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!)
Quote from: CRKrueger;803952Well, 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!"
Well, this sounds cool. Feel free to share more about this campaign (perhaps in another thread), if you feel like it. :)
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"?
In a Call of Cthulhu game, yes. The emphasis of the game is on investigation and global conspiracy cults, based on the rules as presented. But that's not to say you cannot have a Lovecraft themed game without loads of combat.
Ive been doing a lot of reading of Lovecraft (re-re-re-reading - don't know how many times) and literary criticism over the last two years, and getting my teeth into the controversy that many people's understanding of Lovecraft come from August Derleth.
My feeling is that Call of Cthulhu is based on Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos rather than Lovecraft's Mythos as Lovecraft presented in various stories he wrote. Derleth and the other members of the Lovecraft Circle (and quite a number of pastiche and themed modern writers) took the mythology as Lovecraft certainly allowed - taking themes, objects, characters, etc as symbolic rather than definitive, and running with it.
I do think Derleth
interpreted Lovecraft in ways that is not very Lovecraft.
If you haven't re-read his stories in a while, set aside all the gaming lore you've picked up around Lovecraft, and all the stories of other writers - and just read and accept only what's written in the stories themselves. What do narrators really observe, and how much do they actually learn from seemingly unreliable protagonists? How many narrators could actually be a big bug-nuts already because they happened to read a forbidden tome first, and that coloring their perceptions?
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"?
Completely depends on the adventure. I've run everything from Agatha Christie-style parlour murder mysteries to full-on Hellboy pulp adventures. I see no reason to pigeonhole.
Quote from: Soylent Green;803972I've never read Lovecraft so I don't know what best emulates the genre.
The game De Profundis actually. Lovecraft's Mythos are eminently gameable, but his stories largely aren't, with a few exceptions. Call of Cthulhu isnt actually a very Lovecraftian game anyways, it just happens to be set in Lovecraft's + 100 years of fanfics' and tributes' world.
I found combat in BRP could be absurdly deadly, particularly with automatic weapons.
I had an investigator survive being nibbled by a dark young and flung 60 feet through the air. (Some very, very good Luck rolls)
And then he died in one round walking into a machine gun ambush.
Quote from: Will;804020I found combat in BRP could be absurdly deadly, particularly with automatic weapons.
I had an investigator survive being nibbled by a dark young and flung 60 feet through the air. (Some very, very good Luck rolls)
And then he died in one round walking into a machine gun ambush.
Yeah...thats just absurd. :rolleyes:
Well, coming on the heels of a giant tree-like hydra monster thing chewing on you and then throwing you down, it was a bit ignoble.
Fucking Russian mafia.
(Lead by a weretiger)
((Who ended up biting/infecting a PC))
(((Weird campaign, hee)))
Quote from: Lynn;803991My feeling is that Call of Cthulhu is based on Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos rather than Lovecraft's Mythos as Lovecraft presented in various stories he wrote.
Sandy Peterson (the original creator of CoC)
explicitly rejected Derleth's interpretation and his pastiches when designing the game.
Quote from: Akrasia;804042Sandy Peterson (the original creator of CoC) explicitly rejected Derleth's interpretation and his pastiches when designing the game.
Yeah, I never saw much of Derleth's dualistic Catholic worldview in CoC... maybe some scenarios here and there.
Not that there haven't been compromises away from pure Lovecraft in order to make the game playable and fun. I think it's open to being pushed up and down the spectrum from action adventure to nihilistic horror.
I keep looking for ways to inject more Thomas Ligotti into the game but I always end up with results that I suspect will be too bleak/weird... and not all that fun.
Quote from: Akrasia;804042Sandy Peterson (the original creator of CoC) explicitly rejected Derleth's interpretation and his pastiches when designing the game.
While I think he rejected the pseudo-pantheon that Derleth tried to formulate, the game has Derleth creations from Derleth stories in it (and a lot of other writers as well).
