Call of Cthulhu Houserules

I'm running a CoC (6e) campaign now and players are having a blast. That includes me. It is a homebrew story called Eyes of Nyarlothep, where players are tracking down the titular stones in a race against Nazis and conquistador cults. So far they've had shoot outs in El Paso, fought eldritch owl-things in the Antarctic, talked to ghouls under the streets of Paris, and are currently stuck on the moon in the antediluvian past.

I might publish this at some point. 

I have a terrible memory, so I've storified & simplified the rules. Suppose I should have used Trail of Cthulhu, but don't have enough confidence in knowing the system yet.

Maybe my next campaign?

Anyway, here are some houserules we've agreed on:

SANITY POINTS FOR MVP

Every week we decide on an MVP - someone whose roleplaying contributed most to the session, either in terms of fun or story progression. We've decided a d10 SAN recovery for this henceforth.

LUCK ROLL AS ORACLE

I use Luck rolls like Oracles in Ironsworn to decide things. Whenever players are assuming things about NPCs or the world, I ask what they expect, then tell that what I think is more probable. Then they roll a Luck roll to see whether their or my interpretation is what we go with. This gives them some agency, but also means the gameworld is as mysterious to me as to them, keeping me improvising and interested. I also adjust the Luck roll down (ie from POW x 5% to x3%) if they assumption is a slim chance or unrealistic. For instance, at the German Antarctic colony of Neu Schwabenland where they were, they wanted a CB radio. They failed their Luck roll, and had to find other ways of getting a message out, which I decided was via the German radio office.

ONE TIME SKILL CHANGES

Since players had no idea what skills they would need when they chose characters, I allow them to do a one time irreversible change of a skill to suit a need they encounter. Thus far two have changed a language skill to Spanish, which they needed to read an ancient conquistador's diary.

BURNING APP TO GET CONTACTS

Last, I allow players to choose to 'burn' an Appearance point to get a reliable contact, be it an old colleague, friend, family, or ally. This doesn't reduce the App number, just the pool of contacts they can call on. For instance, the old professor tacitly heading the party announced he had a dear friend and colleague at Miskatonic U where they headed with their cursed tome. He had an Appearance of 10, so can choose 9 other contacts in future.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Dear reader, are there any houserules that make CoC a better experience for you? Feel free to drop some wisdom in the comments.

Stormbringer Redux #1 - Regional Weapons & Troops

After re-reading the game, I realized that it doesn't really have many mechanics modeling the larger struggle of Law and Chaos, the Champion Eternal, and the Multiverse / Thousand Spheres. I've put out a request on the I'm Begging You To Play Another RPG Facebook page for suggestions tackling these larger issues, and will get to them when I have ideas.

For my first foray into re-designing Stormbringer, I thought I'd start with something small.  One thing I always loved about the old game was the combat rules for Beggars.

This is a wonderful rule both for its inherent flavour, as well as its creation of a reason for the same 'class' to adventure together, in direct opposition to D&D's varied party model. It is a shame they didn't have more of this type of rich mechanic for the game, so I've decided to adapt it for my re-creation to give a bonus for regional weapons and units consisting of them. This is not only flavourful for the Young Kingdoms, it also echoes real-world regional troops like the Gherkas of Nepal and Swiss pikemen, to name a few.

REGIONAL WEAPON ABILITIES

If you wield the weapon of the region from which you come, you get 10% to skill and +1 to damage. Obvious examples are a Melnibonean wielding a bone bow, a Filkharian using a pike from his homeland, a Weeping Waster with a desert bow,  and a Lormyrian with a local ax. To this I would add Nadsokhorians with daggers, Oinish or Yurits with spears of local make, and Orgish with hatchets from their homeland.

REGIONAL WEAPON TROOPS

In addition to these individual bonuses, for every member past one of the same nation fighting together and using their home weapon, they get +1% to their weapon skill. This is doubled if they are all Warriors, to reflect their training and cohesion as a unit.

For example, if three PCs travelling together are from Lormyr and all wield axes, they each get +2% to their skill. If they are all Warriors, this is doubled to +4%.

It might seem a small bonus in modern game terms, but fits well with the Old School aesthetic of small advances, is in keeping with the pre-existing Beggar rules, and just feels right.

Anything But D&D ‘March Madness’ Human Blogipede – Day 7

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

7 What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?

Looking back on this question, I maybe should have specified mechanics, setting, or whatever. Still, I find it hard to limit myself to just one answer, so I won’t.

Mechanics and setting wise, I’d have to say the old Stormbringer game and Dragon Half, a Japanese RPG I’ve reviewed last year, pleased me the most. Although Stormbringer is a member of the Basic Roleplaying family, it is not exactly the same system as Call of Cthulhu for which BRP is best known, but has certain differences that gave it a lot of unique charm.

First, the game used a series of skill set bonuses derived from the attributes. For example, Stealth skills are modified positively by Dexterity and Intelligence over 12 and Size under 9, and negatively by Dexterity and Intelligence under 9 or Size over 12. Although it was a bit fiddly, it made attributes matter in a quasi-logical way that was nerfed by the pool of points used in CoC and later iterations of Stormbringer, such as Elric! and Mongoose’s version. Second, Stormbringer uses a brutal Major Wound table that rivaled Warhammer or Rolemaster in its capacity to make melee combat feared and avoided, and had us laughing out at the amputations and disfigurements even minor scuffles would provoke. Third, the point-buy demon summoning system was a marvel of mechanical elegance that I found much more graspable than the voluminous and chaotic Vancian magic of D&D, as well as emulating the source material nicely. Finally, it goes without saying that Stormbringer was set in the Young Kingdoms of Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, an antidote to Conan that dominated the fantasy scene for anyone growing up in the 70s or 80s and thus proved a very vivid gaming experience. Add in great scenarios and art (French and Japanese versions are especially beautiful) and the continued popularity of the identical first 3 editions of the game is understandable.

