:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.: : Earth's Dreamlands : Info on: RPG's, :(313)558-5024 : area code : :RPGNet World HQ & Archive: Drugs, Industrial :(313)558-5517 : changes to : : 1000's of text files : music, Fiction, :InterNet : (810) after : : No Elite / No porn : HomeBrew Beer. :rpgnet@aol.com: Dec 1,1993 : :.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.: Chaosium Digest Volume 1, Number 3 Date: Sunday, February 14, 1993 Number: 1 of 1 Contents: An Elric! Preview (Liam Routt) ELRIC! Questions about Magic (Anthony Ragan) STORMBRINGER Fumbles and Criticals (Alex Ferguson) PENDRAGON Who Plays Call of Cthulhu? (Michael Norrish) CALL OF CTHULHU CoC Investigators (Jason Corley) CALL OF CTHULHU Editor's Note: I've got several questions this week. Tom Zunder asked if anyone owned or played Prince Valiant. It's sitting on my shelf, and I think it's a great game, but I've never played it myself. Anyone out there got anything interesting for Prince Valiant? Glen Bailey asked a similar question concerning Superworld. He wanted to know what people thought of the system and what changes they might have made to it. Liam Routt wants to know what the quality of the newest Call of Cthulhu supplements is. Liam asked "is the material any good?" Even more specifically, "how do books like Fearful Passages, Blood Brothers II, and Escape from Innsmouth compare with the material that Chaosium was publishing a few years ago?" If anyone would like to compare old and new Cthulhu releases, or, even better, give full reviews of some of the newest Call of Cthulhu products (or any Chaosium products for that matter), I'd be happy to include them here. My last question for the week came from Giorgio Merigo. He suggested that a FAQ for the Digest might be a good idea, explaining what Chaosium's different games are, and pointing out the similiaries and differences between them. Anyone interested in writing up something like this? That's about it for this week. See you all next Sunday. Shannon -------------------- From: lro@melb.bull.oz.au (Liam Routt) Subject: A Preview of Elric! System: Elric! For any who are interested, I am currently involved in some playtesting for the successor to Stormbringer: Elric! I am willing to answer any (simple) questions about the system, and to attempt to indicate the major differences between it and earlier systems. For the uninitiated, Chaosium have decided to discontinue Stormbringer, replacing the line with Elric!, which is clearly a related game. I have heard a number of possible reasons for the change, but the most convincing seems to be that there was dissatisfaction with the way the Stormbringer treated the Moorcock world, both with magic and in general. In Elric! it seems that Lynn Willis (who I gather is primarily responsible for the rules) has attempted to create a simple game of epic heroes. The epic hero nature of the game might be its distinguishing factor; it sure is for me. Starting characters are offered a sizeable number of points to spread around skills pretty much as they feel. While this might allow one to create an unbalanced character, it does allow you to concentrate to a great extent on certain areas, and even excel in them. My first character, for example, has a 90% Rapier skill, which would have been pretty incredible for a starting Stormbringer character. Such changes may appear to be cosmetic (I mean, can't the GM make such changes in the course of a game, if things seem to be unbalanced?), but I think that they have a lot of effect on the overall genre of the game. The biggest critizisms I remember from Stormbringer had to do with the fragile characters - one hit and they flew apart. It was not a game that seemed to encourage sagas and heroics. The revised system seems to favor such things, starting from the character creation. While I have not compared such details as the damage that weapons do, it seems that Elric has increased the protection afforded by armor, and possibly increased the life-span of characters. Magic is an interesting change. While magic in Stormbringer was limited to strange practioners, in Elric! there are a set of almost RuneQuest-like spells available to all characters. Each spell taken in your character creation, however, clocks up a "chaos" point, as the use of magics is considered to be a sign of a chaotic taint. I am not yet sure what effect the chaos points will have. I agree in principle with allowing easy access to magic, and providing a penalty to those who choose to take it. A word or two is in order about the spells themselves, I suppose. There are fewer than twenty spells, all up, I believe. They have made a good selection of effects, ranging from fairly standard combat spells through spells that enhance your characteristics, or allow interaction with other forces. My favorite has to be the spell that allows you to take on the appearance of another person. The roleplaying uses of such spells are endless. Indeed the selection of spells would seem to encourage roleplaying rather than simple combat. Overall the system seems to be a lot like other Chaosium systems. The skills are percentile based, and the characteristics are familiar. There are x5% rolls for each of the "active" characteristics, including a very useful Dexterity (DEXx5) which I can see being used all the time. The skill list seems to have been well chosen, allowing for a wide selection of skills, without a lot of useless choices. The most interesting category, in my opinion, is the Arts category. Amongst the suggested Arts are the Art of Conversation, and