Retro-Review Call of Cthulhu

Call of Cthulhu
by Sandy Petersen
Publisher, Chaosium

This is the fourth edition of the game released in 1989. First edition was 1981. The game is a softbound edition and after more than twenty five years it has held up to a dozen moves, time in storage, being lost at the bottom of a closet and re-found.

The contents are great it is based on the RuneQuest percentile system and is entirely skill based. No levels for these adventurers. However, I should note that most of your adventurers just aren't going to last long. You'll have fun while they last, I can guarantee you that but long, happy lives? Not in the cards.

I seem to remember the game came with two ten-sided dice but I could be entirely wrong, it was twenty plus years ago.

The players take the part of intrepid investigators and one player is the 'Keeper' or game master. The players investigate arcane mysteries. Usually very dangerous and deadly mysteries that almost always lead the character into doom, insanity, and death.

The skills offered and the sample character types cover about all you will need as an investigator of any kind that fits the genre. A scholar of the occult, a private detective or police officer, a scientist, or archeologist are all solid builds for this game. One thing you should not neglect is running skills.

Nearly everything in this game is immune to bullets, knives, hand to hand combat. Some can be budged with high-explosives or field artillery and there are rules for such. Better results are usually obtained by thwarting the evil critters' worshipers before they are able to summon whatever foul horror they are trying to unearth.

The game is absolutely chock full of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. It is true to the stories and the atmosphere. It give players and Keepers tips on how to roleplay the era and the type of stories that Lovecraft wrote. The illustrations are excellent and hold up even after all my abuse and time. The would fit in any game anywhere.

The game includes plenty of tips for a Keeper to set up a game and keep it taut and exciting. Doom should be just around the corner at all times. There is a list of horrific words to describe things in the Lovecraft mythos (squamous is a particular favorite). The creature list covers nearly every critter in the mythos and some that are just plain dangerous. Everything from an ape to a vampire can be found in the creature section. Vampires and werewolves and such are just in case the Keeper wants something low key and easy for the players to face after one of the Elder Ones.

The good things in this game just keep on coming. There's a size chart (players won't like it), some humor, a timeline of the Nineteen Twenties and so much more. If you can find a copy anywhere I still would recommend it. I have not played later editions so I cannot comment as to whether they hold up as well as this classic. At 190 some pages this is an information dense and very playable game. We even played a Hyborian age campaign using these rules and it was fun.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the most important mechanic that I believe that CoC introduced 'sanity'. Sanity is a stat just like all the others. You start with a certain amount of sanity and what you see and do affects your sanity (usually in a negative way). It is not uncommon for players to acquire phobias, suffer panic attacks, become unconscious due to the psychic shock or even become incurably insane). The sanity stat has been used in other systems by me an others and it works really well if your players are faced by anything 'man was not meant to know'. 

There is something in here for nearly any gamer, game master or game system. It's worth reading. A D&D game influenced by Call of Cthulhu can be tons of fun.

The Giant gives this game Two Mighty Thumbs Up.

Drop me a line in the comments especially if you've played any version of the game and follow the Giant's blog. It's lonely in these woods.

New Races Inspired by American Folklore

When I say 'America' I mean all of America from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle. These are non-player character or player character depending on your take on the legend and creature involved. Remember this is a player character interpretation. They may also appear later as a monster. We'll focus on one per posting.
 
By Patterson-Gimlin film, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=434396

The first is my own namesake the mighty Rainforest Giant or Sasquatch. Sasquatch while being mostly a large animal-type critter for modern folks. For Native Americans and a few Europeans Sasquatch is more of a 'person' in folklore.

We'll just keep with Sasquatch as his racial name, bigfoot is too cartoony and Big Figure is a specific tribal tradition.


Sasquatch
They are seven or eight foot tall hairy humanoids with long arms and legs and both sexes have a peaked head due to the jaw muscles in adulthood. Their feet are incredibly tough with thick leathery soles they can go anywhere a shod person can go.

They are immune to the extremes of weather found from the high basin desert to the coastal rainforest and north into the arctic the Sasquatch needs no clothing. Although in some areas they wear a loincloth of some kind they are particularly adept at weaving, especially plant matter. 

