There are a lot of people out there that either love CoC or despise it.
I think that the difference probably has a lot to do with their first experience.

And probably, the trickiest part of running a CoC game is that first adventure: make it too fatal, too many horrific mythos monsters running about, and players will die or go nuts in droves and may not enjoy that experience.

On the other hand, if you just make it an historical pastiche with little or no action, it means boring-town for your players.

So what's the ideal first adventure for CoC? How do you balance out lethality with fun?

RPGPundit

Zombies.

Low power combats with plenty of suspense and investigation between zombie encounters...eases the players into the flavor of the game with something they can relate to from the start.

Because a Shoggoth will eat your face.  Also the defying understanding bit might be a tad much for nubz.

The first adventure of the SoYS campaign is perfect. It starts out mundanely if interestingly (talk / break your way into this Boston townhouse that's the HQ of this new esoteric order)... but then the PCs discover the basement... And once you've accidentally resurrected what looks like a cross between George Washington and a Gibbering Mouther you know this isn't Holmes and Watson after all.

I thought I remember in one version of CoC the suggestion that an extended campaign be treated like an onion.  A glib example:  Humans - Zombies, Mi-go and spirits - minor Mythos - Giant octupus headed monster, Man in Yellow (sp on exact title) or any insanity sucking monster.

Players being Lovecraft fans also helps.

Most people I have played CoC with have only a passing knowledge of the Mythos, if that.

Throw them up against a human cultist of some kind, someone with a few spells under their belt that they can screw with the players with (no summoning spells, though), but who'll drop dead of gunshot wounds like anyone else. Perhaps give them some loyal thugs to hang out with if you're worried about the PCs overpowering them too easily. There's plenty of adventures you can run just with human antagonists - from murder mysteries (good if you don't have any combat-oriented characters) to gangland violence (if you've got a group of combat junkies), and if you slip in some evidence at the end that the bad guy's motivations were bound up in a greater mystery it's a great way to prompt PCs to start investigating the Mythos - just where did that dude learn to cast those spells, and what was his big plan?

I tend to use "The Haunted House", which is in every freakin' COC edition since 2nd I think, as the first adventure. I rarely use prefab adventures, but that one's a lot of fun and it creepy without too much Mythos and features a haunted house: something anyone can identify with.

Spoiler

Plus they find a mythos book at the end, something that shows that there's a bigger picture and can lead to further adventures

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Once I had the PCs all be cops and they were investigating the local mobsters in Chicago. Slowly it dawned on them that these mobsters had an odd (and creepy) edge over the competition: they were cultists of The King In Yellow. No monsters, few SAN loss, but lots of good investigating and creepy encounters. Plus once they realized that the booze the mobsters were running wasn't quite booze the true horror of the situation dawned on them. It's Chicago after all - lots of speak easies.

-=Grim=-

I don't know if the "just send them up against zombies" setup would work all that well, unless you added some creepy Mythos spin to it. When people think of zombies, they usually think of stories that are not Lovecraftian in style. Maybe a better way would be to do something like "investigate the studio of your demented artist aunt" or somesuch.

The latest occasion I played Cthulhu sadly turned into Buffy the Vampire Slayer with ancient undead necromancers. My character was a tram driver in modern Budapest, and that... didn't work. :what:

There are a few choices. If the players are Lovecraft fans they let them know its cthulhu and let them build paranormal investigators.
More interestingly if they aren't fans then I would be tempted to make characters without knowing the genre. Just say its a Pulp setting in the 1920s or you are all cops with the NYPD or whatever. Then you can bring the characters together with a seemingly mundane plot, all the characters are invited to the reading of their aunts will and have to spend the night in her house to inherit, an unusual muder on the Lower East Side, they are all passengers on a liner travelling from London to New York... etc etc .. The key with the second type is to make it look like another sort of game usually investigation or Murder mystery and then drop the horror on them kind of sneaky like.

Depends a little on the professions of the group. For a journalistic based group, investigating some organised crime to begin with eases people in. Then at the end, some little snippet of info hints at something more, and you gradually excalate the action and introduce the mythos. Money-laundering for Cthulhu!

Quote from: RPGPunditHow do you balance out lethality with fun?

The lethality is the fun. I remember the days when CoC was survival horror. My players always took it as a challenge to see which character lasted the longest. I've had no new players complain that their first experience was a bad one, probably because everyone new before hand that the game was a meat grinder type game and also you get the atmosphere right, they will welcome the carnage.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: MelanI don't know if the "just send them up against zombies" setup would work all that well, unless you added some creepy Mythos spin to it. When people think of zombies, they usually think of stories that are not Lovecraftian in style. Maybe a better way would be to do something like "investigate the studio of your demented artist aunt" or somesuch.

Spoiler:

Spoiler

Which is another reason why I mentioned "The Haunted House"; the antagonist *is* a zombie, but a decidedly Mythos one and creepy as fuck.

So yet again I raise the flag for that adventure.

-=Grim=-