others which are both useful and interesting. A final (for the moment) word on characters: part of the character creation process (which, by the way is contained on a single page in the rules - a fine innovation) is the selection of a demeanour (I may have the term wrong). This is a general attitude: Crafty, Skilled, Active, Knowledgeable. From memory, this attitude gives you a basic set of bonuses or skills to work with. I feel that this really helps in the initial creation of a character. Working with an attitude and possibly a suggested occupation (and a homeland), it is quite easy to create a character rapidly. Maybe it is just a simple crutch, but I think that it is a powerful one. I've heard that some people are a bit restless that the Stormbringer (now Elric!) material is taking a long time to hit the shelves. I know for a fact that the material is there, and is of high quality. The delays are due to the desire to produce all of the material for the new system, rather than publishing another supplement in the old, now redundant, system. I do not know what the release dates are to be, but I think that it will be worth the wait. Hopefully this will generate some discussion. Maybe you want to know more about Elric!, maybe there are things about Stormbringer, or other Chaosium systems that particularly impress you, and you'd like to see retained. Maybe you can correct some of the errors that have likely managed to sneak into my description of Elric! Liam Routt "Murder by Pirates is Good!" Co-Director - The Princess Bride Darcsyde Productions Melbourne, AUSTRALIA -------------------- From: Anthony Ragan Subject: Questions About Magic System: Stormbringer I bought the 4th edition rulebook largely because I had fallen in love with the "design-a-demon" features, particularly the part that made it more or less of a joint effort of the player and the GM. And, frankly, I thought (though I may be wrong) that summoning was already fairly dangerous for the character. Now, with the publication of "Sorcerors of Pan Tang," I've wound up a bit confused. Are those new magic rules to apply only to Pan Tangian sorcerors, or to all sorcerors the world over? Pan Tangian sorcerors are too insane to play as PCs anyway (imho), but I think that Summoning Results chart is too vicious to make being a sorceror attractive to players. Whaddya all think? Finally, I made one change fo my own: I've dropped CHA as the attribute that limits the anount of demons one can have bound. Instead I use a 2d10 roll for each new critter summoned, similar to the rules for elementals: roll under the number currently bound, and the summoner is in trouble. That simulates Chaos much more nicely, I think. --Anthony Ragan ecz5rar@mvs.oac.ucla.edu -------------------- From: Alex Ferguson Subject: Fumbles and Criticals System: Pendragon Pendragon: what a clean, simple freewheeling combat/skill system! Much better than that icky, percentile-obsessed RuneQuest nonsense. Right? Well... Sir Michael and Mad Dax (the Maxed Sax (with his 2H Ax)) find themselves in the Grail Castle. Strangly, despite Michael having Religion, Piety and Love God all at twenty, his chance of healing the Grail King is _exactly_ the same as Dax's, who has all the above at 1. Hmmm. Sir Maladroit of Gauche has a Sword skill too low to mention. Curiously, he seems to drop his weapon no more often than does than the renowned Sir Marhaus, and indeed everyone else with a skill of less than twenty. Yes, fixed chance criticals and fumbles. I hate them. Obvious fixes tend to greatly decrease the chance of both fumbles and criticals, which might have a significant effect on play, and make a mess of published adventures which depend on having them occur at a reasonable rate. Thus, how to relate fumble/critical chance to skill (or trait), while still keeping roughly the same frequency overall? If (net) skill >20: use existing fumble/critical rules. Otherwise make a normal d20 roll, then if any of [skill-1], [skill], 19 or 20 come up, reroll for a possible critical or fumble as follows: [skill-1] : critical on reroll <= skill - 10 [skill] : critical on reroll <= skill + 10 19 : fumble on reroll > skill + 10 20 : fumble on reroll > skill - 10 Obviously, rerolling a chance of >0, or <=20 is unnecessary (automatic fumble/critical), as is >20, or <=0 (no fumble/critical). "Fumbles" or "criticals" on the reroll are ignored. Throughout the above, skill is net skill, after all applicable modifiers. So if skill=10, this is exactly as written in Pendragon. If skill is under 10, 20 is a certain fumble, 19 possible, and [skill] a possible critical. For skill is greater than 10, [skill] is a certain critical, [skill-1] possible, and fumbles are only possible on a 20. Example: Sir Griflet's Battle skill is 18. For him, a roll of 18 is a critical, as before, as is a 17, if he makes a roll of 8 or less on a second d20 roll. If he rolls a 20, he checks for a fumble, doing so on a roll of greater than 8. Kludgy special case: this breaks down for skill >= 20. For skill of 20, ignore the possibility of a fumble (so critical on a roll of 20; on a roll of 19, critical on a reroll of <= 10). For skill above 20, a roll greater than or equal to 40-skill is a critical, as usual. Alex. -------------------- From: Michael Norrish Subject: Who Plays Call of Cthulhu? System: Call of Cthulhu Call me a sceptic if you will, but not having played CoC, I often wonder just exactly how it's done. I read the supplements, wonder at how excellent they are, and then think hard about how a gaming group would actually cope. In some cases, I even