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Chaosium Digest Volume 1, Number 3
Date: Sunday, February 14, 1993
Number: 1 of 1

Contents:

An Elric! Preview   (Liam Routt)  ELRIC!
Questions about Magic   (Anthony Ragan)  STORMBRINGER
Fumbles and Criticals   (Alex Ferguson)  PENDRAGON
Who Plays Call of Cthulhu?  (Michael Norrish) CALL OF CTHULHU
CoC Investigators   (Jason Corley)  CALL OF CTHULHU

Editor's Note:

I've got several questions this week.  Tom Zunder asked if anyone
owned or played Prince Valiant.  It's sitting on my shelf, and I think
it's a great game, but I've never played it myself.  Anyone out there
got anything interesting for Prince Valiant?  Glen Bailey asked a
similar question concerning Superworld.  He wanted to know what people
thought of the system and what changes they might have made to it.

Liam Routt wants to know what the quality of the newest Call of
Cthulhu supplements is.  Liam asked "is the material any good?"  Even
more specifically, "how do books like Fearful Passages, Blood Brothers
II, and Escape from Innsmouth compare with the material that Chaosium
was publishing a few years ago?"  If anyone would like to compare old
and new Cthulhu releases, or, even better, give full reviews of some
of the newest Call of Cthulhu products (or any Chaosium products for
that matter), I'd be happy to include them here.

My last question for the week came from Giorgio Merigo.  He suggested
that a FAQ for the Digest might be a good idea, explaining what
Chaosium's different games are, and pointing out the similiaries and
differences between them.  Anyone interested in writing up something
like this?

That's about it for this week.  See you all next Sunday.

Shannon

--------------------

From: lro@melb.bull.oz.au (Liam Routt)
Subject: A Preview of Elric!
System: Elric!

For any who are interested, I am currently involved in some
playtesting for the successor to Stormbringer: Elric!  I am willing to
answer any (simple) questions about the system, and to attempt to
indicate the major differences between it and earlier systems.

For the uninitiated, Chaosium have decided to discontinue
Stormbringer, replacing the line with Elric!, which is clearly a
related game. I have heard a number of possible reasons for the
change, but the most convincing seems to be that there was
dissatisfaction with the way the Stormbringer treated the Moorcock
world, both with magic and in general.  In Elric! it seems that Lynn
Willis (who I gather is primarily responsible for the rules) has
attempted to create a simple game of epic heroes.

The epic hero nature of the game might be its distinguishing factor;
it sure is for me. Starting characters are offered a sizeable number
of points to spread around skills pretty much as they feel. While this
might allow one to create an unbalanced character, it does allow you
to concentrate to a great extent on certain areas, and even excel in
them. My first character, for example, has a 90% Rapier skill, which
would have been pretty incredible for a starting Stormbringer
character.

Such changes may appear to be cosmetic (I mean, can't the GM make such
changes in the course of a game, if things seem to be unbalanced?),
but I think that they have a lot of effect on the overall genre of the
game. The biggest critizisms I remember from Stormbringer had to do
with the fragile characters - one hit and they flew apart. It was not
a game that seemed to encourage sagas and heroics. The revised system
seems to favor such things, starting from the character creation.

While I have not compared such details as the damage that weapons do,
it seems that Elric has increased the protection afforded by armor,
and possibly increased the life-span of characters.

Magic is an interesting change. While magic in Stormbringer was
limited to strange practioners, in Elric! there are a set of almost
RuneQuest-like spells available to all characters.  Each spell taken
in your character creation, however, clocks up a "chaos" point, as the
use of magics is considered to be a sign of a chaotic taint.  I am not
yet sure what effect the chaos points will have.  I agree in principle
with allowing easy access to magic, and providing a penalty to those
who choose to take it.

A word or two is in order about the spells themselves, I suppose.
There are fewer than twenty spells, all up, I believe. They have made
a good selection of effects, ranging from fairly standard combat
spells through spells that enhance your characteristics, or allow
interaction with other forces.  My favorite has to be the spell that
allows you to take on the appearance of another person.  The
roleplaying uses of such spells are endless. Indeed the selection of
spells would seem to encourage roleplaying rather than simple combat.

Overall the system seems to be a lot like other Chaosium systems. The
skills are percentile based, and the characteristics are familiar.
There are x5% rolls for each of the "active" characteristics,
including a very useful Dexterity (DEXx5) which I can see being used
all the time.  The skill list seems to have been well chosen, allowing
for a wide selection of skills, without a lot of useless choices.  The
most interesting category, in my opinion, is the Arts category.
Amongst the suggested Arts are the Art of Conversation, and others
which are both useful and interesting.

A final (for the moment) word on characters: part of the character
creation process (which, by the way is contained on a single page in
the rules - a fine innovation) is the selection of a demeanour (I may
have the term wrong).  This is a general attitude: Crafty, Skilled,
Active, Knowledgeable.  From memory, this attitude gives you a basic
set of bonuses or skills to work with.  I feel that this really helps
in the initial creation of a character. Working with an attitude and
possibly a suggested occupation (and a homeland), it is quite easy to
create a character rapidly. Maybe it is just a simple crutch, but I
think that it is a powerful one.

