One of the projects I’m working on right now is making props and handouts for my recently purchased copy of Chaosium’s Horror on the Orient Express campaign for Call of Cthulhu.
I started with a simple print out of the route map. Decided to experiment a bit to try and produce some different effects I can use for other handouts and props. The end result – or close to it anyway – is a nicely aged map that has a heavier/coated feel to it. Nicer maps designed to hold up the elements have a coated/leathery feel to them, and I wanted to try and replicate that.
A couple of important things to note:
The original file includes some faint halos around most text that looks a little like a bleed.
I intentionally tried to screw this up at a few stages. That way I know how much wiggle room I have to play around with the process – plus I wanted to test how well the ink in my new printer holds up to the process.
I seriously doubt this will work with just any inkjet printer and ink. There is a LOT of variety in inkjet inks. So if you try this, your results could vary quite a bit.
Be sure to click each image to see the higher-res photo.
Printing
I printed the map on my new Epson Workforce WF-7820 printer. This uses a pigment-based ink. A big goal of this was to see how well this ink resists bleeding when exposed to water, as a common way of artificially aging paper involves water. It did not disappoint.
I printed the map on a single 11×17 sheet of 67-lb cardstock that has a vellum finish.
HotOE Route Map Printed
Aging
Ideally, you would let the print sit overnight to ensure it’s completely dry and minimize any possible bleeding. I intentionally took the printed page directly from the printer to soak and age it.
I placed the printed map on a baking sheet and soaked it in coffee. I looked carefully for any signs of bleeding ink. At worst, there was a very, VERY SLIGHT bleeding around black text. Since the original file includes some faint coloring around a lot of the text, it’s hard to tell if there was actual bleed. If so, it was just a faint bleed of black into the surrounding tissue, but it in no way impacted the crisp edges of the text. Again, I wouldn’t expect this result with any inkjet printer, but it seems this pigment-based ink holds up very well to water.
Then the map goes in the oven for 4-5 minutes at 225°. Flipped the map over for another 4-5 minutes. I placed it directly on the sheet, which evidently had some residual cooking spray on it. This discolored a couple of areas on the back. Simple fix is to always place the paper on a piece of parchment paper.
HotOE map soaking in coffeeHotOE map wet
Waxing
This is where I was going completely experimental to try and get the coated/leathery feel. Basically, I’m using a wax designed to wax and waterproof fabric. In this case, it’s a product called Otter Wax, and it comes in a bar.
Straight out of the oven, I placed the still warm map on the counter and rubbed the bar back and forth over the surface. Again, this didn’t affect the printed details at all. As it’s applied, it adds a subtle, waxy sheen to the surface that slightly brings out the color. Flipped the map and applied wax to the back.
Supposed to let waxed fabric cure in a warm environment for 24 hours, so I initially left the map out overnight. The next day it still had a tacky, wax-like feel to it. Decided to put it in the oven (after I aged some paper for another project) for another 3 minutes. This finished the wax curing / absorbing into the paper. No more wax feel to the surface, and slightly heavier than the base cardstock. I applied a second coat of wax the same way, and put it in the oven again. You definitely feel the wax when you apply it, but coming out of the oven that slight stickiness is gone.
Route map waxingRoute map waxing closeup
End Result
The aging process always makes the paper wavy and wrinkled, so after waxing the first time (and again after waxing the next day) I pressed the map under weight to flatten it out a bit. Then I folded the map and pressed it again.
The final map is definitely heavier than the regular cardstock, and it has a texture and feel very close to what I was going for. I might try another application of wax or two, just to see if it makes a difference. The waxing also enhances the aged look of the coffee-died paper. It adds a subtly mottled appearance to the paper that is very reminiscent of natural parchment.
HotOE Map aged and waxedCloseup of aged and waxed HotOE map
Building from my collection of mythos-related games and book, as well as my interest in integrating props into tabletop games, I’ve gradually developed a fondness for displaying my collection. In some areas it’s modest, in other areas less so. I have dubbed this constantly evolving display my Shelf of Madness.
And I’ve recently taken to creating some props and display pieces of my own.
I’ve posted pictures of some of these items here and there, and I’ve gotten a few requests for a more detailed description of some items, where they are from, etc. So I figured I could start posting some of that here as well. That way when I post some new acquisition or creation and someone sees something in the background, I’ll have a place where I can point them to check out what’s in the collection.
You can see all the posts describing the Shelf of Madness here.
Finally finished my custom bound copy of The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic! This isn’t an exact match to Chaosium’s printed cover, but let’s call it heavily inspired by the official cover.
This home bound copy includes a cover made from a strange hide (skin?), aged gold foil title and Cthulhu artwork, custom protective corner and cover hardware, hand-sewn laser-printed pages with gilded edges, a ribbon bookmark, and embossed endsheets with matching headbands.
I’m using this as a learning experience so I can make a cool version of Our Terrible Fate when I finish it, and this was by far the most complex bookbinding project I’ve undertaken yet.
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Making the Grimoire
Here is a brief description and some highlights of the process I went through to make the grimoire. The most time-consuming parts of the process were planning the cover design and setting it up in vector form for use with my Cricut (about 3 days) and actually making the faux hardware (another few days with lots of trial and error). All told, this took me about two weeks.
Preparing the Text Block
The pages are laser printed and divided into signatures of four sheets (16 pages) each. These signatures are then hand sewn with linen thread. To help keep the printed content aligned despite the tendency of consumer printers to fail at centering content, stitch marks are added to the PDF prior to printing. Once all the signatures are sewn together, the spine is then glued with a flexible glue designed for bookbinding.
Sewing the first signature of The Grand Grimoire
Text block sewn and glued
After the signatures are bound together, it’s time to trim them. During my past projects this step was done by hand with a box cutter. For this project, I stepped things up and purchased a larger guillotine cutter. Of course, that is one of the first points at which things took a turn for the worse. Not having used this type of cutter before, I made a couple of mistakes before I got it right. Fortunately, nothing went so badly that I couldn’t correct it, though the end result was slightly smaller pages than originally planned.
The end result of trimming the textblock was good enough that I went ahead and gilded the page edges. I used a metallic acrylic paint designed to work well on paper. I’ve used this process before on past projects, but the cleaner edges produced by my guillotine made this work much better this time around. Next, I debossed some linen cardstock for my endsheets using my Cricut. The endsheets were then folded and attached to the text block, along with a ribbon bookmark, moslin to reinforce the spine, and headbands to match the endsheets.
Not everything goes smoothly
Completed text block of the Grand Grimoire
The Cover
The cover for this project is a bit of a challenge. The artwork on the official hardcover is designed to look like a tome, but not an ordinary one. To begin with, some of the elements aren’t exactly identifiable. There are parts that might be straps, including one that actually covers a portion of the elder sign in the middle of the cover. The elder sign itself is a little different from Chaosium’s usual representation of the symbol. A lot of the stuff on the cover is made to look like metal hardware. And then there is the background of the cover – the material of this tome. It’s unusual to say the least.
I actually started with the cover material – even before the text block – because I knew it was going to be more challenging than my past projects. Trying to approximate the look of the exotic skin from the official book wasn’t going to be as simply as cutting a piece of faux leather. I ended up adapting a couple of techniques I found online to make a heavily textured cover from a combination of butcher paper and acrylic paints. I then glued that to another layer of butcher paper – again using the flexible bookbinding glue.
