# Running Call of Cthulhu For The First Time



## MortalPlague (Oct 29, 2012)

I will be starting a Call of Cthulhu mini-campaign tomorrow.  My group is all D&D players, most recently used to 4th Edition, though we've played 2nd and 3rd as well.  We're also avid players of Arkham Horror, so we're somewhat familiar with the themes involved.  I'm planning to run a 4-6 session game of CoC to see what it's all about.

I picked up the 6th Edition PDF off Chaosium's site, which includes several excellent starter adventures.  I've settled on the Edge of Darkness adventure, which should give my players a good first taste of dealing with the horrors of the Mythos.

I have a few questions for those who have run the game before.  First, do you have any tips?  Any thoughts on running Call of Cthulhu as opposed to D&D?  And secondly, the book's combat rules are a little complex and spread throughout a chapter.  Is there a combat crib sheet available somewhere which lays things out in an organized fashion?


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## Crothian (Oct 29, 2012)

First of all, best of luck.  It is never easy jumping into a new game and system.  Don't get to caught up the rules and just remember to keep the game moving along.  You and the players will get things wrong so you'll need to learn from mistakes and adapt.  Have fun and don't worry about screwing things up too much.

With CoC unlike D&D don't show the monsters.  Hint at them, show the result of other people running into the monsters (dead or insane is always good).  Smart investigators don't want to run into the monsters, that's how you become a dead investigator or worse.  Show the cultists and their insanity.  Establish the setting especially if you are not running it in modern times.  For one game I was in set in the 1930's the GM started the game with the best selling music of that year and telling us of the latest in motion pictures.  Details like that can really help set the tone and the initial mode.  

Combat can be deadly so don't have much of it.  The combat system is not the greatest so I always concentrate more on story and investigation.  Then I have them run into some weak cultists that mostly die with a hit or two.  The system can be deadly so be careful not to kill the PCs to quickly.


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## darjr (Oct 29, 2012)

Just found this via google.

Never seen it before but I'd figure I'd post it here.

http://arsmysteriorum.weebly.com/uploads/2/4/8/0/2480968/call_of_cthulhu_combat_reference_sheet.pdf


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## Spatula (Oct 29, 2012)

The combat system is surprisingly fiddly for a game that, in theory, is not about combat. I don't think the rulebook has a summary, but I think the important bits are:

DEX determines initiative.

Most guns can shoot 2/round, ammo willing, if you have the gun ready to fire at the start of the round. If you don't have a gun, I don't think you can act during the first shooting phase.

If you roll skill/5 or less, you do double damage (an impale).

If you're practically on top of your target and have a gun, that's point-blank range and you get some really good benefits for that.

If you lose more than X% (half? I forget) of your remaining hit points after getting hit, you have to roll less than CON x 5 or pass out.

You're dead past -2 hit points.

First Aid/Medicine can restore 1d3 hit points from each hit, once (not more HP than you lost, obviously). So if you take one big hit, successful first aid will restore 1d3. If you take several smaller hits, you could potentially get back 1d3 x # hits from first aid.

Shotguns are DEADLY (at least to humans) at close range.


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## MortalPlague (Oct 30, 2012)

Good advice, thanks.  Darjr, that sheet is exactly what I had in mind; all the combat rules on two concise pages.  Well, dense pages.  But I digress.

Can't wait to get at it tomorrow.  I'm tracking down some mood music and reference photos.  This should be fun.


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## ProtoClone (Oct 30, 2012)

The key to a good game is atmosphere. The people over at yog-sothoth.com are great for advice.
Some advice for you and your players:
If you have a gun, remember to save a bullet for yourself.
Have the players create several investigators and have them on stand-by for when one dies the next one jumps right in, with a reasonable story.
Be prepared for every possible thing your players can do; don't be surprised when they don't do any of them.
Handouts are your friend.
Don't worry if they spend lots of time, maybe even a session, going over notes and clues, that's part of the game too.

There is a lot that goes in to running a game for a Keeper. So make time to prepare notes and handouts for the players. Also be prepared that even though you felt like all options were laid out for them, they will find some way to come up with a new one.

Remind them, and yourself, it is OK they died...that's what can happen.

Sorry if my post seemed confusing at first, I copy & pasted it from a similar topic I responded to on a different message board.


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## Plane Sailing (Nov 1, 2012)

I hope it has gone well, as I guess you've had your first session by now!

The one additional bit of advice I'd give is to make sure that the players have set their expectations of CoC adventures appropriately - a game of investigation, fear, insanity and so forth is quite different from a standard D&D game of kick in the door, heroism and winning!

I'm sure that you've already done this and the players are up for it, but I thought it was worth adding into the conversation


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## frankthedm (Nov 2, 2012)

If the game hasn't changed too much from CoC 5th edition, I'd recommend borrowing the automatic fire rules from the Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader & Deathwatch games.

You still get the normal bonus to hit when firing fully automatic, but on a hit, one bullet hits home. For each 10% the shooter passes the test by, another bullet hits home, up to the number fired. If you hit by 10% you get two hits, hit by 20% you get 3 bullets, hit by 60%, seven bullets hit home.


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## RangerWickett (Nov 2, 2012)

I played in a Cthulhu one-shot this past weekend that kind of sucked. My advice, focus on the horror. 

We did a Vietnam War thing where we were too heavily armed, and never really threatened. I _wanted_ to go running off into the jungle in a panic, ditching my gear so I could run faster, only to find my way back hours later and discover the rest of my company half-devoured. But instead we blew the monsters away. 

In horror, you need bad things to happen early, to set the precedent that _terrible_ things can happen later. This establishes a sense of dread. 

