I like my Call of Cthulhu games to have some degree of verisimilitude with reality... I find that makes the horror stuff even more horrifying. But one thing that takes me right out of the suspension of disbelief is when players instantly reach for the shotgun when they discover a cultist. I'm serious... I've had players find some black candles and an evil-looking tome in a basement and they immediately go and murder every last unarmed man, woman and child in the house. I've thrown the police against players that are quick to draw their firearms but it doesn't seem to dissuade anyone at the end of the day and it actually pisses off some players.

It's just bad roleplaying to be frank. If players feel a group is dangerous, then they should go to the police. Or they should at least capture a cultist alive and interrogate him for more answers. But the response is always "the only good cultist is a dead cultist." The players are acting like insane psychopaths.

Then that gave me the idea... if it is insane to shoot at someone just because you suspect they are evil, then why not just make murder a sanity-loss situation? Why not make gunfights in general take a toll on sanity? That might send the message to the players to use their freaking heads instead of their sidearms!

So here is what I am thinking. Tell me if it is a great idea or it will break the game entirely. Rules are for 6e (no 7e answers please):

[table=width: 600]
[tr]
   [td]Sanity Loss[/td]
   [td]Situation[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]0/1[/td]
   [td]Each round that guns are fired at humans (regardless of number, only test once)[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]1/1D3[/td]
   [td]Each round a player character fires a gun at a human (instead of previous sanity loss)[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]0/1D4[/td]
   [td]Be present when a human is killed (but not by you)[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]1/1D6[/td]
   [td]Kill another human in self-defense[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]1/1D10[/td]
   [td]Kill another human while the player-characters are the instigators of the violence (instead of previous sanity loss)[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

What do you think?

Quote from: Theros;1115273It's just bad roleplaying to be frank. If players feel a group is dangerous, then they should go to the police. Or they should at least capture a cultist alive and interrogate him for more answers. But the response is always "the only good cultist is a dead cultist." The players are acting like insane psychopaths.

I dont really want to comment on your sanity system because CoC is not really my bag.  On the other hand I do want to ask if there is ever a good reason why a party should get the Police involved?

In the best case scenario the Police arrest all of the Cultists and the Adventure is over.  In the worst case scenario the Police are hilariously unprepared for dealing with the Mythos resulting in a much higher death count then if the party just shot everyone.

And that is not even accounting for the games where the Police are part of the Cult which means that now the Cult knows who the PCs are (and most likely where they live).

So my question would be, does going to the Police ever work out well?

That's an interesting way to handle muderhoboing or dissuade violence in general, and if you wanna be uber realistic even killing in self-defense could have a psychological toll IRL. Though, I haven't really played CoC in ages so can't really say much about those specific numbers. That being said...

Quote from: Shasarak;1115276I dont really want to comment on your sanity system because CoC is not really my bag.  On the other hand I do want to ask if there is ever a good reason why a party should get the Police involved?

In the best case scenario the Police arrest all of the Cultists and the Adventure is over.  In the worst case scenario the Police are hilariously unprepared for dealing with the Mythos resulting in a much higher death count then if the party just shot everyone.

And that is not even accounting for the games where the Police are part of the Cult which means that now the Cult knows who the PCs are (and most likely where they live).

So my question would be, does going to the Police ever work out well?

...^These are really some good questions to keep in mind about getting the police involved in a horror setting scenario. You go hunting some cultists in some remote town somewhere and what you wanna bet the cops are on the take? Also, even if they're not, WTF where you even doing breaking into some property hunting people down, then getting the cops involved? You trying to get arrested?

SAN loss for violence is an option, but characters from military or underworld careers wouldn't be as affected.

The bigger problem with killing cultists is they leave bodies, and questions.

1) Strangers (the PCs) come to town.
2) They shoot up some cultists and stop the Big Evil. Yay heroes!
3) Those cultists were various town elders who had families, responsibilities, and friends.
4) Somebody is gonna put two and two together and realize the PCs killed the important locals.
5) The PCs are gonna be on the run from cops, FBI and angry families and nobody is gonna believe their story.

That's the big difference with Delta Green. You're government sanctioned murderhobos so if you gotta blast a dozen people to keep a demon-frog monster from entering our reality, you fill out the forms in triplicate and the cleaner teams sweep all the evidence under the rug. But if you're just a Scooby Gang with shotguns, you have no backup and no legal defense.

Quote from: Shasarak;1115276I dont really want to comment on your sanity system because CoC is not really my bag.  On the other hand I do want to ask if there is ever a good reason why a party should get the Police involved?

In the best case scenario the Police arrest all of the Cultists and the Adventure is over.  In the worst case scenario the Police are hilariously unprepared for dealing with the Mythos resulting in a much higher death count then if the party just shot everyone.

And that is not even accounting for the games where the Police are part of the Cult which means that now the Cult knows who the PCs are (and most likely where they live).

So my question would be, does going to the Police ever work out well?

