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Chaosium Digest Volume 1, Number 4
Date: Sunday, February 21, 1993
Number: 1 of 2
Contents:
1920s Medicines (Matt Grossman) CALL OF CTHULHU
PC Casualties (Jason Corley) CALL OF CTHULHU
Orient Express and Gaming Style (Liam Routt) CALL OF CTHULHU
"Investigators" (Liam Routt) CALL OF CTHULHU
Editor's Notes:
Again there are two digests going out tonight, this time very cleanly
split between game systems. This one is all Call of Cthulhu, while
the second ones has material for Pendragon. I finally finished
writing up that Pendragon adventure I was working on and it's included
in the next digest. Any one else want to to write up adventures now?
They don't even have to be as long as mine. I think it would be great
to get a bunch of short adventure synopses, perhaps a paragraph each.
There's been traffic so far on Cthulhu, Elric, Pendragon and
Stormbringer. However, I have yet to see anything on Ringworld,
Superworld, Hawkmoon, Elfquest or Thieve's World. Although I own all
five, Hawkmoon is the only one I've ever played. Any one out there
have any material on any of these "lost" games that they'd like to
share?
The Infiltrator's Report distributed at Dundracon lists the following
upcoming Chaosium releases:
Immediate:
Investigator Sheets [two-color character record forms for CoC]
Dire Documents [custom handouts for your adventures]
March:
Adventures in Arkham Country [a collection of adventures in Lovecraft country]
Castle of Eyes [fantasy fiction in a dark world of warring gods]
April:
Elric! [the new game of the Young Kingdoms]
New Miskatonic U. T-Shirts
May:
Investigator's Companion [essential aid for all Cthulhu players]
Pendragon [Fourth Edition includes Knights Adventurous and a new magic system]
June:
Melnibone [the long awaited source book]
See you all next week.
Shannon
--------------------
From: Matt Grossman <MGROSSMAN@hamp.hampshire.edu>
Subject: 1920s Medicines
System: Call of Cthulhu
In my current Call of Cthulhu campaign, one of the characters is a
doctor, and the issue has arisen of what medicines he carries around
in his "little black bag." I did some research on this, and thought
that other players of CoC might also be interested. I have not
attempted to cover illegal drugs, but rather those medicines that
might be useful to an Investigator-doctor operating in the 1920s. I
am in no way a medical student or professional, so any errors in this
article are probably my fault. _The_Physicians_Desk_Reference_ or a
similar source will probably contain more information on these drugs,
as well as others which I have not listed.
Chloral Hydrate
time to onset of effect: 30-60 minutes
duration of effect: 4-9 hours
Chloral Hydrate is better known as the chemical ingredient of a
"Mickey Finn." It is a (relatively) fast acting sedative,
administered orally as a sleeping drug. An excessive dose is
dangerous; alcohol and other sedatives or narcotics might exacerbate
its effects. This is probably the best thing to use if the
investigators are going to be drugged by cultists (or vice-versa). It
tastes bad, so it will be noticeable if administered covertly (ie via
drugged food or drink) although a strongly flavored medium would
probably disguise the taste.
Codeine
onset: 30-60 minutes
duration: 4-6 hours
Codeine is a partially synthetic narcotic, injected as an analgesic
(or pain killer). It is not as powerful as other opiates such as
morphine or heroin, but still habit-forming if taken for a long time.
It would be used to control light or moderate pain, rather than severe
pain such as surgery.
Epinephrine (Adrenalin)
onset: 5 minutes
duration: up to 4 hours
Epinephrine (better known as adrenalin) is a fast acting injected
drug, primarily used to counteract cardiac arrest (heart attacks). It
is also used to slow bleeding during surgery, as it constricts blood
vessels. It is also administerd in combination with other drugs to
prolong their effects.
Morphine
onset: within 1 hour
duration: 4 hours
Morphine is a narcotic analgesic derived from opium. It is used to
control severe pain, such as surgery. It may be injected or taken
orally. Overdoses are dangerous, and morphine is addictive if taken
for long periods. I believe this is the drug used by the narrator in
the story "Dagon", so there is plenty of precedent for Invesigator
abuse.
