Getting the players to think about their actions more.

[Iamthewayfarer]

You guys are a gold mine! Thanks for all of your help. I never thought of starting the scenario squarely in the prison, and then sicking the crazed survivors of the shanty-town on them. Oh, they're going down next time they try pulling that crap.

In other news, I'm going to use that reloading idea too.

[Pazuzu]

Hm, I can think of things that doesn't die by fire...things that just maybe stalks naughty investigators and burn buildings they visits to the ground...

[ElijahWhateley]

There's a fine line between reigning your players in and making them feel railroaded.

As everyone has mentioned, there are much better options than limiting ammo. I'd say there are also better options than massive SAN-loss for arson. Sure, in the real world there isn't much that can justify burning a village of innocents (preventing a nuclear holocaust, maybe?), but once the PCs become familiar with the horror of the Mythos, they should realize that no human evil is even comparable. Like trapped animals desperate to survive, humans who realize the full extent of the Mythos chew their own (literal or metaphorical) limbs off to survive; this is why so many commit suicide - the Mythos is a fate worse than death. Sure, burning down the shantytown should cause some SAN loss, but if the players are sure they are defeating a Mythos horror, then it should actually be less sanity loss than having the horror escape and realizing that it could have been defeated at the cost of mere lives and suffering.

Instead, just let them face the practical limitations of their actions. As mentioned above, arson isn't as easy as throwing a match, nor do buildings and forests burst into pillars of flame at a single Molotov like they do in films. Is it the middle of a heat wave (when they might), or has it rained recently, soaking everything? Exactly how much gasoline do the characters have? Is there any chance of the fire brigade showing up? How long is it before the arson investigators show up?

As for the briefcases of ammo, weight and curious police are good ways to limit them, but there's also a very easy solution that won't hurt on the arson front, either: fire vampires.

Oh, and "Edge of Darkness", which is right at the back of the corebook, is a haunted house scenario where burning down the house is actually the worst thing the players can do.

[Insanity]

I am not paying that much attention to ammo, but when the group traveled across seas, I am keeping track of their money as they are kinda removed from their income source.

While I am not really keeping an eye on their total ammo, I do try to keep an eye on the number of rounds left in the weapon.
Hasn't happened yet, but during some gunfight, someone is going to raise their pump action 12-gauge or .45 revolver, pull the trigger and here a 'click' and nothing else. Then things will be interesting.
If there has been enough time between fights, I usually assume someone would have reloaded, but if they are rushing about, not sure of what they are doing, might forget.

[mosswood17]

I was going to address the ammunition issue. I assume you are playing in the 1920's. First off, I would echo the previous post by Gaffer. If your players have their spare bullets in their briefcase there are a lot of steps that have to happen prior to them getting at those bullets. First, they need to set the briefcase on a flat surface. They need to work the latch (are there key locks or combinations?). They need to open the box of rounds. They need to load the rounds. This, to me, is at least 3-4 actions. In combat, that is an eternity. This gets even sketchier if they are being attacked at close range. When the bad guy shooting at you sees you duck down and fumbling with the latch on your suitcase usually they will try to close ground and finish you off. Or at least flank you while you aren't paying attention. Doing all this normally is probably not a big deal. It just takes time. Attempting each of these steps while on an adrenaline rush while people are shooting at you gets a whole lot more difficult. Have them roll DEX rolls to see if they drop things or if they fumble around trying to get the suitcase open. After they get the suitcase open and after they get their bullets loaded, have them get flanked by the bad guy who circled around the PC's while they were busy fiddling around with their bullets. In the 1920's there were LOTS of guns floating around. The heaviest restrictions were on handguns as they could be hidden. When they are picked up by the police for burning down a building they will be suspicious because they have handguns. If they have handguns and enough ammunition to take out half a football fied the police will have enough to detain them for a very long time. Bullets in the briefcase should be relatively inaccessible during a gunfight. The amount of time it would take to reload would allow the enemy gunman to saunter up and shoot him before he could whip the cylinder back in to begin firing again. Those are my thoughts. I echo the sentiment tat they should be able to carry whatever they want. If they get caught with it they should be held responsible.

