Help a New Player/Keeper

Where new Keepers can ask "stupid" questions without fear of hazing.
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lostfanatic6
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Help a New Player/Keeper

Post by lostfanatic6 » Thu Apr 17, 2014 7:05 pm

Hello everyone!

First things first: I absolutely love anything and everything Lovecraft. I also love games. I have not played a paper/pencil RPG in YEARS, and I can't quite remember anything of importance from those middle school days. I received the Call of Cthulhu 6th Edition as a gift a number of years back, but every time I get to reading through the thing I seem to get overwhelmed and stop. I really want to learn how to play, but it always completely overwhelms me before I can get a good grasp on it. Could you help me out?
  • What is some advice you have for a newb Player/Keeper?
    I am semi-confused on how the dice rolling system works. I want to stay true to the way Chaosium made the game and stick with their rules. Can someone break down the dice rolling for me and its functions. Like I said...I haven't played a paper/pencil game in years :(
    What are the rules you would say are absolutely imperative or harder to understand than the rest that I should spend more time trying to understand?
    What are some suggestions you have to keeping the horror prevalent throughout the game? I really want to keep the atmosphere dreary and would like to hear what's worked for you in the past?
    Finally, what is a good starting scenario for a new Keeper (myself) and completely new Players? And when I say new players, I mean new to anything Lovecraft and new to anything paper/pencil. I want to introduce this game to them but making sure they have the most fun. Should I do just a one-of scenario for them to get their feet wet and see if they like it? Any specific scenarios you use specifically with newbies?
If there is anything else you can think of that might help me, it would be appreciated and not overlooked. Thanks in advance!

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Re: Help a New Player/Keeper

Post by monkey prime » Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:11 pm

First of all welcome!
Second it can feel really daunting when you first approach rpg-ing. My advice is to listen to some of the live-play podcasts like the Mu podcast ones and the Skype of Cthulhu. It'll help you get a hang on how dice rolls work and when to use them. I read through source books and scenarios but couldn't get it until I heard the Aquisitions Incorporated podcasts about DnD. It helped me understand how it worked.
Third thing is find a story you can tell. The Haunting in the main book is good but I found one in Shadows Over Scotland called Forbidden Isle that I thought I could tell and that my players would enjoy.

Hope some of this helps

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Re: Help a New Player/Keeper

Post by Keeper Jon » Fri Apr 18, 2014 3:26 am

Dice rolling in Call of Cthulhu:

CoC is based on a d100 system, or a percentile system. So, if you have a skill in Fast Talk of 40%, then when you need to roll that skill, you roll your percentile dice you want to roll low. You want to roll equal to or less than 40%.

That first bit is pretty basic. So I'm guessing that you're wondering about 1/2 and 1/5 of your skill, and how that may work. Many Keepers use a house rule of a "critical success" that will convey a bonus to your scenario if you roll low enough with your skill. I call this a house rule, because according to the rules as written, you can only get a critical success, (also known as an impale), with combat skills that have a piercing effect on the target. At any rate, if you have your Fast Talk of 40%, and one-half of that is 20%, and one-fifth of it is 8%, then if you are in a situation where you need to get some info out of an informant and your Keeper asks you to roll your Fast Talk skill and your roll result is 8% or less, then your Keeper might reward you with extra information. If your roll result was 40% or less, then you still get a lot of good information, but maybe it isn't handed to you on a silver platter.

In some cases, you might have a scenario where the Keeper thinks the investigator is facing a very difficult challenge, so he might require that you roll at least half of your skill in order to be successful. So let's say your investigator is trying to question a hostile witness. Your Keeper might tell you to roll your Fast Talk, but you need to do it at half your skill. So your Fast Talk is 40%, but now you will only have a success at 20% or less. Also, many Keepers make the critical success in this scenario a sliding scale. So if in this particular case, you need 20% or less to succeed, then your critical success might only be 4% or less, to equally reflect the difficulty of the situation.

Are there other questions about dice rolling? Was this example to confusing? I'm happy to help. Welcome to the community, lostfanatic6.

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Re: Help a New Player/Keeper

Post by Dr. Gerard » Fri Apr 18, 2014 2:44 pm

Yes, hello!

As I understand it, helping people like you is exactly what this podcast was meant for in the first place.