Phenobarbitol
onset: 30-60 minutes orally, presumable faster if injected
duration: 24-48 hours
Phenobarbitol is a barbiturate, and therefore has a marked sedative
effect, but it's principal use is in controlling epileptic seizures,
as it suppresses electrical activity in the brain. It may be injected
or taken orally. It is dangerous in high doses.
Procaine
onset: 10-15 minutes
duration 40-60 minutes
Procaine is better known by it's brand name, Novocaine. It is used as
a local anaesthetic during surgery or dental procedures. It is
injected, often in combination with epienepharine to prolong it's
effect. If you've ever had a tooth drilled, this is probably what the
dentist injected you with beforehand.
Quinine
Quinine is the only antimalarial drug available in the 1920s, and is
therefore an essential part of an investigators's kit if one is
travelling in malaria-infested territory. It may be taken orally or
injected, and commonly takes effect against the malaria in 1-2 days.
At the high doses used to treat malaria, quinine causes ringing ears,
headaches, nausea, and blurred vision.
Matt Grossman
Hampshire College
mgrossman@hamp.hampshire.edu
--------------------
From: corleyj@GAS.uug.Arizona.EDU (Jason D Corley )
Subject: PC Casualties (Was: Re: Who plays Call of Cthulhu?)
System: Call of Cthulhu
To answer one of Michael Norrish's questions:
PC casualties: ya-hoo or boo-hiss. ANSWER: Play it right. In the
H.P. Lovecraft story "Case of Charles Dexter Ward", the title
character is the equivalant of the PC investigators for the first bit
of the story...
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR "THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD"
And then he is possessed by one of his evil ancestors, and the
rest of the story is about investigating HIM.
END SPOILERS
The point is.... PC casualties should occur, if at all, with at least
a modicum of warning. Of course you should sprinkle these warnings
_all_ over the place so that they are expecting to die at every turn.
Then, when they figure a way out of it (and they will...oh, they will,
unless they've been highly stupid...) they will feel extremely
relieved.
Another tactic to use in lieu of actual PC casualties is defeat. PCs
about to be eaten? Knock 'em unconscious and have them wake up in a
hospital. If they go back or try to keep investigating they find that
everyone involved is unavailable or dead (or both). If they return to
the place where the monster/cultists were...there's nothing there (or
they can't find it). So, they go back to their jobs. Their ordinary
lives. Looking over their shoulder, shaken at every turn. Then write
a sequel in which they are in REALLY big trouble. There are many HPL
stories in which the "investigator" (not-really-an-investigator) is
totally stumped or defeated by the Horrors and tries to return to a
normal life, knowing that it is all a sham.
If there absolutely MUST be casualties, give the PCs some friends.
Develop them over a couple of adventures if you can (campaign packets
are GREAT for this...they often give the PCs a friend in one episode
who is never needed in another. Can you spell Cthulu-fodder? Well, I
can't either.) and that way when they go insane from something just up
there around the corner or get sacrificed first, the PCs have at least
bought themselves some time. WARNING: Use sparingly. Otherwise,
experienced PCs will recognise the expendability of your NPCs.
SUGGESTION: Tell the players you have a character of your own that
you'd like to use as an NPC if they don't mind. Or actually USE one
of your own..the sacrifice is for the greater good.
The reason PC casualties are frowned upon are these:
1. Why have an extensive Sanity system if everyone's going to die from
the things that make you insane?
2. If the PCs die before the end of the adventure, then your players
miss out on the climax. Remember the HPL stories with those brassy
italics, that no matter how melodramatic or stupid-sounding always
made your hair stand on end? That's the ending of a CoC adventure--
you kill a PC before that and the terror is just one step lessened.
3. Like all RPGs, PC death tends to put a damper on the game. This
may seem like a good thing in CoC, but think about this: the setting
is damp and dreary enough...why make it worse with a bunch of corpses?
