy to let others run the day-to-day operations and not micromanage. She is college educated (does Miskatonic U accept women at this point?), at a time when this is still rare. At the moment she seems content to live a life of relative leisure, and occasionally scandalizing the more conservative, 'old money' types that she occasionally runs into. Recently she has taken an interest in seances and other paranormal activity, partially out of genuine interest and partially as an amusing pastime.

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@ Tulpa Girl Tulpa Girl I think Margaret is much cooler if she's studied at Miskatonic. :thumbsup:

(I changed the direction of the character. He was generated using Quickstart Rules. EDU check was failed)


Henry "Hemlock" Hunter

Concept:
Stage Magician

Background: Born in 1898, Henry had an unremarkable but happy childhood in the upper-middle class suburbs of St Louis. Like many of his peers in college, he dropped out and volunteered for the Great War, fighting with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines in the Battle of Belleau Wood. Like many of the Lost Generation, he wandered about Europe aimlessly after the War, world weary and cynical. Supporting himself by street performance, he parlayed his natural charm and skill at illusion into a stage magician persona known as "Hemlock the Magnificent". His show is a carnival of illusion, escapology, hypnotism, titillation, and clever disguise served with wry charm. After years of hard work, he is doing well financially and touring the world. Searching for purpose in a meaningless and uncaring world, Henry has amassed a collection of occult knowledge and in his spare time quietly pursues evidence of the supernatural.

Personality: The War showed you that life is ultimately meaningless. You practice a sort of benevolent nihilistic hedonism, enjoying what pleasures you can while bringing joy and wonder to the masses with your work.

Appearance: Short and slight with youthful good looks and charisma, Henry has an undeniable stage presence. His impeccable dress and grooming might be taken as narcissism but it is in fact an obsessive habit born in the filth and chaos of the Great War.

Gear: Tuxedo, top hat, cape, lockpicks, flask of whiskey, ivory handled cane, Webley revolver, wad of cash.

Statistics
STR 50
CON 50
POW 80
DEX 50
APP 60
SIZ 40
INT 70
EDU 60

Occupation Skills
Spot Hidden 70%
Sleight of Hand 60%
Charm 60%
Locksmith 50%
Credit Rating 50%
Hypnosis 50%
Psychology 40%
Disguise 40%
Occult 40%

Hobby Skills
Dodge 45%
Firearms (rifle)45%
Stealth 40%
Listen 40%

Derived Attributes
Luck 50
Magic Points 16
Damage Bonus 0
Build 0
HP 9
Sanity 80

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Baeraad - I'd like to offer you an optional extra bit of character development, which may have its uses for us both. Since Millard works for a newspaper (which needs a name - The Salem Inquisitor, perhaps?), it would make sense for him to phone his editor with regular updates on the story, and when it gets bigger than anyone expected, to be sent reinforcements. A skinny kid whose entire job is photography so he's really good at it even if he can't do much else, a grizzled, cynical, and almost certainly alcoholic veteran of the crime desk who spends most of his waking hours oscillating between the bar and the morgue, and so on.

My main reason for this is that in a game of this kind, it's handy to have a few people around who are definitely not in league with Yog-Sothoth, don't really have much to do with the story, and have no excessively useful skills or massive firepower, so that if somebody's character dies or is incapacitated at a time when rolling up a permanent or temporary replacement isn't convenient, the players know they can always step into the shoes of one of these guys, and if they don't really want to play a spotty teenager who's a whiz with a camera, it doesn't matter because it's only until they've created a proper new Investigator, or their PC gets out of the loony bin, or whatever.

Since I'm going to do this, if you like, you can contribute descriptions of some of your workmates, describe how well you get on with them, and so on. Of course, I'll create the actual characters, so I can do the bios and all that myself if you wish; I just thought you might like to have a hand in it, since they're Millard's colleagues and perhaps his friends.

That's okay, I'm perfectly willing to play off of whatever you come up with. :smile:
 
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All new material well and good - welcome aboard Miss Ashford! Changes to the magician character have been noted, and are probably for the best, since a direct pastiche of the multi-talented Harry Houdini would have required more skill points than you've got. Though I get the impression that Hemlock, being a genuine seeker of the strange, would take almost as dim a view as Houdini of people he perceived to be cynical charlartans who deliberately fake the supernatural for personal gain.

