Shimmin Beg

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm now looking at how best to model reading tomes in another language, and gaining the benefits and penalties of the tome. Here are a few possible options for handling this issue.

Core rules: Language rolls

The core rulebook goes with the simple option of a Language roll. A success lets you read it fully, while a failure means you lose “some” Sanity but gain no benefits. Now I have a couple of problems with this system, but first I want to highlight that it is a quick, easy and simple method. Those are not to be scorned, and the CoC rules in general aim for simplicity and straightforwardness.

My first objection is that it’s underspecified. Studying a book in another language is a perfect example of something you can retry infinitely in real life, and there’s no discussion of how to handle that. Moreover, you can reread only part of the book, call in assistance, and you often have a good idea of where your problem lies. So how are Keepers expected* to handle this? Can investigators try again if they fail? If they can try again, how much reading time is called for between rolls, and should any bonuses or penalties apply? What does a failure mean, anyway – do they read it easily but miss all the mystical subtext, or get baffled by grammar and lose track of the arguments, or is there too much vocabulary they don’t understand for them to make head or tail of it?

Secondly, the failure system seems perverse. As I see it, the Sanity loss for reading a Mythos book is a consequence of the Cthulhu Mythos gained; they are inseparable. If the investigator doesn’t understand the sinister truths in the book, their worldview remains unshattered. If the book seems creepy and disturbing but they don’t really understand it (and are aware of that), they’re more likely to brush off the creepiness than succumb to it. In any case, failure to read a possibly-crucial tome is bad enough, without losing Sanity into the bargain. Even if you allow rerolls after rereading the book, the possibility of failing your Necronomicon roll and having to spend another year or so before you can gain any benefit from it is just brutal.

*(I do mean “expected”, in the sense of “what did they think Keepers would do?”, because the possibility of completely failing to read a tome, and the costs of temporary failure, will affect how tomes, Cthulhu Mythos and spells fit into the game)

Adjusting for skill

One simple option for adjustments is to say that your reading speed is inversely proportional to your Language percentage. That 1% in Russian means you need to spend 100 hours to make a nominal hour’s progress. A 50% score means you spend twice as many hours as the calculated study time.

This is simple to propose, but has some drawbacks. For one, it requires another calculation on top of the existing ones, which are already well into calculator territory. For another, the benchmark is distinctly dubious: very few people have very high levels in Own Language, so 100% clearly doesn’t represent native literacy. If cryptic terms, archaisms and literary references are an issue, those are already modelled in the book’s attributes. Also, the times are working out about where I wanted them at the moment. If we did use a straightforward percentage system for all languages, I would basically have to adjust all the base times down, so that reading them at about 70% speed (average for the typical EDU 14ish investigator) would give the target times. Faff.

A second option would be to start at 50%. It’s extremely difficult to have an EDU of less than 10, so I feel you can reasonably argue that 50% Own Language is a basic level for functional native literacy; it’s also the ‘professional’ level for skills, so I think we can reasonably argue that it represents a competent level of Language suitable for getting by in most circumstances. On this basis, 50% or more in Language would allow you to read a book at normal speed. For every 10% less (or part) you have in the language, the reading time is increased by 10%. Thus, if you have 20-29% in French, the overall time taken to read Cultes des Goules would increase by 30%. This makes the calculations fairly simple, and also means one less thing to worry about with native language tomes. In this option, we’d assume that very high Language skill doesn’t intrinsically reduce reading time. Anyone who wants to use a calculator could choose to use the actual 100-Language percentage, rather than 10% steps.

Percentile success

Another way to handle Language rolls would be to ignore the binary pass/fail, but use a single roll to determine how successful your reading was. If you pass, you finished the tome. If you failed, you need to keep reading for a period of time proportional to your margin of failure. So if you fail by 20%, you read for another 20% of the study time; if you fail by 80%, you need to read for another 80% of the study time.

This has a few advantages. Firstly, it sticks with skill rolls for success, though it does handle the result in a slightly different way. Secondly, the degree of failure directly determines how much extra time is called for before you can reroll, rather than having an arbitrary amount or a complex set of categories. Thirdly, a high skill is always a benefit even if you fail; someone with 80% French can only fail by a maximum of 20%, whereas someone with 10% can fail by 90%. This means you’ll not only need fewer rerolls to succeed, but even if you struggle, you have to spend less time rereading the book because your initial grasp of it was better. This seems intuitively appropriate to me.

On the downside, the two ends of the scale work dramatically differently. For someone with 95% French, you almost certainly understand it perfectly, but you might need to reread up to 5% of the book to fully understand it. For someone with 50% French, you either understand it perfectly, or need to reread up to half the book, and you might need to reread it a few times before you really get it. But for someone with 1% French, you’ll probably need to read it at least fifty times to understand it, but there’s a very small chance you’ll grasp every detail perfectly on the very first attempt, comprehending a book in a language you barely know a word of just as fast as a native speaker could. This strikes me as a fairly significant disadvantage.

Another disadvantage is that success isn’t cumulative. With 50% French, you might fail by 5% the first time, but then by 40% the next time, and have to reread a much larger chunk. While the odds are on your side, there’s no guarantee you’ll ever finish reading the book. This could be overcome by saying that only a single Language roll is needed: you read it once, then reread however much of it is necessary. Now in reality, trying to read a book in a language you’re fairly good at can still take twice as long as your native language; reading at 1%, with an array of dictionaries, grammar books and idiom references, and constant consultation of literature guides and history books, not only takes far more than twice as long, but you’re very unlikely to ever understand even most of it without first learning the language. However, whether this is something that needs to be modelled in the CoC game is a different matter. For the sake of the narrative, Keepers might be content to say that even the one-percenter can eventually (and really quite quickly) read the cryptic foreign tome. Again, the difficult could be overcome by imposing a cap: below 20%, say, the Keeper might say that only skimming is possible, and they’ll have to call in a translator.

Stepped language rolls

The other main option is to divide the book up into sections, and make a Language roll for each one. Failure means you had a problem with that section, but can reread it. The difficulty here is picking the length of the sections. Of course, you could simply call for a roll at the end of each study session, so if someone chooses to study for eight hours, or half an hour, that’s when you make a roll. Again, this has a pleasing simplicity to it, though it might lead to metagaming – “I read for eight hours in sixteen half-hour sessions” – potentially annoying, but understandable.

Mythosity

Another option that’s already rolling around in my head is to tie this in to skill adjustments, with the book divided up into sections by its Cthulhu Mythos content. Time to look at gains and losses from tomes... I’ll save that for another post, I think.