I am not sure I understand your question... How is murdering all the cultists any better than getting them arrested? It's obviously worse... you cannot question dead cultists, and now you have committed a crime that is sentenced with capital punishment. And what better way for the players to announce their existence to the cult than by starting to murder cultists? Seriously, that will draw the strongest possible response from the cult. When you start killing people, you turn the investigation from something sneaky to outright, open warfare with cultists, police and perhaps other groups bearing down on the players. How can you possibly conduct an investigation in that context? You've just Leeroy Jenkins'd the investigation.

And it seems obvious to me that are clear situations where calling the police would work once the players have done enough investigation to have basically solved the scenario. Then they call in the "cavalry," the police, to arrest the cultists and wrap up the scenario. By that point in the adventure, they should well know 1) whether the police are involved and 2) whether calling the police will just lead to a bloodbath.

My own personal style is that if either of the latter two situations is the case, then I will always create an alternate path to victory that doesn't involve the characters going on a shooting spree.

Besides, cultists are never, ever the "final boss" or the true problem. Killing them all never, ever "solves" the problem. If it does, then your referee is probably a crap Keeper. There is very little point in killing cultists, despite the fact that it seems to often be the first move by players.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1115281SAN loss for violence is an option, but characters from military or underworld careers wouldn't be as affected.

I'm not a CoC fan, so I don't know if they do it this way, but...

In many games, military & underworld characters do usually suffer some kind of hit to sanity for violence and killing, but usually good systems let you build up a tolerance so that you don't go start raving mad from repeating (or repeatedly being exposed to) the same minor act over and over again. An example of this is Dark Heresy (2e) where you can ignore Fear tests (a major source of insanity) up to 1/2 your Insanity bonus (the 10s digit of your Insanity points) and the Jaded talent that (in some versions) causes some insanity points when you learn it but then makes you immune to Insanity points inflicted from 'mundane' violence. Eclipse Phase (2e) has something similar where mental traumas eventually toughen your mind against gaining further stress against what you've already been exposed to, but at the cost of reducing your ability to handle other forms of stress and penalties to Persuade checks.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1115293I'm not a CoC fan, so I don't know if they do it this way, but...

In many games, military & underworld characters do usually suffer some kind of hit to sanity for violence and killing, but usually good systems let you build up a tolerance so that you don't go start raving mad from repeating (or repeatedly being exposed to) the same minor act over and over again. An example of this is Dark Heresy (2e) where you can ignore Fear tests (a major source of insanity) up to 1/2 your Insanity bonus (the 10s digit of your Insanity points) and the Jaded talent that (in some versions) causes some insanity points when you learn it but then makes you immune to Insanity points inflicted from 'mundane' violence. Eclipse Phase (2e) has something similar where mental traumas eventually toughen your mind against gaining further stress against what you've already been exposed to, but at the cost of reducing your ability to handle other forms of stress and penalties to Persuade checks.

That clashes with the overall Lovecraftian theme of humans as helpless and incapable of dealing with reality. You are basically allowing characters to be inured to violence, which will encourage players to use violence. Great for the 40k universe, of course.

Why not a fan of CoC, out of curiosity?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1115281SAN loss for violence is an option, but characters from military or underworld careers wouldn't be as affected.

The bigger problem with killing cultists is they leave bodies, and questions.

1) Strangers (the PCs) come to town.
2) They shoot up some cultists and stop the Big Evil. Yay heroes!
3) Those cultists were various town elders who had families, responsibilities, and friends.
4) Somebody is gonna put two and two together and realize the PCs killed the important locals.
5) The PCs are gonna be on the run from cops, FBI and angry families and nobody is gonna believe their story.

That's the big difference with Delta Green. You're government sanctioned murderhobos so if you gotta blast a dozen people to keep a demon-frog monster from entering our reality, you fill out the forms in triplicate and the cleaner teams sweep all the evidence under the rug. But if you're just a Scooby Gang with shotguns, you have no backup and no legal defense.

Exactly, but players get pissed when they have to answer to the reasonable, predictable consequences of their actions. Even if a cultist is evil, it is still murder in the eyes of the law.

Honestly, the other option is to never run a scenario that has any cultists in it. That would work too. So few of Lovecrafts stories actually had cultists in it... Rats in the Walls? Nope. Colour Out of Space? Nope. At the Mountains of Madness? Nope. Of course, the players will still EXPECT to find cults and will be paranoid around NPCs, which is fine, but I don't have to give them the excuse to go on a murderous rampage.

It's been over a decade since I read it, but Unknown Armies (1ed) has a sort of madness meter for Violence (and other horror tropes). I don't remember exactly how it went but I think that if you reach a certain score in Violence you either need a check to see if you recoil from using further violent actions, or if you embrace the violence and every problem looks like a nail-target to your 9mm-hammer.

Extra bookkeeping for sure, but has anyone used this system and likes to give their impressions?
As UA is sorta d100 based, could this system be used in CoC?

Quote from: Theros;1115289I am not sure I understand your question... How is murdering all the cultists any better than getting them arrested? It's obviously worse... you cannot question dead cultists, and now you have committed a crime that is sentenced with capital punishment. And what better way for the players to announce their existence to the cult than by starting to murder cultists? Seriously, that will draw the strongest possible response from the cult. When you start killing people, you turn the investigation from something sneaky to outright, open warfare with cultists, police and perhaps other groups bearing down on the players. How can you possibly conduct an investigation in that context? You've just Leeroy Jenkins'd the investigation.