Call of Cthulhu has great sanity rules. Use them. If no one goes insane during the course of your mini-campaign, you're either using the wrong system, or not throwing enough horrible things at them.

Kill people, or at least make it obvious that their lives are in peril.


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## Wednesday Boy (Nov 2, 2012)

RangerWickett said:


> I played in a Cthulhu one-shot this past weekend that kind of sucked. My advice, focus on the horror.
> 
> We did a Vietnam War thing where we were too heavily armed, and never really threatened. I _wanted_ to go running off into the jungle in a panic, ditching my gear so I could run faster, only to find my way back hours later and discover the rest of my company half-devoured. But instead we blew the monsters away.
> 
> ...




All of this.  (I would have XPed you if I could have.)  I'm sure it's primarily the style of CoC that I was introduced to but it wouldn't be a satisfying experience if people didn't go insane, die, and be completely out matched and out of their element.

As a GM one thing that I found helpful was to print out the character sheet, jot the rolls and equations used for character creation on the sheet ("3d6" next to Str, "2d6+6 next to Size, etc.), and photocopy those for my players.  Having all of that information on the sheet made character creation go very quickly and let the players fill out this sheets at their own pace.


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## Janx (Nov 2, 2012)

RangerWickett said:


> We did a Vietnam War thing where we were too heavily armed, and never really threatened. I _wanted_ to go running off into the jungle in a panic, ditching my gear so I could run faster, only to find my way back hours later and discover the rest of my company half-devoured. But instead we blew the monsters away.




this partly sounds like a home-brewing balance problem.

The GM changed from the standard scenario of lightly armed civilians to an armed platoon of soliders, without really balance testing the combat encounter.  Since the first few shots proved the monster was not immune to bullets, the soldiers had no reason to get scared and run.  At that point, it became a pure military combat encouter.

I'm not even sure where the GM could have gone from there IF the monster was platoon-proof.  Say  [MENTION=63]RangerWickett[/MENTION] ran, and comes back to see his platoon's remains (and say the other PCs did likewise).  What in Cthulu's Green Snot does 5 PCs think they are going to accomplish against a platoon killing beast?

In a stereotypical horror, the monster takes out a guy or two off camera, that the PCs encounter the aftermath.  There is still room for HOPE that the party can use its combined strength and brains to defeat the monster, because they don't have any evidence of its overwhelming strengh or size.

Once you see the beast wipe out a platoon firsthad, that's kind of a buzzkill.


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## Wednesday Boy (Nov 2, 2012)

Janx said:


> I'm not even sure where the GM could have gone from there IF the monster was platoon-proof. Say @RangerWickett ran, and comes back to see his platoon's remains (and say the other PCs did likewise). What in Cthulu's Green Snot does 5 PCs think they are going to accomplish against a platoon killing beast?




If I was running a game that had a platoon killing beast in it, killing the beast wouldn't be the main objective of the scenario.  There would be a higher goal that the PCs would want to accomplish (stopping cultists from completing an Elder God summoning ritual) and the PKB would be an obstacle (albeit an extraordinarily deadly obstacle) that the PCs would have to avoid or overcome.


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## ProtoClone (Nov 2, 2012)

RangerWickett said:


> I played in a Cthulhu one-shot this past weekend that kind of sucked. My advice, focus on the horror.
> 
> We did a Vietnam War thing where we were too heavily armed, and never really threatened. I _wanted_ to go running off into the jungle in a panic, ditching my gear so I could run faster, only to find my way back hours later and discover the rest of my company half-devoured. But instead we blew the monsters away.
> 
> ...




In the games we played it was the lack of obvious dread that created more dread.  It was the idea of poking our hands around under the car in hopes of finding the car keys we dropped and hoping we don't find something else first.  You want the players to poke around and wonder if the next time they open a book, or a door, or "to see what that was" if it will be their last.

Lovecraft was about building the suspense and only giving you a fraction of an idea of what it is that is out there.


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## jaygeh (Jun 4, 2014)

*Keep it loose*

I have run some CoC missions for my weekly gaming group. I find that when we focus on the investigation more, we have a lot more fun. And I always write up some general notes for myself on the passage of the adventure, with possible side tracks the guys might take. They really like trying to out think me until we build up to the main conflict.  I also make up a lot of props, stuff I print out as handouts for the guys, usually with clues within the contents.


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## WayneLigon (Jun 6, 2014)

Look at some of the introductory scenarios, or the adventures for bare beginners - use those to teach the game rules and to set up a different set of expectations. Death can come very quickly even from human sources, and there is little or no way of healing yourself quickly even with magic. Monsters are there to run from, not fight. Most of them are not harmed by terrestrial weaposn, anyway. Maybe even make the adventures you try the first time around the 'prequel' to the real thing. These investigators all meet horrible ends, and the next set of characters come looking for them. Kill them, kill them dead, bring them back only to kill them again. Have them make horrible discoveries, like when they open the car trunk and find it filled to the brim with their entire liquified family. 

After that shock-show, however.... Now, having done that, ease off and show them there are ways to win, small ways that nevertheless mean a lot. I've had quite a few people tell me they never want to bother with CoC because people die quicker than henchmen in the Tomb of Horrors, but that does not have to be the case. Have the main fight be against the various cults, those conspiracy-laden networks of madmen who invest our society like parasites. The game becomes one of deep cat-and-mouse strikes because the one thing you can never let these people do it learn who you are. That happens, and you're all dead. They can summon monsters or use spells to rip you to pieces and you'll never see it coming. Yet, cultists are mostly mortal and vulnerable. They can be opposed, killed, and triumphed over. It provides some of that visceral joy you get from cleaning out a goblin lair when you finally, finally take down a large chunk of the network for good, then fade back into the night like you were never there in the first place.


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