[Aklo]

For my part, I Keep up games where the confrontation with the otherwordly is (for the most part) unaffected by bullets. Hounds of tindalos are unaffected, The Dark Young are covered in a thick black fluid that burns to the touch and protects them from fire or ammunition, and empty 80 bullets into a dimensional shambler, deep one, or ghoul, and they (might) fall to the ground dead, but by then you've got dozens more to deal with.

In short, investigators should only really use bullets as a last resort or against human evils, after which point they will most likely be held accountable for shooting so many well respected community members the night before.
To me, only magical tomes, or incredibly advanced weaponry phase the spawn of the mythos, and even then, they are a slippery, shadow skulking, darkness hunting, easily teleporting lot who are best avoided or fleed from rather then fought.

Belive me, it is far more hair-raising to sneak past a group of the Dagon-mutated villagers, subject to their smell and horror then it is to unload bullets on them blindly. At no point should the investigators have an edge over you, you command the mythos itself. Bullets? How cute.

[Laraqua]

The next time they burn a suspicious old house to the ground without checking it first, just have it be a suspicious old house with vagrants living inside. It's not a case of being a mean Keeper, really, as it's quite fitting for a Lovecraftian tale for folks to become so paranoid and insane that a rusty door swinging in the breeze is enough to make them burn it down. If you want to be kind, have the first time they do it -- nothing happens! They'll never know if it were an ordinary house or a haunted house. Then when they come up against the same thing the next time, have it be an ordinary yet suspicious looking house with someone inside. Perhaps even have them get out alive but be badly burned. I'd avoid sucker punches like it being a mum and kids, though. This should be more about motivating the investigators to actually investigate first rather than just making them feel awful as a lot of investigators would retire after accidentally burning down a mum and kids.

[Orenda]

This may sound... sacriligious, but the kind of crazed paranoia described in this thread and looking to be curtailed makes me think.

I my structure, my hypothetical scenarios (influenced a fair bit by low fantasy), the most ironic end a character can come to is to die fighting side by side with the same kinds of sorcerous or inhuman weirdos who he had originally hunted, facing down the kind of Blood-Knight pyromanic turned 0 SAN Roaring Troll described herein. Having to fight desperately against former colleagues even as who know that by your actions, Deep Ones or Ghouls or Mi'go make their escape with their charges and dependants in tow.

Of course, if something really mythos-level bad was going on, I'd let the troll go Hulk on the baddies while i went in. Saving the relatively innocent is one thing, stupidity and naivete is quite another.

[Gaffer]

Hang on, when you say this:

The Dark Young are covered in a thick black fluid that burns to the touch and protects them from fire or ammunition, and empty 80 bullets into a dimensional shambler, deep one, or ghoul, and they (might) fall to the ground dead, but by then you've got dozens more to deal with.

I presume you're talking about some sort of house-ruled super-monsters.

Let's talk .38 revolvers, which do D10 damage, averaging 5-6.

Deep Ones have 13-14 HP and have 1 point armor, so the average Deep One dies after being hit 3 times.
Ghouls have 13 HP and firearms do half damage, so the average Ghoul dies after being hit 4 or 5 times.
Dimensional Shamblers have 18 HP with 3 point armor, so the average Dimensional Shambler dies after about 7 hits.
Dark Young have 30-31 HP and each bullet only does 1 damage and heat, blast, corrosion, electrical charge, poison have no effect (nothing about a 'thick black fluid that burns to the touch'), so it takes 30-31 hits to kill them (except for shotguns, which will take about 8 hits by most peoples' interpretation).

Considering that the average human will have 10-11 HP and dies with about 2 hits, these creatures are all tougher (Dark Young are damn hard to bring down), but 80 bullets (that hit) will bring down even two DYs and slaughter numbers of the others.

(All stats are taken from the core rulebook.)

Besides, it isn't me against the investigators and the Mythos can look after itself with cleverness and awesomeness, not by being bulletproof.

