Call of Cthulhu RPG

[Zomg]

EDIT: Sandy Petersen talks about his ideas and shit here

I feel you but he says, under the explicit heading "HOW TO PLAY LOVECRAFT":

The players are trying to understand what is going on. Knowledge is power. Once they realize what is happening, they can (usually) solve the riddle and save the world, though it usually requires a big boss confrontation at the least.

This is totally not true about Lovecraft. Knowledge isn't power. Once you understand you are ruined. "Power" like we understand the meaning doesn't exist in LC. And understanding is like a self-destructive sensual addiction, when you should stay on the straight and narrow of dumb incuriosity. The story culminates in getting high.

So I would say he was conflating Lovecraft with the essential gameplay and "goal-orientation" of D&D much more than the thinks he was.

 

[Menckenstein]

EDIT: Sandy Petersen talks about his ideas and shit here

I feel you but he says, under the explicit heading "HOW TO PLAY LOVECRAFT":

The players are trying to understand what is going on. Knowledge is power. Once they realize what is happening, they can (usually) solve the riddle and save the world, though it usually requires a big boss confrontation at the least.

This is totally not true about Lovecraft. Knowledge isn't power. Once you understand you are ruined. "Power" like we understand the meaning doesn't exist in LC. And understanding is like a self-destructive sensual addiction, when you should stay on the straight and narrow of dumb incuriosity. The story culminates in getting high.

So I would say he was conflating Lovecraft with the essential gameplay and "goal-orientation" of D&D much more than the thinks he was.

 

[JagreenLern]

I always wanted to play the Orient Express campaign. I bought it, but I'm a poor GM, unfortunately.

Could organise an IRC/PnP program get together on /gd/ to play it online, I'd be up for it.

If anyone is trying to get this together, I'd be interested.

 

[meh]

Cthulhu's awesome. I've played and GM'ed multiple times and IMHO it's best to play one-shots or several session games to the maximum effect - until everyone goes mad/dies/solves the mystery (as if Cthulhu games end happily ever after).

Use any RPG system you are comfortable with or the one you want to try out and just slap the sanity rating on it (with Mythos lores and such, but what starting character might have THAT??).

As for the setting, again - read up several variants and test for yourself. In my experience the best one-shot of Cthulhu we had, was a setting in current timeline, the same city we played as a players (capital of third world country), playing as ordinary people investigating trolleybus driver deaths/attacks. We had a great time, nobody survived of course and then got to go home through the same park, bus stations the game took place.

 

[Lord Rocket]

stuff

Yeah I thought twice about providing that link since it undermined my point, although the part I thought fucked my argument most was when he talked about the cinematic nature of the game.

To be honest I think the game has most in common with Robert E. Howard's take on the Mythos, which did influence Lovecraft to an extent. I remember reading, I think in that Howard biography by Mark Finn, that Lovecraft never wrote an action scene a la the chase in Shadows over Innsmouth until he'd read Howard's Mythos stories, and you're gonna get these sorts of scenes in any RPG. Of course, this does tie back somewhat to my point that the Mythos isn't just Lovecraft, and in any case I'm not sure what you say is true for all LC stories. Consider The Dunwich Horror - while the heroes aren't too happy about it by the end (SAN loss from seeing the monster, reading the Necronomicon, casting the spell), the monster is destroyed. You could easily play that out as a short campaign in CoC without altering the mechanics beyond maybe adding a new bind/dismiss spell.
It's probably a bit unfair describing D&D as 'goal oriented' as well, since D&D-as-written at the time was mostly raw unbound capitalism (1GP=1XP) rather than strict questing in the modern sense, and HPL's protagonists frequently had goals (the two stories mentioned, The Thing on the Doorstep, Mountains of Madness is fairly 'questy' as well, I think also The Case of Charles Dexter Ward but I'll have to reread it to make sure).

 

[Zomg]

Yeah Dunwich Horror undermines me

 

[Wolfus]

There is also D20 version of CoC PnP which is (IMO) better because rules are not chaotic as those by Chaosium.
Either way CoC is great choice.

 

[Quilty]

Interesting. Seems like a lot of people find the Chaosim rules too simple. I, on the other hand, found it clunky, so I went for the Realms of Cthulhu conversion which slaps Savage Worlds rules onto CoC. I like it because you can modify the game to be more dangerous for the players, or more pulpy if you don't like dying all that much.

 

[Grunker]

I would never use a d100 system for anything, much less CoC. In my opinion CoC is at its best with no system at all, or a very, very slim one.