Call of Cthulhu: Part 3 - Building Your Party
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2018
- A few tips and suggestions for building your party of Investigators for Call of Cthulhu.
Find the free Quickguide with "The Haunting" scenario here: www.drivethrurpg.com/product/...
Find my own books here: amzn.to/2CYBg3q
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The reason the party stays together is because it's the closest thing to trauma counseling they're gonna get.
Yeah, that's what I thought; They have a Mythos related experience in common, and only each other to relate to!
This is kind of how I thought of it!
Who else is going to believe you saw this crazy stuff?!
This might work, if there are other things in common too. It shouldn't be the only connecting point. I did exactly that and it led to a relatively random group of people from very different backgrounds and cultures, which didn't work as well as I anticipated.
The idea of a common club or society is pretty good and I'll try this next.
Yeah exactly, not like anybody else in their life is gonna be able to relate to the horrors that they've witnessed.
In Cleveland, where I live, there used to be an organization called Cleveland Athletic Club. They had a workout room and pool, but the rest of it was more of the classic "gentlemen's club." (Before that became a euphemism for a strip joint) I had to go there a few times for work, and the building had the oak-paneled sitting rooms, a library, ballroom, guest rooms, etc. It seemed like the perfect place for a group of investigators to assemble, so I transferred the idea to Arkham, and the Arkham Athletic Club was born.
I worked in that building back in the day. Forgot all about it. Thanks for the reminder, great idea.
What a great concept, definitely going to borrow this - thank you for sharing! I love this community!!
I started the group out that everybody was 28 years old and they were attending their 10 year high school reunion. Their first "mission" together was surviving the weird and arcane things that happened that night. They all ended up somehow receiving strange tattoos or marks. They then had to figure out what those marks ment, because their lives were being affected by whatever was behind them. The characters kept intersecting each other through these strange occurances, so they figured out their destinies were now linked, and if they wanted their old lives back they would need to work together to figure things out. A little rail-roady, but it worked to give the various people reason to continue to stay connected.
Hey seth! I found your series yesterday and to my suprise the Starter set reccomends watching your videos! (HOW COOL IS THAT!)
It was a pretty awesome surprise.
Here's an idea: the PCs are all members of a specialized office belonging to the Pinkerton Agency. The trick being that while most Pinkerton affiliated detectives are sent to handle normal cases, this special office is set aside for "weird cases". Not just oddball capers or ones that involve tomfoolery, but cases that have a paranormal element. Where science and normal investigative work cannot explain.
Of course, the Pinkerton head offices are staffed by sober, serious professionals, who don't believe a wick of this supernatural mumbo jumbo. They keep this branch office - informally called the "Spook Squad" - to have somewhere to dump the stranger cases (or clients) onto, so the agency's "important" detectives can focus on "real" cases. For this reason, the office is considered by Pinkerton employees (and management) as a punishment assignment, or a dumping ground for the most useless staff that the agency, for whatever reason, won't or can't fire. (If a Pinkerton higher up is doing a little Nepotism, for example, they might send the subject of their Nepotism to that office, so they technically have a paycheck but aren't interfering with major agency work. No one in the agency cares if that happens). Round out the office staff with academics that act as "experts" on the supernatural. The agency doesn't expect many of these cases to go anywhere, so they only hire or assign people on the basis of fulfilling the minimum requirement to say they did all they could for their clients.
Basically, imagine a Private Investigator version of The X-Files, and you have a good idea of what this is. The PCs work at a run-down, small budget office, following cases forwarded to them by other branches that have more respect than them. Naturally, the PCs discover their case load to be filled with genuine Mythos problems, that their superiors will never take seriously or properly outfit them to solve. Forcing the PCs to handle the issues as best they can with meager resources and their own skills. Some PCs might be discredited academics, students working to cover expenses, or bored scholars/socialites that are just there for the challenge or the supernatural. Others are detectives on the outs with Pinkerton, who struggle to regain positions and prestige in the company. None of them ready or properly compensated for dealing with real horrors from beyond mankind's mundane reality.
This idea is amazing, I'm gonna keep that in mind. Thanks for sharing!
This literally just describes the Chicago PD's SI unit in The Dresden Files
I like the idea of at the end of the first adventure or the beginning of the second adventure, the players are recruited by or in some other way folded into an organization.
"Two very wealth characters...the other being an archaeologist." I hate to disappoint...
When the government agent told Dr. Jones that they had theeir Top Men working on the case, and Indy asked Who?
Top Men.
.... enter the player characters.
My players and I recently cut our teeth on "The Haunting" due to your review. I took your advice and added Jack to the campaign to guide them along a bit. It also gave them a reason to be together despite being a florist and professor!
