Idea for keyword-tagging Cthulhu scenarios to help Keepers

[Shimmin Beg]

So an idea has been knocking about my librarish brain for a while that I've never quite got round to doing anything about. There's a fairly regular stream of questions about scenarios for specific purposes: scenarios for new Keepers, set in specific countries or starring certain character types; scenarios starring particular monsters or items; for small groups, large groups, pulp groups, grounds of hardened D&Ders, groups of impressionable children, groups including all your in-laws and your boss and the local vicar; low-Mythos scenarios, high-Mythos scenarios, scenarios where it was all a dream; short scenarios, long scenarios, deadly-serious scenarios and ridiculous scenarios. Okay, I got a little bit carried away, but you get the idea.

There's a lovely list of scenarios on the Wiki, which covers a lot of them, but the information is bibliographic rather than topical.

My idea was that, by combining efforts, Yoggites could add that information either on that page or somewhere else. What I was envisioning was a tagging/categorisation system, where scenarios have particular keywords added that could be searched for, or ideally where everything in a category could be viewed by clicking on them. A bit like the Wikipedia categorisation system, for those familiar with it, but we probably don't need hierarchical classification.

The other inspiration was the tags on LibraryThing, where you can view all the tags in use (at least by you) and then decide to group or rename or reorganise them. This sort of thing would help prevent it getting too messy if some people used different words for the same thing, for example. It doesn't really matter how many tags get left, more is generally better, as long as it's clear what's going on.

So for example, The Haunting might get tagged with stuff like:
Introductory
Location-based
Haunted house
Dimensional Shambler
Sorcerer
Boston
Undead
Hired to investigate
Magic dagger
Possession
Cult
Moderate violence
...and whatever else people thought was useful information.

Any thoughts on this? Even assuming people like the idea, I don't know exactly how we'd do it, and since I only have a few scenarios myself (and have run even fewer) I could only do a limited amount of tagging.

[Donnovan_Sunrider]

What a great idea. It would obviously take a while to implement, but I can see this being very useful after it's complete.
I'll have to ponder methods of doing this. I'm sure we can do this as a great community project.

[dce]

I think it's fair for me to say (since I wrote many of them) that the pages on the Wiki are only limited to book-data due to a lack of time ... The vision has always been that whatever information about published material that is useful to the community should have a place on those pages.

You will probably notice that there are loads of references on the book pages to independent pages for each published scenarios. Almost none have been written (I did some for a few Monographs). That's where I could see categorisation like this fitting really well.

BTW: any member of YS is able to create or edit stuff on the Wiki, all you need to do is drop a PM to PoC to get it enabled for you (a necessary evil to avoid spammers).


Dean (from Adelaide)

[Shimmin Beg]

Glad to hear other people think it would be useful. It strikes me that, while ultimately it doesn't matter how many categories we end up with, it might be sensible to dream up some starting points to try and minimise confusion, especially for comparative categories (like "Low Mythos" vs. "High Mythos"). As on other wikis, we could aim to have a brief overview on category pages outlining what that category means, to try and keep use fairly coherent across the wiki if different people start contributing.

Here are a couple of suggestions, which will certainly need tweaking or at least rephrasing. Basically the idea is that each category has a number of things that might warrant inclusion. It's all a bit subjective, though.

Mythos content

• No Mythos (but may include supernatural beings, magical artefacts, scientific abominations and so on)
• Low Mythos (such as minor tomes and spells, cults, small numbers of lesser Mythos creatures, weak artefacts, or tenuous links to more powerful entities)
• Moderate Mythos (such as mid-level tomes and spells, sorcerers, very large cults or major rituals, significant numbers of lesser Mythos creatures, small numbers of powerful Mythos creatures, powerful artefacts, indirect connections to GOOs or deities)
• High Mythos (major Mythos tomes, Great Old Ones, deities, major artefacts)

Supernatural contant

• No supernatural (but may include mad science)
• Low supernatural (minor magical items, curses, minor spells, rituals, low-level help from witches or shamans, beings with rumoured supernatural abilities, unconfirmed sightings of more powerful beings, prophetic dreams, malign influences)
• Moderate supernatural (ghosts, werewolves, vampires or spirits; powerful curses, repeated use of magic or artefacts, possession; magical travel in time, place or reality as a framing device)
• High supernatural (large numbers of powerful monsters; non-Mythos deities or similar powerful entities; major rituals or spells; major magical artefacts; heavy use of magic, especially by PCs)

Combat and violence - obviously these can only cover the scenario's intentions, not what the PCs might choose to do!

