Looking for possibly some material to help me ease into the GM role and bridging exploration and action

Hey guys, Firstly, I beg pardon for the incoming wall of text. I posted up a topic a few days ago regarding our Call of Cthulhu campaign where we suddenly had a few players join where they were sort of non-existent prior; I also talked about a rules-police type player who has been a part of the core group. The good news is that the rules-police guy had toned down and gotten better overall, but still tries to challenge me on certain things. He's definitely gotten better though and isn't an issue. We had to let two of the players go because one was inconsistent with showing up and I had to magically make his character appear/disappear in the adventure. The core group agreed this wasn't really acceptable. We had to let a second player go because due to IRL circumstances, he wasn't capable of talking over a microphone and it sort of stunted gameplay when it came to us needing his character make a decision and act in combat and other such things. A third player voluntarily dropped out due to RL issues, but I let it be known he's more than welcome to come back whenever since he fit the group dynamic well and was always willing to break up the sort of silence which I'm going to be describing. But most of that is moot; just giving a general summary as to where we are with players. We went from GM and 6 players down to GM and 3. One player has a friend who should be available, but we might be looking for another, but I again digress. So suddenly, the chat is a bit quieter. I'm new to GMing (and tabletop in general) but feel I'm doing an okay job. I've been told I'm better than our previous option, as I do try my best to listen to and organize the players whereas the GM I took over for didn't really do that. But I feel like I can do better. I try to be engaging and give the players some stuff to feed off of, but the very nature of the CoC game is a little difficult to deal with. There's more emphasis on gathering evidence before progressing to the "actiony" parts of the game and this is where I feel I'm losing the interest of the players. I'm sort of looking for ways to bridge that gap between the players trying to find and piece together information and the parts where they're actively exploring and those sorts of things. One of the players is definitely more cerebral and quiet, trying to think and piece together the information they have. This is fine, but while he's thinking it now means there's only two players conversing about how to advance. It feels like dead air or awkward silence during a spontaneous conversation you try to start at a bar or bus stop or something -- I dunno. So I guess I'm looking for some material I could read, watch, listen to, or anything of that nature to give me a bit of a helping hand in terms of engaging the players and getting them more involved in the world. I don't want to have to handhold, as it's defeating the very nature of exploring and investigating, but I do want to help them move forward and that itself is a very vague line I need to define. There's just gotta be some stuff I can do to make this better overall. They've said I'm doing a decent job, especially with being new, but I know I can do better and want to make this more enjoyable for everyone. Thanks in advance.

Not sure what I could offer in a suggestion since my group is a very talkative bunch. Take a look at the Raiders of the Lost Arc movies and other  pulp action movies and books. Those usually have a alot of action while the main heroes are investigating and exploring. I would suggest making them feel pressed for time. A constant pressure of got to get this solved or the world is doomed type feeling because if the bad guys solve it or get to it first they are going to do A, B C, or All above. CoC is a pulp horror story game and most pulp games are fast paced games usually (not all are) and there is a lot of action constantly. Look up Doc Savage and think how to apply that style to CoC which should be rather easy. Sorry that I can't offer any more help then that but good luck.

I'll look into those things you suggested. I think a portion of it is that the player who left of his own accord was sort of the spur for conversation and always the first to act. With him leaving, that role is left undefined within the group. I think moving forward with a set group will definitely ease things, as having to dismiss two players mid-session was sort of distracting, even though we had finished up the part of the adventure we were on. I had to rewrite some stuff to create the link for moving forward, but it went pretty well. I might just be expecting too much of myself in all areas of the game. I just feel there's something I'm missing. I do try to bring them in with ambiance and things going on, NPCs doing stuff and interacting with them and things of that nature, but it just get a little quiet when they're shuffling through papers and such, which I'd like to avoid. Thanks, though.

Most good GMs feel like they are missing something and that pushes them to improve. I've been GMing for over 20 yrs and I still think I'm missing something and constantly ask my players for critiques on the session. I usually ask for what they like and what they think could be improved on after the session and use that to improve something that I do for the next session.

There are a couple of things that could be going on here: 1. The players aren't picking up fast enough on clues. This could be for a lot of reasons, so check out this article: Three Clue Rule . Basic premise - for any conclusion the PCs need to make to figure out a mystery or course of action, include three clues for it. And red herrings? Never, ever, ever use them in an RPG. Ever. I know they're part and parcel to mystery novels, but they don't work so well in games. So don't use them. The article talks about this as well. 2. Information download. Players tend to engage less when the GM simply downloads information to them. This is necessary in some cases, especially as it relates to setting up established fiction that is part of your prep. But in many cases, you can engage the player by asking them help you set the scenes. Rather than you tell them what they see, you frame the situation and ask them to tell you what they see. Frame it well though so that the player has something to go on, e.g. "Once in the parlor, you're certain something horrible happened here and that whoever or whatever did it left behind a vital clue. What is it and why does it make your skin crawl just looking at it?" It's human nature to engage upon your own ideas rather than simply be fed information. Give it a try. It may take a few attempts to encourage players to do this as it represents, for some, a paradigm shift in the way information is presented. Tell them openly why you're doing it and that no answer they give is wrong as long as it doesn't contradict previously established fiction. If they know you'll accept and use their idea, they'll start to see that no answer is wrong and will tend to engage more. 3. Fear of being wrong is another reason people clam up during these sorts of games. If you take the wrong door, it could mean death. If you misinterpret a clue, it could mean going around in circles for an hour. Nobody wants to be the cause of anyone else's death or waste anyone's time, so sometimes players don't take the initiative. If you as GM, however, always make failure interesting (for the players, if not the characters) rather than boring or punitive, people will tend to be less afraid to be wrong and will act more often and quickly. 4. Finally, ninjas. If the action is dragging in your game, have someone kick open the door and attack. The PCs have been asking too many questions too loudly and now they have to pay. Do this to snap the table awake and to shift gears a bit. Make it a quick one, have the enemies leave clues behind, and then progress to the next scene once you've got better engagement. Good luck!

Thanks Iserith, I've seen that posted somewhere in another thread while trying to dig up some info regarding running a campaign and have definitely taken it into consideration. I had to do a bit of reformatting on the first adventure since I had to take over for the old GM in the same setting in order to prevent him from having outside knowledge. One thing I'm worried about in the second point is actually relevant to the first. I think I can handle adlibbing the environments to a degree, but I am slightly concerned with dropping accidental red herrings by doing that. I've brought up the point before that it's sort of defeatist when they walk into a room and immediately go to their rolls trying to "Spot Hidden" and "Library Use" without any sort of prompt or idea of what they are looking for, but it's mostly just the rules guy who goes straight for that angle. I try to be vague and informative at the same time depending on how successful certain rolls are so they're not left hanging completely with a failure, and not info dumping if they're only middling in success. That gets them talking, but again leaves room for them to, as I put it to them, "read between lines that don't exist". I'll have a talk and see what we can do regarding that since it sounds like a good idea, but requires the players to be on the same boat and not resorting to rolls as soon as they step into a new room. You're right on the third point. For the first leg of the campaign I told them nobody was going to die or go insane so we could get a feel for each other and how I approach the game. There was only one instance where I had to break the rules to allow a player to survive, but I think they understand it's important to be sure what they're doing, and if they gather the appropriate evidence they can be successful. This again brings up the issue of drawing the line between dropping hints and hand holding, but that's really only something I can discern. You bring up some good points and things I'll bring to the table to try and make the experience more inclusive. It's actually sort of odd that the player who resorts to dice rolls as soon as he walks into a room is the same one who roleplays his character more than the others. He's the same rules-police player who seems very contrarian in nature comparing the way he thinks he wants to play versus the way he actually plays.

