In my first game they decided to hit a GOO with a car.

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Keeper Dan
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Re: In my first game they decided to hit a GOO with a car.

Post by Keeper Dan » Tue Apr 09, 2013 5:16 pm

Woohoo!
Congratulations on bringing more people in the world of the Mythos! :yay:
Keeper Dan of the Miskatonic University Podcast

Eibon
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Re: In my first game they decided to hit a GOO with a car.

Post by Eibon » Fri Apr 12, 2013 8:57 am

Yes, good work. As long as the players are enjoying the game, then your definitely doing something right.

With GOOs I wouldn't get too bogged down in statistics. You could, for example, have had Y'golonac knocked off the pier into the sea and out of sight, that would have resolved the situation as well.

I'm not sure a car is sharp enough to "impale", but know what you mean. It was a critical hit. GOOs are multi-dimensional beings, so "destroying" three of their dimensions does not mean you've "killed" them by any means.

Confidence and common sense are certainly things to cultivate as a Keeper. Roll with what you're players are doing. It's the thing that makes tabletop RPGs better than computer RPGs. With computers there's always an invisible barrier somewhere you can't go beyond, or some action you can't do because the game designer didn't think of it. But as a real person you can react to exactly what you're players are doing. I once had a game where the villain disappeared and was literally untraceable! My plan was that when he reappeared the players would chase him into a trap because they would be desperate not to loose him a second time. However, the players worked out a method of tracking the villain to his lair I hadn't considered. I could have just shut them down, and forced my plan through, but I thought about it and their plan should work. So I let it work and the players got to the final showdown, but without having fallen into a trap first! Everyone had a good time.
Last edited by Eibon on Thu Apr 18, 2013 1:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thomas R. Knutsson
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Re: In my first game they decided to hit a GOO with a car.

Post by Thomas R. Knutsson » Fri Apr 12, 2013 9:18 pm

Eibon wrote:Confidence and common sense are certainly things to cultivate as a Keeper. Roll with what you're players are doing. It's the thing that makes tabletop RPGs better than computer RPGs. With computers there's always an invisible barrier somewhere you can't go beyond, or some action you can't do because the game designer didn't think of it. But as a real person you can react to exactly what you're players are doing.
I've played in an RPG group with a GM that has a severe autistic condition. It was like playing a computer RPG, which was pretty awful for everyone at the table with lots of tabletop RPG experience. He just got more and more angry and frustrated because we didn't do like he had planned it. After awhile he just kicked out all people that wasn't newbies from the game, but we didn't mind. We had only stayed and tried to endure it because he had made us promise him that we would stay.
In the morning, mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond Kingsport. White and feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan.
-"The Strange High House in the Mist" by HPL

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Re: In my first game they decided to hit a GOO with a car.

Post by MrEben » Fri Apr 12, 2013 9:29 pm

Thomas, that sounds excruciating. Good on you for keeping your promise though.
“The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”
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Re: In my first game they decided to hit a GOO with a car.

Post by CthulhuDude » Sat May 04, 2013 3:33 pm

Random brain dump for you to use or not as you see fit.

I’m with pretty much everyone else here. You can’t kill a Great Old One. If you get rid of all their HP, they may fall over and melt away (or something) but they will be back. To them, death is just not part of their reality.

As for Y’golonac in particular. I love the tubby, headless, pervert. He is one of my favorite GOOs to use because his desires and motivations are the most human. That said, my .02 on him is that the fat, headless, mouth-in-the-hands version of him that everyone knows is just its avatar. It is a symbolic representation of the completely alien thing that is locked behind some wall. Think about it: Y’golonac is all about primal lusts, so he is headless because he is unthinking when it comes to giving in to its base desires. He only exists to feed his abhorrent appetites. He his obese because he is a glutton with no control when it comes to sating those desires. The mouths in the hands means that he consumes, in one way or the other, everything he touches.

So if you roll with that then the idea of an avatar is that it is only a representation or surrogate of a god. So while it may be destroyed, the god itself is fine. Fine, and now probably really upset that your investigators dare harm one of its manifestations before it could really get its freak on. So the idea of revenge, a very primal and base desire, seems very appropriate for something like Y’golonac as opposed to Cthulhu or Yog-sothoth who might have far more cosmic concerns to occupy their thoughts.

And if you agree with this take on Campbell’s creation that leaves the tantalizing question of what is the true form of Y’golonac then?

But that’s just how I see and use this GOO in my CoC game.
“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.” ― Robert Bloch

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