Real RPGs, none of that new fangled computer bullshit

[jimmy olsen]

I'm not sure how your response has anything to do with mine. Maybe I missed the part where I wrote that CoC was supposed to be a one-shot.

I'm saying it's not all mind bending cosmic horror. There's plenty of pulp adventure along the way to your inevitable madness/demise.

A lot of Lovercraftian scenarios, from the original fiction, to plenty of CoC campaigns end up as monster hunts or have them along the way to the end game.

[11B4V]

Treating CoC as a monster-hunt seems like a failure on the part of a GM. 

[The Brain]

I get the impression that the author hasn't GM'ed CoC, so I think that would be a first step towards answering the questions.

More generally, I'm often amazed by the way people seem hung up on details in RPGs, and kind of view them as computer games. Adjusting challenges, tweaking situations, houseruling, and keeping things fun is part of the routine duties of a GM.

[Jacob]

A lot of Lovercraftian scenarios, from the original fiction, to plenty of CoC campaigns end up as monster hunts or have them along the way to the end game.

Yeah?

Which Lovecraft stories and classic CoC scenarios end up as monster hunts?

[Habbaku]

I get the impression that the author hasn't GM'ed CoC, so I think that would be a first step towards answering the questions.

More generally, I'm often amazed by the way people seem hung up on details in RPGs, and kind of view them as computer games. Adjusting challenges, tweaking situations, houseruling, and keeping things fun is part of the routine duties of a GM.

For good or ill, D&D has taught many, many people what RPGs are. They see other games through that lens until they have more exposure to the possibilities of alternate tabletop rules and themes, settings, etc.

Not surprising, then, that someone would get hung up on the gritty firearms rules in a cosmic horror game. Hopefully someone pushes back on their misconceptions.

[jimmy olsen]

A lot of Lovercraftian scenarios, from the original fiction, to plenty of CoC campaigns end up as monster hunts or have them along the way to the end game.

Yeah?

Which Lovecraft stories and classic CoC scenarios end up as monster hunts?

The Dunwhich Horror is the definition of a monster hunt.

[jimmy olsen]

Speaking of Call of Cthulhu, today I learned that Call of Cthulhu sells more copies in Japanese than all other languages combined, including English. Also, the average Japanese player is a woman between 17 and 35.

However, I've also learned that they almost all play in the modern period. I can understand not wanting to deal with the wars and the political instability leading up to them, but I would think the Taisho period would be quite ripe for role playing.
https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/call-of-cthulhu-rpg/news/call-of-cthulhu-dnd-japan-rpg

Some nice art here
https://imgur.com/a/L76LU#fctZxs1

[Savonarola]

I'm not sure how your response has anything to do with mine. Maybe I missed the part where I wrote that CoC was supposed to be a one-shot.

I'm saying it's not all mind bending cosmic horror. There's plenty of pulp adventure along the way to your inevitable madness/demise.

A lot of Lovercraftian scenarios, from the original fiction, to plenty of CoC campaigns end up as monster hunts or have them along the way to the end game.

If you're not approaching a Total Party Kill / Total Party Insanity at the end of each storyline you're doing it wrong.



The fifth edition has a pulp/weird science sourcebook; so you can play something more akin to a 30s era monster, mad science or supernatural action/adventure movie than a Lovecraft short story.  In such a scenario, though, I think you'd want guns to be under-powered since you don't want your intrepid hero to bite it the first time the villain's cowardly minions draw a gun on him.

[Savonarola]

For good or ill, D&D has taught many, many people what RPGs are. They see other games through that lens until they have more exposure to the possibilities of alternate tabletop rules and themes, settings, etc.

Not surprising, then, that someone would get hung up on the gritty firearms rules in a cosmic horror game. Hopefully someone pushes back on their misconceptions.

Sandy Petersen (who designed the original CoC game) said that he had to try to create a fundamentally different system than D&D.  In D&D Cthulhu would be the boss villain; in CoC he's a cosmic entity that will drive the whole world mad.  If you play the game as straight Lovecraft then I agree that the firearm rules should be mostly an afterthought.  Some combat will (most likely) occur, but that's not really the point of the game.

Edit:  And the "Realistic" and "Ruthless" approaches that the author proposes in the original article sounds like he wants to play Dungeons and Cthulhus; rather than even the pulp scenario I had suggested in my previous post.

[The Brain]

Sweden dodged a lot of the D&D mindset. In the early 80s Swedish company Äventyrsspel released the first RPG in Swedish, and it was powered by the Basic Role-Playing (BRP) system, just like Call of Cthulhu (and others). Äventyrsspel dominated the market in Sweden in the 80s and early 90s, and even if there were other companies releasing RPGs in Swedish and nerds started playing English RPGs when they hit their teens, everyone had played the Äventyrsspel games, and for most it had been their first RPG experience. I think BRP is a vastly superior system to D&D. Some D&D/AD&D stuff was released in Swedish, and I remember testing it a bit, and it felt weird. Unrealistic, contrived, and constrictive. I respect D&D as a great pioneering effort, but IMHO by the 1980s the system was obsolete (from a gaming POV, obviously not from a commercial POV).

[The Brain]

Today I got a bunch of Cyberpunk 2020 books, the main rulebook and some others. I don't expect to play it, but I really like RPGs from the 80s and early 90s. Especially futuristic ones, the future was a lot cooler back in the day.

[Jacob]

I enjoyed reading Drakar & Demoner, but never got a chance to play. I wasn't convinced by the presence of anthropomorphic ducks (clear sign of the BRP heritage), but greatly enjoyed the otherwise more grounded medieval North European feel.

[Habbaku]

Today I got a bunch of Cyberpunk 2020 books, the main rulebook and some others. I don't expect to play it, but I really like RPGs from the 80s and early 90s. Especially futuristic ones, the future was a lot cooler back in the day.

Probably due to when I grew up, I was exposed to many, many '80s and early '90s books at a formative time, so still have a fondness for many of them. Even the really bad ones. I certainly remember Battletech/Mechwarrior and Shadowrun being really cool. Shadowrun, at least, has continued to be that way by adapting with the times.

These days, though, I stick mostly to mostly historical or historical-fantasy RPGs. There's just too much to keep track of in "the future" unless it's a fantasy-sci-fi game like Starfinder or something more concrete like The Expanse RPG.

[Syt]

From: https://twitter.com/MemesDnd

[Hansmeister]

I'm currently running The Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer FRP 4th Edition for two separate groups.  The amount of detail in this campaign is staggering. There are five modules each comes with a main campaign boob and a separate companion book.  Pus thee are separate location books (such as for the city of Middenheim where two of the modules are based).  In the end there are over 2,000 pages of material for the campaign. Every character, no matter how minor, has a detailed background description with potential story hooks.