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Chaosium Digest Volume 03 Number 08
Chaosium Digest Volume 3, Number 8
Date: Sunday, August 22, 1993
Number: 1 of 3
Contents:
More Comments on Elric! (Tom Zunder) ELRIC!
Meeting the Great Knights (Heidi Kaye) PENDRAGON
Alone Against Cthulhu (Kimbo Beattie) CALL OF CTHULHU
Editor's Notes:
Many months ago, Jay Vosburgh passed copies of the old Mythos Delvers
Digests on to me. I've finally uploaded them to soda.berkeley.edu
where they are now available for FTP in the directory:
/pub/chaosium/cthulhu/mythos-delvers
There isn't a lot of discussion about Call of Cthulhu in the Mythos
Delvers Digest. The article in V2.7 of the Chaosium Digest on books,
and the notes on Archaeology, Antropology, Astronomy and Chemistry in
V3.9 are all derived from it, but except for some discussions about
spells in CoC, that was pretty much it for the role-playing game. The
rest of the Mythos Delvers Digest was mostly about Lovecraft's
writing, especially his earliest stories. If that sounds interesting,
you might want to FTP the issues. There are 45 in all.
New out from Chaosium this week is The Investigator's Companion,
Volume 1: Equipment and Resources (Chaosium, 64pp, $10.95). This
supplement for Call of Cthulhu provides lots of useful information on
the 1920s.
Shannon
--------------------
From: Tom Zunder <tzunder@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Subject: More Comments on Elric!
System: Elric!
I was very interested to read Adam Justin Thornton's review of Elric!
As one who has no Stormbringer and little Chaosium experience, he was
in many ways a good choice to review the product. What was
particularly interesting was that all the suggestions he made for
making the game a litle more complex (skills modified by stats, hit
locations, etc) are all the bits of RuneQuest or Stormbringer which
have been obviously cut from this game.
I have no problem with this at all. If you want to spice up the
rules, then just buy RQ and add in hit locations and skill modifiers.
What I do object to, however, is the willy nilly renaming of skills in
Elric! from the core in RQ. Hell, I don't want twelve different
names for a similar skill when I put down RQ, pick up Elric!, play
ElfQuest etc. Couldn't Chaosium keep some things roughly constant?
Similarly, why are criticals and impales all over the place in this
game relative to others? Now, maybe CoC has moved on a lot since I
last played, but it seems to me that inconsistancy for inconsistancy's
sake has crawled into this game. It won't stop me playing it, but it
makes me wish it hadn't happened.
Tom.Zunder@cyberhm.royle.org
--------------------
From: Heidi Kaye [via <P.A.Snow@gdr.bath.ac.uk>]
Subject: Meeting the Great Knights
System: Pendragon
In chivalric romance, meeting and defeating one of the great knights
is often the final challenge of a knight's adventure. The three great
knights who most often present this challenge are Tristram, Gawain and
Lancelot. The idea is that the knight, who has often started out as a
fair unknown, has been through a series of adventures which have
proved his mettle and earned him fame, even love. The culmination of
his achievement is then to beat one of the three great knights in a
joust. This may occur immediately before or after the knight has been
admitted to the Round Table. Which of the three knights is the goal
to be met depends on the date and temperament of the story; earlier
romances make Gawain the greatest of all the knights, while later ones
consider Lancelot the best knight, and Cornish knights and lovers may
find Tristram to be the ideal knight.
Often in the romances, the fairly unknown knight may have met the
great knight near the start of his story and been defeated by him.
His subsequent adventures help establish his worthiness to try again
to beat the great knight. Sometimes the knight will eventually meet
the great knight and the resulting combat will result in a draw;
either both knights were unhorsed in a joust or they fought on and on
until both were wounded and/or exhausted. Whether the knight wins or
ties with the great knight, he has shown himself to be at least equal
to, or better than, the greatest knight. He may now be worthy of a
seat at the Round Table, if you are doing it in that order.
This pattern makes a nice frame for a Pendragon adventure or, more
probably, a series of adventures. Your party of player knights may
come upon a knight at a crossroads bearing a white shield to disguise
his identity while he practices his jousting on passersby. He easily
knocks all the player knights down; whether he makes a scathing remark
or compliments them on their bravery will depend on how they react to
him in their defeat. One of the knights spots a banner tucked away in
the unknown knight's pavilion (Awareness) and recognises it as
Gawain's (Heraldry). This kind of encounter ought to inspire the
player knights to have another go in the future, once they've improved
a bit themselves. They may especially anticipate the chance to best
Gawain in a more public place, like at a major tournament, before the
king. Such an event should be played up with much excitement and
tension and should lead to great festivities and congratulation of the
knights. After all, this is what glory is all about!
