Quote from: 3rik;777698That has been clearly stated from the start of the Kickstarter.

Right. I knew that (and indeed brought it up in discussions ~1 year ago) but subsequently forgot.

I like that players have the option of picking up a rulebook without any 'secret' lore in it.

I find the shift to % abilities the most distracting change, but hopefully it will seem natural after a game or two.

Just by the by, since there was speculation about which edition was the nice hardcover: yes, it's the one someone posted a photo of that is the 3rd edition by Chaosium and Games Workshop from 1986. Happens to be the one I'm looking at right now so I just turned to the copyright page. It is a beautiful volume. All this Call of Cthulhu talk makes me want to get a campaign going.

Those changes to Call of Cthulhu for a 7th (?!) edition sound terrible. But I'm not into metagame stuff anyway. I'll just stick with my tried-and-true 3rd edition. It has never let me down.

Glad to hear Chaosium is still around. They deserve success. They made many games I have and enjoy: Call of Cthulhu (of course), Pendragon, Prince Valiant, Ghostbusters (with WEG), the vastly underrated Superworld...!

Quote from: K Peterson;777672Chaosium 'released' pdfs of the Keeper's Rulebook and the Investigator's Handbook to Kickstarter backers this afternoon. We'll see how the near-final product looks.

Dammnit Chaosium!  Now I don't know if I should read the new Call of Cthulhu, or the new D&D!  *shakes fist at heaven*

And of course they both come out on my daughter's third birthday, when I have family in town and cannot run away for fifteen hours and soak in the gaming goodness.

Truly, the life of the gamer dad is fraught with peril.

Quote from: 3rik;777708There doesn't seem to be any of the dreaded re-recycled art from the board or card games. Looks better than what I've seen of the busy French edition, IMHO.

IIRC it had already been made public that the Spending Luck mechanic would be optional. They might as well have done the same with the Push mechanic as it looks just as easily ignored.

Yeah, I suspect that as with my group for some it'll be a de facto optional rule due to players either forgetting it exists or being suitably wary of the consequences of failing on a push.

Quote from: Warthur;778341Yeah, I suspect that as with my group for some it'll be a de facto optional rule due to players either forgetting it exists or being suitably wary of the consequences of failing on a push.

It is interesting that it says specifically in the rules that a Push is NOT a re-roll. It is a second attempt. This makes it less metagamey than some people made it seem.

Quote from: 3rik;778493It is interesting that it says specifically in the rules that a Push is NOT a re-roll. It is a second attempt. This makes it less metagamey than some people made it seem.

The Push mechanic doesn't bug me... it's something we've pretty much been doing all along... "Want to try to pick that lock again? OK, but it's fragile and if you try again you might break it to where it's jammed shut"... "Forced into the dirt during the car chase? Want try to keep up the speed? OK, but if you fail you might lose control of the car." It's a situational thing though... you don't get second tries on everything.

Really, it's the other meta-game bits that bother me... though it sounds some can be easily ignored.
That leaves me wandering what 7e changes that I WILL like... what reasons for buying it, besides some new art.
Except for the x5 abilities it sounds mostly compatible with all the old materials... I'd hope.

Quote from: Simlasa;778509The Push mechanic doesn't bug me... it's something we've pretty much been doing all along... "Want to try to pick that lock again? OK, but it's fragile and if you try again you might break it to where it's jammed shut"... "Forced into the dirt during the car chase? Want try to keep up the speed? OK, but if you fail you might lose control of the car." It's a situational thing though... you don't get second tries on everything.

Really, it's the other meta-game bits that bother me... though it sounds some can be easily ignored.
That leaves me wandering what 7e changes that I WILL like... what reasons for buying it, besides some new art.
Except for the x5 abilities it sounds mostly compatible with all the old materials... I'd hope.

One thing I like is that the Occupation skill points aren't always 4xEDU (old version 20xEDU).  If the occupation wasn't one that was based on going to college, then the skill points would be 2xEDU + 2xSTR or DEX... one or two times I think there was APP or POW in there too.  So, you're no longer useless skill-wise if you end up with an 8 for EDU, although EDU is still important for skills.  Was that in previous editions?  (I remember something about the Investigator Handbook in 5th or 6th having something for Criminals, but it's been long enough that I couldn't say without looking it up.)

I also like that the money you have is linked to the Credit Rating you have - no longer would you have put 50 points in Credit Rating and rolled no money... or lots of money, and be sitting there with lots of cash but being ignored by the Rothschilds.

Still reading my way through.

Quote from: Simlasa;778509Really, it's the other meta-game bits that bother me... though it sounds some can be easily ignored.

Erm... like which ones? AFAIK the Luck and Push thing is about it, as far as "metagaming" goes.

Quote from: 3rik;778533Erm... like which ones? AFAIK the Luck and Push thing is about it, as far as "metagaming" goes.