And it seems obvious to me that are clear situations where calling the police would work once the players have done enough investigation to have basically solved the scenario. Then they call in the "cavalry," the police, to arrest the cultists and wrap up the scenario. By that point in the adventure, they should well know 1) whether the police are involved and 2) whether calling the police will just lead to a bloodbath.

My own personal style is that if either of the latter two situations is the case, then I will always create an alternate path to victory that doesn't involve the characters going on a shooting spree.

Besides, cultists are never, ever the "final boss" or the true problem. Killing them all never, ever "solves" the problem. If it does, then your referee is probably a crap Keeper. There is very little point in killing cultists, despite the fact that it seems to often be the first move by players.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that murdering the cultists is the better option, but that police would not be equipped to handle actual supernatural threats or the idea that mystical rituals can actually summon monsters from another world. Having weird freaky believes or owning strange "cultist" paraphernalia is not against the law, but breaking and entering is. Unless you have the dead bodies of victims killed by the cultists or people kidnaped by them locked in a cellar there's nothing to arrest them for, but there might be cause to arrest you if you broke into someone's property illegally.

Quote from: Shasarak;1115276I dont really want to comment on your sanity system because CoC is not really my bag.  On the other hand I do want to ask if there is ever a good reason why a party should get the Police involved?

In the best case scenario the Police arrest all of the Cultists and the Adventure is over.  In the worst case scenario the Police are hilariously unprepared for dealing with the Mythos resulting in a much higher death count then if the party just shot everyone.

And that is not even accounting for the games where the Police are part of the Cult which means that now the Cult knows who the PCs are (and most likely where they live).

So my question would be, does going to the Police ever work out well?

Quote from: Theros;1115296Exactly, but players get pissed when they have to answer to the reasonable, predictable consequences of their actions. Even if a cultist is evil, it is still murder in the eyes of the law.

Yeah, that's the thing, being in a cult isn't illegal, except maybe in a Muslim country if the members are ex-Muslims. If the cult has done crimes, like kidnapping/sacrificing people, then sure, going to the police should be a legitimate strategy for getting them shut down, if that is the objective I as Keeper had in mind for the scenario. But usually the cult is just going to be one layer to peel back to get at the Mythos horror beneath.

Quote from: Theros;1115296Honestly, the other option is to never run a scenario that has any cultists in it. That would work too. So few of Lovecrafts stories actually had cultists in it... Rats in the Walls? Nope. Colour Out of Space? Nope. At the Mountains of Madness? Nope. Of course, the players will still EXPECT to find cults and will be paranoid around NPCs, which is fine, but I don't have to give them the excuse to go on a murderous rampage.

Well, there's Call of Cthulhu, where a major part of the narrative is a description of a police raid on a cult, and where it's left clear the cult is still around and scarily powerful. Shadow over Innsmouth is essentially about a cult that has taken over a town. The Whateleys of the Dunwich Horror are sort of a mini-cult. But AtMoM, being set in Antarctica, indeed has no cultists.

Quote from: Marchand;1115307Well, there's Call of Cthulhu, where a major part of the narrative is a description of a police raid on a cult, and where it's left clear the cult is still around and scarily powerful. Shadow over Innsmouth is essentially about a cult that has taken over a town. The Whateleys of the Dunwich Horror are sort of a mini-cult. But AtMoM, being set in Antarctica, indeed has no cultists.

Despite being the namesake of the RPG, others have argued that The Call of Cthulhu is not an archetypal Lovecraftian story, so I'll leave it at that. But in the case of Dunwich Horror, the Wizard Whatley really doesn't conform to what CoC RPG adventures (or at last many players) understand to be cults (expendable minions that are gunned down in droves). And I'll take your comment about ATMoM to be sneering. I'd like to point out that the framework of the story did not in the least stop Chaosium from shoving coteries of human foes into the adventure that is based upon the story (i.e. Beyond the Mountains of Madness). It stands to reason that if cultists were oh so important for Lovecraft's method of storytelling, he could have too included them in ATMoM, despite its setting on the very bottom of the Earth.

Quote from: Theros;1115295That clashes with the overall Lovecraftian theme of humans as helpless and incapable of dealing with reality. You are basically allowing characters to be inured to violence, which will encourage players to use violence. Great for the 40k universe, of course.

Why not a fan of CoC, out of curiosity?

I don't like the theme (look at what you put as the first sentence in your above response), game premise, setting(s), or the mechanics. It doesn't offer anything that really appeals to me more than any other investigation game, and the Mythos itself is unappealing to me.

The new DG lets you "harden" yourself to the SAN-loss that accompanies violent violence, but if you're going ward-to-ward headshotting babies and old people, then *plink* *plink* *plink* you're still going to be chipping away at your sanity until you snap.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1115281SAN loss for violence is an option, but characters from military or underworld careers wouldn't be as affected.

Because they all went insane long ago... now they're just malevolent sociopaths looking for their next fix of violence.