Hm...how to boil down dice rolling...

[Note, I think I wrote this at the same time Jon wrote his answer, which I just saw pop up in my browser. You might already understand things like percentiles, but if not maybe you could use this as an outline of how to explain Call of Cthulhu dice to players who have never played an RPG. In either case, excuse the overlap!]

DICE

1. When a player wants their character to do something difficult or dramatic, figure out which of the skills on their sheet would be most appropriate, and ask them to roll two 10-sided dice. These are called "percentile dice," because they randomly generate a result from 1 to 100.**

2. If the number they roll is equal to or lower than the skill number on their sheet, they succeed. If not, they fail. In either case, you as the Keeper will probably have to figure out what success or failure really means.
Ex: The character goes to a newspaper office to see if there are any past articles about a spooky house. You ask them to roll a skill check against their "Library Use" skill. If they roll a number (say 10) that's lower than their skill level (say 40), you have to decide what information they find, if anything. Those kinds of things are usually outlined in the scenario notes, but sometimes they aren't. If the player fails the roll, you might tell them that they find nothing, or that they only found part of the information, or that the articles were taken out of the office by the original reporter, or a shady character -- etc. Just be aware that things get complicated when you introduce new information.
If the player is trying to do something that doesn't seem to have a relevant skill on the character sheet, you can usually multiply one of the attributes by five and come up with a plausible number. While there's a "jump" skill, and a "climb" skill, there isn't a "swing on chandelier" skill, so you could ask for a "DEX x 5" check to see if they succeed. A DEX of 11 would mean a 55, etc.

Those are the very bare-bones basics of the whole dice system. Honestly, you could easily run a non-combat game with only that much understanding of the rules, and have a great time. Adding combat adds only slightly more complication, like initiative order and damage ranges. There are also rules for adding qualities of success and failure to the dice results that add a lot of drama and fun.

[I'm leaving out my explanation of 1/5th and 1/2 rolls, because Jon said it better. I would add that a roll of 100 is considered to be a "fumble," and it means extra bad things happen, like a gun jams or a sneaking investigator wakes up a watchdog. Note that when you listen to Actual Plays, you'll hear many Keepers consider a result of 96-100 to be a "fumble," though it's not in the most recent rules that way. Fumbles are fun. I think all of us at MUP would recommend going by the 96-100 rule.]

**Just in case you weren't sure: One of the dice is the "tens" place, and the other is the "ones" place. You should decide which one is which before rolling. Often nowadays one of the 10-sided dice in a set will have two numbers on it, like 80, 40, 00 etc. That's the tens place. If not, you can just declare which one is "tens" (veterans will sometimes say "controls"), and which is the "ones." In my groups, we usually said that whichever of the two dice is darker in color was the "tens" place by default. By the way, a "0 + 0" (or a 00 + 0 ) is considered to be a 100, not zero. Therefore, it's the worst possible result you can get on a skill check.

RULES TO FOCUS ON

You'll also want to make sure you understand the Sanity mechanics. They work on the percentile system as well -- when a character sees something disturbing, they roll percentile dice. If the result is equal or lower than their current sanity, then they lose minimal or no points at all. If they fail, they lose the larger amount. The result is subtracted from their current sanity, so it becomes harder and harder to succeed. In published scenarios, this is usually expressed like "1/1d6+1." If you have to improvise a SAN check for something that's not in the scenario, there are some good guidelines for this on page 76 of the 6E rulebook.

You should also be totally confident about when to declare a character truly dead. Review the death and healing rules on page 54 in your 6E book. Make a cheat sheet for yourself if you need to. It's not that the death rules are hard to understand, it's just that a character death is a dramatic moment and the last thing you want to do is consult the rulebook when a PC's life hangs in the balance. A tip: when the character is declared dead, let them have a moment in the spotlight as they describe their last words or actions. This makes death a lot more fun, and helps players contribute to the horror.

MAINTAINING HORROR

This is a huge and subjective subject, but here are the tips that spring to my mind:

1. A little description goes a long way. Pick out a few details in a scene that will help players see and feel and smell the creepiest parts of your setting. No need to go on and on, but a few choice words can help a lot.

2. Unknowns are scarier than knowns. Focus on building atmosphere with secondary evidence rather than direct contact with the badness.

