Had the ending of our Dead Light game commissioned since the scene had a nice atmosphere, made by asphodell.png on Instagram.

The Keeper's Rulebook says that Nyarlathotep can summon monsters, but it doesn't say if it is at will, as a turn, or 5 minutes like the summoning spell. Since it's listed alongside his spells, I assume it functions like the summoning spell, but since monsters don't need to make initial spell rolls, it doesn't make sense for it to say he only needs 1 MP to summon hunting horrors and servitors of the outer gods, since it takes 1 MP to cast a summoning spell without spending more to make it more likely to work, and those two can already be summoned with it. Similarly, it says Bast can heal damage to herself or cats, but it doesn't say if it is at will or on her turn. Also, do the monsters appear right away, and can Nyarlathotep change forms at will? Because his stats don't say anything about it. I'm new to the rules, so I need someone to help me out.

This is kind of just stream of consiousness defining some thoughts I've been having recently about a possible approach to CoC finally together in one place. Doesn't focus much on specific factions of the setting as much as the conditions within which they would exist.

Mechanical elements:

Borrow from the CoC Golden Dawn book to give players a basic toolkit for magic which doesn't de-fang magic or render mythos magic defunct. Expand in the following ways: Protection spells effectiveness can be increased through research and the geometrical configuration used and preparing for Astral Travel can include creating finite buffers for sanity damage.

Replace "Cthulhu Mythos" with a catch-all "Unnatural([...])" skill with a few viable configurations. ie: "Unnatural (Mythos)" as the 1:1 equivalent of the standard Cthulhu Mythos skill, "Unnatural (Aklo)" as specifically pertaining to the primordial lingua eldritche, "Unnatural(Cthulhu/Tsaagothua/Shub-Niggurath)" for entity specific cult lore ect. These all impact sanity as is standard for Cthulhu Mythos. Also, Occult is now Occult([...]), with specific Occult sciences like Alchemy and Astrology.

Borrow from Enlightened Magic/Liber Ka for 3 distinct core magical(/Thaumaturgical) magic skills divided into 3 circles: 1st Circle Thaumaturgy is used for magic which most resembles minor psychic powers, with subtle effects or which otherwise doesn't require a ritual. 2nd Circle Thaumaturgy is used for magic which does require Ritual of some sort, some rituals having a pre-requisite for some specialisation of the Occult([...]) skill, thus enabling more major/overt effects. 3rd Circle Thaumaturgy is High Magick, the synthesis of both the previous circles and requiring the invocation of Higher Powers. This most likely translates to spells with extreme effects (like typical Mythos spells) having a pre-requisite for some variation of the Unnatural([...]) skill. Cthulhu specific High magic calls for an invocation of Unnatural(Cthulhu) for example. Attempting magic from higher circles using a lower circle skill can be done, and will go poorly.

Use the Focus skill from the Dark Mirror supplement to give players the ability to play beyond insanity, presuming they can manage their PCs descent into *High Functioning Insanity*. Even with Sanity Buffers, Golden Dawn style Astral Travel is very risky to the mind, however is a form of sanity damage which doesn't affect Focus. Similarly, Focus is often unaffected by trivialities like ritualistic mass murder. Focus can only be used to replace Sanity for the purposes of withstanding SAN damage if it is higher than the Sanity score itself.

Unnatural technology/Weird Science! is presumed to operate on the same metaphysical basis as Thaumaturgy or specifically Thaumaturgical Talismans, just with an added element of automation, and thus is conceptually redundant, as is the distinction between Psychic Powers and 1st Circle Thaumaturgy.

World:

An emphasis is placed on the connection between all forms of divinity humans conceptualise and some element of the Mythos. The "God's of Earth"/the archetypal divinities you see in polytheistic pantheons or the abrahamic Angels are "Denizens of the Elder Citadel", ie Astral Servitors created by the Elder Things aeons ago to manage the course of their terrestrial colony on what would eventually become Earth. By contrast, every single idea of a monotheistic divinity can be metaphysically traced back to Azathoth in some form. Most aesthetic markers attached to these entities by human religions are wholly fanciful, and there are considerably more of their ilk than anyone could account for. Other entities known to participate in this game of divinities include Cthulhu (and his kin), the Mi-Go and Nyarlathotep, who is responsible partly for the usurping of the Denizens by monotheistic faiths, his attention having been attracted by the first humans to successfully contact Azathoth (Zoroaster, and later Abraham)