I think I might argue the "no red herrings" actually.  But you're right that they require some care.  They should always lead to *something.*  It should never be a complete dead end.  When I use them, I try to have it get them engaged in some fun combat (for a break from the sleuthing), lead them to a clue they might not have found otherwise (in case they've stumbled far off track), or put them in touch with an NPC that can offer them some assistance or something.   I do a lot of mysteries in my game since my players all really enjoy that sort of thing.  I've found that being very precise, but also flexible, in my planning has been most helpful.  Keep a list of where everything important is and who knows what.  But be willing to shuffle things around if your players start running off after wild geese, for sure.  If someone comes up with a really clever idea, don't be afraid to switch things up to make it fit. Something else useful is to have some kind of NPC that's related to the case stop buy to talk to the PCs.  If everyone is quietly pondering, the NPC can poke their head in to ask how it's going.  What do the PCs think?  How far along are they?  They were attacked by ninjas?! Oh my!  They must be getting close to something now!  This can get everyone talking again and possibly give the players a chance to pose some questions to the NPC even.   Iserith's #4 is may sound a bit silly, but it's a great way to get things going again.  Really the trick is just to keep things moving.  If there's a lull, throwing in those ninjas is a great way to shake things up.  It makes the layers feel like they're making progress too.  The badguys are nervous about something they're doing, after all!

More work on your part but you could tell all your players that they are not to roll any dice unless you specifically tell them to and you handle dice rolls as needed with the exception for combat and such. You then get to give them the info based on the descriptions of their actions. It adds more work on your shoulders but it creates more interactivity in the group. If they want the info then they have to do more then just roll dice, they have to describe what they are doing and how they are doing. It goes from a "I roll my spot hidden for anything that looks strange" to "As I enter the room, I start looking over the walls and the furniture to see if there are any telltale signs of something not right. Do I see something that looks out of place or doesn't belong in the room?" type of interaction. That lets you decide on the type of roll and modifiers while not letting the player know right off the bat that they succeed or not. This also lets you as the GM decide to give a key piece of info to the players without them knowing it was a preset info that they have to know.

I love red herrings in my game because they might be red herrings at the moment but later on the players discover that red herring was actually a clue about something else aka a plot hook for a later adventure. Ninjas don't have to be ninjas. You could throw cultist at the group, enemy spies that are trying to get what the group is going after, etc... If the pace slows toss something at them randomly just to get their hearts a pumping and jumpstart the pace again. Even after the bad guys are defeated, you can have a clue or hint be found on one of them that leads to another part of the adventure.  have fun and good luck.

As a disclaimer: I'm not familiar with CoC's rules, so I'm trying to speak generally and you'll have to apply it as it fits accordingly.  With regard to the second point, consider the following: Break down the transaction into goals, successes, and complications. A lot of GMs give varying degrees of information based upon the roll. Not only is this arbitrary in some ways, it makes it much harder for the players to assimilate that information and make decisions because the GM is being vague and hinting rather than stating facts. Instead, whenever a roll is asked to be made or you feel a roll should be made according to the game rules, first state the goal that is being attempted clearly. "This is a roll to determine the whereabouts of the former owner of the Jade Monkey." Then roll. If they roll high, they get the information. If they roll middling, they get the information, but there's a complication. If they fail, there's a complication. Now here's the thing - what you're doing is giving them a broader range at which they succeed at getting information vital to following the mystery, but you're introducing an equally broader range at which something interesting goes awry. A complication can be anything as long as it's interesting (e.g. in a CoC game, it should increase the tension or reveal an unwelcome truth) and needn't be directly related to the roll. So let's say I'm looking for the information on the former owner of the Jade Monkey. I roll middling. Rather than give me a weaker clue than if I had rolled high, give the same clue, but make something happen. Perhaps in my digging around, the former owner learns of about my character and sends some thugs after me. Somewhere in the middle of the next scene, we're accosted. With that in mind, you can also give out the right clue on a failure, but the cost for getting it (because of the crappy roll) is much higher. (Complications and costs will always be highly contextual, so if you're doing a good job establishing the scene and the stakes, you'll be able to see very clearly what that complication or cost should be even when improv'ing. Rule of thumb - on a middling roll, the complication should be something the PCs have a chance at stopping or avoiding whereas on a fail, the complication should be immediate and irrevocable, even if it's "off camera.") Does that make sense?

The above-referenced article's take on red herrings: COROLLARY: RED HERRINGS ARE OVERRATED Red herrings are a classic element of the mystery genre: All the evidence points towards X, but its a red herring! The real murderer is Y! When it comes to designing a scenario for an RPG, however, red herrings are overrated. I’m not going to go so far as to say that you should never use them, but I will go so far as to say that you should only use them with extreme caution. There are two reasons for this: First, getting the players to make the deductions they’re supposed to make is hard enough. Throwing in a red herring just makes it all the harder. More importantly, however, once the players have reached a conclusion they’ll tend to latch onto it. It can be extremely difficult to convince them to let it go and re-assess the evidence. (One of the ways to make a red herring work is to make sure that there will be an absolutely incontrovertible refutation of it: For example, the murders continue even after the PCs arrest a suspect. Unfortunately, what your concept of an “incontrovertible refutation” may hold just as much water as your concept of a “really obvious clue that cannot be missed.) Second, there’s really no need for you to make up a red herring: The players are almost certainly going to take care of it for you. If you fill your adventure with nothing but clues pointing conclusively and decisively at the real killer, I can virtually guarantee you that the players will become suspicious of at least three other people before they figure out who’s really behind it all. They will become very attached to these suspicions and begin weaving complicated theories explaining how the evidence they have fits the suspect they want. In other words, the big trick in designing a mystery scenario is to try to avoid a car wreck. Throwing red herrings into the mix is like boozing the players before putting them behind the wheel of the car. I would add that red herrings can be okay if they lead to something interesting rather than a dead-end; however, in mystery scenarios, players may look at red herrings as failure since it may not get them to the goal they were pursuing in earnest. If you're looking to increase engagement, and fear of being wrong is possibly causing players to be hesitant, then red herrings are definitely not a good idea (right now).

That definitely seems like a way I can approach this and you're absolutely right about how the information could be misleading by giving varying amounts. I'll bring that up and see how they want to approach it. I think one of the difficulties in dealing with the Cthulhu universe is that so many of the events take place away from the eyes of society. Cultists are practicing in secret, alien races are keeping themselves and their rituals secret from the rest of the world, and the players are routinely left to fend for themselves in a foreign or isolated environment. It's not your typical fantasy world where any passerby will shrug at the mention of a dragon or coming across some sort of spell. The average person will attribute it to a freak occurrence, a trick played on their mind, or the person or area in question just flat out being strange. It's a great environment for story-telling and allowing characters to discover things if you have complete control (as in fiction), but in terms of a game it's a little more difficult because the players are sort of left on an island. I have introduced things on a whim if the players make a poor choice or roll poorly, and I try to let them do whatever they want. There's been more than a few times where I've had to spontaneously react to what they do, especially if it was completely against what my expectations were, which was brought up in that article about the 'Three Clue Rule'. I'm going to keep hope that the awkwardness can be attributed to the player shuffling over the last two sessions (introducing and dismissing two characters in each) and that the feeling of disorganization or being aimless will diminish once we're regular again. Like I've said, I'm entirely new to this and want to do a good job, but have no frame of reference for how long it normally takes these things to come together and only really have our prior GM as a benchmark. I might be completely fabricating these issues and that the players are enjoying themselves, but I want to do the best I can and feel I'm lacking in certain areas. Regardless, I appreciate the input and have some things to discuss or bring up.

@Ryan : Just remember the key thing. It is your game and all we offer is suggestions, tips, and comments. You do what you think is best for your game and ignore what you think doesn't work for you. As I usually say Have fun and enjoy the game.