Despite their size they are incredibly good at stealth based skills. Sasquatch suffer no penalties for moving in rough terrain and can do so silently.

They are rare nearly everywhere live entirely solitary lives from other Sasquatch except for mating and mothers with their children. They normally avoid cities and prefer the wilderness or small communities. They avoid using metal tools and weapons and prefer wood, leather, bone, and other organic matter for weapons and tools.

Sasquatch receive a bonus in strength and constitution. They suffer a penalty to intelligence and charisma. A bonus to lifting strength, carrying capacity, or encumbrance is also appropriate. They receive a bonus to whatever stealth is used in your system. They can hide perfectly once per day or walk without leaving a trace once per day. Otherwise their rather distinctive footprints are easier for any tracking class to follow. Classes appropriate to the Sasquatch include thief, assassin, and fighter. Also cleric and druid should be considered due to their association with magic.

Their own language cannot be spoken by outsiders but wilderness types, Rangers, Druids, Shadow Wardens, etc can select the Sasquatch language for understanding but not speaking. They may also find using non-giant sized tools, armor and weapons difficult or impossible. They can understand most human languages however can only speak them in a rudimentary manner.

Socially they should be considered outcasts nearly everywhere. Alignment is any non-lawful. Now to a rather delicate subject. According to some Native American traditions and folklore they can and do sometimes have children with humans.

Half-Sasquatch look more like their human parents. With only their burly build and perhaps height showing signs of their Sasquatch heritage.

Bonuses include greater strength and constitution perhaps half of the Sasquatch, lower intelligence and charisma (perhaps either a cap on the stat or a half of the Sasquatch penalty). They should receive a bonus on stealth but not the perfect stealth or unseen passage ability. Half-Sasquatch can speak the Sasquatch language without penalty.

Classes appropriate for Half Sasquatch are Barbarian, Fighter, Thief, Ranger, Cleric, and Druid. Alignments can be any.

If you like this let me know. I left the mechanics open ended so that they can be adjusted for your game and setting. Please leave me a comment, I want to know what you think of my might people.

Note: The pictures are not my own and I make no claim upon them in anyway whatsoever. 

Romance and D&D

Since everybody and his sister read my post on Sex and D&D and I promised a post on Romance and D&D I figure I owe it to both my readers, I mean my veritable horde of readers.

As in my post on Sex and D&D I will get straight to the matter that all players (and readers) are eagerly awaiting, romance. Romance has been one of the driving forces behind the hobby since the beginning.

Why do people play their paladins like Lancelot or Galahad or Holger? Why do their dwarves seek deep treasures and their elves use bows (other than the mechanical benefits of course)? It's romance.

Players and Dungeon Masters have had a romantic relationship with the game since the beginning. Until I got dumped by my first girlfriend (yes even the handsome Giant has suffered rejection) I have never felt the same sense of frustrating loss as when I lost my first character. Other hobbies have their passionate players and advocates. I've sweated hours every day to perfect a technique or worked the heavy bag until my hands ached many times but I never felt the same unbridled hope and joy with a hobby as I did when I worked on a new module.

When I was working on non-player characters, designing an organic dungeon that fit in its setting, or fiddling on the details of an area's culture or ecology it was a labor of love of romance. When I was making a character sometimes his history, skills, and desires came to me in a flash of inspiration. At other times my character took days or hours of thought. I wanted everything to be just right.

I knew other players and dungeon masters who put the same love and care into their games and players. People would draw their players or the group, some kept a play diary, others drew maps of their adventures or wrote stories based on the characters. We negotiated our dialogue with our game masters with the same intensity we gave to talking to our girlfriends or boyfriends. Maybe more intensity as you could kind of coast talking to a member of either sex about their day but miss one clue of your dungeon master's description and everyone was looking up from the bottom of a ten foot deep spiked pit.

The hobby is romantic of course in a more important way. In the beginning while there were evil characters or chaotic if you go back far enough most were good or neutral. Usually we were on impossible quests that would have had Don Quixote mounting his charger and galloping to the rescue. 

If you weren't playing a character or game inspired by romance and action you were often playing one that was an explicit rejection of romantic themes and characters. Elric and Stormbringer are a rejection of romance. By the late seventies and early eighties we were seeing whole parties of evil characters while not unheard of before it became a big enough part of the hobby that whole campaigns were looking at it form the Necromancer's point of view.