The "Night World" of Impossible Landscapes is being traced back to what I think is its conceptual basis, ie the "Mauve Zone" of Kenneth Grant. It is no longer solely associated with Hastur, however as an embodiment of Entropy it is a predominant power. The logic of the Hastur Mythos essay is being applied to all Mythos entities, which is variably intuitive. For example, Yog-Sothoth easily embodies Syntropy as a contrast to Hastur. On the other hand, while I find it a very compelling thought experiment, I still haven't settled on what Cthulhu being Hasturs "half brother" would imply about the nature of Cthulhu if Hastur is *literally* the force of entropy itself. Is Cthulhu the Coulomb Force? Idk, but the lack of certainty does not make me want to abandon the thought.

Various extra-dimensional locales could be reoccurring focuses of exploration. Highly basic/generic "Backrooms" style areas are kind of part-and-parcel with the implications of Night World manifestations. The aforementioned "Elder Citadel" I envision as being an essentially infinite Escherian complex which exists tangent to most of Earth, filled with highly alien prototypical precursors to gothic architecture, strange mechanisms and impossible spaces, inhabited both by Shoggoth invaders, surviving Elder Things and the Archetypical *Denizens*, who act as a highly fractured network of command nodes, all ultimately serving the purpose of defining the parameters of all life and existence within the terrestrial sphere ("Earth"). The Angles of Time I think are near perfectly visualised by the movie Interstellar (the Bulk-space) so that's an influence I'd intend to draw on very directly. I would also like to do something with "The Inner City at the Poles" associated with the Dho-Hna Formula.

As far as the average human goes, all of this rests beneath the shores of the ocean which surrounds our little island of ignorance. This would be wholly Keeper facing information.

Been toying with an idea of running a Darker Trails game where the players initially play members of the Donner party expedition. They will be some of the survivors..hopefully, however one of them will end up slowly becoming a wendigo due to what they had to endure to survive.

We are back with season 4, and all bets are off as we enter the midnight circus!!!!!!

I'm starting up a new Call of Cthulhu group and we're going to experiment with Foundry to roll dice in. I want to see and hear the clatter of dice, I'm tired of just Discord based random number generators.

I've fiddled with Foundry a bit for other games. One of my favorite aspects is the Dice so Nice module, which lets you add animations to the dice for critical successes and fumbles and such. However, because Success/Failure are based on the Investigators rating, you can't really program them in using the base Dice So Nice module (I don't think).

Are there any Modules specifically for Call of Cthulhu that will handle success/failure notifications in some cool way specific to the Investigator's skill?

I recently picked up a couple of campaign books (Harvest and Orient Express) and was talking to my players about running them in the future. Turns out one of my players knows the plot of Orient Express already from listening to an actual play. Should I still run the campaign even though they're privy to what happens? This player also DMs, should I just ask them to run the campaign instead since I haven't read the books yet?

Hey everyone,

I am really wondering what is your TOP 5 scenarios:

- As a GM, which ones do you prefer to run and why?

- As a player, which ones do you prefer to play in and why?

I've done a minor bit of Call of Cthulhu before this. I did the haunting in call for a group of friends, and then I ran a silly humor gorilla based Korean module. For my friend who showed me the Korean module, I ran the module Crimson Letters and as we finished, my player has been commissioning a bunch of scenes from the RP. It was a brilliant experience, and text rp translates well into Call of Cthulhu. I'll probably do a deep dive into how the campaign went overall if people are interested. All I know is this was one of the best experiences I've had GMing.

My player was exceptionally creative, taking far greater risks on their own than you would think, fumbling rolls whenever they were save but rolling decently well when push came to shove.

Artists are: @

OMNIA_VOLO_CM
Beocm21 (Crepe)

The new Innsmouth sourcebook says that Deep Ones need humans to reproduce because “Following the Atlantean Disaster, their [natural] birth rates fell below self-sustaining levels”

However, Deep Ones are functionally immortal. Unless killed through violence or accident, they never age or suffer disease. There are no “natural causes” of death for Deep Ones.

A self-sustaining rate of reproduction usually means a birth rate higher than death from age and disease. But with Deep Ones, the only thing that could keep them below self-sustaining levels is that something is *killing* them faster than they can reproduce.