You might also benefit from looking into Dungeon World's front design for organizing your campaigns and adventures. Here's what a devious cult might look like in that format (below). It's a great way to give you enough material to work with during play so you can improvise outcomes, especially when trying to imagine what a given group will do in response to a middling or poor roll on the part of the PCs. I've been using this in every game I run for the last two years. It's awesome and has significantly reduced my GM prep. Cult of the Wyrd (Ambitious Organization: Cult) Impulse: to infest from within Grim Portents: (1) Steal the Relic of St. Aug-gg the Apostate; (2) Sacrifice the Scion; (3) The Red Moon Rises Impending Doom: Usurpation - the chain of order comes apart, someone rightful is displaced. Actions: Attack someone by stealthy means (kidnapping, etc.) Attack someone directly (with a gang or single assailant) Absorb or buy out someone important (an ally perhaps) Influence a body of control (change a law, manipulate doctrine) Establish a new rule (within the organization) Claim territory or resources Negotiate a deal Observe a potential foe in great detail So, for example, have just that little bit of detail handy for a given Danger (group, individual, or even a location) and when the PCs take an action or get a die result that would suggest the Cult react in some way, just pick something off that list of bullet points, look at it through the lens of the fiction you've established so far, and make something happen. PCs middled the roll on finding the former owner of the Jade Monkey? Okay, the PCs find out who the former owner is, a name and address perhaps, enough for them to take action. BUT, the cult finds out and "claims territory or resources" as a result, perhaps taking over the library at which the PCs gained that information. If they go back to that place, trouble ensues. If, on the other hand the PCs failed the roll, it's probably because the cult has already "cleaned" this library of evidence and, as a result of that crappy roll, some goons come out of the stacks and "attack someone directly." Were they waiting here for you all along?!

Ryan, I've run a long term law enforcement / mystery game on Roll20 and while I haven't played CoC, I think I get the gist of what happens.  Here's some of my advice learned the hard way: No red herrings.  Your players will come up with their own red herrings due to their interpretation of the evidence.  If you push things that to you are obviously red herrings, you unbalance the game unfairly against the players.  Trust me, they will pick up on things you never intended them to and run that into the ground.  Let them work out their own red herrings in game. Make sure they have the necessary evidence.  Regardless of how or what they roll, give them at least one piece of evidence for an encounter you've designed.  Successful skill rolls or good role playing can give more clues or better clues, but make sure they get the minimum needed to advance the game. Have someone the players can go to in-character for advice.  When the investigation stalls out - and it will - have someone that they can go to at their own choosing for help.  This is tricky because you need to make sure you don't have a GMPC or someone who will overshadow and deprotagonize the player.  Someone who can offer help without actively becoming involved in your mystery, like a mentor of a player character or someone with a reason to be hanging around in the background. Allow for player success.  Even if your players have been bumbling around for the past four months, at some point they're going to connect the dots much faster than you intended.  THIS IS A GOOD THING.  Let your players be awesome.  Resist the temptation to move the goal posts. Use slow spots to your advantage.  When the investigation slows down, use this down period as a character development opportunity.  Have someone from the player character's past show up unrelated to the investigation.  Find ways of forcing the players to make meaningful choices - do I help my brother or continue the investigation? - and deepen the game world at the same time.  Ninjas can be plenty exciting, so can a jilted lover.  Figure out what would your players would find interesting.

You're right on with that first point, Dave. After we finished our first mission (took 3 sessions - about twice as long as I expected but there was some detouring and dealing with moving players in and out) I sort of laid out to the group the places they went right and wrong -- edit: wrong meaning what I had intended, which I now can tell is something I need to limit myself on. They definitely made their own red herrings. One player was pretty spot on, but his suggestion was dismissed by the rest of the group pretty quickly. It was unfortunate that he was a good member and had to leave by his own decision since he was also the resident medic. I had to take over so they could heal and had to force the knowledge back into the game as a discerning player with outside info, which was awkward and unfortunate. But yes, the players definitely do create their own red herrings and I don't necessarily have to introduce them. I've read the 'Three Clue Rule' that Iserith mentioned and agree with making sure they have opportunity to obtain it. I've made it clear that proper investigating will always give them a chance to succeed and prevent them from 'opening the wrong door' to inevitable death. I will ask them what they want to do with giving differing levels of info based on their roll, but they seem to enjoy that and it not being an 'all or nothing' sort of thing since they benefit from it if they fail as well. The only issue with the mentor sort of thing is the isolating nature of the Cthulhu mythos world. Incidents are very separate and singular, and while the campaigns from the books do allow for fluidity between them, the connecting strands are often flimsy and nothing more than placeholders such as books which hold small tidbits for them to later pursue -- it's all very artificial I and try to alleviate that with a deeper story and character-specific reasons to continue. One character is a Professor at Miskatonic University (in Arkham, Mass. - a major fictional city in the universe) so I have a few connections I can take advantage of there, but nobody is ever supposed to have too much information it seems except for the characters who get themselves into trouble, but it is something I try to work with. Haven't had much opportunity to "punish" them for success or goalpost moving, but that's definitely something I'll try to avoid. They've given me the pass to take a few minutes here and there since we take 5 minute breaks every hour or so anyway, so I can collect myself if they surprise me or I need to piece something together quickly. I know I can't plan for everything but it's still bothersome knowing I might be closing doors or opening others inadvertently if I react brashly. Like I said about the player who was on the right track, I'm sure he would've tried out his plan regardless and it would've been awesome, but he had to leave. Once we get a regular group and the characters sorted (one might be rerolled to try and round out the group more since some "skill players" had to be removed) I'll see if I can irk some more character background info out of them and give them freedom in that regard to work stuff into the story. It's just weird with the nature of the Cthulhian universe because so few people are in the know, and those that typically are are often driven mad before their knowledge can form any sort of value. All-in-all, good advice and some concepts I can bring up with the players to give them more interaction with the world rather than feel like they're on a rail. Reinforced some things I feel I'm doing right, and some things to reconsider. Thanks everyone for your input.

Good advice, Dave D. I'm kind of surprised to see someone else use the word "deprotagonize." Awesome!

Played a lot of CoC since the 80's.  Probably my favourite game.  B.R.P. (Basic Role Playing) system which I prefer to most other systems except for Savage Worlds.  Used it for Superworld, Stormbringer, Ringworld and a home-made Red Dawn style modern game.  For material and flow it sounds sort of incorrect but DON't look to the Lovecraft stories.  Read them by all means for an overall plot but they are sort of slow and plodding.  Don't get me wrong.  I love them dearly but they make for slow gaming.  Someone mentioned in an earlier post Doc Savage.  THAT'S great material for a game.  Simple...Fairly straight forward plot twists.  Ideal for gaming.  They sort of already adhere to the 3 Clue Rule.  Just add Nazis and sprinkle some cultists (Or are they the same thing...) and a FEW Lovecraftian unmentionable monsters.  1 part Cthulhu (Lovecraft)...2 parts Doc Savage (Lester Dent).  Most of those old pulp stories are pretty formulaic so they're ideal to directly transpose into gaming.  Also look to Lee Falk and the Phantom.  You will find bajillions of great NPC's and more plotlines than you can ever run. ...And don't forget...If they miss a clue or are going way too far down the wrong path...Just make a few pretend rolls behind the GM screen,  get everyone to make a "Knowledge" roll and just impart the wisdom:)

I know what you mean, Gary. I love the Lovecraftian universe and the way the game system approaches things in terms of gameplay and skills and stuff of that nature, but it feels the campaigns and sort of vibe the game provides are all of the one-shot variety. The links between things are superficial at best, being only small snippets from a book here or an infodump from an NPC there which can segue into something else after the players are done with this objective. I'm new to tabletop, but have always understood player freedom and building of the world and their characters as a major drawing point for the players. The game seems to not want to allow that with the way it sets things up (and the same thing regarding Lovecraft's stories -- worked best with isolated incidents and short stories rather than expansive, overarching plots) and wants the players to pick from a small pool of things to do, but it ultimately leads them to the same final door with only a single lock and a single key to pass through that door. There's something dangerous on the other side and the players don't know if they've made the right decisions or prepared properly to handle it, but they have no other recourse. It just seems limiting, hand hold-y, and a game of the players throwing dice at the wall hoping it says they did the right thing. I've been starting some discussion about trying to leave this model and allow them to have more influence over what's going on and who/what their characters know. I don't enjoy the fact that it wants me to force things on them and dump info, and think we can improve on the base game as a group. We might have to break a few rules from the mythos to achieve this, but I think it will be more beneficial than problematic in the long run.