Both PCs had recently been affected by unexplainable events. Turns out that without connections it is hard to find occult resources and societies! So they found Jack who advertised as a P.I. willing to investigate even the paranormal. That was their entry to the world of the occult as Jack's proteges! Now with some credentials, contacts, resources, and a person they can trust to watch their back, they are ready to venture into the thick of things 😤👍
After watching this video, in one moment of clarity I suddenly understood the real-world utilitarian purpose , from a DM's perspective, of those in-game adventurer organizations in D&D (Harpers, Emerald Enclave, et al)...
The timing of this couldn't be better. I just started "The Devil Rides Out" at your recommendation and I have been itching to start a Cthulu game ever since!
So I gave my players direction for a CoC one-shot by asking them what characters they would want to play in a 1920s noir mystery story. Independent of each other, my six players chose to play 2 mafia bootleggers, 2 private investigators, and a bartender and speakeasy owner who both chose bookstore owners as a cover.
03:01. Still doable in some Scenarios. The Haunting for instance. The investigators are hired to clear out a house for an inheritor. The hobo, PI, and diver are the muscle/meat shields of the team and the doctor is the brains. They were just drawn in by the cash promised for the contract (especially the Hobo). I would be depending on the initial adventure to cause the group to develop ties with each other (due to how life and death it is) and to develop a taste for the Mythos, and thus further adventures.
I just started playing Call of Cthulhu and I was thinking about this and I decided that all the new players were from every walk of life but have become friends with a rich woman called Magdalena Moon who is kind of like a combination of John galt, citizen cane and gatsby. She had untold riches, no one knows where it came from and she has this massive property that is hundreds of acres like Xanadu and she is having a murder mystery party and the party is put into a group made by Ms. Moon. She will be watching through paintings and things like that to see if they are qualified to handle an investigation she is needing help with but wants to be discrete about it. Hopefully this idea works for others too.
Delta Green "hiring" a group of investigators is always a good choice.
For my current campaign I gave the players infos on the setting (Arkham, 1920) and told them to create something they thought would fit. I suggested some possible additional interests and skills to characters I was afraid would bore their players, and then went to create a starting mystery that each of them would be motivated to solve, making sure NPCs and friendships connected each character to one or more of the others. The goal was to make sure that the characters would become friends with each other and make a group that was tightly bound together, so far it's working fine, but I guess I was lucky the characters they thought up were pretty compatible.
Since I started watching your CoC videos I have this idea of how to make a party of investigators. It's kinda like Supernatural, where you have a group of people who actively search for the mythos in order to stop their inherent evil wherever they appear. First you need to do a 1 player session with each player to give them the background of why they want to stop these otherwordly forces (loosing family and such), maybe even have the first player play in the second player session (like a guest who helps the player maybe triying to enlist him or keep him out of the case) until they eventually form this "Supernatural like" group. Also thought you can have in some sessions some Delta Green or a Man In Black type of organization who tries to do the same but at the same time stop the investigators from doing stuffs or something like that.
Thanks for the English subtitles, it makes the video easier to watch by translating it into Spanish. (Google Translate) :D
I am just starting to get interested in Call of Cthulhu, RPG-wise. Read many Lovecraft stories in high school and have intertwined lovecraftian elements in various other games I've run.
Which brings me to a problem I had recently that is a lot like what you start off the video talking about, a group of characters that simply do not belong together.
A friend and I were trying to keep out little gaming group together; we had gone our own ways just past our mid-twenties and recently (in our early to mid thirties) most of us got back together. We caught up with D&D 5E, which only two of us were familiar with (I have remained gaming in my own way over the years) but it wasn't long before we were back at it. Then we started having players leave the table because the brief window of scheduling bliss began to fall apart. And before we knew it, there were really just two of us left (three, but the third guy has some major life issues he hasn't ever dealt with that we knew would have him tap out soon). And so we eventually added two completely new people -- two guys from way back in high school. Neither was familiar with any ttrpg, one only liked to play axis and allies, and the other only played video games and a few rather bad board games (including a particularly not-fun one he made himself). We're still trying to make it work with this two new guys, but they don't jibe well.
Regardless, my friend insisted that we keep trying. So, his 5E campaign that'd been running for about 10 months (with me being the sole remaining player, but I had managed to be a proactive figure in the narrative) very quickly grinded to a halt as the new players weren't actually interested. Maybe it was because we had some long pauses as we tried to invite the new guys it, maybe it was because guy #3 made a scene on his way out (I really wish he'd clean up his life, he's a good guy when he is clear-headed) or maybe it was because one of the two new people was irritated that we only played Axis & Allies with him once (I really don't like that game, I've never found it fun and think there are just far superior war/combat board games out there) but the end result is that the campaign was nixed when I was the only person aside from the DM to show up to the game two weeks in a row with zero response from the new guys. And then heard the one guy say that he "hated" D&D, though he'd only played one session.
