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maglaurus

Concluding Thoughts on "Realms of Cthulhu" One-Shot

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maglaurus
, 24th July 2012 at 06:15 PM (626 Views)
I want to post a few notes about my experience with the Savage Worlds variant of Mythos role-playing, <i>Realms of Cthulhu</i>, and some conclusions I've come to based on that experience. As you might note from previous posts, I converted the scenario "The Dig" by Brian Sammons to these rules. I'm going to use bullet points to save a bit of time.

--Structurally speaking, the transitions were smooth and quick. I had no problems or pitfalls making the Call of Cthulhu BRP material into Savage Worlds material. I found that my group, who had the benefit of three previous Savage Worlds campaigns, easily adjusted to the alternate rules.

--I definitely found the Bennies made up for any concern I had that the characters would find the clues necessary resolve the mystery.

--It was definitely a struggle to get these characters to go mad. Guts checks are far too easy to pass and the fact that you can Benny a Guts check is slightly irritating as a Keeper. With that I will add that when you run a game as Pulpy/Gritty...it's Pulpy. Pulpy rules just seem to trump Gritty rules as long as they are present in whatever form--perhaps because Guts checks are too easy to pass.

--I had two players interested in using the BRP rules just to see what a "gritty" game might look like. Also they were interested to have a more detailed skills system. Were I to do this I might still employ two Trail of Cthulhu enhancements to make play a little smoother: a few "points" for players to sink into automatic skill successes just to make sure clues are found, and Drives. Drives were very useful in this game for keeping the players from running away. Joey had "In the Blood", which led him to hunt Burlington and his creatures, Betty had Follower, which allowed her to do insane things to keep up with Joey, and Patrick had Thirst for Knowledge, which made allowed him to put understanding the mystery above his own personal safety. I want these things in any Mythos game I run.

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Categories
RPGs , Call of Cthulhu , Games , Trail of Cthulhu

Comments

  1. Roxysteve's Avatar
    I've found that Guts checks aren't the problem per se - most terror checks call for negative mods to the rolls. What got me shifting in my seat were the "psychic" soak rolls (which you can't do in the gritty setting of course).

    I think you are spot on regarding the pulp overpowering the grit. One might upgrade the rules to say that not only can one not soak a psychic "hit", one cannot "mulligan" a guts check when the setting is */gritty.

    Of course, once the bennies run out there are more madmen around than you can shake a stick at, and they are very mad indeed. A "Deep One crush" scenario I've run at conventions has players blithely using their precious bennies wantonly only to find themselves on a roof facing a "kill screen", at which point people are going mad left and right in a very satisfying manner. Everyone has a ball in those final minutes trying to outdo each other in acts of demented heroism (or not).

    I think what RoC delivers is a very different experience than CofC, and expecting the same game-flow (as I did) initially made me undervalue the RoC setting. I now understand that rather than a steady descent into madness, RoC delivers like a new bottle of ketchup - nothing for ages, then a meal-drowning gush. I often alter the other benny-burning experiences in an adventure to delay or precipitate this to order.

    And while one can always tune to Gritty/Gritty, one of the attractions of RoC is the very pulpiness of the experience according to the players I've polled.