Dragon Half, on the other hand, was based on manga and anime parody of D&D tropes, using a simplified version of the terribly crunchy Sword World RPG. As I’ve mentioned before, the extending of fantasy tropes to their illogical ends (“Ma is a red dragon, pa was a dragon slayer who fell in love with her.”) made the games we played quite hilarious. If questing to revive the Great Dead death metal gods, making terrible puns, and failing spectacularly seem like fun to you, you’ll enjoy doing these things as much as my old group did.

However, for pure fun and playability the old Palladium Fantasy RPG could simply not be beat. It was barely a step up from the LBBs or the original Runequest in terms of art and editing, but was it ever fun. Rolling around Kevin’s gameworld, Palladia, trying to unite humans and wolfen with a motley party of doppelganger assassins, trollish hunters, giant warriors, and gnomish elementalists cured us completely of the vanilla D&D blues of Tolkien races and uninspiring settings, and made Palladium’s rules seem almost unbroken. Too bad the 2^nd edition was a watered down Rifts clone that threw the charm of the old version under the bus.

I’ve wanted to play other games, notably Ars Magica and MERP, but never found the time or players – hopefully Constantcon can make this a reality after my studies finish.

Encumbrance Rules

So Tenkar asked what we do about encumbrance.

I've used this in BRP and if running D&D again, I'd port it to D&D in a sec.

You can carry as many Items as your STR score.

Item size is indicated on the chart below. A character can carry a number of ready to use Items equal to their Strength score. For every Item over the Strength score, reduce the character’s Move by 1. They also lose any Dex bonus to AC or missile weapons. Characters can carry up to 2 STR in Items.

Description	Light 1 handed	Medium 1 handed	Heavy 1 handed	Light 2 handed	Heavy 2 handed
Ancient weapon	Knife, brass knuckles	Short sword, machete, pistol	Sword,	Staff, greatsword	Polearm
Damage or damage reduction	D4	D6	D8 or 2D4	D10	D12 or 2D6
Modern weapon	Derringer	Pistol	Submachinegun	Rifle	Rocket launcher
Clothing example	Hat	Shirt or shoes	Greatcoat or suit of clothes	Diving suit or animal costume	Suit of armor
Encumbrance	1 Item	2 Items	3 Items	4 Items	5 Items

 Packing - If Items are packed away (i.e. not ready to use but requiring a minute or two to ready), they count as half size.

Coins & Bullets – For tiny objects such as old coins or bullets, a number of objects equal to the character’s Strength equals one Item.

30 Day Challenge 7 & 8

Lucky 7! What edition do you prefer?

Easy! 4th edition is the best!
The old Games Workshop green cover with the great painting of Elric atop ruins as he destroys the Young Kingdoms. You have some rules clarifications from preceding editions (demon summonings & skills), and it adds in the material from the Companion.

Oh. We're not talking about Stormbringer? D&D? Oh, then definitely NOT 4th edition.

I played 4e once. ONCE. Two hours to build a character. Made me want to cry.

I've read 3e, seems needlessly complicated. The Midnight campaign setting I'd easily poach, though. Damn good. Easily portable to Basic Roleplaying, hell there's even a BRP retroclone called 'Age of Shadow' that tacitly does this.

I played a whack of 2e games back in the day. Lots of fun, and tons of great settings. Planescape is basically the Multiverse. Spelljammer and Dark Sun were nicely gonzo and deserve retro-clones. Mazatlan and Al-Qadim were interesting experiments. You could also play a whole campaign out of the Vikings, Celts, or Rome splatbooks. I dunno why they didn't do one for every major culture's mythos. Even Lankhmar got some adventures & sourcebooks.

Never played 1e - by the time I was gaming in earnest, people had moved on to the cleaner 2e rules.

I started with D&D, but I'll be damned if I know which book. Most probably a mishmash of BX and BECMI.

I'm dying to try Swords & Wizardry Whitebox, maybe with Age of Conan. Peanut butter and chocolate.

I'd have to say my favorite edition is whatever I'm playing at the moment. The differences before 3e seem really inconsequential to me. My recent Labyrinth Lord experiences with Vaults of Ur felt the same as all that came before, and markedly different from the 4e I suffered through. And I'd have to chuck in some houserules (mainly skills) anyway, so it's all good.

8 - Favorite Character You Have Played

Funnily enough, all D&D characters I have played were ill-defined, probably because 'world-building' was never a big thing back in the day. The gameworld in the late 80s and 90s was more like that endless loop of scenery in the background when Scooby and Shaggy were hightailing it from some suited goon - just a means to get to the dungeon.  I noticed how things had changed when I played in Vaults of Ur last year - Justin's gameworld was incredibly vivid and detailed. It takes a bit more player investment and GM work, but I think it is a great development in the art of gaming.

Enough digressions - my favorite fantasy character I ever played was Emile (Eh-meel), deposed King of Wallachia and Bard.

It was in a GURPS Fantasy campaign back in the day. While everyone maxed out fighting skills, Emile was good at rapier, but a master in singing, dancing, storytelling, and just about any other social skills. He also was deluded and believed he was deposed king of the non-existant kingdom of Wallachia, which appeared on no maps. He seduced barmaids and queens, sent minions into dungeons while he lounged around the tavern, and was finally assassinated by a powergamer who HATED the way I subverted the game.

I consider that a thing to be proud of.