Maybe Delta Green is an option?  It's CoC, but modernized and IIRC gives PCs a support system.  

It helps to remember that certain mechanics are meant to simulate a particular genre and that can affect the way the game plays at the table. You're playing something very genre-specific and, I'm sure, the rules are meant to help bring out the elements that make that genre distinct from, say, heroic fantasy D&D. This is why mystery or horror games don't work all that well in D&D without a big lift from the DM and players. (Cue everyone who will knee-jerk disagree with me on that without understanding my overarching point which is...) Other games simply do it better. I haven't played CoC specifically, but I've played games set in that genre (e.g. Tremulus), and they do seem to want to follow an episodic format akin to short stories than a continuous campaign like you might expect in D&D. My advice, therefore, is to accept that this is the case (if it is) and frame your adventure scenarios around that. Pick a location, frame the situation, make clear the goals and stakes, stick a timer on Very Bad Things that will happen if the PCs do not intervene or do not succeed, and then play to find out what happens. Either the scenario is resolved successfully or not. The next episode might be with new characters or the same characters depending on what happened or what the players want. It might link to previous episodes or it might not. There also sounds like an emphasis being made on character immersion which I think is actually bad for games. Scene immersion is better, and almost certainly the best approach in a game like CoC (or at least in that genre). The characters aren't meant to survive or remain sane. They rise and fall often in the course of a single scenario. Trying to remain immersed primarily in the character is therefore highly limiting to the play experience. Players should be engaged in the scene and by extension their characters. I have noticed that not many players know how to do this until shown how. Some of it involves using metagame information (being both the author and the audience, the puppet and the puppeteer) and represents a paradigm shift from the typical GM-player relationship most players are used to, especially if their past GMs took on the laughable role of "Anti-Metagaming Police."

I've read a little bit about Delta Green, Dave, and also Trail of Cthulhu might be along those lines also, but I've yet to really look into them in depth. I'm trying to start some discussion amongst the players before our next session and I think they're on board with a few concepts. It just really feels like the game is walking the players down a plank and giving them no recourse, which I don't think is necessarily fair nor fun/engaging for the players. It's like going to a zoo and being forced to experience it on a moving sidewalk: "Look at this great attraction! Here it comes.... and there it goes! Please remain seated, keep arms and legs within the ride at all times, and come back again." You don't get to walk around freely and spend time in the places you want to. I think most of the people who play CoC are doing it because they want to play tabletop and love the mythos universe, but the game abandons some core tabletop concepts the way I see it and the aggravating factor in my initial post; it wants the players to guess at what it wants them to do rather than doing something because it feels right, and it feels like it slows the game down and limits the players. I'll take a look at those things and see what I can work in or adapt to make it more engaging and entertaining for everyone.

Iserith, I understand what you mean about certain rulesets applying to certain universes better than other, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in my group with a different sort of expectations coming into the game. We all joined the original GM just because we loved Cthulhu and wanted to play some tabletop. Nobody but him was really familiar with the rules and at the end of each session we're always going over stuff in the core book at how laughable some of the things it insists upon are. I think it will only be the old GM (rules policeman in the group now who has stated many times that he doesn't think we should stray and that the game is perfect when it's not) who might need some convincing to give it a go. I just don't think a PC needs to die or go insane every session and that longevity of the characters can be achieved without breaking the mythos or the system. Even some of the game's suggested premises are of the nature of a longer campaign where the PCs would need to have accumulated knowledge to some degree (visiting alien worlds, casting spells that take a year to prepare, contacting Elder Gods and other such things), but then the game wants you to do this as a one-shot with no setup, new characters, and just suspend disbelief that this sudden influx of knowledge of alien gods and incredible technology exists and you need to do something to prevent the world from ending. It works in the context of a short story where the author has complete creative control, but not for tabletop where players will be questioning motives both IC and OOC. The game seems contrary to itself and wants PCs to die or go insane, but also wants the players to have knowledge and accept it at face value when there is absolutely no reason for them to.

I also thought hellboy would be a good setting for the cthulthu game.

I can't speak to whether CoC is a good rules set or not having not laid eyes upon it. If you say it's laughable in some ways, I believe you. I also want to make clear that my position is not that "PCs need to die or go insane every session." I'm just saying that this is not an unexpected outcome of the genre and shouldn't necessarily be avoided, either by the rules set or by GM/player intervention or failure mitigation. What I am suggesting is framing the game in a more episodic fashion, whether that's by scenario, chapter, location, or what have you. Rather than day-to-day in a "world," you clip and edit your play to include only those scenes that relate to the premise, whatever that may be. Need a year to cast a spell? Done. "One year later..." It's not really about suspension of disbelief as much as it is about buy-in. To put it another way, "asking how something can be rather than stating how something cannot be." You have the knowledge of alien gods because that's what you know for [reasons]. Then play on. This goes back to what I was saying about the tyranny of character immersion. The scene or premise  requires that your character knows these things, so you do. How and why? In the answering of that question, we see character development, often in ways that nobody expected including the player of that character. Does that make sense? I keep talking about how some of this is a complete paradigm shift for players. I can try to explain better/further if you like. Some of this sounds like an issue of simulationism vs. narrativism.

I understand exactly what you mean, Iserith, and even though we're a new group with a new game, I've been trying to do this to a degree. I had to change some stuff since we had to boot a player it was originally going to be setup for (and their backstory and reasons to continue), but I just don't really agree with a lot of things the game wants the players to do. It's like, as long as you have good Spot Hidden and Library Use skills, you can get everything you need to proceed. 90% or more of the stuff the game suggests for the players is completely useless and contrary even to the character building process. I'd draw an analogy from the game to old racing games where you get to choose one of two paths after clearing an area. Those two paths split into two more and then two more, but then they converge down the line until you get back to the finish line where, regardless of the path you've chosen, the final stretch is going to be the same. It's an illusion of choice and it really becomes a game of players just throwing dice at the wall and seeing what happens. The players don't even need to play and are forced to guess at what the game wants them to do, and much of it ignores the very valid 'Three Clue Rule' you've brought up in the past. To a degree, I've been doing what you're suggesting, but I think we can take it a step further. Sure, we can arbitrarily pass time for the spell to take place, but you only have a 5% chance of success, no character in the world has enough sanity or HP to cast it, and even if you're successful there's a 50% chance of the item you need to bring breaking and it's now "Too bad, game over, Cthulhu's a bitch, right?" It just feels like the game takes the essence of tabletop out of tabletop. It's also in my nature to analyze and break things down, see what can be improved upon, and try to apply those concepts, and this game feels like it can do with a lot of that. I'll take a look at the Delta Green and Hellboy stuff though, and see if I can steal some ideas with how they approach these sorts of things. It's like the game wants the players to be pawns rather than living, breathing, thinking beings, which seems opposite of what tabletop is about.

Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense  A wiki about the bureau Bureau_for_Paranormal_Research_and_Defense  another wiki but it is based on someones work in making it an actual setting source. Those two wiki sites should give you more then enough info to work with as a jumping point.

