I am not putting in any goblins, at least for our starting adventures. Some science fiction, perhaps. Aside: I do feel like getting into a gunfight, should it for any reason come to that, or mobbed by cultists, should be mortally dangerous. Why would it be otherwise?
Something that could be helpful: remember the original cyberpunk theme? Any recommendations for specific adventures that are fun? Not limited to any one system; originally an Eclipse Phase adventure or Mothership or Cyberpunk, doesn’t matter. I can cobble something together by myself — I am not that devoid of ideas — but a tried-and-tested plot might be the way to go.
Oh, wow. There really weren’t many published adventures for the old Cyberpunk 2020 game. There’s Land of the Free which was a big mini-campaign published in 1994. The PCs are hired to transport a scientist’s daugher from New York to Night City and end up becoming the most wanted people in the world. There’s a germ of a good adventure in there somewhere, but it’s a total railroad from beginning to end. There’s also Firestorm: Shockwave and Firestorm: Stormfront where player characters get to participate in the 4th Corporate War. And by participate I mean they get to watch a bunch of NPCs do all the really cool stuff. There might be some interesting ideas for you to use.
Sorry, I was mostly a homebrew sort rather than the module sort. The only module I have for Shadowrun is the set involving Harlequin, which is mostly about the early Shadowrun / Earthdawn (prior to rejiggle) crossover continuity.
Another option though is to pick storylines or sub-stories out of genre specific video games and modify them to your needs. I really enjoyed sequences in SR: Dragonfall and Hong Kong, and any one or two individual runs from those games might make a solid short campaign.
Go to any of the online guides and you could get a summary of what happens, maps, enemies, and comparative encounter difficulties to port back to TT-RPG!
Of course, everyone has different ideas. My ideas work for me but I do enjoy reading others thoughts on this.
Can a game be played without knowledge of the setting. Well, sure. If I say I want to run a Star Wars style game but none of my players have seen any Star Wars movies or shows, I’m not really going to get a Star Wars style game. It will be generic scifi, which is fine but I need to check my expectations.
I think it’s the same for CoC. CoC’s sanity mechanic is built for the unspeakable horrors of the elders. I don’t know of another system that has it built in, like CoC, or that doesn’t tack it on to handle a CoC style game. In general, players fight against negative things that happen to their characters, which is understandable. They also learn to avoid things that hurt their characters if they can find another way. That might not be in the spirit of CoC game. The stories show that protaganists reading or using some of the things that the antagonists have used but for good. The result of insanity is the same. My point, like the Star Wars game, is that if players don’t know the lore/background of the setting, it might not feel like that type of game.
I did create some straw men there but it’s based on my players, whom I know well.
I do disagree with this. This could be the difference in how I interpret or understand of CoC. I could easily see a character, who has lost some SAN, thinking that burning down the warehouse to stop it makes the most sense. Even without that, I could see some non rich characters, who don’t have B&E skills, deciding that burning the mansion down to stop the rich people, with guards including the police, is viable. Maybe they intended it as a distraction but it spread too far. Tragically, some died from it, which caused the loss of SAN as the characters try to justify their actions and the consequences.
I guess my point is that if the bad guys open a gate. In my mind, hopefully supported by the lore, the only way to close the gate is for the whole group to read from the same book that opened the gate. This could cause one of characters to go insane. The players might be annoyed at how I interpreted things without knowing the lore. Understanding the mythos of the setting makes it easier for the GM and players to agree.
I’m going to run a one shot Shadowrun game with my players. Enough of them don’t know the game so in my introduction, I am going to explain that combat is the last thing they should want. In a previous SR game, with different players, I did watch the NPC roll a great to hit roll and the PC roll a botch resist roll and go from full health to down and dying in that one hit.
As I think about it, games like SR should probably have most missions go well without a single shot fired. This is about a mercenary group doing a mission and the best mercenaries wouldn’t set off alarms. It’s not exciting, though. Then it’s understood that even if the PCs get recorded or witnessed, it’s near impossible to track down a SINless person and most authorities won’t try.
I bought it! Great deal!
This may be a more succinctly put response for what I want to say. I still like discussing games!
I hope my responses are taken as fun discussion points and my point of view. I hope all of you have fun in your games.
We might be talking about different things when it comes to setting. For Call of Cthlhu, the setting is our world except it has some supernatural elements. If I tell the players we’re playing some CoC and the campaign is set in New York in the year 1926, they’re already familiar with the setting even if they’ve never read Lovecraft. i.e. They’re going to be able to make a character and fit in fairly easily.
I’ve run games for people who were not familiar with Lovecraft’s work and Sanity presented no difficulties. I mean other than the normal difficulties associated with becoming accustomed to game mechanics.