So we relented and played some less-than-good board games with the new guys, but I also got them to play some rather fantastic board games with us (Pandemic, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Coup, Thunderstone, Evolution, Fury of Dracula, Eldritch Horror, and Resistance: Avalon [we had a fifth person that day]).
But my and my friend's real craving was for some ttrpg action. And my friend reasoned that they just needed to experience a "good" game, whereas he felt his game had fallen apart from losing so many core starting players and the heavy political-intrigue elements didn't work with brand new players joining in so late in things. So I agreed to run a (new) World of Darkness game. I'd had an idea for Hunter the Vigil that I hoped would be of interest to them. I tried to do a proper sessions zero (something my friend has never really understood or wanted to do) in the hopes of getting all three invested before the game even began. But for _reasons_ my planned session zero was relegated to a rushed fifteen minute explanation of the setting, system, and helping them make characters. I wanted to have us put it off until we could do it right, but all three vetoed me, insisting we just "get it over with" so that next week we could start. And so I wound up with three very disparate characters who didn't belong together. And though I did my best, at the end of the first session they basically all rooted themselves in their "hide out" that they'd spent all their points on making secret, with no dynamic between them to drive any sort of story forward and no good investments in the story world to make them want to be proactive. The two new players I could sort of understand, but I was a bit irritated with my friend who should have make a character who actually wanted to do things instead of having the excuse that he "wasn't a people person" and "had no interest in being a leader" for why he basically waited for the story to happen to him... after setting his character up to have no decent stakes in anything going on.
I ended that game after session two wound up being each player pursuing random "shiny objects" while ignoring every single hook or challenge I set infront of them. I mean... I've never seen the like of it before.
I'm still trying to exit this floundering group and find some other people to get a regular game going with. I'd even drag my friend along since I do enjoy gaming with him when the two people I don't like aren't around. I may have a co-worker I can get to join us or let us join their game.
Damnit, Seth. I watched your review on cyberpunk 2020 and bought it right there and then. Told myself "between this and my usual pathfinder games, I'm good. Itch has been scratched." And now here I am one day later about to buy two call of cthulhu books.
Considering the quality of these videos... You should have 10x the number of sucscribers you have, AT LEAST
Seth, thank you so much for taking the time to make this video. I recently came upon your channel a few months ago, as I started becoming interested in CoC. This topic has been troubling me as I begin my campaign creation, and you have provided plenty of ideas and resources to help push my campaign creation forward. Thanks again!
Your videos are just so fantastic. Actionable, clear, well-scripted.
Seth, thanks for sharing your startup for a couple of different groups. I always love to hear how other keepers create the glue. Though it is possible to put them together and send them on their way without explanation, it creates immersion to have reasons for their being together. I'm glad you did not skip this part of the process while breaking down the sections of the game system; you certainly could have done so. I am enjoying your series immensely.
I managed in my first campaign to become hypnotized and lose sanity 3 times on the first night - developing a number of interesting phobias - i never saw the actual beasties - i failed all my roles - but the game was interesting even though my character was a bit of a washout.
I had started to give up hope of the third installment ever coming out. I'd spent all week in my underwear posting newspaper clippings on my walls building a conspiracy theory. Long story short, you were a deep one.
What evidence do you have that that is not true?
He has the Innsmouth Stare.
That never gets old does it!🤣
@@timbuktu8069 I have new evidence that he is in fact a lizard person.
@@JDanger_ Completely different. Lizard People like warm dry rocks. Deep Ones live in Devils Reef.
I wish I thought of that BEFORE i told everyone to make their character, i have an actor, a driver, and a bootlegger who all have to be on a bus together... god help me
Unless your actor is supposed to be some big time A-list type, I don't see any reason why they couldn't be on a bus heading to take a role, the driver could easily be the driver of the bus, and maybe things have gotten too hot for the bootlegger wherever they were and they're heading to a new location to set up shop where they're not well known. I'm sure things could easily go off the rails straight into Cthululand from there.
The actor could of also rolled with the bootlegger when they were kids.
Look at it in another way: You already have the "investigator organisation" here: The bus!
So the problem about why those people are together is solved for you!
And it have an unusual, but interesting, aspect: The possibility to move far away!
In short: You do not need to 'localize' your histories to fit into the neighborhood, as your group can instead move to where it is!
Now it is about figuring out how the group decide their next destination to drive to.
Is it that the bootlegger sometimes get a 'spiritual' insight?
Do the driver just go where the gut feel tell to go?
Or... Is the bus in it self ... haunted? A ghost? Having a will on its own?
Another good thing about the "bus motif" is that it can introduce scenarios and even new characters by pulling up at a bus stop ... somewhere ... and picking up a new PC, or a NPC with a problem.
Indeed! Careful, though, it is not easy to come up with original ideas.