It could be simply that Spot Hidden and Library Use are the best tools to use for the challenges presented by either you or the game. Again, I'll defer to your better knowledge of the game system. It would seem to me, however, that if the game presents a number of other skills and features, that the best conditions to use those skills and features are just not present in the current scenario (for whatever reason). Or the players can't see how it might otherwise apply if those elements are indeed present. Or - and this is something I really dislike - players won't attempt things their characters are not specialized in. Are you seeing any of these particulars in the game out of curiosity? Illusion of choice is frequently a part of games with predetermined plots. The characters do A, B, C, then fight the big bad guy. (It can be more complex than that, but it's still a predetermined plot.) You can't really choose to go do B before A, even if it seems like you have the choice to do so. Games like this can be fun, if the narrative is interesting and there's some variation on how the players get to the predetermined end rather than whether . (And also, I'd want the GM to tell me there's a plot so that I know that only the choices related to the plot are valid. Illusion of choice is a lie and I don't like being lied to.) I'd be curious to know how the actual adventure you have is set up in this regard. If that's the way they wrote the scenario, then this should be a very easy fix to get it inline with what you'd prefer. I think you might like the game Tremulus . It's based on the Apocalypse World rules. I had the chance to play it recently and it was fun. Plus, I love the Apoc World mechanics.

I'll do my best to sum up what the original campaign was, what I changed, and what I lead into along with summing up some of the rules that seem oddly placed and stuff like that. So the original campaign says that the investigators get called together (form your own backstory -- fine) by the landlord of a property in Boston. The last tenants of the property went insane and reported seeing and hearing things and the house doing haunted house poltergeist shit, but he doesn't buy any of it because he's a man of reason and simply wants to make sure the house is safe to put back on the market for new tenants. So the investigators show up and get some info from the landlord. You can go see the Macarios (last tenants) at the sanitarium, but you get nothing from them and have to pass Fast Talk or Persuade skill checks at the desk. You can go to the library and do "Library Use" and pull information out of the air about a series of murders and suicides that took place across the history of the place after the first owner, Walter Corbitt, died. There's a string of lawsuits you can find out, again, by passing a Library Use roll where the people in the area didn't like Corbitt for his strange activities and his will requested that he be buried in the basement of his cellar. The lawsuits fail and nothing is known about where he's buried, but it's not hard to guess that he's in the basement. Another successful Library Use roll nets you information in the Hall of Records that Corbitt's will was executed by the pastor of the nearby Chapel of Contemplation, supposed home of cultists. If they were nice to the clerk, or pass another Persuade/Fast Talk roll, they can get information that there might be more records in the higher court's record office at the police station?? What? Okay, so you go there and with another successful Fast Talk/Persuade, Law, or someone has a police background you can access the records. A successful Library Use roll nets more information about the Chapel being burned to the ground after a police raid when local children went missing, presumed to be abducted by the people there. Pastor dude gets sentenced to 40 years in prison but escapes after 5. If the group goes to the Chapel, the floorboards are old and weak from the fire and they find some symbol painted on the walls leading up to the place. Inside, there's absolutely nothing of interest except the fact that the floor breaks into a basement hidden by rubble blocking the staircase from the raid-induced fire. Inside there's a book bound in human skin (Medicine or Educationx3 pass - education is 3d6+3 roll, average of 13-14 so 39-42 goal and in this game you aim to roll under your target) written in Latin and pretty much unreadable. This book has absolutely no bearing on anything else in any campaign ever, but it's important for you to find. Also in the basement is a cabinet that with, you guessed it, a successful Library Use roll you determine that the church did indeed execute Corbitt's last wishes and buried him in the basement of his house. So the players go to the house and the DM can have basement guy do a bunch of Disney haunted house shit like making paintings fly around and pools of blood form on the walls and ceiling. He can summon a pretty weak monster called a Dimensional Shambler that can't really do anything, but this is a "starter" adventure -- fair enough. He can also mind-control a player, but the game is really vague about what magic can and can't do since pretty much every spell the group might come across will either instantly drive you insane or it costs more MP than any character can possibly have without the DM arbitrarily handing out bonuses. The bottom floor contains absolutely nothing of any interest except some locked cupboards with Corbitt's journal where he talks about trying to turn himself into some immortal being. If you don't have lockpicking though, don't worry, you can just break it and it's pretty much not necessary to continue anyway. In the basement, you have to pass a Dex check because the stairs are old or else you take damage. There's a bunch of rats scurrying around from one of the walls and if you don't give them room, they attack. In our original campaign with the old DM, a dude actually died to the rats. We just kept rolling poorly and the rats critted like 3 times in a row. Seriously, we're supposed to be going up against monsters and creatures from other dimensions and this dude dies to some scared rats? Please. Anyway, the game hints that you need to break through the wall and if you do, there's a small crawlspace. Only with a successful Spot Hidden check will you see anything even remotely hinting at what you discovered before about the Chapel of Contemplation. There are no mentions of it anywhere else in the campaign. So you break through the second wall and fight the dimensional shambler and kick some rats around and fight a possessed bed with "Magic Fingers" syndrome upstairs in the bedroom. But in the hidden room in the basement is the corpse of Walter Corbitt (who knew?!!?) and you can fight him or try to lure him in the sunlight since he's not-really-a-vampire-but-kinda-sorta-is-if-you-want-him-to-be and it's his weakness. Yay, you've won. The landlord comes back and you explain everything but there's no evidence of anything because he turns into dust and the shambler's corpse fades into an alternate plane and you're left twiddling your thumbs waiting for the next telegram to pop up so you have something to do. Hope you enjoyed following the signposts and seeing our attractions, because all of our rides are exactly like this. You can get by with literally 5 skills and 2 attributes - Listen, Spot Hidden, Library Use, Fast Talk, and a weapon. You only need Power and Knowledge since Power is used to check against magic attacks and gives you more sanity, and knowledge is used to get points to distribute amongst those few skills you need. The other skills hardly ever get called into question as well as the other base rolls like strength, size, constitution, etc. The same formula pretty much applies across the board to the campaigns in the rulebook and supplements I've read so far: go into library #3 and pass a few Use Library checks to get hand-fed information, proceed to spooky, isolated mansion #5 and find out what hermit sorcerer #16 was -really- up to. The situation varies, but the same skills get constantly called into question and it's pretty transparent in terms of setting things up. Nobody has any reason to be there or do what they're doing. Nothing personal is ever at stake. You're just doing it to play a game. It's very poorly put together. The system is great and allows the players a lot of variety in how to build their character, but 90% of the stuff is completely worthless or will kill them just by being in the same part of the world. It just doesn't make any sense. I'll stop this here and will make another post in a few about how I changed this and what I segued into. I need a break.

Thanks for the detailed post. It sounds like it's hitting the tropes it's supposed to hit - the spooky stuff, locations, occurrences, quirky NPCs. What it looks like though is that the game (or maybe it's just the module?) offers a challenge and then dictates the solution or solutions rather than leaving it up to the players to decide how to approach a given problem. A couple more things: When does the game say you should roll for something? What happens when you fail? If you're rolling to know or not know something (or find or not find something), that's crappy game design and not uncommon. D&D suffers from this binary issue as well. My suggestion up-thread on how players should get the information but suffer a complication on middling rolls or fails will fix this completely. Suddenly it's not about whether or not you find the stuff in the library with a Library Use check - it's about whether you'll find the critical information before the bad guys are onto you or before the curse becomes permanent or with little personal cost in resources (or whatever). Now that's an exciting roll to make, and regardless of success or failure and the ensuing complications, the PCs will have the thing they need to continually progress through the adventure. What are some other skills in the game other than the ones you said you could get by with? How could you see them being implemented in a scenario of your own design?