Then I turned to planning out the other elements of the cover. I wasn’t about to custom order actual metal hardware or take up metalworking, so I would need another material. I also needed to determine which elements I wanted to keep. Using a PDF of the official cover as a reference, I gradually put together a planned version of the cover using vector artwork. This step took the better part of 3-4 days.
Three days of work designing the cover
Homemade cover material for the Grand Grimoire
I wrapped the material around the boards I cut from chipboard for the front and back cover and spine and affixed with glue. The double layer of butcher paper is thinner than the faux leather I’ve used for previous projects. It’s not quite as flexible, but I definitely understand why bookbinders prefer working with thinner materials. This material also seems like it will hold up better than expected, but time will tell.
For the foil, I used iron-on gold foil cut out using my Cricut. Ran into some challenges with the title on the spine, but finally got it worked out. I also used some watered down acrylic to “age” the foil and better bring out some of the texture of the foil overlaid on the cover material.
Then I turned my attention to the hardware. This took several days with quite a lot of trial and error. The end process consists of heavyweight (110 lb) black cardstock, which is cut and debossed, painted/drybrushed with metallic gold acrylic, and glued together in layers. Some pieces also include resin and some more acrylic. Even the protective corners use this process, with scoring used to allow for clean wrap-around folds to actually protect the cover. The debossing allowed me to get some good detail and a solid overall look without having to custom order hardware.
Protective Corners – Folded cardstock prior to acrylics
Work in progress hardware
The hardware was all attached using glue. I considered applying an additional protective layer over the hardware and cover but ultimately decided against it. Everything seems much more resilient than I originally expected. I had planned to make a strap to gold the book closed with a magnetic clasp – there’s even a magnet embedded in the cover chipboard. Unfortunately, the magnet is not strong enough to work the way I wanted, so I decided to leave it out.
In the end, not everything went as expected, but I learned a lot. I’m also pleased with the end result, and am happy to have added this tome to my shelf.
This post has been a long time coming… but it’s going to have to wait just a little while longer. First, I want to briefly re-look at why I’m not using Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu to play my games.
Call of Cthulhu
I previously mentioned that I don’t like percentile and roll-under systems – it’s just a personal preference.
Despite the updates over time, CoC is still rooted in a traditional Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system. Other than Sanity, there is very little alignment between the system and the style of story it’s trying to accomplish.
I prefer each roll of the dice to be interesting, so I don’t like systems that involve constant die-rolling – especially those that require multiple rolls to resolve a single action.
I want a system that supports and encourages the story, and stays out of the way the rest of the time. A game that has people developing complicated flow charts just to explain a basic mechanic (I’m looking at you Sanity mechanics) is not getting that done.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen new CoC GMs ask about a rule (and I don’t mean a weird edge case) and the bulk of the advice is to not worry about the specifics of the rules and just focus on what makes sense in the story. That’s great advice, but it suggests that a lot of the great stories told playing CoC happen in spite of the system, not because of it.
Trail of Cthulhu
I like that ToC directly tackles the issue of an investigation stalling because the players fail a die roll, but I don’t like the way it does it. Getting the vital clue automatically is fine, but it removes possibilities from the game. I like the idea of failing a roll to find a clue still resulting the players discovering the clue, but with an added complication. I think this approach still resolves the problem Gumshoe is trying to solve, but also creates new opportunities for interesting play.
I really don’t like the point spend system to obtain additional clues. I believe the best games encourage players to focus on what their PCs are actually doing, not on what skills they want to use. The point spend system appears to work against that idea.
Why Fate?
So that hits the highlights of why I’m not just playing CoC or ToC. Which leaves the question of why I’m using Fate Core. If you’re familiar with Fate, you’re probably thinking one of two things: “I like Fate, but I’m not sure it makes sense for an investigative horror game.” or “I can’t stand Fate; what are you thinking?”
I’ll address both of those ideas in more detail, but I think it’s important to understand that there is a difference between the rules of Fate Core and the way people play Fate Core. Put another way, some people play RPGs in a fairly typical style using the Fate system, while others view and play Fate as a somewhat different style of RPG all together. Neither is wrong, but these two different styles of playing Fate can lead to a fair degree of confusion when discussing the game.
System Gets Out of the Way
As I’ve mentioned, I prefer roleplaying games that emphasize actual roleplaying, which I loosely define as “making decisions and taking actions as though you were your character.” In other words, the players (and the Keeper) act based on what their characters would do an any given situation, NOT based on the mechanical options granted to them by the system or other mechanical factors like which skill they want to use. Not only do I find this style of play much more enjoyable (assuming the Keeper is capable of effectively running this kind of game), but it is also easier to learn and teach to others.
Not only does Fate Core support this style of play, but it explicitly encourages it. The Golden Rule of Fate, often paraphrased as “Fiction First”, instructs players to “First, figure out what you want to do, then consult the rules to figure out how to handle it in the game.” This is arguably the central tenet of Fate, and as long as you stick to this concept you should end up playing a style of game along the lines of what I’m going for.
Elegant – Powerful Simplicity
Again, I like a system that let’s us focus on actually playing the game and pursuing the story. I want a system that’s easy to learn for the players and doesn’t require you to look up rules every time a new situation arises. If you need a flow chart for a core system of the game, that’s not good. With an eye towards keeping players focused on what’s going on in the story, I also prefer dice mechanics that are consistent, don’t require you to figure out what kind or how many dice to roll every time, and require a minimum of math.
Fate has a fairly small number of core elements that can be applied in different combinations. They can seem simple and minimalist at first, but once you start seeing how they can be used, it becomes more apparent that they can be used to handle virtually any situation. This approach emphasizes determining what’s actually important in the moment, as opposed to simply ‘in this situation, always follow this process’. This can actually be more challenging for Keeper’s to learn, compared to other system, but it also offers more possibilities and helps speed up gameplay. Ultimately, it can make things easier on everyone. It also encourages Keepers to understand why they are choosing to use a mechanic at any given time – rather than just blindly following a step-by-step process – and how those choices impact the game. This can ultimately help produce better Keepers and better games.
And if you’re rolling dice in Fate, you’re rolling four dice and adding a few numbers. You might make a decision about re-rolling or adding a couple more numbers, but that core mechanic doesn’t change. The basic process is consistent throughout the game.
Scalable
As you learn more about roleplaying game (and adventure) design you begin to see patterns in different areas of play. For example, using dice to resolve an action attempted by a character is serving the same purpose, regardless of who or what is attempting the action. The more you can utilize the same basic mechanics for similar circumstances, the easier the game is to learn. This also minimizes the amount of focus that everyone has to divert away from experiencing the story from the perspective of their character and towards the mechanics of the game (the cognitive load).
As an example, some games might have a whole separate additional system for resolving combat between military units on a battlefield. In some games, this uses a completely different ruleset from the core roleplaying game, which means you have to learn a whole new system for a situation that will only see limited use. In other games, this uses a ruleset closely mirrors the core game mechanics, which makes it quick and easy to learn. It also allows the players to better focus on why that battle is important to the story.
Fate uses the same basic mechanics regardless of the players involved. Resolving what happens when a single soldier fights an opponent on the battlefield uses the same process as two infantry units engaging in close quarter combat. The names of the skills being used might be different – just to help differentiate that these two operate on different levels of scale – but resolving these two actions is handled the same way. Indeed, virtually every element of Fate’s system can be applied the same way at any level of scale.