In view of what he does for a living, Hemlock doesn't have to roll anything when he's onstage performing magic routines he's rehearsed countless times, and he gets a bonus dice for any relevant skills when doing the same kind of tricks offstage, but only in contexts where this is appropriate. So, for example, he can effortlessly switch playing-cards around if it's just for purposes of entertainment, but he's not quite so skilled if he's playing real high-stakes Poker where cheating has consequences. This is unlikely to be of much practical use, but it occurred to me that a real-life stage magician who was any good would probably would need a Sleight Of Hand skill of 99%, unless he was a deliberately inept comedy conjurer like the legendary Tommy Cooper.

I used to know an elderly stage magician whose act was occult-themed, and who went around debunking hilariously clumsy fraudulent mediums and spending the night in woefully underwhelming haunted houses in a fruitless search for the real thing. I never knew him all that well, but I got the impression that underneath the breezy patter he was a sad fellow more haunted than any of the Old Dark Houses he used to visit, desperately seeking something he never found before he drank himself to death.

He had a good enough reputation that the local police used to unofficially consult him whenever they thought they might be dealing with satanic cult activity, which in the end they never were. There was one case where they had reports of unidentified people performing rituals by firelight in a field, and in the morning local residents were horrified to discover various everyday objects arranged in an elaborate and obviously magical pattern for some sinister occult purpose. It turned out to be a bunch of art students having a drunken party in the course of which they cobbled together a random piece of conceptual art out of whatever was at hand and left it to intrigue passers-by, never guessing they would spark a witch-hunt. The local paper reported this under the immortal headline "WEIRDOS IN SHOE RIDDLE".
 
Count Otto Black Count Otto Black

Yes, I pretty much assumed skill checks aren't made for mundane tasks unless the circumstances are trying. Otherwise every PC would be an incompetent boob who can't even perform their day job consistently.
 
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I just thought I'd make it clear that, although stage magic is intrinsically difficult to do, Hemlock can be a superb performer in all contexts where it doesn't really matter without spending vast amounts of skill points on one skill that probably isn't useful enough to justify the cost. So tricks done on stage, where he controls all the conditions and can do things that wouldn't work if the audience were allowed to watch from a different angle, are easy, anything other than the really basic stuff is harder to do in uncontrolled conditions but he'll probably still get away with it, and trying to use stage magic techniques to do anything other than those specific tricks is very hard. Though I'll probably let him have that bonus dice for anything that's not strictly a magic trick but near-as-dammit.

Talking if magic, there's an amusing mistake in the list of Mythos Tomes going right back to 1e that still hasn't been corrected. One of those terrible books that reveal awful secrets which erode your sanity and everything is a real book, and I'm not talking about any of the numerous dodgy Necronomicons which have been churned out over the years. Once, during a tabletop game of CoC, while my Investigator was searching a library I announced that he'd found this particular tome. The puzzled Keeper said no, he hasn't, because it's not there. So I produced an actual copy of it and said "What's that then?" The Keeper was so impressed he let my Investigator find it after all and gain some Mythos Knowledge. Award yourself a Detestably Rubbery No-Prize You Cannot And Must Not See if you know which book I mean.
 
As an aside, I don't know if anyone else is having this problem, but I'm not getting any notifications when this thread is updated, even though I have it on my 'watch' list.
 
but I've just realised that for some idiotic reason, there are major differences in the way you generate characters in the Core Rulebook from how it's done in the Quickstart pamphlet, the technical sections of which I hadn't read thoroughly because I assumed that, being an introduction to the game, it used the same rules as the rest of 7e.
I don't have the 7e book, just the Quickstart, so let me know if I need to re-do my skills. Also, let me know if 1) I need to add anything in particular for my bio, and 2) if you have a 'base city' that the game will be using so I can change where my character is from if needed.
 
I haven't seen any editions past 3rd so I'll see if I can look at the quickstart tomorrow at work as I'm at home getting over a bad cold today. I didn't realize we were rolling up PCs already, but I should be able to do mine tomorrow unless unforeseen problems arise.
 