I got a cup of tea now and will try to summarize what I changed without too much detail and answer your questions. So I took over after the first session and had two days to redesign the whole thing so the old DM couldn't metagame (even though he kept trying to when I told him I changed -everything- except the setup). I introduced a lot of allusions to wine, wrote some diary journals for Mr. Macario (last tenant) about strange things happening in the house over time, I linked the Chapel of Contemplation to the half serpent God, Yig, whom Mr. Corbitt had been dealing with to aide his preservation and eventual immortality. He needed to use an emulsification of a special Corsican wine (there were now 8 wine casks in the basement) with the half-serpent's scales to make the magic work. An unfortunate side effect of this was that it created a sort of supernatural, impenetrable darkness within the house and the party was forced to have limited light sources (I'll get into that again in a second) and stick together or risk having to pass sanity checks in order to not lose sanity, though it was forced in some situations. There were mirrors broken down and some others saved near the biggest window on the main floor where the Macarios had setup a sort of camp, using their clothes and linen as a makeshift mattress. There were all kinds of hints in the journal (which they took forever to read because of derailing) about how they needed the mirrors and that the wine had some part to play. A few players were spot on and I tried to hint at them they were right, but the other members just didn't want to do anything out of fear. They had already died to rats once and knew there was some monster down there in the basement with them. I limited light sources because the finance system of the game is completely broken. Even if you pick an average worker's job and have a poor roll to determine your assets, you still end up with a few thousand dollars. Even with like, the bare minimum amount of money the game gives you, you can waltz up to Ye Olde Gunne Shoppe and buy the place out and have enough ammunition to survive a zombie apocalypse. Mundane weaponry is largely useless against mythos monsters, but 90% of the monsters provided by the game can 1 shot the whole party just by looking at them. Simply including them in the game pretty much damns the party to death with no means for recourse and this applies to so much. But yeah, I'm leaving them all kinds of clues and they sort of know what they're doing and have it pieced together, but they're just simply too scared to do anything. So I whisper to a player and just tell him to have them do something to get it the hell over with so we can move on. It's at this point we have to remove some problem players from the group because they were a hindrance more than anything, and again, I think the fact that I was playing the necessary healer/medic role and trying to organize characters who had to type or were inconsistent in attendance played into the slow breakdown and once we're "regular" we'll be better off. As for the system, the campaigns in the books really only asks for rolls when trying to get information or surviving a creaky set of stairs with a penalized dex or str check. I have brought up the issue of "leaking" info based on the strength of their rolls or what percentage they pass by (so scoring a 50 when your target is 60 yields less than a 50 with a 70 target) and they all like the way that I approach that rather than straight up hit or miss. I try to do that with rolls across the board and not penalize the players for being creative and things of that nature. I let them ask for rolls and, if it applies, do them; I want them to come up with their own solutions to stuff and think I can expand that to the rest of the game. I know I'm new to this and won't think of everything, so I let them play around as long as it makes sense for the situation or their character. Useless skills? Let's see -- accounting, anthropology, archaeology, art, astronomy, chemistry, disguise, law, navigate, pilot (boat, plane, etc.), physics, photography, ride (animals), psychoanalysis (psychology is actually useful because it can be used to return players sanity points faster), swim, track, and a few others that are middling. In the modules provided by the core book and the few supplements I have, each of those skills might get called into question once or twice, but every single one has multiple instances of spot hidden and library use. Anthropology or Natural history? Well, this stuff isn't natural and you won't ever read about it in your textbooks so it's useless. You know it's -not- a deer. You know this rock isn't from Earth with geology, but that's it. Art? History? Maybe you can get a time frame for events that you missed out on because you failed a Library Use check. Hell, a supplement book suggests combining Mechanical and Electrical repair because there's not much in terms of complex electronics. Not the core rules which suggest certain professions put points in this useless skill, but a supplement. You're never supposed to approach any monsters because they will kill you. If I am including them, you are dead or insane before you even start playing. You have no way to hurt them unless you somehow acquire technology guarded by a different set of alien creatures which you have a 30% chance to surviving, or risk insanity by reading an ancient tome for a spell which no character will ever be able to cast. Like, I really like the system because it seems to allow for so much and I like the d100 roll system. I love the Lovecraftian universe, but even then, most of the things the players know and love about it are pretty much ignored and you're just fighting generic cultists and black magic practitioners. I haven't read everything and I might be wrong in some respects, but it's just really frustrating when I'm looking at this stuff and most of it has practically zero use and accessibility. The players can't use the stuff, so they have to find hermetic wizard blackbeard to cast the spell for them. Maybe that's what the thousands of dollars you can't spend on bullets and rifles because you own every single one in New England already is for. The system has its merits and potential, but the way the game applies its own rules to itself is superficial, contrarian, and oftentimes flat-out broken.

To add on and separate it, a lot of the issues I brought up became apparent to me with the "old DM/rules nazi" brought up in this and my previous post. He was clearly trying to craft his character to the strengths the game system encourages. This is what prompted me to look into it and see how unusable like 90% of the material is. I think it's pretty poor and wanted to change some things so the players can be more involved, he was against it, and I asked if it was because he thought it was making his character weaker than what the core game would have him be. He confirms my suspicions and I clearly can tell that the game only rewards certain types of character styles by denying the others opportunities to shine with skills that aren't library use or spot hidden. It's just really badly implemented for a design with a lot of potential.

Thanks for the additional details. Based on what you're telling me, I bet you could make it all workable with some structural changes to your scenario design. That'd be a long-winded post though and I've got a game to run in an hour! There's also the "hinting" issue. The Three Clue Rule article touches on this. It's already hard enough to telegraph information to the players directly, especially online, without having to also beat around the bush. The suggestion I made above as to always getting information (but possibly with complications and consequences) will fix a lot of that. There'll be no need for you to "hint" anymore. I'm guessing the players' hesitation to act is, in part, based on not having a clear enough picture to feel confident enough to act. The "hinting" method has a fatal flaw in my opinion - it's frustrating for everyone involved in the transaction: the GM for not being able to get his point across, the players for not being able to "get it." In my view, having information or not having information is never based on a skill check because having information is vital to game pacing and forward progress. What's kind of weird is that there's a Library Use skill and then a ton of skills that look like you could cross-reference in a library. Meaning, why can't I go to the library in the game world and crack open some books and make an Archaeology check? Thus, in combination with the above advice, I'd recommend a broader interpretation as to skills (if the game allows for it). Any skills can technically be a "knowledge" skill, an "action" skill, or a "social" skill. An Archaeology check, therefore, might mean you know something (like a general sense of what happened at this site), take a physical action based upon knowledge on Archaeology (such as knowing which runes to jump on to avoid danger), or draw upon contacts in that field (such as knowing the curator of the museum and being able to get information from him). The upside to this is also that if you're in the "Yes, and..." mode, players can propose a solution to the problem based on any skill they might have, spontaneously generating new fiction to include in the scenario, and then it's just a matter of playing to find out what happens. How does that line up with your understanding of the game system?

Gosh, I've run 'Corbitt House' at least five times, if not more. My go-to starter scenario for Call of Cthulhu noobs. That starter scenario has always helped me to firmly plant the idea in my player's minds that Call of Cthulhu takes place in a very real world. One where despite the supernatural phenomena that need to be countered, criminal activity - or activity that seems criminal- will attract the attention of society and the law. Consequences abound; loss of jobs, forced travel, bribes, repairs and replacement of property, hospital bills, the list goes on. Over a short story-arc an upstanding group of citizens become desperate fugitives suspected of multiple homicides and arson... A good horror setting, well played by everyone at the table should inspire trepidation and hesitation. There should be a strong sense of risk that goes beyond a min-maxing of dex vs hitpoints. And especially with Cthulhu, that first decision to try spell-casting should come as a compromise; as a significant cost paid because it must be paid and not for glory, power or critical hits. Cthulhu is filled with challenges, and helping new players to enjoy the investigative format ain't always easy. Allow players creativity in the use of the skills they chose. This will help them find the clues, or provide a necessary new lead to keep the story going while helping to develop their characters as they see them . As a GM we have rich opportunities to mine those skills and character choices when creating additional plot lines or planting that next bread-crumb in the trail toward solving the mystery. Ryan, I think you got a bum player in your 'rule-Nazi'. I wouldn't put any stock in their confirmation of suspicions you may have regarding the game. I will emphasise that most systems out there strongly reward a good set of observational skills, but few allow so much adventure to be had by a fast-talking dilettante photographer of Hungarian extraction at the dawn of prohibition in the USA....

