Well, that's basically the question: do you buy the notion that you shouldn't have a lot of combat happening in a CoC game? Or do you say "fuck that"?

Up to the players really, and how they want to approach problems in my games.
Any CoC group that foregoes combat completely foregoes a skill-set that is sometimes vital, and often surprisingly effective against human cultists and low-level beasties like Byakhees. You just should know when you use the gun and when to use the kind word.

It's been a long time, but I always considered CoC to be one of those games where if you're engaging in combat, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong and you're probably going to die unless you're using combat exclusively as a means to cover an escape.

Which fits the genre well, I think.

Those cultists aren't gonna shoot themselves.

Well, technically, they might, if their SAN drops low enough. But I sure as hell ain't waiting.

Besides, if Lovecraft had the US Navy blow up Deep One cities, why can't we dynamite a cultist compound or three?

It depends. Shooting, stabbing or exploding your way out of a situation is always a viable short term solution.
I have peered over the keeper's screen a couple of times and said "Really?", but as I'm fond of using unmerciful dice to represent uncaring consequences, it doesn't happen too often. When it does happen, other options are often exhausted and we roll with it.

Violence actually is often an answer in HPL's writings. At least his early stuff.

Look at The Call of Cthulhu the story. You have the police raid against cultists. Then later one you have a pitched battle between the crew of the freighter and the cultists on the yacht. And then how is Cthulhu dealt with? By ramming him with the yacht.

Same sort of thing in a couple other stories. That one in Red Hook was another police raid. You have the Lurking Fear where the narrator gunned down a monkey man and then blew up the tunnels.

Okay guns don't work as well against Great Old Ones and their kin, it didn't work in The Dunwich Horror, but apparently it worked in The Horror in the Museum. And even in The Dunwich Horror, Wilbur got taken out by a pooch when his gun misfired.

While some of HPL's stuff is magical/supernatural, a lot of his stuff are just aliens and thus subject to physical laws, like being shot with guns. And in some cases, it's just because we don't have good enough weapons, not that physical weapons wouldn't work.

OTOH, combat in BRP is kinda of clunky. Akin to playing as kids "Got you" (attack roll) "No you didn't" (parry or dodge or luck)

Quote from: RPGPundit;803905Well, that's basically the question: do you buy the notion that you shouldn't have a lot of combat happening in a CoC game? Or do you say "fuck that"?

Depends on the group really.

That being said, I don't expect CoC to have "a lot of combat" unless the game is more pulp action hero (which CoC can run) and less a mystery/horror game where several bookish or crank PCs try to learn about the weird and terrible things that man was not meant to know and eventually they try to stop even more terrible things from happening while possibly dying or going insane to do it.

I've run some scenarios without any combat. So a session or even an entire scenario that didn't have combat makes sense. But a campaign with no combat at all would seem pretty odd. In other words I expect there to be some combat in CoC, but I don't expect combat to be typical solution to Mythos problems. (Unless the game is supposed to be pulp action heroes against Cthulhu.)

Quote from: JeremyR;803921OTOH, combat in BRP is kinda of clunky. Akin to playing as kids "Got you" (attack roll) "No you didn't" (parry or dodge or luck)

You say clunky. I say wonderful.

Something people forget with Lovecrafts stuff is that yes, there was some fighting in there. But it was either...
A: Against more mortal foes. Usually cultists. Though a Mi-Go does get shot.
or more likely...
B: Did not do anything lasting after all. They torpedoed the reef? Did not slow them down really in the long run. Rammed Cthulhu with a ship? He was reforming allmost immediately thereafter.

As for combat. Depends on the scenario. I've been in some that had no combat at all other than subduing a crazy person. Ive been in some where having a soldier along was usefull for fending off cultists and some of the more vulnerable lesser thingies.

I have unfortunately been in a session where it might as well have been a D&D slaughter-fest with the players bitching about how "unrealistic" it was to go insane just by looking at something... First and last session with that group.

I cant think of any Cthulhu LIVE events that I attended that had combat. Though I'd love to participate in the Pulp Hero version, Shades of Grey. G-8 style adventures merging the two genres.

Quote from: Omega;803933Though I'd love to participate in the Pulp Hero version, Shades of Grey. G-8 style adventures merging the two genres.

We've done a fair bit of that. More like the Shadow and the Spider than G8 and his Battle Aces. I just love the Spider. He is probably the best hero to base a PC on. His meglomaniacal angst just cannot be beat.

Quote from: JeremyR;803921OTOH, combat in BRP is kinda of clunky. Akin to playing as kids "Got you" (attack roll) "No you didn't" (parry or dodge or luck)

That's the feeling I get with Savage Worlds and other games that are heavy on bennies/hero points/fate points... not BRP.

My CoC games tend to be relatively low powered... lots of cultists and crazies. The big bad might be an ancient sorcerer or some powerful businessman with lots of pull and resources. Combat can be a legit solution sometimes... but it can also land the PCs in jail or worse. Some players resort to it quicker than others... often the guys who played a lot of D&D.

Well, since my current Cthulhu game is RQ6 Hyboria, combat and the Mythos can be summed up as:

"If it bleeds, we can kill it."
and
"Silver and Fire!"

In actual CoC I don't see players doing too well against Shoggoths with their Webley revolvers, but sometimes the Horror can be beaten back.

For me, the classic CoC setting in the 1920s can be fueled realtively easily with pulp stories, noirish detective tales and the occasional prohibition era gangsters in combination with the supernatural themes. So for me at least, characters having guns is not particularly strange or unusual.
Things like the tommy gun hidden in a violin case or the obligatory cane sword of that elderly gentleman just fits the theme very well, and the BRP system does a great job of putting the characters in a role where they don't want to pick fights if they can avoid it because it is a risky affair and characters can die relatively easily, especially when firearms are involved (even more so if you play with the far superior hit location rules).
I think combat shouldn't be too common in CoC, but if it occurs, it should be intense, visceral and brutal, with opponents played as smart as they can possbily be and who will try their best to kill or cripple the PCs as fast and as brutally as they can manage. Violence and combat in CoC should always, always be a part of the horror theme, even if there are no supernatural elements to it.  
So in my experience it is usually good when the characters are at least partially prepared for a violent confrontation, but at the same time it is the ultima ratio and the idea to stand your ground and fight these things or these fanatics who will continue to fight even if mortally wounded, but it should feel at least as scary and risky as running away. There should be no pulling punches in CoC combat. Now, if the players come up with a good plan and lay in ambush or something like that, they can achieve a relatively easy victory because they have earned it through cleverness, but playing those opponents as gunfodder that just exist to add a combat scene to the game session does a great diservice to the game.

I've never read Lovecraft so I don't know what best emulates the genre. In my experience players turn to classic CoC looking for a chance to play academics and socialites rather than the more directly combat-orientated sort of characters that tend to populate most other games.

Which is to say that while characters in CoC should not be prevented from using force, I would not necessarily go out of my way to create situations for them where force was the most obvious response.

Mid you, not that I actually run CoC. :-)

In the Call of Cthulhu scenarios I've run, combat is rare but does happen.  Sometimes not at all in an adventure, sometimes a couple of times.  It is so easy to die in CoC, players resort to it only when trapped or as a final option.  That makes it more exciting when it does happen.

When going against a non-human monstrosity, the players usually plan out their attack quite carefully, and use explosives, traps, and the like, rather than simply shooting at it.  (That is, if they can keep their minds together long enough!)