4. If it's a PC, it usually has to die on-screen. Which is bad if you
want to keep a sense of mystery about what the players are up agains.
Not having read Orient Express, I can't really address the problems it
might have. However, I can see what you're talking about in "The
Great Old Ones" and "At Your Door" (which we are in the middle of
right now) There are a lot of opportunities for them to blow it, but
hey...there are also a lot of things for them to notice, read, pick up
on, that will improve their chances of surviving immensely. Mythos
books may be evil and nasty and SAN-draining, but they are
helpful...hence their allure. Ordinary newspapers and history books
also have info. It's not in the rulebook, but it should be: "The
investigator's most powerful weapon is information." Elder Sign
_this_.
I hope this helps with your question.
Yours in Yog-Sothoth,
Jason
--------------------
From: lro@melb.bull.oz.au (Liam Routt)
Subject: Orient Express and Gaming Style (Was: Re: Who Plays Cthulhu?)
System: Call of Cthulhu
Michael Norrish talked about Gaming Style and Call of Cthulhu, and
uses the Horror on the Orient Express supplement as an example.
Horror on the Orient Express is a bad example of a Call of Cthulhu
scenario, I think. It is one of the largest they have published, for
one thing. The sheer size, both of the manuscript, and of the design
team, invariably means that it has to be treated differently from
other scenarios.
Now, I am on the record as basically feeling that OE (Orient Express)
is not what it could be. I feel that it is, as Michael said, more than
a big of a "railroad" for the characters, with a number of areas where
the players can do little but sit and watch. But, at the same time, I
have to be aware of the difficulties of trying to write such a large
piece in a way that is playable.
It is not really possible to write everything in a general form that
allows the players to do everything. I'd like to believe that it is,
and I have spent some years trying to do just that, but in the end the
story almost always has enough required sections that it has to be
written at least partially in a linear fashion. The challenge is to
write a linear series of events that leaves sufficient space for the
characters to move through it as they feel most comfortable. Some time
that happens, and other times it does not.
Certain situations and stories do lend themselves to a more open
presentation, one where the characters can choose exactly how they
will traverse the action. There are a number of those in OE (France
stikes me as being mainly composed of such situations). Other times,
though, there is no way to describe the intended story without
grabbing the characters and saying "first there, then there, and now
do that!". Such stories are perfectly good stories, but they are not
as much fun to play (usually). I think that OE as it tries to get the
characters across a continent and a massive intertwined plot, suffers
a lot from that. Despite the skills of the people involved (and most
of them are quite fine writers), I can't help feeling that they tried
to do a little bit more than they really could.
The general question of "how is it possible to play a Cthulhu Game" is
an interesting one.
I used to have a Cthulhu campaign running here when I was a lot
younger. I was a lenient GM, and as a result the characters were able
to take on big evils and win. For that reason they went through a
number of the first adventures. The main genre, I guess, was one of
paranoia - they were in the midst of at least three things all the
time, and were never entirely sure what was related to what. It was a
fun experience, and there were a number of frightening things that
happened.
I do not play a regular game now, though. I have read too many of the
Lovecraft books, and I can't see treating my players as lightly as I
used to. I think that the game deserves a darker and more personal
style of horror than I really want to inflict on people at the moment.
Maybe that's just an excuse...
In my experience as a player, Cthulhu games tend to be a combination
of mystery and adventure. There is usually a mystery section at the
start where you collect clues and discover horrid secrets, followed by
an adventure section where you either confront the bad guys or run
away from them. The whole experience is quite easy to get used to. I
guess that one of the key thigns to remember, though, is that the
players don't neccesarily find out everything that is in the scenarios
- the Keeper gets to learn a lot more than the players usually, which
enhances the whole destablizing and paranoid nature of the game.
Liam Routt
Darcsyde Productions
--------------------
From: lro@melb.bull.oz.au (Liam Routt)
Subject: "Investigators"
System: Call of Cthulhu
Jason D Corely talked about the rather contrived, and yet seemingly
accepted "investigators"...
I, too, find this to be amongst the strangest things about Cthulhu.