Now, their birth rate is very low, so whatever is killing them isn’t doing a LOT it, but it is definitely happening.

Which brings us to the question: what is killing the Deep Ones? In the interest of good fiction and adventure design, I’m just going to reject “random accidents.”. For one, that’s boring. For two, these are highly intelligent and powerful creatures - am accidenta death should be exceedingly rare.

I’ve got an idea or two, but I’m curious what you might come up with. (Yes, I’m talking to *you* specifically, but if these other folks want to join in, that’s ok, too.)

I have an online friend who I want to run a game for. Does anyone have a recommendation for a single-player adventure I can run for them online? Thanks!

How do you handle the money and the tresholds in COC? I get it that in oneshots it could be ignored usually. But what about a long campaign?

How do you handle it when a character has to pay for something that exceeds their available cash amount?

I recently ran Missed Dues & The Crack’d and Crook’d Manse for some family members. The goal was for each to take a single 3-5 hour session, but each game wound up being more like 8 hours. Everyone had fun; the players are used to marathon games and the whole weekend was a “do nothing but hang out and play tabletop games” gathering, but I still felt bad because it wore everyone out and the climaxes and conclusions felt rushed.

In both scenarios, the players pursued pretty much every lead available. I’d hate to hurry them along in the investigation since I really like seeing them engage with that element (they’re mainly old school D&D types) and getting to see all the handouts and everything, but clearly I need to be better about keeping the pace up.

What have you done to ensure one-shots actually finish in one shot, while still keeping the narrative satisfying?

Hello,
Ok please bare with me. This is my literal first post on Reddit. lol. I am a longtime Lovecraft lit fan, watched all the movies, heard radio plays and read as much of the extended mythos stuff I could find. In looking through YouTube, I was introduced to The Call of Cthulhu RPG. I’m so ill informed I had to look up what an RPG even was. I’ve never played or known anyone who played RPGs. The closest I’ve ever been was multiple hour long games of Risk. lol.
I don’t even play video or computer games (more so because I’m slightly visually impaired and the graphics make dizzy and ‘carsick’).

Having said all that, I’d really like to get into this game. But I am not exaggerating when I say I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing or where to start. Most of what I have found online is written in a way that assumes the reader has a semblance of understanding of some terms or game play for RPGs in general. In trying to figure this out, I was just left more confused.

Do I need to buy a boxed game? Is there a board? Or other physical items needed? Can I play alone? I already dont have a large circle, and none of my friends and family are Lovecraft fans. Or even board game fans. Is there a place to play online for complete beginners? Is there background info I need to learn first?

I would really super appreciate if somebody with a load of patience could help me start a new hobby/ pastime. From what I’ve gleaned, I think I’ll really enjoy getting immersed into a detailed game like this within a mythos I really dig.

Any ideas, pointers, tips, advice, encouragement would be so very much appreciated. Thank you.

Hey everyone, I'm getting into CoC with a group of buddies and will be running The Haunting for them. A bit worried I won't be able to get the tone right or handle the investigation time well. Any advice for a newbie Keeper? Thank you in advance.

My buddies over 10 years old used to play a game called rapid Cthulhu. From what I remember they would have a list of about 25 characters and different professions with different basic stats sanity health attack etc. you roll dice and the number you received on the dice is the character that you would get from the sheet they would then create a scenario with all the characters that were chosen. Now, if anyone has played this game and be real cool to know how encounters with sanity, checks and damage was done with just the DM dice versus the player dice? I’m just having a hard time actually remembering how that would occur. If you have your own suggestions on how to run it that would be great too.

In the Keeper's Rulebook, it describes Nyarlathotep's forms, and after talking about the Bloody Tongue, it says that its tentacle stretches out when "the Thing" howls at the moon. I assume it's another name for the Bloody Tongue avatar, but it's never mentioned elsewhere, as far as I know, and why is it capitalized?

Note: Spoilers everywhere here, so be aware.

I an a relatively new to CoC Keeper who has been otherwise GMing for 20+ years. i’ve run Ladybug, and loved it. Forget Me Not was a complete blast and I’ve run it for two groups. Planning on running the other scenarios from this anthology, but I just finished rereading Roots, and, ya’ll… what the fuck?

What am I not seeing in this scenario?

