I love my character: an antiquarian, Dr. Reginald P. Gristle, phd. Although NJ born and raised, and a Princeton graduate, he puts his phd in religion to use identifying artifacts from little known ancient and tribal religions for the University of Pennsylvania Museum. He is a collector of such things himself and appreciates them both for their beauty and for the mysteries they can reveal. It is not surprising that with his background he would become a "friend" of The Project. A man of extreme curiosity, he often leaps before he looks when an old book or artifact of mysterious origin is within his grasp - as such he has "seen things" he does not discuss with anyone outside of the Project. Despite the effects on his sanity, he does not temper his behavior.(I rolled a 25 starting sanity).
During our investigation, I managed to pilfer a copy of The King in Yellow (and lost 5 sanity as a result) as well as a carved Elder Sign. Neither of which proved useful when we encountered the thing we're tracking. Fortunately, my character is not a hero, and he dove for cover. With a pistol, borrowed from our group's priest, I joined in a brief fire fight where I nearly hit one of our team (oops!). The session ended with a young boy shot and bleeding, his mother delirious from torture and lack of food, half of our team jumping from a burning building, and some of us pushing some loose bricks in the back of the basement - possibly a hidden room or compartment.
*** Some thoughts ***
As I said, this was my first time playing CoC. I have owned the rules for 2 years but just never got around to reading them all the way through. In preparation for this session, I downloaded and read the free demo PDF figuring it'd be enough to get by. Turns out I was right.
Generating a character took maybe 15 minutes and that was mostly trying to decide which of the skills would give me the character I wanted to play and benefit the group. The skills system was very easy to use in play, although our GM encourages role play, placing less emphasis on the result of the roll than on what you describe (which has a nice old school feel).
I'm looking forward to the next session - I believe we'll be wrapping this one up and I can't wait to see what the hell we're tracking!
Way back in the '80s there was a young woman gamemistress in Salinas, California (near where I worked in a game store) who was famous for scaring the hell out of her CoC players.
ReplyDeleteShe lived in an old Victorian house and would cut all power to the house so they played by candlelight. She had various windows open so that there were drafts and a series of battery-operated tape recorders (mainly silent but with occasional screams or other odd sound effects).
I never had the pleasure of playing in one of her sessions . . . but I sure heard about them.
-- Jeff
Talk about immersion - that sounds fantastic! And worlds apart from the session I just played in.
ReplyDeleteOur game shared the room with a Magic: The Gathering tournament. At times we could barely hear each other,let alone establish atmosphere.
Just found this...I was the GM :-) It was really a year ago? Wow. That was one of the better sessions. In terms of handling large groups, that's happened a lot in my "Cthulhu" sessions. In the "Delta Green" mini-campaign, I made a point of splitting them up and running the game as parallel scenes. That helped to confuse them and ramp up the paranoia. Our FBI Agent is outside the murder scene, calling head office to speak to their undercover boss. Inside the murder scene,our CDC guy is searching one of the mutilated bodies....and a phone starts ringing in the coat pocket of the corpse. He answers, and of course, it's our FBI Agent on the other end. Fun times.
ReplyDeleteJust found this...I was the GM :-) It was really a year ago? Wow. That was one of the better sessions. In terms of handling large groups, that's happened a lot in my "Cthulhu" sessions. In the "Delta Green" mini-campaign, I made a point of splitting them up and running the game as parallel scenes. That helped to confuse them and ramp up the paranoia. Our FBI Agent is outside the murder scene, calling head office to speak to their undercover boss. Inside the murder scene,our CDC guy is searching one of the mutilated bodies....and a phone starts ringing in the coat pocket of the corpse. He answers, and of course, it's our FBI Agent on the other end. Fun times.
ReplyDelete