3. Let the players contribute to the horror. If you don't have buy-in, you don't have atmosphere. Ask leading questions that help the players imagine the circumstances. Spread the spotlight around.

4. Offer horrible choices. Should the investigators strike a deal with the badness? Should they tell their employer the whole truth? Should they suppress evidence to prevent panic and maintain appearances? Should they sacrifice something terrible to stanch something even more terrible? Investigator X sure is acting strange. Can she be trusted? Questions imply choice, so don't push too hard for a particular outcome.

5. Use music. It works. Find atmospheric tracks and play them at low volume during investigations. Play an ambient track of frogs during a scene at a swamp. Let me know if you need help with this. It involves mastering an iPod.

BEST STARTER SCENARIOS

Again, everyone will give you a different answer. If you have the 6E book and you don't want to shop around much, you can just run "The Haunting." I feel it has some pitfalls for new Keepers, but it's got a long tradition and a lot of people have made it work. If you don't mind making an extra purchase before game time, check out "Crack'd and Crook'd Manse" from Mansions of Madness, or "The Reeling Midnight" or "Malice Everlasting" from New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley.

Hope that helps. Please keep posting!
Keeper of the Cthulhu Dark "Secret Everest Expedition" PbP scenario
Rip Wheeler in the Call of Cthulhu "No Man's Land" scenario
Plays for Keepers

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Re: Help a New Player/Keeper

Post by EddyPo » Fri Apr 18, 2014 3:11 pm

I agree with the comment about listening to some actual plays of the game to get a feel for the rules. There are plenty on MUP, Skype of Cthulhu, and RPPR. I also think it helps to be a player once or twice before taking the role of keeper.
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lostfanatic6
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Re: Help a New Player/Keeper

Post by lostfanatic6 » Sat Apr 19, 2014 7:52 pm

Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions! I have been listening to games being run for a couple days now just to understand more clearly the flow of the game and the Keeper's involvement. I know that most of this stuff probably seems really basic, but it still helps me because I feel I truly have 0% of knowledge on all of this.

Jon, thanks for the explanation of the 1/2 and 1/5 rolls, that was very helpful.

Gerard, I will definitely re-read how the Sanity mechanics work and how character deaths work. I'm also a bit foggy on how combat is supposed to work. Are there any good reference sheets out there that break combat down more easily?
EddyPo wrote:I also think it helps to be a player once or twice before taking the role of keeper.
I agree, but I am unable to do so since there is no one in my area who knows enough to play or has ever been a Keeper for COC. I've mentioned it at a couple local gamestores, but all the groups are too engrossed in Pathfinder and the like to run anything else.

Thanks for everyone's help, and if there are any other suggestions or advice out there, I'm still listening.

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Re: Help a New Player/Keeper

Post by EddyPo » Sun Apr 20, 2014 1:37 am

If you don't mind playing over Skype, there are often games needing players advertised in these forums. Just an option to consider. Look under Tales os Mystery and Adventure. :)
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Re: Help a New Player/Keeper

Post by caddy1071 » Fri Apr 25, 2014 5:00 am

Dr. Gerard wrote: MAINTAINING HORROR

This is a huge and subjective subject, but here are the tips that spring to my mind:

1. A little description goes a long way. Pick out a few details in a scene that will help players see and feel and smell the creepiest parts of your setting. No need to go on and on, but a few choice words can help a lot.

2. Unknowns are scarier than knowns. Focus on building atmosphere with secondary evidence rather than direct contact with the badness.

3. Let the players contribute to the horror. If you don't have buy-in, you don't have atmosphere. Ask leading questions that help the players imagine the circumstances. Spread the spotlight around.

4. Offer horrible choices. Should the investigators strike a deal with the badness? Should they tell their employer the whole truth? Should they suppress evidence to prevent panic and maintain appearances? Should they sacrifice something terrible to stanch something even more terrible? Investigator X sure is acting strange. Can she be trusted? Questions imply choice, so don't push too hard for a particular outcome.

5. Use music. It works. Find atmospheric tracks and play them at low volume during investigations. Play an ambient track of frogs during a scene at a swamp. Let me know if you need help with this. It involves mastering an iPod.
Nice list, Chad! Tucked away for future review. :)

tty!
Cory
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