Simplifies the Narration
One thing I’ve never liked as a GM is blocks of text to be read aloud verbatim as part of a scenario. It always comes across as forced and artificial to me. Unfortunately, I’ve also sometimes not been so great at coming up with detailed narration on the spot. I’ve also noticed two trends in that occur sometimes in mystery games: First, if the narration doesn’t include something, the players assume it must not exist – which limits the options they feel are available to them. Second, if the narration does include something, the players assume it must be important. Don’t mention a painting on a wall if you don’t want the players to inspect every inch of it. This can create challenges for the GM or Keeper.
Fate uses Aspects – short descriptive phrases – to describe just about everything in the game. These Aspects are open-ended and allow everyone to make assumptions about the world. Describe a room as The History Professor’s Cluttered Basement Office, and everyone can reasonably assume it contains a desk, bookshelves, books, papers, and artifacts, as well it being dark and dreary. There’s no need to describe all of those things individually. This might seem odd at first to some veteran roleplayers, but it is incredibly freeing and effective in practice.
Adaptable
I’m a firm believer that the best games align their ruleset with the setting and themes of the game. So if I’m not going to build a game system from scratch, then I need to use a system that is already set up for investigative cosmic horror – or a system that can be easily modified. One thing the Fate is known for is how easily it can be hacked to suit a particular need. In fact, I would argue that Fate is actually more hackable than many players think. It has a reputation for producing a very particular style of play, but it’s capable of fostering other styles as well.
Wrap-Up
So that covers the highlights of why I’m using the Fate Core system, but if you’re concerned about how Fate can be used for investigative horror – or if you don’t like Fate – it probably doesn’t really address your concerns. Which is why my next post is going to discuss what I’m changing about Fate Core, and why…
One question that pops up from time to time is how to actually instill fear into horror games. There’s plenty of techniques for setting the atmosphere – especially for games like Call of Cthulhu (CoC) – but I recently came across some really useful guidance in the newly released ALIEN RPG. And since it plays upon the idea of “fear of the unknown” it’s certainly suited to a Mythos game. I definitely plan to use this in my future games. And I also realized that I had unwittingly done so in a past game as well.
Cover of the ALIEN RPG from Free League Publishing
The ALIEN RPG repeatedly highlights that it is a horror game, and it briefly outlines three different kinds of fear (and how to use them). Combined with an understanding that the tension of fear has to periodically be released, I see a lot of potential here. The three stages of fear the game points out are Dread, Terror, and Horror. Here’s how they are described in the ALIEN RPG (Note that the game refers to the GM as the Game Mother):
“Creating horror in a roleplaying game is not always easy. Overdo it, and the players aren’t scared anymore—downplay it, and the game drags on. The key to Game Mothering horror is to manage pacing properly and keep the major threat hidden as long as possible. To do this effectively, you need to carefully manage the stages of fear in the game: dread, terror, and horror.
DREAD: The sense that something bad is about to happen, but no-one is really sure what or why. Dread is the first stage of fear in the ALIEN roleplaying game and should be employed as often as possible. The key to using dread is planting seeds and watching events unfold. The players know something terrible is about to take place, but without knowing what it is, they can’t do anything about it. This dread may evolve to the next stage, but sometimes it won’t—and that’s fine. Examples of dread:
A control panel indicates that the airlock was just cycled manually whilst all of the crew are accounted for on the bridge.
Someone finds blood on the walkway. The ship’s cat is missing.
A strange and leathery egg is found in a crashed derelict ship. It’s like something is alive in there.
TERROR: You feel terror when you know something bad will happen any moment now. It is no longer a question of if but rather when it will take place. From a roleplaying perspective, the feeling of terror is the most effective feeling of fear as the PCs are at their most helpless state. Therefore, terror often involves the scariest moments in a gaming session. Use it selectively for maximum effect. Examples of terror:
A squad of marines investigating an old mine steps into something slimy. One of the marines hears a hissing sound. She realizes that something is directly above her.
A colonial marshal following a killer in the deep bowels of a space station realizes that she is the prey.
A pilot on a stranded shuttle barricaded in the cockpit hears pounding on the access hatch. Something wants in.
HORROR: The ultimate form of fear is horror. Horror is the moment when the danger reveals itself. It is the moment of climax. The payoff that the earlier stages of fear have hinted at. But because of this, it is also less scary than terror. When horror hits, the game mechanics take over. You draw initiative and fight it or try to escape. Horror is vital to the game, but it should be used rarely and is often best utilized late in a game session rather than early. Examples of horror:
A corporate agent turns around and stands face to face with an alien baring its teeth.
The egg opens and a crab-like creature lunges at the closest crew member, attaching itself to her face amidst the screams of her friends.
Black, lightning-quick creatures crawl through the walls and roof towards the marine squad.”
After reading this a couple weeks ago, I immediately began thinking of ways to incorporate this into how I GM. Then, this morning, I realized this also helped explain one of my more successful scenes from a previous game.
Last year, I ran the Peru Prologue for Masks of Nyarlathotep. (I used it as a test for my WIP alternative to CoC’s mechanics: Our Terrible Fate.) The players were my two children and my mother. This was still fairly early in the scenario, but they were already a little paranoid – not freaking out or overreacting, but generally distrustful of everyone. (Also note that I used two play aids during the game that came in towards the end of the scene. I had a printed card showing what the monster looked like – not always appropriate for CoC but worked in this case – and I had Syrinscape’s MoN audio program on my laptop.)
(Spoiler alert: This won’t reveal any big details from the scenario, but it may ruin this scene if you intend to play it.)
The investigators were visiting a professor at the local university museum. The professor’s assistant was translating an old journal that may provide important clues. They are introduced to the professor and are having a conversation. As that wraps up, the professor mentions that his assistant should have arrived already. He suggests that the investigators could go down to the archive room and check on her. (Dread: What happened to the assistant, and what are we walking into?)
The investigators head down and discover her dead body. (This initially provided a small bit of tension relief.)
Then they looked over the body and discovered the nature of the strange wounds and emaciated state. (Dread: What could have done this?)
Then they notice bloody footsteps leading away from the body to another exit from the room. “We are NOT following those footsteps!” (Dread: What left the footsteps, and where did it go?)
The investigators then hear screaming from upstairs. (Dread)
Rushing upstairs, they hear signs of a struggle from inside the professor’s office. (Dread leading into Terror)
Heading inside, they see what appears to be a man clutching the professor. His back is to them. (Terror: It’s right there. What is it, and what’s it doing?)
The strongest investigator, a boxer, decided to grab the figure from behind to pull him/it away from the professor and restrain him. I narrated that the figure easily broke free from the investigator’s grasp and flung him back a few feet. It then turned and snarled at the investigators, revealing at strange mouth on an otherwise human-looking face. (At this point, I played the snarling sound effect in Syrinscape and showed the players the card so they could see the monstrous form of the villain.) (Horror: Big reveal.)
At this point, my son actually got up from the table with an “Oh, hell no!” and started pacing around. Everyone was on edge up to that point, and I think it was the snarling sound effect that really pushed him over the edge. This was immediately a big tension relief in terms of fear, but some of that tension was immediately replaced by the tension of “Okay, now that we’re face to face with this thing, what do we do?”
This scene was easily one of the highlights of our session. (Though admittedly, that may have been because I screwed up some other scenes. But that’s another story.)
This post is actually a more detailed response to a question on Reddit about prepping for a Call of Cthulhu scenario. Unfortunately, the comment limitations forced me to post an abbreviated response, so this is the more detailed post. It’s still a little rough, and far from comprehensive, but these are the basics of a method for prepping to run an investigative scenario. It can be extremely helpful for newer Keepers, as well as help reveal potential pitfalls in published scenarios before running them.