Be prepared for your players to ask: "Is this the Knight Bus?".
th-cam.com/video/FArmRa092H0/w-d-xo.html
I love the idea of a band! It was an idea I had a few weeks ago thinking about what kind of adventure to create or backstory to give. I will play CoC with my band after all 😂
I’m late to the party with discovering these videos, but I’m glad I did because you teach and speak about this game extremely well. Thanks to you I think I may actually be able to run my own campaign!
What I do is in all my CoC campaigns I have a reoccurring NPC, a very famous and well known psychiatrist/therapist named Doctor Crane (a not so subtle nod to Scarecrow from Batman). This doctor is very much experienced with the Mythos, having been somewhat of a mythos investigator in his youth, and what I do is after their first adventure whatever that may be, I have the player characters all directed to Crane in order to unload all that’s happened to them. Doctor Crane will then strongly imply that the group should probably be sticking together, and through this the group now not only has a direction given to them in-game that helps them stay together, but they also have a key NPC that they can regularly go to for advice or to simply get everything off their chest.
I have, in fact, made 3 adventurers in dnd who I refer to as universal, because they are out in the world with the express intention of exploring and learning about the world around them. Handy trait when you're in a pinch and need someone to toss in.
As fir CoC characters though, the circumstances bring you together the first time, but now you all have a shared mythos experience. No one else is gonna believe you. You're all bonded by this revelation and can find comfort in knowing others are with you. Why not trust in them, right? They got you through the first one. That initial setup might be a bit harder though.. I don't really have an answer for that.
This series is awesome; I've been hoping for a detailed vid on 7th ed for a while. I'm glad I found this. Subscribed!
wonderful as always Seth. great job. thanks for all you do. keep up the great work
I love this Review/Overview/Epic Saga!
Thanks for explaining this deeper. I think the next time I try my old campaign adding a few of these extra stipulations to character creation will definitely help it flow smoother.
Thanks so much for this series! I'm working my through the playlist having recently deciding to work out how CoC works.🐙
One of the most unique orgs I ever saw was from a comedy Call of Cthulhu podcast, in which the investigators were all hosts of a bawdy radio show.
I've never read any of the duc de richlieu books, but devil rides out was definitely my favourite hammer horror movie and is absolutely what I think of when I think Call of Cthulhu.
The audiobook read by Nick Mercer is fantastic.
The first CoC campaign I was in all of the players were students from Miskatonic U.
Your EDU stat determined where you were in your university career.
Excellent video and series.
I love Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. I would love to run it after a long set up. Definitely using the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight as their fraternal gathering place.
After a year of playing, it would be a huge twist to send them into it.
I hope Chaosium will readapt SoYS for 7th.
I've been looking forward to this video since you mentioned it because I'm starting a Call of Cthulhu campaign in another week or so. It's funny you mentioned a Boston occult club, because that's exactly the direction I took with it. It's a little hole-in-the-wall place called The Enigma Society that started out as an occult book shop, but is now a private club for individuals who have had supernatural experiences. Each of the characters has had such an experience and ever since, they've been having disturbing dreams where they keep seeing a strange symbol. Not long after the dreams start, they see the symbol in a newspaper ad for The Enigma Society.
That brings me to one suggestion I might add. Keepers can make great use of dreams to bring investigators together, like in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The dreams can draw them to a particular place, to each other, or it might be a kind of apocalyptic prophecy involving the Great Old Ones that is so disturbing that they are driven to do something to stop it.
Dreaming can be a great part of CoC: www.yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.php/Dreamlands
Love your vids! I like to let players pick anything from the Investigator's Handbook,as I want them to really bond with their character. But your right,stretches probability. So I use a "baptism of fire" strategy. The initial scenario exposes them to so much forbidden Mythos,they can't go back. They become professional Mythos fighters right away,at least so far as their commitment. Their backs are against the wall,so it's their only way forward. I like thinking of the party as outsider criminals,even if they maintain a more socially viable facade.
I might be unoriginal but I like dreams to be the main reason why different characters meet in the game, haunting dreams (or nightmares) that bring them together to face death and madness, It's cheap I know but it is good enough to form a group.
Awesome stuff, Seth. Solid gold as usual :)
The one-shot my friend ran gave us the theme of all being part of a bootlegging gang.
For the one I am writing, the players are inmates together.
This is my favourite series of yours so far Seth, keep up the good work. A fun setup I ran with once was a tv news team so the reporter, cameraman, sound guy etc. Ok that only really works for modern settings but I’m sure it could be modified for historical games. Also I’ve sometimes just had the PCs be friends or relatives of each other with those relationships spelled out during character creation. That was particularly fun because some family members didn’t see eye to eye (just like a real family) & that led to some fun role playing moments.