Also, I think August Dereth's original Trail of Cthulhu stories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trail_of_Cthulhu) fit the Call of Cthulhu RPG pattern pretty well.
It was Gahan Wilson's lengthy review of Call of Cthulhu in an 85 Twilight Zone magazine issue that got me really interested in playing the game.
I like using combat in Call of Cthulhu. With the older editions also, but especially with the newest edition, where you can choose to dodge or counter-strike a melee attack. Combat now is very dynamic, in that you can actually hurt a foe in his own combat action, if your success degree is higher than his.
I usually have only a little combat at the end to get (what I think of as) a "Lovecraftian" feel, though I find the system itself leans toward a sort of more-fighty style which actually can spawn new ways of playing.
Like this style of play: http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2013/06/nosebleed-noir.html …was inspired by the desperate way the combat system works.
One fight at the end . Everybody dies.
Quote from: Will;804034(((Awesome campaign, hee)))
FIFY.
I think you can throw as much violence into a CoC game as you feel like. Doesn't make it any less CoC.
Quote from: TristramEvans;803996Lovecraft's Mythos are eminently gameable, but his stories largely aren't, with a few exceptions. Call of Cthulhu isnt actually a very Lovecraftian game anyways, it just happens to be set in Lovecraft's + 100 years of fanfics' and tributes' world.
As it says on the cover of 6E:
horror roleplaying in the worlds of HP Lovecraft. I don't think the game claims to emulate Lovecratian literature particularly strictly anywhere in the book, though I may have missed it in the organisational mess of 6E.
Quote from: Lynn;804056While I think he rejected the pseudo-pantheon that Derleth tried to formulate, the game has Derleth creations from Derleth stories in it (and a lot of other writers as well).
I *think* that it's also stated somewhere in 6E that if you like that kind of thing you can of course add it in yourself.
I love combat in CoC. It makes players shit themselves. However, I tend to let combat be based on choices by the players (aka, you poked the beastie, now it wants to eat you). My cultists are usually too insane to be proactive in hunting down PCs, as the cultists on focused on their much higher purpose.
Quote from: Zak S;804096Like this style of play: http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2013/06/nosebleed-noir.html ...was inspired by the desperate way the combat system works.
Great article. Thank you.
Quote from: Spinachcat;804206I love combat in CoC. It makes players shit themselves. However, I tend to let combat be based on choices by the players (aka, you poked the beastie, now it wants to eat you). My cultists are usually too insane to be proactive in hunting down PCs, as the cultists on focused on their much higher purpose.
Great article. Thank you.
Thanks, Cat
I don't actually use the system from CoC. I appreciate the BRP system and think the latest Runequest is perhaps the closest thing to perfection I've encountered in a fantasy system, but for Mythos games I much prefer my house rules; a streamlined version of FASERIP with a Tarot-based sanity/magic system.
If I'm remembering correctly, in the rules light game Cthulhu Dark, the combat system is basically:
"If the PCs get into a fight, they lose. No rolls, they just lose."
Quote from: Enlightened;804349If I'm remembering correctly, in the rules light game Cthulhu Dark, the combat system is basically:
"If the PCs get into a fight, they lose. No rolls, they just lose."
That sounds pretty shitty.
I think investigators should be quite able to fight regular folks and cultists, maybe some basic monsters with difficulty.
But Cthulhu eats 1d6 investigators per round.
Another system option is Unknown Armies. The system is clearly an evolution from BRP COC (evolution, not better)
Quote from: Will;804355Another system option is Unknown Armies. The system is clearly an evolution from BRP COC (evolution, not better)
Now I'm wondering what selection pressures caused UA to have a better survival rate it it's habitat. :p
Also
outgrowth is feeling neglected.
Quote from: 3rik;804350That sounds pretty shitty.
For what it's worth, it specifically says:
"If you fight any creature you meet, you will die. Thus, in these core rules, there are no combat rules or health levels. Instead, roll to hide or escape."