The initial encounter with a great knight does not necessarily need to
be a combative one. There are several other possible scenerios which
may inspire player knights to defeat the knights of legend.
If your players are anything like mine, they absolutely hate to lose.
Even more than being defeated, however, they despise being helped! If
they were in trouble in a fight and it looked like they were all going
to die, and some great knight came up and rescued them, they would
really sulk. This too could lead to them wanting to reclaim their
lost honour by beating the great knight themselves.
Worse than being defeated, even worse than being helped, comes being
captured in the eyes of my group of players. They will go on to fight
to the death rather than surrender. To capture them requires that the
odds ranged against them look absolutely impossible. If I were ever
to get them all captured by an evil knight and held prisoner and then
rescued by a great knight, that would really get on their nerves. Not
only would they have to show the evil imprisoning knight a thing or
two, but they would see to it that they erased their debt to their
rescuer as soon as possible by showing him up.
An alternative to simply defeating the great knight would be to have
the great knight come humbly to request their aid in a quest. He may
not necessarily admit that this quest is just too tough for him, but
he will have some reason why he needs the player knights to do it
instead (having the great knight come along would probably be just too
incendiary). If Lancelot were himself held prisoner by a witch and
needed rescuing, or if Gawain had to fulfill a vow to find out what
women really want and so could not kill a certain dragon right away
that was ravaging his homeland, then they could get word to the player
knights that they needed a favour. The player knight's role in the
Adventure of the Grey Knight could be made into an example of this
approach.
All of this could also be applied to non-combatative tests of the
player knights against the great knights. Are they truer lovers than
Tristram or Lancelot? Can they be more holy than Percival or Galahad?
Will they sleep with more women than Gawain? Are they more generous,
better hunters, more loyal, more honest than all other knights?
Perhaps a player knight is fated to be the only knight who can ride a
certain faerie steed, which one of the great knights has quested after
but failed to master. These tests need to be carefully set out,
rather than done simply as a set of die rolls.
Players tend to have a certain antipathy for any characters better
than they are, and I don't mean this in a power-gamer sort of way.
They want to be the heroes, so any greater heroes naturally seem like
rivals. Using the great knights as goalposts of knightly achievment
or instigators of competitive questing can be a way of harnessing this
rivalrous energy to serve the game's purposes of attaining glory and
demonstrating one's knightly qualities.
--------------------
From: kimbo@netcom.com (Kimbo Beattie)
Subject: Alone Against Cthulhu
System: Call of Cthulhu
I've always been a fan of solo adventures. They are great for when
you can't get a group together and I also find them fun when there are
only two people available to play. One of us will take the role of
"moderator" and read the paragraphs and roll dice for the monsters and
NPCs. The other person takes the part of the investigator and decides
where the character goes and what he does. I actually prefer playing
solos with two people than by myself. It helps in sharing the record
keeping chores and it's fun to experience the adventure with another
person.
A number of solo adventures have been published for Call of Cthulhu.
What follows is a list of the COC solos that I have found. If there
are any others out there, I'd like to hear about them.
THE THING IN THE DARKNESS
By Matthew J. Costello
Developed by Warren Spector & Steve Jackson
Published in Fantasy Gamer #3, Dec/Jan 1984
I believe this was the first COC solo to be published. A journalist
investigates the disappearance (and murder?) of a college co-ed. "The
Thing in the Darkness" introduces a number of design features that
will become almost standard in COC solo adventures: A Table (list) of
Places to Investigate, which acts as sort of a central "switchboard"
for the investigator as he goes about town (or wherever) investigating
and researching mysterious events. There is a Time Chart, which
eventually turns the solo into a "race against time." It's been so
long since I played this one, I've forgotten most of the plot. I
guess it's time to dust it off and try it again, hey?
ALONE AGAINST THE WENDIGO: Solitaire Adventure in Canada's Wilds
By Glenn Rahman
Published by Chaosium, 1985
Out of Print
WENDIGO is the first solo published by Chaosium. It's different from
all of the other COC solos listed here in that it is a more
"traditional" solo. The investigator starts at the beginning and goes
from there. There is no Table of Places to Investigate and no Time
Track. There is some use of dice to randomly determine the direction
of the adventure, but in general its linearity is more obvious than in
the other solos discussed here. There are a number of plot lines
(hence the random determination mentioned above) all dealing with
investigating strange events in the wilds of Canada. In general,
WENDIGO was less satisfying than the other COC solos. WENDIGO does
introduce a design feature that becomes standard in other COC solos:
the concept of "victory points." In WENDIGO it's called Hanninah
Mythos (HM) points. Most paragraphs award a number of HM points. At
the end of the adventure (assuming survival) the total of HM points is
used to determine the players "level of victory."