I think you misunderstood @Stranger_On_A_Train. He didn’t argue that it was never appropriate to burn down a warehouse or commit egregious acts of violence, just that the focus of CoC is on investigation rather than violence. And when it comes to violence, CoC characters are far more vulnerable than their counterparts in D&D.
Okay but isn’t this making my point? I’m not saying that new players can’t jump into a setting described as 1920’s New York and play characters living there. I’m saying the players won’t know how to give it that lovecraft feel. Do they have their characters flinch at horrors? Do they relish the feel of power from casting that spell even as it tears at their mind?
Put another way, I have run games set in specific settings and I have led up to a big reveal, which fell completely flat because the players didn’t know the setting. The big reveal meant nothing to them because they didn’t know who or what I was referencing. Can they learn? Sure. It takes time and it takes interest. It takes patience on the side of the GM to make the effort to teach the players about the setting. It can be fun in its own way but it takes time to get there.
I’m getting pedantic and I do apologize. I’m talking beyond the mechanics. The Sanity mechanic tells the player that is important but the lore shows them how it plays out. Whether it’s done or described, the hesitation at looking at the remnants of the creature before they know if they have to roll for Sanity loss. The stare they get as they see something else and have to decide if it’s really there or not.
I think I’m equally jealous of groups that are able to play this style of game. I am thankful for my players. They are adults who are looking to be entertained. They rarely want to add to the story and are fine reacting to what I present to them. If I tell the players that losing Sanity is bad, some of them will avoid doing anything that causes Sanity loss. Is that wrong? Well, no, from a realistic point of view, but it doesn’t help tell the story of characters who know the price for saving humanity is their sanity.
That’s fair and a good point. It’s good for the players and GM to be on the same page.
Advice on the above. Pick a movie that reflects some of the sanity twisting of the mythos, without being mythos. Something where you see the mind break down, especially if the enemy is untouchable by “conventional” means. Something as simple as “Fallen” could work. Especially because it’ll show just how crazy it seems to believe it, when you lack the evidence of your own eyes and experiences.
Watch it as a group (or any other similar film, this one is pretty accessible compared to others, but I like “In the Mouth of Madness” for a less adventurous option) on the first night before anyone makes characters, to set the mood.
[ note - I’ve picked two of at least a dozen options, but wanted ones leaning into the mental battle, and a lot less of direct conflict, and certainly ones where victory is limited at best ]
THEN explain the setting. The rest is up to the storytelling. Hand outs are great, so if you give a handwritten journal to the PCs and let them read it, chronicling the descent into madness of someone reading a mythos book (leave plenty of missing pages as a hook if you like) it’ll give them a “first hand” feeling of how dangerous stuff can be.
Back to the OP though, the technique works fine for Cyberpunk and other genres though - depending on the style, some of the less shoot 'em up episodes of Cowboy Bebop, or move heavily investigative, like “Black Dog Serenade” could work.
Heck, even Firefly can work, such as the episdoe “Safe” because it shows just how bad things can be if someone gets shot and everyone’s plans go straight to hell. It also is a good example to NEVER split up the party!
Note, speaking of Firefly, the episode “Bushwacked” is another example of what happens to someone who sees horror beyond what he can handle.
The Cabin in the Woods would be a great choice for this, particularly since it is heavily influenced by Lovecraft’s mythos including having a creature that looks like a Deep One show up near the end of the movie.
TCitW was on my mental short list when I mentioned at least a dozen others, but, for me, it’s the perfect fodder for Beyond the Supernatural’s “victim” class campaigns. Where you have little to no agency, and are just a normal person who gets caught up in the supernatural. Most CoC games involve people with more agency, skills, etc. Of course, the great thing about TCitW (spoilers!) is that it’s one of those times where the “evil cult” is actually working for the greater good, even if they’re the antagonists.
But again, any such movies or show can give newbie players a taste of the style that the GM is aiming for. Gritty and dangerous, investigative and cerebral, casual or one “I rolled a FOUR!*” from disaster, high or low consequences. I mentioned FIrefly because for a scifi-ish setting, it’s one of the few that shows consequences without being completely dystopian. Not that dystopian is wrong for Shadowrun/Cyberpunk of course!
-* bonus points for those of us who get this reference, honorable mention to those of us (probably all!) who’ve HAD one or more of those moment!
Quite old apparently! And I mentioned it because of a “style” of play that was explicit in those books, note I do NOT recommend that gaming system to anyone.
And for the record, I played BtS in college and high school, and I’m 50. So, yeah, a few of us old enough to remember it without quite being ready for the retirement home!