I understand what you mean in regard to acting out these things in real society and do plan on using that, but there's still a lot of things within the context of the game where it rewards a very specific character archetype over others. The finance system is completely broken, at least in the 1920's. The base campaigns are extremely hand-holdy, even the longer ones. So much of the material in the books is just useless. I understand that magic is supposed to come at a cost, I understand you're average people going up against the mythos creatures, I understand the nature of the Lovecraftian universe and the dangers it poses. But the game just wants to kill you and denies you access to 90% of the material provided simply because nobody is ever going to have that much sanity or mp to spare on a spell that takes a year to prepare and has a 5% chance to succeed. So many of the stock campaigns avoid mythos creatures (even in the supplements) are ignored or useless, because them even existing means your characters are going to die. It happens once and the players know how deadly these guys are. Nothing personal is at stake because of the revolving door of characters the game seems to encourage. They can't even exist on the same planet as most of this stuff without being dead. It feels like the game was put together in the haze of withdrawl of a 70's cocaine binge. It has so much potential as a base system but throws it all away in one-shot campaigns and demanding the players die. There's never any personal stake because you're expected to reroll a character every other week. There's no longevity and it's what we kinda want, so it presents frustration with how limiting the game is. You can get through 90% of situations with Spot Hidden, Fast Talk, and Library Use. Combat is useless in the core game because you're not expected to be able to survive. So what's the point of including it then? At this point, the characters are not important, they are placeholders and easily replaceable. Nobody has a reason to care if their investigator dies because you can just roll up a new one with the same exact skill set because of a lack of a real leveling system. The penalties the game thinks it's imposing on the players are contrary to what it's trying to do. I get what it's trying to do, but it just does it poorly in my opinion.

Hey Ryan - I'm just going to encourage you to trust your gut and if things don't feel right to you, then they're not .  As much as it sucks to have to shuffle players or restart a campaign, sometimes it's worth it (I've been there, brother).  You can always get more players - and likely ones who are more inclined to agree with your viewpoints. Honestly, don't worry about your experience level with anything because, dude, you've got passion for this sort of stuff.  That trumps years and years of experience.  You can't learn passion. Also - feel free to PM me if you need to vent in a more private setting.  I'm leery of airing out issues I've had with players in a public venue, so I'm afraid I can't give specifics to things here.

Ryan, I agree with David on the issue of "if it doesn't feel right to you then it's not." I've tweaked around rules to make a game run better (IMHO) so there is nothing wrong in making it fit to your style of play. It's your game and if you lose a few players because it is not those specific rules then in the long run you will be better off without them. You can always match up a setting to almost any system. Sometimes it takes a little work but it can be done. In the 90's I converted cyberpunk 2020 to a sci-fi space setting and almost got it converted into a superhero setting also. Don't feel you are stuck with a system that limits you. If you see the need to alter something, talk it over with your players to let them know what you are going to do and why.Most players don't have a problem with improving the game so they can grow their characters. Usually the ones that have a problem with stuff like that are ones that feel they have to have the best character in the game so they can beat anything that is sent their way. A lot of them have a me vs them (GM) attitude and will complain loudly when it doesn't go their way. As always,it's your game so have fun and enjoy it. All comments i post are my opiniona on the matter and is not consider sacred rules or such so if anyone wants to they can ignore my comments.  :P

No doubt, Metro. I've moved some of the conversations to PMs so I don't feel like I'm cluttering up the board with endless rants and stuff like that, so feel free to PM if you want to continue or have some suggestions or whatever. We have a new player and he's on board with trying to make this work in a different way. I'm just really torn. I think the d100 system is great and has a lot of potential for interesting situations and characters, but the core rules are just so definitive when it comes to the beginning and ends of campaigns. It doesn't really allow for fluidity. As I've said plenty of times, I understand the nature of the universe and that it's secretive and all that jazz, but the game doesn't want to allow for the sort of freedom that traditional tabletop does. I think everyone got into this thinking it was going to be DnD in the Lovecraftian universe when it's not. It's a great system, but limiting. Your character doesn't matter, you're all cannon fodder, the stakes the game thinks it's setting up aren't there because you can just hit up the investigator factory and plug another dude into the hole. It's just very artificial. You're throwing dice against the wall and comparing results with the book. My frustration stems from trying to figure out how to bridge the mythos world to the sort of freeform play that tabletop is supposed to be about. The book doesn't help at all with this, and it's just strange considering how popular Cthulhu and Co. are online and how well the game sells. There's not much info out there regarding bridging this gap. Again, I love the d100 system and have players to work with me (for the most part), but I just don't know how to get these two things to meet in the middle.

If you are willing to change systems try digging around for another d100 horror game called "chill":  Chill Wiki  . You sometimes find it in a used book store or a library (I've seen it in one). Heard it is a pretty interesting horror system.

My two cents.  From the original post I got that investigation and bookish research was "quieter" and losing the interest of the players.  It doesn't have to be.  Nosing around for clues may attract unwanted attention from violent cultists (who is that librarian working for?)  On the other hand, the "action" characters who subdue cultists and interrogate them may find secret libraries of scrolls the cultists must maintain to do their cultist things, physical evidence of out-of-the-ordinary things at the cultists' last ritual site, etc.  Investigation and action can be more closely inter-penetrated.  It is not that different character types will do the same things, but they may be doing different things very, very closely in time and space. In the extreme, you could have the "101st Fighting Archeologists".  In a future game where artifacts from the Precursors arouse tremendous interest, the Corporations want lucrative things to patent, the Military wants powerful weapons of the Ancients, but the Universities (who have gotten fantastically rich themselves from land-grants when the planet was a young colony that are now urban real-estate worth billions of credits) field their own teams for the sake of uncovering and preserving Precursor history and culture before the Corps and the Gun-heads wreck everything.  Here they take an odd curriculum mix of Precursor Grammar Analysis, Lock-Picking and Small-Arms Fire.  So you might hear radio-com conversations like this: "We're in the air!  Those bastards from Antares U. are shooting at us.  Close the airlock!" "I can't!  Jenkins is still on the rope-ladder, trailing us." "You!  Jenkins!  Get inside!" "I can't!  My cast of the petrified Precursor fossil isn't dry yet!" [Random blast of a hot attitude-jet] "Thank you!  I'm coming in now!  Could I have some sunburn-cream?" Back to reality.  Cthulhu.  If a character researches something is she part of the ONLY group researching something?  Could there be a "third party" where the characters are trying to save the world, the cultists are trying to wreck it, but another power-group is messing them both up to achieve some other purpose at right-angles to the first two, like selling mythos creatures for some very wealthy and eccentric collector gathering them in secret?  Maybe the cultists approach and team up with the characters to try to get back a favourite baby Cthonian named "Fluffy"...