This applies primarily to prepping pre-made/published scenarios (including sandbox campaigns), but most of this can still apply to more free-form or improvised scenarios to one extent or another.
Read through the scenario to get some basic familiarity.
Identify the Fail-State. (Or if you like: Identify the Impending Doom)
What happens if the investigators fail – or if they don’t become involved at all?
This really helps understand what’s going on behind the scenes and is very useful when the investigators get sidetracked and you need to instill a sense of urgency.
For many scenarios this is fairly obvious – something like the cult summons a Great Old One, and so the apocalypse begins. But it’s amazing how many scenarios don’t really go into this – even popular ones like The Haunting, Paper Chase, etc.
What does success look like? What do the investigators need to accomplish to end the scenario successfully?
I’ve actually had scenarios flounder at the end because we couldn’t decide where to actually end things – this helps with that.
More importantly, it lets you determine one crucial thing…
What conclusion do the players need to reach in order for the investigators to be successful?
In the Masks of Nyarlathotep Peru Prologue, for example, the investigators need to return a gold artifact to its place in a pyramid in order to end the scenario successfully. So the players need to reach the conclusion that the artifact must be returned to the pyramid.
Understanding what conclusion the players must reach helps you identify which clues are really important and recognize holes in the scenario that could cause the investigation to stall.
Identify Locations & Characters. Make a list of all the locations and characters in the scenario. Also list any important artifacts, tomes, etc.
If you’re not sure if you should include something in these lists, ask yourself this question: Can this place/person/thing provide the investigators/players with information that will help them reach the conclusion or help them find other clues? If so, add it to the list.
Build Clues (Identify, Categorize, Organize, Fill Holes)
I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on this subject, but here’s the quick version.
This step is arguably the most central to how I prep for investigative scenarios, and in some ways it’s also what’s different about how I prep. Essentially, you are going to re-read the entire scenario and write down every clue you can find. Then you’re going to categorize and organize them.
Distinguish between clues and their sources. A translation of an ancient tome is not a clue, but the information contained within it likely includes many clues.
Treat clues as discrete, individual pieces of information – and write them that way. Write each clue as its own brief phrase or sentence, separate from other clues. If it’s remotely conceivable that the investigators could learn one piece of information but not the other, then they should be two separate clues.
This will likely result in a long list of clues – I had nearly 60 clues for the Masks Peru Prologue.
Categorize each clue as either Core or Supporting.
Core clues either lead to more sources of clues (locations, characters, etc.) or are vital to the players reaching the correct conclusion. Keep in mind that the players need not understand the conclusion to reach it. For example, the players don’t need to understand why returning the golden artifact to the Peruvian pyramid will resolve thing, as long as they figure out that it’s necessary.
Supporting clues are everything else. They don’t lead to new sources and are not critical to reaching the correct conclusion, but they do provide more information that explains things. These are the clues that help the players understand what’s going on. They might even help players reach the correct conclusion early, but they’re not necessary.
Organize your clues by the location(s) where they may be found. This can overlap into the next couple of steps if clues could be available only at certain times (in specific encounters). Also consider that clues can be static or floating.
If a clue can only logically be obtained in specific locations or encounters, then it is a static clue.
If a clue could easily be assigned to multiple locations/encounters, consider making it a floating clue. The location of floating clues is not determined ahead of time, instead the Keeper includes it in whichever encounter makes the most sense during play (or whenever the investigators need some new information to move things along). For example, the Master’s Last Will and Testament contains some important clues, but it could reasonably be found in several places throughout the house (or even elsewhere). The Keeper waits until the investigation has progressed a while, then when the investigators search the next possible location of the Will, the Keeper provides it.
Make sure that there are sufficient Core Clues to lead players to the correct conclusion. Also make sure that there is a clear path (or paths) lead to each of your Core Clues, locations, and encounters. Consider how the investigators would need to interact with each potential source of clues in order to obtain all of the Core Clues. You may find some holes in your scenario that you need to fill.
Holes that can cause the investigation to stall are often caused by the players needing information pointing to a specific location or source, but there is either no actual clue providing that information, or the action necessary to reveal that clue is not intuitive. Making a Clue Map can help identify these gaps.
For example, in Dead Man Stomp, the players need to end up going to a funeral the next day (where they receive more clues), and the latest version of the scenario makes it very clear that the Keeper needs to get them to understand the funeral is important. However, there are perhaps two clues that lead to the funeral, and there is very little that would even lead to the investigators receiving those clues. Understanding the holes in the scenario from this perspective makes it obvious why so many Keepers run into challenges when running it.
Identify Encounters & Opposition
Working through your list of locations, identify the encounters that could occur at each. Some locations may only have a single encounter, while others could have several. For each encounter, identify what opposition exists. What do the investigators have to overcome to accomplish their goal(s) in the encounter (obtain the clues or items, get assistance, escape, etc.)? In other words, what rolls do they need to make and against what? (This bit could vary somewhat depending on what system you’re using and your preferred style of play.) Some encounters may not have any opposition, if a helpful character or other source of information is simply providing clues now that the investigators have located it.
Encounter Summaries
Write a brief summary of each encounter, including:
Encounter Location
Character(s) introduced & character(s) present
Core and Supporting clues available in the encounter
Other relevant items, artifacts, tomes, etc. found in the encounter
Opposition that may be faced
Handouts or props that may be found in the encounter
Clue & Encounter Maps
Optional but very helpful (especially for longer/more involved scenarios), make Encounter and Clue Maps.
Encounter Map simply shows how encounters lead to one another (determined by the clues provided by each).
Group encounters at the same location together. Use arrows to lead from one encounter to others. If you have multiple pages, consider color-coding by location. Note which encounters are optional. Consider using different markings to show which pathways are based on Core Clues and which are Supporting.
Clue Maps are more involved, but this is where everything can come together.
Shows how encounters and investigator actions lead to clues, and how those clues lead to other locations and encounters. Full map includes all clues and encounters, but I also find it useful to make a second Clue Map with just the Core Clues and how they lead the players to the correct conclusion.
I’ll post examples from my Masks Peru prep, as that will probably be more helpful than trying to explain. Here’s a PDF of those clue and encounter maps.
Figure out what props you want and get them together.
I’m working on a method for playing CoC scenarios with my family that includes making cards for clues, locations, and characters. It’s been extremely successful so far and helps avoid some common issues that can come up in investigative games. So one of my last steps is to make these cards – along with some blank ones I can use if unexpected stuff comes up in play.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, in the past couple of years I have played two Call of Cthulhu scenarios with my family. The first game, The Haunting, did not go as well as I wanted. The second game, the Peru Prologue to Masks of Nyarlathotep, went far better. I learned a lot from both sessions, and studying those experiences can point to what worked well and what didn’t – pointing to a preliminary list of features for my game.
I’ve also played a fair bit of both Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror: The Card Game, not to mention numerous other board games. Again, examining what I liked and what I didn’t should help define some more features I may wish to incorporate.
Differences Between The Haunting and Peru
There are a few things I did differently when playing these two scenarios. While The Haunting didn’t go badly, my kids had a difficult time with it. We also didn’t really engage the system that much, and wading through the content of the prop handouts I used consumed a lot of time without a lot of benefit in terms of driving the investigation forward (great for immersion though).
System
When we played The Haunting, we used the Trail of Cthulhu conversion. There were very few dice rolls, and in general we didn’t engage the system except for during character creation. We didn’t quite reach Corbitt before we had to stop, which assuredly would have used the system due to combat. Not sure that would have gone well anyway, since we didn’t use the system much leading up to it.