Dumarest Dumarest - I didn't actually ask for PCs to be rolled because this is only an interest check and there will be a short wait before the game is ready to start, but several people rolled characters anyway and there was no reason not to accept them. So there's absolutely no hurry at all. The only thing is that if, like you, players don't have 7e, I'll have to give you the exact rules for rolling your Investigator. There isn't really much difference between the editions, just a few tweaks. There's certainly not enough difference between, say, an Accountant in 3e and 7e for you to have to rethink your basic character concept, so you can decide broadly who and what your Investigator is and I'll advise you on the mechanics.

Tulpa Girl Tulpa Girl - I don't know if you've taken this into account already, but I did initially tell people to use Quickstart to generate characters if that was all they had, but I later changed that because I only realised after another player began quoting rules which made no sense to me that the Quickstart rules generate characters in a completely different way from the 7e Core Rulebook, and I hadn't bothered to read sections of Quickstart I assumed would be exactly the same in both books because they were supposed to be using exactly the same game-system. Slightly careless of me, but very silly of Chaosium! Oh well, you can't expect people with "chaos" in their name to be all that logical. Anyway, the proper 7e rules for choosing Dilettante skills are:

Art/Craft (any), Firearms, Other Languages, Ride, one interpersonal skill (Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate or Persuade), any three other skills.
Credit Rating 50-99, Professional Skill Points EDUx2 + APPx2, INTx2 points to divide among any number of other Personal Interests.

As with all the Investigators, I'm not going to insist that this young lady has to stick rigidly to the skills on the list, because technically there are no skills you need to be one of the idle rich other than having a lot of money, so while some talents might be a bit incongruous (she's probably rubbish at mining coal), if you think a required skill is useless and could be replaced by something else which would be more in character, by all means swap. For example, being rich doesn't automatically mean you own a horse in an era when other faster and more comfortable modes of transport are available, and a city girl might barely know which end of the beast the hay goes into.

@everybody - the campaign isn't initially based in any particular city, and if it leads to other adventures our heroes will travel to many distant lands, so you can be from anywhere you like, including places made up by Lovecraft, though if you were brought up in Arkham and went to Miskatonic University, it has no special significance. As far as you know, Arkham is just a sleepy old town in New England most people would find quaint but slightly dull, and Miskatonic U is respectable but not quite A-list, though it does have an internationally renowned faculty of history and a world-class library. And you've probably never even heard of Innsmouth or Dunwich.

The Investigators have for various reasons obtained invitations to a Halloween party and midnight séance at a big house in a small town in rural Kentucky, so they're all travelling a long way to be there and have no links with the locality. The purpose of this event isn't entirely clear, and depending on who you ask, it's a serious investigation into psychic phenomena at the most haunted house in America, a publicity stunt intended to establish a legendary but extremely non-haunted house as a tourist attraction, or just a rich guy whose big old mansion is supposed to be haunted throwing a spook-themed party for a bit of fun.

Although a large number of guests have been invited, it is understood that the room where the séance will take place is quite small, and only a select few will be allowed to take part. All the invitations are identical so it isn't yet possible for the Investigators to know if they've been chosen for this special treat. Since the event has been widely publicised for weeks in advance but invitations appear to have been distributed not only among the wealthy and fashionable "it crowd" as might be expected, but also to members of the press, self-proclaimed psychics and experts on the occult, and other people in a position to provide publicity of the sensational variety, there is every reason for skeptical types to suspect that chicanery is afoot, and it has very little to do with the supernatural.

However, the house does have enough of a history for persons with a genuine interest in the occult to consider it worth their while to make the trip, since even if the hosts of this party are using made-up spooklore for their own ends, it doesn't necessarily mean there are no real spooks. Besides, it is rumoured that the guest-list includes as many big cheeses in the world of occultism as could be persuaded to attend, so even if nothing else happens, it's a rare conjunction of far more of the crystal ball crowd than are usually found in the same room, mainly because most of them are posturing egomaniacs who can't stand each other.
 
Art/Craft (any), Firearms, Other Languages, Ride, one interpersonal skill (Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate or Persuade), any three other skills.
Credit Rating 50-99, Professional Skill Points EDUx2 + APPx2, INTx2 points to divide among any number of other Personal Interests.

Those points are added to the base values listed on the character sheet, right?

(my only other familiarity with BRP was playing Stormbringer last century)
For example, being rich doesn't automatically mean you own a horse in an era when other faster and more comfortable modes of transport are available, and a city girl might barely know which end of the beast the hay goes into.
Yeah, but what girl doesn't want a pony?
 
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