One thing I insist on is that all player characters know each other. If not personally, then they have at least read each others work. (generally while standing in a supermarket checkout line) I've also forbidden certain characters, usually those that are committed to a certain lifestyle or location such as gangsters or on duty soldiers. I have one player who insists on playing an Oliver Twist type street urchin. Not in my game. I did have a player who really, really, REALLY wanted to play a Tibetan monk. I finally agreed and promptly set him down in 1920's Arkham. Oh yeah, he couldn't speak English. 15 minutes later I gave him a fresh sheet.
_Josie and the Pussycats Meet The Minions of Cthulhu_
Works for me!
Josie and the Pussycats in the Cthulhu mythos? Gives a whole new meaning to long tails and ears for hats. ooooo.
Seems you understood something: Increase your Feline Mythos with 5 % point, and remember to count down your max. CAT with 5 points too.
The whole Hanna-Barbara shtick of a group of "kids" traveling and solving mysteries is great party building.
They did go to outer space...
...And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you lousy kids!
hey seth, another great vid - watching on my birthday
My character in cthulhu is extremely rich but dad still holds the purse strings.
Whilst I'm not particularly skilled he is in the process of setting up his own town house as a base of operations for a cthulhu investigations unit (plus other related side businesses).
Easy hooks for the GM as I can just pay the other characters to go adventure!
Great video, Call of Cthulhu is an awesome game
Most of my adventures involved superheroes, lawmen or adventures so it was usually a given they'd get involved. But the times when there was no obvious reason for it were both a pain the tailpipe and a fun challenge at the same time (a pulpish one had a stage magician, a country western cowboy singer, a big game hunter, a P.I. and a wealthy athletic playboy. Once I connected it to old time Hollywood it flowed sensibly). Though an easy go to later on was everyone being or being connected to "The Adventurers Club".
That was really helpful, thank you!
Love dat Scooby-Doo idea
Sounds like your Devil Rides out scenario was a kind of "Bait and Ipswich".
Cool video as always
Can anyone "sell" the Investigator's Guide to me? Seth has me considering it more than I ever have with his comments on organizations. But I have a copy of the sixth (fifth?) edition 1920s investigator's handbook. Is the content really so different and fresh (other than the 7E update) that it is a MUST have? What makes it worth the cost to you?
Bootlegger, Diver, Doctor, Hobo and Acrobat... Sounds like our average 'Eldritch Horror' group :D Throw in a wealthy politician and the to-stupid-to-be-afraid harvester...
Really good tips
I may have only started this video, and it’s 18 minutes from completion, but construction tips are always great! I’m predicting a softwood recommendation. Like balsa wood.
Awesome!
Heh, happy to say that while you weren't the final push (believe it or not, Overly Sarcastic Productions silly narration of some HP Lovecraft tales was, and then learning that somebody tried to make an alternate interpretation of The Dunwich Horror involving Wilbur Whateley) I have at least gotten the Keeper's Handbook for this edition, with the Investigator's Handbook on the way.
It will miss the point of horror, this learning outing, but I dub the group, to the laughter of two fellow gamers, "Law & Order: Supernatural Crimes Unit"... That would be more in place in Pulp than the base game, I assume.
Also, after a few games and getting the hang of it, I'm considering getting that weird west supplement. Looked neat, at least that cover.
In a previous video you mentioned some characters could cast spells. Can you explain the magic system in call of cthulhu?
Jason magic in CoC is pretty cool but something not to use lightly a lot spells cost sanity to cast so it best to give magic to players sparingly
I'll be getting to magic eventually, but the short of it is that magic is costly as hell (some of it too costly, in my opinion). The Sanity loss for casting spells is brutal and many players who come from magic-heavy games will quickly learn that spell-casting in CoC is a different animal. I'm actually fine with giving my players access to spells from Mythos tomes or even initially if they selected the Mythos Background Package during character creation. I've found that once all the players have tried magic and understand the cost, they stop pressuring each other to cast spells constantly. Before I opened the flood gates on magic I had one player lose their temper at a session because another player would not stop telling them to cast an armor spell at every potential opportunity.
I will pretty much do what you layed out here. I'll GM 'The Haunting' for a mostly new group of players online. And I figured - what the heck? Why re-invent the wheel, when you prepared it so perfectly :D
And I also will totally steal Jack. Just hope to get your voice right :D
Seth, I am highly looking forward to your video on magic, mentioned earlier. I am working on a campaign set mostly (if not entirely) in the middle ages, which focuses on the struggle between the church and the rise of mystery cults / occult practices. I am currently drawing from the core book and Cthulhu through the ages. Are there any other sources you would recommend for better grasping the era?
I've never looked into Cthulhu Dark Ages, myself. No reason, other than I just haven't picked up a copy. I've been secretly holding out that Chaosium or Golden Goblin will release some 7e Dark Ages material.