For Peru, I used a work-in-progress version of the system I’m working now, which is a custom adaptation of Fate Core. There were a few parts of the system we didn’t engage with as much as we probably should have, but that was due more to some mistakes on my part as GM. I should have made the difficulty of rolls known to everyone, which I think would have helped drive the Fate Point economy. (I was leaning on my past experience of using unknown difficulties to help build suspense, but that wasn’t necessary.) I probably called for a couple of rolls I shouldn’t have, since I didn’t have any good ideas for complications from failure. And I should have called for a few more defense from horror rolls when the investigators encountered something strange or horrific.
Overall though, we definitely used the system a lot more in Peru, and it never felt like we had an excessive number of rolls. I had already put together a conversion doc that helped me quickly identify what skills would typically apply. However, even when the players wanted to take some action that wasn’t explicitly covered in the scenario, the Fate system made it easy to quickly identify a skill and mechanic to handle what they wanted to accomplish.
Character Creation
I think one of the differences that had the biggest impact for my group was how we got started with everyone’s characters. Our first time around we created characters from scratch using the ToC rules. This got the adults interested in their characters, but we spent a lot of time on this – and since we didn’t engage the system much, it was largely pointless. The choices of professions and such was interesting, but no one had a clue how the numbers for the skills would be relevant. We ended up spending around two hours on creating characters, whereas if we had spent less time on this we probably could have finished the scenario. More importantly, the kids were completely lost during this part. There were way too many choices for them to pick from, which turned them off from the beginning.
When we played Peru, I converted the pre-generated characters over to my Fate Core implementation and presented them to the players. So three people were choosing between about 8 characters. Since I was using a version of Fate, each investigator had a handful of aspects that provided a quick summary of the character, which made it easy for everyone to see how the investigators were different from one another and make a choice. After the investigation got started, I also had each player come up with a Drive for their investigator – basically a goal or concern they had related to the scenario or the other investigators. We didn’t have much opportunity to actually use those Drives in the scenario, but it allowed a bit of customization without requiring a lot of time.
I’ve though quite a bit about how best to handle creating characters in my game. I like the idea of starting with pre-generated characters for the first scenario or two and then allowing custom characters to be created. I also think providing the option to use pre-generated characters in later scenarios could useful – especially if you have additional players join the group. The option to customize pre-generated characters could also be useful. I want character creation to be quick and simple, but still allow for player choice and customization. When it comes to creating investigators from scratch, I’m also thinking of starting with a limited number of choices and then expanding them over time. This makes it easier to get familiar with the process without being overwhelmed and helps support character creation being quick.
I’ll probably deviate a fair bit from typical Fate Core character creation. The focus on the player characters in cosmic horror is very different from that of vanilla Fate Core, and the likelihood that investigators will die or go insane is usually fairly high in these types of games. I want the players to be invested in their characters, but not feel so attached to them that they are put off when they have to be replaced.
Character Creation Design Goals
Incorporate pre-generated characters
Allow pre-generated characters to be customized (Drives, Stunts, Ties)
Allow creation of new characters
Quick and simple character creation combined with player choice and customization
Limited initial character creation options that increase over time
Character creation is one of the areas where I have some developed, but a lot planned conceptually. I’ll create a separate post delving into this in more detail.
Clues
A central element to investigation-based gameplay is the discovery and interpretation of clues. One mythos game that really embraces this idea is Trail of Cthulhu, and it also touches on there being different types of clues. Building on this idea and adding a Fate twist, I handled clues a little differently with Peru than I did in The Haunting. This ended up working to great effect.
When we played The Haunting, I used lots of props, so there were plenty of documents that provided clues to the investigators. While these were great for immersion, they did little to overcome some of the common challenges with investigation games. Without going too much into it here, the players had difficulty parsing through the documents to separate the clues from the fluff, keeping track of the clues they had uncovered, and piecing together clues any sort of helpful way. When we ran Peru, which has far fewer physical documents, the players nevertheless had a far easier time keeping track of clues and figuring things out. They still had to find the clues and interpret them, so the core of this kind of gameplay remained intact without many of the usual challenges. (They even interpreted the clues incorrectly, but were still able to bring about a generally successful conclusion to the scenario.)
The first thing I did was to give clues a little more of a defined structure. Rather than a document or “the information Mr. Knott told you” being treated as a clue, each piece of relevant information obtained from those sources is a separate, discrete clue. So a document may contain several clues, each of which is written as a short, bite-sized, phrase or sentence. (Each Clue is also an Aspect, which has some other interesting advantages, but more on that elsewhere.)
I then created cards for each Clue, which were given to the players as the investigators uncovered them. I still gave the players documents and other props, which continued to provide immersion, and the players only received the Clue cards once they had read the documents. The Clue cards proved extremely helpful. The players could use them to keep track of and review what they learned and easily differentiate between actual clues and information that was just fluff/detail. I also categorized Clues as either Core (vital to the successful completion of the scenario) or Supporting (helpful or background info, but not indispensable), which is useful when determining how to handle investigator efforts to find those Clues.
Clue Features & Design Goals
Clues written as Aspects on Cards
Clue types – Core, Supporting, Floating
Use props whenever possible for documents, etc.
Clue and Encounter maps for the Keeper/GM
Some Clues lead to other scenarios (Fragments, Seeds, Hooks)
Locations
Mock up of Boston board used in The Haunting
One thing I had a lot of fun with when we ran The Haunting was a map of the locations in the scenario. I printed a large 20s-era map of Boston and put it on a bulletin board. I then printed out small collages of images for each place and pinned them to the board, with thin yard tacked between the place and its location on the map. As new locations cam up in play, I added them to the board. Gave everything a nice investigation/conspiracy feel and provided the players with some images to help visualize each location.
However, using this board did have a couple of issues. First, it was rather large. We had to either let it take up one whole side of the table or put it off to the side, which meant the players had to get it and walk to it if they wanted to look at the images or reference the map for any reason. It also meant that any time a new location was added, it took a minute to post it to the board and tie it to its location. Most importantly, using the board meant that putting everything away between sessions either took up a lot more space or a lot more time.
When we played Peru, I took a page from Arkham Horror: TCG and decided to use cards. In that game, each location is represented by a single card. Obviously, this doesn’t take much space, and it has the added benefit of allowing for any size location to be represented in the same way. I made a card for each location that contained its name, an image, and an aspect or two describing the location. I started out with only the starting location in play. As places came to the attention of the investigators during the scenario, I put the cards for those locations into play (assuming they knew enough of the location to actually get there).
In practice, this worked extremely well. The players were provided with an array of options of where to go, and as they gathered Clues and learned more they revealed new locations. Essentially, it provided a visual path to follow. They still had to decide where to go and what to do when they got there, but they always had some idea of where to go to look for more Clues.
I also created a sort of “board” for the Ruins in Peru. The idea was to echo the process of exploring a location in Mansions of Madness. I showed the players the map of the Ruins and they described what they were doing as they checked them out, but once they went underground, I laid out tiles representing the tunnels under the ruins. They started out with only a couple of tiles branching in two or three directions. As they explored I added more tiles (and also a few Aspects that described the environment). Combined with the creepy sound effects of the Peru module for Syrinscape that I was using, the players were definitely spooked and cautious. It worked fairly well, even with just basic white tiles with no art. The descriptions provided by the Aspects and the process of revealing the map only as they explored it, plus the atmospheric sound effect, was more than sufficient to set the mood and keep them on edge.