Chivalric romance and planetary romance of the kind of Roland and John Carter were losing out to Drow Assassin Ninja's and Half Orc Clerics. You can play a game either way but one embraces and the other rejects the romance.

That's not to say that the romance, high ideals, impossible goals, tragic and doomed heroes, and unbearable loss was always adopted by all players. Some played it like a battle simulator or fancy chess moving their miniatures strategically from square to square or hex to hex with all the emotions of a war gamer. And just as much attention to their character's life story or desires.

At least half the first level characters I saw never had a name until a game master said, "Dave, what's your fighting man's name?" "Uh, Crom." or Barzak or Karne, were usually the answer. Something vaguely conanesque or fantasy sounding.

How ever you played the game and whether or not you read any of the appendix n that inspired much of the atmosphere you cared about your hobby. Most of the kids who played cared and cared deeply about their characters. I've seen adults get teary eyed when they had to hand over their character when they were killed by a vampire or otherwise became a 'GM' character or the character died.

It was never as bad as 'Dark Dungeons' made it look but it could get emotional. So the Romance and D&D was real and will stay real as long as one player cares about his character and one game master works hours to make just the right dungeon crawl.

Keep romance alive play fantasy role playing games.

If you thought this was a trashy sordid tale leave me a comment. If you thought this was a shining example of worthy of the Matter of France leave me a comment and if you disagreed with everything drop me a comment.

UPDATE: I've had a reader leave a comment on G+ saying he felt like this had been a bait and switch. I am not one to argue with my audience so for his benefit I will address the subject of relationships between characters at a later date.

Which Setting Would Like to Play In?

Okay, I have a couple of questions for all you readers. Which kind of setting for a pencil and paper fantasy game would you rather play in and GM?

Setting one an Arthurian era setting before the sinking of Lyonesse and Hybrasil. Something like the Lyonesse stories and Arthurian legends.

Setting two a fantasy setting in an altered North America set after a couple of thousands of years of migration from Europe and North Africa.

Both have fantasy, swords and sorcery and derring-do.

Question Two would you rather play a fantasy skill based game, class based game with levels, or a combination of the two.

Please leave answers in the comments. If you think of some options I've missed for game type go ahead and make recommendations.

Relics and Rubbish

So the Giant has had some Brood related issues. All giants have them if they are married. You have one chained under a mountain, another that is encircling Midgard, another chases the sun and moon, that kind of thing.

So it got the Giant to thinking. What do I have sitting deep in my treasure horde? What weapons and treasures do I need? Lets look a few that the Giant is just waiting the right time to acquire.

Let's look at some real treasures first then some that might have been real and so on. All pictures are the property of whomever owns them and I am making no claims to ownership of any of the images.

First is the Holy Lance or the Spear of Destiny



 This is the version that is in the Hofburg palace in Vienna. Whole books have been written about this artifact. While the lance itself has been tested to about the seventh century there is a nail embedded in the lance that is consistent with first century crucifixion nails. Many legends surround this lance. It is supposedly the lance that pierced Christ's side as he hung on the cross. The dating of the lance makes that unlikely. However, there are at least three other lances out there that could be the Spear of Destiny and there is that nail. If you use any one of the versions in your RPG the owner cannot be defeated in battle while he has possession of it. A mighty artifact indeed.

The Sword Curtana.



Okay, we can be certain of two things about this sword. It is not the original sword that was carried by Tristan or Ogier the Dane. Two it is part of the Royal Regalia of the English monarchy. For some reason for the first few hundred years they used this sword they simply remade another one. Can't see the reasoning behind that but there you go.

The sword is called Curtana because a chunk of it supposedly broke off in Morholt's skull. Since this is a copy it's simply tradition to make it blunt. The sword is called the Sword of Mercy because of the blunt point. I can't imagine that getting stabbed by a broken sword would be an act of mercy as that's exactly what most convict fights come down to is broken blades and lots of blood. The Giant would actually pass on this one. Besides mercy is just not in my nature. As a GM I would grant a boon or blessing for every honorable foe that was defeated but granted mercy with this short busted sword. The next one though....