On a totally different, but almost related topic that I just love talking about. Cthulhu Dark Ages recommends as a movie to use as inspiration is The 13th Warrior. I love that movie and love the Crichton book. An interesting thing about the novel is that among the many sources listed in the very back bibliography is the Necronomicon by Abdul Alhazred. This tiny detail means that the entire novel and therefore the movie are set in the Cthulhu universe.
Seth Skorkowsky ooh! I too love that movie, and was unaware that the book references the Necronomicon. Hmm, maybe I'll shift my focus a bit and take that angle. I have been basing most of my campaign construction so far on the, now out of print, novel Ars Magica by Judith Tarr. Thanks!
I'm looking forward to Seth's take on magic as well! Especially regarding the question of player characters casting spells.
🌟 *Please do character creation guides / overview for other systems you & your groups play .*
*Just like you did for Call of Cthulhu 7th edition .*
*I really want to learn more about RuinQuest RolePlaying in glorantha , Conan , aliens , delta green & Advanced Dungeons & dragons 1 & 2 .*
Very useful, thanks !
Our group started a detective agency ( specializing in the Macabre )
Late arrival, but my 2cents on the player relations issue. I'm actually of the opposite opinion when it comes to the start vs finish relationships.
Figuring out the initial WHY for them being together is the easiest part. After the campaign, why they keep going on adventures is much easier to explain. People who go through trauma together tend to develop very strong bonds.
An upper class doctor, and a hobo might make strange bedfellows at first. But after they mutually save eachother's lives time and time again, they're basically blood brothers. So long as you get one invested on the next adventure, the other might tag along purely out of loyalty.
The best solution to the problem then, IMO, is to promote your party into developing strong bonds. Both through hinting, setting, and circumstance. Hit them with challenges that require them to back each other up unflinchingly. Etc.
Josie and The Pussycats vs. Cthulhu.🐙😎
HA! The "we're all part of the same rock band" idea was also a suggestion in Vampire: the Masquerade 2nd edition as a way of linking the PCs in a vampire coterie. A group of kindred going from nightclub to nightclub, entertaining their audience and then feeding on the groupies, while they trade favours with the other kindred that claim territory at those same clubs.
How about a former soldier group? They where all part of the same company in the Great War.
Entirely possible. Maybe they were digging a trench and came across something weird buried in the mud. Or maybe they were pinned down under enemy fire and then the shooting stopped and when they moved up they found that all their enemies had vanished and all that remained was some strange artifact surrounded by a ring of severed heads.
more please
Magic, monsters, ancient aliens = believable. Deep sea diver, bootlegger, and hobo working together = not believable. Gotta love CoC!
Another great video, Seth. If I could draw from your wisdom for a moment, is there a scenario you would recommend for a bunch of new players? I've run DnD forever and I've run the haunting a couple times but I'm looking to start a full campaign and am looking for a fun scenario to run through. I'm slowly working my way through your reviews but if you could point me in the right direction that would be swell!
Ones I've enjoyed:
-Edge of Darkness is a great opener
- Blackwater Creek
- Dead Light was a lot of fun
- The Auction
- Darkness Beneath the Hill
If you're planning a campaign that's a series of adventures, which ones you do will entirely depend on what sort of party you've assembled and how you can work those scenarios in. For example, I always wanted to run Missed Dues, but my party of characters never really worked out to where I could run it for them. I think it'd be a great 1-shot or could fit into a different campaign than the one I was running.
Good luck and I hope you and your players have fun.
2:38
Coney island perhaps? Like a vodoo priest using the carnival for some wicked purpose perhaps?
Are you suggesting that hobos don't hang out with deep sea divers on the regular?
Very useful
I have a question about character creation. If I don't invest any skill points in fighting brawl, can my character not fight, is the default 25? Any advice on this would help greatly, thanks.
If you don't invest any initial points into Brawl, then you begin at the default of 25. It will got up from there as the character uses Brawl.
CoC is the perfect example of being thrown together by circumstance. What’s up absurd is the idea that they’re going to be hired to do this kind of stuff. It should be something that they’re driven to do because of their experiences.
What would you say is the best resource for keepers running campaigns in and around Arkham and the miskatonic valley?
The Arkham book is very good, breaking down the town and giving it a lot of detail. Escape From Innsmouth does the same for that town, bringing in many personalities and details. I've never read Dunwich or any of the other Lovecraft County supplements, so I can't really say anything about them.
Another way for characters to know each other, they could all be Amateur Journalists. 1920s amateur journalists I mean, people writing fiction for small magazines (like Lovecraft was). And they turn their experiences into weird fiction (like some people think Lovecraft did)
Nicholas Hurst good idea
Make them part of an alcoholics anonymous group, one of the NPC's that is part of the group complaints about a ghost problem and ask them to help because they're the only people he talks to, and then make a whole campaign based around the encounter, and then eventually the stick together because they've been through so much
I do not drink spirits!