How...completely uninteresting in every possible way.
Quote from: Enlightened;804417For what it's worth, it specifically says:
"If you fight any creature you meet, you will die. Thus, in these core rules, there are no combat rules or health levels. Instead, roll to hide or escape."
That... still sounds pretty shitty.
I don't get where the idea that CoC must have no or little combat comes from. Not every CoC game I've been in has had much of it, but there's usually been at least a bit, and I've played in some CoC games that had a fair amount of it.
Come to think of it, a number of the official adventures and campaigns Chaosium has published for CoC feature significant combat -- Escape from Innsmouth, Masks of Nyarlathotep, No Man's Land, etc. Combat tends to be present in Delta Green as well.
Quote from: Rezendevous;804433I don't get where the idea that CoC must have no or little combat comes from. Not every CoC game I've been in has had much of it, but there's usually been at least a bit, and I've played in some CoC games that had a fair amount of it.
Come to think of it, a number of the official adventures and campaigns Chaosium has published for CoC feature significant combat -- Escape from Innsmouth, Masks of Nyarlathotep, No Man's Land, etc. Combat tends to be present in Delta Green as well.
I recall it from my 1st edition CoC, it being mentioned that gun combat is deadly and it shouldn't be encouraged. I have 6th Edition but I don't recall the same admonition.
I agree though - it seems to me like Chaosium still liked to pack combat into the game, at least in the many of the early published campaigns and scenarios. I started running Shadows of Yog-Sothoth back in the day; the Silver Twilight vs Party ended with Party losing, guns + magic.
Delta Green is an entirely new take on Lovecraft.
Quote from: CRKrueger;804418How...completely uninteresting in every possible way.
For a more emulative Lovecraftian jaunt. It fits. Long as you dont meet any cultists. Wonder how it handles those? Do they count as monsters and thus unbeatable? Or are they beatable but via some non-combat resolution?
Interesting if your leanings are to the non-com side.
Quote from: Rezendevous;804433Combat tends to be present in Delta Green as well.
Delta Green at times feels like it is all about shooting mythos thingies and not much else.
Which to me is pretty boring really.
The problem is one of expectation.
Coc characters are not supposed to be 'heroes they are supposed to be investigators. Reporters, professors, students, jazz singers, actors, doctors etc normal folk plunged into extraordinary circumstance. They should be as used to and as skilled at combat as well professors, students jazz singers etc...
How many times have you seen a PC turn up with a history professor who has 25 in history 80 in rifle, and 60 in punching.... if you preload the expectations of the game with combat then your PC's are all exsoldiers, private detectives, cops, big game hunters etc etc. One or two of those guys is fine but a party of them and you are playing mercenaries spies and private eyes or Daredevils. There are already games that do 1920s pulp heroes and some of them are excellent why do that with CoC?
I once had a PI who punched out Nyarlothep. Of course, the PI died horribly.
Or did you mean successful combat? That's just silly. Excluding unsuccessful combat takes out most of D&D, too. Roleplaying games are all about futile fights where you're hoping to get lucky!
Quote from: Omega;804485For a more emulative Lovecraftian jaunt. It fits. Long as you dont meet any cultists. Wonder how it handles those? Do they count as monsters and thus unbeatable? Or are they beatable but via some non-combat resolution?
Interesting if your leanings are to the non-com side.
I don't know. Lovecraft has written some more pulpy stories, in which the big bad monsters are defeated by more or less ordinary men; Cthulhu himself losing that headbutting contest with a steamboat and all that.
I don't think that "failure is the only option" makes a good game. There should always be a tiny chance to succeed, even if it is highly unlikely, to contribute to the players' motivations. Some people win lotteries. Some people manage to fight off a Shoggoth with nothing but a machete.
In the original story, you can ram Cthulhu in the face with a small ship and get away long enough to write it up in your journal.
Granted, Cthulhu just woke up so he may have been a bit groggy.