• No violence
• Low violence (occasional nonlethal fights, or optional fights; threats, injuries or violent incidents; limited offstage violence like dead benefactors or a string of mysterious deaths, though if the PCs have to investigate gory murders it's probably the next step up)
• Moderate violence (some compulsory fights; strings of murders, or a few very brutal deaths; PCs are likely to die; maiming, destruction, severe trauma, rioting, violent madness)
• High violence (repeated compulsory fights, or especially violent fights against large numbers of enemies or very powerful creatures; mass murders, huge sacrificial rituals, pitched battles, large-scale destruction; PCs are almost certain to die)

Does that make sense? I'm not sure if some of the Mythos vs. Supernatural stuff needs more teasing out (especially things like cults). Combat & violence currently covers both how much fighting takes place in a scenario, and how much death and destruction is involved; we might want to break it down instead, as combat is more of a playstyle preference, whereas violence affects how family-friendly scenarios are or whether sensitive players might want to avoid them.

Any thoughts?

[Shimmin Beg]

As a glance at the Scenario category page will show, I've made a start on categorising scenarios. So far I've got major categories of:

• Scenarios by place (where geographically does it happen?)
• Scenarios by era (when does it happen?)
• Scenarios by hook (how do the investigators get involved?)
• Scenarios by venue (what sort of place does it happen in?)
• Scenarios by keyword (what sort of stuff is in the scenario?)

and I'm creating subcategories of those to assign scenarios to (e.g. Boston > Massachusetts > USA scenarios).

I'm leaving the fluffier categories for now while I get a handle on things. Those will be categories like the ones discussed previously: how Mythosy it is, how violent it is, what party size it suits, or how suitable it is for beginner Keepers. Some other possibilities would be a Pulp-Purist sort of axis, a threat-level axis (your old friend is in danger vs. the universe is in danger), and listing scenarios by monster.

Suggestions and advice would be welcome!

[WinstonP]

I've already created a table of Lovecraft Country scenarios in the wiki-

http://yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.ph...ecraft_Country

[Shimmin Beg]

I saw it, it's great. Are you happy with the categories I've started adding? I don't want to just impose my ideas on people, and to some extent the place categories are overlapping with pages like that. Saying that, I think there's a place for specific categories for narrowing down searches, and a place for comprehensive tables like yours, which have much more information at a glance.

[Shimmin Beg]

Phew. Okay. I've done an initial pass through all the scenarios, creating the categories they seemed to need, as well as some that aren't currently used but form a useful pattern.

Most or all of them will be incomplete even for now, since I only own a handful of the scenarios listed. This means I can't accurately define the hooks they use to start investigations, the science/supernatural and pulp/purist tendencies, and various other categories that aren't immediately obvious from the scenario descriptions.

At some point I would also like to add Mythos entity, tome and GOO categories, though I wondered if these would present problems as spoilers? It would be possible to create hidden categories (which don't show on the page, but the category page lists its members) if necessary.

Anyway, will be away for a while, but some feedback would be great.

[Skyman]

I've already created a table of Lovecraft Country scenarios in the wiki-

http://yog-sothoth.com/wiki/index.ph...ecraft_Country

Dead Leaves Fall additional location is Foxfield

[Shimmin Beg]

Back to work again! I've started trying to fill in some of the gaps in the scenario lists by creating rudimentary articles with the information I can readily find. However, many of these will be short on information because I don't own them. I'm considering creating a "needs looking over by somebody with a copy" category to indicate that these are just starting points rather than complete articles. Because these types of articles need a bit more effort to create, it's going to take a while.

[malcojones]

I think this is a good idea. There is a precursor though, which I found on acquiring a French edition of Terrors from Beyond. I suspect Edition sans detour do this for all their products. Each scenario is given a star rating out of five in the following categories:

Investigation
Action
Exploration
Interaction
Mythe

The following descriptors are also supplied, but some are very general:
Style de jeu: (everything in Terrors is 'Horreur Lovecraftienne')
Difficulte: (nothing in the book is other than 'debutant')
Duree estimee: (one clock symbol = 1 hour)
Nombre de joueurs: (person symbols instead of a number)
Type de personnages: (in Terrors pregens are provided so everything is 'Pretires')
Epoque: 1920s etc

There is also a small paragraph nearby on 'Ambiance'

Hope this is helpful. Best, malcojones

[Angelman]

This is a brilliant effort, Shimmin Beg. But here's a question: Are these to be put into a searchable database sort of thing, or are we talking simply lists of stuff? A searchable option would be very cool.

I think you have covered the tags pretty well so far.

[Shimmin Beg]

Are these to be put into a searchable database sort of thing, or are we talking simply lists of stuff? A searchable option would be very cool.

