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Lord Loss
2011-05-23, 02:55 PM
I recently started a Call of Cthulhu Campaign, thrusting my players into the role of police officers and detectives, using the Crimes People Play system. Without telling them it was call of cthulhu (using the Crimes People Play rules) :smallamused:.

For the uninitiated, Call of Cthulhu is an RPG based on H.P Lovecraft's stories, that pits normal humans against mind-destroying horrors with unimaginable powers. There's not a whole lot of fighting evil monsters and quite a bit of investigation and stopping cultists from summoning their evil gods. Generally speaking, once an Evil Thing gets summoned, you're as good as dead.

Crimes People Play is a detective RPG that can be used to run anything from Bond to whodunits (and in this case Call of Cthulhu)

My players created the following characters:

- Moriarty. A cliché'd, Chicago born private eye that wears a fedora and a trenchcoat. And smokes. Despite very generic, the player roleplays quite well, so it's quite interesting. Uses the Private Eye Archtype.

-Michel Beaubien and Guy Tremblay. Two very stereotypical French Canadians from Quebec, inspired by the movie Bon Cop Bad Cop. Myself and another player are French Canadian, another is half French Canadian and the last is american/canadian.

The english/french dynamic is hilarious, as Moriarty's player doesn't speak french, he's often clueless to what they're planning/saying.

I'll post the first session soon. Also, would you guys like a GM's impressions type thing as well as describing what happened plot wise? If so, would you like it to be in the plot posts, or seperate?

Extra Special Thanks With Sprinkles on top to Morph-Bark for help, support and advice, especially with the title.

3SecondCultist
2011-05-23, 03:33 PM
I have a question. Do you write your campaign journal from a first person perspective, or from a more general one?

Lord Loss
2011-05-23, 04:13 PM
I'm the GM, so I'm going to be using third person. Although I'm not sure how much detail I want to put into this. Should I give detailed accounts of what happens, like a novel, or should I keep things brief?

Otherworld Odd
2011-05-23, 06:13 PM
There's tons of different types of readers here so you'll probably get tons of answers. If you don't know, why not do both? Detailed, then a TL;DR crunched and key point specific post.


Detailed:
DEEETAAAAAILS weeee.

The crunch:


Cruncherific!


That should work.

rayne_dragon
2011-05-23, 06:41 PM
I always like to see things from a GM's perspective as well as from the players' point of view.

Out of curiousity, why did you decide to use a different system than the Call of Cthulhu rules? Are you mixing any of the rules in, such as the sanity system? And if not is there some sort of mechanic in the Crimes People Play system to emulate it?

Lord Loss
2011-05-23, 08:01 PM
Thanks for all the interest! It's really encouraging. Also, Crimes People Play is a free RPG, so here's a link to the PDF: Crimes People Play (http://www.hauntedattic.org/crimespeopleplay/CrimesPeoplePlay.pdf)

I didn't use the Call of Cthulhu rules because Crimes People Play is rules lite and I was looking for something that had really quick resolution mechanics. Scaring players is a lot harder when you're looking through rule-books, once you have a very basic grasp of the mechanics, you don't even need the rulebook to play. Furthermore, the guy who plays Moriarty hates D&D because it's rules heavy and loved Crimes People Play, so it seemed to fit a lot better. The fact that it was designed for Mystery games (and also that it wouldn't tip the player off that there were monsters involved) sealed the deal.

As for additional rules, I'm going to be implementing one later on in the game. I hate CoC sanity mechanic, it's too numerical. Instead, I'm going to be using Micheal Tresca's Tower of Sanity. Inspired by Dread, you draw from the tower of Sanity whenever someone sees something scary, whoever makes it topple temporarily "freaks out" (one of many things can happen, from hallucinations to attacking friends to running and hiding). You accumulate points as this happens, acquiring permanent insanities when you have too many points.

Also, I'm not just going to be using Mythos entities, in fact, the first Scenario deals with a much more typical horror villain (I'll let you guys figure out what it is as the story unfolds).

Otherworld Odd
2011-05-23, 09:13 PM
Thanks for all the interest! It's really encouraging. Also, Crimes People Play is a free RPG, so here's a link to the PDF: Crimes People Play (http://www.hauntedattic.org/crimespeopleplay/CrimesPeoplePlay.pdf)

I didn't use the Call of Cthulhu rules because Crimes People Play is rules lite and I was looking for something that had really quick resolution mechanics. Scaring players is a lot harder when you're looking through rule-books, once you have a very basic grasp of the mechanics, you don't even need the rulebook to play. Furthermore, the guy who plays Moriarty hates D&D because it's rules heavy and loved Crimes People Play, so it seemed to fit a lot better. The fact that it was designed for Mystery games (and also that it wouldn't tip the player off that there were monsters involved) sealed the deal.

As for additional rules, I'm going to be implementing one later on in the game. I hate CoC sanity mechanic, it's too numerical. Instead, I'm going to be using Micheal Tresca's Tower of Sanity. Inspired by Dread, you draw from the tower of Sanity whenever someone sees something scary, whoever makes it topple temporarily "freaks out" (one of many things can happen, from hallucinations to attacking friends to running and hiding). You accumulate points as this happens, acquiring permanent insanities when you have too many points.

Also, I'm not just going to be using Mythos entities, in fact, the first Scenario deals with a much more typical horror villain (I'll let you guys figure out what it is as the story unfolds).

That Tower of Sanity sounds very interesting sir! What is it? It is an actual tower Jenga style?

Lord Loss
2011-05-24, 05:32 AM
It is indeed! Instead of losing sanity, you'll draw a certain number of dice from the tower depedning on how madness-inducing the sight was. If the tower falls over, you go mad (temporarily).

Here's article about the Tower of Sanity:

The Tower Of Sanity (http://www.rpg.net/columns/thehorror/thehorror3.phtml)

Here's One About it's problems:

Farewell to Sanity (http://www.rpg.net/columns/thehorror/thehorror17.phtml)

Here's the system it's inspired by:

Dread (http://www.tiltingatwindmills.net/dread/dread_quickstart_letter.pdf)

3SecondCultist
2011-05-24, 05:39 PM
This definitely looks interesting. I might just have to subscribe to this thread as it proceeds.

Lord Loss
2011-05-26, 05:19 AM
It might take me a little while for me to get the first entry done, because exam period is starting at my school, so I'm going to be studying a lot.

Cisturn
2011-05-26, 10:14 PM
This sounds pretty great, I can't wait to read to the first post.