There were a few things that need to be refined too. I think providing the players with the map of the ruins worked okay, but I think using cards to represent each area of the ruins could have some benefits. The ruins on the surface were kind of an odd middle ground between the “Encounter” and “Investigation” levels of the game, so I need to look at that some more. When there wasn’t anything of consequence for a couple of tiles in the tunnels, the process of “Which way do you go? That way. Here are more tiles. Now where?” got a little tedious and pointless. Obviously, Mansions of Madness has a lot more structure defined with turns, actions, and such, so I’ll have to work on how to structure this Investigation level of play better. I hadn’t really delved into that yet for this first play through, so all in all it went well. And of course having art for the tiles would be a big improvement. I’m a little concerned that while converting scenarios to this system should be fairly simple for the most part, creating tiles for the Investigation of specific locations could be a challenge and big time sink.
Location Features & Design Goals
Support quick set up and tear down
Include image and descriptions/Aspects for each location
Use cards for locations at most levels of gameplay
Put location cards into play as players learn of them
Player pieces can be placed on cards to indication their location during Encounters
Investigation of locations transitions to tile-based board/map with player pieces
Additional tiles are added as players explore
Support additional locations not specified by the scenario, as players desire to visit other places
Non-Player Characters
In games like Call of Cthulhu, keeping track of all the non-player characters the investigators come across can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. This can be such a big issue in larger campaigns that Chaosium’s most recent edition of the epic Masks of Nyarlathotep includes 12 pages of NPC portraits that Keepers can present to players just to help them keep things straight. It’s always a good idea to provide information in more than one form (spoken, text, images, etc.) whenever practical, since different people have an easier time processing and recalling information in different ways.
There aren’t that many NPCs in The Haunting, and only one of them is all that memorable. Since we didn’t reach him during our play through, NPCs weren’t that big of a deal during that game. On the other hand, investigators in Peru will actually get most of their clues from NPCs. There is a lot of repeated interaction with different NPCs, and even one that uses an alias. Again, I used cards for each NPC, including the image from the scenario guide and a couple of descriptive Aspects. Worked really well for helping the players get a quick impression and keep track of everyone.
One thing I need to do differently is with the Aspects for each NPC. I included some information on the cards that the PCs wouldn’t reasonably be aware of at first. I need to focus on basic first impressions and allow for additional details to be added as they are uncovered. Additional details/Aspects could be physically written on the cards, put into play as separate cards, or an alternate version of the card could replace the original. I actually used the last approach for one of the named NPCs in Peru whose “true physical nature” is revealed partway through the scenario.
Character Features & Design Goals
Use cards for each named NPC or mob
Include name, image, and descriptions/Aspects for each character
Allow for additional details of NPCs to be revealed and put into play, beyond what’s on their card initially
Wrap Up
Obviously, there are plenty of other elements to the game – details on the investigators, character advancement, tying scenarios together, etc. – but these are the big ones that made a clear difference in our two games, so they are taking center stage to start out. As I mentioned, I already have more developed or planned for character creation and clues as well, which I’ll hopefully get around to posting in the near future.
This series of posts discusses some of the existing games set in the Cthulhu Mythos that are currently popular and why I’m not just playing one of these games.
In Part 1, I looked at two major board/card games, Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Both of these games place a large emphasis on meta gaming over making story- or character-based decisions. Both also suffer from a lack of player options due to the lack of a GM. There’s a lot to learn from these games, but they just don’t offer the gameplay I’m looking for.
So now let’s look at those mythos games that have a GM and place a higher priority on story- and character-driven decision-making: Roleplaying games. In other words…
Why not just play an existing roleplaying game?
To some extent, what I ultimately want to do is play a roleplaying game like Call of Cthulhu, but some changes are necessary to be able to play with my family in a way we’ll all enjoy. And I think some of these changes can actually provide a novel way of dealing with some of the challenges that frequently come up in investigative roleplaying games.
First, I should provide a little background. While I’ve played a few different RPGs over the past 20+ years, I’ve also studied a great many more to varying degrees while I worked on my last project. Most recently, the two systems I have focused on most over the past few years are Burning Wheel and Fate Core. I’ll talk more about these two systems and how they factor into my plans later, but for now I’m going to focus on three of the most popular Cthulhu Mythos roleplaying games currently on the market.
CoC 7th Ed (Image taken from the Chaosium website)
Let’s start with the granddaddy of mythos gaming: Call of Cthulhu (CoC).
Thousands of players have shared stories of great/horrific times they’ve had playing this game. A big part of my goal is to be able to have similar experiences with my family and make use of the decades of content available for this game. CoC essentially created the standards by which most mythos games are judged. The integration of sanity and madness into RPGs largely started with this game, and it will be a big inspiration for me moving forward. I backed the 7th Edition Kickstarter and would be happy to own just about anything released for this game. That said, there are a few things about the system that I’m just not a fan of.
First of all, at its core CoC really just uses a standard, traditional RPG system (Basic Roleplaying, BRP). The elements of the system that actually reinforce mythos or investigation themes are just bolted on. Sanity has been continuously refined over the years and is fairly well developed at this point, but there is very little to this system that actually relates to investigative gameplay. In fact, about the only element of the system that specifically relates to investigating some sort of mystery is the Idea roll. And to be honest, I hate the Idea roll.
On its face, the Idea roll is a fairly good… idea. It was created to solve a problem that can come up in lots of RPGs and can be especially prevalent in investigative games: For whatever reason, the players can’t figure out what to do next to advance the story. So they roll some dice to get a hint from the GM (or Keeper, if you prefer). It’s really not a bad solution, but it’s just not a solution I like. To me, it feels like a band-aid slapped on a hole – one that shouldn’t exist or at least should be subjected to better treatment.
So this is one reason I don’t want to play CoC as written: The one element of the system that is really tied to an investigative game is a mechanic I don’t personally like. The other big reasons are also ultimately an issue of personal preference: I don’t like the dice or the basic mechanics.
As I have played and studied games over the years, I have learned a few things about what I like and what I don’t. I don’t like systems that use lots of different size of dice (d4, d6, d10, etc.). I don’t like percentile dice. I don’t like roll-under systems. I’m not really sure why, as rationally I see some value in a percentile mechanic being easy to explain, but I’m just not a fan of these types of systems.
I’m also actively trying to minimize the recordkeeping and math the players have to deal with. This is partly because I know many players – and especially my kids – don’t want to deal with this. It’s also because I have a tendency to put together things that others feel are too complex, so I’m continuously trying to guard against that. I’m honestly not too sure how successful I’ll be on that front, but one look at a CoC character sheet with fractional values is a turn off.
Another thing that initially concerned me about CoC was the setting – specifically the time period. While there is a wealth of content out there covering decades, even centuries, the bulk of CoC is centered in the 1920s. As I have written elsewhere, the big reason I stopped working on my last project was that the setting was so foreign that my family – especially my kids – would have a hard time playing in it. When I decided to pivot to a mythos game, I decided to stick with a modern setting so my kids would be able to easily find their footing. However, having already run a test game set in the 20s (the Peru Prologue for Masks of Nyarlathotep), I’m thinking that this won’t be much of an issue. The setting is still familiar, and the other elements I’m introducing to the gameplay help ensure the players don’t ever feel lost.
ToC (Image taken from the Pelgrane website)
Next up is a game that retooled the basic CoC concepts and integrated them into a system specifically designed for investigative roleplaying: Trail of Cthulhu (ToC).