Oliphant


Now this is not the actual Oliphant used by Roland but his probably looked something like this. These horns made from elephant tusks were popular in Europe for quite a while. The Horn of Gondor was probably influenced by the original Oliphant. It is said that if you ever blow this horn it will be heard by your allies. So maybe if they are close enough you could get some serious back up. If not you can wind up like Roland or Boromir.

Now we come to an actual dragon slaying sword. Probably the last in the world.
This is the Conyers Falchion. In legend and folklore this big bad chopper shortened a dragon. The sword is at a minimum seven hundred years old. Definitely a relic and not rubbish. In game terms I shouldn't even need to cover this one. It is a dragon killing sword. It also confers legitimacy in the eyes of the Crown and Church to the individual possessing it.

The Holy Grail or the Nanteo's Cup
There's not much left of this cup. For centuries pilgrims would come from far and wide to drink from this cup and be healed. But people being greedy would take a tiny bite from the cup because, 'who would miss just a sliver'?  So now no one gets to drink from it. Way to go you sick, greedy losers. Anyway, this cup was actually stolen and recovered by the police in a neutral exchange.

The Holy Grail so how do we work that into a campaign or game? No one has ever told any stories about it or anything before so we GM's are mostly on our own. In game terms if you drink from this cup you can be healed and heal anything you are tied to like for instance your kingdom. Find yourself unworthy and it will leave you. So if your queen is sleeping around with your paladin and you've had an illegitimate son with your half sister don't plan on holding on to this one for long.

The Oriflamme or Golden Flame
This is was the royal battle standard of France and kept at the Abbey of St Denis when not being carried into battle. It was displayed when there was no quarter to be given. The bearer of the standard was granted a great honor one he was expected to die for rather than allow the standard to fall or fall into enemy hands (the Oriflamme was lost five times). It was said to be red as it had been dipped in the blood of St Denis when he was beheaded. In game terms this standard must be borne by a Lawful Good fighter paladin etc. He must be noble true and worthy, willing to die rather than disgrace his standard or his liege. The bearer of this standard grants morale, stamina, and strength bonuses for all allies on the field. Losing it doubles those bonuses as penalties. Don't drop it. It can be fitted to a spear or lance and unfurled once a day.

If you think any of these relics are interesting drop me a line in the comments. If you own any of these and want to give them to the Giant, drop me a line and if you are a GM and have used historical items in your campaigns drop me a line in the comments and tell me about it. I love war stories.

Actual Play or Running Right Out of the Sandbox

Busy today. No time for my usual fare. However, I will give you Dungeon Masters out there a glimpse into the Giant Life with some actual roleplaying action.

I'll set the stage, I have in my infinite GM wisdom set up a basic Rome-type Empire as the setting. The characters are somewhere near the northern edge of the empire at the southern end of the Valley of Kings. It is high basin desert with harsh alkali soil, sage brush, bunch grass and not much else. The valley has been used for constructing tombs along both walls in often complex and deadly configurations dating back to pre-human and even pre-elven time. The further north the older the tomb. The Empire has allowed licensed folk to venture into the region and explore a selected tomb, all known tombs are cataloged, numbered, and marked on a map. They are sealed with the Imperial Church seal and that intact seal along with the corresponding permit allows one protection during the dangerous hours of the night. Not perfect protection but better than nothing. Adventurers are warned that the magic in the valley has dangerous radiation like side effects. Don't eat any grave offerings even if they look fresh.

Our players a stalwart ranger with a bear and a halfling druid with a bug deal going on, receive their permits and directions to their tomb to explore. They arrived without running into anything dangerous but the ranger and his pet bear 'Naugahyde' or 'baloo' or something find tracks leading in and out. Old tracks but since Ranger was such a good tracker and there had been no recent rain he sussed them out.

Worse the seal had been broken which negated the protections that the combination permit and seal provided, (the GM might have been a bit vague on that at first).

The two enter the dungeon to find every sign that someone had been messing with the place offering rugs and shrouds used to block light, and tracks lead further into the tomb.

The Ranger led the way to an area of sealed ossuaries and burial niches. Only not all of them were still sealed. Some had been looted and their contents tossed into piles on the floor. Of course, they poked through the piles (the Ranger wanted to carve runes on the bones for religious reasons or to read runes on the bones) and they found a flute made from a human thigh bone.