Every time I decide to sit down and run a scenario for people, I am
faced with the question: "So how do I get them into the adventure?"
And every time, Chaosium wants me to decide that the characters are
all "investigators" of one sort or another.
But when I read the old Lovecraft stories, I do not see all that many
investigators. As Jason pointed out, most of the protagonists are
ordinary people; and indeed, the horror is largely due to that
collision between the ordinary and the extraordinary.
>From the point of view of system design, I can see that it is
important to have a default occupation that will allow characters to
function as a group, and will get them into scenarios, but I really
feel that it eats into the entire genre to posit that the characters
are occult or private investigators. And I often feel that I have lost
that horrific edge partially because the characters are
"investigating" things as a job - there is little personal
involvement, mainly looking into things for other people.
In Australia we have a thriving convention scene, and a number of us
have been writing tournament scenarios for years. While we have
written our share of "investigator" scenario, I suppose, we have also
come up with a whole swag of interesting other ways to get characters
involved (musical group, amnesiac inmates, society high-rollers,
etc.). Whenever we have submitted stuff to Chaosium, one of the first
things to be changed are the possible characters: change it to
investigators. That has meant that we have withdrawn some submissions,
and rewritten others (Tatterdemalion was written here - are the
characters in the published scenario really supposed to be
investigators? Ugh!).
For all the mood and atmosphere that Call of Cthulhu does have, there
seem to be a number of areas where they miss the point of Lovecraft's
stories altogether. The elements of personal horror, while they can be
rediscovered by a particularly dedicated GM and a good group of
players, all too often seem to replaced by one of a number of other
genres: humour (from light to subtle to over-the-top), adventure (Indy
and the Great Old Ones), Mystery (follow those clues...), or violent
(another arm ripped off...). While those are interesting genres, at
least some times, none of them are really "horror", at least not
Lovecraft's horror. At least that's the way I feel.
An old friend was just telling me about the Cthulhu game that he used
to be in. It had continued for a long time, but they never really ran
into anything all that big and nasty (I think he said that they killed
a Deep One, but it was almost an accident), and they never got out of
New England. He described it as almost pitful that they would never
have got any further, but I was elated to hear that somewhere people
were playing a game that might have the elements of Lovecraft's horror
- a slowly gathering doom that we rarely see, and must always fear;
such a game would be one where the characters really do not have much
chance to succeed, to destroy the evil servants of the Outer Gods.
I think that a lot of the problem is that scenarios must, by their
definition, set up and then resolve a situation. But in Lovecraft that
usually means that SOMETHING AWFUL happens, and a lot of people die or
are driven insane. That does not really make for a satisfying game,
unless you are not planning to play again - too many people are
ruined. So, to write a scenario for the game, there must be a fair
chance that the characters can experience the whole story, and get to
the end, and then get into another story. But doing that lessens the
impact of each story in two ways: for starters it makes the story more
survivable, and less catastropic - people survive and then go on
afterwards to other things; secondly, there is a succession of such
adventures for any character, and there are few ways to resolve such a
life history into a character who is plagued with a personal horror at
the slightest shadow or threatening dream - the continual scenarios
lessen the impact for the charcters and players.
Maybe I am being a bit too harsh on the whole system. I tend to do
that when I get critical, but it seems that the problems associated
with what could be described as the non-Lovecraft elements of Call of
Cthulhu are all the elements that make it a playable roleplaying game:
scenarios and campaigns that do not reflect the structure and impact
that the stories had on characters; characters that have as a job the
investigation of strange occurences; the lack of the personal tie to
the horror.
I have not played Vampire (I know that this is not the digest to talk
about it...), but it seems that at the very least they have a game
that is focuesed on the personal horror. Their characters can easily
be played as being involved in their own personal horror.
Hey, I love Call of Cthulhu - it is definitely amongst the best games
of all-time. But when I try to play it as written (the scenarios in
particular), I often find that it is not "the game of horror in the
worlds of H.P. Lovecraft". That's a pity.
Liam Routt
Darcsyde Productions
--------------------
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