For the first of our 2018 Halloween "Spookathon" gaming marathon, we sit down to play the forthcoming Call of Cthulhu scenario "The Dare" by Kevin Ross.
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In addition to our games, we also did a super-spooky unboxing of a Mysterious Package, so be sure to check that out!
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Featuring:
Jade
Des
David L.
Alexander
That might have been the creepiest thing I have listened to in a while. Kudos & respect. The session also shows all the up- and downsides of the classical Cthulhu System (in my opinion) - lots of randomness, certain skills are way more important than others etc. (i.e. "notice things" vs. "play with matches"). Also, the scenario itself sounds like it is quite railroady - which makes me appreciate all the more how you all made it work and sound mostly organic.
ReplyDeleteIn short: Ideal listening for my nighttime bycicle commute. I think I got home quite a bit faster than usual :-) !
Thanks for the compliment! Yeah, this is meant to be a tournament game so it's got a lot of railroad-y advice for speeding up the pace. It's also designed to run for an hour longer than I had time for, so I had to regrettably incorporate all of their hustling strategies.
DeleteAs for the randomness and skill utility, you couldn't be more right. Usually in longer form games you have a chance to tailor the sessions to more skills and allow backup plans for setback, but for one-shots I find the best skills are Spot Hidden, Dodge, Jump, Psychology, some kind of fighting skill, a language skill, and one personal or era specialty. I call that the Munchkin career, but it won't save anyone.
If you get a chance, take a quick listen to A Chill Semester and you'll see how I run most of my games, mostly by letting the players run around like herdless cats, then clumsily get them all back together with something shiny in time to wrap things up in an unsatisfactory manner.
As a faithful listener of the Esoteric Order, I have overcome my deep-rooted aversion against anything that ever passed by a white wolf (I became aware of the existence of indie RPGS during the early 2000s and have imbibed the typical stuff of the era - google "Ron Edwards" and "brain damage" if you dare, but maybe you shouldn't) and even dared to listen to all your WoD stuff. I found it surprisingly enjoyable, though I'll never love the system or even be moderately eager to play it.
DeleteAbout the randomness: That's why, in my opinion, Gumshoe Cthulhu = better Cthulhu(TM) :-) . But for a gory one-shot game, Gumshoe simply doesn't do the trick.