I communicate with them!
games assuming that all players buy into that and don’t have any emotional issues with a substance abuse thread, sounds like a good setup.
@@larsdahl5528 lol
Hey Seth!
Thanks for your great overviews! They really helped me a lot. I just have a question regarding the complexity of organisations. I'm just starting with the second chapter of "Tatters of the King", in which the group is again confronted with the Mythos after having a one-year break. During this break the group gathered the shattered reminiscences of the former investigators, who mostly got killed. Now they are reorganizing themselves in a new found organisation, which was build up using the money of one of the killed investigators, who was a rich English lord. My players decided that the survivors joined forces with the last heir of that English lord's lineage, who was called upon to become the head of his house. He then found out about his predecessor
's struggle against the Mythos and welcomed the last surviving investigators, to build that organisation, shielding the world from the Mythos. (My idea strongly relates to the story of "Darkest Dungeon")
Now I am thinking about giving my players the opportunity to help building up this organisation, but I don't really know, if it's going to be too much micro-roleplaying / accounting for a small effect. What do you think about "leveling up" the organisation, its resources and NPCs?
Thank you in advance. :-)
I like it. Much of the stuff can be done between games, with any required rolls and role-playing during or at the start of a session. You might have "dues" or some other income for the organization, such as renting land or apartments. This could give the organization it's own Credit score to cover "this and that" costs, so you don't have to worry about them. If they have a Library, you could give it it's own "Occult" and "Cthulhu Mythos" score and if they use the library to research these topics, you treat it just like if a character is using a Mythos tome as a reference book. Members can float in and out with a few of them as regular NPCs with personalities and what-not you can role-play. Role-playing every single member can get overwhelming if the group gets too large. I did something similar with a street gang the PCs belonged to. They had a list of all the NPC names and minor details, but only 5 of them were regularly role-played NPCs. One of those NPCs can be the Book Keeper or Accountant, so that way the players don't have to deal with it and they can go about on having adventures.
@@SSkorkowsky Thanks for your fast reply and your point of view. That helps a lot. Thanks. :-)
I used an "anonymous benefactor" sending out letters to bring them together. Luckily my groups were able to suspend a bit of disbelief. Plus i gave all of them some kind of mythos experience in their background for why theyd be brought together by the benefactor.
when murder hobo is a viable character
Hello Seth, I've just catch this CoC intro videos recently and I'm interested in getting me these Books and dive into CoC game mastering. I would like to know if that is the CoC 7ed slipcase, and if that white book is part of the set or just some useful addition. Thank you for these "How to play CoC" videos, they are inspiring me a lot.
That's the Petersen Field Guide. After removing the Keeper Screen and module there was enough room left in the slipcase for the guide to fit perfectly.
@@SSkorkowsky Got it!, Thanks!
An idea for a campaign. A Grateful Dead like concert turned eldritch.
Amazing tips, first game im being a dm, made them be hired by the government to hunt a nazi general after ww2! This general is an occultist and is planning to use a meteore wich is actually a mythos!
Seth, I have a question. Do you have your players roll up new characters before each adventure?
For campaigns, they roll their own character and I advise they have a backup that's about 90% complete. If their primary PC is incapacitated/killed they can flesh out the backup so that it fits into wherever we are and can bring them in easier. For 1-shots it depends if they make PCs or if I provide them.
Thank you for this, i wanted to try CoC for some time but i feel intimidated because it is so different than D&D. There are a lot I don't understand on the reasoning of the game, such as if the investigators have some actual proof, such as the corpse of a ghoul, what stops them from going public and show the world? But also on the topic of parties, if one player dies or gets insane and is no longer playable their new character is going to be "weaker" on comparison since the others might have some increases in skills found arcane tomes etc. How do you balance this?(if it needs balancing in the first place)
As far as balance, it's never been an issue for us. Being a Skill-Based game, it's not like D&D where a new character is significantly weaker than a character that's had several adventures. The new character can easily start out equal to or better than the veteran characters in several skills.
Now for going public, there's nothing stopping them. But there's also a few ways it can be treated. Many Mythos creatures (Mi-Go, serpent people, etc.) break down after death, leaving nothing to show. Others, like ghouls or deep ones, don't. So if a PC came forward with a dead ghoul as proof there's several things that might happen. First, it depends how they go about coming forward. If not done well, the academic community won't believe them. It might even damage their Credit Rating because people think they're a loon. The sheriff and mayor of that small town they discovered the monster in might just seize that evidence because they're worried the town's reputation is at stake. But if the PCs go through the right channels, and hold their announcement off until they're in a proper setting to reveal this creature to experts (such as some big event in a big city with news and academics around), they'll have something pretty significant. Might even give them a few points to their Credit Rating and a book deal. Scientists will have fun trying to figure out how that weird thing fits into the fossil record. There's probably several times it's happened before in history, but has since been written off as a mistake or prank. Even with significant proof, some will praise the PCs for their discovery, while others will continue to disbelieve it. Such as with Lovecraft's 'At the Mountains of Madness' the expedition did recover several damages specimens of Elder Things, but it didn't cause any permanent stir except a few weeks news and the funding of a second expedition down to the Antarctic.