It's not that the research parts are boring or quiet, but the way the core/supplementary quests want you to proceed at times can be. It either relies on extremely transparent hints or extremely vague clues where it requires a passing roll for a very select number of skills (library use, spot hidden, listen, fast talk are the most called upon for information gathering) and it just seems super artificial. There is room for NPC interaction, but it really doesn't offer a lot of room for actual roleplaying. I'm trying to work in allowing the players to RP alongside their skill rolls to successfully get what they need. The game also demands that the players run (again, it's a trope of the game/universe but it creates no longevity in the characters and gives no importance to what they do) from 90% of the encounters or risk being one-shotted by damage or insanity. They can really only deal with humans and some minor creatures, and again, while I understand the nature of the mythos, it doesn't lend itself to very fun play when you're expected to constantly flee. There's generally three outcomes: flee, die, or succeed, and dieing or succeeding generally depends on if you picked up on the clues for this specific situation. If you flee, it's just like, "You flee." Yeah, it's up to me as DM to introduce pursuers and the other intangibles or constant forces that can keep the players moving and involved, but the game just doesn't lend itself to it very well. Most of the stock material has someone vaguely receiving a letter from somewhere to come investigate or some other extremely superficial introduction. It's the nature of the beast, really. The mythos is meant to take place in secret and in isolated incidents, but I have to give the characters longevity, personal stake, and a chance to survive/succeed or we face the problem of them throwing people at the monsters because they have another guy just chilling in the on-deck circle. The lack of a real leveling system enforces this because of the nature of character creation, so it's a little awkward. I take partial responsibility with rewriting the initial campaign and slowing it down a bit, but I also attribute it a bit to the problems we were having internally with some players, which has hopefully been corrected, and also the players being aware of the nature of the game and being too scared to do anything, introducing quiet moments in conversation while they try to guess at what the game wants from them. It's not just my rewritten campaign that does this. In the future things are going to be more straightforward and I'm going to let the players have more influence and places to turn to with some NPCs introduced through deeper back stories. I'm also planning on introducing some of the elements you brought up, but at the same time, the nature of the mythos demands that the mundane world isn't aware of what's going on, so you're on a balance beam between respecting the nature of things and allowing a bit of player freedom. So I'm going to be tweaking stuff and I think I have an understanding of what to do to bridge the gap. I'm reading the stock campaigns and seeing where I think they go right and where they go wrong, and how I can work them into the lore so it's not just 'You received mysterious letter #6, prompting you to go to this location for no reason outside of curiosity and wanting to play the game.' It just seems odd to me how the game is so contrarian to itself with trying to make the characters vulnerable and scared to proceed, but having no reason to fear character loss because they can just roll up another. It denies access to so much because it doesn't let the players to interact or succeed. Hell, even in Lovecraft's stories, if the main character doesn't vanquish whatever evil they're up against, they at least escape with enough sanity to write about it in their journal, even if they're questioning what happened. The game says you die or becoming a slobbering mess in Arkham Asylum and to roll up a clone.

Maybe you'll get better suggestions from a CoC forum about properly handling the genre.

<a href="http://www.yog-sothoth.com/content/" rel="nofollow">http://www.yog-sothoth.com/content/</a> Very much worth checking out!

It's all how it's run and how it's played.&nbsp; It's no different from sitting in a tavern and getting hired to save the orphan in a cave outside of the village.&nbsp; Not very interesting if that's all it is.&nbsp; A GM needs to be creative and the players need to "Get It" and be interested in the outcome regardless if they're guns blazing or bookish nerds (Which can be crazy fun in CoC).&nbsp; You're going to use a lot of the same rolls in ANY game... "I attack!"... "I parry!"... "I backstab!"... Whatever.&nbsp; It is true you must be inventive as a player to use as many skills as possible in CoC as that's how they get higher.&nbsp; CoC puts the onus on the player to be creative...So rule nazis are counter productive.&nbsp; Remember...As a GM you can reward players with extra skill checks for doing cool stuff...Or even bringing the GM Cheesies!&nbsp; And like any game...If the GM wants to he can tone down any of the adversaries so as to be more suitable to the players.&nbsp; I've played WAY more CoC than D&amp;D and lost WAY more characters in D&amp;D...&nbsp; Maybe that DM was just nasty:)

Thanks for the response, Gary, even if it's a little late. I'll give you a little bit of a recap on what's happened since I started this thread. Firstly, I've come into my own and settled in as a DM pretty well, though I do still have some areas of improvement and welcome criticism and suggestions from my players. As a group, we've had a lot of players coming in and out, but we had two players from the original group still together, one of their friends, and a new player who's a veteran CoC DM, but had never played as a player and was curious about some of the changes I've made to the game. All together we've had a total of 10 different people involved in the game total, and are now down to 3 original players (one of them being me as the current DM), one new addition (the friend) about a month ago, and our final addition this past week with the ex-DM. We've finally got a solid, reliable group who wants to play the damned game. The changes... Well, first it started out with medicine. I was really turned off with how the core rules approached healing and how, as long as the players weren't in immediate danger, they could essentially sit in a circle and continually try to heal each other until they were successful and all wounds were addressed. You can only treat each wound once, but it was still a stupid concept to me. The rolls only ever came into play when the players were in danger, and it just doesn't really work all that well. The sanity recovery and going to a hospital if you survived (a whole other issue I have with the game) and being asked to pass arbitrary amounts of time was a turn off, so I started inserting ways via the story for the players to regain sanity rather than straight dice roll rewards as suggested by the book. So we've been making lots of small changes and balancing things out a bit, but that's all about to go right out of the window. The world... I wasn't too happy with the railroady nature of the CoC campaigns, so I began to write my own and think of ways I could involve the players' backstories so that they had motive beyond "We're all investigators that know each other by happenstance or happen to exist in this world where everything's gone to hell." I was expecting a "more traditional" tabletop experience when I started playing Cthulhu, but realized that the core rules don't really provide for that outside loosely stringing together the 1 shot campaigns, or using one of the longer published campaigns. So I did a bunch of research and picked up the Arkham Unveiled and Miskatonic U. books and began to craft the city of Arkham for my players after they were done with this last little isolated adventure I dreamed up. I made handouts for them in the form of newspapers and Miskatonic fliers which contained leads to interesting situations and let them follow the leads and see where the story went. They were making the story based on small snippets and I was simply reacting to it. This is what I wanted that the core books and supplements give absolutely no help with. I gave the characters a list of University departments and other contacts within the city they could go to for help; ones they would know based on their character's backstories. I kept pressing them for more information on their backstories and finally am beginning to get enough so I can really push them along and serve their motives better and get them involved in the story -- acting rather than reacting. Over the course of disassembling the game and figuring out what was wrong with it (because there is a lot wrong with it -- it's been 30 years with little to no changes, whereas D&amp;D has tried to change with the times and offer variations on playstyle -- done research on Chaosium and they just don't want to support systems outside BRP, trying to hook people in and change them to sell their other RPGs rather than try to compete with systems using the ever-popular 20-sided die), I've come to terms that I and my players (and many others out there) simply do not like the percentile system nor some of the approaches that CoC takes regarding the world it wants you to explore. So I'm making my own system based off d20s which will put more of the game in both my hands and the players: no more scouring skill sheets to see what % you have in a skill, no more every person needing spot hidden and library use in order to get that vital clue, and if they don't, shoehorning it into the game at some other spot. The players don't have target numbers off their sheets to aim for, and they don't know if I'm fudging the numbers because they don't know what they're supposed to roll over. Combat will take place on both sides of the field and there will be a lot less missing and shots firing off into the darkness going on. The players will have more things that can do and everything will be much more intuitive, and numbers will be much more condensed and easy to access. The skills they have will be their own and it will encourage teamwork and supporting each other (since in my system not everyone will be able to have all the necessary skills, you just don't have enough points to get them) and fulfilling a role rather than just being another guy who's good with a gun and using a library because you have to be in this game because you need every chance you can get to succeed. The characters will matter, the skills will matter, and they won't have the tension sucked away as I reveal the results of their roll since they do not know any longer what they were aiming for -- a huge flaw and tension-breaker in a game where tension is supposed to be paramount. They will have freedom and will act according to their characters' goals and I will plan and react along with them, getting my part of the game rather than being frustrated when the dice say my players fail and I have to lie to them straight to their faces. It's work, but it's good work and I have the support of my players in developing a new system which functions better in the Mythos universe. I ran the framework and some numbers and examples by them last night after our session and they all seemed on board (especially the ex-DM player) and I'll actually be running some playtest sessions in a few weeks to see how people build their characters and encourage them to break the system, and provide a few pre-written modules for them to play around with and to see how a living Arkham functions compared to the static and isolated worlds given by the core books and supplements. Thanks for reading if you've gotten this far, I tend to type a lot. But the game is running a lot better and I am improving every week as DM after we've essentially scrapped the old ruleset and the game functions much more biologically than mechanically compared to the old rules.

Yay - glad everything is working out for you.

Good on ya'!