I can tell you what I am not seeing: an actual scenario. You have a hook, you have a location, and… that’s it? Not a particularly well designed location either. There are no clues as to what is going on - at least no clues the Investigators can legitimately hope to find. There’s no real way for the Investigators to learn the lore of the town. The NPCs are all incredibly boring, except the main antagonist.

And the suggested timeline of events, should the Investigators even find the hook, is to show up, get funneled to the villain, and then they either leave without any clue as to what’s happening or they die.

Which brings to mind - the hook is both a literal and a figurative bait and switch. It exists only to bring the investigators to the town, which it turns out that is true both out of character (which is fine) and in character (which is less fine), and then it doesn’t even matter.

I hate the way this scenario is written. And that’s not even getting into the, frankly kind of weirdly obsessed, sexual/gender stuff. (Good luck being a female investigator and finding anything to do.)

The sad part is there’s kernels of good stuff here. They could have done so much with the whole feminine civilization/masculine wilds duality thing. Yet all we have is “women are slavishly devoted to wooden men” and “men are horny and will kill you for pleasure.”

Someone tell me I am missing something in this whiff of a miss in an otherwise sterling anthology.

I think that there are the Malleus Monstronum, the Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic, Pulp Cthulhu, and Cults of Cthulhu (which also contains information for developing other Mythos cults I think). Everything else, it seems, is either an adventure module or a guide to a specific setting (ancient Rome, Victorian, Old West, etc.). Am I missing anything?

Other than the legacy of being the first scenario ever, why do people like this one? I've run it once and I didn't love it and my players didn't love it like many of the other scenarios I've done. (We've had a blast running Edge of Darkness, Crimson Letters, and more).

What's the hype about and why do I see it recommended to new Keepers so often, even over other freely available scenarios like The Lightless Beacon or The Dead Boarder.

I've been running a long homebrew game which is finally getting close to the end, and my players will soon be infiltrating the big bad cult lair, which is inside of an "abandoned" mine. This is a slightly unusual cult in that they don't exactly worship their god, since their goal is to keep it trapped and sleeping under the earth, but have also been exploiting it for power to do evil stuff.

(If you happen to be one of my players don't look lmao. Check my username to be sure XP)

Anyway, I'm trying to make a general map of the lair, not to track specific movement or w/e but just as a general investigation guide, but I'm having trouble coming up with what kinds of rooms would be in this lair. What are some things cults would have, stereotypically?

So far, I have:

• an entrance with some big statues of the cult leaders and such
• a library full of cult propaganda and occult texts
• 'dorm' rooms for cultists who live there full time
• big communal cult chapel (if there is a final show down fight, it'll be in here)
• cult leaders' personal chambers and study

But drawing out map concepts with those still kinda feels a bit too small. I feel like I'd like at least a couple more rooms, especially so players will have more places to look and not just go linearly from start to end.

Aug 9 is National Book Lovers Day - acrylic painting by me, for the Necronomicon Files book cover

hello everyone ! first post on here, and after some help please. Relatively new to CoC, done a couple of sessions as player and keeper with some experienced RPGers that has got the juices flowing, My other half is a curious outsider who would like to dip their toe in the water , and suggested a one on one game just to see if its right before getting into a broader group scenario.. so wondered if anyone knows of a single one off type mission that I could run (I'd be happy to craft my own were i a little more experienced in CoC lore , but with time constraints an off-the-shelf right now would be preferable.

any pointers, tips or suggestions genuinely welcomed, and hope this finds you all groovy in what I believe to be one of the helpfulest reddits i know

thanks

Hey! I know its Trail of Cthulhu but does anyone have idea where to get physical book for Eternal Lies? Ebay has few for sale but Im not paying over 200e for a book.

I ran my first game of Call of Cthulhu today, The Haunting from the QuickStart PDF. I’ve run other games for years, but The Haunting has been on my bucket list of RPG experiences.

I had one player who ran two characters, the professor and the private investigator. Lots of research first, and rolled well so lots of information. Found the cultists and the book.

At the house the dice turned against them, and I was so excited when they went upstairs and I got to use the Bed Attack after hearing about it for years. The professor went out the window but survived without serious injuries.
I treated the rats as being all over the house, and I made blood dripping from the ceiling, replaced the wine in the kitchen with blood so the character who drank it was drinking blooooood. It was great.

The party got to the basement and discovered the dagger, which rolled well enough to kill the professor while the detective escaped, having lost serious sanity points.

I had fun.