suspect that perhaps the material is only really written for the benefit of the Keeper, and the players haven't really been considered. Take Horror on the Orient Express for example. (I got this at Christmas). Much of this seems quite staged. Sticking the players on a train is a pretty excellent way of getting a linear plot for a start, but the encounters within the adventure occasionally go even further. There are set pieces coming into Sofia, and then in Constantinople also, that, well, 'railroad' the characters into a course of action. (I'm being deliberately vague here for the benefit of those who don't want to read spoilers). Don't the designers think that the players might resent this? Another thing is the high mortality rate. In the rules (5th ed anyway), there is some discussion to the effect that mortality rates shouldn't really be that high, and that people who say the CoC is too dangerous for character health are just being overly paranoid. Then along comes HoE and we see that they quite candidly admit that a high fraction of players will probably die. Like I say though, I'm a CoC novice, so any enlightenment on this would be much appreciated. I can't help but think that the Chaosium Digest is just the place for a discussion on gaming style in Call of Cthulhu, so let's hear it! Michael. PS: I'm not trying to knock CoC here; I suppose I'm just after a little vicarious CoC playing by way of the mailing list because I haven't got much chance of doing the real thing at the moment. :-) -------------------- From: corleyj@GAS.uug.Arizona.EDU (Jason D Corley ) Subject: CoC Investigators OK, I'm going to gripe for a little while about some of the points about Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu. Then I'll focus on some of the ways I've found to improve those points, and the features that I find especially helpful. INVESTIGATOR CASH ON HAND Now I know H.P. Lovecraft's characters were always at least comfortable in terms of money, but the cash sections are ridiculous. Here's the rules I make: * The amount you roll is the maximum amount you could have made last year. * The items you buy are items you picked up last year and now have lying around the house/apartment/flat. * 1/10 of the leftover cash you have on hand...the rest is assumed to go to expenses like food, clothing, maintenance, and into that HUGE store of property not immediately accessible as cash. THE TERM "INVESTIGATOR" In a lot of modules, it is assumed that the investigators actually think of themselves as investigators. This is almost totally at odds with the Lovecraft hero. The protagonists of Lovecraft's stories were not "bug hunters" in any sense of the word. They were ordinary people with ordinary jobs, perhaps one or two extraordinary interests or friends (dead relatives, Mr. Ward?????), but on the whole they could have been you or I. This is one of the chief features of Lovecraftian horror - the totally alien placed alongside the utterly commonplace. The investigators do not investigate in the ordinary sense of the word. If they are scientists, they consult or research. If they are policemen, they ferret out clues. If they are mobsters, they keep their ears to the ground. If they are dilettantes, they keep up with what is going on (or what they _think_ is going on). NO letter-to-start-a-module (tm) should start "Dear Investigators" (as At Your Door did, which is unfortunate, considering the overall high quality of the rest of the book). STARTING SKILLS It's too easy for characters to start with very high skills. This is a minor gripe, though, since in general, skills are needed less than sanity and thoughtful roleplay. A private dick with a Handgun of 75% isn't going to do that well when it comes to fighting the King In Yellow in his own domain (as one of the characters in my game found out - we were using the Fatal Experiments book, which is worth every penny you pay for it, regardless of how much you pay). Enough Gripes. Here's some things I like: I like the way the skills seem to fade into the background. It almost seems natural when you describe a room or a shelf or a field or a forest to just slide into a "....Roll Spot Hidden." or "...do a Listen check." The natural paranoia of the game translates into that same feeling of suspense when you first picked up the dice in a role-playing game. (Come on, don't try and pretend you've forgotten.) I also think the Sanity rules are extremely well-done, however, I suggest you make your players make a note of the things their character has seen on the back of their character sheet to help in making Sanity rolls. For instance, a Doctor of Medieval Philosophy and a gangster are sitting in a speakeasy. A rival gang raids the place and shoots someone in the head immediately in front of the pair. The Doctor probably has never seen this before and should make the SAN check. The gangster probably has _done_ it a few times and shouldn't need any. Of course, beings like Nyogtha force everyone to take a SAN check. Finally, I _really_ like the tone...and this is hard to describe, but to me, Call of Cthulhu is the _finest_ horror role-playing game on the market today. Vampire: The Masquerade can go suck it's thumb and GURPS can put as many mechanics in as it wants.....but Cthulhu waits in watery R'lyeh for more players - and there's plenty of vile monstrosities for all. Later, Jason Yog-Sothoth Fan Club ==================== The Chaosium Digest is a Discussion Forum for Chaosium Games which do not have another specific area for discussion. To submit an article, mail to: appel@erzo.berkeley.edu