I've heard that some people are a bit restless that the Stormbringer
(now Elric!) material is taking a long time to hit the shelves. I know
for a fact that the material is there, and is of high quality. The
delays are due to the desire to produce all of the material for the
new system, rather than publishing another supplement in the old, now
redundant, system. I do not know what the release dates are to be, but
I think that it will be worth the wait.

Hopefully this will generate some discussion. Maybe you want to know
more about Elric!, maybe there are things about Stormbringer, or other
Chaosium systems that particularly impress you, and you'd like to see
retained. Maybe you can correct some of the errors that have likely
managed to sneak into my description of Elric!

                                                    Liam Routt
        "Murder by Pirates is Good!"                Co-Director
                - The Princess Bride                Darcsyde Productions
                                                    Melbourne, AUSTRALIA

--------------------

From: Anthony Ragan <ECZ5RAR@MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: Questions About Magic
System: Stormbringer

I bought the 4th edition rulebook largely because I had fallen in love
with the "design-a-demon" features, particularly the part that made it
more or less of a joint effort of the player and the GM.  And,
frankly, I thought (though I may be wrong) that summoning was already
fairly dangerous for the character.

Now, with the publication of "Sorcerors of Pan Tang," I've wound up a
bit confused.  Are those new magic rules to apply only to Pan Tangian
sorcerors, or to all sorcerors the world over?  Pan Tangian sorcerors
are too insane to play as PCs anyway (imho), but I think that
Summoning Results chart is too vicious to make being a sorceror
attractive to players.  Whaddya all think?

Finally, I made one change fo my own: I've dropped CHA as the
attribute that limits the anount of demons one can have bound.
Instead I use a 2d10 roll for each new critter summoned, similar to
the rules for elementals: roll under the number currently bound, and
the summoner is in trouble.  That simulates Chaos much more nicely, I
think.

--Anthony Ragan
  ecz5rar@mvs.oac.ucla.edu

--------------------

From: Alex Ferguson <alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Subject: Fumbles and Criticals
System: Pendragon

Pendragon: what a clean, simple freewheeling combat/skill system!
Much better than that icky, percentile-obsessed RuneQuest nonsense.
Right?  Well...

Sir Michael and Mad Dax (the Maxed Sax (with his 2H Ax)) find
themselves in the Grail Castle.  Strangly, despite Michael having
Religion, Piety and Love God all at twenty, his chance of healing the
Grail King is _exactly_ the same as Dax's, who has all the above at 1.
Hmmm.

Sir Maladroit of Gauche has a Sword skill too low to mention.
Curiously, he seems to drop his weapon no more often than does than
the renowned Sir Marhaus, and indeed everyone else with a skill of
less than twenty.

Yes, fixed chance criticals and fumbles.  I hate them.

Obvious fixes tend to greatly decrease the chance of both fumbles and
criticals, which might have a significant effect on play, and make a
mess of published adventures which depend on having them occur at a
reasonable rate.

Thus, how to relate fumble/critical chance to skill (or trait), while
still keeping roughly the same frequency overall?

If (net) skill >20: use existing fumble/critical rules.

Otherwise make a normal d20 roll, then if any of [skill-1], [skill],
19 or 20 come up, reroll for a possible critical or fumble as follows:

[skill-1] : critical on reroll <= skill - 10
[skill]   : critical on reroll <= skill + 10

19 : fumble on reroll > skill + 10
20 : fumble on reroll > skill - 10

Obviously, rerolling a chance of >0, or <=20 is unnecessary (automatic
fumble/critical), as is >20, or <=0 (no fumble/critical).  "Fumbles"
or "criticals" on the reroll are ignored.  Throughout the above, skill
is net skill, after all applicable modifiers.

So if skill=10, this is exactly as written in Pendragon.  If skill is
under 10, 20 is a certain fumble, 19 possible, and [skill] a possible
critical.  For skill is greater than 10, [skill] is a certain
critical, [skill-1] possible, and fumbles are only possible on a 20.

Example: Sir Griflet's Battle skill is 18.  For him, a roll of 18 is a
critical, as before, as is a 17, if he makes a roll of 8 or less on a
second d20 roll.  If he rolls a 20, he checks for a fumble, doing so
on a roll of greater than 8.

Kludgy special case: this breaks down for skill >= 20.  For skill of 20,
ignore the possibility of a fumble (so critical on a roll of 20; on a
roll of 19, critical on a reroll of <= 10).  For skill above 20, a roll
greater than or equal to 40-skill is a critical, as usual.

Alex.