ALONE AGAINST THE DARK: Defying the Triumph of the Ice
By Matthew J. Costello
Published by Chaosium, 1985
Out of Print
Matthew Costello follows up with ALONE AGAINST THE DARK which, even
today, eight years after its publishing, is still one of the best COC
solos ever published. It is a world spanning adventure that takes a
series of adventurers (it's also rather deadly) from Arkam, Mass to
New York, Germany, Greece, Egypt and even the Antartic! It's a great
adventure with lots of "interesting" events. The basic idea of the
scenario would also make a great multi-player scenario if a GM were so
inclined to modify it for such use. The Investigator's object in
ALONE AGAINST THE DARK is nothing less than the saving of the world.
The level of Victory is determined by how many investigators it takes
to complete the adventure. This adventure includes a Table of Places
to Investigate (that spans the world!), a Time Track (that is years in
length!) and a handout of a pyramid in Eygpt that allows the player to
explore the interior. (Sort of like a jigsaw puzzle, "map as you go"
idea.) We lost quite a few investigators in that pyramid! :)
After ALONE AGAINST THE DARK, it's seven long years before any other
COC solos are published. At least it's that long before I see any
other COC solo adventures. As much as I enjoyed ALONE AGAINST THE
DARK, I guess COC solos didn't do all that well. If there are other
COC solos published during this time, I'd like to hear about them.
I'd also like to get my hands on them!
ALONE ON HALLOWEEN
By Scott David Aniolowski with John Tynes
Published by Pagan Publishing, 1992 $8.95
HALLOWEEN is a "haunted house" type of adventure that pits the
Investigator and his friend against a dark and forboding Mansion and
its inhabitants on a stormy Halloween night. It includes all of the
"standard" design features: A table of Places to Investigate (in this
case, a floor plan of the Mansion), A Time Table (What terrible thing
occur at Midnight?), and a way to track victory beyond just survival
in the way of "Journalism Points."
The adventure starts off with the Investigator having an "accident"
while driving his car past the old mansion. It is a dark and stormy
night and the only place to go is the mansion (of course!). Once
inside, the Investigator is introduced to the owner and soon finds
himself in a race against time to find his friend. There is a great
dream sequence and searching the house for signs of your friend gets
quite suspensful as you uncover clues about the inhabitants and time
begins to run out. Your investigator should have a high Sanity rating
as there are many chances to go temporarily insane which results in
the investigator waking up in a hospital somewhere and losing the
game.
Also included with ALONE ON HALLOWEEN is a small adventure toolkit
including a floorplan and descriptions for an English Manor House. A
list of NPCs and scenario ideas round out the toolkit. Some nice
scenario ideas in there.
GRIMROCK ISLE
By Michael Szymanski (?)
Additional material by Scott Aniolwski
Published August, 1992 by Triad Entertainments $18.95 (?)
GRIMROCK ISLE could easily be classified as the "Mother of all COC
solo adventures." This is one big package! It contains the "main"
scenario booklet, DOVE'S BAY, which includes some 400 paragraph
entries. Also included in the package are five (!) "sub-solos"
(BLEAKMOORE CEMETERY, THOMPSON'S BRIDGE, PALMER'S ORCHID, McKIERNAN'S
LIGHTHOUSE and HUTCHIN'S CAVE) of about 100 paragraph entries each.
In addition there is a "Book of Terrible Knowledge" which contains a
group version of the solo adventure. There are fourteen pages of
handouts (mostly letters or newspaper clippings that turn up as a
result of research) as well.
I haven't actually had the chance to play GRIMROCK ISLE yet, so I
can't say anything about the adventure or its quality. I'm impressed
by the material contained in the package and a brief skimming of the
introductory material gives me hope for this package. It looks like
it will be a fun adventure. The premise of the story is that of a
haunted house. The Investigator has been hired to get to the bottom
of the mysteries surrounding the house so the owner can sell it. The
standard design features are included: A Table of Places to
Investigate (the Town of Dove's Bay and its environs), A Time Table,
and "Research Points" used to determine the "level of victory."
ALONE AGAINST CTHULHU
And that's it for this survey of Call of Cthulhu solo adventures. I'd
like to see more such adventures but I guess they appeal to only a
limited subset of the RPG market. Nonetheless, solo adventures are
great for when you don't have the time (or inclination) to organize a
group game. They can be lots of fun, but I wouldn't suggest using
your own characters (use the characters provided instead) unless you
are willing to risk that character. Solo adventures, by their nature,
tend to be deadly.
As mentioned above I'd be very interested in hearing about other solo
scenarios for Call of Cthulhu (heck, for any RPG!). My INET address
is kimbo@netcom.com.
--------------------
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