Now, a dead body probably won't cause any Sanity Loss to others, but it might, just depending on how weird and anything else the Investigator brings to show. If they do, they might suffer some sanity loss themselves after realizing what they've unleashed and the harm that's caused. Or it might cause some mass panic as people suddenly believe there's monsters like ghouls living under their streets. People begin panicking and blowing up sewer tunnels and caves, or murdering that poor guy who was passing through the cemetery one night. "Ghouls you say? Weren't those from Arabian myth? I bet it was caused by that Middle Eastern family down the street! There's only one way to fix this!"
Of course announcing the Mythos to the world also puts a big target on themselves to any intelligent people or creatures wishing to keep that silent. There might be some action against them as a result. And not just Mythos monsters and cultists either. Some religious zealot might take a shot at them or try and burn their house down because the Investigator is promoting some creature or story that doesn't align with how their holy text says the world works. Another academic might try that, too. Check out the history of paleontology for wild stories about just what lengths they'd go through to destroy or steal dinosaur bones and discoveries from one another. In short, the PC is going to make enemies no matter what.
The government might also get involved. As with Lovecraft's 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth,' the Feds might swoop in and take action, while also covering up any evidence. Now men with badges are taking away the Player Character's evidence and telling them not t say anything more about it, not caring that the Investigator is about to give a big presentation before the Smithsonian Museum and all their evidence is now gone and now they're going to be discredited as a quack and their reputation is going to suffer.
Anyway, going public can have a lot of results - some good, some bad. What that is and how people respond is up to the GM.
@@SSkorkowsky i honestly can't thank you enough for all your help. I talked to my players from D&D and we will try CoC at the end of the month! You are an inspiration!
No problem at all. I hope you and your group have a blast with it. Welcome to Call of Cthulhu.
Im not certain if it's mentioned at all but surely some sort of buying in to the groups existence and continuation lies with the players
Occult society idea: Miriam’s Legacy. Founded by a group of young men who were all suitors to Miriam Blackwell, a young woman who was torn to shreds by a werewolf as the men were unable to fight the thing off, the group began looking for more on various strange phenomena and creature they came across and found nothing of actual value, just the occasional bit of myth or more that wasn’t always reliable. This group took it upon themselves to record events of supernatural and otherworldly nature. They are always on the lookout for men and women that have a keen investigative eye and the skills, bravery, and luck necessary to survive said encounters.
Given that second hook, I would've probably had made a medical doctor that was friends with several of the Miskatonic staff and gave the occasional lecture at the school.
After our Linguist died, we got a Lawyer who was pretty much like that. Part-time lectures, but then I had the lawyer get hired by the University legal team to help with a piece they were loaning to the British Museum (Madness in London Town), then help with firing their staff at a dig in China (Lost Expedition), and then later he was used when the PCs went back to London to help with that British Museum display travel to the US to be displayed at Miskatonic. While there, they had Bad Moon Rising.
It was amazing how much Miskatonic suddenly needed a lawyer all the time once I had one :-)
That one link can lead to a thousand hooks. And if he later on just starts hanging around the other PCs, all the better :)
I like your videos and have subscribed. However, might I suggest you use an external microphone.
You'll be happy to know that in the 5+ years since this video was made, I've upgraded my setup.
Dude, I didn't even look at the date. I love your videos, especially your reviews of old D&D modules (save my ass in one module). I am mow learning Call of Cthulhu, so these are a great help.
My BIGGEST problem is finding Players. Even in Roll20, I find it hard to join a game.
They were all in the Great War together. Afterwards, one became a doctor, one became a deep sea diver, one died in mysterious circumstances, but his wife, an acrobat, keeps in touch with his war buddies. Tragically, one couldn't cope with the experiences of what he saw in the war, and couldn't ever cope with life back in civvie street, couldn't keep a job, and just lived on the street. Of course the last one never really followed the rules even DURING the war, so had no problem in turning to bootlegging...
Screaming Hellfish they used to call us.
Wait, I dont get it. I'd start a campaign by throwing all the PCs through a mythos related incident. Then they all share a traumatic experience that they can only relate to each other with, thus starting their investigative group. Does that not work out?
I'm a little bit hesitant to encourage players to create their own organization, as opposed to recruiting them into one I create for them. The reason is, this can easily turn into a lot of player conflict as they argue over minutiae, and ultimately who gets to lead the organization, and whether they will run things democratically or with one player trying to be a dictator.
The point is that while they get to name it and have some say over the logo for example, the keeper runs the show; players are the hirelings. At first anyway.