So I'm not sure how much people have used wikis before, apologies for any blinding obviousness.

A rough "search" option is available by going through the categories. You could start at the main COC scenario category, and decide you need ghouls for a follow-up adventure. So you'd head to "scenarios by creature" and pick out the "ghoul scenarios". You get, at least, a shorter list this way!

Unfortunately some of the category names may not be completely transparent - I was trying to avoid having categories with really long names, because it gets unwieldy and typos become more likely! So things like "setting", "era", "venue" and "place" are a bit fuzzier than I'd like, and "theme" for example isn't ideal. So some experimentation is required.

You can use the wiki's search function for this too. Run a search (click 'search' rather than 'go'), then pick the 'advanced' option at the top and search categories. This will help if you can guess what words will appear in a category's name or the descriptions I've tried to write.

Properly searchable and filterable data would be lovely. At the moment I personally don't think it's worth creating a separate database with special search capability for the subset of scenarios we've got, though if we finished and comprehensively tagged every scenario (one day!) it might be more arguable. It would turn what's currently just part of the wiki into another separate resource that would need someone to maintain and host it, etc., which is a problem.

Searches that filter by several categories are theoretically possible on wiki, but so far only available through specially-written tools. Beyond my remit, sadly. So at the moment we've basically got semi-filterable lists.

I think you have covered the tags pretty well so far.

I'm glad it seems to be working for other people.

I think this is a good idea. There is a precursor though, which I found on acquiring a French edition of Terrors from Beyond. I suspect Edition sans detour do this for all their products. Each scenario is given a star rating out of five in the following categories:

Investigation
Action
Exploration
Interaction
Mythe

The following descriptors are also supplied, but some are very general:
Style de jeu: (everything in Terrors is 'Horreur Lovecraftienne')
Difficulte: (nothing in the book is other than 'debutant')
Duree estimee: (one clock symbol = 1 hour)
Nombre de joueurs: (person symbols instead of a number)
Type de personnages: (in Terrors pregens are provided so everything is 'Pretires')
Epoque: 1920s etc

There is also a small paragraph nearby on 'Ambiance'

Hope this is helpful. Best, malcojones

Interesting. Some of those I think would be quite difficult to do consistently, especially with different people making the call, and I've tended to go for either few broad categories, or a few distinct categories that are likely to make sense even if there's grey areas ignored between them. So I've got "Mythos-free", "Mythos-light" and "Mythos-heavy", for example, because those were the most categories I thought I could readily assign in a consistent way (ignoring whatever "Mythos-medium" may be as not likely to be a useful metric), whereas even 1-5 seems a bit tough to make out. SD may have house rules for determining this stuff - I wonder?

The exact categories they've got are interesting, though. Things like "exploration" could be handy. I do wonder how reliable the estimated times are, in the light of my own experience...

[malcojones]

Interesting. Some of those I think would be quite difficult to do consistently, especially with different people making the call, and I've tended to go for either few broad categories, or a few distinct categories that are likely to make sense even if there's grey areas ignored between them. So I've got "Mythos-free", "Mythos-light" and "Mythos-heavy", for example, because those were the most categories I thought I could readily assign in a consistent way (ignoring whatever "Mythos-medium" may be as not likely to be a useful metric), whereas even 1-5 seems a bit tough to make out. SD may have house rules for determining this stuff - I wonder?

The exact categories they've got are interesting, though. Things like "exploration" could be handy. I do wonder how reliable the estimated times are, in the light of my own experience...

I think your approach is right. They seem to use Mythe for how canonical the mythos content is. Investigation light and heavy could work. Exploration is a key element. Most scenarios will focus on one of these or action, but interaction seems to emphasise built-in roleplaying opportunities.

The times are realistic, but as you say MMV. I suspect all you need is the 'epoch' from the latter part of their list, though some way of noting if pregens are provided would be good.

Best, malcojones

[OptikaNET]

Couldn't tags be ranked/rated.

So instead of High/Low Mythos etc, you could have Mythos: 5 (being high) or Mythos: 1 (being low) or Mythos: 0 (non-supernatural or mundanely supernatural only).

Violence could be rated 1-5, Skill level rated 1 (beginner) to 5 (expert), Survivability 1-5 etc, etc...

Might be easier to read at a glance, once you've got used to the ranking system, than having a long list of keywords (which is useful for a boolean search but less useful if a Keeper just wants to see at a glance if the campaign is one he wants to buy or not).

Kind Regards
Dave

Edited to add: I missed the fact that a few other people had suggested star-rankings and such, so just acknowledging that I'm not the first to post this suggestion.