Dreaming

[essentialsaltes]

aaronjv ran a Dreamlands-y CoC game over the 3-day weekend. It suffered a bit from what most Dreamlands type things do. You run into a series of extravagantly described things that have nothing to do with you. "You come across a wandering giant marsupial tiger. But not just any giant marsupial tiger... its ears are bedecked with long, draping earrings of chrysobel and iolite, while its shaved forehead is covered in arabesques of black henna. Within its pouch is a latticework sphere of filigreed titanium, which contains a hen's egg as large as a ruby. The tiger's obsidian claws look as if they have recently rent three or four lesser auks into shreds of flesh. All in all, the tiger is as irrelevant as it is remarkable."
"Uh... we, uh, give it a wide berth and continue with our mission."
"OK, next you come across a river of unusual size. But no ordinary...."

Anyway, no fault of Aaron's that the (published) adventure was constructed that way. The climax to the adventure was suddenly a thousandfold more interesting, but we had frittered so much time in sightseeing that our hurried plans came to an inevitable end: ignominious deaths (almost) all round.

Aaron tried out d20 on it, and looked to be almost as confused and frustrated as I was when I ran my one Worldprime game. Seeing CoC run by d20 gave some interesting perspective. It seems to me that d20 automatically creates a much more rules-lawyer friendly and story-telling unfriendly atmosphere. It's hard to run cinematic and enjoyable combat/action scenes when twerps are going on about move actions and flanking and opposed grappling checks. C'mon! This is Call of Cthulhu! Do you actually think you can win?!? Just enjoy yourself for fuck's sake!

I swear, as I get older and crotchetier, my own preferred RPG-style looks more and more like Once Upon a Time.

OK, I'm ranting. But I had fun, and hung out with old friends and new friends and ate and gabbed and rolled little polyhedra.

Comments

[alex-victory.livejournal.com]

I read your write-up aloud to my roommate, who was a player in my long-time CoC campaign at school. We both laughed. Thanks!

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree to all that. :-(

What I learned for my Dreamlands campaign (if I do run one):

1. Exploring the world itself is at least, if not more, exciting than following a plot.

2. Although there are things in d20 that I like, a lot of things I don't like crop up, like having to look up the rule for tripping enemies...and FINDING IT!

3. If I do run d20, I definitely need to be more familiar with the rules.

4. D&D players are NOT CoC players. Their approach is far different than what I am used to.

5. One thing I am considering for the campaign, whether d20 or regular: having players make up characters, but then I take them away and give back a words-only character sheet, like: "You know a ton about history," or "You took some swimming lessons as a kid, but that's it." These descriptions would all relate to the regular skills (in bold), and would be based on the number behind it, but it's not something you (player) would need to worry about. Then, when I call for a roll, you just toss the dice and hope (which is kinda what happens anyway, right?).

What do you think? Do you, as a player, need to have that sheet of paper with numbers on it lying before you as a safety net? Obviously, you should know what you are carrying on your person, what skills you have, etc., but do you need a number attached?

Lastly, one big point of the game that I wished to enjoy longer was hanging out in the Gothic mansion with the seven foot tall pale man with long black hair and the coolest coat in all of RPG-dom, plus his twisted little "companion" (who of course had many more games she wanted to play with you). I didn't want to constantly force the issue and yell "No! You can't learn spells in a day from the town sorceror! Get back on the ship and get to the Moon!"

So I take the blame for most of that, however, I still think it was successful, at least in giving me a preview of what I've set up so far. I am seriously re-considering using the d20 rules (at the end, I didn't even do any conversions for the bad guys, I just rolled percentage behind the screen instead of a 20).

Thanks for playing. I wish wish wish we had more time to role play out the Mansion on the Moon. You didn't even stick around for the great feast on the next night, where Vredni forces his Lengite servants to joust astride phororhacoses, and if a Lengy gets hurt...ooh, look, another tray of meat is served about an hour later!

Oh, well.

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

1. Exploring the world itself is at least, if not more, exciting than following a plot.

In the more relaxed setting of a campaign, there'll be much more time for that. I mean, I and my character desperately wanted to investigate a hidden temple in the forest, but hey... we had a curse to uncurse.

Obviously, you should know what you are carrying on your person, what skills you have, etc., but do you need a number attached?

If you force someone through all the decisions of choosing stats and feats and skills, I don't think you can take his/her sheet away. But maybe you can pull a similar stunt on them - they're gonna be Cthulhu Now types, right? Who knows what their Dreamlands stats should be? Maybe they're different when in the Dreamlands. Different and... ignorant of their own skills. I dunno.

I didn't want to constantly force the issue and yell "No! You can't learn spells in a day from the town sorceror! Get back on the ship and get to the Moon!"

That's not your fault, nor is it really the fault of the players. It's just part of the seductive nature of the Dreamlands. I consider that one of the perils of the adventure... being sidetracked. For the campaign, just don't curse people to cross the world as quickly as possible!

You didn't even stick around for the great feast on the next night, where Vredni forces his Lengite servants to joust astride phororhacoses

That reminds me, have you heard they're gonna make a Joust movie?

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

That reminds me, have you heard they're gonna make a Joust movie?/i>
Oh my.

The benefit of running a longer campaign is that I can adjust GMing as needed. Thanks for the tips.

d20 WorldPrime

[notjenschiz.livejournal.com]

does this mean I never get to find out what's behind the door under the temple on the Street of the Gods?

Re: d20 WorldPrime

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

We'll see. I do have ideas.

[ajax.livejournal.com]

I've been reading through the D&D 3.5ed rules and am reaching much the same conclusion -- fuck a bunch of "flat-footed" and "5-foot-step" and "take a 20." Any action that can't be properly assessed with no more than two (2) die rolls and three (3) modifiers, it's the DM's responsibility to just make something the hell up.

All these revisions to the core rules say to me that those fuckers at WOTC just wanted to graft a wargame onto my favorite RPG so they could sell more miniatures. Because the only business model they know is selling you packages of random crap, 85% of which you don't need.

--- Ajax.

[(Anonymous)]

I've heard that they're going to clean up combat in 4th edition, but not sure how much. I've run a couple episodes of an Eberron game. It feels like the system is being wasted a bit, on my game, since my games tend to have almost no combat. So they've got all these elaborate rules for combat that just rarely come up. I enjoyed using White Wolf's storyteller system pretty well for light action, but all their actual abilities for the various supernatural groups are totally unbalanced and required re-balancing to actually use.

[zorker.livejournal.com]

I've heard that they're going to clean up combat in 4th edition, but not sure how much. I've run a couple episodes of an Eberron game. It feels like the system is being wasted a bit, on my game, since my games tend to have almost no combat. So they've got all these elaborate rules for combat that just rarely come up. I enjoyed using White Wolf's storyteller system pretty well for light action, but all their actual abilities for the various supernatural groups are totally unbalanced and required re-balancing to use.