Quote from: NicephorusThis would be a good setup for a game.  
 
A lodge that is more than a bunch of old guys bowling and driving tiny cars in parades.  They slowly and secretly select community members to protect the community from supernatural forces. The lodge would have ancient lore that's been passed down and have connections to the national organization.  It would also have connections to local government so would have as much cooperation as could be given without arousing suspicion.

Reminds me of the Adept series by Katherine Kurtz.

Quote from: WarthurReminds me of the Adept series by Katherine Kurtz.

I picked those up at yardsale last year but still haven't read them.

They're good-natured pulpy fun.

Quote from: Erik BoielleWell, CoC as played by me and my groups yes. Is that an issue?

(And you had a a motorcycle-riding, sword-carrying, modern knight-templar wannabe?

What a total munchkin. Thats so not lovecraftian. Wouldn't you have been happier with DnD? Was he called Neo, perhaps?

:-) )

Was I skeptical about it?  Sure.  Was it munchkin?  Hardly!  He ended up being a wild west, ultra-Catholic, interesting character.  He added a lot to the game.

-O

The last Cthulhu game I ran was back in my college days.  It had:
* A mortician
* A mob assassin
* A criminal/thug
* A drunk riverboat captain

Oddly enough, the assassin came the closest to getting killed (by getting into a shoot-out between the mob guys and the cops).

The riverboat captain started to lose his grip on his sanity after reading a mythos book, but only so far as to become obsessed with drawing a particular symbol over and over again (kind of like the guy in Dark City).

Everyone, even the mortician, had a gun and at least minimal combat stats.  They all ended up surviving and stopping the evil voodoo cult.

My campaign was definately not arty, but not over-the-top action, either.  I use Dashiell Hammet, not Lovecraft, for my inspiration for CoC games.

Quote from: obrynWas I skeptical about it?  Sure.  Was it munchkin?  Hardly!  He ended up being a wild west, ultra-Catholic, interesting character.  He added a lot to the game.

Almost as if the game worked better with fewer normal people out of their depth and more John Mclanes...

Quote from: jgants* A mob assassin

Munchkin...

Have you considered a more low brow game like dungeons and dragons?

(incidentally, my point is little more than that you can see how this unhealthy attitude could lead to whole parties of drooling incompetents who can't tie their shoelaces let alone foil a nameless cult - who wants to be a munchkin?)

Something I always wanted to use in a campaign (Cthulhu or otherwise) but you are free to use.

The Shriners run a series of charity hospitals specializing in treating children with horrid diseases and physical deformities who cannot get the care they need elsewhere. They have a sterling reputation for their work in these hospitals, and have gained a measure of fame and respect for their charity work in this area. People will bring their poor waifs from all over the country, if not the world, to receive treatment. I've been in one for a good period of time, and I've seen first hand the work the dedicated doctors and staff do to help truly suffering children. Their work in the osteopathic and neuromuscular field is particularly well received. They're borderline miracle workers in many instances.

That said, these hospitals are also a ready-made source of virgin blood and children to sacrifice.

Just sayin'.

Quote from: Erik BoielleAlmost as if the game worked better with fewer normal people out of their depth and more John Mclanes...

I'm still confused what point you're making.  The game works fine both ways.  It's wonderfully flexible like that.  Mine had a decent mix of firefights & investigative creepiness.  Others may swing more one way than another.

...which is what everyone in the thread except you has been saying the whole time.

Quote from: You, responding to someone elseMunchkin...

Have you considered a more low brow game like dungeons and dragons?

(incidentally, my point is little more than that you can see how this unhealthy attitude could lead to whole parties of drooling incompetents who can't tie their shoelaces let alone foil a nameless cult - who wants to be a munchkin?)

That wasn't your point at the start of the thread, though.  Your point seemed to be that CoC is fatally flawed because it dares allow for rather mundane PCs.

You seem to really, really want to shoehorn all CoC players into your prejudices.  Who am I to stop you, though?  I mean, your game with a crappy GM and that podcast obviously better show how CoC is really played than about a dozen people telling you that those are nothing like their experiences.

-O

We played BRP CoC again last month and although the session was awesome, the rolls were a bit whiffy.

Seanchai

Quote from: Pierce InverarityFor an even more proactive approach to dealing with cultists & minions, google the legendary rpg.net actual play reports by American Badass.

Or not.

Seanchai

Never got beyond chargen with CoC, but let me see if I have a handle on this.

CoC invented as a horror game where a lot of the fun was, basically, watching your character die in interesting ways, or go insane. For this kind of play, it doesn't matter much what kind of character you make, you just have to be willing to walk into danger and enjoy watching the consequences.

Probably out of a combination of factors, i.e.:

a) Players who wanted more continuity and character identification, maybe because they were carrying over assumptions from other games;

b) Chaosium wanting to expand the game out of a niche that tended to imply occasional/alternative play, and turn it into a "main course campaign" game...

As I said, because of these factors, people wanted characters who'd survive fairly well from session to session. But not everyone absorbed the difference in character types that were suited for long term play. So you had a paradigm clash where people were highly attached to their characters yet unwilling to construct them in a manner that would give them a good chance of surviving through a series of "interesting" sessions. (This may have been reinforced if Chaosium never revised chargen to reflect different needs for different kinds of play. Did they?)

Result: either the players refuse to do anything interesting, or the GM has to resort to all sorts of improbable contortions to lead the characters safely through interesting situations.

Yes? No? Maybe?

Quote from: Elliot WilenNever got beyond chargen with CoC, but let me see if I have a handle on this.

CoC invented as a horror game where a lot of the fun was, basically, watching your character die in interesting ways, or go insane.

Not in my experience. You wanted to SOCK IT TO THEM, just like in any other game. It's just that, more than in many other games, part of the sockery involved a) sleuthing; b) given the power of some of the sockees, dealing death or burial from a safe distance (dynamite); and c) given the annoying lawfulness of modern society, stealth and subterfuge.

But whether you played it Holmes-ish (Cthulhu by Gaslight) or Indiana Jones-ish (Masks), CoC was never about horror as psychodrama, or the tragedy of eventual madness and stuff.

Your PC's SAN total is getting too low because his Mythos is getting too high? Excellent. He gets to be the librarian/sage/spell caster at Investigator Central aka Lord Cavendish's manor, and you roll up a new one for the fieldwork.

Also, CoC was supported from the get-go with regular, globe-spanning campaigns. Shadows of Yog-Sothoth was the first official campaign I ever played and one of the first published for any game. So, CoC was not designed specifically for one-off play. It was all about the layers of the onion, and R'lyeh at the bottom of it all.

Oh, well. So, who came up with the idea of making characters that can't SOCK IT TO THEM?

Beats me.

No, wait...

The Germans!

Seriously. Ask Settembrini or Dirk. CoC tea-time-style is how it got drifted in Germany as soon as the translation was out (which was fairly early). That podcast sounds exactly like that.

But that's drifting! Remember, Sandy Petersen went on to work on Doom and Quake. No tea-time here.