In my view, there are three major advantages of ToC when compared to CoC. First, clues and investigation are built into the system from the ground up. Second, sanity and horror are further refined to better portray the nuances that exist in mythos fiction. Third, the game offers adjustments to players and GMs depending on whether they want to play a more action-driven, pulpy game or a more classic, purist game.
Bottom line: There is a lot to learn from ToC’s approach, and I expect to lean heavily on it. However, there is one major element of it that I just don’t like. The system resolves the problem of “what if the players roll badly and don’t find the clue?” by making discovering clues nearly automatic. As long as the character is in the right place and is using the right skill, the clue will be found. It builds on this by also incorporating a spend mechanic that allows a player to spend points to uncover additional clues or information. This is where the game loses me.
There are two reasons for this. First, it smacks of encouraging a meta approach to the game. It becomes less about what the character would do in that situation and more about how many points you have available. I’ve seen players complain that the game just becomes an exercise in traveling to a location and reciting a list of skills. That’s something a GM should be able to overcome, but the fact that the system can effectively encourage this line of thought is a problem. Second, this approach robs the GM and players of an opportunity created by failed rolls. One longstanding challenge of many, more traditional RPG systems is what happens when the characters need something to advance the story but fail the roll that was to provide them with it. This automatic-success, point-spend system resolves that issue, but there is a way I find far more interesting.
As seen in games like Burning Wheel and Fate, a failed roll could mean that the character does not get what he was after – but it can also mean the character gets what he wanted with some sort of additional complication or twist. Not only does this ensure the story always advances in some way, it also creates great opportunities to take the story in a new direction. For me, there’s just too much potential to ignore. So I know that many players have had success with ToC’s mechanics, but they’re not for me.
Delta Green (Image taken from the Delta Green website)
When I decided to start working on a mythos game set in the modern day, I naturally took a hard look at another major mythos roleplaying game: Delta Green (DG).
Of course, DG also uses a percentile system, so that was an immediate issue for me. One element the system really has going for it is the integration of investigators’ ties to the outside world – their family, friends, and colleagues. This is one of the most commonly cited parts of the system that make it stand out, and an idea I may end up borrowing from.
Ultimately, a major reason I decided to not just play DG was the setting. To me, it feels like a pulp version of the Cthulhu Mythos (or maybe the first Hellboy movie) married to the X-Files. Now don’t get me wrong, that sounds awesome and is something I’d like to play. I could probably get my wife excited about a game like that. I may end up exploring this setting further, but for my immediate goals it just places too much emphasis on the government conspiracy angle. A common element to cosmic horror investigative roleplaying is that the player characters are everyday people. That’s an element I want to keep, at least as a starting point, so a game that starts from the assumption that the characters are government agents isn’t quite what I’m looking for.
Wrapping Up
So that covers some of the reasons why I’m not just going to play one of these RPGs, but there are other reasons too – reasons not tied to the specific system used by a particular game, but that are generally common to roleplaying games across the board. I’ll explore those more in the next post, which will hopefully shed more light on why what I’m envisioning is a little different.
This series of posts is going to discuss some of the existing games set in the Cthulhu Mythos that are currently popular and why I’m not just playing one of these games. To be fair, I actually am playing some of them and have great opinion of the others, but they just don’t fit what I want to play with my family – at least not on their own. I also touched on some of this in my last post (Background and Early Concept), but this will explore the issues in a bit more detail. Beware that this point could conceivably contain some minor spoilers related to some of these games.
Of course, there are numerous mythos-themed games on the market right now. Specifically, I’m looking to play a game that embraces the cosmic horror of Lovecraft’s mythos, as well as the investigative gameplay suggested in numerous mythos fiction and brought to gaming most notably through Call of Cthulhu. With this in mind, quite a few games are ruled out, particularly those where players take the role of cults, Great Old Ones, etc.
Roleplaying, Board, and Card Games
The mythos games I actually play most often are those produced by Fantasy Flight Games, specifically Mansions of Madness (MoM) and Arkham Horror: The Card Game (AHTCG). I’ve played the original Arkham Horror board game (and have the latest edition preordered). I’ve also played both editions of MoM, and while I mainly play the second edition these days, I expect to draw some inspiration from the first edition as well. Needless to say, Fantasy Flight Games has made a fair amount of money off me.
Likely the biggest reason that I play these games more often than others is that they can actually be played solo. This is a huge advantage in making these games accessible for easy play, but it also results in some drawbacks which I’ll come back to in a moment.
As with most of FFG’s games set in the mythos, both of these games derive their difficulty from a combination of time pressure and trying to make the most efficient use of available character actions. While this works to help realize the overwhelming odds the character’s face, it also results in every game feeling similar in many ways. It also strongly encourages a very meta-based approach to playing the game, which tends to discourage any roleplaying or attachment to characters. It also makes the game much less accessible to the people that are less avid gamers.
Mansions of Madness (image taken from the FFG website)
Between these two games, Mansions of Madness is the most detailed. Each scenario includes rooms or buildings the investigators can explore in detail, there are detailed clues that must be pieced together, and it is probably the closest board games currently get to a Call of Cthulhu type of investigation. However, the fact that each scenario is limited to a single location is a major drawback. There is one level of detail, and the level of complexity that can exist within a single location is very limited. There is no campaign of any kind, nor any character development. While it might be theoretically possible to link related scenarios together, each occurring at a separate location, this has not been implemented and would also create some other issues.
Mansions of Madness also tends to be fairly straightforward in the win-or-lose department – even to the point that it sometimes departs from what would make sense in a mythos story. For example, I played a scenario in which the investigators had to locate some information and then escape town by boat. This is generally considered one of the most challenging scenarios in the base game and involves exploring an area around the docks to find what you need while evading wave after wave of enemies. I played using three investigators, and managed to get two of them and the information to the boat. I had used one investigator to lure the enemies away and create an opening to the boat for the others. Due to some poor in-game text it was not obvious that I had to get everyone out, so the remaining investigator was not in a good spot. Nevertheless, I managed to get him to the docks, which were now surrounded. Using a lantern he started a fire that cleared the docks of enemies so the others could escape, but died in the process. Now in terms of mythos fiction, this would probably be considered a “good” ending – one character sacrifices himself to save the others and ensure they escape with information necessary to save the world – but in MoM this was just ruled a loss.
In MoM, there are standard actions that are always available to characters, and occasionally some scenario-specific actions, but the players are always limited to just a handful of predetermined actions. I also decided to try playing a scenario using my work-in-progress system in place of the basic mechanics to see if it would work. While successful, this experiment also made me realize something else about the game: It involves a LOT of rolling. Once each scenario gets to a certain point, you’re making a minimum of 1-2 rolls per investigator every turn. Once I realized this, I felt like this was just rolling because the system said so, not because of anything that happened in the fiction. The game does a fair job of providing flavor text to justify the rolls, but once you notice this issue, it’s hard to ignore.
Finally, the game is actually very atmospheric. Employing a modular board composed of individual rooms, streets, and other locations, lots of different types of environments can be created. The required app provides sound effects and visuals which work well. Most importantly, the fact that the board is revealed a little at a time does a great job of adding to the suspense and mystery of the game.
Arkham Horror TCG (image taken from the FFG website)
Arkham Horror: The Card Game handles some things better than MoM, but that comes with some tradeoffs. Rather than a modular board, AHTCG uses cards to represent locations (as well as most other things). This use of cards allows for a much broader variety of locations in terms of scale. In one scenario, each location could be a single room in a house. In another, each location could be a different building or area in a town, or even an alien environment on the other side of a strange gateway. This gives the game significantly more flexibility compared to MoM and is one of its biggest strengths.