--------------------

From: Michael Norrish <Michael.Norrish@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Subject: Who Plays Call of Cthulhu?
System: Call of Cthulhu

Call me a sceptic if you will, but not having played CoC, I often
wonder just exactly how it's done. I read the supplements, wonder at
how excellent they are, and then think hard about how a gaming group
would actually cope. In some cases, I even suspect that perhaps the
material is only really written for the benefit of the Keeper, and the
players haven't really been considered.

Take Horror on the Orient Express for example. (I got this at
Christmas). Much of this seems quite staged.  Sticking the players on
a train is a pretty excellent way of getting a linear plot for a
start, but the encounters within the adventure occasionally go even
further.

There are set pieces coming into Sofia, and then in Constantinople
also, that, well, 'railroad' the characters into a course of action.
(I'm being deliberately vague here for the benefit of those who don't
want to read spoilers).  Don't the designers think that the players
might resent this?

Another thing is the high mortality rate. In the rules (5th ed
anyway), there is some discussion to the effect that mortality rates
shouldn't really be that high, and that people who say the CoC is too
dangerous for character health are just being overly paranoid. Then
along comes HoE and we see that they quite candidly admit that a high
fraction of players will probably die.

Like I say though, I'm a CoC novice, so any enlightenment on this
would be much appreciated. I can't help but think that the Chaosium
Digest is just the place for a discussion on gaming style in Call of
Cthulhu, so let's hear it!

Michael.

PS: I'm not trying to knock CoC here; I suppose I'm just after a
little vicarious CoC playing by way of the mailing list because I
haven't got much chance of doing the real thing at the moment. :-)

--------------------

From: corleyj@GAS.uug.Arizona.EDU (Jason D Corley )
Subject: CoC Investigators

OK, I'm going to gripe for a little while about some of the points
about Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu.  Then I'll focus on some of the ways
I've found to improve those points, and the features that I find
especially helpful.

INVESTIGATOR CASH ON HAND

Now I know H.P. Lovecraft's characters were always at least
comfortable in terms of money, but the cash sections are ridiculous.
Here's the rules I make:

* The amount you roll is the maximum amount you could have made last year.  
* The items you buy are items you picked up last year and now have
  lying around the house/apartment/flat.  
* 1/10 of the leftover cash you have on hand...the rest is assumed to
  go to expenses like food, clothing, maintenance, and into that HUGE
  store of property not immediately accessible as cash.

THE TERM "INVESTIGATOR"

In a lot of modules, it is assumed that the investigators actually
think of themselves as investigators.  This is almost totally at odds
with the Lovecraft hero.  The protagonists of Lovecraft's stories were
not "bug hunters" in any sense of the word.  They were ordinary people
with ordinary jobs, perhaps one or two extraordinary interests or
friends (dead relatives, Mr. Ward?????), but on the whole they could
have been you or I.  

This is one of the chief features of Lovecraftian horror - the totally
alien placed alongside the utterly commonplace.  The investigators do
not investigate in the ordinary sense of the word.  If they are
scientists, they consult or research.  If they are policemen, they
ferret out clues.  If they are mobsters, they keep their ears to the
ground.  If they are dilettantes, they keep up with what is going on
(or what they _think_ is going on).  NO letter-to-start-a-module (tm)
should start "Dear Investigators" (as At Your Door did, which is
unfortunate, considering the overall high quality of the rest of the
book).

STARTING SKILLS

It's too easy for characters to start with very high skills.  This is
a minor gripe, though, since in general, skills are needed less than
sanity and thoughtful roleplay.  A private dick with a Handgun of 75%
isn't going to do that well when it comes to fighting the King In
Yellow in his own domain (as one of the characters in my game found
out - we were using the Fatal Experiments book, which is worth every
penny you pay for it, regardless of how much you pay).

Enough Gripes.  Here's some things I like:

I like the way the skills seem to fade into the background.  It almost
seems natural when you describe a room or a shelf or a field or a
forest to just slide into a "....Roll Spot Hidden." or "...do a Listen
check."  The natural paranoia of the game translates into that same
feeling of suspense when you first picked up the dice in a
role-playing game. (Come on, don't try and pretend you've forgotten.)

I also think the Sanity rules are extremely well-done, however, I
suggest you make your players make a note of the things their
character has seen on the back of their character sheet to help in
making Sanity rolls.  For instance, a Doctor of Medieval Philosophy
and a gangster are sitting in a speakeasy.  A rival gang raids the
place and shoots someone in the head immediately in front of the pair.
The Doctor probably has never seen this before and should make the SAN
check.  The gangster probably has _done_ it a few times and shouldn't
need any.  Of course, beings like Nyogtha force everyone to take a SAN
check.  

Finally, I _really_ like the tone...and this is hard to describe, but
to me, Call of Cthulhu is the _finest_ horror role-playing game on the
market today.  Vampire: The Masquerade can go suck it's thumb and
GURPS can put as many mechanics in as it wants.....but Cthulhu waits
in watery R'lyeh for more players - and there's plenty of vile
monstrosities for all.

Later,
Jason
Yog-Sothoth Fan Club

====================

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