[viscounteric]

Let's talk .38 revolvers, which do D10 damage, averaging 5-6.
Deep Ones have 13-14 HP and have 1 point armor, so the average Deep One dies after being hit 3 times.
Ghouls have 13 HP and firearms do half damage, so the average Ghoul dies after being hit 4 or 5 times.

b
That's all contingent on the investigators hitting in the first place, and even if they make Delta Green Ops drool with their stats, they are going to miss on occasion (or worse,weapon malfunction with the latter mentioned 80 rounds). Once they unload that revolver/shotgun, it's the monsters turn, and teeth and claws don't need to be reloaded.

[Laraqua]

Besides, it isn't me against the investigators and the Mythos can look after itself with cleverness and awesomeness, not by being bulletproof.

I could be wrong but it sounds like you're implying having bullet-proof Mythos creatures is in some way unfair to the players (though I don't dispute you're right that they can be killed with bullets unless you house rule it, they have hit points). It makes thematic sense that some of these things can't be killed with bullets and is quite in keeping with the genre. It's only unfair if you require the investigators to dispatch them with combat and then make combat stupidly hard. If it's more of a Lovecraftian psychological horror or occult thriller where success means never truly confronting the enemy, then it works out quite well. Unfortunately, there are too few examples of this sort of adventure in the published scenarios as they generally require some sort of battle at the end.

[wombat1]

My Cthulhu Invictus game ran a couple of days ago. Afterwards, one of the players explained his theory for dealing with situations. Most of the 'bullet-proof' Mythos creatures are, to his way of thinking, indeed invulnerable to attacks. However, their limitation is their need for a support structure of cultists. The stars have to be right, the invocations have to be chanted and so on. Therefore, under his guidance, the group draws great big red circles on the map where there are powerful things, but is absolutely hard charging and lethal whenever softer targets appear. This plays off of Laraqua's last comment--if the players can come up with some convincing means of avoiding the battle at the end by being clever, by all means they ought to be encouraged to do so.

[Gaffer]

My reply was strictly to Aklo's post, which seemed to imply that Dark Young, Dimensional Shamblers, Ghouls, and Deep Ones - in particular - were practically invulnerable to gunfire. I was pointing out that, per the core rulebook, this is far from the case. Well, not so far with DY, I'll concede. There are other entities that are 'bulletproof' and I agree that more elegant scenarios that provide alternatives to gun battles are greatly to be desired. Unfortunately, I -- like many writers of scenarios -- seem to have difficulty concocting them.

I also replied to his comment which seemed to imply that the game is a contest between players and Keeper. Not in my opinion.

Missed shots and creature prowess were outside the scope of my comment, though a legitimate topic for another discussion.

[zackspacks]

Some interesting comments, but I think this all comes down to your group's expectations of the game they are going to play. It is often worth having a few minutes discussion with the group to come to an agreement about how you are going to play the scenario/campaign. As long as you are all having fun, it really does not matter how you play the game, AFAIC there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way to play, you should all be playing and enjoying the experience.

If you want to go pulpy, then as has been suggested, forget ammo counting, even inventory management if you wish. IMHO there is nothing more boring than a group of investigators getting to the well of the big bad, finding they don't have the correct equipment, then nipping back to a shop to buy exploratory equipment. Is this really the aim of your game ? Now if it is, cool beans to you, carry on with the fun. If everyone finds this tiresome, drop it, and get to the next 'fun bit'.

With regards to the comments about briefcases and ammo that have been suggested, by imposing these restrictions, you will simply go down a route of the players developing ingenious multi-weapon bulletproof carrying devices. Similarly with making all of the monsters bullet or fire proof, you then restrict yourself in what you can use, and possibly bore your players with everything having to be taken out by book wielding librarians, which they have no interest in ? Maybe they do though ?

As for punishing players, I really don't recommend this route at all, the game should be about 'fun for all', not wielding godlike power over the players. In my experience, not many players like that.

So, in summary, just have a chat with the group and try to establish the type of game you all want to play, and will enjoy. That's what it should be about

cheers
Paul

[Bazorkin]

I agree that punishing them can be a bad move. As always, open conversation is the best tool to resolving or heading off a problem. Its a shame but you just might have to come to the conclusion that you guys want two different kind of games; You want lovecraftian horror and deep investigation, they seem to want action and pulp. Neither is wrong but if Keeper and Players want two different things neither will ever be happy.