The other nice thing about AHTCG is that it is designed from the beginning to support campaign play. The players’ actions in one scenario can actually have an impact in later scenarios, eventually building to a conclusion at the end of the campaign. There is also a degree of character customization and development. There’s a lot of potential here, and some interesting story lines can be experienced, but there is a downside that prevents the game from delivering the kind of investigative experience I’m looking for: A decided lack of detail.
Similar to MoM, players are limited to a fairly standard set of predetermined actions. More actions can open up through development, but their abstract nature means they are usually chosen for their mechanical affect on the meta side of the game, rather than for any roleplay-based reason. Far more problematic is that both typical character actions and clues are even more abstract. Exploring a location to obtain clues doesn’t get any more detailed than that. There is no mention of what the character is doing at the location, nor is there any mention as to what the clues are – they’re just tokens. The game ends up boiling down to acquiring clue tokens in order to advance a deck to progress the story before something bad happens. Since there is no detail to the clues, there is very little sense of mystery or investigation.
The game also employs a set of tokens in a cup or bag instead of the usual dice. While this does allow probabilities and effects to be altered from one scenario to the next, I personally don’t like token-based systems. They just don’t feel as random/balanced, and I seem to get the same tokens repeatedly. It may just be a psychological thing, but it’s a big turn off for me.
Ultimately, both of these games in their current forms suffer from a shared limitation: Players choice is severely limited. The game and setting cannot adapt to whatever ideas the players may come up with, so players are forced to stick to a narrow set of options. Essentially, it is railroading to its fullest. Without a GM or similar role, there just isn’t much of an alternative. The lack of a GM opens up some doors in terms of solo play, but in my opinion it’s just not a good trade.
There’s a lot of good ideas in these games – as well as a few others – that I plan to steal borrow, but on their own they just don’t provide enough of what I’m looking for.
Why not just play an existing roleplaying game?
This got a bit long, so I decided to split this up into a series of posts. In the next post, I’ll look at some of the main mythos roleplaying games.
I’ve been working on a system to play mythos scenarios that incorporates elements from other tabletop games. It’s inspired by Call of Cthulhu (CoC) and Trail of Cthulhu (ToC) – plus a couple of other RPGs – as well as board games like Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror: The Card Game (FFG‘s got their hooks in me). My main goal is to make playing more of the wealth of content easier with my family, so a lot of my efforts are based on making the game more accessible and minimize some of the challenges that can come up in play. In the end, I expect it to end up occupying a middle ground between pen and paper roleplaying and a board game.
Background
I’m a big fan of both Mansions of Madness (MoM) (both editions) and Arkham Horror TCG, as well as numerous other board games. At the same time, I also love the greater player freedom (and corresponding greater potential twists) afforded by a tabletop RPG.
I ran The Haunting using Trail of Cthulhu a couple years back with my family – two adults and two kids. None of them had any roleplaying experience. I used lots of props and the adults fell into the swing of things naturally. Had fun, though we didn’t actually engage the system that much. The kids had a more difficult time, partly because the abstract nature of the game (no board, pieces, turns, etc.) made it more difficult for them to engage.
On the other hand, there’s a lot my kids like about Gloomhaven and Descent. They seem to enjoy the basic dungeon crawl concept (although the tactics of how to use their cards was a little challenging) and they liked how missions were linked together to tell a larger story and unlock other missions. Obviously we all also liked unlocking character options and how even when your character died you didn’t feel like you had lost all progress.
On its face, something like Mansions of Madness would seem to strike the ideal balance between dungeon crawler and RPG for myself and the kids. However, there are a couple of shortfalls. The actions are too restrictive to allow for the freedom seen in an RPG, but too varied for my kids to easily decide what they want to do. The scenarios are generally win/lose with little variance. Decisions have no impact outside of the current scenario, so there is no campaign feel.
So the idea is to borrow concepts from all of these games to be able to play the way I want.
Preliminary Concept
So here’s the basic idea so far. You have a Keeper and Investigators a la 1st Ed MoM, or CoC/ToC RPGs. You have two basic levels of play.
I originally referred to the first level of play as the “World Map”. This could be the entire world, just a region, or a town. For more involved campaigns you could even have multiple maps at different levels. I originally conceived of thus as a map showing the various locations the investigators can travel to. As they progress in the story, the map can change. New locations can open up, locations can be closed off, or travel restricted in some ways. Having converted and played a CoC scenario, I have taken to actually using cards to represent these locations.
Investigators can visit locations and engage in Encounters. Think of Encounters like common scenes in an RPG, for a Lovecraft game something like looking up some information in the local library or purchasing supplies. You may talk to some NPCs and make a few skill rolls, and the scene could even be really important. But if there isn’t any detailed combat or exploration, and the relative positions of the investigators don’t matter, then it can be handled as an Encounter.
However, at some locations the investigators can switch to the second level of play: Investigation. This is very much like the missions from Gloomhaven or Descent, the scenarios from MoM, or a big scene from CoC/ToC that involves searching through a location room by room, combat, etc. The Keeper builds out the map of the location as the Investigators explore. In addition to the advantages that this brings to keeping things straight in combat, the level of tension created by revealing portions of the map a little at a time is a great addition.
A typical adventure/story would involve at least a few Encounters and one or more Investigation Missions. Depending on what the Investigators do the details of those Encounters and Investigations would vary as determined by the Keeper. Investigators could also come across clues unrelated to the current scenario, but which lead into others. In other words, these are hooks which unlock other locations/scenarios.
Using Existing Content
Given the wealth of mythos content out there that I want to play, I need to be able to use my system to play it, which means I need to be able to convert it. Playing converted content is also a good way to test out and continue to develop the system, so converting and playing existing mythos scenarios has become a major focus. I’ve already played the Peru Prologue for the Masks of Nyarlathotep Call of Cthulhu campaign, and I’m currently converting the classic Call of Cthulhu introductory scenario, The Haunting.
One concept I’m incorporating into my The Haunting conversion is giving the Keeper tools to resolve scenes in different ways, depending on what the Keeper and players want to focus on in terms of story and gameplay. In essence, the game could be played as a full pen & paper RPG, a simpler (and shorter) tabletop game, or anywhere in between. To that end, each scene could be played using one a variety of methods. The Keeper chooses how to play through each scene depending on how important the scene is to the story, what the players are likely to find most interesting, how much time and focus they all want the scene to take in the scenario, etc. In addition to helping the Keeper keep things interesting for the players, this also allows for gameplay to be sped up or slowed down depending on how much time everyone has to play and in how much detail they want to explore each scene.
Differences Between The Haunting and Peru
The first thing I did was to give clues a little more of a defined structure. Rather than a document or “the information Mr. Knott told you” being treated as a clue, each piece of relevant information obtained from those sources is a separate, discrete clue. So a document may contain several clues, each of which is written as a short, bite-sized, phrase or sentence. (Each Clue is also an Aspect, which has some other interesting advantages, but more on that elsewhere.)
Investigators can visit locations and engage in Encounters. Think of Encounters like common scenes in an RPG, for a Lovecraft game something like looking up some information in the local library or purchasing supplies. You may talk to some NPCs and make a few skill rolls, and the scene could even be really important. But if there isn’t any detailed combat or exploration, and the relative positions of the investigators don’t matter, then it can be handled as an Encounter.