The question is perhaps related to a division going back to the game's development. I gather that Sandy was intent upon a Lovecraft-horror game, and would have made it grimmer; while the Chaosium folks were more interested in Roaring '20s adventures (gangsters and their gunnery being a significant part of that).
In at least one edition, the view was expressed that reliance on gadgets and stats easily goes too far and detracts from interesting choices and character development. In some games, there is not much else on offer; but CoC by design is primarily a game of 'investigators' (the standard term for pcs) and grapplers with threats to sanity (which gets really fun when the Sanity checks fail).
I think many of us like to play up what makes each game distinctive - as for instance the element of exploration in D&D. It's the variation in emphasis that gives reason for having a collection of games rather than just one.
Quote from: Beagle;804549Cthulhu himself losing that headbutting contest with a steamboat and all that.
Man wakes up with a flea in his bed, chases it off, goes back to sleep. Did the flea try to bite him? He didn't notice if it did.
QuoteI don't think that "failure is the only option" makes a good game. There should always be a tiny chance to succeed, even if it is highly unlikely, to contribute to the players' motivations.
I think the atmosphere of inevitable doom is important to the flavor of CoC... but staving off that fate for a while can be a decent victory.
Also, I think that 'Save the Earth' type scenarios should be relatively rare compared to smaller threats that only save a life or two... or maybe just steal some Mythos artifact away from inept/corrupt owners. Lots of successes can be had at that level without having them feel implausible in the larger scheme.
Answering to Pundit's question:
Usually it's up to the players. Also, it tends to depend on the campaign. I am running an intermittent game set around Innsmouth, and combat is rare, and non-lethal, usually (this will change when the raid comes, of course). In Horror at the Orient Express there is not a lot of combat.
Masks of Nyarlathotep or Shadows of Yog-Sothoth lend itselves to quite more combat. Either way is perfectly valid, and lovecraftian, IMO.
It really depends on the game we're in the mood to play, I guess, but I'll add an adage that I consider CoC a horror game, not a pulp game. We've had great fun playing out the Dying of St Margarete from ToC - where there is no combat, unless players start picking up fights with gardeners I guess, as well as seen scared players on intense scenes of being chased by Byakhees. Since scaring the players is paramount to me (as long as they desire to be scared, of course), I tend to wrap the combats in such a way that they are tense, short, and well, obviously, scary. Which is a bit of a pickle, as I've seen combats made scary by rolls of dice, or destroyed by rolls of dice, so a lot as well depends on the scenario and mood of circumstances.
Sometimes it's better to unleash a creepy Alien - like monster that'll just drag their victims away horribly without rolling for much (save an escape roll), and sometimes it's better to flash out those dices and have a tense shootout against chasing Byakhees as they try to rip off the roof from your car, and then, your arms.
In my group of players (it's been a while since the last time I GMed the game) there always are characters that have fighting skills, but just in case. Fights in CoC are (nicely) unpredictable and scary, and getting into a fight is always a bad idea. This doesn't mean that we only play academics and socialites; I've recently lost a totally action-focused character that was a world-class mountaineer, and had gone and come back from beyond the Mountains of Madness. Had he been more combat-oriented, he would probably have lived a shorter (and less horror-filled :D) life.
I've only played Call of Cthulhu once, but the characters in that game did come to blows with a couple of ghouls and some cultists.
I played a film student who got skewered by a ghoul early on but somehow survived and recovered, then later helped to disrupt a ritual to summon star-spawn. It's been a while, but I believe my character tried to pummel a ghoul with his fists at the end there. I don't know how my guy survived. I think somebody shot the ghoul with a gun.
I like the idea of combat in CoC. I like the idea of having the odds stacked against the player characters but with just enough cosmic indifference in their favor that its possible to kill up a mythos-beast.
I just didn't like the 'whiff-factor'. To much dice rolling. Not enough rolls actually doing anything.
In my games it is indeed up to the players; but I make sure to do nothing to stop them.