The Druid was worried, how could he study the insect life in situ if tomb robbers had been disturbing the pristine nature of the tomb? Never fear, he was able to view the fauna up close and personal. Tomb rats the size of dogs (I was thinking mastiffs our Druid, chihuahuas) started gnawing on our Druid. These rats were bigger than he was but our Ranger was to the rescue and had his bow-string snap. And he missed.

The fight progressed, I was getting worried because these were the clumsiest adventurers ever. One mishap after another. At one point the Ranger was sitting on the ground with a rat in his lap like Santa with a disease ridden, filthy, crawling with parasites, magically mutated brat. Who was trying to eat Santa's beard and face.

The druid was not without resources and decided what was needed was a crocodile. He opted for the small normal model but you know that it's not always the size that counts. Me, I would have called up the spirit of Godzilla or the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. This led to some serious rat chomping. Like head crushing decapitation time.

The druid and his bear, ('Thumbelina'?) rallied and put paid the angry 'lap-rat' and the rest fled squealing. I was gratified because I had no idea these big rats would be so dangerous.

Returning to the mysterious tracks, our party found a room that had been used and recently as the habitation of the living. Somebody was living amid these undead, mutated rat, disgusting insect and creepy crawly infested tombs. They also discovered a tomb spider.

Big as your fist, bright acrylic orange and green, the tomb spiders are endemic to the valley and Druid now had what he wanted; a bug to study. There were rumors that these spiders could use human speech and it did act as if it were used to people. The Ranger took a chance and talked to the critter.

For you DM's out there this little bug was a throw-away I never intended them to talk. I assumed they would squash him or at least shoot or stab but no they talked and charmed that little horror right to the edge of its web where they could hear its hissing speech.

The first and only real question they asked? "Who was living here?" not an unreasonable question. The answer? The most wanted man in the Empire a rebel general a known sorcerer, and cunning fighter. And apparently with the confidence in his magic and enough chutzpah to live cheek by jowl with a big ass spider, giant rats, and more, ghouls, vampires, ghasts, ghosts, specters, revenants, draugr, and other assorted undead than you can shake a stick at. 

The reward for the general alive or dead was more wealth than anyone could really imagine. Great heaps of gold, silver, doubloons and triploons. So they did the natural and patriotic thing without searching the chambers for any clues, treasure or anything. No looting of any kind. They high tailed it to see if they could track the General and his two companions. No looting. I even openly told them via the spider that the general had been collecting 'papers' from the tombs. There was a stack of scrolls I figured they would need to get through the hours of darkness plus more than a few others each worth a fair amount of coin but no they were too civic-minded to stop and rushed after the tracks. They lost the tracks but found a bandit ambush.

Bandits had been watching the tomb during the day and retreating to a safe spot at night assuming the General would only move during the day. They figured the druid and ranger would know the whereabouts of the General.

After some fruitful negotiations, the bear scared one bandit away and broke the neck of another but that was entirely an accident. The bandits they did search and found that they had been rolling their tobacco and smoking it with grave goods and shrouds. This had already began to mutate the killed bandit.

With a bounty on dead bodies they took the bandit and returned to the Imperial fort and waystation. They managed to enrage the way station's commander and nearly brought the entire garrison down on their heads.

They settled in for the night as it was nearing sundown and the area outside the waystation was filled with undead.

Will the blood of the freshly dead bandit attract unwanted attention? Will his spirit come seeking revenge? Who else is sharing the waystation with them tonight besides the soldiery?

We'll find out tomorrow morning.

GM's round up? What were we expecting? A standard dungeon crawl. I'm up front, if I show you a hook bite. I had just intended to make the evening hours a bit more dicey by having the seal broken. I had no clue they would actually talk to the spider, no clue they would want to know who was there before and was taken off guard by them abandoning a ripe juicy tomb without any looting or murder-hoboing. It was like they were playing actual people or something. 

And it was some of the best times I ever had as a DM.

If you had fun reading this you should play in one of my games. Drop me a comment and I'll send you an invite. If you are a DM with a sand box that's ever gone sideways let me know. If you are a player who's ever run off the beaten path let me know.