The Push thing isn't meta for me... or at least depends on how you present it. I'd probably ditch the term 'Push' altogether and just offer the additional attempt when it seems warranted (as I've done previously).
Spending Luck is optional so it can just fuck off.
The Bonus/Penalty dice... those are still feeling a bit 'gamey' to me.

It does seem like Chaosium or Playtesters reigned in a good bit of what I'd heard rumored early on... some of the statements from the Designers had me thinking they wanted to turn it into some cross between Savage Worlds and Fate.
Still... the Keeper's book has a good bit of language that echoes the 'Just say 'Yes'' and 'Fail Forward' mindset... and there's this bit from the section on using Skills:
"If the player has rolled equal to or under the target set by the Keeper, their investigator has achieved the goal that was set and agreed before the roll. The player should be encouraged to participate in describing the outcome. This can include aspects of the story beyond his or her investigator, such as the actions of non-player characters and the environment."
I'd just kibosh the PCs dictating what NPCs do or how the environment reacts... but still, it's there in the text... pestering me.

Things I do like, so far:
Chases sound fun.
Getting rid of the taxonomy of Mythos races... Servitor and Independent races. That always felt to be overreaching... trying to impose some hierarchy that's seldom in the source material.

Quote from: jcfiala;778523One thing I like is that the Occupation skill points aren't always 4xEDU (old version 20xEDU).  If the occupation wasn't one that was based on going to college, then the skill points would be 2xEDU + 2xSTR or DEX... one or two times I think there was APP or POW in there too.  So, you're no longer useless skill-wise if you end up with an 8 for EDU, although EDU is still important for skills.  Was that in previous editions?  (I remember something about the Investigator Handbook in 5th or 6th having something for Criminals, but it's been long enough that I couldn't say without looking it up.)

I also like that the money you have is linked to the Credit Rating you have - no longer would you have put 50 points in Credit Rating and rolled no money... or lots of money, and be sitting there with lots of cash but being ignored by the Rothschilds.

Still reading my way through.

Yeah, those are MASSIVE improvements. In particular, as much as ol' Creepy Howie loved his academic protagonists, hamstringing players because they rolled a miserably bad EDU roll has always been a problem and I'm so glad it's changed.

Quote from: Simlasa;778602The Push thing isn't meta for me... or at least depends on how you present it. I'd probably ditch the term 'Push' altogether and just offer the additional attempt when it seems warranted (as I've done previously).

As I read through the skills section, the Push thing really seems like it's less metagamey than it was before, too.  Beyond the fact that the GM expressly has the ability to say if a push is possible, each skill describes what's involved in pushing.  For instance, here's what it says for the first skill, Accounting:

QuotePushing examples: taking more time to review documents, visiting banks or businesses to validate findings; double checking the math and data.

Sample Consequences of failing a Pushed roll: discussions between investigators and third parties alert some enemy faction to the investigators' intentions; a vital part of the accounts is destroyed or lost (perhaps in their tired state the investigator spills coffee over them).

If an insane investigator fails a pushed roll, he or she might be found having partially eaten the documents.

That feels fairly sensible to me, really.  (Well, aside from what an insane investigator might do, which tends to be a bit silly.)

But why is that even a mechanic?

I do this with pretty much every skill roll in every game ever. Sure, you can try again, but each attempt takes X amount of time. In D&D the consequences of taking another turn are already baked into the turn checklist (e.g. roll for wandering monsters) and in other games we use common sense (e.g. "for every time you roll to disable the security system, the guard gets a Perception roll." or something).

That's just common sense. If this is the much dreaded Push mechanic, I think I can live with it just fine, seeing as I have been doing it forever without thinking of it as "a mechanic". I'd file this under "GM advice" or something but that's just semantics. *shrug*

Quote from: jcfiala;778907Beyond the fact that the GM expressly has the ability to say if a push is possible, each skill describes what's involved in pushing.

Yeah, it's nice to have examples with each skill... if for no other reason than to dissuade the knuckleheads that want to claim any failed skill roll results in utter disaster.
The spilled coffee in that example seems a bit of a stretch, IMO... not directly related to Accounting (maybe get tired and mix up some numbers?)... though I could see having coffee-stained records being what led to an Accounting roll being required to begin with.

Quote from: The Butcher;778915But why is that even a mechanic?

Yeah, as implemented it's pretty much old news. The use of the jargon-word 'Push' just gives it a fancy-boy 'storygame' air (again, my suspicions of the designers' original intents creeping in).

Quote from: The Butcher;778915But why is that even a mechanic?

Dramatic Logic

The point isn't to have your character do what your character would do, and the world simply responds in kind.  That's the first 6 editions of CoC.

The point is to have narrative tension chosen by the player, not the character, to further the story and make it feel more like a horror/thriller.